Walking up from the buses, several minutes ago...
"I can't believe you're not freaking out," Eric said to his mom. "I'm freaking out," the panther tail swayed behind him, the very tip of it flicking back and forth in agitation. His mom seemed blasé about the whole thing even while she herself hadn't yet been transformed. In truth, she hadn't even stated an animal.
Ms. Olive Suterland shrugged. "Maybe you'll end up with super-powers, hun," she offered to her son as they moved up the walkway in the heavy rain. "What's that feline-based hero that hangs out with Peter Parker?"
"T'Challa is black, mom."
"No, no. The burglar. Felicia Hardy?"
"The black cat? Her powers are all luck-based—bad luck-based—and she's a woman besides."
"And what's wrong with that?" She smirked, putting her hands on her hips as she walked along with him.
"Women aren't allowed to play football," Eric sighed, and it was a strange hangup for Eric as he badly wanted to play professional football. He was more attached to the sport than the issue of gender. And, unfortunately, neither Eric nor his mom had ever heard of a national women's football league even though there have been several.
Eric's duffle bag was currently slung over his shoulder, but as he came to a stop, he dropped it with with other football player's things in a pile just inside the front doors. Catching sight of some of the other players, he looked back to his mom.
"I gotta get cleaned up, OK?" the black-haired young man in the supposedly black shirt said as he turned away from his mom. Then he looked back, and tapped his lips as he said: "Remember... say'n da animals." She nodded to him, watching as he interacted with his friends Ahmed, Matthew, Francis, and Lukas as they looked over the map of the cabin in the woods that was there on the lobby wall.
Ms. Suterland smiled and moved away, leaving her son to clean the caked-on sticky cum that plastered the front of his body. She hadn't asked him the details, as it would just make him uncomfortable. She suspected more than he did that he might, in fact, be trans. More importantly, his sexuality didn't matter to her. She was a mother that just wanted her child to be happy...
Eric's father, Jack, had died when he was very young, but she always made sure there were positive influences in his life be they male or not. A number of men had come along, but they had always ended up being a bad fit. In truth, Ms. Suterland considered herself a terrible judge of men and had occasionally entertained the idea of a woman in her life.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Coach Banks speaking with Matthew and Ahmed. The sound of Eric's voice carrying over from the old metal elevator could be heard as he called out "Carolina Panthers!" for some reason. She smiled.
When Eric was only a few years old and the family was set to move, they had all the pamphlets for schools and homes scattered over the table for the places in Montana where they might consider living. Jack had Eric sitting on his lap, and asked the five-year-old which place he liked... and the little boy had pointed at the school with the black, blue, and silver wolf painted across the End Zone of the football stadium. "Papa's Team!" he had said, which had sold Jack. The logos of them and his favorite NFL team were almost identical back then. As a result, Eric had been the coin toss on which home the family would pick as Washington was just a viable as the other locations.
Making her way across the lobby, Olive moved to take up a seat near the windows opposite the main entrance, still reminiscing about old times. Had it not been for Eric and Jack's selection, she may never have ended up at Glacial Missoula Zoo and now working with Mrs. McCormick. They had known each other for many years, and were the reason the McCormicks too had moved to the area from afar relatively recently.
"Have you seen Parker?" Mr. Eddington inquired, looking down at Ms. Suterland as she sat in the comfy black leather seat. "I think I grabbed his bag again... this is all looks like his stuff," he explained as he pulled the ties on the old army duffle bag to show its top-most contents. Inside was an old football jersey that Graham sometimes wore in the stands. The bag itself was generic enough, a cylindrical bag of faded green U.S. Army colors that it could have likely been owned by anyone who served.
"I have not," Olive shook her head, her long black hair swaying side to side as she did. "In fact, I believe Mr. Parker walked off into the woods shortly after we all got off the bus."
Mr. Eddington glanced back towards the main doors to see that it had stopped raining. As he did so, he witnessed Emily Clark approached Coach Banks, explaining how they were going to use the guestbook to track everyone's animals and leave record for the future. A moment later, Eddington's eyes shifted to witness the double-doors close behind James d'Aragon on his way out.
