Nat awoke slowly, blissfully rested from his nap and the calm dream. He lay there for a while, on that edge of sleep and wakefulness unaware of a slight tingling that begun to encompass his form.
Slightly more alert now, Nat rolled back and forth, trying to shake the sensation of pins and needles running across his body to no avail. He played it off as the oncoming symptoms of flu he remembered feeling earlier, and tried to fall back asleep. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't ignore the odd tingling enough to return to unconsciousness.
Slowly Nat began to realize that his shirt felt tight around his chest. He assumed it must have been caught under him. But as Nat rolled around he could not get comfortable in the oversized shirt he was wearing. His jeans too seemed to be a bit tighter than he remembered. Even his shoes, which he'd forgotten to remove in his exhaustion, seemed more uncomfortable around his aching feet.
Nat tried to ignore the sensation but as he lay there the irritation became more insistent. The tingling was not just confined to a single area; it seemed as though every inch of his body was affected, from his toes to his scalp. The fever symptoms he had felt from earlier were gone; he could not place the cause of the strange sensations. He thought his sweaty body might be the cause but the sensations kept getting steadily worse.
Suddenly he felt the small bed begin to groan as though his weight had increased.
That is impossible… thought Nat …isn't it?
His bed was cheap, but not that cheap. Nat rolled around, hearing a sudden pop as a bed spring burst from the sudden movement.
Nat got up with a start, eager to examine the damage. His shoed feet hit the floor much harder than he was used to. In shock he noticed his arms looked...bigger. He felt his forearms; they were hard, firm, the growth most certainly muscle. He rubbed himself all over, feeling the firmness of new muscle bugling against his touch, pushing against the fabric of his once loose-fitting wardrobe.
Nat quickly made his way to the adjoining room to take a long look at himself in the bathroom mirror. Gone was the familiar image of the skinny young man that had greeted him every morning for as long as he could recall. In its place were the beginnings of the muscular visage he had so often fantasized about.
Nat had seemingly put on several pounds of muscle in the past twenty minutes. He looked as though he had spent several months hitting the gym, regulating his diet, and pumping iron. Yet he was sure the image staring back at him could not have originated from his lanky frame, no matter how much effort he put into it. His shirt, much too small for the frame he now sported, had begun to ride uncomfortably up his chest, revealing a muscled toned stomach, the beginnings of a six-pack evident in his stretching skin.
Nat’s mind played back to earlier that day, when he'd made the wish. He hadn’t really expected it to come true.
There is no way this could be the result of a few misplaced thoughts in front of a fountain, thought Nat.
Yet Nat could not deny the changes he had just witnessed with his own eyes.
Nat’s thoughts were interrupted as…