#oni writes

Henry woke up by degrees, he felt bleary and slow...and so full he thought he might throw up. It was like his stomach was contracting around whatever he’d gorged on the night before in another apparent gluttonous fugue state. His eyes opened with a blink, and his vision was strange...like only one of his eyes was seeing in full color. The sky was still dark, but there was a creeping shine of dawn coming in to the east.

He tried to roll over, his belly twinged and sloshed sluggishly...it felt like he’d guzzled down a few dozen pounds of wet cement. He couldn’t stop a pained groan from rattling out of his throat, and it didn’t sound...human. ‘Oh god… what’s happening..?’ He thought, near panic as he realized the gritty feeling underneath his entire body meant he was outside...and that he was naked… again.

He finally managed to roll onto his side, and in this position he saw something he’d only been feeling a few moments ago. That itching sensation that he was feeling across his entire body...it was thick, coarse, dark hair either shedding off of his body in wafting spirals or in some cases...retreating into his flesh, thinning and lightening slightly as it did. He gasped as something in his face cracked, he pressed his left hand to his jaw and felt it pop and shift...changing from a muzzle-like shape and returning to his normal doughy jawline.

The sky continued to lighten, and the changes began to speed up. The itching sensation intensified to a maddening pitch, and Henry realized after a moment that it was receding toward the middle of his left forearm...where he’d been bitten by that… “dog”. He stared at his arm in wonder, his fingers grew slightly smaller, his nails receded to a more human shape, and finally the last of the hair either detached from his skin or shrank back to a more human texture to become his normal if thicker than usual bodyhair.

“I’m a… I’m… I’m a…” He struggled to voice the thought and then jumped when a deep voice not far away from him finished it for him.

“Hey, I’m not going anywhere.” Henry said and then saw a pair of feet shuffle over to them. “Oh, a morning vision…” Henry muttered.

“Hello to you two, what are you guys doing on the floor. Midnight wrestling and didn’t invite me?” Rosa said thickly, she was in the middle of brushing her teeth.

“Oh, you know me.” Bryan said, pushing himself into a seated position which let him stick both feet under Henry’s belly, that got a laugh from him. “I always love a good floor-nap. And since the best pillow in the house was out here I figured I’d come and see if he’d let me use him.”

Henry smiled and shifted himself toward the wall as well, the change in his position let his belly drape completely across Bryan’s lower body. He kissed his boyfriend on the cheek. “You two are adorable. But adorable won’t make you not late for class. I guess I’m mostly talking to you, Bryan since I don’t think Henry has a morning class today. But that means he has time clean up the pizza carnage.” She said pointing over his head, prompting him to roll away from Bryan who groaned quietly but didn’t try to keep his boyfriend’s bulk pressed to him.

“Oh jeez, I did it again didn’t I?” Henry muttered, only now taking stock of his outfit, the coffee table, and the shredded pizza boxes. The new purple tank he’d changed into after the gym was torn from the bottom of the arm hole to the hem on both sides, with shreds and slivers of it hanging out of his folds. His shorts were more or less intact, but still had a few rips and tears and holes. The bigger mess though was on the coffee table. The three pizzas Bryan had ordered were almost completely gone, the only remains of them were scattered fragments of cheese and crust and pizza sauce.

Henry slept badly...but at the same time deeply, the sleep wasn’t restful, and filled with unsettling dreams. Mostly he dreamed of the Wolf, laid at the bottom of a pit filled with foliage and flowers that bent their deep purple and blue blossoms with their hood-shaped petals over it. Pollen drifted from them onto the Wolf like eerie discolored snow that smoked very slightly when it landed on the creature.

He seemed to have some measure of conscious control of himself in the dream. When he stepped closer to the edge of the pit, close enough that his shadow fell across the Wolf, it let out a piteous moan and tried to look upward. It was then that Henry heard the tinkling of metal chains, he hadn’t noticed them at first through the creature’s shaggy fur and its plush flesh obscuring them. It moved slowly, and weakly, and the chains smoked a little as they shifted against the Wolf’s flesh. It groaned again, as if asking, “Why..?”

“You tore up downtown...that can’t happen again. And, my appetite was already big, but with you involved...it’s just too much and just...how fast you digest, if I can’t stop eating so much I won’t even be able to move soon.” Henry said, his tone shaky and defensive.

Another whine, like the Wolf was having trouble breathing, it sounded apologetic...almost pleading.

In the dream, Henry covered his mouth...or tried to, noticing that the Wolf wasn’t the only one chained in silver. He felt ill, and the huge guy didn’t think it was just the draining effects of the silver he was wearing or the tea he’d drunk before going to bed.

Suddenly he began to shake, not as if he were trembling but more like he was being jostled around. He tried to wave off whatever was pushing against him, something small and fairly delicate compared to his bulk, but the chains held his arms.

Henry’s misgivings about joining in on practices had fully evaporated by the next day but, he was still wondering why he was so much hungrier...and why he’d awoken that morning with crumbs, with his mouth filled with the residue of a fruity flavor that he couldn’t immediately place. He’d also noticed with some dismay that his back door was wide open when he’d come into the kitchen of the house he was renting near campus. Some of the chairs were askew, the table was several feet from where it normally was, and the kitchen trash can was upended with its contents strewn about the floor.

“Did an animal get in here last night? How did I not wake up while it was ransacking the kitchen?” He murmured, as he swept up the detritus and moved the furniture back to its proper place.

His stomach gurgled as he put the broom away, after he’d righted the final kitchen chair. He wasn’t hungry and that...surprised him. He pressed one meaty hand against his upper belly, eliciting a groan and a couple of gullet-glorps. Sure he’d eaten really big the night before, but he’d never woken up still full...at least not that he remembered.

He went to sit at the table just as Bryan yawned and staggered his way into the kitchen. The wiry young man’s short, coarse, black hair still glittering with a little bit of water. “Hey, biggun, I thought you went to bed before me, but I could hear you clattering around in the kitchen after midnight. Rearranging the furniture?” He said through a yawn, looking a little blearily around at the kitchen which wasn’t quite in the same place.

“What d’you mean? I was kinda wiped so I went to bed at 9:30…” Henry said, furrowing his brow at Bryan as the smaller man went to the fridge and opened it.