Jeff, Jack and Eric just continued to stare at Tony, stooping over to get his head out the doorway.
"Well? Did you come here to call me and Mark freaks again, Jeff?"
"What?"
"Like you did yesterday?"
Jeff just shook his head. Someone had gotten Tony, too, and just like Mark, he had a newly created lifetime of memories of being an embarassing freak.
Jack took the lead knowing Tony trusted him. "Tony. We're your friends. All of us. Please let us in. Let's go up to your room and talk about something. How 'bout it"
Tony nodded to Jack and opened the door. Jeff and Eric followed Jack inside. Jack could see Mark in the kitchen eating a piece of cake, frosting ringing his mouth. Jack tried not to look shocked but could barely control his reactions seeing how stupendously fat reed thin Mark had become. He turned to Tony.
"Tony. This concerns Mark, too. Could you have him come upstairs, too"
"Anything to get him away from the food!" seconded Tony's mother in a near shriek from the living room. "Between his affect on the food budget and his older brother's need for new clothes every month, their killing me!"
"I haven't grown to a new size in a month!" Tony grumbled under his breath as he waved for Tony to follow him upstairs. He led the others up to his room. By the time they got there, Tony was stretched out on his bed, his head on his pillow and his elongated body stretching past the end of his bed such that his knees were just off the bed and his shins extended vertically downward so that his size 17 sneakers were flat on the floor.
Jeff, Jack and Eric trooped in and all sat on the edge of Tony's desk. Mark eventually waddled in and sat on the bed near Tony's knees.
"Do you know what this is?" asked Jeff holding up the Chronivac programmed laptop.
"I've, uh, I've seen a laptop computer before Jeff, yes"
"No. Do you know what's on MY laptop?"
Tony shook his head.
"Well, you used to know. And you used to look like this." Jeff turned it on and went to the Chronivac program. With just a few clicks, he was able to show Tony's picture from his registered profile on the entire screen. Jeff was waiting for an argument but Tony started blinking and gazing off to the side and then mumbling to himself. The sight of his normal body seemed to have cracked the facade of his new memories.
"Oh my god! It's true. I'm not supposed to look like this"
"You didn't" said Jack "Not as late as 2:30 this afternoon."
Tony sat up and edged to the end of the bed. "Oh my god. Now I remember! I was walking Mark home and a bus went by and I felt this tingle up my back. It wasn't quite like the electric wave I get from the . . chronivac and I started to stretch my hundred sixty seven pounds out to become . . this" he said gesturing to his new body.
"Hey, what about Mark?"
"Yeah, was I" Mark couldn't even bring himself to say the word 'thin', " . . like that, too?"
Jeff switched the display to the rotating chronivac picture of nude 5'8" 118 pound Mark. Elephantine Mark gasped. Just like Tony, the sight of his normal body triggered a chain reaction of memories till all his recollections flooded forth.
"So, what happened to us?" asked Tony
"We don't know yet" said Jeff. "Here, look at the records of my machine. You were zapped around 2:45. My machine was home in its hiding place at the time."
"I-I think I was zapped as I was leaving ballet class the night before" said Mark. "I still remember being 118 pounds showering and changing to my regular clothes. I remember kind of fending off the older boy who wants" he looked at his corpulent corpus "wanted to get into my pants. Then I remember telling the teacher I wouldn't need a ride. I was still slender then. Then I stepped outside and-and after that, I remember starting to waddle home"
Jeff scrolled down the page. "Nah . . nah . . nope. Here it is" he said pointing to the screen. "The machine was on from 4:30 to 6:09 and then not till the next morning. It couldn't have been me or anyone using this machine."
"Alright, look, I'm not making an accusation, but couldn't somebody have zapped us and set the transformation for a sort of time delay start?"
