--
This story is a bit sexy, a bit spooky, mildly emotional, and extremely TF-heavy. We hope you enjoy the journey. Long live Jumbo Love.
Commissioned by
\n\t\t\t\t\tMorghus on FA.\n\t\t\t\t\tMorghus on FA.",
"writing": "[color=#888a85][i](Warning: [s]This story contains themes of depression, alcoholism, grief, and acts of questionable consent[/s].)[/i][/color]\n\n[center]***\n\n[/center]“Guess I’m a little rusty, huh, George?”\n\nAs Andrew gripped another rock on the simmering orange cliff side, he started to regret leaving the hotel as late as he did. Heat peeled sweat drops from his ash-black hair, but not fast enough to keep them from jumping down into his eyes. \n\nThe man smiled to himself, even as he huffed with lungs half-full. At just 30 years old, he could already feel a decade of climbing wear on his bones. Andrew sighed, “I know you’d be halfway up this rock by now. I’m too damn slow.”\n\nHe tried to channel George’s constant energy, the kind that would spring his best friend up the boulders like a jack-in-the-box. It was enough to get him through a few more feet and pull himself onto a ledge, one wide enough to support his weight. There weren’t many like that on this side of the canyon. At 2400 feet.\n\nAs Andrew spun around and took a seat on the rocky lip, he looked out at the bold blue sky peeking up from the other side of the ravine. His smile widened.\n\nEven though he was alone.\n\n“You would’ve loved it up here, man.” Taking a moment to breathe, he fished his phone out of the buttoned pocket of his cargo shorts and focused up the camera. He needed two shots. One selfie and one landscape of the forest below. George never liked selfies, even back when they were teenagers.\n\nAs Andrew held his palm over the screen to block the glare, he noticed a surprising photobomb in frame. \n\nA small inlet split the rocky wall behind him, no more than an inch wide and maybe two feet tall. The crevice was cut in the shape of an upwards arrow, as if directing climbers in the most obvious direction. Despite it being no larger than the height of his backpack, a calm breeze fluttered out, cooler than the surrounding air.\n\nEager to embrace the wind, Andrew snapped his first photo then pulled off his sweat-marred tee. He slouched forward and let the soft breeze whip the sweat from his back as he framed up the second shot. George always laughed at him for leaving his shirt on so long when he was clearly dying in the heat. But Andrew never had a six-pack to show off like [i]some [/i]people.\n\nThe breeze was lifesaving when there was no other wind in the canyon. \n\n“I’ve been trying to bring Marcy out again,” Andrew said to the wind. “But she’s not budging. I remember how hard it was to get her started in the first place. You could barely get her foot off the ground. Can’t imagine I’ll have much better luck.” He did feel lucky that Marcy still gave him the time of day, all things considered. Their little climbing group had whittled down over the years, between marriages, divorces, busy lives, and sudden...departures. Honestly, Andrew always loved spending the time with his friends more than the act itself, a fact he’d never let George (the Climbing God) know. But in the past five years, he’d grown used to climbing alone -- to being alone, in general.\n\nA cold hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. \n\nAndrew jumped at the sensation, nearly launching himself off the ledge to his death. But he gripped the rock in time and twisted back to look at the mountain wall. \n\nNothing. Just the wind. It was just a little wind from a little black divide.\n\nHe exhaled, laughing at his overreaction, and rubbed at his bare shoulder. Obviously, it was a particularly strong breeze that chilled his skin. He should be glad that there was something cold to be found anywhere in this scorching summer. It’d been a record high for the past few weeks, and today was the first time Andrew felt like his fingers wouldn’t melt the moment they touched a boulder. It felt good to be back up on the rocks. Even if he was climbing solo.\n\nThe hand came again, now on his right shoulder. And this time it pulled.\n\nAndrew fell backward, bracing to smack his head against the jagged wall behind him. He didn't have time to look back or shield himself, but that was alright. The impact never came. He began to fall into darkness. \n\nThe cutout in the rock didn't seem so small as he passed through it and watched the daylight get swallowed up -- like a mouth closing around the sun. He screamed, reaching for his rope, his phone, anything but the blackness that blanketed him and smothered his cries.\n\nAndrew fell for a long time.\n\n[center]***\n\n[/center]The pounding of his heartbeat shook Andrew awake. Cold stone squished his cheek like a mound of clay, and his eyes flashed open, absorbing the darkness around him. As he peeled himself off the ground and took stock of his limbs, he found his body unscathed -- as though he’d never fallen a thousand feet into an abyss.\n\nA mineshaft? A cavern? Whatever it was, the entrance was too high up to see anymore. Not one sliver of light reached down into the pit. \n\nHe was alive. He should've been dead.\n\nAndrew got to his feet and felt the dark wall in front of him, its surface barely visible in the black. The rock was a sheer slope, unnaturally smooth, almost like glass. He wouldn’t be climbing out without a hammer and an ice pick.\n\n“Fuck.”\n\nAndrew dug around in his pockets for his phone. Empty. He felt along the ground where he landed. Nothing. Not even stray rocks or dirt around his feet. The floor was as smooth as the wall.\n\nWith one hand against the cavern’s side, he began walking along the perimeter, tiptoeing as if the ground could drop out from under him at any moment. Again.\n\nHe listened for any sign of life besides his own heartbeat and occasional shuddering breath. Aside from the soft steps of his climbing shoes, the chamber was uncomfortably quiet. No dripping water. No shifting breeze like the one he felt minutes ago. Was it minutes? Or hours? How long had he been unconscious?\n\nAs Andrew counted the seconds of his journey, he started to realize how large of a space he’d found himself in. Or the darkness was deceiving him, and he was moving in circles inside a well. \n\nIn a stroke of fortune, the former was true. Two minutes had passed when his fingers found something more than smooth stone. A ridge, followed by a gap less than a centimeter wide. The frame of a door?\n\nHis hands scrambled for any sort of handle, hinge, knocker, or slot. Andrew’s heart leaped as his fingers dipped into a crevice, only to find that it was shallow and empty, likely an ornate carving. He kept walking, tracing the bumps and curves with his fingertips. The handle had to be on the edge of the doorway or somewhere in the middle.\n\nSeven paces forward and Andrew’s shoe pressed down on something. A moving plate. It sunk, roughly half an inch, until it was flush with the floor.\n\nSparks flew around his feet. The hiss and crack told Andrew to run.\n\nHe stumbled backward, eyes wide as a knee-high trail of blue-green fire came to life at the foot of the door before circling the room. Waves of aquamarine washed the walls and revealed the outer limits of the cave. No, “cave” wasn’t the right word. The stone surface looked as smooth as it felt, curving perfectly, tall and wide, with the ceiling high out of view and smothered in darkness. This was a pure circle. A tower.\n\nAndrew’s eyes followed the fire trail back to the double doorway, which stood three times his height, at least, and vanished into the black overhead. The doors themselves had engravings twisting along the front that he couldn’t decipher, if they were any sort of language at all. Of greater concern, they possessed no handles.\n\nIgnoring the flames, he rushed back to the exit and pounded his fist into the stone. He tried prying the slabs apart, pushing and pulling in every direction. They didn’t bother to shake in response.\n\n“Hey, open the door! I’m locked in!” Andrew shouted, his pleas reverberating against the walls. “Please!”\n\n[i]“[/i]They’re not gonna open.”[i] [/i]A small voice echoed behind him. Light and thin like that of a child. “Trust me. I’ve been trying for a while.”\n\nAndrew spun around towards the center of the room, which was lit just enough to make out the dimmest of shapes. Someone standing there, wrapped in shadows.\n\n“Hello? Hey, I need help!”\n\n“Yeah, well, get in line, dude.” The stranger maintained their flippant attitude, but Andrew didn’t care. He was just happy that he wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t die here. Alone.\n\n“Where are you, kid?” Andrew said, trying to calm in his voice so as not to scare the child. “I can’t see you.”\n\n“Maybe you need glasses, grandpa.”\n\nThe 30-year-old ignored that jab. “Look, I’m not going to hurt you. My name’s Andrew. What’s yours?”\n\n“Eh, people call me Devlin. And you’re [i]people[/i] so….”\n\nDevlin? That…wasn’t a name he heard often.\n\n“Alright, uh, Devlin. Maybe we can help each other out. Are you okay? Are your parents here?”\n\n“Nope, not here. That’s part of the problem,” Devlin sighed in the distance. “But yeah, [i]maybe[/i] we can work together. Come here for a second.”\n\nAfter one last glance at the door, the man moved towards the dark center of their shared prison. Each step carried him further from the short flickering flames, his only source of light and comfort. He steadied his breath and let his vision grow dark once more.\n\nAs Andrew’s eyes adjusted, the silhouette began taking shape. Its humanoid curves turned angular. Sharp. This wasn’t the boy. It wasn’t a person at all. It was a pedestal. And propped upon it was a glass filled with liquid. Maybe water. Maybe not.\n\n“Uh, I still don’t see you, Devlin.”\n\n“But do you see that cup?”\n\n“It’s hard to miss,” he said, omitting the fact that his eyes were playing tricks on him in the low light.\n\n“Yeah, so all you need to do is drink from that and we can start opening the door.”\n\nAndrew paused. He assumed the cup was full of rainwater or some other filthy runoff. Why was Devlin asking him to drink it? “Uh, I don’t see how that’ll help.”\n\n“Could you just trust me on this?”\n\n“I’d trust you more if you weren’t hiding, kid. I don’t think I’m a scary guy.” His eyes scanned the shadows of the room, searching carefully for his new cellmate. He wanted to trust the boy, but the odd request left him weary. Andrew needed to speak with him in person. \n\nIt was much harder to lie to someone face-to-face.\n\nA sigh fluttered out from the darkness. Andrew couldn’t pinpoint where exactly. Maybe to his left?\n\n“Look,” Devlin continued, though his words now seemed to echo from the right. “Do you want to get out of here and find George, or not?”\n\nHis heart skipped a beat. \n\n“What?”\n\n“You talk a lot in your sleep, and you were out for a while. And if you ever wanna see him again, you’re gonna have to trust me.” If the boy’s tone weren’t so earnest, his words might have felt like a threat. \n\nAndrew crossed his arms over his bare chest, if only to brace against the sudden chill down his neck. He eyed the glass cautiously and recalled several films that demonstrated how poor of an idea this was, one in particular involving two wizards in a cave -- George’s favorite. The contents of the glass could be rancid, if not fatal, and he dreaded the thought of being locked in here with a puddle of his own fluids.\n\nHowever, Devlin seemed confident in his idea, or at least committed fully to the make-believe. If Andrew’s options were to play along or starve together in a hole, what options did he truly have?\n\nAnd George…what would he do? \n\nOf course, he’d laugh with his big bassy voice and start chalking up his hands.\n\nAndrew inhaled deeply and lifted the drinkware from its pedestal. As he wrapped his fingers around its rippling indentations, he realized why the shape looked so familiar. A scotch glass. The sides felt cold in his hands as if chilled in an icebox for hours.\n\nHe held it to his nose and sniffed. No aroma came to mind. He couldn’t make out the color, and he hesitated bringing it closer to flames in case the drink was alcoholic.\n\nIt tasted like salt water.\n\n“Ugh,” Andrew groaned, swallowing hard as he returned the glass to its base. “There. I trust you, okay?” Whether or not that statement was true didn’t matter. So long as Devlin trusted [i]him. \n\n[/i]“Thanks! Sorry if it tastes like ass.”\n\n“No, it’s worse than ass. I’d know.” Aaron bit into his cheek as the words left his mouth. It felt wrong to say such jokes around a child, for several reasons. “So, now what? Are you going to come out and drink this too?”\n\n“Nah, I think…”\n\n [i]I’m good.\n \n I’m good.\n \n I’m good.\n \n[/i]Devlin’s voice distorted midsentence as his words split into cascading layers. Echoes under echoes, like a thousand voices twisted into one. Andrew shuddered as the sudden noise bounced and decayed around him.\n\n“Wait, what did you say?”\n[i]\nYou can still hear me?\n\n Great! \n \n Means I was right about you, buddy.\n \n[/i]The discordant echoes twisted back into one unified sound. More intelligible. More human. But not quite the way it was before.