Feeding Frenzy

For Spooky Season, I can’t think of a more appropriate story than this tale of an inexplicable monster TF. This runs more towards pure horror but if you’re a monster fucker, you might get a rise from it. 😈

Riley awoke in a swirl of damp sheets, feeling slightly nauseous. He knew he tended to thrash around in his sleep, or at least, that’s what his boyfriends always told him. This was a worse case than usual; his legs were squeezed together and wrapped in 400-thread count cotton percale, making him look like a merman. Gently belching and coughing up bile, he pulled himself free, then sat up and tried to get a handle on his condition. The back of his neck didn’t feel warm, so hopefully it wasn’t the flu. Food poisoning? He’d been living mostly on frozen meals, saving up money for a bar crawl with his roommates… which would be tonight. The weekend had just started and already he was sick. It didn’t seem fair.

The light in his room was strange. It was a soft, flickering yellow green. An insistent whisper vibrated the windowpane. Rain. Yawning, he reached for his phone to check his weather app. The stark white numbers on his lock screen glared at him disapprovingly. It was close to four o’clock in the afternoon. He’d gone to bed at two in the morning.

Maybe he was sick after all. Scrolling through his text alerts, he found a few dozen from a needy sub he’d flirted with on Discord and a few from his roommates, a pair of cubs named Eldon and Merle. They both had weekend jobs at the same grocery store that had them starting at seven a.m. on Saturdays. They had started texting him around noon and were concerned that he hadn’t answered yet. He wondered if he should let them know he was feeling ill. Not wanting to miss out on the bar crawl, he replied “Sorry, overslept” and left it at that.

He took two aspirins and resolved to power through his stomach trouble. In the bathroom mirror, he examined his reflection. He was twenty-four, slim, and reasonably good-looking. Deep blue eyes beneath straight, bold brows, full lips, his messy pompadour chocolate brown with caramel highlights, and dense, dark stubble. His ears stuck straight out from his skull, tempering his handsomeness and giving him an affable, boyish air. This morning, shadows ringed his eyes and his complexion seemed pastier than usual.

Aiming a finger at his reflection (who pointed back), he smiled charmingly and said, “Pull yourself together, stud. We are NOT missing drinks tonight.” His stomach gurgled. Grimly, he slammed down some knockoff Pepto Bismol and took his laptop to bed with him, planning on finishing up some files from his accounting job while he waited to feel better. Eldon and Merle always teased him about his little computer. They both had tricked-out gaming PC’s and a small fortune in game consoles. He preferred to live thriftily and save his money. His uncle had taught him that. Even this rental was thrifty. It was a house instead of an apartment, sure, but it was a small rental property in a so-so neighborhood. And he had roommates. There’d be money enough for his own mansion once he became a partner in the firm.

As he typed, the air seemed to grow colder. As the storm outside grew louder, the whispering grew into a shrill whistling as the outside air rushed through the home’s shitty weatherproofing. A shiver made his skin twitch. And then he couldn’t stop shivering. The shaking grew in intensity until it became a violent full-body muscle spasm. With trembling fingers, he touched the back of his neck again. It was still cool to the touch. Teeth chattering, he rose to his feet and stalked restlessly through the tiny house, racking his brain for the cause of his illness.

Hunger, of course, he thought. He hadn’t eaten anything since the previous evening. He just needed some food in his belly. In the fridge, he found a Greek salad left over from an office function a few days before. It wasn’t heavy and had plenty of healthy ingredients, so it made sense as a snack. The crumbled feta cheese would give him some protein. He took the salad and a bottle of mineral water and went back to his room.

He took a bite of the salad and chewed, slowly. And stopped. There was something wrong with it. It tasted repulsive. Not spoiled – he could see for himself how fresh the ingredients looked. But there was something about it that made it feel unnatural to eat. As though he was stuffing masking tape or candle wax into his mouth. His nausea kicked into full gear. Feeling lightheaded, he swabbed the food he hadn’t swallowed from his mouth as he sprinted to the bathroom. His knees gave way near the toilet. His stomach ejected the rest of the salad, along with digested food from the previous day. The heaving didn’t want to end. The food gushed from his mouth until it was pure liquid, thin and clear. Exhausted, he rested there with his head down and his arms braced on the rim of the bowl. The rancid odors of partially digested food and bile wafted into his nostrils.

“No drinks for you tonight, baby girl,” he said to himself, his voice a husky whisper. He attempted a little laugh at his own remark. It hurt too much. His skin crawled, feeling flushed and freezing all at once. Shakily, he pulled himself to his feet.

