The Mask of Sho-Yog, ch. 1 (Patreon)

Mike’s legs burned with each step, the shaking muscles threatening to give out entirely.  His apartment was only on the fourth floor, and he usually enjoyed the aged metal and marble stairs, but he felt like he’d been in motion for days and even his impressive physique had its limits.  He could have used the elevator in the lobby.  It was a lovely antique, all polished brass and weathered wood, the same design motifs that ran through the rest of the squat, brick building.  But he’d had his fill of boxes over the last few days and at least the stairwell provided room to move if they came for him.

Not that he’d make it far in his exhausted state.  Sleep was a precarious thing at the best of times for the paranoid P.I..  His existence was a constant simmer of tension, a state of perpetual readiness for when the other shoe dropped.  Between his time in the service, then as a cop, and now as an investigator for hire, he collected enemies like it was his hobby.  He always had one eye looking over a broad shoulder while the other was fixed on the path ahead, never knowing when the bill would come due or from which direction.

Normally he liked it that way.  He was addicted to the rush of adrenaline and the thrill of the chase.  It forced him to keep his mind sharp and his body honed, because if the former couldn’t get him out of a jam he’d have to use the latter.  Given his background, and considering the broad, brawny torso straining against his button down, as well as the tree-trunk thighs struggling to heft his tall, muscled frame up the stairs, most people assumed the lantern-jawed hunk was a simple bruiser.  Which is exactly how Mike wanted it.  He could clean himself up when he needed to, but he preferred to exist in his naturally rugged state, with a few day’s stubble obscuring his deceptively sharp cheekbones and his short, salt-and-pepper hair in an unkempt, wind-blown tangle.  It threw people off and made them underestimate the middle-aged bulldog as nothing but dumb muscle.  This time, though, he was starting to feel like he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

There was nothing normal about his current situation.  He didn’t feel a rush of adrenaline or an exciting thrill from the game of cat-and-mouse.  All he felt at the moment was bone-weary dread that chilled him to the core.  For the entirety of his forty-two years on the planet, Mike had taken for granted that things worked a certain way, that there were some rules which just couldn’t be broken.  He’d been very, very wrong.  Every time he closed his eyes he saw what they did to his partner, Brant, but leaving them open was just as tricky considering what now happened whenever he laid eyes on the other man.  Mike still couldn’t wrap his head around that last part.  It was hard to process any of it, but the idea that even after his friend had been changed he was still acting as a seed of chaos, causing unforeseen reactions in others, was a hard pill to swallow.  It didn’t make any of it easier to think about, either.  Though he’d fooled around with guys in the past, usually when drunk and out of other options on a deployment, Mike had never experienced the kind of desires Brant now stirred within him.  Then again, up until they’d taken the job a few days ago he’d never met anyone even remotely close to what his friend had become.

It was supposed to be a cut-and-dry missing persons case.  A college student had disappeared, some History major who’d stuck his nose where he shouldn’t while researching a thesis.  According to the notes his roommate had given them, the kid, Chad, a lanky, bookish nerd in his early twenties, was last seen heading to an old warehouse down on the docks.  It wasn’t the kind of place a History grad student normally spent their time, especially in that part of town.  Any legitimate business had long since dried up when the shipping lanes all shifted north, and while product still flowed through the dilapidated terminals, it was usually of the illicit variety.  Drugs, people, smuggled goods; business was thriving if you knew what to look for.

Chad’s roommate insisted that his friend was entirely straight-laced and wasn’t out to buy drugs or pick up hookers like most of the people who crept around that neighborhood at night.  He said the missing man was working on a paper about a certain, supposedly dead, religion, but that he’d heard about some related artifacts moving through the docks and had wanted to see what he could find out.  It was the reason Chad’s roommate hadn’t gone to the cops.  If his friend had gotten involved with smugglers it could jeopardize the missing man’s career before it even started, so he was hoping to keep it quiet.  Mike and Brant assumed Chad had simply shown up in the wrong place at the wrong time and seen something he shouldn’t.  It was unfortunate but not uncommon in a sprawling city like theirs, and it should have been a simple matter of chasing down a few leads and turning up an inevitable body.  Of course they didn’t tell the client that, but it wasn’t their first rodeo.