Looking to the woman next to Olive, Mrs. Garcia, Oswald Eddington—Ossie to those he was was familiar—smiled behind that black beard he had. "Annalucia," he said, though her eyes were off somewhere else, looking at a painting of a wolf on the nearby wall. She turned to face him. "Did you see Parker head off into the woods?"
She nodded. "Yes, Mr. Eddington, I did," she offered. "Him, Monique, Clara, Gary, and Shelta Corcoran's girl, Mina, all headed clockwise through the woods starting from the parking lot," she said. "Seemed like they were looking for mountain trails. A poor idea at night, I'd think, but Graham wouldn't let anything happen to those kids." Mr. Eddington nodded, knowing the the man well enough.
Ms. Suterland shrugged. "My son said Officer Dowd went into the woods straight and came out some other way," she offered as knowledge that wasn't exactly common yet. "The way the road vanished behind us, that would seem to align."
"Right," Ossie nodded. "Pac-Man." Ms. Suterland smiled and nodded. "Off one side of the screen, back on from the opposite." At that moment, Seamus and Heather McCormick set off through the somewhat rusted glass door next to Mr. Eddington, each giving a nod to Ms. Suterland who was a friend of their mother.
"Wonder where those 'delinquents' are going?" Mrs. Garcia spoke, though she didn't mean the McCormicks. She was nodding towards the front door as she worked her crochet. Her son, Raúl, lay across the couch next to her, asleep, with his phone flat on his face from where it had fallen out of his hands a few moments earlier. "Least that's what Mrs. Ann'd say, yeah?"
Mr. Eddington turned around to look back towards the main entrance, seeing Nate, Marcus, Shonda, Janice, and Gloria all ducking out, with Marcus actively looking over her shoulder. Oswald had snuck out of class enough times in his life to know what a smoke-run looked like. Turning back to Mrs. Garcia, Ossie just shook his head. "Being that only one of those yutes is definitively white, I believe 'thugs' would be more Mrs. Ann's flavor," he grumbled. "If you'll excuse me, I'll be chaperoning."
With that, the man turned on his heel, bag still over his shoulder, and walked towards the front door. On his way, he saw Mr. Katz scratching his head as the door finished shutting in front of him. "I see you, Uri," said Oswald, putting two fingers up to his eyes and then twisting them to point at the other man, then his own, then Uri again.
"Pardon?" the smaller man blinked. He a black, blue, and silver kippah atop his head and looked a little intimidated by Oswald suddenly talking to him. His eyes glanced over to Jorge and Lyall at the front desk as if maybe they had seen him do something wrong he hadn't realized. Seeing them handing keys out to people without looking over towards him, he simply looked back to Mr. Eddington confused.
"I know a smoke-cut when I see one, don't you?"
"I wasn't thinking about—" the light-skinned man began, looking over the other. Mr. Katz had been staring out towards the parking lot where Zelda and her friends were. He was thinking about how he'd said 'moth' and wondering if that counted. The darker-skinned man just shook his head as he pulled up the black hood from beneath the red and black of his flannel jacket. "I'll come with," Uri said as he zipped up his winter jacket and stepped outside with Oswald. "Just in case."
Mr. Eddington stepped outside and looked around. He spotted Christopher trying to get into a car in the parking lot with Zelda, James, and Andrew all standing nearby. Not expecting to see a—in his mind—real crime being committed, he just about turned and headed down the walk towards all the white kids. But before he did so, Uri got his attention with the phase: "I smell burning leaves."
Taking a sniff of the air, Ossie turned his green-brown eyes to look towards Mr. Katz as he walked the stone path that lead towards some picnic tables that neither recalled seeing on their way in. The path lead forward and around the edge of the log cabin-style hotel and towards windows that were blocked by high bushes.
Placing one hand on Uri's shoulder, Oswald put a finger up towards his lips to indicate he wanted quiet. His shoes ended up in the wet grass, rather than atop the stones, quieting his footsteps. Mr. Katz followed suit and kept silent.
