literature

Rise A Fortiori

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When I was hatched, my parents took me from my cradle of broken eggshell, wrapped my tiny, fragile body in a satyr-hair blanket, and let my scraggy red wings dangle weakly. When I was three, I could reach the top of the kitchen table without use of a chair, and could walk from one side of the city to the other with my dad without feeling tired. My legs had grown stronger, but overhead all the others flew, and I longed to join them. My scales grew shinier with age and health. I was six when I took my first flight, diving with great courage from our roof and soaring over the neighboring two gardens, early for my age. Out next-door neighbors two teenage sons were working out with weights on the patio, and I can remember both scowling at me as I distracted them from their concentration and curls. I felt very mature, very pleased with myself – and then flew into a tree.

By the time I was nine, all the other dragons in my class had mastered their wings, and the air-hockey teams had been formed. My dad was especially proud when I made the team; he feared I liked walking on two legs too much, like when we used to go from one side of the town to the other. We were only pre-change, but the coach liked us to do strength conditioning nonetheless. I didn’t mind.

I remember it well, the first time it hit the first one in our class. I was hoping it would be me… I kept imagining the faces of the others, as I walked in one day, looking down upon them with my big, new body. But that face belonged to me, when Darius the Crimson came into school one day when I was eleven, three times the size he’d been the previous day; he was glowing with health and pride, a new adult body packed with dense musculature, rippling with every step. It was both horrifying and hypnotizing. My dream of being first had been crushed; but Darius felt very pleased with himself. He was early.

Over the years, it happened to the others of course… practically everyone I knew. Each morning after Darius the first thing I’d do after I opened my eyes would be to throw off the bedsheets, and take a good look at myself. I was always disappointed, as you can probably tell. My grades started to slip; I couldn’t think about anything else apart from changing. I spent more time in the gym than anyone else, which the coach himself said was pointless as it wouldn’t matter after it hit me. What I was really hoping to do was get it to happen sooner, hoping that exercise was the key. It hasn’t worked yet…

So now I’m one of the last, and I can’t do a thing about it. I’m thirteen and late now… but at least I’m not alone. All I have for friends are the other pre-changers that are left. But I’m still hoping… that it’ll happen any day now. You just don’t understand what it’s like. But I can tell you.
I saw it happen.

*****

It must’ve been… three months ago now. It’s been three months I’ve gone to sleep thinking of nothing else but Cassius the Orange’s transformation, as it happened right before my very eyes. And not just my own; Zeru the Purple and Endus the Green were there as well. It was a sleepover – we had a match to play the next morning, and it was always quicker taking off from the same place. Cassius had a new GameBox system we all wanted to play on too, as they were only just on the market. He’d been waiting for a really decent birthday present for years, so none of us felt too envious of him. Most of us reckoned his folks had bought it to take his mind off not changing yet, and wished ours would do the same.

We were all pretty tight as a bunch of friends, a little because we were all, in our own small ways outcasts - or at least, we felt like it some days. No… most days. We each had our own little differences to add to our motley group - Endus was the joker, quite a lean, wiry fellow for a dragon, his nostrils fairly bulbous at the end of his long muzzle, the face of a comic. He most always wore bright, garish colors that contrasted with his scale-tone - making him look like even more of a clown. That’s what we all reckoned he’d become in the end, when he finished school… he knew how to make us laugh, anyway, and that was fine. Zeru was the serious one… a lot of people thought he was just plain moody, until you got to know him. He was a little shorter than the rest of us, but I don’t think that bothered him much, even if he did get teased for it. But boy, he could come up with the most interesting things, completely out of the blue. One quiet moment, you might lapse into silence - and then he’d open that big, wide jaw of his and say something that’d make you see things in a completely different way. You’d have to hear him at one of these times to understand. Cassius, who I’ll get to describe in great detail momentarily, was just a geek. To the other kids, anyway. To us guys, he was just smart, really, really smart. And he liked his consoles and games a lot… and most of all the computer. None of us were ever really interested in his latest coding projects, so he stopped showing them to us after awhile. So he was just the guy who did the video games.

