Fruiting Bodies, ch. 16 (Patreon)

Everyone would talk about the dreams for weeks to come.  No two were exactly alike, but the number of people sharing a similar nocturnal vision taking place in the same setting was too great for it all to be a mere coincidence.  Given their nature, certain details were usually politely omitted, or adamantly denied, though the implications were clear.  If someone had one of the dreams, they experienced a version of the world that left them both dreading and longing for more.  The visions didn’t impact everyone in the city, and no one knew about the rift in the sky or the magical confrontations taking place that caused them, but that did little to lessen their impact.  Whether or not someone knew that the extra-dimensional forces bleeding into their dreams were actually real, they still woke up a changed person.  At least mentally, though in the days to come many found themselves wishing for the physical alterations they’d experienced.

Cody hadn’t been one of those people at first.  When the ochre-haired man had awoken in his familiarly fit, sweat-soaked body he’d experienced a wave of relief, followed by horror, and then confusion, over what he’d seen and done in the seemingly endless nightmare.  Unlike most dreams that brought with them a surreal time dilation, Cody felt like he was experiencing it all in real time.  Seconds, minutes, hours; all stretched by in customary, vivid fashion.

The first few were the worst.  Cody had actually felt trapped when his eyes shot open and he found himself staring at the unfamiliar sky instead of his bedroom ceiling.  Part of the structure remained on the half of the room that went deeper into the house, but the walls that led outside appeared to have disintegrated.  There wasn’t a clean break with the bits that remained, but jagged cracks, like a decayed log or rotting branch that had split.  The sky itself was a swirling, sickly haze of purple and orange, a perpetual sunset gone wrong with no clear source for the diffuse illumination that came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.  Looking towards the part of the room that still stood, Cody saw a thick layer of mold and fungus coating the walls and door in a fractal pattern, while the carpet had been replaced with a porous, spongy layer.  Day-glo Mushrooms and squat, spherical pods surrounded by long, fruiting tendrils sprung up like obscene wildflowers from the unfamiliar floor, but the stunned man could only see so much from his prone position.

He was literally stuck to the bed, cocooned beneath a layer of the same neon dust that hung in the air like a fog.  Small mushrooms and bulbous pods had sprouted across the surface, at first making Cody fear that they’d sprung from his actual body before the horrified young man realized that he’d been swaddled in a fungal wrapping.  Which isn’t to say that his body wasn’t being affected.  As he started to thrash and fight against the earthy shell, Cody began to recognize the throbbing pulses surging through him.

What he’d first mistaken for a fleshy mushroom was actually his rigid cock, looking far larger and thicker than his modest five inches should as it erupted over and over again.  The sticky geyser caused the neon smog to clump together and spatter back down, further encasing him with each horrible release and causing Cody to start thrashing in earnest when he noticed what happened after each explosion.  His body would tingle and the bonds would tighten, and as the shell constricted further it began to outline a series of unfamiliar proportions.

When he’d gone to bed Cody had been tight and tapering, standing just under six feet tall with a broad-shouldered body that was shredded and lean.  Everything about the sandy-haired man was sharp and defined, from his cropped hair, razor cheekbones and strong jaw, to his defined arms, sculpted pecs, and ripped stomach.  Cody had made sure to continue his regular workouts in the few years since graduating from college, wanting to keep himself fit and trim but never wanting to bulk up the way many of his friends did.  He’d achieved what he felt was a perfect equilibrium between size and definition, and he knew that getting bigger would only make his somewhat smallish cock look even less impressive.

Which is what made the broad, bulbous body he awoke to all the more jarring.  He put the unfamiliar mass to work, pushing and straining against the fungal shroud with all of his might until it eventually gave, his expanding bulk having finally pushed the surreal cocoon past its limit.  Cody rolled off the bed and hit the ground with a dull thud, the impact softened by the springy, uncomfortably warm floor but still jarring enough to send unfamiliar ripples through his impossibly widened body.  He propped himself up on his hands and knees, his mind reeling at how heavy his body felt even as his wide-eyes took in the size of his piston-like arms.  Instead of being slightly too large when compared against the rest of him as they should have been, they were thick, muscled pillars that perfectly matched the rest of his altered body.

Cody staggered upright, wobbling both from his altered center of gravity and from the intense eruptions that still shot forth from his inflated club of a cock.  The tingling that followed each one seemed to have stopped, leaving only the familiar buzz that normally accompanied such releases, and after a few tense moments the young man was at least relatively confident that he’d stopped growing.

