Beauty Only Skin Deep

[6 word request: NFL player gets good looks stolen]

Derek was soaked up to his neck in the outdoor hot tub when the hotel clerk came to check on him.

“Just wanted to make sure things were up to snuff. We just want to make sure our VIP clients feel well taken care of…”

Derek took a deep breath, lifted his massive arms from the hot tub and gave two thumbs up. “Honestly? Everything’s been great,” he said in his silky baritone voice.

“We apologize again that the hot tub in your room isn’t functioning correctly,” the hotel clerk said, his hands folded in front of him. “I assure you we’ll have the thermostat checked in the morning, and tomorrow night you’ll be able to enjoy a private soak.”

“Photo shoot’s not extending past tomorrow night,” Derek said with a big smile. “I won’t be here. Honestly, don’t sweat it. There’s nobody out here now, so it’s like it’s private.” He gestured to the empty outdoor area, the brightly lit pool, and the steamy hot tub soothing his 300 pound body. “Honestly, everything is great.”

The thin clerk smiled, then blushed. “I was wondering… If it wasn’t too much trouble…” He looked at his feet. “My son is an enormous fan of the 49ers, and he wears your jersey pretty much nonstop…”

Derek flashed a wide smile. “What do you need? Autograph? Voicemail message? Clipping of my hair? I’m in a good mood so it’s best to strike now.”

The clerk approached the big defensive lineman with a pen and paper. “An autograph would suffice.”

“What’s your son’s name?”

“Gerald,” the clerk said.

“Isn’t that your name?” Derek said with a wink. “What, is he a junior?”

“Uh, well,” the clerk stammered. “Actually, it’s for me,” he said. “I apologize, for the intrusion and the dishonesty.”

“Not a thing in the world could bother me, the mood I’m in,” Derek said. “Honestly, I’ll be filling out a good review of you guys on Yelp.”

The clerk thanked him and left. Derek rose from the tub, water cascading from his enormous body as he toweled himself off.

“Holy shit!” said a voice. Derek turned to see a security guard, eyes wide, taking in the enormous NFL player’s shorts-clad body. “You’re HUGE!”

“I’m medium at best,” Derek said.

The security guard, a portly middle-aged guy, ventured toward the huge player, staring up at the foot-taller athlete, eyeing up Derek’s thick, rippling arms. “You a bodybuilder or something?”

“NFL,” Derek said. “49ers.”

“I thought football players were all fat hogs and pretty boys!” the security guard said.

Derek shrugged his beefy shoulders. “And here I thought I was plenty pretty,” he said, rubbing a thick paw over his chiseled abs.

“For real, man, you’re like, all muscle!” the security guard said. He lifted his cap from his bald head. “Good lord, I’m sorry. I’ve just never seen a guy your size before!”

Derek smiled and readjusted his towel. “Good. I’ve seen way too many guys my size--or bigger--in my line of work.”

The security guard clicked on his flashlight and pointed it over the manicured hedges at the iron fence surrounding the hotel’s pool and hot tub area. “We got a call about some guy prowling around out here, peeking in windows. No description; guess they didn’t get a good look at him. You didn’t happen to see him, did you?”

Derek shook his head. “Nope. It’s been silent out here. Not a soul wandering around that I knew of.”

“Good thing!” the security guard said. “I’d feel sorry for that guy if he ended up bumping into you!” He patted a small gun strapped to his belt. “But if you hear anything you give me a shout. Not like you need the help, but Mr. Taser here will make short work of anyone who’s up to no good!”

“I’ll give you a shout if I hear anything Mr…” Derek extended a hand.

“Call me Murray,” the guard said. “I’m gonna do another sweep. Maybe it was somebody locked out of their room or something.”

Murray left and Derek considered returning to his room.

The photo shoot that day had been a breeze. He couldn’t believe how easy it was to just pose for a camera and get paid for it--what a dramatic difference from his usual head-smashing bone-crunching line of work! Not a lot of lineman had both the face and the body to sell magazines. Next week was Men’s Health, the week after GQ--and an agent wanted to have a meeting with him about a script floating around.

Derek was ready to retire from the NFL, and the idea of being a movie star had been a fantasy since he had been a little kid admiring Arnold Schwarzeneggar on the screen.

This photo shoot wasn’t a big production but it was sure to give him some major exposure, a nice stepping stone to his post-NFL career goals. It should have been a one-day shoot, but they needed clearance to set up on a private section of a local beach.

The magazine paid for him to stay the night in this hotel until the morning, when all the paperwork would have been cleared. Derek considered it a little mini-vacation.

Heading out to a club was an appealing option, but there was no way he would end up at a bar without being tempted to drink. Coach was barely okay with this little side-venture; he would freak of pics of Derek, drunk, went viral.

But a nice relaxing evening at this mid-level hotel wasn’t a bad idea. There was a little restaurant in the hotel with a hot blonde waiting tables. Maybe he could slip in and get her back to his room after her shift, blow her mind with his godlike NFL bod and his big swinging dick.