If he looked a little pasty before, he looked like a corpse now. His skin was dead white around his mouth and the front of his neck and a dull gray on the rest of his head. Lifting the hem of his t-shirt, he saw more white skin on his chest. The bloodless hue continued on the inside edges of his arms and legs, with the sickly gray afflicting the rest of his body. Mouth agape at this, he saw that even his gums and tongue had grown pale.

The itching sharpened to an unbearable degree. He had the sensation of being gnawed on by a million fire ants. Reflexively, he clawed at his arms. Time seemed to slow down as he watched his arm hair detach itself and float into the air in a downy cloud. Stunned, he ran his hands through his hair, his go-to nervous gesture when things got too real. The chocolate-caramel locks came out in chunks. Gasping, he backed away from the horrific image and bumped into the built-in linen cabinet. The impact loosened more hair, including some from his eyebrows. His mind raced with a dozen theories about his condition, none of them hopeful. Was it radiation poisoning? Cancer? Some new disease that hadn’t been named yet? The itching got worse. Worse than his worst sunburn, like he’d been deposited on the surface of a star and was being incinerated. Knowing it would do no good but unable to help himself, he scratched every inch of his body, inadvertently denuding himself of his eyebrows, stubble, pubes, and every other bit of hair. The itching abruptly subsided along with the heat. The sudden coolness staggered him almost as much as his new appearance.

An alien creature stared back from the mirror. “This is… this is food poisoning,” he said to himself, his voice still gravelly and far too soft. “That’s all. I don’t really look like this. I’m hallucinating. Oh God… please tell me this isn’t real…!” He needed to go to a hospital. He couldn’t drive, not if he wasn’t in his right mind, but there were other ways to get there. Not an ambulance, obviously. He didn’t want to receive a bill for thousands of dollars in the mail afterward. His roommates were at work across town and could only use their phones on their breaks, so that option was out. But he could call a ride service. He just had to get his phone.

After all his sweating, his clothes were soaked. He peeled them off, knowing he’d have to dress again when his ride arrived, and then he dug into the pocket of his shorts for his the device.

The facial recognition feature couldn’t identify him. He had to enter his password and then open the app. That used facial recognition, too. The password for the app eluded his fractured mind. As he battled a mounting panic, the warmth tickled his spine and spread over his body again. Pain stabbed into his bones, causing his muscles to spasm. His fingers were wrenched apart. With a dull clatter that sounded to him like a church bell tolling for a funeral service, the phone dropped into the sink.

Pathetic grunts wheezed from his spasming throat. Not even words this time, but the primal protestations of a beast in pain. The agony this time was concentrated beneath his gray and white skin, in his muscles. The burning had a vaguely enjoyable edge, reminding him of the times he’d run in marathons. Through tear-stained eyes, he watched his wiry limbs bulk up in agonizing bursts. The discolored flesh flowed like syrup, multiplying itself to accommodate the expanding muscle fibers. It was impossible, he knew. His delirium was getting worse. It couldn’t be food poisoning, he thought. Something so simple couldn’t affect him like this. Maybe he had a brain fever. Maybe he’d never recover from it. He’d be left in a vegetative state with his mind tormented by unending nightmares until some kind soul pulled the plug on him.

He was getting taller and broader as the muscles haphazardly bulged out, distorting his hairless body into an asymmetrical shape. His arms were thicker than his legs and his shoulders much wider than they needed to be. The heat soaked into his bones. They splintered, tearing through both muscles and nerves. The whines and grunts escalated into a long, ragged scream that only ended when his lungs ran out of air. By the time the bone shards knitted themselves back together, longer and thicker than before, he was too exhausted to shout. His spine acquired a slight curve, making him hunch slightly. More distortion. It didn’t matter, he reminded himself. None of this was real. Fresh pain shot through his hands, splaying his fingers apart once more. The bones lengthened, pushing his fingernails from their beds. The discarded keratin landed in the sink next to his phone. The gray-white flesh flowed upward between his digits, linking them together with thin, membranous webs. His toes followed suit.

“H-hurt… s-so MUCH,” he wailed. He didn’t know why he was saying anything aloud. Nobody could hear him. And with nobody to hear his torment, no one was coming to save him.

The pain ebbed. This didn’t feel like a mercy. He had been left shaken and miserable, wary of the agony’s return. A hollow gurgling echoed in his gut. Somehow, he was hungry again. He glared at his belly and bitterly shook his head. He couldn’t eat, not now, not when he was ill. The hunger deepened, becoming a ravenous, all-consuming need. Shaking, he doubled over and rested his hands on his knees, trying to will the need away. His jaw moved reflexively, trying to clamp down on imaginary morsels. He clamped it shut, but his teeth continued to grind against one another.