The way things were going, though, it might be their last.  Mike paused when he reached the fourth-floor landing, his trained ears searching for the slightest sound.  A creaking board, a rustling of fabric, a light ping of metal, anything that would signal a hidden presence.  Hearing nothing, he gripped the knob in a calloused hand and extended his senses through the closed door in the way he’d learned through countless near-death experiences.  There was nothing supernatural involved, just a final gut-check about the likelihood of a potential ambush on the other side.  Relatively certain of his solitude, Mike pulled the door open, waiting a beat before stepping through into the empty, familiar hallway.  His eyes did a quick once over of the worn, burgundy carpet, scanning the few doors that peppered the wall, with its bottom-half of oak and top half of emerald damask paper, for any hint of danger.  Nothing seemed out of place, but he still tensed as he passed each apartment, expecting the doors to fling open at any moment.  The agents of Sho-Yog were everywhere.  It wasn’t a dead religion at all but a terribly thriving one.

The thought made the bright wall sconces seem to dim in Mike’s eyes, causing the menacing pools of shadow that lurked in the corners to grow and spread.  His heart started racing as the inky tendrils drew near, but he shook his head and gave his stubbled cheeks a few rough slaps, causing the corridor to become mundane once more.  He went through a similar routine when he reached his apartment, pausing at the threshold for any sign of danger.  Based on what he’d seen he knew his efforts were futile, that no mere door or walls could keep such forces at bay, but old habits were hard to ignore.

He took a deep breath as he stepped inside, bracing himself for something more complicated than a simple attack.  “Brant?  Everything good,” he called, quietly closing the door behind him.

Mike’s stomach fluttered to the floor at the chirping response.  “I was starting to get worried,” Brant said from the other room, his squeaky, lightened voice causing the exhausted man’s cock to stir.  That stirring turned to an instant rigidity when his friend rounded the corner, his impossible new proportions fully on display.  The sight was still as overwhelming as it had been the night it happened.  Between Brant’s exaggeratedly pretty face, his confusingly curvy shape, the perfect, pendulous cock between his legs, and his unnaturally high voice, Mike’s brain didn’t know what to take in first.

“Still a no-go on the clothes?”  Even as he asked, Mike was undoing the buttons of his shirt, exposing the wiry, salt-and-pepper dusting that covered his granite slab of a chest.

Brant gave a short, shrill laugh and shook his head.  “I managed a sock.  Took everything I had, but I forced that fucker on there.  Seriously, you should’a seen me.  I was sweating like I’d just run a marathon and then it…it just…” he trailed off and shrugged.  “It just wasn’t there any more.  I found it back in the drawer with all the others like I’d never even tried.  And what if…what if I didn’t?  What if I just thought I put it on, but it was all just in my head?  What if ALL of this is just in my head?”

Mike shucked his shirt and stepped forward to grasp Brant by his overly-broad shoulders.  He gave the smooth mounds a gentle squeeze as he spoke, fighting the urge to let go of control entirely.  “If it’s in your head then it's in mine, too,” he said, fixing his friend’s gaze with his own.

Brant’s blue eyes blazed with unnatural illumination, obliterating the feeble walls Mike tried to put up between them.  It was as if the now-blonde beauty could see to his friend’s core, stripping away the rough, masculine exterior until nothing but a vulnerable, eager boy remained.  “You look like shit,” Brant said, reaching up to run his hands across his friend’s furry pecs.  His own were perfectly smooth, just like most of his altered body had become, and Mike could see the flash of jealousy in the curvy beauty’s ice-blue eyes.

