"I'm sorry, man." Andreas insisted, deeply dreading seeing his friend cry... "I admit I went too far with the spray... I don't know what got into me yesterday. I remember thinking I should stop, but I just kept spraying... I can't explain it."
"And now I'm a hairball freak!" Warren whaled... "A disgusting ape-man, a stinking musk factory! Forever!"
Andreas was at a loss for consoling words. The stench rolling out of Warren's pits was truly offensive. He'd already buried his face firmly in the crook of his arm to block the smell. "I said I'm sorry!.. But, would you mind putting your arm down? I can barely breathe."
Warren was completely mortified. He hadn't even realized his arm was still floating high over his head, exposing his enormous pit bush to the word. He immediately clamped his arm down tight against his side in an attempt to hide his shameful smell and scruff, or at least that's what he had intended to do, but in spite of his intentions, his arm remained proudly aloft.
"What the hell? I can't move my arm!" He screamed.
"You're joking." Andreas sputtered between coughs from the overwhelming smell.
Warren reached up with his other arm and pulled the floating limb down forcefully. It didn't feel numb, it felt like he should be able to move it just fine, but the moment he let go it began to rise again involuntarily. "No, for real; It almost feels like it's tied to an enormous, invisible balloon!.. What did that stuff do to me?!"
Andreas was frantic, something was definitely off... The man at the cursed items warehouse hadn't mentioned anything about this as a side-effect. "I don't know... Let me make a call, maybe I can find out what's going on."
"Ok, but give me the spray can first. I wanna check the instructions. Maybe you applied it wrong or something."
Andreas turned his back and began to rummage through his bag from which he quickly produced the can. "I'm not sure it even has instructions, but here you go." He threw the can to Warren without looking first, and it ended up striking him dead in the center of his chest. He couldn't catch anything anymore with both arms now floating over his head. "Oh, no!"
"Call whoever it takes, just do something Andreas! I can't move my arms!"
While Andreas was scrambling to place a call, Warren kicked the can around on the floor to try and see if it had anything useful printed on it.
"...Andreas, this can says it expired 3 months ago."
"What? It can't expire; it's an infinite can! What's the point of a can that never runs out if it expires?!" He slammed his phone against his leg in frustration. "No answer!"
"Who are you calling?"
"That sketchy abandoned-looking warehouse by the train tracks. They sell cursed items and stuff."
"Don't they have a website?"
Andreas just flashed him a skeptical look.
"Well, I don't know!" Warren shouted indignantly. "Why don't we just go over there? Maybe they can fix this."
"Yeah, good idea... I'll drive."
"No kidding." Warren replied, gesturing with his head to his floating arms.
"Right, sorry."
"Help me put a shirt on first. I'm not going out with all this hair on display."
It wasn't easy for Andreas to wrestle Warrens shirt on with his uncooperative limbs and the unrelenting stink of his underarms, but eventually the task was complete, and even though Warren's fuzzy tummy still peeked out from below the bottom of the shirt, Andreas refused to draw attention to it by pointing it out.
Meanwhile, Warren was sick with embarrassment having Andreas do the simplest things for him. It was bad enough having him literally clambering all over his personal space to get him dressed, but he couldn't even open the car door for himself anymore, and when he sat down in the passenger seat, his arms refused to behave themselves by following him inside, and Andreas had to deliberately fold them up against the ceiling for him.
"Do you mind if I put the windows down?" Andreas sputtered delicately.
"I'm not the only one who smells in here, you know? And up until yesterday I never even had anything like this BO problem, so I'd appreciate it if you'd stop acting like you're suffocating all the time!"
"Sorry."
"...No, I'm sorry, man... You can roll the windows down. I don't care..."
"Thanks."
The hot summer air was a mixed blessing. It cleared the immediate atmosphere, but it was also blasting Warren's moist pits like a furnace.
"Hey, Uh... Would you mind... Scratching under my arm?" Warren asked with a pained look of embarrassment.
Andreas' eyes shot a quick glance under Warren's arms. Dark patches of sweat had completely saturated the shirt fabric. "Maybe... If I can find something... like a stick or-"
"Please, man. They itch really bad. You gotta help me out. I can't do anything with my arms like this!"
"Ugh...Yeah, fine."
Andreas cringingly pressed his fingers into his friend's cold, wet t-shirt fabric, and dug in as well as he could through the crunchy mounts of wiry hair beneath. He tried his best to keep his mind off of what he was feeling and focus on the task of driving, but he could swear it felt like there was a lot more hair under there than there had been... An impossibly large amount more...
"Thanks, man. Do you think you can get the other one too?"
"Yeah, sure… Just wait a sec. I'll catch this red light..." He retracted his arm and absentmindedly gave his fingers a small sniff. The smell almost bowled him over. He'd really have to wash his hands later…
"Thanks. I can't believe how sweaty I am. I can feel it running down my sides. It's so gross."
Once they got to the stoplight, Andreas turned to scratch at the other pit, but he stopped short when he saw what looked like a thick bundle of hair poking out from the sleeve of his friend's shirt. It was just a fleeting image though, when he looked again it was gone…
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing... I just thought I saw something weird... Nevermind."
-----------------------------------
Once they got to the train crossing, it was clear they wouldn't even need to get out of the car, but they did anyway. Andreas delicately hoisted his friend out of the car and they both silently stared together at the abandoned lot... The warehouse was completely gone. Totally demolished. There was no sign of any store anywhere in the area.
"What do we do now?" Andreas asked hopelessly…
To his surprise Warren seemed to be snickering quietly in response, his laughter steadily growing as he doubled over as if he were being tickled relentlessly.
The bottom edges of his shirt began to curl upward revealing thick bundles of wiry underarm hair acting like sentient tentacles. They rolled his shirt up to his neck as he straightened back up, his laughter giving way to panicked screams. Then the hair grabbed the edges of his shirt and pulled it up around his head, muffling his shouts. From there they continued to conduct the garment over and away from his arms, fully revealing his embarrassingly-pelted torso and the full magnitude of the hair growth that had been occurring in secret.
The tentacles were over 4 inches across and at times impossibly solid-looking. The individual wiry strands of hair were like muscular tendons, tightly packed together, writhing in unison and soaked in teenage perspiration.
"Holy Shit…" Andreas said, breaking out of his astonishment. "Are you controlling those?"
"No way, man! They're moving all on their own!" Warren could do little more than stare at the stench-coated tubes of fur that had sprouted from under his arms while they flexed about aimlessly, seemingly exploring their surroundings. "You gotta do something, Andreas. Cut them off before this gets any worse."
"I told you, man. I've been down this road... I mean, at least a little… I mean… enough to know that you can't get rid of this cursed hair by trimming it back… It'll just grow back worse."
"Well I don't know what else we can do. I'm not going to let these pit bushes replace my arms!... And cut it out with that, man. This really isn't the time for a high-five!"
Andreas didn't know what to make of that statement, until he followed Warren's gaze to find one of his own arms floating up helplessly above him.