As they approached the corner of the building, the two chaperones could smell the scent of heavy pine, rosemary, and something else. Frowning, Mr. Eddington readied himself for the confrontation, stepping around from the corner and directly in front of Nate who was flicking his lighter upon the medium-sized, white-wrapped joint that was somewhat loosely hanging from his lips.
"Shit," the young man said, dropping his hands before his paper lit. Mr. Eddington reached forward and quickly snapped the doobie out of Nate's mouth, limping starting a defense with: "Mr. Eddington, I..."
"I may not be your father, but I might beat your ass," he said, stepping up to the youth. His hands reached forward and patted down the sides of Nate's windbreaker. Putting his hands at his pockets, he was satisfied the weed did not originate from Nate. "Get inside," Oswald commanded.
As Nate nodded his head slightly, he moved passed the two chaperones and towards the front doors. Mr. Eddington gave a moment's glance to confirm that Nate did not yet have a tail, unaware that they boy's curse was indeed locked in from joining in the Washington Wolves cheer on the bus an hour ago. With Eddie's direction and James opening the door, those at the front of the bus had managed to escape then then in-progress orgy.
Mr. Katz, for his part, was already stepping past the Nate and towards Marcus. "Where's the bag?" asked the smaller, Jewish man of the cornerback. The young black man wore the number forty-two jersey, a number he'd picked deliberately because he was a nerd. Marcus was of a sizable stature, with calve muscles that bulged the inside of his football pants. He was also going to be a sheep later.
"It's not mine," Marcus insisted putting his meaty hands up in front of his face, a joint almost dangling from his lips. Mr. Eddington looked like he may have played varsity in his youth, but in actuality had served in the Gulf War. He stepped up to Marcus. Snatching the spliff from his mouth, he then gave him a pat-down just as he had Nate.
Mr. Kats looked to Gloria, the next non-white student of the bunch: "You?"
In Uri's defense, four of the five students present were owners of higher than average melanin. But, he suspected that Janice's puffy jacket indicated the true culprit. Oswald then stepped up to her and met her eyes. "What?" she asked him, a single sweat-drop rolling down from her brow. If it hadn't been for the office light's glowing from behind the bushes, he might not have caught it.
Mr. Eddington smirked. He answered Janice while talking in Mr. Katz's direction: "White kids and black kids use weed at the same rates, but blacks aren't let off easy... they also serve more time for it."
Janice rolled her eyes. "Cha, I know that," she groaned. "That's why I'm always the one holding it. Whose gunna pinch the blonde-haired, blue-eyed valley girl for tha weed?" she asked the taller man with the thick beard. "Even Dowd let me go, twice, and told me not to do it again." She grumbled. "Honestly, I think he just thinks I was two-different dumb white girls each time."
"I don't think you're dumb," Oswald admitted. "And, personally, thank you for using your white privilege to help your friends." Janice smiled, her eyes glancing at Gloria and Shonda as Mr. Katz politely and perhaps poorly pat them down. Those blue eyes turning back to Mr. Eddington, her face became a frown when those green-brown eyes stayed fixed on her. "But give me the bag," he said, one hand out to her.
She huffed. Did she mean what she had said, or did she know it was a usable excuse as a white girl in her position. Whatever the truth, Janice reached up under the back of her Stanford gray hoodie and produced a bag big enough to get her jail time as an eighteen-year-old.
Mr. Eddington held up the bag as Shonda and Gloria moved away. He whistled through his teeth, admiring the zip-lock bag with the dark green plant. "Sh—oot, girl. You're looking at a $500 fine and a max of five years in prison." Holding the back out to the side, he offered it to Mr. Katz who did not take it. Oswald met her blue eyes: "My life got upended when my dad got put away for this—" he shook the bag, "—and was murdered in prison."
