The Kicker's Curse

[6 word request: Barefoot Football Kicker Foot Growth Curse]

The disappointment in the Granite State Goliaths’ locker room was palpable. Steam poured from the showers as the massive athletes lathered up, but a gloom hung in a haze over the crestfallen players.

This was their third loss in a row. 17-0 was embarrassing. Coach wasn’t happy. The previous season, they would have been heading out to the field to run laps after Coach tore each of them several new assholes. But things had changed.

Darius, the team’s kicker, once again felt the pressure of the whole team’s success riding on him. Coach put a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder and nodded. “Go do your thing, boy,” Coach said. Darius nodded, his feet throbbing inside the cleats he still wore. As he turned to his teammates, in various states of shower and undress, a hush fell over the room. They knew what was coming.

“Once again, we failed to perform,” Coach said. “I don’t have much to say for you, except… you know what that means. We keep losing, I won’t have much of a team left to be angry with. For whichever one of you pathetic creampuffs that gets chosen, just know that you brought this all on yourself, and we’ll be stronger without you.”

Darius’ skin tingled. He felt his heartbeat in his toes. As he unlaced his shoes, his hands shook. He felt like he was unleashing a monster as he slid his feet out. The lights flickered as he flexed his bare toes. Several players gasped. Other than the sound of the still-running showers, the locker room was silent. Everyone was desperate to find out who was going to get chosen. Darius was used to this moment; a silent hush as he decided the future in a few short moments.

Heat radiated off his feet. He ran his hands over them as he felt them start to stretch. His normal size 9s had already started to expand. He stood up and looked down at his smooth, veiny feet, wiggling his toes, admiring the smattering of dark hair on each. They looked like size 11s now. Darius started to do a lap around the locker room. By the time he got to Carter, the team’s quarterback, his feet were size 13s. Darius paused to place his foot next to Carter’s to compare; he had now outsized the six-inches-taller man.

Carter stared back at Darius as they stood near. “You’re not afraid it’s going to be you?” Darius weakly asked.

“It’s never fucking me,” Carter said, although his voice cracked at the end. His rigid posture relaxed as Darius walked away.

Darius felt his big toe twitch as he passed by Grant, the pretty well-built tight end. Darius looked up at the 6’5” broad-shouldered man who backed up against the lockers, turning his head and closing his eyes when he knew the kicker had him in his sights. Then Darius shrugged and walked away. Grant went back to his usual cocky swagger, high-fiving DeShawn, the wide receiver, now that they knew they were both off the chopping block.

The strongest pull came from Lineman Alley, that section of the locker room where the massive beefy 300 pound men gathered to change. Darius slowly walked that way, watching the normally overconfident gigantic bulls of the team start to titter and shake like scared mice. “I’m sorry guys,” Darius said as he approached. Dirk, a big bearded hog of a man, turned to flee, but the other lineman grabbed him and made him address his fate.

Most of the overgrown linemen had size 17 feet. As Darius approached, he looked down to see that his were the same size now. He felt like a clown, padding along carefully with the throbbing, pulsing steppers getting so big he doubted he would be able to run. Darius regarded each of the linemen in turn, passing by the wide, thick Defensive linemen one-by-one until he was sure neither was “the one”--but he paused when he got to James Madison, a 330 pound beast from Kentucky who held the team’s records for squatting, benching and deadlift.

James tattooed, hairy body was bulging with muscle and fat, an oversized towel barely able to wrap entirely around his body, but he cried out like a woman when he realized Darius was staring at him. “No fucking way!” he said, turning and running. Even the overhang of James’ sturdy keg-belly wasn’t enough to hold the towel up as he started to run. He turned left to flee for the door, hoping he could barrel through the way he did on the field, but a dozen teammates had formed a wall. At the next row of lockers he found the same. He turned the other way, ducking into the showers in a panic, as Darius approached him.

The big man cried out when he realized the shower knobs, which normally sat level with his groin, were chest-high to him now.

When Darius, hating what he had to do, finally arrived in the showers, the team’s biggest player was only three feet tall. Darius couldn’t help but notice how cute the little lineman looked as he dwindled away, every second smaller and smaller. He didn’t lose a bit of his muscle or bulk, but as he shrank down to two feet it was clear the little man wouldn’t be able to lift up a 45 pound plate anymore, let alone hoist 500 pounds overhead.

“Just let it happen,” Darius said. “We all agreed to this. We lose, someone has to be sacrificed to my feet. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules.”

James was only twelve inches tall, now shaking like a little bunny, when Darius took a step forward, holding his right foot up high, “Looks like you’re going in the right one,” Darius said, but James, in a high-pitched squeak of a voice, cried out and sprinted.

