Misfit Chapter 7

[umlerian49]

Misfit

 

Chapter 7

 

“Well, now what?”

 

Lee and Fred were standing outside the Athletic Center about to set off to find Ham. They were both dressed up in football warm-up sweats and Lee thought Fred looked damn fine in the double-XL’s he was wearing. As they were dressing, Lee learned that Fred was now six-two, a gain of three inches, and had gone from one-hundred-eighty pounds to two-sixty.

 

Fred’s sweats were tight everywhere except the waist, and Lee was finding the way that the university logo was stretched across Fred’s chest very distracting.

 

“Oh, um... gosh. Why don’t we start with the Student Union?” Lee answered.

 

The coach had weighed and measured Lee, too, before he’d been issued his sweats. He was an amazing six-foot-ten, and four-hundred and ninety-two pounds. He’d been given triple-XL’s, but they were still much tighter than Fred’s.

 

Lee’s traps erupted from the neck of the sweats like some kind of volcano, stretching the neckband near breaking. Lee’s forearms were so big he couldn’t get them through the sleeves and he ended tearing them off. Even so, it was a struggle to get into the sweatshirt. The bottom of his shirt landed above his naval, leaving about eight inches of ridiculously compact waist visible above his waistband. The extreme stretching of the shirt across his chest was in marked contrast to the loosely flapping hem.

 

The waistband of Lee’s sweatpants was pulled almost obscenely low in the front by his prodigious package, then followed around and under an adonis belt so sharply defined one could nearly grasp it with one’s hands. From there, the waistband pulled sharply up and over Lee’s insanely jutting bubble butt.

 

Lee had tried to put on a jock in the locker room, but had been forced to go commando when even the largest one was uncomfortably restricting. For now, he would just have to ignore the rather pleasant sensation (as well as the stares) as his jumbo equipment flopped around in the front of his pants in an all-too-obvious way.

 

The legs of Lee’s pants had much the same problem as his sleeves, and only went down to just below his knees. The coach had a pair of pants that fit his tallest basketball player, but Lee couldn’t get it on over his thighs. Consequently, he had to go with a pair made for a clearly obese person, and pull the drawstring tight.

 

That time of the morning, there were lots of students out and about on campus, and the two behemoths stopped traffic wherever they went. Lee seemed to enjoy the attention and smiled and waved often. He got a charge the first time he winked at a guy that common sense and personal safety would have told him to give a wide berth just the day before. He could get used to this, he thought.

 

Fred, on the other hand, was completely flustered by the attention, and seemed to avoid eye contact at all costs.

 

“Come on, relax,” Lee said as he gently nudged Fred with his elbow. “It’s a new world. Every one of those girls wants to be with you, and every one of those guys wants to be like you. The world’s your oyster.”

 

Lee knew that he was exaggerating to some degree– not everyone looked upon bodybuilders as living gods the way he did, but he thought the poor guy needed some encouragement.

 

“This is going to take some getting used to,” Fred answered.

 

The pair entered the Student Union through the cafeteria. The entire dining room fell silent as Lee straightened up. He was about to comment on the similarities to an old western when the hero enters the saloon, when the smell of food hit them both like a brick wall.

 

“Are you hungry?” Fred asked.

 

“Starved,” came Lee’s earnest reply.

 

The crowd parted as the two muscle men made straight for the serving line. They immediately started piling on french toast and bacon and sausage and scrambled eggs and toast and biscuits and muffins and oatmeal and grits, until they each had two trays filled to the brim. 

 

“I didn’t realize I was this hungry,” Fred said as he took a bite out of one of his biscuits. Lee had to stop chewing his bagel before he could answer.

 

“Me neither,” he said with his mouth full.

 

Neither of them had eaten since their growth spurts, and they suddenly wondered how they could have ignored the gnawing hunger so long.

 

“He’s paying,” Lee said as they got up to the cashier.

 

“The fuck I am,” Fred said. “Pay for your own damn food.” Lee turned and looked down at Fred.

 

“I left my wallet in my other blanket, okay?”

 

“That’ll be sixty-two dollars and twenty cents,” said the guy at the register.

 

“Pay the man,” Lee said as he picked up his trays. Fred shrugged and reached for his back pocket.

 

“Shit,” he said.

 

“What?”

 

“My wallet’s still in my locker.”

 

“Who’s gonna pay?” the cashier asked.

 

“We’re good for it,” Lee told him, and started to walk away.

 

“Somebody’s gotta pay!” he said stridently. Lee turned back.

 

“I said,” Lee spoke as he bent over until he was nose-to-nose with the slight young man, "we’re good for it. We’ll pay you later. Come on, Fred."

