From the Archives - Fir Hollow, ch. 5: The Lot (Patreon)

Mickey cursed under his breath as the car sped past.  It disappeared around a bend in the road, ignoring his outstretched thumb entirely.  He was exhausted.  He’d been hoofing it through the darkness for miles, his lungs burning as he trudged up the mountain road’s deceptive incline.  Even for someone in better shape the trek would have been a challenge, and at no point during his thirty five years had Mickey ever been considered athletically gifted.  A coating of sweat clung to his sharp, shrewd face, reflecting the passing headlights and stinging his eyes, further inhibiting his already limited vision.  The thin man’s back and shoulders ached from hauling the heavy, leather satchel, and his wiry legs were ready to give out.  More than anything he wanted to stop and take a break, to at least pause for a few minutes and catch his desperate breath.

But he couldn’t stop.  Mickey knew he wouldn’t be safe until the dim lights of Fir Hollow had disappeared from the rearview, and even then it wasn’t a guarantee.  He’d heard stories about the quiet little town but he hadn’t believed any of them, and now it was too late.  By the time he learned the truth he was already in too deep.  He hadn’t jumped from the frying pan into the fire; he’d jumped into the heart of a volcano. He thought he’d be able to breeze into the sleepy town, run a quick grift, and then hit the road without anyone being the wiser.  It wasn’t turning out to be that simple.

The first half of the plan went off without a hitch.  Mickey went with the insurance scheme, it always seemed to work in the old coal towns peppering the hills, and it hadn’t taken long to con his way into the seventy five grand he needed to get Marty and his boys off his back.  He’d sent the funds as soon as he’d had them and packed his bags for Pikesburg, intending to leave the following morning.

The town had other ideas.  After tossing and turning for hours, his sleep filled with vague nightmares the details of which he couldn’t recall but which left him trembling, Mickey discovered that his car was missing.  He’d parked it right in front of his shoddy motel room, and it had been one of the only cars present in the lot, but confusingly, when he asked the person working the desk about it, the young man claimed to have no memory of Mickey ever having a car.  Despite the fact that he’d helped the wiry man unload his bags just a few days earlier, he now claimed Mickey had shown up on the bus.  Mickey argued, but his protests came to an abrupt halt when he pulled out his wallet and found the stub of a bus ticket, along with a state ID where his driver’s license should have been.

His initial instinct was that someone was running a con on him for a change, until he thought back on his journey into town.  Instead of sitting behind the wheel of his sedan, he now remembered sitting on a rickety bus, looking out the window as it wove its way through the shadowed valleys of the surrounding mountains.  More alarming, though, was the absence of any memories involving driving at all.  Mickey wracked his brain, staring at the young clerk with a shocked, pale expression, but he couldn’t find a single scrap of recollection that involved him ever having operated a car.  It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t even know how.

Fighting back a scream, he’d bolted from the motel and stumbled into town.  It was the last place he wanted to go, but since he now needed to catch a bus he didn’t have any other choice.  It wouldn’t arrive for hours yet so Mickey did his best to lay low, telling himself the sensation of being watched was all in his head.  He kept looking back over his shoulder, expecting to see a crowd of people staring at him, but never found anyone.  The effect was jarring.  As he clung to the side streets and isolated corners, the town that had seemed so quaint and ripe for the picking now oozed with menace.  Mickey felt like he was looking at the reflection of a city instead of the real thing, like he was walking through the idea of a place without any real form or substance.  He’d reached towards the weathered brick of a nearby building but stopped, afraid that if he made contact his hand would pass through and shatter the illusion entirely.

With the feeling of being watched growing stronger by the moment, whatever veil that had draped itself over his thoughts when he’d first arrived was fully lifted.  Mickey’s stomach dropped, and he let out a gasp at the memory of some of the town’s more unique inhabitants, like the young man he’d seen gliding by on a skateboard wearing nothing but a stuffed, glittery thong, or the pair of burly men with heaping tits that he’d seen at Tucker’s a few nights before.  There was also the group of men at the lumber mill, with their jockstraps and panties and altered anatomies, and Mickey tried not to think about the young man he’d seen with the extra set of legs.

It was too much.  Marty and his boys would have just broken some bones or maybe put a bullet in him.  This was much, much worse.  His memories, possibly his entire past, had been altered, and it was becoming clear that the rumors he’d heard about the town didn’t even scratch the surface.  As he darted from building to building, faint, sourceless whispers echoed down the empty alleys around him, while the fresh mountain air began to carry a rancid undercurrent and the pleasant trickling of the nearby canal became a wet slapping, like something slimy dragging itself across the ground.  He tried to stay calm and block it all out, but he finally clenched his eyes shut when the mountain peaks looming overhead began to shift and move, and he struggled to stay upright at the rush of vertigo that washed over him.  The whispers grew to a roar, whirling around him as he heard the thing that wasn’t a canal lurch over the banks and creep hideously closer.  Mickey wanted to flee but the ground was no longer beneath his feet, and though his eyes were closed he could still see the looming peaks glaring down at him in the, swirling, star-peppered void that had replaced the quiet little town.  He let out a shriek, and when he opened his eyes the nightmare vision was gone, leaving everything as it had been.  The canal was back to being a gentle, rushing stream, the voices were silent, and the air was crisp and clean.