Though, as far as he was concerned, he’d grown far too much already.  His pile-driver arms hung at an angle from hulking, cannonball shoulders that competed with the plump, meaty mounds of his pecs to see which of them could be more spherical.  It was a theme that the bulky, cresting muscle gut continued below, and one that his chunky, tree-trunk thighs and rocky calves carried to the very end.  His huge, ample rear with its globe-like cheeks certainly didn’t hurt the overall impression, nor did the churning, inflated balls and foot-long hose that continued to spring leak after leak.  As he stumbled over and wiped a thick layer of spore dust from the mirror, Cody saw that even his face had filled out, now sitting like a bowling ball directly on his shoulders as his hair had seemingly vanished.  Instead of trim and fit he was broad and beefy, built like a heavyweight power-lifter whose size became all the more imposing when Cody finally realized he was looking down into the mirror from at least six inches higher than he should have.

As horrified as he was by the sight of his altered reflection, it was what lay behind it that pulled a hoarse, choking scream out of the inflated young man.  Through the crumbling void where a wall and ceiling should have been, Cody looked out on an apocalyptic Eden.  The same kinds of mushrooms and other fruiting bodies that sprouted in his room did so outside, only instead of standing a few inches they reached towering, dizzying heights.  The growths jutted up like redwoods and skyscrapers, covering the entire neighborhood in a nightmare, fungal forest that stretched as far as he could see.  It covered houses and buildings and whatever other structures it came across like a blanket that had been draped over everything, and above it all loomed a gauzy, spore-choked sky that hung like the ceiling of a cave.  Cody could see other figures moving around in the distance, and though it was hard to distinguish through the constant haze and dim light, their proportions, while familiar, seemed off.  As did the odd grunting moans that barely traveled through the heavy atmosphere, further adding to the infernal landscape.

He stumbled back and crashed through his bedroom door, the wood having become brittle and rotted.  He wasn’t sure the remaining walls would fare much better as he heard them creak and groan with his heavy footfalls, but he needed to check on his roommate, Brandon.  Given how the growths flowed out of his room and into the hallway, and how there was only a gaping hole at the end of that hallway leading outside where the living room and kitchen should have been, he feared the worst.  He didn’t know if he’d find the burly ginger fully entombed or buried beneath rubble, but he never once expected the actual sight that greeted him.

Brandon sat in a pile on the spongy ground next to his bed, his body even more warped than Cody’s had become.  The red-haired hunk had been the more built of the pair, with a body that was closer to the traditional meathead look than Cody’s lean frame.  Brandon had broad shoulders, powerful arms, prominent pecs, a firm stomach, and an appropriately thick lower half supporting all that mass.  He was slightly shorter than his blonde friend, and his features weren’t as refined, but he made up for it with an almost comically large package that he was always happy to whip out at the slightest provocation.

Now, Cody watched as his friend stared at the spurting, two-foot spire of flesh his cock had become, the impossible organ looking even larger depending on which end of his friend he compared it to.  Where the former-blonde had grown everywhere, Brandon looked like someone had taken all of the mass from his upper body and shoved it down below his waist.  Instead of broad and burly, his friend’s pale, freckled torso was now lean and wiry.  Arms that should have been thick and strong were now slim and slender, hanging from thin shoulders that framed in the faint outlines where Brandon’s pecs should have been.  And where Cody’s features had filled out, becoming round and rugged beneath his bald scalp, the disproportionate redhead’s had gone in the other directions.  Brandon’s blunted features were now almost delicate in their beauty, standing in stark contrast to the mountain of mass that was his lower body.

From the waist down, the bottom-heavy man was a hulk.  Cody wouldn’t be able to confirm until Brandon stood, but the other man’s mammoth ass looked as if it would jut out in defiance of gravity.  The top of the heaping globes looked like they would form a shelf as the bottoms flowed around to meet with the lumbering pillars that had become his legs, while thighs as wide as Brandon’s trim new waist pressed together to the knee above calves the size of skulls, with wide, paddle-like feet to hold it all upright.

Before Cody could say anything his untouched cock blasted his seated friend in the face, eliciting a similar response from the stunned man’s impossibly engorged member.  As horrified as he was by everything that was happening, the sight of the other man’s warped, bottom-heavy body hit him like a punch in his distended gut.  Though the house was crumbling around them and the world outside appeared to be ending, in that moment all Cody wanted to do was wrap his enlarged arms around the other man and take their new bodies for a spin.

As he wiped the copious liquid from his pretty new face and clambered awkwardly to his feet, it was clear Brandon wanted the same thing.  Even when they tried to speak and found themselves unable to do little more than croak out hoarse, wordless grunts, they were more focused on their growing lust than anything else.  Having breathed in countless spores their vocal chords had apparently been impacted, but words weren’t necessary for what they needed to do.