 

Fred shrugged again and raised his eyebrows at the kid and followed Lee over to a table.

 

As they were eating, the irate cashier picked up the phone and dialed the campus police.

 

 

Professor Lofgren sat looking at the data on the screen. Somehow, his nanites had mutated in some unforeseen way. His ultimate goal all along had been to greatly enhance the human organism– make it stronger and smarter and free of disease, but that was supposed to be decades in the future.

 

The data he’d taken from the young man that came to see him didn’t make a lot of sense. Not only were those nanites radically different from what he’d been synthesizing in the lab, but they didn’t seem capable changing an organism to such a great extent. He really needed to study that Connor boy, and the sooner the better. That was why it was so important he get that oversized oaf out of his hair as quickly as possible.

 

Besides, there was nothing more to be done for the Prentice kid. He was perfectly healthy, and it wasn’t every Nancy Boy that got a chance to be his own walking wet dream. He’d thank the professor before this was over, he was sure.

What Lofgren couldn’t know was that the nanites were still fully active in Ham Connor. Not only did they grant him powers beyond all human understanding, but they had merged with his mind and radically boosted not only his intelligence, but all three aspects of his personality– id, ego and libido.

 

At first, the nanites had only interacted with Ham’s baser instincts. His sex drive permitted the initial opportunity for change, without even acting on his conscious mind. The nanites acted to produce a super-pheremone, so powerful that virtually no one could resist while in his presence.

 

This made Ham Connor very dangerous, for as he continued to evolve, he felt less and less connection with mere humans.

 

 

Paul was still nearly blind with rage as he strode across campus looking for Ham. He knew it was only a matter of time before he caught up to the little fucker and pounded the shit out of him. Across the great lawn he saw some sort of commotion. As he got closer, he realized that the flashing lights were from a campus police car.

 

A small crowd had gathered near a tree that had been uprooted. One of the school’s famous old elms had been pulled from the ground and the trunk literally shattered. Giant splinters littered the area. It looked like several people had been injured by whatever had caused the damage, and the officers and bystanders were tending to the victims. An ambulance was just pulling up and school officials were clearing a path through the crowd. 

 

Paul’s first thought was that a tornado had passed through, or maybe there was a lightning strike, but that immediately made no sense– he hadn’t heard anything, and the weather was all wrong. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. As the EMT’s broke out their equipment, Paul was momentarily distracted from his mission.

 

“What happened?” Paul asked a young woman.

 

“I’m not sure,” she answered. “Somebody said it was some kind of big animal.”

 

That made even less sense to Paul than a tornado. Watching the EMTs kneel down to talk to one of the young men, Paul realized he knew him. He pushed through the crowd until he was near enough to speak.

 

“Joe, are you okay?”

 

Paul kneeled down next to the EMT.

 

“Your friend has a dislocated shoulder,” he said. “Help me sit him up.”

 

Joe grimaced as they leaned him forward.

 

“Put your arms around his chest,” the EMT continued. Paul moved behind Joe and did as he was instructed. The EMT wrapped his arm around Joe’s and put his other hand on Joe’s shoulder.

 

“This is going to hurt,” he told him.

 

Joe stifled a scream as the EMT pulled on Joe’s arm and popped the joint back into place.

 

“You okay?” he asked.

 

Joe nodded as he breathed heavily, tears streaming down his face.

 

“Good. I’m going to leave you with your friend while I go take care of someone else.”

 

The EMT went off to tend to another victim.

 

“Jesus Christ, Joe, what the hell happened?”

 

“Well... I... um...”

 

“What?”

 

“You wouldn’t believe me. Hell, I’m not sure if I’d believe me.”

 

“Try me.”

 

“It was your roommate. You know, the little fag. Except he was all cocky.”

 

Instantly, the fury washed over Paul once again like a wave. Then, almost as fast, it faded to confusion.

 

“What could he have to do with this?”

 

“Well... that’s the thing... nah... it’s not possible.”

 

“What’s not?”

 

Joe crinkled his nose distractedly. “New aftershave?”

 

“Joe!”

 

“Okay, okay. He... he... no, it’s not possible.”

 

“Arrrrgh!”

 

“He grew,” Joe blurted. “He just grew!”

 

Paul crossed his arms and looked carefully at his friend.

 

“Grew? Grew how?”

 

“He got fucking bigger! What did you think I meant?”

 

Paul uncrossed his arms.

 

“Did you hit your head?”

 

“Goddammit! I knew you wouldn’t fucking believe me!”

 

“Come on...”

 

“It’s really true,” said another voice. “I saw it.”

 

Paul looked up to see another of the young men addressing him– one he didn’t know.

 

“What did you see?” Paul asked.