\n\n“Alright, I did what you asked. Would you come out now so we can talk normally?”\n\n[i]We’ll have plenty of time to talk once the game’s started!\n\n[/i]“No more games, Devlin! We don’t have time --“\n\n[i]Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]Andrew’s retort died before it left his mouth. Did he hear that correctly? He stood in silence for half a minute, waiting, before Devlin spoke again.\n\n[i]Okay, I guess you never played this before. So we take turns and ask --\n\n[/i]“I know how it works! I just don’t understand why we’re talking about this.”\n\n[i]Once the game’s over, we can open the door. That’s why, duh! You got it?\n\n[/i]He did not [i]get it. [/i]The juvenility rubbed Andrew raw, and his growing hunger soured him further -- he prayed it was hunger and not dysentery contracted from the scotch glass.\n\n“Look, if you know how to open the door, can you just tell me? Please? We can play whatever you want once we’re out of here.”\n\n[i]I just told you how. But I guess we can sit here and wait until you’re ready. Or until you starve. Whichever comes first.\n\n[/i]The man grumbled to himself. He was running out of options, and arguing with a distractible “child” was not a viable one. \n\nFinally relenting, Andrew dug his heel into the ground and exhaled. “Alright, fine. Truth, I guess.”\n\n[i]What is your soul desire?\n\n[/i]“You know what it is. We need to get out of here!” \n\nAs the words left his mouth, Andrew felt the floor shudder beneath his feet. He gripped the sides of the pedestal before his balance failed.\n\nA deep rumble shook the tower. The circle of fire flickered from emerald to red, erupting to twice its height until the flames lapped at the walls like the threatening tongues of a hydra.\n\nAndrew’s voice caught in his throat. “W-What the hell?”\n\n[i]Sorry, that wasn’t true! Try again.\n\n[/i]He swore he heard a giggle on the tail of those words.\n\n“What do you mean? What else could I possibly want right now?”\n\n[i]It’s not about what you want now. It’s what[/i] [i]your soul wants.[/i] [i]What you’d give anything to have. Your[/i] [b][i]soul[/i][/b] [i]desire. You never heard of that before?[/i]\n\n“No, I just want to --” More words clogged the man’s throat. It was useless, he realized, to argue with a voice that may or may not be a concussion-induced hallucination. He’d be wise to pick his battles. This boy wanted a different answer. The room did as well, it seemed. \n\nHe just had to be honest. That wasn’t so hard.\n\nWhat did Andrew want?\n\nWhat did he want above anything else? \n\nA deep inhale filled his chest. “My best friend, George. He went missing last year on a climb at Clark Mountain. I want…I need to find him. I don’t know if he’s still alive or not, but…that’s what I want.”\n\nWith Andrew’s admission, the roaring flames shrank down and shifted back to their cold, caustic green.\n\n[i]Alright, now we’re getting somewhere. Nice job! I wouldn’t lie again, though.\n\n[/i]He shot a scrutinizing glance into the void. How could a disembodied voice gauge his dishonesty? If anything, it supported the theory that he was hallucinating this entire experience.\n\n“Look, is this some kind of prank? Are the Impractical Jokers filming me right now?”\n\n[i]Hang on, you gotta ask me Truth or Dare first!\n\n[/i]His eyes rolled. “Fine. Truth or dare?”\n\n[i]Truth, please! Only one question at a time though. Them’s the rules.\n\n[/i]“Okay…” he said, tempering his annoyance. “What is this place? The fire, the door? This shit….this [i]stuff[/i] don’t just build itself.”\n\n[i]I said one question, Andy. But yeah, this place is whatever you want it to be. A prayer circle. A jail. And a bathroom if you’re desperate.\n\n[/i]Devlin held back a childish snicker, and Andrew could imagine a smirk across his face as he answered. If he had a face at all. Even [i]if[/i] the boy was being honest, he wasn’t being direct.\n\n[i]Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]“Truth.” Andrew didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t fathom what a “dare” would entail in this game.\n\n[i]How did you and George meet?\n\n[/i]“He moved to town the summer before high school started. I was playing baseball with my friends when he just came in and joined the game. Everyone liked him immediately.”\n\n[i]You liked him immediately.\n\n[/i]“That’s what I said. We were all friends right away.”\n\n[i]Okay, sure. Anyway, your turn. I pick truth.\n\n[/i]“Uh, right…” Andrew stalled for time as he went through his mental questionnaire, a list that grew by the minute. “How long do we have to play this game for?”\n\n[i]Until you can open the door, duh. I already said that!\n\n[/i]Another vague answer. Typical for a child -- or someone pretending to be a child. That was the alternative theory. Perhaps he’d been kidnapped by a Jigsaw impersonator, and the moment Andrew agreed to a dare, he’d be severing a limb.\n\nHow did George ever stomach those movies?\n\n“Okay, truth.”\n\n[i]What's the worst mistake you ever made in your entire life?\n\n[/i]Andrew recoiled at the sudden escalation. That wasn’t a simple question to answer. Also, wasn’t the answer subjective? How could he possibly be wrong?\n\nThe climber finally took a seat and leaned back against the old pedestal. “Well…if we’re being honest, I never got to tell George goodbye. I guess that’s cliché, but...yeah…”\n\nIt felt rather odd talking to a stranger about regret. The only other person he opened up to was…gone now. Months had passed since Andrew spoke so vulnerably in a way that even his therapist hadn’t seen. The honesty felt cathartic despite the strange circumstances.\n\nAt least, Andrew thought he spoke honestly. The bellowing red flames thought otherwise.\n\nHe flinched at their sudden eruption and smacked his head back against the stone pillar. The glass atop it rattled from the jolt. “Jesus Christ!”\n\n[i]Uh oh, guess that was a lie.\n\n[/i]“What do you mean it’s a lie? That’s so subjective!” His face twisted in agitation. He never liked this game. The last time Andrew played ([i]sober[/i]), he was nearly outed at a middle school sleepover. If it wasn’t for George covering for him that night...\n\nAs Andrew’s frustration boiled up in his stomach, a different heat seeped its way down past his abdomen, flicking on like a lighter in his cargo shorts.\n\n“What the fuck?” he muttered, his eyes falling to the bulge between his legs. Did he have…? Now, of all times? \n\n[i]Tried to warn ya, Andy.\n\n[/i]Sitting at attention, he shifted his groin around in the way all men do when they rise up at inopportune times. However, grazing himself through the fabric was enough to spark another wash of uncomfortable heat. His toes curled involuntarily in his climbing shoes. “Jesus, what is happening?”\n\n[i]I wouldn’t ask Jesus about this to be honest. It’s probably sacrilegious.\n\n[/i]More than simple arousal fueled his shaft. This was an aching need. As though he’d been edged along for hours and now on the precipice of staining his shorts. His member continued throbbing, twitching in pulses. As loose as his clothing was, the mere presence of fabric against his cock sent him spiraling. “D-Don’t look, kid.”\n\n[i]Hard not to, buddy. Speaking of hard… \n\n[/i]“You got to be kidding me,” Andrew groaned as he finally pulled down on his zipper. He was careful not to rub at his front too much, lest he ruin the one pair of shorts he had. With no patience to thread his fly or the cutout of his boxer briefs, he undid his belt and peeled away his waistband.\n\nHis dick sprung out like a jack-in-the-box.\n\n“What the fuck is happening?” he shouted, shimmying his boxer briefs down to his ankles and putting as much distance as he could between them and his shaft. It stood at mass, as erect as it had ever been. With five inches in length, Andrew wasn’t the largest, but the erection he sported pushed him to his maximum girth. \n\n[i]I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.\n\n[/i]Despite its freedom and exposure to the cool chamber air, Andrew’s arousal wouldn’t subside. It was sweltering. Growing. Visibly throbbing between his thighs. “Not now, I can’t be doing this now…”\n\nA pang struck him in the head, like a flash of a migraine that came and went like lightning. In that moment, he disconnected from himself -- and that second was enough for his baser instincts to take hold and wrap his right hand firmly around himself.\n\nThe touch of his fingers sent a sharp bolt through his hips that ricocheted up his spine. It wasn’t the pleasure he’d expected, but an electric current that made his skin twitch and perspire in an alien way. However, the shocks weren’t enough to rip his hand away or at least slow his sudden stroking.\n\n“Ha…shit…” Andrew grumbled in a mix of disbelief and lofty warmth. He didn’t feel fully in control of his motions, as if someone else was guiding his grip up and down his manhood, coaxing out beads of precum just moments after he began. His will to stop, to control himself even slightly, was nonexistent.\n\nIt was this heady haze that blinded him to the strange state of his fingers. How the skin of each knuckle began to wrinkle and dry out like a sea star under a heat lamp. How the pads of his fingers lost their plumpness. How his joints swelled visibly under the skin.\n\nOnly a jolt of pain through his unoccupied hand could divide Andrew’s attention.\n\nHe raised his left hand while tending to his shaft with the right. His continuous stroking motions persisted when his fingers started to ache…when his pointer finger began to grow.\n\n“Shit…what the hell?” Andrew squinted in the low light, not believing for a second that his finger looked longer than it had a minute ago. Even as the pain grew worse and he started to hear a crackling noise beyond the low roar of the distant fires. The sound of three bones stretching their way through his digit, pushing the tip of his index finger well beyond the edge of its neighbor. One inch, maybe two.\n\nThen it spread to his middle finger. And his fourth. His fifth. And his thumb.\n\n“Ah! Fuck!” Andrew shook his free hand like he’d touched a stove burner, but the searing ache within his fingers wouldn’t dissipate. It only grew hotter, polluting the awkward need that radiated from his cock but never fully overriding it -- if his vigorous right hand was any indication. The creaking of phalange bones dipped below the hot popping of his swollen joints and knuckles, each one bulging up under the gnarled skin. Like a sickly inflammation, his hand became a throbbing glove made of bumps and gangly, bony branches, each now twice as long as they once were.\n\n“What the fuck! What’s wrong with my hand?” Andrew shook his wrist wildly as he wailed like a B-movie scream queen. “Help me!”\n\n[i]Not much I can do, buddy. I told ya not to touch it.\n\n[/i]No help came as his left hand throbbed in its dysmorphia and his right hand began to ache in the same way. The joints popped and rippled as they rode his cock in an absurd display. His brow furrowed in frustration. He had to wrench himself away, but his other hand wouldn’t fare any better at gripping his member. Couldn’t he stop tending to his arousal for just a moment?\n\nNo. No, he could not.\n\n“Stop! Jesus Christ!” Andrew groaned as he lay back on the stone floor, hips bucking into his fist, which was becoming increasingly difficult to keep closed. The digits of his right hand sizzled, tendons pulling as they lengthened beneath the skin. While the horrible elongation took hold of his pre-cum-coated fingers, Andrew bent his wrist strangely just to maintain his slippery grip. He was close now. He couldn’t lose the momentum.\n\nDesperate to end the heat in his groin, Andrew employed his other hand and rubbed a gangly thumb around the head of his manhood, pressing its tip into a thickening finger pad. Almost there, despite how much his other fingers tried to impede him.\n\nOnce his right pinky snapped with a wooden crack, tripling its length, Andrew felt the dam break.\n\n“Ah! Fuck!” he squealed as his load shot off, dousing both hands in a wet, white rainfall. His shaft pulsated in time with his frenetic heartbeat, and whatever glue held his hand to his dick finally dissolved.\n\nWith a sharp exhale, Andrew pulled his hand away, the overstretched mitt falling to the floor exhausted with a hard wet smack. His eyes squeezed tight, each breath labored as he recovered from the hardest, yet strangest orgasm he’d ever experienced. Part of him hoped he would never experience that again. But only part of him.\n\nWhen his eyes reopened, the man raised his sticky hand overhead and saw what had become of it. The fingers were as long and bony as those on his left and the skin just as curdled. They looked almost connected by the hot strands of cum dribbling down. His mouth twisted into a grimace as clarity replaced the bestial haze.\n\nHe groaned, wiping his hands on the floor. When stone didn’t prove absorbent, he resigned to kicking off his shoes and shorts then using the latter as a rag. What a despicable display.\n\n[i]Sorry, we’re out of paper towels.