Who knows? Maybe tonight he’d be able to get to sleep. Jordan stumbled suddenly on the sidewalk, dragging his feet and catching them on a crack. The sidewalk seemed to pulse up and down as he struggled to figure out whether he was going to fall or not. Four days since he’d tested the serum on himself. Four days he hadn’t slept a wink. That part was working just fine, apparently, but he hadn’t quite anticipated feeling this exhausted.
Jordan was a medical researcher, a young hot shot in his field, fresh off his PhD researching the nature of sleep. He’d always found it funny that, even though no one knew why people needed to sleep, everyone did it anyway. Imagine the amount of productivity lost, just because people were doing something they might not even need! This serum would change humanity, if he could get it to work–if we only used ten percent of our brain, why not activate another ten percent to operate while the daytime half went dormant? It was so simple, or so he’d thought. With the right mix of stimulants, people wouldn’t have to sleep ever again. Sure, he shouldn’t have tested it on himself, but he hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by not taking risks. Jordan had always been consumed with his studies. He’d pretty much lived a celibate life (he’d always felt gay, but being raised in a conservative baptist family had led him to shove those feelings as deep within him as he could) and with his small frame he’d never been cut out for much beyond books. He’d just…never had enough time in the day to do everything in his head, to try everything he imagined, and he’d hit a wall in his research. Injecting himself had been a gamble–if it worked, he’d be able to redouble his focus, and maybe get new insight into the therapy. Unfortunately, things weren’t turning out quite like he’d planned.
Four days. He’d been good for two of them, but yesterday he’d started crashing. He’d never been this tired before in his life. He couldn’t focus, he couldn’t work. He’d just been staring at papers in his lab, trying to decipher things he’d written last week, but everything suddenly looked like gibberish. It was Friday, he just needed to relax and hope the serum would wear off so he could sleep, finally. That, and he needed to get home without killing himself.
It was only a few more blocks to his apartment, but as he passed a small smoke shop he’d walked by hundreds of times, his feet stopped, and he sniffed the air. Ever since yesterday, he’d had this…craving. He hadn’t been able to articulate it, but it was like his body was screaming at him for something he didn’t even know he needed. On the air outside the shop he caught whiffs of tobacco and smoke and…and without knowing why he was doing it, he went inside, picked a brand of cigar at random, bought half a dozen with a book of matches, and left. What was he doing? He wasn’t a smoker! Sure, for a couple of years towards the tail end of his undergraduate study he’d gotten into the habit, but he’d kicked it for years. Is this what he’d been craving this whole time? But why now, out of the blue?
The exhaustion had reached a new level now–no longer did Jordan feel like he was inhabiting his body, it was more like he was outside of himself. Not even really aware of what he was doing as his fingers unwrapped the first cigar, stuck it in his mouth, and lit it. The smoke in his lungs was like a jolt to his system–part of the reason he’d loved smoking so much was because it helped him stay awake while he worked on term papers and grant proposals. The nicotine hit him, and it was like a shock to his entire body–he didn’t feel more awake though, if anything it pushed him further away from himself. He…sensed he was in pain, but it was more of a dull throbbing ache, his body grunting and growling. He saw himself stumble into an alley, teeth clamped hard around the cigar, sucking in more and more smoke. Someone else was screaming though–was it even him? It…it didn’t sound like him. The voice was so deep and rough and…and he was floating. He could see everything, hear everything, but it wasn’t him anymore, he could…sense that. Better…better if he took a break, he thought to himself, and fell back.
With a roar, he woke up, heaving for breath, heaving for smoke, staring around at where he was with panic in his eyes, looking down at himself. Where was he? Who…was he? He ran his hands down over his body–he was…huge, holy fuck. Big gut, covered with fur. He had on a shirt much, much too small for him–the buttons had already shot off, and he tore the remnants away, running two big hands over his hairy pecs and down over his gut, down to his massive bulge, letting off a low growl around the cigar he had stuck in his maw.
“Fuck, I gotta…gotta fuck…” he muttered to himself. These shoes were too tight though, and he yanked them off, wiggling the fat toes at the end of his size seventeen feet with a sigh. He was in an alley or something, and he walked out of it–it was early evening, and the sidewalk wasn’t very crowded, but there was enough light that he could still see his reflection in the window of a smoke shop on one side of the alley…and hell, he was one sexy mother fucker for sure. He started groping his cock harder in the pants stretched tight over his hips and thighs, seeing a wet spot form from the precum leaking out the head. Through his reflection, he saw the older proprietor’s jaw drop at the sight of him–and he sneered a bit, all sorts of strange ideas pushing through his head suddenly, and he went inside.
Bracken's Corner 