"I... I'm sorry, I..." Janice's eyes were wide, he hands going up to he head. "Please, sir... When Jessica goes off to college, I'm supposed to be [flyer] next year for varsity. Sneaking the stuff was one thing, but when we thought we got stuck here, I thought for sure us getting caught with it was prolly gunna happen."
Oswald sighed. "You could have gone down and dumped it in the lake rather than coming out front to smoke," Eddington pointed out, nonchalantly giving advice.
Janice was crying. "You're right. You're right!" she agreed, putting her hands over her face, the sobbing commencing. "That's what... that's what... that's what Ma— that's... someone said that," she admitted, keeping from saying Marcus' name fully. "I should have listened."
Uri Kats, who still hadn't taken the bag from Ossie, stepped over. He reached out to pat Janice on the shoulder, but Mr. Eddington shook his head at the smaller man, whose hand stopped moving. The darker-skinned man directed his voice at Janice:
"OK. Stop," he said, but still she sobbed. "I've heard your story before on Zelda's vlog," Eddington explained. "Officer Nannery also let you go, a day before he shot Curtis in the bleachers," he added with a tone that came off like it could have happened just days ago rather than years. "I know you've been caught with this sh—tuff, like, seven times Mrs. Letterman." He leaned forward just a little. "I also know you're in line for an Acting Scholarship," he added softly. "You're very good."
The tears stopped, and she swallowed hard. "Thank you?" she asked, her eyes meeting his.
"No thanks needed. You're grandmother wouldn't believe me if I told her anyway... and Dowd would probably let you off with a warning, again," he said. "So you're biggest concern is going to be keeping the opinions of your fellow students up," he offered, still holding the bag. "If we can't call the school, then we can't let anyone know... and Mrs. Ann, yer granny, well... you'd get a stern talking to at best and then you'd probably ignore her."
"We at an impasse?" Janice inquired.
"Let's make deal," offered Mr. Eddington. Mr. Katz blinked and looked like he wanted to object, but he said nothing.
"OK?" she probed, tentatively.
"Going forward, you never rat out Marcus, Nate, or Malcom to Coach Banks," Mr. Eddington said, not thinking about speaking an animal name as, without a tail, he'd all but forgotten. Also, he was destined to be a cockroach anyway, so... rat didn't apply.
Janice blinked. "Who's Malcom?"
"Malcom, my son, should be on varsity football next year while you're flyer," he revealed. "Though if you see him do so, you tell me," Oswald added and Janice nodded. "And as part of this deal, I will not fink to Head Cheer about you or your fellow cheerleader's actions tonight."
Janice considered the offer, while Mr. Katz just watched the interaction. "One night of silence for untold night's of silence? Is that fair?"
"Oh," Mr. Eddington considered, putting a hand onto his chest. "I see. You'd rather risk the $500 fine and five years max for you and your friends than help me keep the armed, student-suplexing cop from knowing illegal activities were happening on a school trip that could end up scandalized by those same activities?" He huffed. "Nate and Marcus aren't my boys, Mrs. Letterman. If it were Malcom, maybe I'd fight harder. But this is your deal, take it or leave it."
Janice nodded. "Report to you about Nate, Marcus, and Malcom... silence about them and the other cheerleaders?" She wiped the tears from her eyes and held out her hand. "Deal."
Mr. Eddington reached out and shook her hand, then he looked to Mr. Katz who he was making an accomplice. It was only at that moment that Uri realized what his standing by and letting things happen had resulted in. He had the power to stop this and tell everything to the authorities, but instead he put a hand out to Janice and shook as well. "Deal," he said, and Mr. Eddington turned his eyes to Janice and replied the same.
"Now. Get inside," he commanded, louder than the tone he'd just been using. She took off, completely unaware that remarking about being a 'flyer' was, for anyone keeping track, not just the name of a cheerleader position but also another name for a female kangaroo. "Would you please take this," Ossie added, glancing to Mr. Katz.
"I don't want it."