Jeff puzzled at how to rule that out but realized he couldn't. Then he thought of another angle. "Let's call TransDem labs" he suggested. "They might have records of the use of the chronivac"
Jeff dialed up the 888 number and held the phone's receiver away from his ear so everyone could hear the woman on the line tell him that ". . the last time your unit was used was six days ago when you, Eric Powers, Jack Sullivan, Tony St. Martin and Mark St. Martin changed into wolves and then back to your registered profiles a day later". Jeff thanked her and hung up the line.
"Okay, I apologize to you guys" said Tony. "But it still leaves the question open of who turned us into freaks like this" he gestured to himself and Mark. "But whoever did it, how about changing us back?"
"Oh please!" added Mark.
"I don't think that's a good idea" said Jeff
"Me, neither" said Jack. "Whoever did this to you thinks they've taken care of you. If you show up as your studly selves, they might make sure they take care of you and turn you into a bug or something"
"I've gotta stay like this?!" Tony and then Mark, too, grumbled a hoard of expletives.
"Just give it a few days, guys" Jeff pleaded. "If there's really someone else out there with another chronivac, we've got to figure it out and stop them before they do some real harm."
Tony and Mark knew that Jeff was right but they still couldn't help but pant at the excruciating situation. Jeff scanned their new bodies to make sure there were no imminent problems and didn't find any. Both had had every measure of health and athletic ability reduced from the 99th percentile to the 25th percentile in addition to suffering the transformation into their new shapes.
Suddenly a thought ocurred to Tony. Wait a minute! Claire's coming over. He pleaded with Jeff to turn him back to his former self but Jack had a good retort. "If she's coming over, dude, she's coming over to see you stretched out the way you are now. She agreed to come over and spend time with you the way you look now. Why don't you see how it goes"
Tony agreed and considered it more after Jeff, Jack and Eric had left and Mark had gone down to the kitchen. Claire was willing to spend time with me the way I look now! The way I look now!? Tony had had his disappointments with girls before Claire who seemed to want to be seen with gorgeous Tony but didn't really care too much about Tony himself. He always thought Claire was different but this proved it.
When the doorbell rang, Tony ran down the stairs as fast as he could with his overstretched, weak body. He nearly tripped but caught himself on the railing. "I got it!" he shouted just before he opened the door.
"Hi" he smiled, stooping to get his head as low as the doorway opening.
"Hi" she grinned back. Tony took her hand and was going to take her straight upstairs to her room but heard shouts from the living room. Ugh. Reluctantly, he led Claire into the living room and introduced her to his parents and sister.
"What a pretty girl to be going out with a giraffe like Tony" his father chuckled to his mother and everyone else in the room.
"Oh, don't be silly. She's just getting Tony to tutor her, right?"
"No that's not right" said Claire. "This is a purely social occasion. I'm here to see Tony"
"Really? Why?" Mrs. St. Martin laughed and kept on laughing.
Claire looked up at Tony, stooped just to be in the room and she felt tremendous sympathy for him not because this outrageous talk seemed to hurt him but because he seemed inured to it as though he heard it untold times before.
"Tony has a lot of exceptional qualities that any smart girl would appreciate" she said, and to Tony's amazement, lightly rubbed the flat seat of his pants.
"Let's see" giggled Cindy from the couch "He's exceptionally uncoordinated. He's exceptionally homely. He's exceptionally . . " she couldn't control her own laughter. Without a word, Tony led Claire out of the living room and upstairs to his room. As soon as they were inside, he bent over and kissed her. "Thanks for defending me"
"Well, why don't you defend yourself?" she asked as Tony took to sitting on the edge of the desk with his legs stretched out toward the bed. This position left him only a little bit taller than her.
"I save my efforts for defending Mark. They can't hurt me at this point"
Clair let out a long sigh.
"What?"
"Nothing" she smiled and stepped closer and wrapped her arms around him. "Let's forget about them. You were going to tell me about a book the other day. Go ahead"
Tony frantically searched his recollection of fictitious Too Tall Tony memories.