“Shit,” he said as he scanned the patio. He had purposely left his phone in his room so he could have a little peace and quiet, but he’d forgotten his wallet and his room key as well. “No big deal,” he thought. “The front desk guy will nut in his pants at the chance to help me out.”

One more dip, he thought--fifteen minutes, tops--and he would head back, shower, and prepare to sweep that waitress off her feet for a night she would never forget. His dick jumped at the idea.

The hot water felt amazing on his aching joints. “I should get a hot tub installed at my house,” he thought, eyes closed, breathing in the steam as a jet blasted water on his aching back.

Something sprayed him in the face--cold with a chemical smell. He winced, wiping his eyes as he sat up in the tub. “What the fuck--” Something hit him. His vision was blurry. Everything was moving in slow motion. There was somebody next to him--how had he not heard the guy approach?--dressed all in black with a ski mask pulled over his face. He gave Derek another spritz from the atomizer in his hand and Derek felt his legs give way, sliding into the tub. If not for his enormous arm grabbing the edge, his head would have sunk underwater. Every inch of him tingled like he’d been hit with novacaine.

“I’ll… ferkin… kell… yoooo…” Derek’s head swooned, his eyes rolling around as he reached out to weakly swipe at the air. The masked man gave Derek a gentle shove and the gargantuan athlete just tumbled over, powerless to resist.

“Hold still there, prettyboy,” the man said. He reached up and grabbed Derek by his cheeks. Derek raised his hands to shove the little guy off--he couldn’t have weighed more than 130 pounds! He should have been able to launch this guy into orbit!--but his arms were like cooked pasta.

“That’s a good man. Perfect face, crazy to have it on a big ogre like you,” the man whispered. His breath stunk like sour milk. Derek groaned as the man gripped his face harder--and then peeled it off with a loud velcro rip.

Derek’s head fell back, stunned. His face felt numb--was it just exposed muscle and blood, he wondered? His vision was off, like his eyes were too far apart. He couldn’t focus.

He struggled to stand, groaning as he found just enough power to pull himself from the tub, but he stumbled on unsteady legs like he was drunk.

The little burglar stood next to him holding Derek’s face in his hands. The big man expected to see blood, tendons and torn nerves, but the face the burglar held looked like a hyper-realistic mask he had bloodlessly detached. Derek reeled at the sight.

“You, fucking…” he bellowed, still unable to form a sentence. “Somebody help--”

The man grabbed Derek by the throat--again, the defensive lineman tried to summon his incredible strength to thrash this pipsqueak but found himself helpless--and squeezed. Derek felt something thick and viscous rise from his throat. He coughed and choked until an iridescent slime poured from his mouth, thick like egg yolk but glowing softly orange, and landed in the man’s hand.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you!” The sound of Derek’s voice came from the goo in the burglar’s hand, not from his throat. “I swear, you’re fucked as soon as I--” The burglar put the slime into a zip-lock bag and tossed it in his sack, muffling it.

Derek opened his mouth but no sound came out--not a squeak as he tried to scream at the top of his lungs. He strained so hard he felt blood-vessels burst in his eyes, but he couldn’t make a peep.

The burglar was eyeing up Derek’s body with his tongue hanging out. He reached up with the strange atomizer to give Derek another squirt of the liquid, but the big man slapped it out of his hand. It bounced across the cement pool deck and landed in the deep end, sinking to the bottom.

“Dammit!” the burglar said, starting to back away as Derek slowly regained his strength. “I guess I’ll just grab this,” he said, grabbing a chokehold on the big football lineman’s crotch and yanking at the massive dick in Derek’s swim trunks.

Derek doubled over, expecting pain but all he felt was a cold numbness in his groin. He fell to his hands and knees, shocked as he felt something detach from the burglar’s pull. He watched in horror as his cock and balls fell out the bottom of his trunks in one neat piece. The burglar grabbed them, as bloodless as the pilfered face had been, and tossed it in his bag. Then he scrambled away, diving over a hedge and scaling the iron gate.

It took Derek a few moments to collect himself. Every time he tried to stand his head throbbed and he tumbled over. He took deep, slow breaths--something about his nose felt wrong, like he couldn’t breathe well through it--and finally pulled himself together.

He immediately yanked down his shorts, expecting to see either a bloody whole or a smooth ken-doll-like pubic area, but instead he just saw a tiny, unfamiliar dick. He blinked as he stared at in disbelief, finally reaching out to touch it. It was an ugly little thing, like a little brown mushroom, but he shuddered when he touched it, his finger grazing the two shriveled balls that hung beside it.

He tried again to speak with no luck, then raised a hand to his face--which felt wrong. His nose seemed flat and misshapen. His mouth felt too wide. He had no hair! Where he once had thick black curls he felt only tough, calloused flesh all over his head.

In the door to the pool area, he saw his reflection--and nearly punched a hole in the door to escape it. His eyes were far apart, one sunken slightly lower than the other, with thick, heavy-lids that wouldn’t open more than half-way. His nose looked like it had been crushed against his head, only two small holes with barely any cartilage around them. His mouth was wide with jagged, discolored teeth jutting out in wild directions. He ran his tongue across them, horrified at the crazy angles they protruded from his jaw--and then reviled as he caught a look at his tongue: too long, thick and black like it was an animal’s.