"Yeah, I get that," Mr. Eddington said he saw Ms. Suterland approaching, passing Janice. "But I don't want Barney Fife finding it on me in the next little while and overreacting." He looked to Olive, then back to Mr. Katz. "All that shit that valley girl said about white privilege is true wether she meant it or not... and you're very white," added the black man with a smirk. "Perhaps even the whitest."
"That's a lot of weed," Ms. Sutterland confirmed, stepping up to the two men. "Serious trouble, or...?"
"Made a deal, apparently," Dr. Katz grumbled, finally taking the bag from Mr. Eddington.
Mr. Suterland smirked. "I used to be his dealer," she offered, grinning. "Right, Ossie?"
Oswald smiled behind that thick black beard of his. "Until you went sober," he said, reaching into his pocket and producing one of the joints he'd taken to her. "Which I get. When your kid is old enough to know what that special little plant is you growin', it's the responsible thing to do."
Mr. Katz's jaw dropped. His head shifted as his eyes went back and forth between the two of them so fast the kippah atop his head looked like it might fall off. He pushed the bag of weed into the tan carry bag at his side. "Hypocrites the lot of you," he grumbled, but he wasn't that serious. Mr. Eddington smiled and offered him a joint. "Are you serious?"
"Uri... you're already a co-conspirator," Oswald smirked. "Besides... did you know 'the Jewish population of America is over-representative among the recreational cannabis using population'?" Mr. Katz blinked, taking the spliff from the larger man. "Suterland and I were among several parents in Washington who canvassed to legalized marijuana in the state which, I should note, it will be in—" he glanced at his smart watch, —"eighteen days."
Mr. Katz patted his bag flat. "Is this amount really enough for a $500 fine and jail?" he asked.
Ms. Suterland pulled a lighter out of her pocket, she lit her own stick. She almost laughed it out of her face, though, when Uri asked the question. "No, Mr. Katz. And trust me, Mr. Eddington knows that. But the kids? They just know they're not supposed to have any, so when you lay down the law, it doesn't mater if you exaggerate... ninety-five percent have no idea how much real trouble they're in."
Mr. Eddington lit his joint as Uri put his hands on his hips. "If it's so not a big deal, then why even stop the kids?"
"Human minds keep developing until early twenties," the former dealer explained as the three of them ended up situated around one of the picnic tables. She turned her head to look up into the night's sky. "Morally, I've no issue with young adults using... but medically, there might be something to the dangers with developing adolescent minds, but, ya know... being a schedule one means you're not even readily allowed to do scientific research on it... so until the feds get their act together, we just won't know..."
"Also, there's the legal issue," Mr. Eddington added. "States have and are legalizing, federal hasn't. Juvee or jail for drug use is fucked up, Uri. I've lost my dad, two brothers..."
"And Curtis," Mr. Katz said. Olive shook her head. "Not Curtis?"
The woman in her forties explained: "Zelda proved pretty definitively Nannery planted that weed on Curtis. Beyond a reasonable doubt as far as I'm concerned."
"I never smelled it on him once from over the fence," Oswald confirmed. "It's not one hundo, but... who are you going to believe? An activist wanna-be journalist in high school or the cop who killed a kid for having drugs, supposedly." He shrugged. "To me, her story makes more sense with what I know of the people involved."
Mr. Katz too a long drag of his joint. "I guess you're right..." he trailed off. His eyes catching that Ms. Suterland had started to wander down the hill into the clearing, her head looking up at the parting green clouds of the sky. "Something wrong?" She didn't realize he was talking to her, so he repeated. "Ms. Suterland... something wrong?"
She glanced back up the hill, then back up at the sky. "Do those stars look right to you?" she asked, pointing up to a clearing in the dark green clouds above.
Mr. Katz took a few steps forward, his head tilting to look up. There was no chance Uri knew any stars in the sky, but that's not what he was seeing. "What's all that pink and blue?" he asked.
Blinking, Ossie turned his head upwards for the first time. "That's the galaxy that's gunna collide with ours... but shit if that isn't clear," he remarked. "You'd think there was no light polution at all."
Looking over at him, Mr. Katz had to question that. "What's light pollution? Is that even real."