Even at full size, big James was never fast. He had the muscle to propel his massive body but bnot for long distances, and sheer physics slowed him from gaining speed too easily. But at eight inches tall, he did his best to get away, hurtling (to him--with his little legs, he couldn’t cover ground very quickly) between Darius’ legs. But when he got to the entrance to the shower, he found his teammates had gathered to form a wall.

Not going down without a fight, James didn’t stop, despite the looming presence of the building-sized teammates he used to tower over. His plan had been to slip between their legs, but Carter stomped his foot down sideways, making a wall that the eight-inch tall lineman collided with.

Grant used a toe to slide the supine lineman along the slick shower floor. James growled (just a silly squeak) and flailed his beefy (but tiny!) arms and legs, but there was nothing he could do. James found himself staring straight up at Darius, who had his hands on his hips.

“Hold still,” Darius said, raising his foot again. “I don’t think it hurts that bad.” Darius stomped down slowly, pressing the shrunken brute against the tiled shower floor. Then he stomped down hard.

The onlooking players winced, expecting a squish or a pop, but they could still hear James’ chipmunky voice screaming (albeit muffled now). Darius raised his foot to reveal James, squashed like gum against the sole of his foot.

Some of the players laughed as the smooshed (but still very much alive) James tried to peel himself away, but many of them lost interest and they filtered back into the locker room, sure they were safe for the time being. Darius stomped down again. This time, for everyone else present except Darius, James’ cries seemed to suddenly cease. But the kicker could still hear the lineman, echoing as if at the bottom of a well.

Darius raised his foot and examined the bottom. His feet were slowly shrinking back to normal, a good sign. The sole of his foot looked normal until he saw a face and hands pressing against them from the inside, stretching like they were trapped behind cellophane. Darius poked the emerging body with his finger. “Quit fighting, James. Just let it go.” In his own head, Darius heard James whining and moaning as the foot absorbed him, trying to resist the process he was helpless to fight.

To knock the wind out of his sails, Darius stomped the foot down again. James went silent. Seconds later, some weak blubbering and whimpering was all Darius could hear from the formerly oversized man.

As Darius, fully dressed, started to leave the locker room, Coach stopped him, gently brushing his polished dress shoe against Darius’ sneaker. “So what do you think? That sacrifice going to do the trick? Your foot got the magic it needs to make us a winning team again?”

“It’s not magic,” Darius said wistfully, “but yeah, I think that would do it. It feels… satiated… in a way it didn’t with the others.”

Alone at home, Darius took off his shoes and studied his feet, especially the right one. James had gone quiet on the drive home, but now, as Darius stretched and flexed his feet, James seemed to stir. Darius closed his eyes and focused on the beefy ape of a man. He could see James--or rather, James’ essence--alone in a dark room, wrapped in leather straps and chained to a wall. James fought against his restraints, his body flexing and heaving but he was never able to be free. Darius sighed.

That was only James’ spirit’s interpretation of his situation. In reality, James’ physical body had merged with his foot. Some of his own parts still seemed to maintain their function, as well. He examined his foot, gently tracing along the veins, rubbing the webbing between each toe. He found that James’ head had settled in his big toe; they all usually did. He stroked the side of the toe as if he were massaging James’ fat head. In his head, he heard James snarl, but the rage dissolved into soft moans.

James’ penis had relocated to Darius’ pinky toe. Licking his lips, Darius rubbed his thumb up and down the pinky toe, relishing as his whole foot twitched at the stimulus. Darius let out a soft moan of his own; now, James’ pleasure was his own. With his thumb and forefinger, he rubbed his pinky toe, moaning as he heard James starting to purr like a lion.

This wasn’t the first time the two had shared such an encounter; after losing games, before Darius’ curse had begun, he and James used to comfort each other by lying side-by-side on James’ enormous bed, each jerking the other off with one hand while the other hand wandered the other’s beautiful body.

“There you go,” Darius said softly as he felt his entire foot go rigid, then relax. He tried to “see” James’ essence now and the enormous man was hairless from head to toe, restrained with thick pieces of silk he no longer fought against. The bald beast was drooling, a complacent look on his face as he allowed himself to be subsumed into Darius’ being.

As Darius walked to his bed, he felt flashes of James’ memories tickling the edge of his brain as James was slowly broken down by the magic of the curse. By morning, all that was James would be gone--part of Darius now, actually--and whatever spirit had lain the curse upon him would be satisfied, ready to turn this into a winning season.

As Darius slowly drifted off to bed, he could actually smell James’ musk coming from his body. He hoped that James was the last, at least for the time being. If they lost again, he knew Carter would be next, and their occasional playful champagne-fueled hot tub romps would have to come to an end as well.