\n\n[/i]Ignoring the crude remark, Andrew got to his feet and pulled his boxers up with dry, if not entirely clean hands. Each one had grown nearly five inches from wrist to tip. Bundles of spindly twigs silhouetted in the low light. Dark like the claws of a demon.\n\nFury bubbled up in his stomach and propelled Andrew back to the doorway. “This isn’t real,” he cried. “None of this is fucking real!” He clawed the stone, desperate for any sort of break, a crack or crevice he could contort his body through. \n\n[i]It’s not time yet, Andy. We gotta keep playing.\n\n[/i]“No, I’m fucking done! That was horrifying, that was…God, I don’t know what that even was.”\n\n[i]It’s just part of the game. Don’t stress, buddy.\n\n[/i]Andrew’s jaw clenched at the dismissive tone. He continued shuffling and prodding along the doors, trying with all his might to ignore how his sense of touch had changed. How difficult it now was to discern the ridges from the grooves.\n\n“I-I must be hallucinating, or that drink was poisoned or something. That’s why my body’s aching.” His breathing picked up. “Shit, I’m going to fucking die in here!”\n\n[i]Chill out, I’m not gonna let you die. This game’s too important.\n\n[/i]His heavy palm slammed against the stone. “How much do you know about this?”\n\n[i]Does this mean we’re playing again? In that case, I pick truth.\n\n[/i]“Jesus, fine! What do you know…\" He stopped himself abruptly. He had to be specific. “What…the hell…is wrong with my hands?”\n\n[i]It’s what you get for lying and giving in to your urges. Same thing will happen if you refuse your dare. Or fail it, I guess. That’s kinda on you though.\n\n[/i]“How do I change them back?”\n\n[i]Wait for your next turn, Andy! Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]He grimaced, glaring down at his overstretched fingers. “Truth.”\n\n[i]Why did you go to Arizona State?\n\n[/i]“That’s where George was going. We always said we’d go to college together since 10th grade. There, happy?”\n\n[i]See, wasn’t that easy? Okay, truth.\n\n[/i]“How do I fix my goddamn hands?” Andrew yelled into the darkness above, as if his voice could make its way up to God from the pit.\n\n[i]You can’t, sorry. Hopefully, it doesn’t get worse! But like I said, that’s up to you.\n\n[/i]“Wow, very helpful, Devlin. Thank you.”\n\n[i]If you want help, try asking better questions. That’s all the advice I can give. That, and stop grabbing your dick, dude!\n\n[/i]“I get it! Play the stupid game and don’t jerk off. Next question!”\n\n[i]Are you a good friend?\n\n[/i]Andrew curled his hands into fists, or at least he tried to. He couldn’t close them all the way.\n\n“Yeah, I am.”\n\nDespite the confidence of his words, his will floundered as the walls turned red once more.\n\n[i]Uh, are you sure? Sounded like a wrong answer.\n\n[/i]“Oh yeah? Well, that’s not really a true or false question, is it? So, how about you pick a better one off the fucking [i]Jeopardy[/i] board and give me a fair…a fair…”\n\nHis words caught in his throat as a fresh tent pitched itself in his underwear.\n\n“You can’t be serious. Is this gonna happen every time?”\n\n[i]It’s not your turn to ask. But also, don’t waste your time with dumb questions, buddy.\n\n[/i]“We’re not b-buddies, you…”Before Andrew could find a retort, his knees crashed down to the floor. A cold sweat straightened his neck hair and chilled his spine for the second time. Heavy heartbeats pounded between his ears, accelerating every second, pumping blood as fast as it could to his groin.\n\n“Please…don’t do this to me…” His lanky fingers clawed at the stone, in part to keep them away from his groin. He faced forward and away from it. Out of sight, out of mind. Even as he felt himself throbbing. Even as his pre-ejaculate re-stained the fabric constricting his tip. Even as a familiar silhouette invaded his thoughts. One of a freckled, redheaded climber with the grip strength of a matador.\n\nAndrew nearly tore his boxers in half and kicked them aside.\n\nHe rolled onto his back and resumed his handiwork, curling each deformed digit around his erection. However, his grip was tenuous at best, and a lack of coordination left his right hand fumbling like a prom night virgin. Frustrated, he tried switching hands, an approach he’d only done once in his life -- when he was a teenager and broke his wrist while climbing with…\n\n[i]Brings back memories, huh, Andy?\n\n[/i]A throaty growl passed his lips and echoed through the chamber. He sounded unhinged. Animalistic. It might have bothered Andrew if his furious heat wasn’t so damn distracting.\n\n“Fucking…hands…how the hell…” he whimpered with his cock twisting between two open palms. He could never start a fire this way while camping -- he always had George do it -- but this was all he could think of. All he had available.\n\nNo, that wasn’t true.\n\nThere was a pile of stained shorts and undies right next to him. If he just -- \n\n“No! I’m not going to… I can’t…” His breathing changed to hyperventilation. The need in his groin was strong and eager to erode whatever modesty he had left. He thought about the bundle of clothes, sitting there, begging to be tested. Maybe if he imagined they were someone else’s clothes. Another man’s clothes.\n\nMaybe…\n\nShame flustered Andrew’s cheeks as he flipped onto his hands and knees. His sweaty palms slapped down with wet smacks, and precum was dripping onto the floor. It didn’t matter. He needed this.\n\nHis long fingers worked like perfect shovels, bundling up his boxers and shorts into a soft pile. It had to be big enough, thick enough for him to plow through. It had to be perfect.\n\nAndrew crawled forward, held the fabric in place, and slid himself into the soft confines of his makeshift lover.\n\n“This is…ugh…so gross…” Andrew sputtered in between thrusts. It had been years since he’d turned a gym sock into a sex toy, and he didn’t have the stupidity of adolescence to shield him from this embarrassment. Only the lustful haze was enough to drive him forward again and again and again into the cotton amalgam.\n\nAs he braced the floor with his free hand, his attention drifted to the spindly fingers splayed out beneath him. They were already twitching, shaking as if the earth below was giving way to a quake. For a moment, he thought it was the tremors of his morose pleasure or the hasty thrusting of his sweaty hips, but he knew the rules of the game now. He understood what was coming.\n\nThe sick, aching pulling that returned to twist his hands.\n\n“No, no more,” he squealed as his fingers seared themselves on an invisible fire, burning hot as they resumed their heinous elongation. His skin pulled taut against the expanding flesh, and what little fat remained on his fingers boiled away with the heat. Clawing desperately at nothing, his fingers scraped along the ground like the teeth of a rake, feeling every new inch shiver against the cold stone. Eight inches. Nine. Fifteen.\n\nIt would never end, would it?\n\nThe fire spread to the spaces between his digits, where the little skin flaps began their own advance. They climbed up and away from his knuckles as though desperate to escape -- a sensation he found terribly relatable. With every extension of his fingers, the fatty flesh stretched farther across the space like a pale canvas. Sixteen inches. Twenty-four. Thirty-two. \n\nThe growths had long since passed the middle joints and would soon approach his distant fingertips. As flexing muscles twitched his digits, the webbing moved along with them, expanding and contracting like the wings of a bat.\n\nWings? No, that couldn’t be….\n\nVolcanic pressure erupted in Andrew’s cock, its tip shooting off within the twists of his cotton-poly partner. In the same breath, a rapid rush of sharp pops exploded within his hands and sent him rolling onto his back.\n\n“Ah, shit!”\n\nAndrew was belly up again, his wet shaft dribbling the remains of seed onto his stomach. Shaken from his haze by the snapping pain, he gingerly raised his hands overhead and gawked at their deformities. His fingers, mercilessly stretched and bound together, had splayed themselves wide in an arc like a ceremonial fan. The webbing pulled taut, and he couldn’t bring his fingers closer together. At least, not as close as they used to be. As they should be. The only digits unconnected were his thumbs, but even their joints felt stiff and swollen.\n\n“Oh my God…oh my God,” Andrew stuttered as his fingers hung over him like icicles ready to fall -- each one now twice the length of his forearms.\n\n[i]Well, that was a creative use of underwear. Never seen someone do that before.\n\n[/i]“Shut up! Just shut up!” \n\n[i]I can’t, it’s truth time. So, shoot!\n\n[/i] Andrew sat up, trying to keep his fused fingers out of sight. “Fuck this. If you know everything, then tell me the truth. What happened to George? Why do you keep asking about him?”\n\n[i]Uh, I don’t know everything, Andy. Not sure why you’d think that. \n\n[/i]“Because you set this up! This is some weird torture game, and you know what happened to George, and that’s why you keep drilling me about him!”\n\n[i]Honestly, I don’t know any more than you do. I know that he’s missing? That’s really it! Sometimes people just go missing. And sometimes people just do stupid things, right?\n\n[/i]The man stayed silent. \n\n[i]Anyway, truth or dare? \n\n[/i]“No more fucked up questions. Just give me the test.”\n\n[i]It’s not a test, it’s a dare. It’s called truth or dare.\n\n[/i]He felt another curse in his throat but decided to swallow it. \n\n“Okay,” he muttered. “Dare.”\n\n[i]Look behind you.\n\n[/i]Ice froze his nerves for just a moment, and Andrew had to force himself to move. Slowly, carefully, he glanced over his shoulder to where the pedestal had stood.\n\nIt was still there. But the glass was gone.\n\nHe stumbled to his feet, his gangly hands making it a harder task than it once was, and took a closer look at the stone pillar. \n\nIn place of drinkware was a dusty cube no larger than the size of his palm -- or the size it used to be. The sides of the block segmented off into rows and columns, each face a mess of faded colors and cheap stickers. One of the corners was missing, revealing the plastic mechanisms within.\n\n“Is…this a Rubix cube?”\n\n[i]Think you can solve it?\n\n[/i]He stared at the object as if it were an alien. However, it was the familiarity that made him shudder. George had an entire collection. The man was practically a professional when it came to solving them.\n\nAndrew was not.\n\nOf greater concern, he reached for the puzzle and watched his fingers extend well past the pedestal. “Shit, how the hell am I supposed to do this?”\n\n[i]Do what you gotta do, Andy. The timer starts once it’s off the base.\n\n[/i]Andrew’s lips pursed. Why did he wait so long to attempt a dare? Maybe he would’ve had a chance if his hands were still normal. No, that wasn’t true either.\n\nWith a deep breath, he channeled his best Indiana Jones and prepared to snatch the cube in the webbing of his hands. If he could clutch it between his palms, maybe he could rotate the sides with his stiff thumbs. Just maybe.\n\nAndrew’s plan collapsed when the pillar crumbled into dirt. The toy tumbled out of reach.\n\n“Shit!”\n\n[i]You got sixty seconds. Get twisting!\n\n[/i]Frustrated, he dropped to his knees and fumbled with the plastic.\n\n“This is impossible! I can’t use my hands!” \n\n[i]You have feet, don’t you? Or that mouth you keep running. Forty-five seconds.\n\n[/i]Andrew winced at the ichor that stained Devlin’s words, but he had no time to complain. He wrangled the cube between his hands and attempted to flip its sides. However, his thumbs couldn’t twist the sides while his unwieldy palms squeezed the entire block. He was left batting at the toy like a cat.\n\n[i]Thirty seconds…\n\n[/i]Like a frustrated, he hunched over and leveraged the cube between his feet, freeing his hands to rotate the columns.\n\n[i]Fifteen seconds, Andy…\n\n[/i]“Goddamn it! I couldn’t even do this normally. I just watched George solve them!” With significant effort, he turned the top row clockwise for the first time. Unfortunately, it only scrambled the colors further.\n\n[i]Yep, you always watched George. Four seconds. Three…\n\n[/i]As Andrew began twisting the left column, the fires around him returned to their vile, heavy red. \n\n[i]Oh, darn! Time’s up.\n\n[/i]“That’s not fair! That wasn’t possible!” Andrew’s breath shuddered as the familiar heat rocketed down to his cock. He was already at mast. The waves came faster every time.\n\n[i]Just because you suck at the game doesn’t make it unfair. You sound like a little kid!\n\n[/i]Despite the crippling arousal, he had enough wherewithal to keep his shaft away from the wet pile of clothes behind him. Andrew instead turned his attention to the cotton socks on his feet.\n\nHe truly was reliving his teenage years.\n\nAndrew toed off the fabric and coddled them with a massive, clumsy hand. His dexterity was gone, and each thrust forward proved more challenging as his garments refused to stay in place. Though he slipped out of the bundle more than once, the animalistic heat urged him on, its influence strong enough to fend off the musty smell building up in the chamber.\n\nHe kept masturbating with his socks, even when his spine cracked like a thunderbolt.