Cry Havoc

Chapter 12
Reflection

Chapter Description: from Book Two: Submission

monday 2 october – 7:00 AM

This can’t be happening. This isn’t me.

Troy “Impulse” Delvecchio was engaged in his daily ritual of looking his nude form over in the bathroom mirror.

A nightmare! That’s it. I’ll pinch myself and it’ll all be over.

But the pinch of scrawny flab Impulse pulled away from what had used to be rock-hard pectorals told him everything he needed to know.

The Tiger gulped and prepared to take inventory. The muscles he and his associates had spent years and years sculpting had become soft, utterly unremarkable tissue. His biceps were thin films affixed to gangly, bony arms, and he couldn’t imagine using them to lift anything more demanding than a television remote. And those dutifully-maintained six-pack abs? Utterly wrenched from the fabric of reality. Along with them went all those daily, sweaty, painstaking, hour-long sojourns to exorbitant gyms.

Troy Delvecchio was a geek. A slender, pencil-neck pushover. So much for the days during which he fancied himself the man who could’ve served as the model for the Colossus of Rhodes. Now he looked like an extra from “The Big Bang Theory.”

From this horrible revelation emerged a single silver lining: He still had his cock. Impulse exhaled almost theatrically when he saw the long, proud snake... all nine inches of it, its base resting comfortably on a pair of testicles so productive that it was merely confusion that prevented Impulse from indulging his basest autoerotic fantasies at that particular moment. There wouldn’t have been time to do that and telephone Recon before school was called into session.

He was nervous to place that call. He didn’t know what would be worse-- if whatever had just happened to him had also happened to Recon... or the even more horrifying prospect that it hadn’t.

Impulse, still naked and in need of a shower, rifled through his small pile of dirty nightclothes in an attempt to locate his smartphone. To his surprise, the device rang as soon as his fingertips touched it -- and the incoming call was originating from none other than a one Rico Velez.

“Recon!?” he hollered. “Has this shit happened to you, too!?”

“What the fuck is this supposed to be?” came the panicked voice from the other end of the connection. “Some kind of ridiculous fucking disease that steals all the hard work out of the world’s coolest people?”

“Like Denis Leary?”

“NO TIME!”

“Have you gotten in touch with Loudmouth?” asked Impulse.

“No answer, man.”

Impulse had begun to hear some pounding on the outside of the bathroom door. “C’mon, Troy,” whined Elizabeth from the other side. “I really gotta take a piss.”

“Shit,” hissed Impulse to Recon. “I gotta go. I can’t see my dweeby little sister catch me like this.”

“Who are you talking to in there?” came the feminine voice. “I’m coming in!”

“NO! DON’T!” In his panic, Impulse dropped his phone, and it clattered noisily to the ground. When the 17-year-old looked up again, the door was wide open... and there was 14-year-old Elizabeth, reeling through more than a few different emotions.

All of them cycled in under half a second, though. She went through some shock, then some embarrassment, then she felt the tiniest twinge of guilt--

--and then she did precisely what Impulse knew had been inevitable. She laughed. She positively burst into such a rapturous bellow that it could’ve dropped a man with a heart condition.

Impulse wanted to react -- to move, to cover up, to yell -- but the sheer emotional strain of the entire morning was seeming to have stripped him of any locomotion whatsoever. All he could do was stand there, butt-ass naked, weighing at least 80 pounds fewer than the night previous, with nothing but a disproportionately girthy cock that looked like it belonged in a bad porn film staring his dumbass little sister in the face.

“I’m gonna kill you,” was all he managed to mutter.

“With what, Troy McNo-titties!? And I thought I was underdeveloped. Better not get too close... I might sneeze and knock you on your ass. Nice cock, though.”

Impulse chased Elizabeth out of the bathroom in a fury.

Unfortunately, he still had to find himself in school, knowing full well that he was still on the thinnest possible of ices with regard to the “alleged” vandalism rap. Recon and Loudmouth (who, as if it needed to be noted, was also freshly rail-thin) were in attendance as well, but the trio’s attitudes had changed dramatically.

They still tried to rock the blue jeans, but they felt billowy, and whatever favors the jeans had once done for the display of their asses weren’t being done anymore. The weight of the chains they donned took a noticeable chunk out of their stamina levels. They tried to hide their sudden, inexplicable medical anomaly with baggier, long-sleeved t-shirts, but they weren’t fooling anyone; the Tigers had lost some weight. Both physically and in the realm of public consciousness.

But the worst of it was the insults. And the Tigers’ ghosts of the past had returned to sling them.

From Steve Benjamin: “What kind of football jerseys you gonna be wearing now? The Gumby line?”

From a girl picking a notebook off of the floor: “Hey, Troy, could you find somebody to lift this?”

Though the most deserving retort came courtesy of Shawna, the girl Loudmouth had savagely victimized nearly two weeks prior.

“Bet I could fight you off now.”

It wasn’t all a circus by sunset. In fact, the drama came fast and furious later that evening, when an extremely irate Sheriff Brynner telephoned a confused and regretful Mr. Benes.

“You told me--” --she howled-- “--you assured me--” --she raised her voice still higher-- “--that the acts of the compound were gradual. That it would be impossible to fall asleep Dwayne Johnson and wake up Rick Moranis.”

“Look,” Benes stammered, “I’ve already talked to Willis. He’s looked into it. He said it was a bad proportional calculation. Then he checked and rechecked to make sure that the following transformations are more gradual. ‘Like easing your toes into a pool,’ he said.”

“If the Center for Disease Control shows up here, by God, I’ll make sure you wish you’d never gone to high school, let alone work at one.”

Elsewhere, in a house roughly equidistant from Brynner’s and Benes’s, Loudmouth quietly cried himself to sleep.

to be continued