 

“It was just... wow... it was like, The Incredible Hulk. My buddies and me just cracked a couple of jokes and the guy flips out. Next thing we know he’s splittin’ right out of his clothes and tossin’ us around like little kids. Then he gets so big he just up and yanks the tree out of the ground.”

 

“You’re shittin’ me... aren’t you?”

 

“That’s not the best part,” Joe says. “Tell him what happened next.”

 

“He fucked it.”

 

“Fucked what?”

 

“The tree! The goddamned tree!”

 

Paul’s mind started reeling as he looked over at the shattered elm and noticed that in among the wood fragments were countless blobs of shiny, pearlescent liquid. He swallowed hard.

 

“Holy shit...”

 

 

“That’s him, officer...”

 

Lee managed to tear his attention away from stuffing his hungry maw just long enough to notice that scrawny pipsqueak of a cashier standing nearby with his hands defiantly on his hips and trying his best to reduce Lee to a greasy pile of disintegrated ashes with just a look. Standing next to him was a campus police officer.

 

At the moment, the officer was experiencing two separate emotions, and they were competing against each other mightily.

 

The first was awe– awe at never having seen such a large and mighty specimen of humanity, and awe at the simply unbelievable mass quantities of food that specimen was shoveling back. He’d seen all the biggest football players from this and competing schools and this guy was way off in a league by himself.

 

The second was that he was scared shitless. Campus security had two different classes of officer– deputized and non-deputized. This officer was the latter, and that meant that he wasn’t allowed to carry a GUN and he very much wanted to have a GUN right at that very moment so he could point his GUN at the extremely large man sitting in front of him. With his GUN.

 

“Um, sir...” he began tentatively, “did you pay for the food?”

 

“Jesus Christ,” Lee said, pounding his massive fist on the table, “I said I’d fucking pay for it when I’m done!”

 

The officer jumped back with a start as Fred deftly caught a plate of biscuits before they had a chance to bounce off the table. The cashier, however, was undeterred and took a step forward.

 

“You have to pay first!” he screeched.

 

With an annoyed look, Lee turned toward the cashier and abruptly reached out with his big hand, grabbed the smaller man’s pant waist right at the belt buckle and pulled him in close.

 

“C’mere, shorty, I wanna see how big your balls are...” Lee furrowed his brow intently and peered down the front of the man’s pants.

 

“You see! I said he was dangerous! He threatened me before!”

 

Lee stood up and hoisted the little man high into the air with one hand until he was batting at the suspended ceiling tiles.

 

“I SAID...” Lee paused, closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself. After taking a deep breath he opened his eyes and looked down at the trembling officer with a benign look.

 

“Officer... uh... Smith,” he began slowly as he looked at the officer’s name tag. “This is all just a little misunderstanding,” he said soothingly.

 

“Put me down!” the cashier screamed from his position up against the ceiling. Lee held his arm up as easily as if he were hailing a cab.

 

“My friend and I were just very hungry. For a couple of guys like us, you can imagine that it’s kind of important.” Lee smiled and gently patted the officer’s shoulder and all the while the cashier was squirming and kicking eight feet in the air at the end of Lee’s other arm.

 

Fred nodded sincerely, his mouth full of french toast. Officer Smith seemed to relax perceptibly. 

 

“It just happens that we both forgot our wallets at the same time. What are the odds, right? So as soon as we’re done here, we’ll go right back to our dorms and bring back some money, simple as that. Okay?”

 

Officer Smith looked up at Lee, over at Fred and then finally back up at the wriggling cashier.

 

“Well... I guess that would be alright. I should get your names for my report.” 

 

“Certainly,” Lee answered obligingly.

 

The officer started to pull out a notepad.

 

“Put me down!” the cashier screeched once again. Lee raised his eyebrows as he looked down at the officer, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod.

 

“Okay, junior, you can go back and count your nickels,” Lee said as he gently lowered the man to the floor.

 

The dining room erupted into spontaneous applause.

 

“Thank you! Thank you! I’ll be here all week!” Lee told the admiring crowd. “Try the veal!”

 

The cashier muttered to himself as he skulked back to his station. Officer Smith was about to get the names of the two huge young men, when his radio crackled to life.

 

“Attention all units! Attention! All units are to report to the northeast corner of the Great Lawn. This is a code red, repeat, code red.”

 

“Oh, gee, sorry guys, I gotta go. Some kind of emergency. City tactical units are responding to reports of a large animal. Possible bear. Or gorilla. Or several of each. Multiple casualties.”

 

“You don’t suppose?” Fred said, looking up at Lee.

 

“I’d bet you my lunch,” he replied. “Officer, we’re going with you.”