He was a horror show! He would have screamed if he could make any sound at all.

He opened the door and sprinted toward the front desk, skidding to a stop when he realized he couldn’t speak. How was he going to explain what was going on? How would they know who he was? He didn’t even have his wallet on him.

He paused to stare at his horrible face in the elevator door. It dinged and slid open. He recognized the family inside: a mother, father, and two young boys. The son who had asked him for a picture earlier that day screamed at the sight of him as the parents grabbed their sons and backed away, the father slapping the “Close Door” button wildly.

Derek turned around and headed back to the door to the pool area. He hopped over the bushes and over the fence, hoping to follow the burglar, but he was nowhere in sight.

Derek had no phone, no keys to his room, and no voice. He looked like he grew up too close to Chernobyl. I look like Voldemort and Deadpool had a baby! He thought as he patted his misshapen visage.

Fingerprints! He stared at his hands, As far as he knew, they were unchanged. If he could get to a hospital, maybe, he could be identified. He could still write! With any luck he could communicate what had happened, get the police on their trail, and somehow this ridiculous situation could be remedied.

He approached the hotel’s entrance slowly, wishing he had a bag to wear over his head. The look of dismay on the Gerald’s face made him sick to his stomach, but he hustled up to the counter, grasping desperately for a pen and paper, as he mouthed words he couldn’t say aloud.

Gerald grabbed the pen and paper, stowing them behind the desk, then huddled against the wall. “Please!” he said. “Please don’t hurt me!” He reached under the counter, probably to hit an alarm buzzer or something. Derek waved his arms wildly, unable to express anything any other way.

A man his size with a disfigured face contorting in frustration, waving arms as powerfully built as Derek’s, seemed like nothing more than a horror show to the clerk. Derek tried to calm down, realizing he was wet, only wearing shorts, and still unable to make a sound. There had to be something he could write with!

“Holy jesus,” said a voice. Derek turned to see Murray holding his taser shakily. “Good god, now, we don’t want any trouble… but you have to know the police are on the way, so if you know what’s good for you…”

Derek shook his head. He was done with this nonsense. “Let the police come,” he thought. “At least then they’ll ID me.” Furious, he unconsciously flexed his whole massive torso.

Murray took this as an act of aggression. The terrified night watchman fired the tazer. Two metal prongs fired into Derek’s enormous, quivering pecs, and an electric charge rocked the man’s huge body.

A normal man would have probably dropped under the assault, but Derek took the blast, shaking on his feet, before pressing forward, snatching the gun from the man’s hand and shoving him away. Murray yelped and huddled against the wall while Gerald phoned the police. Derek looked at the two men, still shaky from the taser blast, and stormed out of the hotel, taser in hand.

A few shoulder smashes into his hotel room door weren’t enough to bust it in. He was on the second floor, but as he headed around to the other side of the building, he realized he could easily scale the fire escape. His enormous muscles bulged and flexed as he climbed like an ape, thrusting an elbow through the window once he reached his room. He could pay for the damages later. Right now, he needed his phone more than anything. An alarm sounded, but the police were already on their way. He planned to throw his arms up and surrender as soon as they arrived--and as soon as he had texted his agent, and the coach, to tell them what happened--along with a photo to dispel their disbelief.

He almost crushed his phone when the facial recognition failed to unlock at his bestial visage. He gritted his teeth and tapped in his code, hearing sirens outside.

He heard a pounding at his door. He set the taser down, held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, and opened up, expecting a cadre of police with weapons trained at his face.

Instead, he caught a blast of cold liquid in his face. He stumbled back, reeling as the burglar stepped into the room, slamming the door behind him.

Derek lay on the floor, stunned, as the burglar leered over him, only his eyes visible through his ski mask. He leered, sticking out a tongue.

“I have to admit, I’m cutting it really close, especially with the police outside, but I couldn’t pass up all this…” He patted down Derek’s muscles. The feeble lineman swatted at the prodding fingers ineffectually.

The burglar suddenly pulled out a zipper, slapping it on Derek’s chest. The huge athlete went limp for a moment, his whole body numb, as the burglar slowly pulled the zipper down. His chest peeled away in two halves as if it were a suit. Derek’s eyes went wide as the burglar reached down and slid his big, muscular body away as if it had been a sleeping bag.

“These big meaty muscles are going to go for big money!” the burglar said, rolling up Derek’s massive body and putting it in his bag. Then he grabbed Derek’s phone and jetted out the door.

Derek was just getting the feeling back in his body as he heard the sounds of police outside. He stood up, looking at his scrawny, gnarled looking body. He looked like he was eighty years old! When he stood, he realized he was a good two feet shorter as well. He heard pounding on the door and gazed down at his hands, wondering if his fingerprints were the same. If he were bigger, at least he could put up a fight.

But as the police burst in, subduing and handcuffing the mute, withered little monster, there was nothing Derek could do to convey that he was really a professional athlete and someone had stolen everything he was.