And me? I don’t know. Maybe call me the sporty one. You’d have to ask the others.

So there we were, the four of us all hanging out at Cassius’. We’d had a few practice games of air hockey, two-a-side in his back yard, which was actually pretty big. There was a strong wind blowing through the town that night, strong enough to knock you about a bit if you were hovering as the goalkeeper, waiting for the puck to come your way. In conditions like that, the game can get really wild. You’ll see it coming straight towards you through the sky and - zing! - a strong gust and it’d blow in a completely different direction. It was one of those games that night. It was wild, and we all finished that evening feeling completely wiped out.

I remember that it got dark quickly, and we sat up for hours and hours after we’d eaten, playing on that new GameBox. Cassius didn’t have many games because it was so new, and mostly we took turns thrashing each other at Turbo Fists: Xtreme Fury, a beat-em-up tour de force with blood and gore. We ended up playing our own miniature tournament, and in the end Endus came out on top. He took great delight in the final showdown between the two of us whooping and shouting “You can’t touch dis!” in a womanish voice, every time he landed a blow. He was playing a female character, some chick with big breasts and bigger katanas, which seemed to get past the clumsy swings of my hulking, bare-chested Russian wrestler guy every time. Eventually, we were told to knock the noise off by our host’s parents, and reluctantly settled down in our sleeping bags. The three of us - myself, Zeru and Endus were on the floor, whilst Cassius had his bed raised above. As a bunch of teenage guys are prone to do, we didn’t go to sleep straight away, and spent the next few hours in the darkness blabbing and teasing each other, talking about everything from girls and sex to movies and music. A couple of times, Endus made us laugh so much we’d have to bury our faces into our pillows and hyperventilate there, so that we wouldn’t wake up the entire house.

Luckily for us, he was the first one to tire out and dropped off. Sometime after that - I’m not sure exactly how long it was - Cassius too grew quiet, his mutterings replaced by that deep, heavy breathing sound of sleep. Then just Zeru and I were chatting, discussing what we expected things to be like at the game tomorrow, quietly and sleepily. I might have fallen asleep myself at that point if… it hadn’t happened.

I remember it quite well. I’d was telling Zeru what the weather conditions were supposed to be like the next day - windy again - and had just finished my sentence when the room was filled with this kind of… gurgling sound. The sort of noise a stomach makes when short of food only much louder than that, and more sustained. I stopped talking. Zeru and I exchanged glances, like what the heck was that? Then we looked up at the bed, where Cassius lay, as we inexplicably realized that the strange gurgling noise was coming from him.

“I think,” Zeru muttered quietly, “that something we didn’t expect is about to happen.” He phrased his words in that slow, careful voice of his like this was the opening to a movie trailer.

Now, let me be clear. The change itself isn’t a taboo subject - its something talked about in the lower years of high-school almost as much as sport, girls and music. But it isn’t the sort of event you have your friends over to witness… or anyone, for that matter. You just expect it to happen in the privacy of your own room, in your own time, on some random night. The first people to see the result are usually your parents, who first take some photos (embarrassment city), and then take you down to the medical center for the once over. In case I haven’t made it clear enough already, the change is an instantaneous, once in a lifetime shift in the body from adolescence to adulthood. You go to bed a kid, and wake up a fully developed adult male. The girls have their own changes to tell, which I won’t even go in to here.

So, I turned from my purple friend and looked to the bed again, and I saw that he was right. We certainly didn’t expect this. As the gurgling, rumbling noise increased I realized that Cassius was in the throes of his change. It would begin when the noises stopped, the sound of the body fuelling itself for a massive push and expenditure of energy. I looked at Endus waking up, groggily, his sleep disturbed. “Wha… what’s going on?” he muttered, rubbing his eyes and looking about trying to work out where that sound was coming from.

“It’s Cassius,” I said in a low whisper, indicating the sleeping form under the sheets on the bed. “I think he’s about to… you know…”

Suddenly, Endus appeared bright-eyed and alert, an expression of profound surprise upon his face. “What… he’s going to… change, right now, really?”