\n\n“Gah! Ah, fuck!” he screeched, arching his back up and pressing his head into the floor. Something had yanked on his vertebrae and threatened to tear them from his spinal column. The gap between his shoulder blades felt tighter and twisted around the bone. Something had shifted inside him, but he was too engrossed to investigate.\n\nAs his orgasm came and went, the warm blitz of pleasure paved the way for a more grievous burn. The fire in his spine flowed down into his arms. Bones crackled like kindling. Muscles rippled in heat waves. He knew what was coming, and the post-climactic haze was too weak to save him from the consequences of his action.\n\n“No! Help me! George, help me!” Pain stricken, Andrew dug his giant, webbed fingers into the cold ground -- a ground moving farther away from him by the second. \n\nCrunching snaps echoed as his arms stretched past their normal limits, the bones sawing fissures into their own lengths as they tore and mended over and over. Bicep muscles ripped and stitched back together, thinner than they'd been in years, but stronger in a different way. His elbows flew further and further from his chest and extended his wingspan to grotesque proportions. When both shoulders popped, jerking backward towards his spine, he finally collapsed onto his stomach. His fin-like fingers bent awkwardly beneath his chest.\n\n[i]Wow, that looked rough, buddy. But hey, at least you got those beefy shoulders you always wanted!\n\n[/i]While the cursed heat cooled to a simmer, Andrew teetered on the edge of exhaustion. He pushed himself onto his knees, unfolded his hands, and felt his heart sink. His arms had reached double their length if not longer. The digits looked larger as well. He was a tree with two massive branches, wide and unwieldy. Walking would be cumbersome, and his hands would likely drag on the ground if he didn’t consciously hold them up.\n\nThe distorted man got to his feet and tried lifting his head, but the tightness in his back resurfaced. An ache between his shoulder blades, like muscle and bone had bound together in a new form of restriction. His spine wouldn’t straighten itself anymore.\n\nUnable to balance normally, Andrew fell back to his hands and knees, the sail-like membranes of his hands making hard slaps against the stone. Panic twisted his guts. Andrew turned his head and glanced over his shoulder, shivering like when he was a child scared of lurking monsters.\n\nHis back had grown a thick, mountainous hunch. A large permanent curve that weighed him down and stole his human posture. The formation peaked right between his scapulae, which bulged and arched in their own distorted display.\n\nHe was the monster now.\n\n“Oh my God…” Andrew groaned. “How am I supposed to walk?”\n\n[i]Not that I’m answering you, but humans used to walk on their knuckles in the old days. They looked kinda goofy, though.\n\n[/i]“So, I’m supposed to crawl around like a caveman? That’s your advice? \n\n[i]Uh, is that your question for this round?\n\n[/i]“No! Fucking…hang on.” Andrew shouted as he tried to support himself on his giant hands. Despite his reservations, he took Devlin’s suggestion and curled his fingers inward, fanning their webbing out to his sides, up past his distant elbows. Embarrassment washed over him as he realized how ridiculous he looked, hunched over on his knuckles like a Cro-Magnon. The situation was steadily devolving from terrifying peril to miserable hazing.\n\nWhen he raised an arm and attempted his first steps, Andrew stumbled immediately, his stiff hips stinging from the unnatural posture. It pained him to admit, but walking flatfooted made his pelvis buckle beneath his weight. Instinctually, he resorted to bending his knees and popping up on the balls of his feet. That felt right. Animal, but right.\n\nAndrew nearly gagged at the thought. “Alright. What, specifically, am I becoming…like some kind of bat-monster-thing?”\n\n[i]No, not a bat. I don’t know what to call them in your language, but they’re pretty common where I’m from. My family watches them fly around and try to eat each other. It’s really funny.\n\n[/i]“What, you think this is funny?” he asked with a spiking anger. “You’re laughing up there while I’m jerking off and growing goddamn wings?”\n\n[i]I mean it is funny, but not because your jorkin’ it. It’s just…eh, whatever.\n\n[/i]The quadruped male rested on his knees, knuckles already tired from bearing more weight than normal. “Next question, let’s go.”\n\n[i]Who is Marcy?\n\n[/i]His brow jumped. How did Devlin know that name? Maybe Andrew mentioned George in his sleep. But not Marcy. He wouldn’t have. “She’s a friend from my climbing group. Uh, George’s wife. Or, uh, ex--”\n\n[i]Say no more. That’s true.\n\n[/i]A sigh of relief passed Andrew’s lips. “I’m [i]so[/i] glad that was good enough for you.”\n\n[i]Hey, I just did you a solid. She’s George’s wife. Even now.\n\n[/i]“Sure. Even now.”\n\n[i]Your turn. Truth.\n\n[/i]“How did you know about Marcy? I know I didn’t mention her before.”\n\n[i]I told you, Andy. I know what you know. Been watching you for a while. Even in the bathroom. You use way too much TP.\n\n[/i]The admission all but confirmed Andrew’s [i]Saw[/i]-style kidnapping theory. “That’s really creepy, y’know?”\n\n[i]Uh-huh, I’m the creepy one. Your turn. Truth or --\n\n[/i]“Pretty sure I’m fucked either way, so let’s try dare again.”\n\n[i]Okay, I’ll give you an easy one this time. Walk around the room once in a circle.\n\n[/i]Andrew hesitated. “That’s it?”\n\n[i]Yeah, but you gotta sing when you do it.\n\n[/i]“Like, anything? Or --“\n\n[i]Ring around the rosie!\n\n[/i]Strange. The sudden lack of stakes made Andrew uneasy. For a boy eager to prod him at every turn, this “dare” was uncharacteristically simple. Why bother asking this at all?\n\nPerhaps better not to question it.\n\nWithout further objection, the hunchback rolled onto his bulging fists, hesitant to take another step on four limbs. It was an embarrassing admission of defeat to surrender his human posture to some cruel, invisible force. Perhaps the cruelty was the point.\n\n“Ring around the rosie…” He began his trek along the flame-lit wall, though not without a few missteps that nearly twisted his wrists wrong. “Pocket full of -- ah, shit!”\n\n[i]Start the song over if you mess up.\n\n[/i]“Yeah, okay,” he groaned. [i]“[/i]Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes…um…”\n\n[i]We all fall down[/i]!\n\n“We all…fall down.”\n\n[i]Nice! Now keep walking, buddy.\n\n[/i]Andrew continued at a slow, unsteady pace. He wobbled with awkward swaying motions as his long gangly arms and pike-like fingers jutted out to the sides. The distended, webbed digits prodded him in the stomach more than once, earning a grunt each time. Thankfully, the floor was smooth and easy on his knuckles, which would’ve hurt worse if the skin hadn’t gnarled itself into a leathery husk. He feared the rest of his flesh would make the same transition in time. How many failed questions before his humanity disappeared entirely?\n\n[i]Must feel really weird to walk like that.\n\n[/i]“Yeah, kind of…”\n\n[i]Imagine what Marcy would say if she saw you right now. Or George. He’d probably think you’re super gross with those giant hands!\n\n[/i]“Don’t talk like you know him! You don’t.”\n\n[i]But I know you…\n\n[/i]He passed the halfway mark with fewer stumbles. Unfortunately, walking on the balls of his feet became more comfortable since his spine transformed into the St. Louis Arch. He felt lucky to be walking at all.\n\n[i]I know that you’re alone, Andy. You pushed everyone away. \n\n[/i]“Man, you are really talkative all of a sudden.”\n\nAndrew completed his trek and found himself back in the shadow of the doorway. He looked up into the darkness, still trying to find the top of the arch.\n\n[i]Hey, nice job! Ask your next question.\n\n[/i]“The door. Where does it lead exactly?”\n\n[i]Home.\n\n[/i]“And where is --”\n\n[i]Wait your turn! You’re literally wasting oxygen. Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]He let out another tired sigh. “Truth.”\n\n[i]Marcy and George almost broke up. Why’s that?\n\n[/i]“It’s because George…made a mistake.” Andrew held his breath, clinging to the words in his throat. “He cheated on her.”\n\nThe walls screamed in a red rage.\n\n[i]Mmm, that’s a lie…\n\n[/i]“Wait! He did…kind of…he really --”\n\nThe cycle resumed, and Andrew found himself rutting into his soiled clothes again, no longer averse to the wetness or sick sensation it left in his stomach. Was it shame, hunger-induced nausea, or the game warping vital organs? Something shifting and twisting in on itself like his arms had. Andrew couldn’t be sure.\n\nOnly three thrusts in, however, and the change began to wreak havoc in more certain terms. He could feel in his neck the tensing of muscle and sensitive nerves, a growing pressure where his spinal column began its slope into his bestial hunch.\n\nHe wasn’t ready for what was to come. He never would be. But if he could lose himself in his perverse pleasure, perhaps this time it wouldn’t sting so badly.\n\nHis neck cracked. Fast. Loud. Like the sound of a chiropractor about to lose their license.\n\n“Ah, fuck! Fuck!” he wailed as the feverish heat wrapped around his head and yanked it forward, up and away from his shoulders. Strained muscle stretched taut along his throat, bulging beneath the skin in a field of visible veins and arteries. His anguished moans drowned out the crunching vertebrae and wet slopping thrusts beneath him.\n\nHe couldn’t tell if his spine was growing more chunks of bone, or if the current ones were growing longer. It didn’t matter. The flesh around his neck swelled at the same time, distorting its proportions and constricting his windpipe. He twisted his head side-to-side in a vain attempt to relieve the searing pressure.\n\nNothing could stop it. Even his lust struggled to abate it now.\n\nEventually, Andrew’s chin hit the floor, hanging down from a distended neck that had grown an extra foot in length. How long would it ultimately become? Fear pushed the thought from his mind as blood rushed to his brain and sent him into a dizzy spell. The weight of his pounding head made rutting difficult. Staying [i]upright[/i] was difficult. It’d be easier to lie down again, just for a little while.\n\nCurling up in a fetal ball, he shivered as a foreign itch washed over his trunk. He’d have scratched himself raw if his hands were still capable. Instead, he suffered silently, watching with squinted eyes as the skin of his abdomen began to dry out, bunching up and wrinkling as if all the water was draining from his body. What little fat he had melted away, revealing the jagged curves of his pelvic bone and ribcage. His overstretched arms looked more ominous when his torso seemed so shriveled.\n\nAs grotesque as the sight of his chest was, Andrew’s eyes returned to the sight of his solid erection and the droplets of pre falling pooling on the floor. The heat worsened, ignored and unsatisfied. It called to him. A deep sick urge. A need for pleasure.\n\n[i]Go on, Andy. You know you wanna…\n\n[/i]It didn’t require much thought to decipher the Devlin’s meaning, not that Andrew had much attention to spare. The idea had crossed his mind in his adolescence, as he suspected it had for many growing males. Now the opportunity was dangling before him. The proverbial carrot.\n\nPart of him didn’t expect to reach so far. He couldn’t tell how long his neck had grown, even without the nagging distraction between his legs. However, the angle was sharp enough to bring his head down towards his abdomen and pitch his hips up towards his face. \n\nAndrew stretched his tongue out to complete the circle. It could only touch the bridge between his shaft and head, but that was enough to feed his desire.\n\nWhen the first drop of precum slid onto his tongue, he thought he’d be sick. It was salty, hot, muskier than he anticipated. His mind begged him to stop, but when the second and third drops were exchanged, he committed fully to the act of sin.\n\nThe sensation of a tongue on his cock was too intense to dismiss, even if it was his own. Sweat rolled down his skin, rippling along the new ridges of his jagged ribs and sternum. His breath shuddered. “Ah…f-fucking…” Andrew was caught between curses of disdain and pleasure. The tip of his tongue sent sparks up his spine, circling through him like an electric conduit. It had been so long since he’d been touched in this way. A triste with his discarded clothes couldn’t compare. He lay there lapping, a sad, warped reflection of a man who could never resist his carnal needs.\n\nA few more licks sent him rocketing into another orgasm, but even as the white torrent coated his face and tongue, he kept going. He’d throttle the pleasure for as long as he could.\n\nHe deserved that much.\n\nFinished with his latest bout of hedonism, Andrew uncurled himself and rolled onto his back, his rubbery neck twisting into an S-bend as he struggled to rest his head properly. The post-orgasm rush gave way to clarity, leaving him silent in a puddle of semen, sweat, and regret. Shameful.\n\n“God…look at me. My fucking neck…it’s like a snake or something.”\n\n[i]Not a snake. My mom likes snakes, not me though.