“Hey now,” Mike grunted, letting his friend’s hands linger for as long as Brant wanted.  The other man’s bulbous head brushed against his muscle gut, but he successfully fought the urge to reach down and start stroking it.  “You’ve got an unfair advantage.”

“I always did,” Brant purred, grinning at Mike’s quick gasp when he tweaked the burly man’s nipples.  “But I don’t know that I’d call this one,” he sighed, motioning down to himself.

“Depends on where you’re standing.”  A part of Mike hated how turned on he was.  Not out of anything rooted in homophobia, but because he felt like he was taking advantage of his friend’s state.  Considering what was about to happen, though, he wasn’t entirely sure who was taking advantage of who.  Brant was correct in that he’d always been the pretty half of their partnership.  At ten years Mike’s junior, the sculpted brunette was the beauty to his beast.  Brant was trim and tapering, his athletic frame packed with lean muscle and capped by a disarmingly handsome face.  His impressive body was, or at least had been, coated in a light dusting of the same perfectly styled chocolate hair that sat on his head, and the younger man was always bragging about the many opportunities he had to put his girthy cock to use with as many women as possible.

But those days were seemingly gone for good.  The Brant that stood before him now was nothing like the proportional stud he should have been.  His friend’s chocolate hair had been swapped for a golden blonde that matched the uninterrupted tan covering every inch of his now-smooth frame.  All the hair south of Brant’s eyebrows had vanished, leaving nothing to obscure his warped face or the bloated, disproportionate muscle that had swallowed his athletic frame.  Mike still wasn’t sure that “pretty” was the correct word, but he didn’t know how else to describe Brant’s sharp chin, razor cheekbones, plump, pouty lips, button nose, and alarmingly bright eyes.  The features were unnatural and predatory in their perfection, provoking intimidation and desire in equal amounts.  Just being in the presence of his friend left Mike feeling ugly and vulnerable and out of control in a way he’d never experienced, and that was all without factoring in Brant’s new curves.  Under normal circumstances the now-tanned, now-blonde Adonis would have been shaped like a bodybuilder considering the amount of muscle he’d packed on, only the unwanted bulk didn’t hang in the right way.  It piled at Brant’s chest and shoulders, giving him a set of oversized, pillowy pecs and beefy arms but leaving his tight waist untouched before exploding out again at his hips.  The other man’s firm bubble had ballooned into a set of colossal, impossible globes, the extra meat spilling around to encompass his now-supple thighs and the inflated, constantly-rigid club between them.

And it wasn’t just the sheer excessiveness of the muscle, or where it sat that set it apart, but how it felt.  Brant’s skin had become as exaggerated as the rest of him in its smoothness, carrying a moisturized glow that made him radiant in his exposure.  He was soft and solid at the same time, tapering and curvy, firm and juicy, a walking contradiction that was only further heightened by his altered voice.  Instead of a deep rumble or even a feminine purr, Brant sounded like he’d been sucking on helium, leaving him with a voice that was as unique as his warped body.

Mike still didn’t see the point of any of it.  He didn’t know what kind of god Sho-Yog was, or why the man in the mask had made the changes he’d made.  At the time, he didn’t even know they’d stumbled onto a cult when the group got the drop on them at the warehouse.  From what he’d overheard while the man had been monologuing to Brant, when the head of the order wore the obsidian, featureless mask he viewed the world with Sho-Yog’s eyes.  All worlds.  Apparently that included seeing alternate realities through the glowing red gems that ringed the mask’s exterior, and something to do with a multiverse that Mike didn’t understand.