I nodded vigorously. “Do you think we should um… get out and leave him to it?” The edginess probably showed in my voice. I didn’t want to disturb Cassius’ privacy.

“No,” Zeru said firmly, and deathly quiet. “It would not be a good idea for us to leave. We do not want to risk making any kind of noise that might wake him up. You must have seen the articles. If his change is interrupted, he may be deformed.”

I felt a little lump in my throat as I appreciated that he was right. We would have to wait here… and watch? I supposed we could close our eyes. I looked at the others. They were sitting up in their sleeping bags, looking edgy, but curious. They certainly didn’t seem to have any intention of looking away. And so neither, I supposed, did I. I looked back at the bed again. The noises had ceased. The change was about to begin.

I suppose the transformation must have begun about his torso; for that was what seemed to be first to rise and grow. As surely as the width of his chest increased, did the duvet slip away from him. I must now stress, that if my friend had not been wearing his boxer shorts, I would have buried my face in my sleeping bag despite what the others might think. I was half tempted again at that moment but… I suppose I was just curious enough about the workings of the change - of what I was to go through myself - to continue watching. That is why I can describe it now in such detail…

Yes, it was his chest first - his youthful, skinny breast becoming fleshy and meaty, giving him pecs. At the same time it seemed the little flab around his midsection melted, replaced by the wall of eight stubby abdominals, which would grow tighter and more defined as the change went on. So then did his frame increase in stature! The others heard the creaking of the bed the same as I, as he then increased in every dimension, height and width. Whatever the fuel for the change was - some hormone we would learn a lot about if we studied college biology, for its compound is maddeningly complex - it seemed to travel along the pathways to his limbs. I noticed his arms were becoming less undefined pencils, but large, bulbous masses which swelled as he slumbered - the bicep receiving most of my attention. I saw it growing and growing like a balloon, and I wondered how much more he would be able to lift in the gym from now on. I felt my first stabs of jealousy. My guilty eyes could not avoid his lower body for much longer, for even as his scales grew tauter his legs were undergoing a similar process, pushing against one another, fighting for space in his sleeping posture, thundering thighs that rippled with power, growing… dare I say it, eagerly. Oh yes, I could imagine it now. His body was reveling in that change. In becoming an adult. It was what it was made to do… his muscles and his bones and his skin delighting in the process of maturity, to join the rest of the race in fitness and power and sex that I always thought about…

Yes, I could see his crotch - I didn’t want to, but it was there, growing as well, his changed organs pushing against the fabric (which was already ripping at the seams around the legs), making it cling to his shape. I turned my eyes away, and didn’t look at that part again at any moment thereafter that night.

The thing about the change that really got us pre-changers speculating, was that you never knew how ‘big’ you’d be afterwards. It varied, and as of yet no-one had worked out any kind of correlation that might indicate what caused the variation. But you can be sure some egghead will figure it out one day, get rich, and from then on every boy thereafter will turn out as big as a house. But for now, we had to guess - and I suppose that was what fuelled our curious eyes most. We wanted to see how big he’d turn out.

By all accounts then, Cassius was going to be a record-breaker for the region. A pendant in the shape of a ring he was wearing around his neck snapped as the muscle there increased a few inches more in size, and the little golden circle fell between the crevice of his pecs which had grown even bigger, becoming wedged within. His upper arms were now the size of basketballs - as big as my head, no contest. Even the forearms were becoming monstrously huge, as thick as hams and streaked with veins. His parents were going to be proud… I glanced back at the others who seemed just as rapt as I was. Even Endus was lost for anything witty to say. Our friend had become one of the biggest post-changers we’d ever seen!

His broad back now spilled over the edges of the bed - the arms shifted out of position as the thick muscles under his armpits expanded outwards, until with a final groan the bed gave up the fight, and simply collapsed. Snapped in two in the middle it turned out, under his weight. And with that final crash - we all jumped back in fright - Cassius stopped. He awoke, a new man - literally.