Stepping further off down the hill, Ms. Suterland looked to Uri for a second before looking back to the sky. "Light pollution is what it sounds like. Light filters up from cities into the night's sky and illuminates everything enough to blot out stars," she explained. "But Ossie's right. I've never seen the sky this clear... it's like we're on Pangea or something. And, again, the stars... something about the sky looks wrong for their placement."
Shrugging, Uri moved back to sit down on the seat of the picnic table. "Honestly, I don't think I'd know... They have an app for that, though. It'll tell you what constellations and such."
"Ah!" Olive snapped her fingers. "You're right!" She pulled out her smartphone and started searching the app store for such an application.
With Ms. Suterland fully distracted, Mr. Katz looked to Mr. Eddington. "So. What do you do?" He paused. "For a living, I mean."
Those green-brown eyes turned look at Katz' light brown. "Electrical engineer... hobbist locksmith," Oswald said. "You?"
"Software engineer... hobbyist game designer," Uri smiled.
"Video games, I assume, being a software engineer... have I played anything you—" Mr. Eddington cut himself off, quickly turning his head and tossing down his joint on the ground away from the kids who were traveling up from the parking lot. He quickly motioned his head to indicate to Uri they were coming as he crushed the cig beneath his foot.
Mr. Katz was just crushing his own spliff when he heard Christopher call out to James. The smaller man looked up to the teenagers. "Is he alright?" Uri asked, and those bright hazel eyes of James' struck him as if a directed bolt of lightening. Before he knew it, Mr. Eddington was already turning his head around and the two engaged in a passionate kiss. The extreme lust wave, powered by the curse and Eda d'Aragon's spell together had struck them hard. Suddenly nothing else was more important than their baser needs.
The two proceeded to snog without regard for those around them. The group of teenagers followed James into the cabin quickly, leaving only Ms. Suterland with the two men out front. And it was she who said "What the fuck?" into the air while looking up at her phone using the app she'd just downloaded only to turn around and repeat the question when she saw Uri and Eddington pushing their lips together: "What the fuck, guys?"
"I can't stop," Oswald said.
"Lust wave?" Ms. Sutterland asked, taking careful steps up the hill of wet grass. The two men nodded as they kissed and ran their hands up and down the other. "I don't feel anything so that's... interesting," she said, noting the beginning of bulges above the men's asses. "Those don't look like regular tails," offered Olive as she approached but stood back from the picnic table, watching.
"Moth," Mr. Katz managed to get out between kisses.
Ms. Suterland seemed unfazed. "Ossie?"
"Cockroach," the man moaned as Uri moved to kissing along his neck. He had a better angle on it than Eddington's mouth due to their height difference. Meanwhile, Oswald was still taking a bit of the lead, unzipping Uri's tan jacket and reaching for the belt buckle on his khaki's.
"I guess you're both in luck then... unless you want me to leave," she said with clearly a scientific fascination and nothing else. "It's pretty obvious that not naming an animal must mean you don't get affected by the L.W." She took up a seat on the end of the table as she watched them. "Needs a better name than 'lust wave', I think. Apt, but a little cumbersome."
"Why," Katz began, but became distracted by the hard feeling around the backside of Oswald's pants. "Why are... are we... lucky?" he wondered, sniffing the air for some reason. A nub began to push itself out of the left side of his skull very slowly as his own backside extended further outwards behind him.
"Ento... ento...molo...gist," the taller man answered between kisses. Eddington groaned as he managed to get Uri's pants open with them falling around the smaller man's shoes. Ossie reached into the Uri's pants and wrapped his hand around the hard but shrinking shaft there. "Shit, Uri... I didn't know," he said, rubbing the length as it shrunk.
"About... what?" Uri asked as Oswald began to kneel down. It was pretty clear that Eddington was going to give him a blow job just before he put his lips over the pale-skinned crotch... but by the time his mouth reached it, Uri's penis was gone.
Mr. Eddington moaned in frustration: "It's so small, I can't..."
