With a sudden hiss, the door in the rear of the elevator began to creak open, and without even thinking the two former men rushed out to get a breath of fresh air. Their clothes still hung on them like blankets, making them trip and stumble as they hurried out of the elevator, and after a few steps they tripped and collapsed in a pile on the smooth tile ground.
“Gross, your weiner touched my leg!” David yelped, his voice cracking as he gave a half-hearted shove to get himself untangled from Mitch.
“Nuh-uh, your leg touched my-… H-huh? Wait, what did you say?” Mitch asked, blushing as he tried to cover himself up. “’Weiner’? That’s what a little kid calls it, you dork!”
After a few minutes of squabbling, the two new boys finally looked out to see where they were, and they both let out identical boyish gasps as they realized that they were no longer in the office building they had been in a mere five minutes earlier.
They were instead in a huge, brightly colored mall that stretched into the distance, with stores on each side that neither of them had ever heard of.
“Big Clothes 4 Chubby Boys”. “Poppa’s Warehouse”. “Tubbs’ Bar & Grill”. “Victor’s Secret”.
Ther were posters put up along the walls, advertising every sort of youth sports imaginable and accompanied by glossy photos of smiling young boys in sports uniforms watched over by big, chubby men. One poster proclaimed “Join Boy Scouts! Making your son the best boy he can be!”
And walking along the tiled walkways between the shops were hundreds of men and boys, not a woman or girl in sight. The men were big, not only in height but also in bulk; some muscular, some quite overweight, and some both at the same time. And nearly every man seemed to have his hand held tightly by a young boy, each of them extremely adorable in their own ways. Skinny boys, chubby boys, nerdy boys, athletic boys… and each one was watched over by an older man.
Mitch and David looked around in astonishment, seemingly forgetting that they were still lacking any clothes that fit them as they looked at the numerous examples of manhood and boyhood around them.
There were chubby middle aged men in sweat-stained t-shirts and stretched-out sweatpants, with silver whistles around their necks and surrounded by a gaggle of sweaty young boys in matching sports jerseys and shorts.
There were well-dressed older gentlemen in suits that could barely hold in their bulging guts, smoking cigars and moving leisurely down the walkway, glancing from time to time at only the most expensive-looking clothes and curios on display.
Even (much to Mitch and David’s utter disbelief) a gruff-looking man in his 30s pushing an oversized stroller, with a boy who looked like he could easily be 13 strapped in tightly while sucking on a pacifier, blushing and squirming while wearing nothing but a food-stained bib and a clearly-used diaper.
Older men of all sorts, seemingly pulled from all different cultures and time periods, wandered around the enormous mall with their ‘sons’. Men dressed in clothes from the 1950s, the 90s, clothes from America and China and Mexico and every other culture imaginable, even some in outfits with an apparently futuristic, science-fiction appearance.
They had almost nothing in common, except for two things:
First, they were big, hairy, and very, very male.
And second, they were already looking at Mitch and David with the amused, curious look. A look that clearly said, “What are you two young fellows doing without a daddy?”