Commissioned by Anonymous

“Alright, miss, here we are–and feel free to call anytime you need a lift,” Miles said, as he pulled up next to the curb.

“Thanks again, sir,” the girl in the backseat of the car said, grabbed her backpack and climbed out of the campus security car, which had picked her up at the library and dropped her off in front of the house. In the front seat, Miles and Ed watched to make sure she got into her house, and then set off back to campus a few blocks away. Miles had pulled away and reached the end of the block before Ed started to giggle in the seat next to him.

“Shut up, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Ha, she called you ‘sir’! I always knew this day would come,” Ed said, laughing openly now, “I can’t believe it, my little security bumpkin has finally become a man.”

Miles scowled as he turned down a sidestreet and skulked a bit in the driver’s seat. He was at most six or seven years older than the college girl he’d just dropped off, but apparently he was already out of touch enough to warrant a “sir.” He didn’t want to be a “sir,” and he was sick and tired of working this damn security job. He’d been assigned to work with security services while he was attending school as a Freshman, and that’s when he’d first met Ed. Ed was an old timer–he’d worked for the school for close to forty years now, and as much as Miles liked the old guy, he didn’t want to be him, and yet it seemed like everything in his life had conspired to trap him here, in this faux squad car, dropping off girls that never seemed to age at the same houses off campus, and he gave a heavy sigh.

“Aww, hey, cheer up–you’re only as old as you feel.”

“And what does that make you, eighty?”

“Oh don’t get snappy with me, boy, we still have five hours on this shift, and I don’t want you getting all pissy and morose. It’s annoying. This is my last semester after all–maybe be a little happy that at least it only took close to half a century for me to escape.”

“Don’t remind me. I don’t want to be stuck doing this for the rest of my life. I had plans man, I had…gah…” Miles stopped himself before he rehashed the same old sob story for Ed to hear once again. The old guard was way more tolerant of his bullshit than he had any right to be, but Miles still didn’t want to push him away with a plea for pity. “Sorry, I won’t get into it.”

“Trust me, I understand better than most, kid.”

They got back to campus, and parked in a lot outside close to the library, ready for the next person who wanted to be ferried from safe haven to safe haven, and neither of them said anything for a while. Ed was either sleeping or pretending to sleep, and Miles was thinking back to all of those failed applications to grad school, how all of that work had been for nothing, all because his thesis’ conclusions had contradicted those of Dr. Taylor, the head of the chemistry department on campus, and his big money donors. Miles had been the most gifted student the department had ever seen, but thanks to Dr. Taylor’s insistence or writing him a personal recommendation, not a single school would accept him for graduate study. Effectively blacklisted and muzzled, he’d managed to receive a full time position on the security staff at campus, and here he was still. He could see the science building from where he was parked, and there were a few offices still lit, and he realized with a start that Dr. Taylor’s light was on. “That fucker…” Miles said under his breath.

“Who, your Goliath?”

“Yeah, shut the fuck up.”

“Hey, I’m sympathetic kid, but academia is a monster. You were too much of an idealist–you wanted to be right, more than you wanted to be successful. Life’s full of tradeoffs–you can’t get something for nothing.”

“What would I have to give up for a chance at revenge?”

Ed was quiet for a moment, “Is that what you’d really want?”

Miles thought for a moment, and then nodded, “Yeah, actually. What the hell, I don’t have anything waiting for me now–no girlfriend, no decent jobs, just one long slog to the grave, in the rut you so nicely ran down for me.”

“Well, a long slog can be fun,” Ed said, but saw that Miles was serious. He looked at him, wondering if it was worth it. It might not even work–sometimes it didn’t, but hey, if that’s want Miles wanted–what he really wanted–then it couldn’t hurt to try. Ed picked up the radio and said, “Hey Melissa, we’re gonna leave the car for a bit, gonna look into something in the science building.”

He didn’t bother to wait for confirmation, he just climbed out of the car, and Miles, wondering what was up, climbed out after him. “Where are you going Ed?”

“You’ll see–come on. I want to try something.”

Miles just hurried to catch up to the old guy as he crossed campus, matching his pace as they walked up to the science building and let themselves into the building. “Ed what the fuck are we doing?” Miles whispered, but Ed just started climbing stairs up to the chemistry department’s floor, and then they walked down the hall to the employee offices, Mile’s heart beating faster all the while, but he was actually curious about what Ed was doing. He’d almost expected them to go to Dr. Taylor’s office and tell him off or something, but they went in the other direction instead, until Ed came to an empty office which was set aside for the occasional visiting professor, or overflow instructors, and let himself in, waiting for Miles to follow before shutting the door behind them both. “Ok Ed, what the fuck is up?”

“Listen for a second, alright? Were you serious back in the car, about wanting revenge?”

Miles was a bit taken aback, and something in the older man’s creased face told him not to lie, and so he thought for a moment, not entirely sure himself. But at the end of the day, he was serious. He did want revenge, but he just felt powerless. Still, if he had the chance, he would have loved to discredit Dr. Taylor’s bullshit research, he would love to know that fucker down a few pegs. “Yeah, I was, and I am.”