I shuffled away nervously as he opened his eyes. I didn’t want to feel like I had been prying… even though now I must admit that I blatantly was…. But his gaze settled on me first, and his eyes seemed bigger… deeper, like there were strange new thoughts filling his head… of all the conquests that lay before him with his new life and new body… he looked at me and said in a voice that rumbled through the room, seconds before his parents came entering looking for the source of the crash: “Hey there… what’s up guy?”

*****

Hey there, what’s up guy!

That was what he said to me. After all that muscle, and all that changing, I remember on that night feeling in awe of him. My friend had changed - had been reborn in one night and was about to embark on an entirely new level of existence. But I felt glad for him through the jealousy… and like Zeru, like Endus… like his parents… I congratulated him and shook his meaty hand once he was awake enough to realize what had happened… and that was so long ago now… it feels unreal.

But I’m still here, waiting. Waiting to enter that world. Zeru too… but Endus changed just a couple of months later. Now there are just two of us left, and we are the last in our year. There is a lot of shame that goes with that. I’m doing what I can… trying everything passed down in urban legend that will bring on the change, or make you really big when it does. And all I can think about anymore is the muscle and size, and being big… and getting bigger. Twenty-four seven my brain turns to it… and it brings me no happiness. I know when it happens I’ll want to be bigger… because being small is all I feel. All I’ll ever feel, I fear sometimes.

Zeru said to me the other day, in that calm, collected manner of his when he found me staring at a muscle magazine - containing really huge guys, bigger even than Cassius became - during a lunchbreak: “The guys in there, I feel sorry for them. There’s nothing left of them but a bag of skin and muscle… too bad.” I asked him what he meant by that… but he just smiled and walked away to the library.

But I don’t think there’s nothing left of them… I think they’re more than men. More than just male… they’re like superdragons. Like gods.

And I’d rather die than stay a mortal…

END
‘Rise A Fortiori’ is a story that is steeped in issues which have affected this author almost more than any other in his life. My teenage years continue to recede further and further away, yet they are not so far gone that I cannot remember the struggles they contained. Muscle; power; adulthood and growth, were the demons I grappled with, alongside the wraiths of my own perception of self, my lust and the fetishism of it all.

This is not the first time that I have written a story concerning muscle growth and infatuation, for long ago I wrote a few tales for myophiles like myself, homoerotic and pornographic by their very nature. But they did not contain meaning, no more than the painter who takes his brush and puts upon his canvas a stark erection. Phallic and shocking as they may be, such things do not last. This story, whilst in purity is a scene of growth as those before, is not about those things I must warn you. It is chaste.

I fear a bad writer explains the meaning of his piece before he starts, so I won’t; but in this rare case I am compelled to describe what I concerned myself with as it was written. There are many things about the mind that is obsessed with muscle that have seldom, if ever been explored in fiction. The desire of the adolescent to be seen as a man, the single-mindedness of it, its raw connections with the homoerotic (and the way those connections may then be denied); strength and sex and their relationship with the male. It’s a soup of hormones and erotica which the reader may well be familiar with.

I visit this ground now one final time, as part of an agreement with ~XSYSTM47, who created the environment and scenario you may be about to read, that I have now expanded upon. I earnestly congratulate his rich imagination. I do not know if the piece will be what he is expecting, but I hope it will be found to be interesting and entertaining nonetheless. In earnest my task was to write a narrative to go with one of his pictures [link] , with a few tantalising details about the world it took place in. There was much for me to paint in however.

And so here it is; I admit it was something of a challenge to approach something that I had made taboo for myself, and certainly probably a rarified story with a niche audience; but I am sure some of you out there will enjoy nonetheless, even if I do make it sound too serious. Enjoy the imagination.

A Fortiori is latin for ‘for a stronger reason; all the more’ (literally ‘from the stronger’;).

- Charles Croft, July 2005.
© 2005 - 2024 croftinnz
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CaleAi's avatar
umm is there going to be a sequal i relly hope there is can you let me know i frlt sorry for the kid:(