But that wasn’t even the truly alarming part.  The alarming part came when the brass cap covering the stump where the masked man’s left hand should have been started to smoke.  Mike had been watching the events unfold from his concealed spot in the corner, trying to learn as much as he could, and it was at that point that he’d tried to intervene.  His body wouldn’t respond.  All he could do was watch in helpless horror as the smoke took the shape of a hand that grew larger and larger until it was big enough to encompass Brant entirely.  When the dusky claw grabbed his friend the other man had been a handsome brunette, but when it let go and the smoke cleared, Mike had been horrified to see the new version standing in his place.  Rooted by a fear he’d never felt before, he’d crouched and cowered until they were gone, feeling sick with guilt and filled with a strange desire as he looked at his misshapen partner.  The days since had been a frantic scramble for knowledge as the brawny investigator tried to uncover whatever clues he could, his mad darting around town punctuated by Brant’s golden, glorious cock.

He still didn’t know which of them had been more surprised that first time.  Brant had been understandably shocked and horrified by his transformation, but not to the point that either of them felt he should be.  Even when he heard his voice for the first time, and when they made the discovery that he literally couldn’t wear clothes anymore, the naked beauty seemed to regard his circumstances with an amused detachment more than anything else.  Brant would at least pretend to be embarrassed, but the more that Mike’s shock began to wane, the more that the older man began to suspect his friend enjoyed the new version of himself.

And if the masked cultist had been telling the truth, that’s exactly what Brant was.  If the gems saw into other realities and the smokey hand pulled things from those realities, then the permanently exposed stud wasn’t really the Brant he knew.  At least not entirely.  His friend was even starting to hint at that, mentioning strange dreams and flashes of memory that he couldn’t possibly have.  It would also explain how the supposedly straight Brant was able to work Mike’s body with the kind of expert precision that only came from extended practice.

They’d been so overwhelmed that first night that it was happening before either of them even realized it.  Mike was trying to comfort the other man, and trying to find something that his friend could put on and keep on, but the next thing he knew he was naked in Brant’s arms.  Their lips were pressed together and he kept trying to tell himself he needed to stop, that they shouldn’t be doing this, but he’d never wanted anything more.  His body was vibrating with desire, the sound of the other man’s squeaky new voice making his own deep rumble seem like a crude bark, just as the other man’s disproportionate perfection made his hairy bulk seem rough and ugly.  Having never had such thoughts, Mike was left with a confusing, aching need that only Brant could fill.

And fill he did, over and over again.  For the first time in his life Mike had another person inside him, riding Brant’s infinitely virile log for hours.  Even when his friend came the hefty organ never softened, letting him take the burly investigator in every position imaginable.  Mike straddled Brant’s lap, presented his furry cheeks while face down, came all over himself laying flat on his back with his legs in the air, was slammed up against the wall, had his meaty rear pummeled on all fours on the floor; the whole time feeling small and insignificant while Brant chirped and cooed in a condescending squeak.  Mike had never felt so exposed and out of control before, so it had never once occurred to him that he might enjoy the experience.  Brant certainly did, seeming far less surprised by the aftermath than the addled investigator. He’d been just as stunned at first, but where the older man grew more desperate and out of control during the experience, the altered blonde became more confident.  When Mike asked him about it afterward Brant said he didn’t know where the shift had come from, but ever since, like now, there had been a change in their dynamic.

Mike sighed when Brant began thumbing his nipples, his hands desperately fumbling with the button of his pants.  “Did you at least learn anything new,” Brant asked, stopping the older man once he had his fly open.  He reached down and kneaded the girthy log through Mike’s briefs before tugging the elastic down just enough to let the wide head wedge up against his friend’s muscle gut.

“Yuuh…yeah…” Mike gasped when Brant began running a finger around the tip of his now-oozing member.  “These assholes are everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  I found a few mentions of Sho-Yog and a cult in some history books, but nothing from the last century.  No articles, no blog posts, nothing.  It’s like they don’t exist, except for the people who’ve been tailing me for the past few days.  I swear to god even the chick at the coffee shop looked at me like she was one of them.  Probably just being paranoid, but…” Mike trailed off, wanting nothing more than to tear off his remaining clothes but feeling like he shouldn’t until Brant either told him to or did it himself.  “I found Chad, too.  And his roommate.”