\n\n[/i]“Your…mom?” Andrew struggled to process Devlin’s words when his own pulse pounded on his eardrums.\n\n[i]Yeah, she rides them for fun. You’ll love her. Truth, by the way.\n\n[/i]“Uh…why…” He forced out the words and spit to get rid of his own bitter aftertaste. “Why do I get so horny during this? Do you just get off on it?”\n\n[i]The punishment has to fit the crime. Well, we call it sin down here, but same thing. Fair is fair, right?\n\n[/i]“You think jerking off is a sin? Didn’t know you were into Catholic guilt…”\n\n[i]You want my advice? You could try, y’know, not doing it. Just a thought. Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]“I think…I need a minute…”\n\nDevlin huffed like any child being told to pause their games. It almost sounded authentic. Almost.\n\n[i]Fine.\n\n[/i]As Andrew’s chest heaved, he stared into the darkness overhead. Was there some hidden window or night vision camera? If he could find “Devlin” or figure out the trick to this tower…perhaps he’d have a chance at winning the game. \n\nNot this farce of truth or dare. The game behind it.\n\n[i]Man, it’s funny.\n\n[/i]A sudden growl built up in Andrew’s distended throat. It wasn’t intentional. “I knew you were laughing at me. You’re a freak for watching all this!”\n\n[i]I’m not talking about you jorkin’ it. It’s just that…you know the rules of the game. And you know what happens when you lie. But then you go and lie anyway. It’s like you don’t care what happens. Maybe you want to turn into…this.\n\n[/i]“Of course…I don’t. Look at me…” Andrew lifted his head and took in the sight of his distorted chest and limbs. A body bordering on animalistic. “This is so wrong.”\n\n[i]Okay, but like…you complain about your body changing and being horny as hell, but you’re not doing what you have to to stop it. Man, I don’t get humans at all.\n\n[/i]The bestial man flipped back onto all fours and glared upwards, as if staring Devlin in the eye. “Well, I don’t get you either. You ask the most basic shit, and then you start prodding at me like a goddamn prosecutor. If you have something to say, then say it! Enough with this cryptic shit.”\n\n[i]Sure, I’m the cryptic one. You ready yet?\n\n[/i]Andrew blinked the sweat out of his eyes as he took in Devlin’s words. He learned more every time the boy ran his mouth.\n\n“Truth.”\n\n[i]Where did George want to travel the most?\n\n[/i]“Clark Mountain. There’s a climbing route on it called [i]Jumbo Love[/i].” His explanation earned a giggle from the childish voice.\n\n[i]That’s a funny name!\n\n[/i]“Yeah, well, he said it spoke to him.”[i]\n\nUh-huh, all that’s true. Clark Mountain. Sounds like fun.\n\n[/i]“It might’ve been if he didn’t go alone.”\n\n[i]You wanted to go with him.\n\n[/i]“We always talked about that one. For years.”\n\n[i]But he wanted to go with someone else.\n\n[/i]“Shut up,” he huffed. “Truth or dare?”\n\n[i]Truth, duh.\n\n[/i]The man had to word his questions carefully. Any loophole, anything Devlin didn’t want to answer, he’d weasel his way around. And Andrew needed answers while he still had the mind to process them. “Why exactly do we need to play truth or dare to unlock the door? Honestly, this is a really stupid way to go about it.”\n\n[i]Well, we don’t have to play this exact game, but it’s definitely the fastest way outta here.\n\n[/i]Andrew’s mouth pursed. Of course, the “boy”[i] [/i]chose this game for a reason. He simply didn’t want to explain it.\n\n[i]Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]“Truth.”\n\n[i]What's the most disgusting thing you've done to another person?\n\n[/i]“See, there you go again! That sounds so goddamn accusatory.”\n\n[i]It’s just a question.\n\n[/i]“No, you can’t ask something like that and then punish me when the answer’s not good enough. You can’t know what the answer is!”\n\n[i]But [u]you[/u] know what it is! And I know when [u]you[/u] know you’re fibbing.\n\n[/i]“Oh, fuck off with that reverse psychology bullshit.”\n\n[i]I’m still waiting for an answer…\n\n[/i]Andrew scowled. “I got drunk one weekend, ate an old burrito in the back of the fridge, then I threw up in George’s bed. Happy?”\n\n[i]Well, that’s definitely gross, and true…but it’s not the truth I’m looking for.\n\n[/i]“I know!” This was growing repetitive. Annoying. Being forced into arousal and subsequent agony was torturous enough. He didn’t need the jeers on top of it all.\n\nBefore the heat could ensnare him, he rolled over and bent down to face his crotch. “This is what you want, right? You enjoying this, you sick bastard?” \n\n[i]Look, if you could resist the urges, you’d be fine.\n\n[/i]“How the fuck…could I resist this…” His indignation grew as he lapped at his member.\n\n[i]Not the first time you’ve asked yourself that, huh?\n\n[/i]Andrew ignored the taunts and continued his servicing, even when hot knives of growth drilled into his thighs, cramping the muscles and forcing them to bend in towards his stomach. A gasp shot out of him, and he had to steady himself with his wing-hands to stay upright.\n\nOut of the corner of his eye, he watched his upper legs swelling, the muscles doubling, then tripling in scale. He counted himself lucky that he ditched his clothes long ago. Being crushed by his own briefs would’ve been a torrid affair.\n\nWhile his thighs expanded, both knees popped in sharp and sudden jolts, the tendons inflating and bones expanding to support what would be his final form -- a fast-approaching, inevitable fate. The sharp force made Andrew dig his heels into the ground. Even while preoccupied, he could see his calves bulge with new, firm muscle, the bones within preparing to grow like the rest of him. However, it was the crackling at the front of his feet that distracted him from the sexual fervor, if only momentarily.\n\nThe joints of his toes cracked in a cluster, expanding with each audible shockwave. His digits curled and uncurled beyond his control, and with every flex, they lengthened, trading their stout plumpness for a long, jagged, twiggy figure. While nowhere near the growth spurts his fingers experienced, the same terrible stretching was enough to make Andrew wince and whine mid-masturbation.\n\nHis licking slowed slightly as he saw his toes wriggle like the legs of a skittering skink. He recognized how reptilian they appeared, having encountered many desert creatures in his years of climbing. There was no lizard he knew of, however, that had the massive wings as he was growing. None that were real, at least.\n\n[i]Look on the bright side. You won’t need climbing shoes anymore!\n\n[/i]Yes, how fortunate. A [I]CRICK[/I] in his neck made Andrew wince -- another punishment for his, alleged, sin. More explosive growth forced his head closer to his crotch, finally giving him unrestricted access to his entire length. Without hesitation, he plunged forward, gagging as the tip grazed the back of his throat. It’d been a long time since he had a man’s shaft in his mouth.\n\nHalf-begrudgingly, Andrew closed his lips around himself and quickened his maneuvers. On occasion, he would glance back up at his feet and each time find his toes longer and more gnarled than before, the skin wrinkling as his hands and chest had.\n\nOne last spiral of his tongue around the tip, and Andrew let loose a fourth orgasm -- fifth? -- down his throat. He swallowed the hot warmth in its entirety for a reason he couldn’t explain. Was it the lurid, animalistic instincts eroding his mind, or simple hunger begging him for a hot meal?\n\n[i]Now you’re getting it! The sooner we finish the game, the sooner we can leave. I’m hungry too, ya know?\n\n[/i]He tossed his hips back when new bolts of pain lanced down his feet, too sharp to ignore. Andrew’s lanky toes clenched and twitched as a fresh heat scorched his arches before sinking deep into the muscle. Granular cracks and snaps assaulted his ears when the hard tarsals and metatarsals began to elongate, expanding in all directions though most apparently forward. His feet were growing longer.\n\nThe distance between his heel and the ball skyrocketed, toes drifting farther out of reach like shifting tectonic plates. He wheezed as the flesh ached and tensed, tendons on the verge of tearing off the bone before strengthening and doubling in size. Just as before, the post-release haze could not protect him from the cruel reality.\n\n“Damn it, stop! They’re too big!” Andrew squealed, digging his aching heels back into the ground. Their fatty skin felt thicker than before, and they slapped heavily on the stone as he flailed about. Now flush to the floor, his arches pressed down and flattened with two wet cracks, their structure losing the curves and preparing for a digitigrade life. As thick as his feet had swollen, their cartoonish length left the proportions completely wrong. They resembled long, steel bars with twisted screws dangling at the ends. The only exceptions were his largest toes, now positioned halfway up his feet and pathetically abandoned by their front line. \n\nWith a final barrage of grinding creaks that thrust his toes forward and yanked his heels back, Andrew’s feet came to rest in their new reptilian form. Sans the lack of scale plates, the distinction between foot and animal paw was almost nil.\n\nAndrew rolled back onto his elbows, both feet extended and presenting their animalistic shape for his displeasure. He could feel his humanity unraveling like the broken twists of his DNA. Clearly, he was losing the game.\n\n[i]You’re gonna fit right in, buddy.[/i]\n\n“Fit in where? Look at me, I’m a fucking monster.”\n\n[i]That’s kinda your fault. Also, it’s your turn. Truth.\n\n[/i]A frustrated bellow escaped him, but he tried to refocus on the game. The reason for its existence. The answers he was looking for. ”What you said earlier…why is [i]this[/i] game the fastest way to open the doors?”\n\n[i]Hey, what matters is we get them open so we can both get out of here.\n\n[/i]“That’s not an answer, and you know it.”\n\n[i]I’m gonna answer! I just don’t get why you keep asking about them.\n\n[/i]“And I don’t get why you’re asking about my friends. So, I guess we’re even.”\n\n[i]Fine, okay! It’s fast because I know exactly what you’re going to do. You kind of suck at this.\n\n[/i]“And what is it that I’m going to do?”\n\nDevlin scoffed.\n\n[i]Stop trying to cheat! One question, one answer. Now, truth or dare?[/i]\n\n“Truth.”\n\n[i]Why didn’t Marcy come climbing with you today?\n\n[/i]“She hasn’t climbed since George disappeared. We all used to be in a group together. But now…she’s traumatized by what happened.”\n\n[i]Look, I don’t wanna split hairs, but -- \n\n[/i]“Hey, that’s all true! I swear to God!”\n\n[i]Sure, it’s all true. But that’s not the answer to the question. \n\n[/i]“I don’t understand!”\n\n[i]That’s also a lie. Lucky for you, we’re not playing double jeopardy. You’d already have a snout by now!\n\n[/i]With one reluctant lick of his shaft, Andrew sent a brand new heat cascading through his body, dehydrating the last of his skin into a leathery hide. Everything burned. Everything blistered along his flesh. Shifting, tightening to such an extent that it felt like hardening.\n\nAnd so the first of his scales began to bloom.\n\nThe half-human felt ants gnawing at his flesh. A bitter scream came in tow. From the bridge of his nose to the gaps between his twisted toes, bushels of hardened plates sprouted atop his skin, bathing him in rivers of black. He flailed about, scratching at whatever flesh he could with his massive feet.\n\nIn a final swift judgment, fleets of white bands twisted around his abdomen and hardened into longer structures. Their edges fused to the black scales on his sides, trapping him in a shell of his own making. The hardened abs he longed for, that he admired for so long on his friends, were beyond his fingerless grasp. This was the closest he would ever have to a washboard stomach.\n\nHis only respite from pain was self-pleasure. \n\nWith cock between lips, he tried to ignore the world. The ache of hardening scale plates. The tickling of hair tufts as they abandoned his scalp. Even the searing heat of ice-white talons shredding his nails and the cuticles below. The only change that gave him pause was a toothache, and he had enough foresight to pull back before tearing his shaft to ribbons. Lustful panting gave way to whimpering groans as his teeth swelled within their gums, each one sharpening to a carnivorous point.\n\n“What the th-uck!” Drool seeped over his parted lips. His tongue struggled to form consonants across the ivory daggers, let alone continue its ministrations below. “I nee-th…heh…”\n\n[i]Hey, you still got feet, don’t ya? Paws, talons, whatever you wanna call them.\n\n[/i]Perhaps in other circumstances, maybe hours or minutes ago, he would’ve refused Devlin’s crude suggestion. Not now. Andrew pulled his feet in towards his groin as if he were sitting criss-cross in grade school. Their terribly impressive lengths made it easy to reach his manhood, the newly freed talons wrapping around himself like fingers he no longer possessed.\n\nTwo strokes later, rivulets of cum dribbled down his arches and between his toes. The orgasm faded faster than ever, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth -- in every sense.