And it was quickly occurring to them that it was much more of an actual need than a want.  In just the few moments they’d been around each other, the confusing attraction had swelled to a painful, magnetic pull.  Cody was almost desperate when he grabbed Brandon by his shrunken arms and pulled him close, his meaty new paws easily circling his friend’s now-dainty biceps.  From his new height he towered over the lopsided ginger, but the other man’s impossible cock looked every bit as massive as it wedged between them.

A series of wide-eyed grunts and bashful, blushing moans followed as the two friends pawed at each other, exploring the extent of their alterations in greater detail.  They both knew it was the last thing they should be doing considering the horrifying setting they found themselves in, but the fascination with each other was a reflex.  Their groping, probing hands moved the way their lungs drew breath, an autonomic impulse more than a conscious decision.  Cody was mortified at the way Brandon’s fingers bit into his full new face, just as his friend seemed equally perplexed by how small his torso had become, not to mention the heaping size of the cock that oozed all over it.

Even if they’d been able to speak, neither of them knew what to say.  They didn’t have words to describe the aching longing they felt for each other, and they only would have gotten in the way if they had.  With only a few hoarse grunts, there was nothing slowing them down when Cody eventually sprawled out on the spongy floor with Brandon’s chunky thighs straddling his expanded midsection.  The other man’s heaping cock was like an anchor as it rested between his plumped pecs, the continuous eruptions quickly coating Cody’s face as his friend impaled himself on the former blonde’s aching log.  The burly new brute’s own pudgy member kept spraying into the other man as well, but there was seemingly no end to the spurting geysers.  No matter how many times each of them came their lust never abated, and if anything only continued to grow stronger as they writhed together.

As he listened to their croaking wails, Cody understood the source of the muffled sounds he’d heard through the haze of spores.  He knew that the odd, humanoid shapes he’d seen were really his friends and neighbors, now as warped and desperate as himself and Brandon.

He wouldn’t know it was all just a dream until hours later when he would awake, exhausted and once again lean, to tattered, soaked sheets and the sounds of Brandon’s ecstatic, slumbering wails echoing down the hall.

************

“This isn’t good,” Shawn groaned, trying in vain to rub the lack of sleep from his face.  They’d been up all night, scrambling to discover the extent of the damage caused by their purloined ritual.  Ethan had redirected the flow to the nearby university as promised, and while that was bad enough on its own, they were getting reports of city-wide nightmares.  Several members of the Learned had been affected, waking to describe a terrible landscape overgrown with horrid fungus and infested with warped, wailing people.  They all reported different changes to themselves, but the apocalyptic setting was the same in every single dream.

Tyler rubbed Shawn’s back as the athletic man leaned forward against a large, circular table.  A series of ancient, weathered books cluttered the broad surface, but none of them had been useful in pinpointing the exact cause.  “Was this Ethan sending another warning, or is that…thing…starting to break through,” the lithe blonde asked.

“I think we have to assume the latter,” Shawn sighed.  “The way things are escalating…” he trailed off and shook his head as he eyed Dave, Will and Tom on the other side of the table.  “We were too hasty before.  We should’ve known that Ethan would have defenses in place.  The Spore HQ is basically a temple at this point.  We might eventually be able to punch through and close the rift above it, but we don’t have that kind of time.  It’s all happening too fast…”

“We have to go back to the cave, don’t we,” Dave said, more a statement than a question.  The burly bear’s thumb toyed with his bottom lip, hovering just on the other side of wedging itself inside.

“Always thought it was odd how they kept us away from it after what happened,” Will nodded.  “They sent Tom on all sorts of field expeditions, but none of us could go back there?”

Dave lost the battle with his thumb, speaking around the digit as it wormed its way between his plump lips.  “They really have been in our heads, haven’t they?  How many goddamn board meetings did I sit through getting updates about the harvesting operation, and it never once occurred to me to question why we couldn’t see it ourselves?”

Tom shrugged and folded his arms across his chest, briefly locking eyes with his three friends to make sure they were all on board before speaking.  “Guess we get to find out why.  You guys got another one of those magic doors?  Maybe a plane or a boat stashed away in one of these books?”

Shawn nodded.  “We can get you there, but I need you to understand that this is very much a last-ditch effort.  If we’d been able to get the four of you together earlier maybe we could have come up with a ritual or something else.  Now, though…” he trailed off and looked at Tyler, his expression somehow falling even further.  “This is up to you guys.  The fact that they kept you away makes me think it could go either way, if that’s any consolation.  So, you know, no pressure or anything, but If you can’t find a way to stop this, no one can.”

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I'll post a longer update in a separate entry about the schedule and the next interactive, but we're pretty much reaching the end of this one.  I'm thinking another chapter or two at the most for the current leg of the HB&L saga, but I want to leave the ending up to you all.  I have a few different ideas for how it could go, so which do you prefer: