Wish Granted

[6 word request: Football Player Becomes Slobbish Overweight Nerd]

The meatsack I cobbled together to gain a foothold on their plane of existence is repulsive. It stinks and so much of it is moving even when I remain still. Internally, it feels loathsome and repulsive. Externally, it looks flimsy and crude. I examine my shape and I wonder if the beings of this world would find it as grotesque as I do. It doesn’t matter; I can feel my three targets. They’re a dull ache I can’t escape, another layer of agony on the mild suffering this existence seems to be even at its best. They’re nearby, one extremely so. I endeavor to complete my task quickly so I can go back to my home and bask in the sea of golden light that extends in all directions forever.

It doesn’t take much of my power to tap the spirit world for information. Passing through this world is a dense fog of lapsed life, beings desperate to exist beyond the destruction of their human forms. They’re all thirsty for conversation and in moments a thousand of them have shared all they know. This rapidly decaying form has an organ to process all of this information. I of course use some of my power to speed it along. In minutes I know everything.

I'm on a college campus. It’s nearly sundown. My targets are football players. The one nearby is named Brett Forrest. He’s a quarterback. He parks his SUV illegally in front of this rustic New England town’s largest beer store, Quickie Cans. He flips on his hazards and heads inside. Women passing on the sidewalk crane their heads to look at him. From what I learned from my spirit guides, this man is an absolute beauty. He towers over my own physical form and his eyes glimmer like icicles in the sun. I admire his cheekbones and his chiseled jaw, the dimples that form when he smiles. His shoulders are broad and he towers over his peers. The other students buying beer for the evening stare up at him. He basks in their adulation.

On his team he is a natural leader. He’s been praised since he was a child, always faster and tougher than the others. He has a bright future ahead of him: a lucrative professional football career; a marriage to a gorgeous woman; two kids; a painful divorce than ends with him starting an incredibly successful business. I see him just as stunning in his sixties with a much younger wife, having another child at such an advanced age. He’ll maintain his virility well into his eighties. He’ll die a happy old man after a luxurious and comfortable life.

I’m going to take that future away from him.

I act nonchalant as I follow him to the rear of the store. He chooses a case of bottled beer and a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor. I grab an energy drink and trail behind him to the front of the store. A young man in a sweatshirt with red eyes, nearly shut despite his best efforts, smiles at Brett. He recognizes him and Brett notices the recognition. Behind me in line, two young women whisper to each other about the tall, built stud.

He’s the team’s quarterback. The Granite State Goliath’s win that morning was all thanks to him running in the final touchdown. He pulled off an unlikely two-point conversion that thrilled the entire stadium as their team claimed success at the last moment.

Despite the fact that I understand all of these things now, I’m still dreadfully bored by all of it. I just want to go home.

“Yo Brett! What’s up!” says the man behind the counter. His name is Skip. He slaps his hand against Brett’s. “Yo, dude, you remember freshman English bro? I sat like two seats away from you.”

Brett smiles. “Yeah, definitely,” he lies. “Good to see you, bud.”

“Dude, look, you’re a goddamned legend!” Skip says. “Dude, honestly, if you ever want to chill sometime, I can score the sickest bud, dude, for real....”

“Hey, definitely!” Brett says with a winning grin. Even I can feel the effect of his charm when he turns it up like that. “Look, dude, y’know what would be cool? Think I can score these beers on the house and we’ll make plans to chill sometime this week?”

Skip shifts uncomfortably and glances up at a camera above the counter. “Look, bro, I would love to man, for real, but… See, my boss is this old geezer, not cool at all. He’s been on my ass lately and…”

Behind me, one of the women, a redhead with a tight dress on, pushes past me. “I’ll buy it!” she says. “My name’s Monica.” Her friend rushes forward and the two giggle and smile wide at the big football star. “This is Tina. Beers are on us. Where are you drinking them?”

Brett smiles. “Just a gettogether with the guys, ladies,” he says, pulling out his phone. “But if you give me your numbers I’ll text you and you can join us.”

I want to shift things at that moment, but I should conserve my power. This reality is foolish and flimsy, but moving too many pieces at once, especially while I’m mired within it, could take too much out of me.

“Hey, buddy,’ Brett says to Skip. “Where’s your pisser at? You mind if I take a leak?” Skip points to a hallway behind a, “NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS!” sign. No one has noticed me at all. I’m suddenly grateful for the plainness of my shell. I step backward carefully and wander into the store.

The bathroom door is opened a crack and I can hear Brett peeing inside. Because of what I am, I can see him clearly despite the fact that he’s not within my line of sight: he’s tall, strong, with small, tight muscles and a round ass. He’s built more sturdily than others. He’s twenty-one years old. I watch him smile at himself in the mirror. He lifts up his shirt and grins at his abs, flexes a bicep, then opens the door.

I hope he got a good look at them because they won’t be his much longer.

When he’s face to face with me I make my move. He opens his mouth to speak but suddenly everything freezes. I’m not physically touching him but my essence has grabbed his lifeline, applying pressure to force him further down it despite the constrictive laws of this physical world. In a moment he’s ten years older. It’s infuriating to see that age has only added to his beauty. His muscles are bigger, his skin tighter, his masculinity enhanced as he enters his thirties. Seconds later I’ve forced another ten years out of him.

His body’s still tall and strong but it’s starting to lose its density. His muscles are starting to sag, his abs obscured, lines forming in his face. Still, his brilliant blue eyes pierce from his slightly weathered visage. Ten more years, his hair’s gone grey. His body still has a shape that denotes athleticism at first glance but a small pool of pudge has formed around his middle. His face has bloated slightly and is starting to sag.

Brett looks down at himself, confused by the changes, examining his fingers as they lose their tan brilliance and immediately start to look rough and worn. He moans as the guns that defined his football career soften and condense. A dull ache echos through his body. Ten more years and he’s balding. His tan is gone; his skin is speckled and pale like an egg shell. His muscles look stringy and soft, his tummy now a full-fledged gut. The granite butt that stood out so prominently before has softened like melting wax. Wrinkles cover his skin.

When he moans, he doesn’t recognize the dry wheeze of his own voice. He stumbles, grabbing for something to regain his balance, as another ten years pass by. He blinks his eyes, having difficulty seeing. He looks to have lost several inches in height, accentuated by the aggressive curvature of his back. He puts his hand on a tower of beer stacked five cases high. He grabs at his aching lumbar, winces as his elbow screams at the sudden movement, and feels himself drowning in exhaustion.

Ten more years. He’s a shriveled husk of a human. His promising athletic career is two lifetimes behind him. Nothing remains of his beautiful brown hair but grey wisps. The crispness of his eyes have faded, mottled by milky cataracts. He smiles and reveals a set of yellowed dentures.

I don’t want to murder the man, so I step back at that point. I’ve punched a hole and this reality twists and reshapes to accommodate it. Outside, Brett’s illegally park vehicle has vanished. Skip is getting the phone numbers of Monica and Tina and planning to let them take a case of beer without paying.

An apron appears on Brett’s body and a broom in his hand. He uses it as a cane as he walks to the front of the store. “Goddammit Skip!” he wheezes. “If you’re giving away beer again I swear you’re finished here!”

“Relax Mr. Forrest! They’re paying now, right ladies?” Skip says.

Monica rolls her eyes. “Yeah, we are.” She thrusts a card forward. Skip swipes it.

Brett relaxes, relieved he doesn’t actually have to fire his employee. He can’t keep working these late hours at his age; his doctor says one of these late night shifts is going to be the death of him. His body is screaming for rest, but he’s afraid the moment he walks out the door, his shoddy staff will hand everything in the store out for free.

He’s so desperate to retire, but he’s still waiting for the right buyer. What’s worse, deep down he knows he’s young. He knows he walked in that store a football star, a young, powerful, beautiful man, but he’s unable to say it out loud or do anything out of the ordinary for the withered old beer store owner. He knows he’ll be sleeping alone that night, dreaming of which sexy co-ed he was supposed to bed that night. Weeks into the future, he’ll watch the Goliaths play, knowing he should be on that field, but all that will come out of his mouth is, “Y'know, I’ve been attending games here for forty years.”

I glance back as I watch Brett begin to sweep the floor. He looks at me and I know he knows who did this to him but can’t say a word.

On to my next target.

Ricky Wildes has to meet with his boyfriend in private. The team doesn’t know that their big, strapping tight end spends his evenings balls deep in a beautiful, dark-haired poli sci major named Spencer. There’s two feet between each of them as they meet. I’m a hundred feet away but I can sense the ache between them. Big, strong Ricky towers over little Spencer, but his body language is limp. He kicks the ground, stares at his shoes, wracked with guilt.

“I don’t want to have this conversation,” Ricky says, “but there were actual NFL scouts at that game today,” he says, running a hand through his thick blonde hair. I watch his biceps bulge through his t-shirt as he does it. The man is wide as a fridge, stuffed with full, round muscles. His long legs are powerful enough to squat a smart car but the man is agile enough to outrun a bear.

I can feel the pain of the man next to him, who has endured hiding his feelings for Ricky for three years, hoping that soon, when his gladiator’s career was over, they could hold hands in public like they deserved. He could tell his parents about him. He could meet Ricky’s friends.

I don’t care about any of it. Ricky is one of my targets. So as Ricky walks away from the broken-hearted man, I get to work.

Ricky’s letterman jacket suddenly squeezes tightly over his muscular torso. He freezes as he feels it squeezing over his sinewy frame. He pauses, takes a breath, and looks down at himself. What the hell is happening? He wonders. He bends his arms and hears his sleeves tear. The same happens to his pants as he flexes his legs, tiny tears spreading laterally around his thick thighs. But his eyes are drawn to the tight bulge of his crotch as, before his eyes, his big dick swells even bigger.

Ricky looks around in a panic, worried that if he breaks into a sprint to get back to his car he’ll end up naked before long. He turns back to the man he just dumped, about to yell for help, when he hears the seams of his pants bursting apart. He glances back to see his ass swelling like a balloon. He starts to run--more like a waddle, really--decimating his pants as he finds it’s not just his ass or his manhood; his muscles are blowing up on all sides!

He lets out a groan, much deeper than the voice he was used to, as he finds his clothes falling off in tatters on all sides. He’s still 6’5” tall but he looks like a bodybuilding freak, blown out with nearly 300 pounds of swollen muscles. The tatters of clothes on his body rearrange. In seconds he looks down and lets out a guttural whimper as he sees himself dressed in a mesh tank top and shorts that only barely contain his huge glutes and massive junk.

A gentle breeze tickles his now hairless body and he shivers. He hears the jingle of metal on his front; he can’t see his nipples over the arch of his hyperdeveloped pecs but he feels the hardware dangling from them. He remembers the day he got the piercing, when the tattooed runt at the shop suggested ornamentation worthy of his massive form and jabbed his gumdrop-sized nips with massive barbells.

Why wasn’t anyone reacting? he wondered. He’s enormous, a freak--and as he runs his hand over the shaved sides of his head but felt the strip of jelled up hair down the center, he realizes he’s a mohawked freak.

The honk of a horn on the street makes his oversized heart jump in his massive chest, but he’s relieved to see Spencer in his convertible. He knows the eyes of every campus stud in the area are on him as he saunters to the car, unable to stop his giant pecs and ass from bouncing and jiggling with every step. His dick’s getting hard, the head poking up beyond the waistband of his tiny shorts, and he blushes, but deep down he savors the attention.

“Get in you big ape!” Spencer says, slapping the beast on the ass as he lowers himself into the relatively cramped vehicle. “My boyfriend has his friends over and they really want to see you flex!”

“Gosh, really?” Ricky says. There’s a fog over his thoughts. The idea of Spencer dating someone else agitates him--but why? They’ve been fuck-buddies since freshman year, but ever since Spencer met a serious boyfriend they agreed to a strictly platonic relationship. But since Ricky savors the idea of men lusting over his body, he’s never shy about stopping by Spencer and his guy’s place to strip, flex and get them in the mood. “There gonna be whipped cream tonight?” Spencer asks as his jaw goes slack, his eyes staring blankly into the middle distance.

“You want to do the whipped cream speedo thing again?” Spencer said as he pulled his car away from the sidewalk. “God, you lack creativity. But if it makes you happy, you big lug, you know we won’t complain. And who knows! Maybe one of the guys there tonight has the patience to date a braindead imbecile like you!”

Ricky nods--imagine that! Maybe failing out of school wasn’t so bad after all. College just isn’t the place for a musclebound imbecile like him.

My last target is an ox of a man: Grant Sustern, a 300 pound brick wall of a man--in the vernacular of his peers, that is. That neckless brute is in his apartment slugging back beers, preparing for the celebration of his lifetime. He played like a monster that day, and some NFL scouts saw! Coach says they’re going to have a meeting the next day to talk about his future.

With my first two targets out of the way, my powers are reaching their zenith. I can sense Grant from miles away. It’s nothing for me to materialize in his apartment, which stinks of body odor and piss. I can practically see the male hormones in the air, a thick fog of testosterone that burps out of every one of Grant’s pores.

I’m in his bedroom. I can smell dozens of starchy, crumpled tissues under the bed. Grant doesn’t masturbate so much because of a lack of sex; it’s that his grapefruit-sized balls and thick hose of a dick demand attention nearly round the clock. He holds off when it’s gametime to give him a deep well of rage to tap into on the field. After their win that day, he didn’t even shower before banging the first two sluts that texted him to congratulate him, then jerked off while pounding beers in his bedroom later on.

He’s got a thick hand on the wall as he aims his hose at the toilet, unleashing a powerful stream. He groans at the relief. He’s got six beers left from the thirty-pack he picked up earlier in the day, plus a bottle of mezcal in his freezer. That should be enough to tide him over until he parties with the guys from the team that night.

Big Grant is all id; he’s helpless to the demands of his huge muscular body. After he’s done pissing he wags his big hose, then yanks up his briefs. He’s a spectacular specimen of a man, looking closer to a rhinocerous than any of his human peers. Below his broad chest is a massive gut, solid and immobile. He’s nearly too wide for most doors, having to turn sideways and stoop slightly. If he had a nickel for every time a chair snapped under his bulk during class and the teacher just excused him with an A…

Those fratty fucks next door are partying again! (Look at me; such a scant time in their reality and I’m already adopting their method of speech!) Grant shakes his head as he hears the Delta Chi fags next door blasting rap music. He can smell weed through the wall and hear them cheer as they play their stupid drinking games. The blonde behemoth bangs on the wall as he roars for them to pipe the fuck down. Big man doesn’t know his own strength; on the fourth bang, his fist goes right through the drywall!

He missed the stud by only a few inches. He chuckles, realizing he could have broken his fist--or, more realistically, he thinks as he examines his sausage-sized fingers, he would have snapped the stud in half.

It’s been like this all semester. Grant can’t stand rap, and especially can’t stand those Greek assholes raging like they earned it. Too many of these tools just coast their way through college, he thinks as he cracks open a beer and chugs it before smashing it on his cinderblock of a head. If they had any idea how fucking hard I work out there on the field to bring pride and money to this school… He stomps out the front door for a face-to-face confrontation.

Two weeks before, Grant had a girl over when one of the dipshit fratboys started lighting fireworks out the window. He ripped the door off its hinges, through one of them through a folding table littered with red plastic cups and ping pong balls. He actually dragged one of those fratheads, a tall lanky guy named Hersom, back over to his apartment and made him apologize to the girl Grant hadn’t finished fucking. Then, when the cops showed up, they told the fratboys to pipe down and congratulated Grant on a great game.

Grant barrels into the hall still in his briefs, ready to revisit his rage on these little punks. That Hersom dick is one of those steroid punks with a big chest and arms and nothing else. He uses his mildly inflated muscles to bully the smaller guys in his frat. Grant couldn’t wait to humiliate that little shithead.

(I’m still in Grant’s bedroom, my powers at their peak; my target is so radiant in my sights that I can still see him with my eyes closed. I examine the thousands of realities I could visit upon him as he threatens to bash down the recently reattached door once again. With a snap of my finger I could make him a butterfly--and make it that he had always been one. I could make him a 4000 pound blob of immobile human flesh; I could vanish his limbs so he wriggles around the ground like a worm; I could blend him with a pig and leave him snorting helplessly, gorging on slop from a trough and clomping around on clumsy hooves. For a moment I pity these pathetic, helpless beings. With a snap of my fingers, this “powerful” man could be a fart dissipating in the breeze before he even realized what happened. What a loathsome existence to be so without agency, so at the mercy of those like myself.)

Just before the door opens, Grant’s massive body suddenly sinks down. The muscle deflates from his body, and the density of his body seems to melt. He’s shocked as his eyeline drops down, even more shocked when he looks down at his pasty, doughy frame. He blinks when a pair of thick glasses appear on his face. It’s the only article of clothing I allow him other than the briefs he strode out so confidently in. He grabs a handful of his overflowing gut and gives it a wobble, astonished, before looking into the mid-torso of Hersom. He’s struck with a feeling he hasn’t felt in years--anxiety.

“The fuck you doing out here, Cyber-pig?” Hersom says, throwing open the door so everyone can see the overweight, barely dressed nerd in his corpulent flesh.

“I just…” Grant speaks with a squeak, sliding his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. His other hand was holding a beer--wasn’t it? No, it’s his inhaler. All this agitation has his asthma acting up. “I have a big exam on Monday and I really need to spend this whole weekend studying!”

Big Hersom smiles, crossing his arms and puffing up his chest as two of his equally built brothers flank him. Grant takes an anxious step backward, his knobby-knees shaking as he realizes he’s out of his league.

“I think he needs another lesson,” one of the intoxicated bullies says. “Maybe wedgie? Leave him digging those undies out of that fat ass for the next day and a half!”

“Maybe,” Hersom said, grabbing Grant’s flabby arm, “we toss him outside so the whole campus can see what Tubby Nerdstrom here looks like in his skivvies!”

Grant tried to wriggle away. “No, please, I’m approaching you with a civil request!” Inside, the former sasquatch of a man still rages: Fuck you frat punks! I’m gonna bury you little shits. I’ll snap you in half and swallow you fucking whole! But outwardly, all he can say is, “I apologize! You can party, it’s fine, I’ll go back to my apartment…”

Grant turns around, but as he waddles back to his place, Hersom grabs the waistband of Grant’s underwear. The chubby nerd yelps as he leans forward, caught in place as his briefs squash his little dick and fat thighs. Then Hersom lets go and Grant tumbles forward, his inhaler clattering across the hallway. As the door slams shut, Grant can hear them all laugh. He wipes tears from his eyes before hurrying back into his lonely apartment--past the shelves of sci-fi memorabilia, past his gaming station, to his fridge, where he yanks out another half gallon of ice cream.

Deep down, Grant remembers how that day began--how he was the hero, how he leveled massive men with his own physical prowess, but as he shoves scoop after scoop of rocky road down his throat to quell his nerves, he realizes there’s nothing he can do about it. His other life will always seem a dream--and all he can hope is that the Delta Chi brothers next door don’t torment him too much in the last few months of school so he can escape this nasty school and all of his horrible memories there.

I’m at full power now. I could extinguish this entire planet, snuff out every life on its surface, with only mild exertion, but what I truly desire is to leave this plane of existence and return to the endless golden skies of my home dimension.

In a moment I materialize before the man who summoned me. I traveled hundreds of miles in an instant, but the crude physics of this place mean nothing to me anymore. The man who conjured me forth holds the amulet of my people, forged by men of great power long ago (in human times). Seeing this hulking bear of a man wielding such a talisman is much like seeing--in plain human terms--seeing a frog with a rocket launcher.

“Holy shit!” the beefy man says, stroking his moustache. In an instant I see every moment of his life: Coach Jeremy Meridian, a former powerhouse like the men whose lives I altered that day. My human form is starting to deteriorate. I’m shrouded in purple smoke, my eyes glowing a vibrant blue. Not long from now my body will burn to ash and I’ll return to my home. But not before completing the task of the talisman.

Coach Meridian invoked powers beyond his understanding by summoning me to ruin the chances for his rival team. He had dreams of a championship trophy. I  am here to grant those dreams.

“Shit, you’re…” The big man is shaking as I float across the floor to him. It’s good to see these crude meat-men acknowledging my superiority. “I… I can’t believe it worked. Are you going to… grant my wish?”

“Wish is granted,” I say. My voice echoes now. Jeremy is hearing it not with his ears but in his pulpy flesh-mind. “The star players on the other team have been taken care of.”

Jeremy smiles. He rubs his fingers across his thick moustache, his big bicep flexing as he does so. “Shit. Can I… make another wish?”

Greedy monkeys, all of these imbeciles. “You wished for a championship trophy. You got your wish,” I say. I’m a moment away from turning him to glass and shattering him into a thousand still-thinking, still-feeling pieces. But technically I’m bound to the talisman’s power; I must grant his wish.

“But what if I want…” He shrugs. “I dunno, eternal life?”

The meatsack I cobbled together to gain a foothold on their plane of existence is repulsive. It stinks and so much of it is moving even when I remain still. Internally, it feels loathsome and repulsive. Externally, it looks flimsy and crude. I examine my shape and I wonder if the beings of this world would find it as grotesque as I do. It doesn’t matter; I can feel my three targets. They’re a dull ache I can’t escape, another layer of agony on the mild suffering this existence seems to be even at its best. They’re nearby, one extremely so. I endeavor to complete my task quickly so I can go back to my home and bask in the sea of golden light that extends in all directions forever.