"What do you mean?" asked Uri who had been focused on the red-brown exoskeleton that was extending itself from Oswald's backside... his legs being pushed just slightly apart as it did. Looking down at himself he saw chitinous white fibers, like fur, crawling up from below the line of his pulled-down tighty-whities. But, very distinctly, his cock was gone. And in that moment, the shock almost knocked Uri free from this extreme wave of lust as he yelped: "Where's my penis!?"
Ms. Suterland stood up and moved to Uri's backside, confirming easily from what she saw extending from below his 'tail'. "Insect's genitals are at the end of their abdomen," Olive explained. "I don't mean to intrude, but... here..." she said as she wrapped her hand around the the very end of Uri's repositioned cock. Had she seen his penis before, she might think it looked like a dildo version of it... somewhat tough and black with a little spike at the end. Even while she touched it, it was hardening into a more triangle, pointed shape.
As Mr. Katz now stood, there was now a bulk of hard flesh, chitinous epidermal, which was like a curved rectangular body out behind him. It was all covered in the white 'fur' that was at his crotch. He kicked off his khaki pants and underwear as Oswald pulled them down. Kneeling, his own brown-red abdomen—almost the size of his torso again—pushed out behind him, rounded at the end.
"American cockroach," Olive nodded as the two continued to embrace. Mr. Eddington's blue jeans had already been lowered with his bright red boxer-briefs having been pulled down around his ankles as well. Ms. Suterland ran a hand along his surprisingly slick carapace as he and Mr. Katz stood still facing each other, unsure how to precede, but unable to give up due to the continued magic.
"You said entomologist?" asked Uri as one antenna was pushing it's way up out of his head. It was a dark brown with a glossy tan to it, with multiple spikes jutting out from it. It curved back behind his head, just the one, up and over his kippah.
"Study of insects," Oswald clarified, his body overrun with arousal, but words coming easier to him without the chance for gratification. "Feel like... there's a grip on my balls... balls I don't have," he grumbled, chittering softly as he took in a breath. "Can you help?"
"Do you want me to?" Olive blinked. "I mean, the likelihood tha—"
"Yes!" the two men implored loudly.
"Kick your pants off," she offered as a start, stepping up to beside the two men. "Based on your body configurations your sexual gratification may be possible, but it will require some positioning." The two men glanced at each other, then to the amazingly blasé woman. But soon enough, they were removing their pants completely all while running their hands up and down the other.
It was only in that moment did Oswald realize he had a third arm which was running along Uri's white chitin of his abdomen. This was strange and probably would have been more erotic and alien if the two human minds of these males weren't otherwise clouded by their strange new shapes and inability to find release.
Taking a breath, it was Uri who first realized something about that last concept wasn't entirely accurate. While the breath was a human motion, the truth was that he could smell from somewhere other than his nose. His foot-long, spiked antenna curved out to one side and took in the scents from the air. A female cockroach was present somewhere, though so was a female human by the strange scent? As poodle moth, he didn't care for one... but the other enticed him.
Cautiously reaching forward with her hands between the men's legs, Olive took each penis in hand... and then pulled softly with them extending easily on a tube that Olive knew was an endophallus. It was as if their dicks were on the end of an articulated camera arm... and as she pulled on each, she saw the hand-like claspers at the end of their abdomen's gripping at the air in preparation.
First with Mr. Eddington, then with Mr. Katz, she inserted the aedeagus—the spike-like end-tip of their phallus—into the other's ovipore—basically, their vagina. Yes, both men were now also women, the curse having shifted all of their genitals and lower bodies in one go. As they stood face to face, the two men re-embraced. It was like their were reeling each other together with their dicks.
Ms. Suterland leaned back, then sat on the grass watching from a few feet away. The finger-like claspers of each of their abdomen's gripped onto the other, locking the man-bits with their respective female ones. Their manhoods up into each other, not simply dropping off their sperm like an insect might, but actually thrusting up within the other a great distance, not unlike how humans might.