 

 

The football players had made the mistake of angering Ham before his powerful pheremones could have any effect. His seething rage built quickly, suppressing Ham’s rational mind and snuffing out the pheremone production almost instantly. He was now a primitive creature, operating almost entirely on instinct of the brain stem.

 

In the twenty minutes since he’d yanked a hundred-year-old elm out by its roots, Ham had cut a path of destruction across the campus, twisting steel park benches like paper clips, snapping trees like matchsticks, even knocking over the statue of the old fart that founded the college. A lifetime of pent-up rage was being dispensed in mere minutes.

 

People scattered in all directions as the ten-foot leviathan barreled through like a locomotive. Close to three-thousand pounds, he was nearly as wide as he was tall, and every massive footfall sent shockwaves through the surrounding earth, cracking sidewalks where he crossed them and leaving footprints as deep as six inches in softer soil.

 

Gigantic, naked, inconceivable muscular; Ham the Beast was like nothing ever seen on the face of the earth. His ruggedly masculine face with its brutish, exaggerated brow over fiery piercing green eyes and high, strong cheekbones was nearly encircled with bulging muscle. Hugely bulging traps over a foot thick rose up from behind his neck and extended forward beneath his ears, fighting for space with a neck almost twice the width of his face. His great lantern jaw was cradled between massive pectorals that came nearly straight up from the collarbone before leveling out and extending to form a pec shelf two feet deep and then curving down and around to form gargantuan orbs, giving Ham a one-hundred-fifty inch chest.

 

Deltoids the size of wrecking balls sat above sixty-inch biceps and fought for room with the rest of Ham’s staggering upper body, forcing his arms out to forty-five degrees. Somehow, this massively monumental mountain of muscle that made up Ham’s upper body perched on a waist that measured just fifty-two inches.

 

Below the waist, Ham’s body exploded once again with size– his quads measured nearly ninety inches, with the preponderance of that mass from front to rear rather than side to side. Ham’s calves, however, were much wider than deep, and at sixty-two inches were bigger than his upper arms and were more responsible for his wide stance than his vast quads.

 

Most startling of all was Ham’s gigantic fuck-pole. Hard as steel, it was so stiff that it barely wagged as he stormed across the school. At thirty inches long and six inches thick, it pointed slightly upward as it remained suspended above testicles like ripe honeydew melons.

 

These freakishly other-worldly proportions were nonetheless narrow enough in all the right places so as to keep him remarkably flexible; and this was clearly evident as he rampaged across campus. 

 

And yet, a spark of humanity remained within the colossus. The reptilian part of Ham’s brain hadn’t replaced the other parts; merely suppressed them. The barely cognizant part of Ham knew he was headed someplace, but it didn’t know where.

 

 

Sarah hadn’t heard from her boyfriend in a couple of days. This was strange; normally she and Paul texted each other throughout the day. She was scrolling through the messages on her phone to see if maybe she’d missed something as she hurried to class.

 

She was about to round the corner of the Science Building when a large crowd came running in the other direction, nearly knocking her down.

 

“What in the world...” she started to say.

 

A young man in the group grabbed her by the hand and started pulling her along with the group.

 

“Come on!” he shouted.

 

The young man pulled her so hard she let go of her book bag.

 

“Wait a minute,” she said as she tried to reach back and retrieve the bag. Instead, she stumbled and pulled them both tumbling to the ground

.

“It’s coming,” the young man said as he scrambled back to his feet. As she tried to stand, a searing pin shot through her ankle. “Come on!” the man yelled.

 

“I twisted my ankle,” Sarah said through the blinding pain. “What’s going on?”

 

That’s when she saw him. The ground shook as Ham came rounding the corner of the building at a rolling trot. Sarah momentarily forgot her pain as she looked up at the muscle monster. They momentarily locked eyes before Sarah collapsed again from the pain. The young man she was with scooped her up in his arms and valiantly tried to flee.

 

Until that moment, all the tiny, insignificant beings Ham had encountered were inconsequential; paltry insects to be batted away. This one was different. She had special meaning. He paused for a moment to scour his fevered brain for meaning until he understood.

 

She was his rival. Hard to believe, but true. She was the one person that had any chance of eliciting any kind of feelings from Ham’s boyfriend– feelings that belonged to Ham, and Ham alone. He charged after interloper.

 

Carrying Sarah, the young man didn’t have a prayer of outrunning the beast, and Ham was on them in a flash. As he reached them, the pounding shockwaves of Ham’s footsteps caused the young man to stumble, and once again, they both went down. Ham grabbed the shoulder of the young man’s jacket and flung him out of the way.

 

Sarah screamed as the colossal muscle beast scooped her up under one arm like a rag doll and ran off into the nearby woods.