The first day on the island was one of the toughest of my life. For one thing there was the constant embarrassment of my nudity. Not only was a I very self-conscious about my own exposure, I was very aware that the others were similarly exposed and I had to try very hard not to look at their junk. It wasn't that I was gay, it's just hard not to catch a glimpse and I didn't want none of them accusing me of staring. It wasn't like we could just cover ourselves up either. We needed our hands to push through the thick bush, grasp hold of tree trunks for support and such. So our penises just dangled there between our legs, swinging free for anyone to see and it was sooo awkward. I could at least tell the others felt similarly embarrassed.
James may have been a jock and used to taking showers in the locker room, but evidently walking around a jungle without any clothes to throw on at all was weird even for him. He was the one who tried to fashion a crude loin-cloth from some leaves and vines. I watched with some amusement as the leaves seemed to instantly burn his cock and butt, making him throw them down and let out a torrent of curses and abuse. Apparently our captors had designed this island and they wanted us to stay nude.
"This whole place is fucked in the head!" James had exclaimed and I knew he was right. We were in big trouble.
The first thing we did was make our way up a sizable hill to try to get a vantage point. It wasn't easy with the thick jungle, the humid climate and slippery muddy trails. None of us had ever walked barefoot outside our yards before and it wasn't long before even tough James was stopping and cursing as he rubbed his sore, bruised bare feet. We were also getting increasingly thirsty what with all the sweating. When we came upon a small stream at last we had no choice but to drink the water and hope for the best. Luckily it seemed the water was untainted and we were able to drink our fill before heading on.
The top of the hill took two hours to reach. But it hardly felt worth it once we saw the view. The island was really quite small and there was nothing but brilliant blue ocean in all directions. Not only that, a coral reef surrounded the place too, making it very difficult for a boat to arrive or leave. It was the red-headed boy, Eric was his name, who fell to his knees in horror and declared in his British accent, "There's no escape mates."
"Don't say that man," Miguel urged, but James and I stayed silent, we were thinking the same thing as Eric.
"What are going to do then?" Eric finally asked, looking to us for some leadership.
"We should probably try to build some shelter," I suggested with a shrug. "Looks like we'll be here for a bit."
The others nodded and we began to trudge back down into the jungle. It was Miguel who suggested, "We should go for the beach, see if we can get some fish so we don't need the fruit."
It seemed a genius idea the moment we heard it and the beach became our new goal. By now we had noticed a complete lack of animals in the jungle, no source of food other than the plentiful brightly coloured fruits and berries covering the trees. Well there were insects, hordes of ants, mosquitoes, beetles and all sorts of spiders, but who knew how poisonous they were, never mind the ick factor.
As we forced our way through the dense bush I began to hear something coming from our right, the sounds of rough movement, something big snapping branches as it approached. Maybe there were gorillas or something on the island after all. "Hold it, hold it!" I urged the others, signalling for them to stop. The snapping and thuds to our right stopped a second later and there was a moment of silent tension before a voice called out, "Someone out there?!"
We shared a startled look and I called back, "Yeah, over here!"
Perhaps we were saved, or maybe it was just our captors checking up on us. Either way I needed to know.
"Come over this way!" the voice called.
"Should we?" Miguel whispered.
"I don't think we have much choice," I argued. "Let's just meet them."
James didn't look impressed but he said nothing, his alpha-male status seriously hurt by his forced nudity and lack of experience with such weird situations.
"Okay let's do it," I said, turning towards the voices.
A couple minutes later we pushed through into a small clearing and found ourselves face to face with another small group of three naked young men. I recognised them immediately from the room. One was a tall blonde white man, the second a thin Indian and the third was East Asian. All were shiny with sweat, breathing hard and looking just a frightened and bewildered as us. No, this wasn't help.
"Fuck, you too?" the blonde man declared.
"Looks like it," I replied.