It doesn’t take much of my power to tap the spirit world for information. Passing through this world is a dense fog of lapsed life, beings desperate to exist beyond the destruction of their human forms. They’re all thirsty for conversation and in moments a thousand of them have shared all they know. This rapidly decaying form has an organ to process all of this information. I of course use some of my power to speed it along. In minutes I know everything.

I'm on a college campus. It’s nearly sundown. My targets are football players. The one nearby is named Brett Forrest. He’s a quarterback. He parks his SUV illegally in front of this rustic New England town’s largest beer store, Quickie Cans. He flips on his hazards and heads inside. Women passing on the sidewalk crane their heads to look at him. From what I learned from my spirit guides, this man is an absolute beauty. He towers over my own physical form and his eyes glimmer like icicles in the sun. I admire his cheekbones and his chiseled jaw, the dimples that form when he smiles. His shoulders are broad and he towers over his peers. The other students buying beer for the evening stare up at him. He basks in their adulation.

On his team he is a natural leader. He’s been praised since he was a child, always faster and tougher than the others. He has a bright future ahead of him: a lucrative professional football career; a marriage to a gorgeous woman; two kids; a painful divorce than ends with him starting an incredibly successful business. I see him just as stunning in his sixties with a much younger wife, having another child at such an advanced age. He’ll maintain his virility well into his eighties. He’ll die a happy old man after a luxurious and comfortable life.

I’m going to take that future away from him.

I act nonchalant as I follow him to the rear of the store. He chooses a case of bottled beer and a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor. I grab an energy drink and trail behind him to the front of the store. A young man in a sweatshirt with red eyes, nearly shut despite his best efforts, smiles at Brett. He recognizes him and Brett notices the recognition. Behind me in line, two young women whisper to each other about the tall, built stud.

He’s the team’s quarterback. The Granite State Goliath’s win that morning was all thanks to him running in the final touchdown. He pulled off an unlikely two-point conversion that thrilled the entire stadium as their team claimed success at the last moment.

Despite the fact that I understand all of these things now, I’m still dreadfully bored by all of it. I just want to go home.

“Yo Brett! What’s up!” says the man behind the counter. His name is Skip. He slaps his hand against Brett’s. “Yo, dude, you remember freshman English bro? I sat like two seats away from you.”

Brett smiles. “Yeah, definitely,” he lies. “Good to see you, bud.”

“Dude, look, you’re a goddamned legend!” Skip says. “Dude, honestly, if you ever want to chill sometime, I can score the sickest bud, dude, for real....”

“Hey, definitely!” Brett says with a winning grin. Even I can feel the effect of his charm when he turns it up like that. “Look, dude, y’know what would be cool? Think I can score these beers on the house and we’ll make plans to chill sometime this week?”

Skip shifts uncomfortably and glances up at a camera above the counter. “Look, bro, I would love to man, for real, but… See, my boss is this old geezer, not cool at all. He’s been on my ass lately and…”

Behind me, one of the women, a redhead with a tight dress on, pushes past me. “I’ll buy it!” she says. “My name’s Monica.” Her friend rushes forward and the two giggle and smile wide at the big football star. “This is Tina. Beers are on us. Where are you drinking them?”

Brett smiles. “Just a gettogether with the guys, ladies,” he says, pulling out his phone. “But if you give me your numbers I’ll text you and you can join us.”

I want to shift things at that moment, but I should conserve my power. This reality is foolish and flimsy, but moving too many pieces at once, especially while I’m mired within it, could take too much out of me.

“Hey, buddy,’ Brett says to Skip. “Where’s your pisser at? You mind if I take a leak?” Skip points to a hallway behind a, “NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS!” sign. No one has noticed me at all. I’m suddenly grateful for the plainness of my shell. I step backward carefully and wander into the store.

The bathroom door is opened a crack and I can hear Brett peeing inside. Because of what I am, I can see him clearly despite the fact that he’s not within my line of sight: he’s tall, strong, with small, tight muscles and a round ass. He’s built more sturdily than others. He’s twenty-one years old. I watch him smile at himself in the mirror. He lifts up his shirt and grins at his abs, flexes a bicep, then opens the door.

I hope he got a good look at them because they won’t be his much longer.

When he’s face to face with me I make my move. He opens his mouth to speak but suddenly everything freezes. I’m not physically touching him but my essence has grabbed his lifeline, applying pressure to force him further down it despite the constrictive laws of this physical world. In a moment he’s ten years older. It’s infuriating to see that age has only added to his beauty. His muscles are bigger, his skin tighter, his masculinity enhanced as he enters his thirties. Seconds later I’ve forced another ten years out of him.

His body’s still tall and strong but it’s starting to lose its density. His muscles are starting to sag, his abs obscured, lines forming in his face. Still, his brilliant blue eyes pierce from his slightly weathered visage. Ten more years, his hair’s gone grey. His body still has a shape that denotes athleticism at first glance but a small pool of pudge has formed around his middle. His face has bloated slightly and is starting to sag.

Brett looks down at himself, confused by the changes, examining his fingers as they lose their tan brilliance and immediately start to look rough and worn. He moans as the guns that defined his football career soften and condense. A dull ache echos through his body. Ten more years and he’s balding. His tan is gone; his skin is speckled and pale like an egg shell. His muscles look stringy and soft, his tummy now a full-fledged gut. The granite butt that stood out so prominently before has softened like melting wax. Wrinkles cover his skin.