He took a step toward the door. The kitchen wasn’t far away, he knew. The thought of food made him sick, but an unshakable urge to eat had taken charge of his limbs. With a lumbering, simian gait, he lurched through the door and down the hall. The awful hunger felt like it was devouring him from within, hollowing him out. Bitter, chuffing laughter rang through the empty house. With no other noises to compete with it, the husky, sarcastic mirth filled his skull. Tears streamed down his gray-white cheeks as the laughter deteriorated into wracking sobs.

A blast of hot air swept through the corridor. He froze as the heat saturated his hideous body. The pain was coming for him again. He thrust his arms outward, spanning from wall to wall as he braced himself against the oncoming assault.

Bone shattered, muscle ripped apart and flesh liquified again, pummeling his senses, making him feel as if he might black out. He was getting taller and bulkier – more powerful, although his terrible hunger seemed to be sapping all his energy. As his lats and traps bulged, out of all proportion with the muscles in the rest of his body, his back hunched forward even more. His legs, weirdly shorter than his arms, grew stouter, like tree trunks, with his feet getting longer and broader, his webbed toes extending outward to help him balance his grotesquely oversized torso. “Not happening, not happening,” he whispered to himself. His deep, sandpapery whisper had a sing-song quality. It was the melody of a lunatic. He wanted to laugh at that, but before he could, fresh pain tore into his arms and legs. An awful crunching sound scraped at his ears as fin-like appendages extended from the sides of his forearms and the backs of his calves. His grinding jaws fell open as he held up one arm to peer at this new addition to his warping body. Before he could fully comprehend this new change, a sharp pain ran though his cock and balls, He grasped at them, but at his touch, they shrank away, melting into his crotch. Although he couldn’t see the genitalia anymore, he could still feel it beneath his skin, still in agony, still shifting and crawling like the rest of his organs.

His mutated legs carried him forward. The heat was leaving him, boiling from his pores, distorting the air itself, making everything look wavy and unreal. There was no more nausea. His hunger had finally trounced it.

Muttering, he stalked through the tiny dining room, swiping at a chair that was in his way, knocking it over, and then kicking it when it continued to obstruct him. He threw the fridge door open and angrily pulled out the things that were keeping him from what he needed. Beer cans, jars of jam and salsa, a bag of shredded cheese, everything was dashed against the floor as he dug his way to the rear of the refrigerator and found the meat he knew was there. Raw chicken breast. Not bloody enough for his taste (his subconscious registered the utter derangement of the thought but was shouted down by bodily need) but it would do. When his nail-free fingers proved too soft to break through the plastic wrap, he brought the container to his mouth and chewed through it, spitting out plastic and Styrofoam before sinking his teeth into the uncooked meat.

A keening filled the small room as he threw his head back, choking on the blood erupting from his gums. He flung the chicken against the cabinets, fell to the floor and silently stared at the pale pink meat. His teeth were still stuck in it. His fingers probed his mouth, loosening the teeth that hadn’t already fallen out. With heaving spasms, he spit out the rest of his teeth, accompanied by a river of blood.

The world turned red. And very, very hot. Hunger and frustration tortured his mind as more changes shook his body. Grunting, panting, trembling, he pounded his fists against the floor, feeling his muscles and bones expanding once more. His lungs inflated, pushing against his ribcage, which stretched outward into the proportions of a barrel. Razors cut into his palms. Howling, he unclenched his fists and stared in disbelief at the long, black talons that had emerged from his old nail beds. Pain in his feet foretold claws emerging from his toes as well. The copper tang of blood tantalized his nose. Sniffing at his injured palms, he huffed the aroma, and then gave the blood an exploratory taste. He snorted at it. “No good,” he thought, dolefully. “I don’t want MY blood.” Before he could consider the implications of that evil thought, a ring of fire ignited in his jaws. More fresh blood poured from his mouth as new teeth pushed from his gums. The teeth were triangular and flat with serrated edges, and they emerged in three rows, the inner ones getting progressively shorter. His tongue delicately lapped against them, sampling the blood but taking care not to get sliced by the deadly fangs. His wild, bulging eyes glanced sideways at the refrigerator. He was growing again, his back hunching forward even more as a short, stubby tail began to push out from the base of his spine. He was changing into something inhuman, he could admit that now, and it terrified him. “Hospital,” he grunted. “Have to get to… hungry… meat… n-no… need to get h-hel…HUNGRY…!”