“And you understand that in order to get something, you have to give something up, right? It might be things you weren’t even imagining, it might not even be worth it at the end of the day. Revenge is a costly thing–it can be worth it, but it’s costly. It wounds your soul in ways that you can’t understand until afterwards.”

“Ed, you’re freaking me out, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Ed just stared at him, knowing that if he tried to explain the whole story, they would lose their chance, and so he decided to wing it, he waved his hands in a momentary, complex pattern, and then laid them both on Mile’s chest, and after a single heartbeat, Miles was shoved back against the door by some invisible force.

“What the fuck was that?” he said, looking at Ed, but the older man was just looking at him, and smiling the oddest smile. “What was that Ed–could you give me an answer please?”

“It was magic.”

“Magic?”

“Let’s just say you might get what you wished for. I did warn you though–it can come with some…penalties.”

“I don’t–” Miles said, but gave a lurch, as one of his legs suddenly shortened substantially, his body standing cockeyed for a moment before the second one caught up, and dropped him down to a few inches under five feet. “What…the fuck…?” Miles said, looking down at his shorter stature, and then up at Ed. “You fucker.”

“I warned you…”

“What the fuck did you do to me, I’m fucking short!” Miles was craning his head up to look at Ed, and found the new perspective disconcerting. Nothing looked right–it was like somehow the entire room and everything in it had been grabbed and stretched upward away from him.

“It’s not going to stop there. Here maybe I should…hmm…yeah,” Ed said, and then wiggled his fingers at the wall and the entire surface shimmered before warping into a seamless mirror, and Miles looked at himself, looked at them both, and couldn’t believe how small he was. He didn’t want to be small! The sudden flash of anger that shot through him felt surprisingly good–it felt…justified, in some strange way, but as soon as it faded, he watched as his uniform started to bloat.

Part of the reason Miles had managed to get a work study job with the school in the first place was because he was one of the few incoming students who could pass the physical test required to be employed there. He’d always taken good care of his body, and one of the perks of working for the school was that he could use the athletic facilities for free, and he’d spent the last few years honing and perfecting his body, but as he watched, his six pack abs bloated outward, and then sagged down into a comical gut. He grabbed it by the sides, not quite able to believe it was attached to him, but he could feel it jiggle as he shook it, and then as he watched in the mirror, other parts of his body started to expand, and his gut only grew larger, the buttons of his shirt popping off, the zipper of his pants bursting open, the seat ripping out a second later. He just gawked at himself. He wasn’t just short–he was a blob. It only highlighted the fact that he was short, making him appear almost as wide as he was tall. “Oh…oh my god…what is happening. Please, Ed, you have to change me back, you have to, I can’t–”

“There’s nothing I can do for now, but don’t worry,” Ed said, “Just ride it out, and then we’ll talk.”

“You mean it’s not done?” Miles said, but as the words left his lips, he felt a strange itch spread all over his body, and the skin he could see started filling in with a copious amount of body hair, spreading in large whirls all over his belly, matching his dark hair, and he even felt it crawling up over his shoulders and down his back, making him shiver and itch for a few moments, before running his hands over it in surprise. Before he could even process it however, he noticed that the hairs weren’t staying dark for long–in fact, they all seemed to slowly be fading from black to grey, and then to white.

“No…No no no…” Miles said, and looked up at the mirror, watching his young face begin to crack and crease with thick, deep wrinkles, his cheeks sagging into jowls, A bushy white beard erupted across his face, crawling down his neck to meld with the white hair there, and his eyes turned grey and bloodshot, before blurring, making him squint to try and make out his image in the mirror. Thankfully, a moment later, a pair of half moon spectacles appeared, perched on his now bulbous nose, and he could make out his face again, not that he really wanted to. He looked almost as old as Ed, if not a bit older, and the clothes on his body started to shimmer and take on a life of their own, wrapping themselves up around him, contorting and twisting against his flabby body, reconstituting into a three piece suit, and if he hadn’t known it was him inside, he would have assumed he had become someone else entirely, and he just kind of gaped at his reflection for a few moments, trying desperately to understand how the short, fat old man looking back at him could possibly be himself.

“Hmm…are you done?” Ed said, walking up to him, “Weird, you usually get a tool…let me see…” the older man squatted down next to Miles, making him feel absurdly short, and Miles tried to back away from Ed as he gave him a strange pat down, and when Ed tested Mile’s new breast pocket on the inside of his suitcoat, he let out an “Aha!” and pulled out a full bent, very large pipe. “Here we are–your tool, sir.”