\n\n“Ugh…th-this…are we almost…done?” Andrew found that if he talked slowly and remained calm, he could curtail the lisp infecting his speech. For how long, he wasn’t sure.\n\n[i]There’s not much left of you to change, so that’s kind of a dumb question. Just sayin’.\n\n[/i]“Shut…up…”\n\n[i]I can’t shut up or we’re gonna be stuck in here forever, duh! Now, truth, please.\n\n[/i]Andrew continued his last line of questioning. He had struck a nerve and had every intention of rubbing it raw. “Why is…the door…locked at all?”\n\n[i]You’re still asking about that while you’re slobbering all over yourself? Well, more than slobber. It feels like you’re wasting questions again, buddy.\n\n[/i]“Don’t th-ange the subject…I need to know…if I should open it. Period.”\n\n[i]If you want to get out of here, then yeah, you should.\n\n[/i]“Still haven’t…answered.”\n\n[i]It’s cause someone locked them, obviously.\n\n[/i]“So…you don’t know why…”\n\n[i]It’s not my fault people can’t take a joke! The guy was on his last legs anyway. Well, leg. Besides, I was hungry! They just overacted.\n\n[/i]“They knew…you were a threat.”\n\n[i]A threat? Ow! If this is how you treat your friends --\n\n[/i]“We’re not --”\n\n[i]-- which I know that it is, no wonder everyone hates you.\n\n[/i]“Not…everyone.”\n\n[i]Keep telling yourself that, Andy. Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]Andrew let his eyes rest. “Truth.”\n\n[i]Why did George climb Clark Mountain alone?\n\n[/i]“He was…supposed to go with Mar-thy…anniversary…but they fought cause --”\n\n[i]Andy….[/i]\n\n“He cheated…on her.”\n\nAnother tired sigh fluttered down from above.\n\n[i]You never learn, do ya? Don’t answer that. \n\n[/i]Andrew brought both foot paws back to his shaft and began toying with it. There was no point in waiting. However, his half-hearted masturbation stalled when a cold pain rippled through his lower back and twisted him over onto his knuckles and tiptoes. He groaned as his hips rutted in the air, simultaneously bucking through the pleasure and trying to relieve the harsh pressure bubbling above his rear. Although he expected the worst, he bent his bestial neck around and looked over his shoulder.\n\nJust below his waistline, between two patches of ebony, a plump nub of skin had attached itself to his rear. An oversized boil. A parasite.\n\nThe branch-breaking crunch made him roar. Like a reel of tape unraveling beneath his skin, the fifth limb pushed further through fat and flesh, sending his tired nerves into shock. It collected mass from thin air, stretching and thickening and flicking back and forth. Sparks of electricity sizzled along his spine, sending new unintelligible signals up to his brain.\n\nAndrew was growing a tail, and the sensation was driving him mad.\n\nIntertwined with his cursed arousal, the flood of impulses became too much to bear, and Andrew had no choice but to lower himself to the ground and slide his wet cock along the barren stone. It was far from comfortable, but it took little stimulation to reach climax and even less time for the pleasure to fade.\n\nThe carnal lust turned to empty longing as if it was a new form of punishment the game had invented. When Andrew fell over onto his side, barely missing the fresh white puddle beneath his crotch, he remembered several similar occasions where he woke up in bed, abandoned by strangers and lovers. Alone. Again and again and --\n\n[i]That tail’s gonna be your new best friend, buddy. Use it wisely! Next question.\n\n[/i]Given his low stamina and extensive changes, Andrew only had a few questions left in him. The game would be over soon. “You’re not…from here. What are you, Devlin…really?”\n\n[i]Wow, you waited a while to ask that.\n\n[/i]“I wanted…to be sure. I’ll know…if you lie.”\n\n[i]I haven’t lied once! I’m not allowed to. But this one’s hard to answer, okay? There’s not a word for it that you’d understand.\n\n[/i]“Try…me…”\n\n[i]Look, I’ve been called a lot of dumb names. Imp. Demon. Evil incarnate. That’s as close as anyone seems to get. But for you, I’m Devlin. Just Devlin!\n\n[/i]That name. Andrew seethed at the thought. “And are you…you’re the --”\n\n[i]No, I’m not the guy you’re thinking of. Trust me, if you were dealing with him, you wouldn’t have skin right now. He’s weird like that. Anyway, truth or dare?\n\n[/i]The scale-ridden man weighed his options. He was fucked either way. “Uh…d-dare…” \n\n[i]I dare you…to tell me the truth about Marcy and George.\n\n[/i]“Th-thuck off!” Andrew roared at the abyss, unable to prevent his lisp from seeping out. “Why do you care th-o much? You don’t know eth-en know them!\n\n[i]But you know them, Andrew. You know them [/i]s[i]o well that you thought could play games with them. Now would ya just tell me, or are you gonna waste time fapping again? \n\n[/i]Andrew’s silence became his answer.\n\nThe second his tongue grazed his cloaca slit, the flux of transformation returned. A violent grunt came as his chest began to bulge, swelling and barreling and cracking his ribs with each expansion. The salt-white plates expanded each with breath, never once giving way to the rough hide below. He struggled to maintain the fellatio as his sternum jutted forward and threatened to obstruct his neck, but Andrew persevered. Even as swelling took hold of his neck. Then his back. Then his limbs. Then everything.\n\nEverything was getting bigger.\n\nExploding beneath their armor, Andrew’s bloated hips rocked forward with a loud crack, reorienting themselves on his backbone. The muscles tightened within and wound his joints on strictly animalistic hinges, locking him in a permanent quadruped stance. His long feet wheeled aimlessly, limited in their new articulation. Andrew didn’t care. The dramatic change in posture allowed him to take in more of his arousal, and he clamped down on the base of his shaft without a second thought.\n\nA whimper escaped him as the next flood of seed shot down into his gullet. \n\n[i]Wow[/i], [i]dude. I’m starting to think you’re enjoying this.\n\n[/i]His needs satisfied, the reptilian man rolled onto his rear again, suddenly aware of his expanding limbs. Years’ worth of growing pains sent him floundering, his wings windmilling as they grew in length and girth. Pulling, Stretching. Fusing. Fresh webbing from his elbows to the plane of his naval. Curving arcs cascaded like the rest of the wing membranes, turning his arms into two streets of telephone wires -- his fingers towering poles and the fleshy webbing the antiquated landlines.\n\nThe growth spurt ended with a new extension of his tail. Its whip-like length lashed out above his rear, twisting and curling beyond his control, packing on muscle and fat with every uncontrolled wag. In a final fit, the tip chiseled itself into an arrowhead. Flat and pointed like that of a cartoon devil.\n\nHe rolled onto his side again, a massive wing half-covering him like a blanket. His breathing stuttered as freshly born air sacs inflated inside him and bloated his lungs to the brim. \n\n[i]Y’know, I can’t tell if you’re dumb or crazy. And I’m a great judge of character. It’s kind of my job back home. \n\n[/i]“Do you ever…shut up?”\n\n[i]I’m just saying,[/i] [i]no matter what happens to you, anything is better than telling the truth, right? Cause otherwise, you’d do it. That’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? Or is just stupid? You don’t have to answer that.\n\n[/i]“I don’t know…oh…” he wheezed on the words as excess air flushed out of his new lungs. “…what you want from me.”\n\n[i]C’mon, you can’t be that dumb. Try using your brain for this next round. Truth.\n\n[/i]Too breathless to concentrate, he asked the next question that came to mind -- one which troubled him from the start of the game. “How…why…do you go by…Devlin? That’s not your…real name.” \n\n[i]Well, you wouldn’t be able to say my name without your throat catching fire, so I picked one that you knew. I wasn’t gonna go by George in case you said it while you were jackin’ off. That’d be awkward! And this one…well…I thought you’d find it funny.\n\n[/i]Andrew wasn’t laughing. He couldn’t spare one. His voice was raw from the yelling, the crying, the deep, lustful moaning. If the change didn’t steal his voice eventually, the strain alone would leave permanent damage.\n\n[i]Okay, truth or dare?\n\n[/i]“…Truth.”\n\n[i]You think George and Marcy fought because he cheated on her. If that’s true, then who did George cheat with?\n\n[/i]“I…don’t know…”\n\n[i]Wrong again….\n\n[/i]Another lie, another session of ill-gotten pleasure. Andrew had little control over his freshly sculpted tail, but a singular instinct forced its way to the front of his mind, and without hesitation, his fifth limb slithered up between his legs.\n\n“Gotta be…kidding me…”\n\nThe room blurred as his tail made two full loops around his leaking cock and pumped like a plumber on a drain. For such a massive, muscular limb, it moved with delicate precision and a keen instinct for his most sensitive spots -- as if this was the tail’s sole purpose for existing. As if the only reason for his transformation was to drown him in the misery of lust.\n\n[i]Okay, I said that I liked how predictable you are, but you’re getting kinda boring to play with. No wonder your friends don’t wanna hang out with you anymore. Well, I guess there’s a lot of reasons.\n\n[/i]Andrew wasn’t listening anymore.\n\nDespite the hot strokes rolling down his shaft, he could feel the taint of change ruining his pleasure once more. The last of his hair withered and fell, making way for a hood of scales seamlessly connected to those on his brow and neck. He reeled his head back and scratched it along the ground, his neck bending every which way to silence the annoying itch.\n\nA migraine rippled along his scalp, and he knew on instinct that his horns were growing in, the sharp nodules forcing out of his skull and splitting his skin in the process. They only made it two inches out before stalling. As hard as they were, he could almost “feel” the air through them, a strange sense that he couldn’t place. Droplets of blood rolled down his brow, and he nuzzled the crook of his wing to wipe away the streaks. The joints of his limbs, however, didn’t bend as far as they used to, so he twisted himself into a knot just to clean off his face.\n\nA twinge along his spine made Andrew pause and peer back over his shoulder, tail never once leaving the mast of his cock. There, jutting up like a thorn, was a black spine lodged in his upper back. It was no longer than his human arm once was, and he had half a mind to pull it out with his teeth -- such an animal thought to have. Before he could intervene, another spine shot up from between his scales, then another, and another. Then one below the first. Then another above.\n\nThe reverse acupuncture made him flinch and serpentine his body until the trail of spikes carved a route from the tip of his tail to the back of his head. Andrew could feel them rooted deep in his hide. They twitched as white webbing stretched its way from pole to pole, connecting his spines in fleshy arcs. It didn’t hurt as much as it might have when he was smaller and his skin less weathered. It was just another addendum to his body.\n\nIt mattered little once his tail brought him to another orgasm, splattering the soiled ground with monstrous seed.\n\n[i]Good thing you don’t want kids, or all this jizz would be a real waste!\n\n[/i]Andrew’s arousal leveled off as his tail unwound, but his twitching erection maintained its stiffness and pulsated in time with his heartbeat. Then double time. Triple time. The veins along the base were pumping, almost vibrating.\n\nHis shaft began to swell, suddenly feeling too tight in its skin -- like a sausage bubbling in its case.\n\n“N-Not th-that! You’re th-ucking kidding me!” Horrified, Andrew rose on his hind paws before falling backward and crushing the new spines beneath his weight. This couldn’t be real. This was hell. All of this was hell.\n\nSatanic heat embroiled his cock. With every throb, his girth increased until it matched the thickness of his ankles. His member angled up towards his abdomen, purposefully reorienting itself for animalistic mating with a wet, warbling [i]schlick[/i].\n\nThe tip deformed next, its mushroom dome pinching down and molding itself into a sickening pointed arrow. The entire shape looked sculpted, angular in an almost cartoonish way. This wasn’t something that belonged on a human body -- not that his body had much human left in it.\n\n“Th-thuck! What i-th…what…” Andrew sputtered, lost for words as his cock saturated into a stained, neon pink and developed fleshy thorns along the underside. Blistering heat wormed its way down into the base of his shaft and spread into his groin. His skin trembled like a fault line ready to divide.\n\nThe worst part was the tearing feeling. \n\n“Ahhh! Stop!” He screamed himself hoarse, terrified that his manhood would rend itself apart.\n\n[i]Don’t worry, it’s not a vagina. I think it’s called a “cloaca” in English. Based on what I’ve seen, it’s a major upgrade for you!\n\n[/i]Wet squelching noises soured the room as his pubic skin began to separate, isolating his manhood inside a weeping chasm. Like a wound reopening, his pelvic region parted vertically as delicate skin curdled into two wet reptilian lips -- the opening of his protective vent.