"Oh, A Simple Heart, by Flaubert. One of the most beautiful pieces of writing I've ever read. It's not very long, only about a hundred pages. You were looking for exceptional short books and I was going to suggest that one"
"I just love that you know those things" sighed Claire. "That you care about beautiful things that aren't popular, that aren't in the news right now. I love how strongly you felt about Brave New World"
Tony sighed. "That book is so beautiful and so sad. To see the whole world arrayed against honor and any difficult appreciation of beauty, the way Huxley writes it. That's the saddest thing imaginable, people all so much less than what they could be"
His eyes looked a little glassy as he finished recalling it and Claire hugged his slender torso with all her might seeing him. Tony kissed the top of her forehead and was kissing her there again as he felt her hands go down the loose waist of his pants. She looked up at him and smiled. He held her back so that he could kiss her on the mouth and continued to do so, unconscious of all that both of them were doing, groping and feeling until he felt her small hand around the shaft of his penis. He gasped then immediately started unbuttoning her blouse. What a wonderful girl! What a wonderful girl! He motioned for her to back up and remove her hands from his pants so that he could remove her blouse. He did and unclasped and removed her bra as well. She insisted on pulling off his t-shirt, in fairness, and then, with laughable ease, yanked his loose pants and boxer briefs down to his ankles. Tony had a split second of worry, not sure what his new penis would look like. He was half erect and already 12 inches long but only about an inch thick. He chuckled inwardly. About the penis I should have, with this body.
He put on the radio fairly loud and quickly went about removing his sneakers, socks, pants and boxers while she took off the last of her clothing as well. Tony kissed her and they fell onto his bed. He kissed, caressed and licked her, not foreplay as a duty but as purely joyful affection for her. He could tell she loved it. And while licking her breasts, he realized that another part of him was outrageously stretched. His tongue. When he got to her pussy, Tony was able to extend his tongue inside her and lick her clit while still maintaining eye contact with her. He brought Claire to what seemed the edge of orgasm. She was squeezing his spindly shoulders with all her might and panting increasingly fast. He slowed and then kissed her small round breasts some more, alternately licking and exhaling warm breath on them to let her feel the pleasant cooling of evaporation. After a bit of that, Tony went back to her pussy and licked her clit harder than before. Claire squeezed his weak shoulders. She didn't want to moan or cry out and completely give them away. Tony pushed the side of his hand between her teeth while starting to lick faster and Claire bit hard until finally having her orgasm and letting his hand fall out of her mouth as ecstatic exhales slowed.
They sat up on the bed kissing. Tony held her close to him at least until she felt his nearly fully erect penis pushing up between them. She leaned back and chuckled looking at it. It was nearly 18 inches long but still only 1 inch thick.
"It's such a perfect expression of you!"
While Tony laughed, she reached down to the pile of her things and produced a condom. She tore it from its package and gleefully rolled it onto the last third of Tony. He advanced toward her, kissing her and dropping her back onto the bed. With his knees on either side of her feet, Tony thrust forward and into her. Claire gasped at first and Tony worried that he'd pushed too far but she rubbed his shoulders affectionately and he knew it was right. Over and over and over he thrust, losing complete track of anything else until he noticed that she seemed to really love it when he rubbed a certiain area deep within her on the front side of her vagina. He made sure to thrust there, to the degree that he could as he was losing control of himself, nearing orgasm but as he came, Claire was pretty worked up as well.
She left an hour later, after much more kissing, some more intellectual talk and some eyepopping fellatio.
Tony went to school the next day about as at ease with his temporary body as he could be. But school was nearly as bad as the evening with Claire had been good. In the hallway before homeroom, Tony stopped amid a throng of freshmen when traffic pushed on, Tony fell flat on his face. Any of a dozen laughing freshmen had tied his shoelaces together. Then, the first class of the day turned out to be phys. ed. Tony didn't think too much of that. He changed into a t-shirt, shorts and a supporter and ignored kids making fun of his body. He ambled over to the storage closet and picked up a smallish baseball glove. He wrapped his hand around the outside of it. His hand was bigger than the glove. He saw a swim fin on the floor of the closet and stepped next to it with his 17 EEEE's. His foot was nearly as big as the swim fin. He was jolted out of his daydreaming by the news that they'd be wrestling that day.
