“I can’t believe Eric just let me have all this clothing,” Chase said to himself as he checked himself out in the mirror a couple of weeks later. “I always envied that he was an actual cowboy and he always looked great in those clothes, too.” He flexed in the mirror and watched as his pecs and biceps inflated. He grabbed a pair of Wranglers from the pile Eric had left him and slid them on. He looked at the way the pants legs draped over the tops of his feet. “I knew he was taller than me, but jeez. Good thing cowboy jeans are supposed to stack on the boots. I better grab a belt, though. Looks like maybe he enjoyed a few too many biscuits when he wore these.” He grabbed a belt from his closet.
“Huh,” he thought idly as he cinched it another notch tighter. He threw on a shirt, which showed off his manly physique and let a tuft of chest hair escape out the neck opening, and tugged on the boots Eric had given him. As he headed down the stairs to his truck, he noticed his feet sliding a little. “Guess he was a little bigger than a 14,” he chuckled to himself. Suddenly he sneezed, then sneezed again. Rubbing his eyes, he thought, “I hate having allergies.”
Once he had gotten to the shoot—a calendar shoot featuring him and two other behemoths, Trigger and Jake, “working” shirtless with ropes and trucks and hay—his attention turned only to his work. He flexed and posed as he’d done ever since he’d been discovered five years earlier, after high school. His agent, Rich, was hard at work on his laptop and absent-mindedly took the USB stick the photographer handed him, then copied the raw photos up to the cloud site where Chase could see them.
On the way home, Chase noticed the rear view mirror was out of alignment. “Musta biffed it with my big ol’ head,” he thought. As he pulled into the parking garage of his apartment, suddenly he was overcome with chills, followed immediately by sweating. “Damn it,” thought Chase. “I better not be getting sick.” He went into the apartment, grabbed the last of his free Covid rapid tests, and swabbed his nostril. Lips hadn’t had a single case of Covid thanks to their testing regimen, and they were ferocious about testing. He sat down at the computer and opened up the shoot photos just as a wave of dizziness and fatigue overtook him.
“Huh,” he said. “That’s a weird angle. It looks like Trigger is bigger than me. Well, I hope he enjoys it, because the reality is different.” He looked over at the rapid test. “Fuck!” A dark black line next to the test strip. He grabbed his phone and Snapped a photo to Kyle. “I know the rules,” he captioned. He took a selfie. “See you next Wednesday at the earliest.” And with that, he went to bed.
The next five days were the most boring of Chase’s young life. He got up and walked around the apartment in sweats or shorts, watched all his favorite TV shows again, chatted with a bevy of admirers (some handsome, some just rich), and ate sparingly. The only thing that livened up the day was that he had to use the toilet ten or twelve times. His doctor seemed unconcerned. “Your lymphatic system is getting rid of the virus. So no Paxlovid for you, you’re 24, fit, and no health history. You don’t need it.” Chase drifted into and out of sleep any time he stopped moving.
On the following Thursday, Chase felt a million times better, with a ton of energy. He tested again and it came back negative, so he Snapped the successful photo to Kyle and said, “Be back tonight! Get my mini-me ready”
Walking over to the closet, he decided to wear the same outfit he’d worn to the shoot. With his impressive physique and the big truck, the boots and jeans and belt and hat made a big impression.
But when he put the jeans on, he knew something was wrong. When he pulled the jeans up to his waist, his feet didn’t push through the leg holes, and the waist wasn’t snug around his body. He checked the tag… 36/36. He shrugged it off and put on the shirt, but that didn’t feel right either, and the zhuzhed sleeves he’d left didn’t tug at his forearms the way they should have.
The next indicator was the boots. They required no effort to tug on, and when he stood up, he swayed as his feet slid forward and his heel slipped. He grabbed the hat and, when the top of the crown just smashed the top of his head, he panicked. “What the fuck…?”
Chase tottered over to the full-length mirror in the bathroom. He looked ridiculous. The jeans stacked from his boots past his knees; the shirt billowed; the hat covered his ears; the boots buckled every time he took a step.
He shucked everything off. No… he looked normal. Huge pecs with just enough hair on them. Massive quads, huge forearms leading to even bigger biceps. A thick bull neck. And a nice long dick.
He grabbed an outfit, not realizing it was the same outfit he’d lent Eric after the punch spill. He tugged in the pants but the waist was even bigger and the legs still were inches too long. The shirt that once stretched over his chest and back hung loosely like some 90s caricature. And the Nikes that had fit him like a glove were comically large.
Chase sprinted to his bedroom and stepped on the scale. “234! Fuck! I was 310 when I got Covid! How did I lose 75 pounds in six days??” He grabbed his phone and smart tape measure and started measuring frantically. When he pulled up the size trends, they showed slight increases week over week… and then a dramatic angle downwards. From a 58” chest to 44”; from a 40” waist to 32”; from 22” biceps to a sad 17”; from a 21” neck to 16 1/2”.
Chase picked up a pencil and carefully balanced it on his head as he stepped back to a doorway. Trembling, he used the smart measuring tape from the floor.
“Oh my God,” he whispered as the device flashed “67.12” at him. “OH, MY GOD!” He grabbed the phone and frantically scrolled through missed calls until he found Eric’s name. But his hands weren’t big enough for the Pro Max phone and it slipped onto the bed.
“Eric!” he yelled into the phone as he picked it up. “It’s Chase! Get over here! Please! I need you! It’s an emergency!” There was an urgent murmur of assent and in a little while a knock on the door.
“Come in,” said Chase, hiding behind the door as he opened it. Eric and Trigger strode in, and looked around. Chase closed the door and Eric turned around and looked up to face the huge model… only to revise his gaze downward. The enormous man he had looked square in the abdomen a few weeks ago now was just more than a head taller than him; Eric realized he was looking Chase in the collarbone. Chase, meanwhile, realized with a gulp that he was looking Trigger squarely in the Adam’s apple.
“What the fuck?” breathed Eric as he moved back a step. “Are you shrinking too?”
“YES!” wailed Chase as he collapsed onto the smaller man’s shoulder. “I’m like nine inches shorter. 75 pounds lighter. My chest is small. My neck is small. My feet are like an inch plus littler. Even my dick shrank. Nothing fits. I tried to put on your old clothes this morning and they’re huge on me. Huge. What do I do?”
“We call my doctor, Dr. Patel,” replied Eric. “I haven’t shrunk much lately so he’s hoping I’ll stop soon; I’m about four foot eight and a half now. So don’t panic.”
“Don’t PANIC?!” screamed Chase. “I dont want to be a fireplug! This can’t be happening to me!”