\n\nWhat followed was the sensation of suction, a sinking feeling as Andrew’s cock pulled itself into the chasm like a ship falling to its watery grave. He whimpered, kicking his legs as he felt the thick mass of his dick crammed into his body. An equally nauseating feeling came as his scrotum rolled into the bottom of his slit and vanished forever.\n\nAndrew felt more naked than when his dick was exposed. “…Why…why do thi-th…”\n\n[i]I’m not doing much at this point. You’re a grown-up. You’re responsible for your actions. Always have been.\n\n[/i]“You make it th-ound…like I…killed him.”\n\n[i]Weird how you jump to that. I wasn’t even talking about George.\n\n[/i]“I didn’t! As-th me…it’s tru-th!” His arms gestured furiously despite the wing membranes constricting them. They were built for flying and perhaps climbing. Nothing else.\n\n[i]Maybe I would if it was my turn, but it’s not. Ask your next question, and try using your brain this time.\n\n[/i]A number of questions still rattled his mind, but he only had time for one. His throbbing gut told him as much.\n\nHe had to make this one count.\n\n[i]Any day now, buddy.\n\n[/i]Andrew had learned much in the course of their game, and his concern about the boy grew with each answer he received. Devlin was his cellmate and jailor. His assailant and accomplice. Did they both deserve to walk free?\n\n[i]Andy? You awake?\n\n[/i]A choice had to be made, and only he could make it.\n\n “Devlin, what will you do…when you leave here?”\n\n[i]Oh, that’s an easy one.\n\n[/i]Andrew doubted that.\n\n[i]I’m pretty hungry, so I’m gonna go meet some people. Y’know…for dinner.\n\n[/i]Devlin giggled like a child kicking their feet off a ledge, looking down on Andrew -- on the world -- from high above. Perhaps he was exactly what claimed to be. A little boy staring down at ants on a hill. \n\nAnd he was going to stomp them all flat.\n\n[i]Truth or dare?\n\n[/i]“T-Truth.”\n\n[i] Does Marcy know you and George dated in high school?[/i]\n\nAndrew’s talons curled against the ground. “I…don’t know.”\n\n[i]Mmmm...I think you do. And I think you know why she won’t climb with you anymore.\n\n[/i]Andrew didn’t bother arguing. Once his cock emerged from its shelter, he repeated his oral service with glassy eyes glazing over. His mind melted as he disassociated from the moment. From everything. His present. His past. His future.\n\nNo more games. No more judgment. No more guilt.\n\nA crackling, like burning coals, filled the space between his ears as though his own brain had caught fire. It grew louder by the second. Thumping, crunching, and churning, until the pressure gave way to flames.\n\nHis head was going to explode.\n\nScarlet pain flashed behind his eyes as the rear of his scalp widened behind the ears, both of which flattened and fused to his head. The crown of Andrew’s skull sloped forward, trading its round shape for crude, angular slants. He swore he could feel fractures breaking open across the bone, splitting up shards that had long since fused in his youth.\n\nWhen the insufferable fire spread down to his jaw, he pulled his penis from his mouth and reverted to using his tongue. The pink muscle, as if on cue, cramped up and elongated -- thinning, tapering, and splitting the end into a jagged fork.\n\nDespicable. Cruel.\n\nEvery added inch of tongue wrapped out his length like a corkscrew, chasing a point of pleasure just out of reach. Warm saliva spilled over quivering lips and splattered onto his abdomen. Translucent trails ran down his length and pooled into a reptilian vent on the verge of overflow.\n\n[i]Man, it’s gonna take forever to clean this place up! Not my problem, though.\n\n[/i]As the sickness of pleasure overwhelmed him, the pressure of a vice slammed down on his cheeks, crushing flesh and bone into an inhuman mold. Blood vessels swelled and popped like overworked well pumps, dousing Andrew’s face in a gross, wet heat. His mandible popped -- [I]CRACK -- [/I]out of its hinges when the joints reshaped.\n\nThe skin of his chin lurched forward while his jaw creaked into position, pulling taut with cheeks sloped down into a triangle. His upper lip followed along with desperate flaring nostrils. Forced almost parallel to his upper jaw, the bridge of his nose collapsed under its own weight and fused into the rest of his skull, locking Andrew’s face into a reptilian pyramid.\n\nHorrible. Monstrous.\n\nAs his snout snapped forward, Andrew felt his nub-like horns lengthening in a backwards arc. Curving, twisting, undulating. Even as the bone bases thickened, peeling back his scalp in their exodus, he could barely feel the stretching of skin. The flesh had already converted to reptilian hide, with more scales on the way. His body was stronger than before. Impossibly so.\n\nThe remaining changes felt miniscule. His brow hair and lashes shed like a winter coat while his lips thinned into non-existence and black diamonds coated the last of his human skin. Irises shifted to coal color while the whites blurred to gold. The pitch darkness of the chamber softened into clearer shades of gray.\n\nTears dribbled down his snout as a final [I]SNAP[/I] locked it into place. The ducts dried up afterward. In near-perfect timing, a seminal missile shot onto his tongue and spread bitterly along the rim of his muzzle. \n\nHis entire body was a temple of sin.\n\nDisgusting.\n\nMuzzle flooded with seed, the beast sprawled out onto his back, twisting his neck and coughing out the miserable fluid. His cock sputtered its last drop before reeling itself back into his vent. Another empty release that left him cold and alone. \n\n“Fuck…I’m…so gross…”\n\n[i]Yeah, but you knew that already, Andy. \n\n[/i]“Is it…it’s over, right?” On instinct, the reptile knew his human body was gone. He was surprised that he could still speak in a human language. Despite the bulging snout attached to his face, his elongated tongue articulated seamlessly against his carnivorous teeth. The widened space in his skull added a bassy timbre to his voice, and his thickened vocal cords dropped him into a lower register, but he otherwise spoke in the same, exhausted manner. \n\nFor better or worse, Andrew still felt like himself.\n\n[i]I said we had to play the game until you could open the door. And now you can. This could all be over in the next round. Truth.\n\n[/i]The reptile sighed, reiterating a question he’d asked so long ago. “How do I open the door…now?”\n\n[i]The stupid seal reacts to heat. More than I can conjure up since I’m, y’know, playing with a handicap. And now that you’re a big, fire-breathing whatever…well, you get the idea.\n\n[/i]Oh…\n\nAndrew [i]did [/i]get it.\n\nPerhaps for the first time.\n\nAnd it left him seething.\n\n“So…you knew the door wouldn’t open unless I lost the game.”\n\n[i]You didn’t lose, yet, but you did keep lying and doing…stuff…and there’s consequences to that. Everything has consequences, Andy.\n\n[/i]“But you knew this would happen! And that’s why you were asking all these stupid --”\n\n[i]Hey, it’s not my fault you have deep dark secrets and a really bad poker face.\n\n[/i]Andrew slammed his fist…wing…whatever into the ground. “You knew what you were doing!”\n\n[i]Yeah, because I’m not a dummy who only thinks with his dick. Sorry.\n\n[/i]“Okay, then I guess I’m too dumb to open the door!” The reptile leaned back on his haunches and slammed his rear down. He tried crossing his wings as if they were still fully apposable, but he could only fold himself up like a hanging bat. The message was clear nonetheless. \n\nHe could feel Devlin festering in the silence.\n\n[i]C’mon, Andy! Just blast the door so we can go home. You’re telling me you never wanted to breathe fire? That sounds super cool!\n\n[/i]“I see what you are now. You’re manipulative. You’re not even human --”\n\n[i]I know you aren’t, but what am I?\n\n[/i]“You’re stuck in here. That’s what.”\n\nA moment passed as the two played silent chicken. \n\nDevlin called his bluff. Andrew held fast.\n\nThe choice was made.\n\n[i]You’re really gonna sit here and “sacrifice yourself” to save the world? \n\n[/i]“If that’s what it takes --”\n\nDevlin laughed. \n\n[i]You think you’re freakin’ Iron Man? Spoilers, sorry, but you’re not the hero, Andy. Not by a long shot.\n\n[/i]“Talk all you want. I know I’m doing the right thing here.”\n\n[i]Uh, the “right thing?” When has that ever been part of your plan?\n\n[/i]Andrew bit his tongue.\n\n[i]It’s weird that you care so much about my history when yours is a dumpster fire. Even if you got out of here without wings and a tail, were you just gonna go home and pretend that everything’s okay? That you didn’t ruin your friends’ lives?\n\n[/i]His wings tightened around his body.\n\n[i]Seriously, did you just get tired of being a third wheel? Or maybe you just hated George for treating you like an experiment at junior prom? \n\n[/i]He closed his eyes.\n\n[i]Remember when he told you he loved you? But, like a brother? Not like how you fantasized. Like the kind of love that would sweep you off your feet and carry you on his back up Jumbo Love Mountain.\n\n[/i]His talons curled against the floor.\n\n[i]The kind that’d get down on one knee for you, Andy, not to some dumb bitch who could barely climb three feet up a boulder -- who looked at him like how you looked at him, but never with the intensity. Never what he deserved.\n\n[/i]He tried to block Devlin out.\n\nBut Andrew knew the truth. “He deserved better…”\n\n[i]Of course, he did. So, you had to break them up.\n\n[/i]“No, I didn’t.”\n\n[i]You didn’t HAVE to do it. But you really, really wanted to! Why else would you kiss him?\n\n[/i]“He wanted me to. I could --”\n\n[i]Then you must be a really bad kisser because you slept alone that night, drunk. Like usual. Kinda sad. No wonder you came up with that big dumb stupid idea afterward. Do you really think she believed what you said? \n\n[/i]“She did! Because she’ll fucking believe anything!” Andrew snarled, his thickened vocal cords poisoning his voice with an unstoppable growl. The roar of a beast.\n\n[i]Alright, now you’re being honest, Andy! Turns out you’re not crazy. And you’re really not that dumb. You’re just selfish. That’s why you’re so easy to play with.\n\n[/i]He couldn’t hold back. “They were going to break up anyway! I saw them after dinner --” \n\n[i]They were fighting, sure. But you couldn’t hear them well. It was loud, and you were drunk again. You knew something was wrong all night because she wouldn’t look at you. But he and all your other friends tried to ignore it.\n\n[/i]He wanted to stop. “I wasn’t --”\n\n[i]You know they weren’t fighting about some made-up girl. They were fighting about you.\n\n[/i]But a cramp in his gut forced the words out like bile. “I told her the truth!”\n\n[i]You told her what you wanted to be true. But like I said…You’re. A. Bad. Liar.\n\n[/i]“No, it was real! What we had was --”\n\n[i]A lie. But all you did was lie, right? You can’t be blamed for the rest of it. He’s the little bitch who stormed off and solo’d a big scary mountain. Weird how he had the guts to do that, but the last time you saw him, he couldn’t even call you out to your face.\n\n[/i]Andrew’s stomach bubbled. “George said we’d talk about things when he got back! We were going to be --”\n\n[i]You’re putting words in his mouth again. Now that takes some balls! More than he had, at least.\n\n[/i]“Fuck off!” His chest burned. “Don’t talk about him!”\n\n[i]It’s true though, isn’t it? George was a coward to the very end. Maybe he climbed that big ol’ rock, thought about you and his family and everything else weighing him down. And then he did what you should’ve done and…y’know…let go? \n\n[/i]“SHUT UP!” Andrew’s roar flourished into physical pressure. A [i]click[/i] like a trigger pulled at the back of his throat.\n\nAll the darkness vanished in the wake of his fire.\n\nA scream of horror and rage intertwined with the rumbling embers that erupted from his maw. His mouth turned red hot, tongue on the verge of burning but now too thick to combust. Andrew’s neck serpentined beyond his control, the force of the flames rocketing his head about like a firework.\n\nAfter bucking down on his heels, or rather, haunches, he managed to shutter his snout and smother the blaze.\n\nBut not before it bathed the door in a violent red.\n\nAndrew raised his head and saw the stone carvings glow orange, as though lava was filling up the gaps of their chiseled faces. An inscription took shape, and the former human now recognized what had been scored there however long ago. Not letters of a lost language. No instructions or demands. But a shape more familiar. The circumscribed points of an inverted star.\n\n[i]I knew you had it in ya, Andy.\n\n[/i]A rattling squeal shook the chamber. The sound of old stone grating against itself. He winced at the creaking ruckus, his sensitive ear holes unprepared for the pitch.\n\nDarkness gave way to a crimson glow. The pale, emerald flames that had once circled the room died out. Hot air flooded the chamber, and Andrew’s fury faded into anxious relief. The game was over. He peered through the growing crack, expecting a dusk sunset on the other side of the door.