"Fascinating," Olive found herself saying as she could literally hear the sounds from outside their bodies. Because of the length and extending nature of the endophalli, they could keep thrusting into their mate with their bodies otherwise mostly stationary.
As she watched their changes going further. It was clear that Ossie's red-brown exoskeleton was slowly crawling up under his shirt and to his chest. And it was strange that Uri only had one antenna, while white chitinous fibers started flowing into his black head of hair from around it. The side of Oswald's body with the extra arm protruded slightly at the chest as if growing a single breast, though made of hard exoskeleton.
"This is... fucked up..." Ossie remarked, his body timed to thrust against Uri as the other man did the same to him. "And you're just... watching..."
"Admittedly, most insects I've seen copulate haven't seemed as into it as you both are... but I'm sure you'll each think back on this unique experience later," she shrugged. "Besides... this isn't even the strangest thing I've seen in the last ten minutes, let alone with insects."
Uri moaned loudly while trying to start speaking: "What was weirder than this!? Oi, this feels so... so... good," he couldn't help himself, trusting further and harder up into Oswald.
"The stars," said Ms. Suterland monotonously as the two men fucked in front of her beside the picnic table. Pointing up to the slowly clearing night's sky, she explained: "Orion's supposed to be in the southwest... not the northwest." She took a breath. "I checked the app which still thinks we're in Helena National Forest in Montana... but the stars of Orion—Rigel, Bellatrix, [Betel]geuse, Saiph, and so on—they're in the wrong corner of the night, and could only be where they now seem to be if we were in the southern hemisphere instead of northern."
Ms. Suterland took a deep breath... she suddenly felt very flustered. "Whoa..." Putting a hand to her chest, then to her head. She shook her head. "I suddenly feel very... hot..."
"You... said... beetle," offered Uri as he neared climax.
Eric's mom looked up at the two men, unable to deny her wetting arousal. "I said Betelgeuse. I..." she found her other hand going up under her shirt and to her breast. "Well... that's hardly fair," she said, then took a deep breath. "It's not like I said the movie of the same thing... Betelgeuse isn't even spelled the same way..."
"But it is... said... the same!" confirmed Mr. Eddington as his aedeagus released a thick white glob up inside of Mr. Katz. This spermatophore was like a bag of sperm which normally would be placed up inside of an insect, but in this case was ejaculated at some speed, filling up Mr. Katz from the inside.
"Oh... Oh!" Uri moaned a feminine moan. "Never... in my life," he kept thrusting, though Oswald's thrusts had lowered inside the abdomen, instinctually not breaching the spermatophore. Pushing his long, extended length further up into Mr. Eddington, Mr. Katz let out a long sort of squeaking south as he came and deposited his own pre-packaged sperm at high speed up inside the other man.
The two men collapsed against each other, their bodies partly changed from the curse, and asymmetrically so. As they leaned against each other, and their breathing trying to calm, they each caught whiff of a new female present. Their eyes and heads each slowly turned to look towards Ms. Suterland who was most of the way into removing her undergarments.
Her legs were already pushing further apart as her unshaved vagina slid down and away from her crotch, losing its hair along the way. Blue-black carapace colored the space as a long thick bulb of body extended out behind her. Surely she'd know what type of beetle she was becoming, but her mind probably wasn't in it at that moment. Instead, she crawled forward to the two men, and touched their legs...
The lust wave Uri and Oswald had felt originally hadn't affected Olive. However, it lingered on her spirit and when she tripped into invoking the curse, it had hit her full on. She wasted no time disrobing, having felt no urge like this before in her life. And when her hands grabbed the two other newly hybridized men, it was as if she inflicted them with lust again.
Their claspers had unclasped, and their aedeagus pulled back into their own abdomens... but when she touched them the lust was renewed. They knew it. She knew it. And when she met each of their eyes in turn, she understood her folly completely. Turning around, she stood on strengthening legs to hold up her bulbous rear to them. "I'm sure you can find an opening," she offered.
The two men looked at each other, then asked who she meant.
"Why not both?"