Oh no. Tony would be matched against guys who weighed within 10 pounds of his 167. There were three different guys around 175, in terrific shape, who were on the wrestling team. They had bullied Tony pretty badly freshman year. When he became his model/athlete self, Tony had given it back to them. "This is going to suck" Tony mumbled to himself. I'm so weak and my long limbs give me zero leverage against someone in close.
Tony was right. When the gym teach called his name, he also called out "Trosky". Tony's spirits dipped. Steve Trosky made all districts for a lower weight class the year before. The match started and Trosky immediately ran rings around Tony, almost literally. He pushed Tony around at will, throwing his spindly body over one hip then the other. He finished with a quick move out of a standing grappling position that enabled him to lift Tony off the ground. He body slammed Tony to the mat and then pinned him. It was all Tony could do to get off the mat before the next pair. The next match was even worse for Tony. His opponent wasn't as good as Trosky, but Tony was still hurting. This guy had a signature move that Tony just couldn't stop. He would grab Tony about the head, neck and under one arm and throw Tony pretty much anywhere he wanted to. Tony tried to avoid it as they grappled, but the other wrestler was so much faster and stronger than Tony that he could have done just about anything. The thing was, he could have pinned Tony quickly but seemed to want to inflict pain on him. He threw Tony to the mat 9 times before falling on him and ending it. The other boys, except for Jack, laughed heartily at Tony's humiliation. But the last match was worst of all. Tony was already bruised all over. Tommy Peskovitch was even better than Trosky. Tony tried to get things to a grappling stalemate but couldn't. Peskovitch threw him down a few times before the worst of it. He had brought Tony's two ultra slender wrists together and clasped them in the iron grip of one hand. Next, he pulled Tony's arms downward. Tony resisted to no avail, but couldn't see what Peskovitch was getting at till he brought a stumbling Tony's wrists almost against his ankles. "Aha!" he shouted as he gathered Tony's wrists and ankles together into one clump. Tony was immobilized as if hogtied. But it became worse still. Peskovitch stood up and, like competing in the hammerthrow, whiled in a circle while grasping Tony with two hands. Faster and faster he spun, the boys hooting and hollering at his maneuver, till finally he threw Tony well off the mat, causing Tony to land with all his weight on his almost non-existent buttocks. Tony groaned and rolled over wondering if he'd broken something. He could barely make his way to the showers where only the sight of his incredibly long penis dulled the laughter and riffs at his expense. His classes for the rest of the day were a painful affair. The desks were uncomfortable for someone his height, to begin with, but he could barely stand to sit his badly bruised ass on the hard classroom seats.
It was because he was so bruised that he asked Jack to run ahead of him to meet Mark at the junior high to protect Mark. Jack readily agreed and ran to the junior high. Like Tony, he met Mark outside the doors and promised Mark that he would be out of this before long. Mark nodded happily. A sea of kids rushed past them. Jack looked at all the faces, goth kids, jocks, preppies, grade grubbers, all sorts. Nobody jumped out as somehow hating Mark, at least not more than all the others calling him "fatty" and "lardass".
Jack walked with Mark down one street, with buzzes whizzing by every few seconds before they turned onto another one. Jack felt an odd tingle up his spine and then he felt nothing. Literally nothing. He seemed to be floating in mid-air as if on a throne or something. Then, the muscles of his body just withered and Jack's snug clothes billowed loosely about him. 5'11" tall Jack no longer weighed 161 pounds. He weighed 111 pounds now. His limbs looked as ridiculously thin as Tony's. Only Jack didn't grow. He just remained their in his seated position as gradually, not a throne but a quadriplegic's wheelchair formed in the air beneath him. Jack blew into his control and made his chair turn hard toward fat Mark. Then he ran into something. It was a gawking, gawky Tony, whose mouth nearly hit ground.