He extended the pipe to Miles, who looked at him, a bit terrified, but also curious. It looked small in his old mentor’s hands, a bit like a toy, but when he reached out and took it from him, he realized that was only because it was made for his own hands, with palms half the size of Ed’s. The pipe felt like it belonged there though, and he took a moment to examine it. The wood and the briar were almost impossibly black, and even though the surface was as smooth as the mirror, the wooden stem only gave of the slenderest reflection of light, indicating it’s roundness. The briar, in contrast, was very rough, almost like it would scrape off his skin if he rubbed it too hard. He’d admired it for a few moments, when he noticed a puff of smoke pop out of the bowl, and looking in it, he saw that somehow the pipe had filled and lit itself while he was holding it, and he looked up at Ed, wondering what he should do, but Ed didn’t seem interested in giving him direction. He looked at his reflection again, and figured he probably didn’t have much else to lose, stuck the stem of the pipe in his mouth and took what he’d intended to be a shallow draw, but as soon as he’d opened the airway to his lungs, the smoke shot through the stem of the pipe, burning its’ way down his throat and filling his lungs with high heat, making him wonder for a moment whether he was dying, but the heat was joining with something else, it was searching for something. He could feel it working out from his lungs, reaching for his heart, for that ball of hatred and resentment and anger he kept there for Dr. Taylor, for the man who had ruined his future, and the heat grasped it, and fertilized it, and Miles felt it suddenly burgen and blossom in him as righteous fury, the same anger he’d felt for that brief moment in his transformation, and it invigorated him.

He took a deeper draw off the pipe, feeling it settle deep within him and start changing him, but his heart this time–his spirit. It was warping him, but more than that, it was freeing him, freeing all of the cruelties he’d ever imagined, freeing all of the hate fueled fantasies of what he would do to that man, and using them. Beneath the fat, he could feel some of his musculature return, and even though he was short, he found his posture shifting into something more rigid and proud. His mouth curled up into a sneer, and then he felt the fear. What was he doing? What was he feeling? He shouldn’t be feeling this, he shouldn’t be wanting this to happen, this was wrong and immoral but he didn’t care, he did want it, he wanted it so bad, and he embraced it, he he pulled it deeper, feeling the anger flow down into his groin, the heat in his balls and cock unbearable for a moment, making him lean against the mirrored wall for support as he felt his cock grow and bulge in his pants, snaking it’s way down his leg, becoming a nine inch monstrous beast as thick as a pop can, his balls filling and churning with cum, bulging out the crotch of his pants beneath his gut, heavy and full of need and desire.

“Oh fuck…Oh fuck, I need to fuck something…” Miles growled, his voice gruff with smoke, and an octave deeper than moments before, “and I know just who I need to fuck, I think.” Miles grinned, he felt so free–it was like all of the burdens, all of the limitations on him had suddenly disappeared.

“Hold your horses, we need to talk for a second,” Ed said.

“There’s nothing to talk about, I have a date with the bastard down the hall.”

“You do, I know. But hear me out first,” Ed said, “Look, revenge is sweet and all that. But it does have a cost, as you can see. The spell I cast…the tool you have. It wants the spell to be completed, it wants you to take the revenge as much as you want it. But you can turn away. If you take your revenge, this is who you will be for the rest of your life. Think about that Miles–don’t throw away your youth on a whim. If revenge is what you want–if you’re willing to take this in exchange for it, then walk down that hall and take it. But if you can, I…just…think about it, alright?”

Miles had turned away already as Ed trailed off, shaking his head, and reached up for the handle awkwardly before flinging open the door and was marching down the hall. He wasn’t going to be denied this anymore. He wanted this. He wanted it so badly, he’d never realized how much he’d wanted it. He’d stayed on campus out of spite, he hadn’t seen it that way, but it was true. He’d wanted a chance like this, and now it was his, and then he passed the intersection which led out of the building and his stride faltered and he came to a stop, and he thought.

He looked down at himself, he felt the gut barely confined by the suit, the heavy arms and fatty thighs, looked at his small hands and wiggled the toes of his petite feet in his shoes. He felt the sensation of his hairy body, of his beard on his wrinkled hands. He felt the heat of the pipe, the tool urging him onward, to finish the spell, to take what he deserved and what he wanted. He looked up, and realized he would be looking up for the rest of his life, his life that was suddenly going to be much, much shorter in more ways than one, and he asked himself if this is what he really wanted. He could leave. He could turn away from all of this, and yet the power coursing through him, the desire and the drive, he’d never felt so alive! For the first time in years, it felt like he had direction, a goal, a purpose, a righteous purpose, something that was worth doing, and he realized that revenge was more than him, it was making sure that bastard never had a chance to ruin another student’s career. It was making sure that no injustice got away unpunished, and he renewed his stride, his short legs making quick strides down the hall, a cruel sneer curling his mouth, and he turned the handle on Dr. Taylor’s office door, and shoved the door so it slammed into the wall, making the professor jump at his computer, and he turned towards the sound, and saw the old, short man standing in his doorway, the pipe in his old mouth churning out a thick chimney of smoke, and the man said, “Dr. Taylor, I believe that you and I have some unfinished business.”

To be Concluded