**
We spent the next couple days setting up a crude camp along the edge of the jungle. Our new companions were Tom, an Aussie but unfortunately not of the aboriginal type likely to be helpful in this situation, Raj, and Indian university student from Chennai and Park, a Korean kid who luckily had learned passable English at school. None of them knew any more about surviving here than we did. Raj was particularly bashful since nudity in his society was a sign of deep poverty and likely membership in the untouchable class and even then only for small children. As a result he spent much of his time hidden away from us.
We set up near the beach to exploit the fish for food. Miguel turned out to be a big fan of the TV show Survivor and got most of his expertise from watching it. Unfortunately it turned out there were no fish, at least not within the coral reef guarded waters close to shore. There was thus no way to get food other than the tainted fruits we'd been warned of. Now we found ourselves surrounded by food but slowly starving. We slept long hours, stayed in the shade as much as possible and hoped for some kind of rescue. But by the third day people were getting desperate.
"We need eat," Park finally declared that afternoon. "Eat fruits," he said, pointing at the dangling tantalising fruit hanging from the trees over our heads.
"We don't know what they gonna do to us bro," James reminded him, annoyed.
"So we find out," Tom said, speaking up. His words made people take notice. Tom had become the de facto leader of our group over the last couple days. He was as tall and strong as James and carried even more confidence. In fact his was the genuine article whereas James faked his bravado. Tom walked with more purpose than us in the jungle, said he was used to it from growing up in northern Queensland. He was more used to being barefoot too, not needing to take the same careful steps as the rest of them with their tender feet.
"You volunteering to try it first?" James asked nastily, not liking his loss of leadership status.
Tom shrugged. "At some point we all have to eat."
"So put up or shut up," James snapped. "You say we gotta eat them fruit, you eat 'em first."
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence before Eric's soft voice spoke up. "I'll try them," he stated.
All eyes turned to the pale, ginger young man. Eric rarely spoke since they discovered there were no fish at the beach. He had withdrawn from the group, so much they often forgot he was even there. Now everyone was in awe of his offer.
"You don't have to," Tom said.
"Someone does, or we'll never know if it's true."
No one spoke as Eric stood, brushing off the sand on his legs, and turned into the jungle. He didn't need to go far. There was low-hanging fruit all around. But he ignored them, picking some blue and purple berries instead. After gathering two handfuls he returned to the camp and held them out for us to see. "I guess I'll start small," he explained.
He looked at the berries a long moment and said, "Maybe they just make you horny or something," sounding hopeful but frightened.
We all watched as he took a single purple berry and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly and swallowing. His eyes widened and we all held our breathes, waiting for him to scream or double over in pain. Instead he smiled and declared, "That was the most delicious berry I've ever had!"
"Really?" I asked, surprised.
He nodded. "It's a taste like I can't even describe," he said.
"You feel okay mate?" Tom asked.
He nodded. "Feel brilliant, no effect at all," he answered, then popped another one in his mouth and clearly savoured the taste to its full extent this time.
"Okay, give me one," James demanded, getting up and snatching a juicy purple berry from Eric's hand. He eyed it a moment, then popped it in his mouth and bit down.
"Oh, fuck me," he gasped, eyes rolling back. "That is sooo sweet bro," he declared.
"Still feel okay?" Tom asked Eric warily as the others seemed to be considering giving the berries a go.
Eric nodded and took another berry to pop in his mouth when he suddenly stopped and furrowed his brow. Everyone stared to see what was wrong.
"What is it?" I asked.
Eric said nothing but a moment later we all saw that something was indeed wrong. His red hair was visibly growing, lengthening at an incredible rate. It came out wild and tattered, almost instantly filthy and matted looking.
"My hair!" Eric exclaimed, feeling it.
But that wasn't all. His lily white freckled skin began to darken. It wasn't changing his race or anything, just gaining a deep tan, like he'd spent weeks in the sun. At the same time the most noticeable change came to his penis, which rapidly grew erect. Eric groaned in obvious pleasure as his penis stood straight up, pulsing with arousal. "Oh man," he gasped.
"Eric are you okay?" Tom asked, looking very worried, but nearly as terrified as James, who had already eaten a berry himself.
