Genetic Anomaly: When It Started

[First part of this story is here. The part below begins a year before the events of the "Intro"]

Cal tried not to give his rising panic away over the phone. He would solve this. He knew he would.

“Look, Chris, I know it’s gym policy or whatever, but this is an emergency. If I don’t get my meds… well, it’s a really serious condition and I really need them! Just give me the guy’s number!”

He knew exactly who had his bag. That skinny little guy who he always caught staring at him--Rick was his name. The little creep had pointed out one day that they had the exact same Under Armour gym bag, black and navy blue, and Cal wondered if he had bought it on purpose. That morning as Cal digested his preworkout, Rick put his bag in the locker right next to Cal’s as he stared and shot a smirk that made Cal shiver.

The question was, had Rick grabbed Cal’s bag by accident, or was he trying to score some sweaty underwear? Not that it mattered. What was important was that Cal’s medication was in his bag and he needed his next dose soon--or else.

“I-I’m sorry, Cal, really,” Chris pleaded. He’d always been a nice guy, reverent to all the powerlifters (Cal especially), so Cal resisted the urge to fly into a rage. He was just doing his job, and he had no idea what kind of situation he was putting Cal in. “I can’t give out any member’s phone numbers, even if it’s an emergency.”

“C’mon, man!” Cal shouted, punching his truck’s dashboard with his mammoth fist. “I need some help here!” His voice sounded a little higher--was he just flustered, or was the change starting?

“Look, h-here’s what I can do, big guy, o-okay? What if I give the member a call and tell him he’s got the wrong bag. With your permission I can give him your number and he can get in touch with you. Would that work?”

Cal couldn’t think of any other way, aside from marching down to Global Gym, hoisting Chris by the neck with one hand, and making him give that number. “Sure,” he said. “Fine. Do that.”

He could feel the tingling in his stomach, a reminder that the change would be coming soon. There was no way he could just sit around in his truck waiting for Rick to call.

Desperation rising, he gave his doctor a call. “I’m sorry, Dr. Yates is out of his office for the rest of the day,” the receptionist said. “I can forward him your message but he won’t be checking them until tomorrow. He’s spending time with his family.”

Again, Cal wanted to scream into his phone but knew it wasn’t her fault. “I just… can you get them to call in a prescription for me?”

“I can’t personally, but I’ll forward him the request. Maybe he’ll check his messages today. You don’t have a back-up supply?”

“Normally, yes,” Cal explained, pressing a fist into his forehead. “I keep a backup in a safe in my closet, but I’m moving today. Everything I have is packed on a truck and in transit. No idea when the movers are going to get to my new place.”

“Well, don’t panic,” the receptionist said. “I’ll contact Dr. Yates and maybe he’ll come through, or the movers will show up, or maybe you’ll locate the bottle you lost? I mean, you’d have to have really bad luck for all three to fall through.”

Cal just leaned back in his seat. Fingers trembling, he tried to feel out the space between the top of his head and the headrest--it was normally only a finger’s width, he thought, but now it was at least a thumb. Time was running out.

Cal was thrilled to see a moving truck in the driveway in his apartment, but there had been two trucks that morning. “Where’s the other truck?” Cal shouted as he leapt out of the drivers seat and stomped aggressively at two lanky men carrying boxes inside.

“Got a flat,” one of them explained. “They’re getting it fixed. We’re discounting you for the delay but there’s nothing else we can do.”

Cal clenched his fists and stormed inside, shoving another of the movers, a short college-aged guy, out of the way.

“Jesus Christ!” he heard the guy say as his front door shut behind him. “Fucking gorilla like that, and we’ve got to carry HIS stuff? He looks like he could press the whole damned truck! Why am I lugging his shit around?”

Cal ignored him and darted around the apartment, reading the sharpie labels on the side of each box. His backup meds were in a safe, with his steroids, that he was sure he had put in a box labeled “Bedroom Stuff”--a box that hadn’t shown up yet. He could feel his hands and feet starting to sweat, another sign of what was to come.

He had only ever undergone “the change” twice. The first was before anyone knew about his “genetic anomaly,” before anyone even knew this kind of thing was possible. It was at high school football practice. To his teammates, he’d seemed to disappear. It happened so quickly that first time. To him, the field had vanished in a blur and he found himself in a dank cavern. The whole place stunk like sweat--like him, he realized later--and it wasn’t until he had climbed up toward the light that he realized he was emerging from his own helmet.