It had been a desperate flight ever since.  Mickey ran out of town on foot, hoping to hitch a ride anywhere else.  After several unsuccessful hours it appeared to be a hope in vain, until a pair of headlights finally slowed as they approached.

“Oh thank god,” Mickey panted, flashing as friendly a smile as he could muster.  He waved with one hand and shielded his eyes from the bright headlights with the other, barely making out the shape of a rusted pickup truck behind them.  He hurried over to the door, grateful that he didn’t recognize the large, bald bull of a man sitting behind the wheel.

“Need a ride?” The man asked through the open window, motioning for Mickey to hop inside.  He grinned as he looked at his passenger’s sweaty, disheveled state.  “Hills are a bitch, ain’t they?”

“They sure are,” Mickey laughed, climbing up onto the torn, vinyl-covered bench.  “Thanks for stopping…been hauling my ass up ‘em all afternoon.”

“Would’a had a long walk,” the man whistled as he pulled the truck back onto the road.  “Next town’s nearly an hour by car…and you don’t wanna be out in those woods at night.  Not around here.”

Mickey sighed and leaned back in his seat, his weary legs aching.  “Didn’t have a lot of options.”

The man gave a short grunt and nodded.  “I can see that.”

With his initial relief fading, Mickey began to stake stock of his current situation.  He sized his rescuer up out of the corner of his eye, noting how the man’s hairy arms were larger than his own lean thighs as they stuck out of his sleeveless flannel shirt.  The man’s legs were like the trunks of fallen trees, and if there was a neck supporting his rugged, bearded face, Mickey couldn’t see it.  He knew he was still in a precarious situation.  He was in the middle of nowhere, and he was too tired to put up any kind of fight if his new friend had ill intentions, not that he’d stand much of a chance even if he’d been at his peak.  “Wherever you’re headed, you can just drop me at the next place that’s still open.  Don’t have much cash on me, but I can give you a twenty for some gas at least.”

“Sorry Mickey…it’s gonna take a lot more’n that to pay off what you owe.”  His tone was still friendly, but the bigger man’s words were like a punch in the gut.  Mickey instinctively reached for the door, opting to take his chances with a tuck-and-roll, but the handle was gone.  The whole door was.  Now, the side of the truck continued in an uninterrupted wall, leaving him trapped.

Mickey took a deep breath, trying not to let his trembling show.  “O…okay…look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I wasn’t trying to skip out on anything.  I swear!  I just need to get out of town to get the money in order, that’s all.  A few weeks, tops, and I can pay everyone…”

“Oh, you’ll pay it all back,” the man said, his mammoth arm flexing as he tightened his grip on the wheel.  “Probably take more’n a few weeks, though.”  He looked over and laughed at the smaller man’s stricken expression, shaking his head.  “Relax.  We’re just gonna put ya to work. Real, honest labor too, not that con man bullshit you tried to pull on us.  It’ll do ya some good,” he said, reaching down and swallowing Mickey’s thigh with a meaty hand.

The smaller man gasped at the touch, his clothes vanishing on contact.  There was no transition.  One second his sweat-damp polo and jeans were there, the next they were gone.  “Fuck!” Mickey yelped, gawking at his slender thighs, mediocre package and shapeless torso, too shocked to be embarrassed at his sudden nudity.  “What…what just happened…”

“You’ll be workin’ out there forever unless we do somethin’ ‘bout that body.  Ya ain’t bad lookin’, but those truckers like ‘em with some meat on their bones.”

As soon as the man said it, Mickey felt a pulse shoot through him.  Starting at his exposed thigh, he watched as his lean frame began to inflate.  Legs that were thin and spindly packed on muscle until his expanded quads touched, forcing his equally inflating balls and lengthening cock forward.  The sprouting muscle continued flowing upward, a set of ripped abs blooming on Mickey’s formerly soft stomach while a pair of prominent, chiseled pecs ballooned off his chest.  His bony shoulders shot outwards, growing solid and round as his arms tripled in size, leaving his body as unrecognizable as his face.  Where once he’d had sharp, pointed features, Mickey now saw a wide, lantern jaw, soft, pouty lips, a button nose, and bright eyes beneath a head of shaggy golden hair where his short, raven scalp should have been.  He looked like he was barely in his twenties, not in his mid-thirties.