“Do I even want to know,” Brant asked, a hand now slipped into his friend’s briefs to work the burly man’s churning balls.

“See for yourself.”  Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, hating the way his cock throbbed at the memory.  After what happened to Brant they’d reassessed their earlier assumptions about the likely outcome, but when he went to check in with Chad’s roommate he’d found the young man had vanished as well.  Following a hunch based on Brant’s new proclivities, Mike had been scouring the seedier parts of town, checking in at various bars and brothels to see if anyone unique had been hired lately.  After a bit of bouncing around he’d wound up at a sleazy dive that doubled as an off-the-books sex club, his search coming to an abrupt end as soon as he’d walked through the door.

The place was mostly empty as it was midday, but Mike’s attention was immediately drawn to the beefy man dancing for the scant crowd.  Though the towering mountain of chiseled, red-headed muscle gyrating on stage looked nothing like the slender, bookish Chad at first, there was no mistaking the familiar features of the young man’s face upon closer inspection.  Only the dull grin and dim expression set it apart, both making it clear that the young man’s days as a grad student were likely over.  Mike was surprised by the incredibly petite little lump that stood out against Chad’s bright thong, but not nearly as surprised as when his roommate swirled out on stage to join him.

The last time Mike saw Bryan, the younger man had been entirely average.  He was neither short nor tall, with an unremarkable build and a bland face beneath his shaggy mop of chestnut hair.  But the man who waddled out onto stage was anything but.  He was no more than four feet tall, with a slender, waifish build that carried all of its weight between the massive, clapping melons of his colossal ass and the impossibly large hose that hung more than halfway down his short little legs.  Like Chad, there was no denying the familiar features on the short, slender stallion’s face, though they’d been softened to match the rest of his now-twinkish frame.  If Bryan saw Mike standing in the crowd it didn’t show as the shrunken man tugged Chad’s thong down and swallowed the entirety of his towering friend’s nubbish package while the bigger man moaned and flexed, much to the crowd’s delight.  By the time Mike left, Chad had scooped Bryan up, wedging his diminished friend’s massive cock between them and licking around the fist-sized head while kneading the smaller man’s huge cheeks like piles of dough.

“Damn,” Brant whistled, a distant look in his eyes as he finished the video.  “Did you stick around to talk to them?”

Mike shook his head.  “A few people were paying a little too much attention to me.  Gotta be honest…I’m starting to feel like they WANTED me to see it.  Like they LET us leave the other night.  If they’ve got this kind of power, how come that’s not me and you up there?  And what the hell kind of god is this Sho-Yog anyway?  Some weird sex demon?”  He sighed and leaned forward, pressing his head against Brant’s when the other man reached around behind and slipped a few fingers between his meaty cheeks.  There was still a part of him that reeled at the idea of getting fingered, let alone being excited about it, but Mike ignored it.

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that,” Brant squeaked.  “But you’re right.  This definitely feels like being toyed with.  They know where we are, they know what you’re doing…what are they waiting for?”

“Let’s hope we don’t find out,” Mike said, his heart racing when Brant gently spun him around.  He wanted to cry tears of joy when he felt his pants and briefs land at his ankles, his firm, meaty cheeks already rooting backward for the other man’s cock like a nursing infant.  His own aching rod throbbed so hard it felt like it would shoot off his body, but Mike left it untouched as he leaned forward against the table, his beefy arms flexing under his weight.  Once Brant was inside him nothing else mattered, and there was a part of him that questioned whether it would be so bad to end up like Chad and Bryan.  The way it felt to let the other man take charge, the freedom that came from just giving in and submitting, was intoxicating after a lifetime of always having to be hyper alert and in control.

Mike pushed the thought from his mind, telling himself it was just the desire talking as he felt Brant’s thick log force itself inside.