The player he had just tackled off his feet was no as tall as a building. Just the sight of him looking down, his huge hand advancing, filled Cal with a terror he’d never known. He tumbled backward into the darkness, finally comprehending that the strangely textured walls and ground were his collapsed uniform, until the ceiling was suddenly ripped away. He stared up at what seemed at first to be a titanic monster--but it was just his coach, looking down at the miniaturized form of the biggest man on the team.

Cal remembered the next few months as only a blurry nightmare as doctors and scientists treated him like a lab animal, keeping him in cages and handling him like he was an object. “I’m sorry,” Cal remembered one male nurse telling him as he gently poked him in the chest and belly. “It’s hard to remember you’re a full-grown man now that you’re not so… full-grown!”

The second time it had happened wasn’t an accident. He had been controlling the change with a miracle drug, but one of his teammates purposely intervened--and ultimately paid for that decision with his life.

“Where the fuck is that second truck?” Cal shouted, noticing that his shorts were starting to slide down. His shirt, tight before, was starting to hang loosely. He did his best to look intimidating despite the tingling swarming over his body.

“Look, big man,” said one of the movers as the others climbed back into the truck. “There’s nothing we can do about getting a flat tire fixed. It’s on its way. We’re giving you a 50 percent reduction on the bill, so you should be thrilled.”

Cal couldn’t help but notice that the mover, who was now looking eye-to-eye with him, had come up to Cal’s shoulder earlier.

“Fine!” Cal said. He knew the change was happening. The last thing he wanted was for these punks to see it happening to him. He ran back into the house, almost losing his shorts as he let go to open the door.

“Funny thing about big guys like that,” Cal heard the mover say before he got into the truck. “All those muscles make them seem a lot more intimidating than they are. I could’ve sworn he was a beast when he first showed up, but standing next to him he wasn’t nearly as big as I first thought.”

Cal checked his cell phone--no messages--and paced through his apartment. After a few minutes he just let his shorts fall to the ground. His shirt hung down past his knees now. He hated the way it billowed around him, heavy with his sweat.

“The fuck am I supposed to do now?” he asked the mostly empty apartment. His shirt dragged along the floor now and the doorknobs were at his eye level. He picked up his phone--fuck, it seemed heavier!--and tried calling Trevor, his lifting partner. He called Dr. Yates’ office again but it went to their voicemail. Then he pitched the phone at the wall. He had shrunk so much now that he slid through the neck hole of his sweat-soaked t-shirt. As it pooled around his feet he resigned himself to being nude. What was he going to wear now, a wash cloth?

Suddenly something dawned on him. He spun around and sprinted into the bathroom (a distance that seemed like a hundred yards from his spot in the living room). Up on the sink was a box labeled, “Bathroom Stuff.” He had to stand on his tiptoes to get it down--holy shit, was it heavy! His whole body strained to let it down gently but he finally had to let it drop.

“Please,” he begged as he pulled the cardboard flaps open. The box was tightly packed. He pulled out his razor and his electric toothbrush and tossed them aside. He rifled through the toiletries as the box went from being waist height to shoulder height. He still hadn’t found what he was looking for when the box was as tall as he was--at the last second he leapt and clung to the side of the box, tumbling inside. He imagined he was less than a foot tall, rapidly shrinking now with not much size left to lose.

He found what he was searching for at the very bottom of the box: an old daily pill organizer with every compartment opened except for Sunday. He shivered as he looked up and around himself, realizing that the box was now much like a room to him. The pill organizer was longer than he was tall. But he found what he was looking for, although it took a lot of strength just to pry it open: one purple pill, 300 mg of Macrosyl, the medication that reversed his anomaly and returned him to his normal size.

The pill was larger than a football to him now. He hugged it, so grateful to find it, and even licked it, wondering if he could ingest enough to start growing him back. But at this size, which he estimated to be about 4 inches tall, he would have to bathe in it for it to fully reverse the change.

The nearest corner of the box was worn away. Wielding a set of nail clippers like a battering ram, Cal was able to punch a hole that he pried open with his hands. He crawled out, cradling the huge pill in his arms, and stared up at the unbelievably space around him. The ceiling seemed to be miles away. The toilet was like a massive building, the bathtub an unscalable cliff, the sink an unattainable goal. He just had to dissolve the pill in water and then submerge himself--but where was he going to find enough water to dissolve it in?

Suddenly the ground shook. It shook again. He dropped the pill and shielded his ears from a deafening crash--which he realized after may have been his front door slamming shut.

“The fuck?” boomed a voice. “The front door was open but where the fuck is he?”