When he moans, he doesn’t recognize the dry wheeze of his own voice. He stumbles, grabbing for something to regain his balance, as another ten years pass by. He blinks his eyes, having difficulty seeing. He looks to have lost several inches in height, accentuated by the aggressive curvature of his back. He puts his hand on a tower of beer stacked five cases high. He grabs at his aching lumbar, winces as his elbow screams at the sudden movement, and feels himself drowning in exhaustion.

Ten more years. He’s a shriveled husk of a human. His promising athletic career is two lifetimes behind him. Nothing remains of his beautiful brown hair but grey wisps. The crispness of his eyes have faded, mottled by milky cataracts. He smiles and reveals a set of yellowed dentures.

I don’t want to murder the man, so I step back at that point. I’ve punched a hole and this reality twists and reshapes to accommodate it. Outside, Brett’s illegally park vehicle has vanished. Skip is getting the phone numbers of Monica and Tina and planning to let them take a case of beer without paying.

An apron appears on Brett’s body and a broom in his hand. He uses it as a cane as he walks to the front of the store. “Goddammit Skip!” he wheezes. “If you’re giving away beer again I swear you’re finished here!”

“Relax Mr. Forrest! They’re paying now, right ladies?” Skip says.

Monica rolls her eyes. “Yeah, we are.” She thrusts a card forward. Skip swipes it.

Brett relaxes, relieved he doesn’t actually have to fire his employee. He can’t keep working these late hours at his age; his doctor says one of these late night shifts is going to be the death of him. His body is screaming for rest, but he’s afraid the moment he walks out the door, his shoddy staff will hand everything in the store out for free.

He’s so desperate to retire, but he’s still waiting for the right buyer. What’s worse, deep down he knows he’s young. He knows he walked in that store a football star, a young, powerful, beautiful man, but he’s unable to say it out loud or do anything out of the ordinary for the withered old beer store owner. He knows he’ll be sleeping alone that night, dreaming of which sexy co-ed he was supposed to bed that night. Weeks into the future, he’ll watch the Goliaths play, knowing he should be on that field, but all that will come out of his mouth is, “Y'know, I’ve been attending games here for forty years.”

I glance back as I watch Brett begin to sweep the floor. He looks at me and I know he knows who did this to him but can’t say a word.

On to my next target.

Ricky Wildes has to meet with his boyfriend in private. The team doesn’t know that their big, strapping tight end spends his evenings balls deep in a beautiful, dark-haired poli sci major named Spencer. There’s two feet between each of them as they meet. I’m a hundred feet away but I can sense the ache between them. Big, strong Ricky towers over little Spencer, but his body language is limp. He kicks the ground, stares at his shoes, wracked with guilt.

“I don’t want to have this conversation,” Ricky says, “but there were actual NFL scouts at that game today,” he says, running a hand through his thick blonde hair. I watch his biceps bulge through his t-shirt as he does it. The man is wide as a fridge, stuffed with full, round muscles. His long legs are powerful enough to squat a smart car but the man is agile enough to outrun a bear.

I can feel the pain of the man next to him, who has endured hiding his feelings for Ricky for three years, hoping that soon, when his gladiator’s career was over, they could hold hands in public like they deserved. He could tell his parents about him. He could meet Ricky’s friends.

I don’t care about any of it. Ricky is one of my targets. So as Ricky walks away from the broken-hearted man, I get to work.

Ricky’s letterman jacket suddenly squeezes tightly over his muscular torso. He freezes as he feels it squeezing over his sinewy frame. He pauses, takes a breath, and looks down at himself. What the hell is happening? He wonders. He bends his arms and hears his sleeves tear. The same happens to his pants as he flexes his legs, tiny tears spreading laterally around his thick thighs. But his eyes are drawn to the tight bulge of his crotch as, before his eyes, his big dick swells even bigger.

Ricky looks around in a panic, worried that if he breaks into a sprint to get back to his car he’ll end up naked before long. He turns back to the man he just dumped, about to yell for help, when he hears the seams of his pants bursting apart. He glances back to see his ass swelling like a balloon. He starts to run--more like a waddle, really--decimating his pants as he finds it’s not just his ass or his manhood; his muscles are blowing up on all sides!

He lets out a groan, much deeper than the voice he was used to, as he finds his clothes falling off in tatters on all sides. He’s still 6’5” tall but he looks like a bodybuilding freak, blown out with nearly 300 pounds of swollen muscles. The tatters of clothes on his body rearrange. In seconds he looks down and lets out a guttural whimper as he sees himself dressed in a mesh tank top and shorts that only barely contain his huge glutes and massive junk.

A gentle breeze tickles his now hairless body and he shivers. He hears the jingle of metal on his front; he can’t see his nipples over the arch of his hyperdeveloped pecs but he feels the hardware dangling from them. He remembers the day he got the piercing, when the tattooed runt at the shop suggested ornamentation worthy of his massive form and jabbed his gumdrop-sized nips with massive barbells.

Why wasn’t anyone reacting? he wondered. He’s enormous, a freak--and as he runs his hand over the shaved sides of his head but felt the strip of jelled up hair down the center, he realizes he’s a mohawked freak.

The honk of a horn on the street makes his oversized heart jump in his massive chest, but he’s relieved to see Spencer in his convertible. He knows the eyes of every campus stud in the area are on him as he saunters to the car, unable to stop his giant pecs and ass from bouncing and jiggling with every step. His dick’s getting hard, the head poking up beyond the waistband of his tiny shorts, and he blushes, but deep down he savors the attention.

“Get in you big ape!” Spencer says, slapping the beast on the ass as he lowers himself into the relatively cramped vehicle. “My boyfriend has his friends over and they really want to see you flex!”