Eric shook his head. "I don't know, I just feel tingly all over mate. Oh man I am so fucking horny too!"
The changes weren't over though. Eric's feet began to widen, his toes spreading out, growing straighter with spaces visible between each one, like they'd never been inside a pair of shoes. Somehow I just knew the soles of his feet were thickening too, growing calluses which would allow him to run the rough jungle paths with more confidence and speed than even Tom.
Eric saw this too of course. "My feet, they..." he began to exclaim. Then Eric's eyes visibly glazed over as his draw dropped open, his whole face going slack.
"Shit," Tom muttered. I could see it too, something was seriously wrong.
Eric dropped down to a squatting position, gazing around at us with those vacant eyes, totally lacking in comprehension.
"Eric, do you where you are?" I asked him.
"Ugh! Oooh-mmm-ugh!" he grunted, his language abilities completely gone. He rocked on his hips looking up at the sky and down at the water with no ore understanding of his surroundings than a baby or an stupid animal. He made loud woops and grunts conveying no meaning at all.
"He's gone feral," Tom declared in horror.
"Fuck!" James cursed and suddenly we remembered he'd had a berry too. I looked back over to see that he was now standing there sporting his own rock-hard erection. Glancing down revealed his feet were in the process of spreading out, toes growing straighter and stronger.
"This can't happen!" he screamed. "I can't be like him, I'm a man, I'm in charge here! I'm not a dumb fuckin' anim...ugh..."
I watched as James' eyes lost focus in mid-sentence, his hard-set jaw going loose and all the anger and tension leaving his face. His shoulders slumped as the tension was wiped from his whole body, only his erection staying stiff. As he slowly lowered himself to a squatting position Tom stepped to his side and gently patted his smooth head, like a pet. "Poor James, it's okay," he cooed as if talking to a puppy. "Maybe you're the lucky one, you don't have to worry about a thing anymore."
James gaped back up at his replacement with the vacuous eyes of a man who's brain had never developed. "Ugh--oh-ugh!" he grunted.
"I know buddy, I know," Tom replied.
**
The berries were thrown back into the woods shortly after that. Unfortunately poor Eric escaped off into the wild while we were talking over what to do with them. There was some debate about whether we should try to bring Eric back or let him go, since he was now nothing more than an animal really and this was his natural habitat. In the end it was decided to at least make an attempt to find him and Park and Raj agreed to go after him while the rest of us watched the camp.
I felt bad for James of course but by nightfall he had already been more helpful to us than he'd ever been as a leader. We'd fashioned a sort of leash from vines and tree back, tied around his neck and lashing him to a sizable tree to prevent him escaping like Eric now that he'd lost all his sense. He had a little bit of room to play around though and we watched him skitter about in his new constantly squatting, hunched stance, his hands touching the ground almost as often as his feet. He'd scurry away until the leash snagged his neck, then he'd grunt and whoop and hop up and down, his ever-present erection flopping against his stomach, then he'd scurry back. The leash was tied on with a simple knot but James never attempted to undo it, just looked at the leash and back at us with that dumb slack-jawed expression and grunted more.
But the important thing we discovered soon on was that James could now show us what bugs were edible. I had found him sitting on his bare bottom in the jungle at the end of his leash with ants crawling all over him. But he wasn't upset by this, he was grabbing them as best he could and stuffing the still crawling insects in his mouth. He even grabbed one of his dirty, callused bare feet, yanked it to his face and licked a huge beetle off the brown, muddy sole and chewed it with several audible crunches. As disgusting as it was to watch it proved there was a food source other than fruit.
"You just might have saved us buddy," I told him.
"Ugh!" James replied, bug juice running down his chin, all those words he'd spelled as a little boy totally and permanently wiped from his mind along the most basic of knowledge. But before I could feel too bad for him James grabbed his raging stiffy and began stroking away at it, gazing about without a speck of modesty, gasping in pleasure as he shot his load all over his stomach a moment later. Maybe he really was the lucky one after all.