After a few moments of waiting, the door slowly opened and a man stood in the doorway. He was a grizzled, old man with a bald head and grey stubble covering his jowls. A pair of round glasses framed his wrinkled eyes and a round pot belly stretched out his shirt. Fred turned to Grant and gave him a questioning look. Grant silently replied with a shrug. The old man looked them up and down, then said "I guess you ate the pancakes?". They nodded awkwardly. "Well you're not the only ones. Count yourself lucky you weren't the one making them, like me".
Peter asked "So that means you're Mr. Gardini?"
"Ah, call me Roy. There's no need for formalities, we're all adults here". He chuckled to himself as the four ex-boys shifted uncomfortably at his joke. "Come on in and join the others".
He led them through the hallway and into a large living room that was filled with several men of various ages and various states of undress, chatting to each other. They all looked unfamiliar to Fred, but the other three seemed to recognize a few based on certain traits. Grant pointed at a youngish man with shaggy, fire red hair and a beard to match, saying "That's got to be Bryan. I don't know anyone else with hair like his".
Harold nodded in agreement, and added "then the guy he's talking to must be Darren. I don't think I've ever seen one without the other".
"Oh yeah! Wow, I'd never have recognized him otherwise. He really slimmed down with age, but that ponytail does not suit him at all".
Harold grinned and asked "You sure you're not just jealous that he still has hair while you almost have a chrome dome?".
"What? Noooo, It makes him look like a founding father. Besides, he's like 20 years younger than I am now, of course he'll still have hair. Stupid pancakes...". Grant ran a hand over his head, feeling his ever diminishing hairline. By this point, he was the only one of the group still getting older, now crossing over to 50. He was possibly the burliest man in the room, still baring strong muscle across his body even if more fat now surrounded and softened their appearance. It especially gathered around his torso, giving him a beer belly you could balance a drink on. He'd undone his jeans and taken off his shirt to accommodate the growth, unhappy to see his thick body hair was as salt and peppered as what remained on his scalp.
Harold jabbed Peter in the ribs with his elbow and pointed over to one of the only men dressed in clothes that fit him despite his large stature, a beefy, black man who looked to be in his mid 30s. "Hey, do you think that's Donny over there?"
Peter gasped and said "oh my god yes! He looks exactly like his dad, right down to the moustache! Unless that really is Mr. Nasair..."
Roy overheard them and replied "No, it's Donny alright. He was still at home when he changed and had to pretend to be his father to get out the house without raising suspicion. He sighed. "It's an epidemic that's spread all across town. I've been trying to contact and gather anyone affected back here so we could contain it and try to fix things".
"But what was in the pancakes that caused this to happen in the first place?" Peter asked.
Roy shook his head solemnly. "Well it all started when my son, Bobby, bought some crazy ointment from an herbal remedies store in Chinatown that promised to make him appear older. However he was overzealous in applying it and, well...". He gestured to the corner of the room where an elderly man, even older than Roy, was asleep in an arm chair, his long, white beard covered him like a blanket. "I found him in his room this morning like that and thought he'd put on some super realistic make-up or prosthetics as a joke. But he had some ointment left on him that ended up on me, and ultimately in the pancake mix. Ingesting the ointment causes the effects to intensify and occur faster leading to, well, all of us. Though strangely, it doesn't have any effect on females".
Harold was unconvinced. "How do you know all this when it all happened this morning?"
"The ointment came with instructions that my son stupidly didn't bother to read. Warnings, side-effects, and all. Besides, my wife had some pancakes this morning and she hasn't changed a bit. And then Chris and Anna had some too and... Well I'll show you". Roy pointed them towards a closed door. Harold opened it and peeked inside. It was a pastel coloured child's bedroom with toys scattered everywhere. Sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room were an overweight, hairy man with thinning hair, and a small girl in pigtails no older than five. They excitedly chattered while pretending to have a tea party with some stuffed toys. Roy's voice cracked as he said "they used to be twins this morning, now he looks more like her old man than her brother". He closed the door quietly so as not to disturb them.
As they walked away, Fred asked the older man "You said that this is all due to something from Chinatown. Haven't you gone back to get a remedy?"
"Well I sent Bobby with my wife to find the shop this morning. They looked everywhere but they couldn't find it. What's weird is that people definitely recall seeing it in the week. It's like the building just up and vanished. Which is why I need to get everyone infected back here before the whole city's contaminated".
"But if it's just an ointment in the pancakes, surely we're the only ones who would be affected right?"
Roy hesitated but before he could reply, someone knocked at the front door. Roy quickly excused himself to answer it. It was another two nervous middle-aged men in tattered clothing. While he was gone, Fred put his arm around Grant's hairy shoulders and asked him "So how are you holding up?"
He sighed "Well I'm still aging but I think the effects are slowing down. With any luck, it'll hopefully stop before I'm even older than Roy...". He glanced at the man showing the newcomers into the house and shuddered at the thought. He was already in his late fifties. A fringe of almost completely grey hair wrapped around the side of his head, while several strands of hair stubbornly clung to the top. His beard had reached Santa status, being both long and white. He'd started to get splotchy age spots across his skin, while his joints were getting stiffer and he felt a dull ache in his knees.
Fred squeezed him reassuringly and said "Don't worry bud, I'm sure we'll find a way to reverse this soon enough!" He called Peter and Harold over to them and formed a huddle. "I don't know about you but I certainly didn't come all this way just to be quarantined. What should we do?".
Grant was the first to pipe up. "I say we interrogate that Bobby guy. He started this whole mess in the first place. I bet he knows more than he's letting on. And I want answers fast before I end up like him".
Peter grunted in approval and added "If we're going to interrogate, I say we split up and talk to everyone in the house. Find out how it went down with them and maybe we'll find a pattern that could help us".
Harold interjected "Surely we should find the instructions that the ointment came with. It feels like Roy is keeping info from us and I want to read it for myself".
Fred snapped his fingers and said "Wait, I've got it! One or two of you should distract everyone while the rest of us sneak out and head over to Chinatown to find this mysterious store ourselves. It can't be that hard to find right?".
The group argued over the best solution but ultimately agreed to...