“Gosh, really?” Ricky says. There’s a fog over his thoughts. The idea of Spencer dating someone else agitates him--but why? They’ve been fuck-buddies since freshman year, but ever since Spencer met a serious boyfriend they agreed to a strictly platonic relationship. But since Ricky savors the idea of men lusting over his body, he’s never shy about stopping by Spencer and his guy’s place to strip, flex and get them in the mood. “There gonna be whipped cream tonight?” Spencer asks as his jaw goes slack, his eyes staring blankly into the middle distance.

“You want to do the whipped cream speedo thing again?” Spencer said as he pulled his car away from the sidewalk. “God, you lack creativity. But if it makes you happy, you big lug, you know we won’t complain. And who knows! Maybe one of the guys there tonight has the patience to date a braindead imbecile like you!”

Ricky nods--imagine that! Maybe failing out of school wasn’t so bad after all. College just isn’t the place for a musclebound imbecile like him.

My last target is an ox of a man: Grant Sustern, a 300 pound brick wall of a man--in the vernacular of his peers, that is. That neckless brute is in his apartment slugging back beers, preparing for the celebration of his lifetime. He played like a monster that day, and some NFL scouts saw! Coach says they’re going to have a meeting the next day to talk about his future.

With my first two targets out of the way, my powers are reaching their zenith. I can sense Grant from miles away. It’s nothing for me to materialize in his apartment, which stinks of body odor and piss. I can practically see the male hormones in the air, a thick fog of testosterone that burps out of every one of Grant’s pores.

I’m in his bedroom. I can smell dozens of starchy, crumpled tissues under the bed. Grant doesn’t masturbate so much because of a lack of sex; it’s that his grapefruit-sized balls and thick hose of a dick demand attention nearly round the clock. He holds off when it’s gametime to give him a deep well of rage to tap into on the field. After their win that day, he didn’t even shower before banging the first two sluts that texted him to congratulate him, then jerked off while pounding beers in his bedroom later on.

He’s got a thick hand on the wall as he aims his hose at the toilet, unleashing a powerful stream. He groans at the relief. He’s got six beers left from the thirty-pack he picked up earlier in the day, plus a bottle of mezcal in his freezer. That should be enough to tide him over until he parties with the guys from the team that night.

Big Grant is all id; he’s helpless to the demands of his huge muscular body. After he’s done pissing he wags his big hose, then yanks up his briefs. He’s a spectacular specimen of a man, looking closer to a rhinocerous than any of his human peers. Below his broad chest is a massive gut, solid and immobile. He’s nearly too wide for most doors, having to turn sideways and stoop slightly. If he had a nickel for every time a chair snapped under his bulk during class and the teacher just excused him with an A…

Those fratty fucks next door are partying again! (Look at me; such a scant time in their reality and I’m already adopting their method of speech!) Grant shakes his head as he hears the Delta Chi fags next door blasting rap music. He can smell weed through the wall and hear them cheer as they play their stupid drinking games. The blonde behemoth bangs on the wall as he roars for them to pipe the fuck down. Big man doesn’t know his own strength; on the fourth bang, his fist goes right through the drywall!

He missed the stud by only a few inches. He chuckles, realizing he could have broken his fist--or, more realistically, he thinks as he examines his sausage-sized fingers, he would have snapped the stud in half.

It’s been like this all semester. Grant can’t stand rap, and especially can’t stand those Greek assholes raging like they earned it. Too many of these tools just coast their way through college, he thinks as he cracks open a beer and chugs it before smashing it on his cinderblock of a head. If they had any idea how fucking hard I work out there on the field to bring pride and money to this school… He stomps out the front door for a face-to-face confrontation.

Two weeks before, Grant had a girl over when one of the dipshit fratboys started lighting fireworks out the window. He ripped the door off its hinges, through one of them through a folding table littered with red plastic cups and ping pong balls. He actually dragged one of those fratheads, a tall lanky guy named Hersom, back over to his apartment and made him apologize to the girl Grant hadn’t finished fucking. Then, when the cops showed up, they told the fratboys to pipe down and congratulated Grant on a great game.

Grant barrels into the hall still in his briefs, ready to revisit his rage on these little punks. That Hersom dick is one of those steroid punks with a big chest and arms and nothing else. He uses his mildly inflated muscles to bully the smaller guys in his frat. Grant couldn’t wait to humiliate that little shithead.

(I’m still in Grant’s bedroom, my powers at their peak; my target is so radiant in my sights that I can still see him with my eyes closed. I examine the thousands of realities I could visit upon him as he threatens to bash down the recently reattached door once again. With a snap of my finger I could make him a butterfly--and make it that he had always been one. I could make him a 4000 pound blob of immobile human flesh; I could vanish his limbs so he wriggles around the ground like a worm; I could blend him with a pig and leave him snorting helplessly, gorging on slop from a trough and clomping around on clumsy hooves. For a moment I pity these pathetic, helpless beings. With a snap of my fingers, this “powerful” man could be a fart dissipating in the breeze before he even realized what happened. What a loathsome existence to be so without agency, so at the mercy of those like myself.)

Just before the door opens, Grant’s massive body suddenly sinks down. The muscle deflates from his body, and the density of his body seems to melt. He’s shocked as his eyeline drops down, even more shocked when he looks down at his pasty, doughy frame. He blinks when a pair of thick glasses appear on his face. It’s the only article of clothing I allow him other than the briefs he strode out so confidently in. He grabs a handful of his overflowing gut and gives it a wobble, astonished, before looking into the mid-torso of Hersom. He’s struck with a feeling he hasn’t felt in years--anxiety.