Another voice: “Big dumb gorilla is probably shooting his ass full of steroids. Let’s just dump these boxes and get the fuck out of here.”

The second truck had arrived! This was fine, he thought. Maybe he would just wait in the bathroom until they were gone--but then what? He considered getting their attention, explaining his situation to them. Who else was going to be able to help? But as he approached the bathroom door and peered out into the massive apartment, a giant sneaker stomped down just feet from him. The force knocked him to the ground and he scrambled for cover, which he only found behind the toilet. He huddled there, shivering against the cold porcelain, as a gigantic monster--who was only an 18-year old working for minimum wage, he tried to remind himself--stomped into the room and switched the light on.

“Fuck, man, I’ve gotta piss,” the monster boomed. Cal heard the torrent of urine blasting into the bowl and carefully crawled out to get a look. Sure enough, the guy was a scrawny guy with a bad goatee. Full-sized, Cal could have drowned the guy in his shadow, but now… he was terrifying. The idea that the guy’s dick was bigger than Cal was just cemented the idea of how dangerous the mover was and how insignificant the guy had become.

When he was finished, the mover shook off his dick and reached up to flush--but then stopped. “Fuck, what’s this?” he asked, reaching down and plucking the purple pill from the ground.

“No!” Cal screamed, but his voice came out so high and faint that the mover didn’t hear him.

“Dude, I found a pill in here!” the mover shouted. “Should we take it?”

“It’s probably steroids!” boomed a voice from outside. “Guy looks like he takes them with every meal!”

The massive mover considered the purple pill before shrugging. “Nah. Don’t want to shrink my dick or nothing.”

Cal’s hopes sank as the mover let the pill go. It seemed to fall forever before splashing into the toilet. Then the mover flushed. Cal beat his fists against the massive porcelain but he didn’t even make a dent. He was overwhelmed by how powerless he felt.

Even after the movers left, Cal lay behind the toilet. He was exhausted, naked and cold--but worst of all, he was out of ideas. The box with his meds had now arrived but there was no way he could get to them now. A single drop of icy water fell from the u-joint and splashed him on his back. He jumped to his feet, sobered by the sudden chill.

“Fuck!” he shouted. What was going to happen to him? How long would it take someone to notice he was missing and come to investigate? What would he eat until then? His mind raced through the perils of being so small. He pictured himself swinging his massive arms ineffectually at a spider or getting snatched up by a raccoon. He prayed the movers had shut his front door tightly. He looked down at himself, flexing the massive muscles he had spent so long building. The only purpose they would serve now was to make him a tastier snack.

His apartment seemed endless as he walked through it. He tried not to look up; taking in all that massive space gave him vertigo. The sun was set and the darkness made him feel sick. He was sure he could hear shuffling or chittering from the dark corners of his apartment. Light switches weren’t an option anymore. He patted his thighs where pockets would be. He would kill for a flashlight; it was too bad his phone hadn’t shrunk too…

His phone! He surged with hope as he realized his phone was somewhere in the living room. As if in response he saw it light up the room, vibrating like a massive insect. He wasn’t sure who he was going to call on it, but he ran desperately toward its buzzing--until a loud crash behind him stopped him in his tracks.

His front door squeaking open was like a winged creature shrieking. A massive shadowy form stepped in. Who the fuck was that? The giant reached out and flicked a switch. Cal dropped to his knees, desperate for cover, as light filled the room. He had to shield his eyes and squint at first. It was several long anxious seconds before he realized who it was.

Rick stood in the doorway with Cal’s bag slung over his shoulder. His eyes were wide. No doubt he had spotted the tiny muscular man, crawling around the carpet. The bag falling to the floor sounded like a building collapsing. Cal looked around, searching for a hiding spot. There were boxes about a football field away on either side. Cal could feel Rick’s approaching footsteps shaking his whole body, making his teeth chatter. He never made it to cover.

The feeling of strong fingers wrapping around him still horrified him. The floor fell away and he rose into the air so quickly he gagged. Still, he fought with all the strength of his massively developed body against the fist that coiled around him. Beyond it, Rick laughed at Cal’s struggles.

“Holy shit…” he hissed as he opened his fist and examined his catch. 

To Cal, Rick’s face was big as a movie screen. He tried not to collapse as the mouth opened. “Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!”

Rick laughed, the hand squeezing the breath out of Cal’s little body. “Why the fuck would I eat you?” he said. “How did this happen to you?” He opened his hand again and his eyes ran hungrily over Cal’s nude form. “Just… look at you…” he said in a tone that reminded Rick that eating him wasn’t the worst thing Rick could do.