As the pain ebbed once more, he slammed his fists against the refrigerator, mindlessly raging at it before remembering he had to pull the door open. There was a five-pound tube of ground beef in the back and a package of bacon. His claws ripped through the plastic. Impulsively, greedily, he scooped up gobbets of meat and shoveled it into his mouth. The juices dripped down his throat, giving him an odd feeling of elation. The chicken was on the floor next to his monstrous feet. He devoured through that meat as well, aware that some of his old human teeth were still lodged in it and not caring about that in the least. With increasing strength, he seized the handle of the freezer door and tore the thing from its hinges. Inside, he found his frozen meals, which he regarded with a disdainful snarl, a small tube of breakfast sausage, a package of brats, and two pounds of stew beef. His serrated fangs made short work of it all. He enjoyed the shivery sensation of the frozen meat teasing his insides before the furnace of his stomach warmed it.

The introduction of solid food sent a charge through his system. The fire rose from the soles of his feet this time, engulfing his legs. His bones cracked and shifted again, muscles lengthening and tightening, making his feet ever larger and raising his heels off the floor, warping his legs into a bestial, digitigrade form. His spine lurched forward, hunching his muscular back even more. His nascent tail stretched out some three feet, with a modest fin forming at the tip. His ribs creaked, rotating like hinges as they extended and left more room in his torso for his guts. More room for food. His arms grew longer still, bones breaking apart and rebuilding until his knuckles were nearly dragging the ground. The splintering and reformation of his bones felt worse every time, never allowing him to get used to the agony. The splintering came again for his skull. His eye sockets fractured and spread further apart, causing his nose to flatten and his mouth to stretch into a grimace. His earlobes were dead tissue now, rotting from his head, leaving him with mere holes. He raged at the pain, but his capacity for human speech was gone. All he could manage was the inarticulate bellow of an injured animal.

Meat. He needed more of it. There was a freezer chest in the home’s crude cellar. Eldon and Merle had stocked it with discounted steak. And his own brother had given him venison and quail, although he had never touched it. Panting, grunting, his huge shoulders bumping against the walls, he squeezed his grotesque bulk down the narrow staircase and followed his powerful sense of smell to the thrumming appliance. Seizing a package wrapped in white butcher paper, he held the meat to his nose and inhaled the delectable, if annoyingly subdued, odor of bloody flesh. With no patience left, he sank his fangs into the meat, wrapper and all. A new sensation stirred in his horrible body: lust. Sex and hunger had braided themselves together in his mind. Screwing and feeding, that’s what he was made for. As he sated himself on food, his free hand restlessly clawed at his crotch. Twin shark cocks ripped through his featureless groin. They were pale and pointed and flat-sided, designed for clenching onto mates, trapping them for insemination. His rippling spine added more length to his tail, doubling, then tripling its length. The weight of it pulled him down to the floor. Roaring, he thrashed about on the concrete, unable to right himself. His claws, now twice as long, raked the hard floor and any timber supports they could reach, leaving long, deep gouges. Part of him understood that he was wrecking his own home, but that part was growing less significant by the second.

The heat fled once more. How much more would he have to endure? And would there be anything left of him to care?

His tail swept back and forth, driven more by primordial panic than anything approaching reason. It was getting hard to breathe. Air rumbled and wheezed from his mammoth chest, but it wasn’t enough. He felt like he was dying. “Then you should end this,” a tiny human voice in his head told him. He looked at his long, dark, razor-sharp talons and knew what he had to do. He wondered if he could cry. It didn’t seem that way. With dead eyes, he raised his great, webbed hands and sank them into the sides of his neck.

The ominous heat brushed against his fingers. There was no blood. Where his claws had raked through his neck, feathery gills formed, easing the pressure on his lungs. He couldn’t die, he realized. He couldn’t even hurt himself. And he suddenly hated the part of himself that wanted to end his life.

It had to go.

A terrible sound was building in his chest, pushing its way from his lungs up through his larynx. It opened his mouth wide – so wide, that the corners of his now-lipless mouth tore, becoming a bloody, semi-circular gash, his skull inflating like a balloon, making his jaws huge and dreadfully strong, his pale gums sprouting more jagged fangs by the second, crowding together in rows like razor-edged gravestones, the original three rows joined by four more. His eyes migrated to the sides of his head and turned a dull, soulless black, as his head finally shifted into the snub-nosed snout of a great white shark. His mighty dorsal fin emerged from his spine as his back fully doubled over, shoving his head into forward-facing position it needed to feed. And he screamed. Screamed the last bloody scraps of the human known as Riley out of his perfect killing machine body. He could control his tail, now. He was his own master, a perfect organism. Slowly, methodically, he rose to his feet and climbed the steps. He could hear the front door opening. Voices called out, weak human voices, yelling a human name. “Riley.” He could smell the blood surging through the soft, fleshy things, hear their footsteps as they drew closer. His steps quickened as he sprinted into the living room, ready to feed.