“What did you just do to me,” Mickey stammered, torn between horror and wonder at what he saw.  He was beautiful, with the perfect proportions of a muscled Adonis and smooth, unblemished skin that was coated in a deep, unbroken tan.

“Just givin’ those boys at the Starlight somethin’ to talk about.  Once word gets out you’ll have fellas lined up down the interstate waitin’ for a crack at that ass.”

Mickey tensed his meaty new globes, his stomach dropping.  “I don’t…what do you mean?”

“Starlight Motel.  Truck stop off the eighty-two exit,” the man said, as if it should have ben obvious.  “Place gets pretty hoppin’ at night.  Lots’a horny truckers with money to spend on a piece’a ass like you.”

Mickey’s new boy-next-door face went crimson.  “What?!  No!  I’m not a fuckin’…”

“No, what you are is a man who rolled into a town full’a folks mindin’ their own business, who thought it was a good idea to try and rip ‘em all off,” the man said, his voice growing stern for the first time.  “And who then tried to skip town faster’n that four-legged fella can run.”

“But…but I’m not…” He didn’t get a chance to finish before the man squeezed his thigh again.  There was another dizzying rush like he’d felt when he’d discovered his missing driver’s license and related memories, only this time it was magnified.  Mickey tried to cling to his fading identity as it slipped through his fingers, leaving an entirely unfamiliar existence in its place.  He still knew it wasn’t right, but that didn’t stop the new memories from pouring in.  Whether he wanted to believe the terrifying images in his head or not, Mickey saw himself developing a whole new set of skills.  He suddenly knew how to work a man’s cock with expert precision.  His mouth tingled at the memory of the countless, throbbing organs it had held, while his ass suddenly ached for something to fill it.  He actually whimpered at the surge of lust that shot through him, his cock rocketing to life as he tried to tell himself it wasn’t real.  He pushed back against the memories of himself on his knees in bathroom stalls, truck cabs, and dirty motel rooms, desperately wanting to deny the thrill he felt at the thought.  “Oh…oh fuck…” Mickey groaned, unaware of how long he’d been stroking his thick, seven inches.

“That’s right…best figure out how all that works before we get there,” the man said encouragingly.  Mickey just nodded, flexing his newly acquired muscle as he writhed and groped himself.  He tweaked the tiny nipples standing off his chiseled mounds and reached under to squeeze the meaty, ample new globes that were his ass.  Before he could stop himself he leaned over and fished the man’s cock free, swallowing the thick log with the kind of ease that only came from experience.  When the man reached over and slipped a pair of fingers into his eager hole there was no pain, only a familiar pleasure that made Mickey’s untouched cock begin to ooze.  “See?  You’re a natural,” the man sighed, pumping his hips to work his cock deep into the other man’s mouth.

Mickey wanted to argue, but he couldn’t.  He actually was good at what he was doing.  It was one of the few things he knew well.  There was a slight rush of fear when he started to realize just how many of his previous memories were missing, but he was too focused on the burly giant to think about it for long.  Even after the man had blasted down his throat, he kept his head buried against his lap, letting the other man stretch his hole with his stubby fingers.  Hearing the sound of his whimpers, Mickey knew the man was right.  It wouldn’t take long at all for word to spread of the baby-faced hunk hanging out at the Starlight, and he hated how excited he was at the thought.

That excitement turned to disappointment when the man pulled his fingers free.  “Almost there…let’s get you dressed.”  Mickey only gave a dull laugh when a mesh, cropped tank-top appeared on his chiseled torso, followed by a cherry thong that was quickly obscured by a pair of white mesh shorts smaller than the briefs he used to wear.  A pair of neon pink sneakers completed his new look as Mickey blinked down at his tented shorts.  A part of him felt like he couldn’t possibly get out and walk around in such a state, but a bigger part fo him knew it was good for advertising.

As they pulled into the broad, bustling truck stop, Mickey eyed the scantily clad women roaming from truck to truck, or leaning up against the single row of motel rooms.  They weren’t much more than a closet with a stained bed; just enough to get the job done.  The bathrooms and showers were inside the truck stop proper, and Mickey was surprised to find himself intimately familiar with both.  There weren’t any other men working the lot that he could see, but that didn’t bother him.  It was just less competition.  He grinned as the man shoved a key that read “B7” in his hand, already eager to jump out and get to work.

“Welcome to your new home,” he said, nodding to the bright yellow keychain. “I’ll be by in the morning to collect what you make.  Knock ‘em dead,” he winked.

Mickey just nodded, pushing open the door that had reappeared.  He took a deep breath of the crisp, mountain air as he hopped out of the truck and slowly stretched, letting everyone in view get a look at his ripped abs and solid cock.  He ignored the desperate voice in his head that told him he shouldn’t be doing any of this and instead focused on the plentiful rigs filling the lot.  It was going to be a busy night.