\n\nThere was no sun. There was only…something.\n\nA twisting. A dark red. A burnt photo on the verge of pixilation. He didn’t have the words for it.\n\nHe continued to stare, his heart pounding harder and heavier in his chest. His wings and tail curled in on themselves. Cowering. His animal instincts told him to run.\n\nHis eyes stung as they bled.\n\n[i]Oh yeah, don’t look right at it.\n\n[/i]“What…what the hell is that?”\n\n[i]I told you. That’s home.\n\n[/i]Andrew’s eyelids clamped shut. “No...that’s not…that’s not [i]anything[/i].”\n\n[i]Hey, it’s not so bad on the other side. You just gotta cross the line to get there. Nothing new for you, right?\n\n[/i]Devlin giggled with his trademark, invisible sneer.\n\n[i]Well, let’s get a move on!\n\n[/i]“No!” Andrew retreated with a quivering jaw. “You said this was the way out!”\n\n[i]This is the way out. We have to go together. Them’s the rules.\n\n[/i]“Fuck off! I’m not going in there!”\n\nThe voice was quiet, calling his bluff once again. He imagined Devlin rolling his eyes and tapping his foot impatiently. Perhaps he’d leave Andrew behind and slink inside on his own, defying the rules as any child would. What did “rules” matter to a demon anyway? \n\nDevlin should leave him to perish. He was content with his fate. Isolation. Starvation. Death. Anything but walking into…that.\n\n[i]Sorry, Andy. I’m not exactly asking here.\n\n[/i]The noise made him bury his head in his wings. A harsh, grating sound blaring from the doorway. It wasn’t something he’d ever heard before. Like creaking floorboards played over static. An iron rake over a chalkboard. Squealing pigs flayed over and over.\n\nHe peered past his wingtips just enough to see the red mist wrinkling like a blanket, its amorphous form twisting into a defined shape. Five branches pushed through, stretching the haze like a tar that wouldn’t tear.\n\nA cold hand. The size of a boulder. Reaching for him. Fast.\n\n“Get away from me!” the beast screeched as he flapped his wings for the first time, relying on instinct alone to get him off the ground. His luck lifted him with ease, and he fluttered away like a desperate moth. \n\nAndrew ascended the tower in bursts, only to find the walls curving inward like a bottleneck. The higher he rose, the tighter the space became. It wasn’t long until he reached the ceiling, a hard flat plate no wider than an umbrella. A seal too tough to break and too small to pass through. With nowhere to turn, he circled the tower like a tornado, searching for the rift he first fell through hours, days, weeks ago. “Gotta find it…where is it?”\n\nEven with predatory vision, he couldn’t spot a single crack in the foundation.\n\nThe hole was gone. If it was ever there at all.\n\nGravity shifted. The wind beneath his wings disappeared, and Andrew crashed down into the side of the glassy wall -- as though the room had rotated ninety degrees on a whim. The tower became a tunnel, and he was trapped at the dead end. \n\nThe hand behind him blinked forward, closing a mile gap immediately.\n\n[i]It’s time to stop running, Andy.\n\n[/i]Five fingers wrapped around his neck as if wrangling a cobra. His nerves screamed from the frigid touch, so cold that it pierced his charcoal scales.[i]\n\n[/i]It pulled.\n\nAndrew roared, all human tone absent from his voice. His rear talons clawed at the frictionless ground, then the hand itself, then his own neck. His wings flapped helplessly. Powerless. Pointless.\n\nIt dragged him back to the door.\n\nIt was pulling him in.\n\nAndrew’s snout pressed into the scarlet mist, and the rest of his body followed.\n\nA final cry filled the tunnel as the door shut behind him.\n\n[center][b]***[/b]\n\n[/center]A warm spring breeze rolled across his face, making his eyebrows twitch. He stepped forward through the sliding glass doors onto the patio. Another step and he heard a wet squish underfoot. Looking down, he found his sneaker crushing a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza. The grease left a stain on the floorboards.\n\nDamn it. He’d just bought these shoes.\n\nWait. That wasn’t true. Andrew didn’t own these shoes anymore. Confusion addled around his mind. He looked up at the backyard stretched out before him. The balloons. The streamers. Not a cloud in the sky.\n\nThe red horror had turned to daylight.\n\nThe scene was familiar. A replay like a dream, but identical and undeniably real. Andrew walked the exact steps he had before, powerless to stop his feet. He wanted to turn back. He wanted to run. He wanted to climb back into the cold stony tower and finally die there.\n\nHe didn’t want to say hello.\n\n“[i]Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies! Ashes, ashes…”[/i]\n\nHis eyes darted to a [i]Midsommar[/i]-lite gathering by the vegetable garden. There stood a young woman, twisting about in a hula hoop as she harmonized with a choir of off-key melodies. A dozen boys and girls circled her, hand-in-hand, like a pack of Great Whites.\n\nMarcy.\n\n“We all fall down!” she laughed as the hoop dropped to her feet along with the swarm of giggling children. “Alright, who’s ready for cake?”\n\nThey all cheered and scrambled back to their feet before rocketing off across the yard. The one in the yellow party hat lagged behind, clinging to the blonde woman’s leg.\n\n“Hi, Andy!” Marcy called out, waving from across the yard. “You better get in line if you want a slice.”\n\nHe forced a small smile and a smaller wave in return.\n\n“Right behind ya, buddy,” said a bassy voice at the back of his head. A ringing followed in his ears. His heart stopped, freezing time even as he stepped aside and let the muscular redhead pass with a wide white box the length of a baseball bat.\n\n“Hey, George.” His words were a whisper. The man didn’t hear them as he pressed on and set the box down at the table of chattering children. The one in the yellow hat sat at the end.\n\n“Can you close the door behind you?” The wife called to him again.\n\nAndrew slid the glass pane shut, stepped onto the grass, and dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans. Good. His flask was still there.\n[i]\nHappy birthday to you!\n\n Happy birthday to you!\n\n[/i]Andrew approached the table and mouthed along halfheartedly. He wouldn’t be heard above the squeakier voices anyway.\n[i]\n Happy birthday, dear Devlin!\n \n Happy birthday to you!\n \n[center][/i]***\n\n[/center]An hour had passed, and the three-foot-long cake was nearly demolished. The black reptile pasted on top was missing most of its limbs.\n\nAndrew opted for whiskey instead.\n\n“Alright, guys,” George said, picking up bushels of wrapping paper before the wind swept them away. The birthday boy had opened an entire table’s worth of boxes and bags. Andrew had contributed neither. “I think we have time for one more game. Dev, what are you feeling?”\n\nThe red-haired child looked up from his new Rubix cube. Like father like son. “Uh…maybe…truth or dare? We haven’t played that in a while, I think.” \n\nMarcy sighed. “Alright, but nothing crazy, guys. I’m still scraping burnt chicken off the back of the stove.”\n\nA round of juvenile laughter and high-fives spread among the party guests. Andrew took another sip from his flask, and the game became a blur.\n\n[center]***\n\n[/center]Around eight o’clock, Andrew found himself sinking into George’s couch, alone in the den, flask in hand. He needed a refill.\n\nWhen he reached the wooden liquor cabinet tucked in the corner, a knock on wood made him stop. He saw George through the reflection of the glass.\n\nThe man leaned on the side of the doorway, his jersey tank top teasing a tuft of his red-orange chest hair. Phoenix Suns #13. A pair of blue gym shorts clung tight to his thick yet firm waist. Hours of climbing continued to stave off his dad bod for the seventh year in a row.\n\nAndrew wished he could say the same -- and he was no father.\n\n“You’re staying the night, right?” The redhead’s voice had a mixture of humor and earnest concern. Thoughtful as always.\n\n“I’ll be fine,” Andrew lied, retrieving two clean glasses and a half-finished bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.\n\n“Well, thanks for coming, buddy. I’m sure Dev will warm up to you soon. At least, I hope.”\n\n“That makes one of us.” \n\nThe larger man blinked. He wasn’t sure how to interpret that. \n\nSilence lingered as Andrew set the glasses onto the coffee table and poured. “Hey, George,” he said as he flopped down on the couch and held up a second scotch. “Truth or dare?”\n\nGeorge chuckled, taking the glass and a seat next to him. “Uh, truth.”\n\n“Devlin’s pretty quiet. You sure he’s yours?”\n\n“God, I hope so. Or else Marcy fulfilled her childhood dream of sleeping with Ron Weasley and didn’t tell me.”\n\n“That damn invisibility cloak,” Andrew laughed before his next long sip. “Your turn.”\n\n“Truth or dare?”\n\n“Truth.”\n\n“Um…do you mind watching Dev for a bit? Next month?”\n\n“That’s not much of a truth question.”\n\n“Well, it’d be for the whole week. Marcy and I are, uh, going to [i]Jumbo Love [/i]for our anniversary[i].”\n\n[/i]Andrew swallowed his heart before it could climb further up his throat. “Wow. Okay.”\n\n“I know we had --”\n\n“No, it’s fine. That’s just a big climb. For her.”\n\n“I don’t think we’ll get very far. It’s more for the sentiment and some photos. But if you’re busy --”\n\n“I’ll babysit. It’s no problem,” he lied. “Truth or dare?”\n\n“Truth.”\n\n“If Marcy didn’t get pregnant, would you be married right now?”\n\n“Um…” George took a drink. Andrew matched him then topped himself off. “I mean, probably by [i]now.[/i] It was sooner than we expected, but I wouldn’t change it, of course.”\n\n“Of course. Your turn again. Truth.”\n\n“Are you…uh…are you doing alright, Andy?” The herculean man shifted closer and set his glass on the table. “I feel like we only see you climbing nowadays. Every time we try to make --”\n\n“It’s just been bad timing,” said the raven-haired liar. “Busy with work, you know how it is.”\n\n“Yeah, I do.”\n\n“Truth or dare? And please pick dare for once in your life.”\n\nThe redhead smirked, a perfectly white canine poking over his plump pink lip. “Okay, fine. Dare.”\n\n“Kiss me.”\n\nGeorge bristled. “Dude, c’mon.”\n\n“I won’t say anything. It’s not even, you know…” He leaned into the nape of George’s neck, planting a kiss before he could react.\n\nHis best friend pulled away. “Andrew, stop!”\n\n“Oh my God, relax. It’s just a game.”\n\n“Is it?”\n\n“Either way, it’s nothing new for us.”\n\n“We talked about this. You’re still…” George rubbed at his eyes. “I will always treasure our time together, but we’re passed that. Well past.”\n\n“[i]Treasure[/i], sure. That’s why I’m not supposed to bring it up.” The drunkard laughed in between swigs. “No, I get it. You had your fun, but now you’re all straightened out. No more D for the Big G.”\n\nGeorge’s voice softened. “Andrew…I’m bi. I’ve never been dishonest about that. Most of all with you.”\n\n“Yeah? So, does Devlin know you suck dick? Does he know about us at all?”\n\n“Of course not, he’s seven! So, I’d appreciate if you didn’t mention him when you’re talking about your sex life.”\n\n“[i]My[/i] sex life? Just mine? You think [i]this [/i]doesn’t matter?”\n\nAndrew thrust his hand down George’s underwear.\n\nThe stiffness he expected came in the form of a hand across his face.\n\nHis scotch glass shattered against the table.\n\nGeorge took the bottle and walked away. “You’re drunk. Sleep it off.” Even now, he was too kind to send his friend to the car wasted.\n\nThe double doors slid shut and the lights dimmed on their own. Andrew fell to his side, sinking into the leather of the couch, the weight of the day crushing him all at once.\n\n[center]***\n\n[/center]His eyes flickered open, nearly blinded by the morning light. Yellow rays twisted with the green of the forest surrounding him. A technicolor overstimulation that worsened his headache.\n\n[i]I hope you learned something today. First time for everything, right? Anyway, thanks for playing! I’ll see you soon.\n\n[/i]The words became a faint echo in his mind.\n\nHe peeled his aching body off the wet grass and looked around. To his right, the mountain ridge towered over him. He wondered if his phone was still sitting on the ledge or shattered on the ground below.\n\nIt didn’t matter. \n\nHe looked left, squinting at the pale yellow dot alone in the empty blue horizon. \n\nAlone. Again.\n\nWith a deep breath, he got on all fours and bowed his head. A deep hiccup thumped in his chest as his stomach shuddered in a quiet sob. Despite the storm behind his eyes, no tears would fall.\n\n“I’m sorry,” Andrew muttered.\n\nHe addressed it to everyone. The woman he widowed. The friend he betrayed. And the boy who would grow up without a father.\n\nAndrew wished he could change the past. Change anything and everything.\n\nBut he couldn’t.\n\nHe could only accept the truth.\n\nWhether karmic, satanic, or divine…\n\nThis was the truth.\n\nThis was his punishment.\n\nThis was justice.\n\n[center][B]THE END[/B][/center]\n",
"writing_bbcode_parsed": "(Warning: This story contains themes of depression, alcoholism, grief, and acts of questionable consent.)