“The fuck you doing out here, Cyber-pig?” Hersom says, throwing open the door so everyone can see the overweight, barely dressed nerd in his corpulent flesh.

“I just…” Grant speaks with a squeak, sliding his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. His other hand was holding a beer--wasn’t it? No, it’s his inhaler. All this agitation has his asthma acting up. “I have a big exam on Monday and I really need to spend this whole weekend studying!”

Big Hersom smiles, crossing his arms and puffing up his chest as two of his equally built brothers flank him. Grant takes an anxious step backward, his knobby-knees shaking as he realizes he’s out of his league.

“I think he needs another lesson,” one of the intoxicated bullies says. “Maybe wedgie? Leave him digging those undies out of that fat ass for the next day and a half!”

“Maybe,” Hersom said, grabbing Grant’s flabby arm, “we toss him outside so the whole campus can see what Tubby Nerdstrom here looks like in his skivvies!”

Grant tried to wriggle away. “No, please, I’m approaching you with a civil request!” Inside, the former sasquatch of a man still rages: Fuck you frat punks! I’m gonna bury you little shits. I’ll snap you in half and swallow you fucking whole! But outwardly, all he can say is, “I apologize! You can party, it’s fine, I’ll go back to my apartment…”

Grant turns around, but as he waddles back to his place, Hersom grabs the waistband of Grant’s underwear. The chubby nerd yelps as he leans forward, caught in place as his briefs squash his little dick and fat thighs. Then Hersom lets go and Grant tumbles forward, his inhaler clattering across the hallway. As the door slams shut, Grant can hear them all laugh. He wipes tears from his eyes before hurrying back into his lonely apartment--past the shelves of sci-fi memorabilia, past his gaming station, to his fridge, where he yanks out another half gallon of ice cream.

Deep down, Grant remembers how that day began--how he was the hero, how he leveled massive men with his own physical prowess, but as he shoves scoop after scoop of rocky road down his throat to quell his nerves, he realizes there’s nothing he can do about it. His other life will always seem a dream--and all he can hope is that the Delta Chi brothers next door don’t torment him too much in the last few months of school so he can escape this nasty school and all of his horrible memories there.

I’m at full power now. I could extinguish this entire planet, snuff out every life on its surface, with only mild exertion, but what I truly desire is to leave this plane of existence and return to the endless golden skies of my home dimension.

In a moment I materialize before the man who summoned me. I traveled hundreds of miles in an instant, but the crude physics of this place mean nothing to me anymore. The man who conjured me forth holds the amulet of my people, forged by men of great power long ago (in human times). Seeing this hulking bear of a man wielding such a talisman is much like seeing--in plain human terms--seeing a frog with a rocket launcher.

“Holy shit!” the beefy man says, stroking his moustache. In an instant I see every moment of his life: Coach Jeremy Meridian, a former powerhouse like the men whose lives I altered that day. My human form is starting to deteriorate. I’m shrouded in purple smoke, my eyes glowing a vibrant blue. Not long from now my body will burn to ash and I’ll return to my home. But not before completing the task of the talisman.

Coach Meridian invoked powers beyond his understanding by summoning me to ruin the chances for his rival team. He had dreams of a championship trophy. I  am here to grant those dreams.

“Shit, you’re…” The big man is shaking as I float across the floor to him. It’s good to see these crude meat-men acknowledging my superiority. “I… I can’t believe it worked. Are you going to… grant my wish?”

“Wish is granted,” I say. My voice echoes now. Jeremy is hearing it not with his ears but in his pulpy flesh-mind. “The star players on the other team have been taken care of.”

Jeremy smiles. He rubs his fingers across his thick moustache, his big bicep flexing as he does so. “Shit. Can I… make another wish?”

Greedy monkeys, all of these imbeciles. “You wished for a championship trophy. You got your wish,” I say. I’m a moment away from turning him to glass and shattering him into a thousand still-thinking, still-feeling pieces. But technically I’m bound to the talisman’s power; I must grant his wish.

“But what if I want…” He shrugs. “I dunno, eternal life?”

I could vanish then if I wanted. The talisman’s power is releasing me. But I can’t help myself. I reach out with my now-burning hand and wave it over his face. He twitches, rubs a beefy paw through his crew cut and examines his thick frame in his sweatpants. He’s glowing. He smiles.

“You really gonna make me live forev--”

He never finishes his sentence. He’s eight inches tall now, made of an indestructible substance I conjured forth to resemble gold. His feet are attached to a shining pillar with a championship plaque at his bace. I even returned him to his football-playing shape, dressing him in uniform before trapping him in his championship trophy for all time.

As I fade away, I can hear Jeremy screaming in there. He’ll never be able to move or speak again, but he’ll hear and feel everything… until the end of time.I could vanish then if I wanted. The talisman’s power is releasing me. But I can’t help myself. I reach out with my now-burning hand and wave it over his face. He twitches, rubs a beefy paw through his crew cut and examines his thick frame in his sweatpants. He’s glowing. He smiles.

“You really gonna make me live forev--”

He never finishes his sentence. He’s eight inches tall now, made of an indestructible substance I conjured forth to resemble gold. His feet are attached to a shining pillar with a championship plaque at his bace. I even returned him to his football-playing shape, dressing him in uniform before trapping him in his championship trophy for all time.

As I fade away, I can hear Jeremy screaming in there. He’ll never be able to move or speak again, but he’ll hear and feel everything… until the end of time.