Chapter 3: The Morning After
Dawn was a rude intrusion. A pale, watery light filtered through the grime on his single window, falling across his eyes. Leo groaned, a sound that emanated from the deep cavern of his chest and vibrated the floorboards beneath him.
He was on his back. The ceiling, once a distant, water-stained plane, was now close enough to touch. A network of hairline cracks seemed to orbit the light fixture. He tried to stretch, an automatic morning ritual, and his knuckles slammed into the plaster with a dull thud. A fine dust of drywall sifted down onto his face.
He coughed, rolling onto his side. The movement was a logistical nightmare. His shoulders, broad as a yoke, caught on the edge of his futon frame. His legs, endless and corded with muscle, had to be drawn up carefully to avoid kicking over the mini-fridge. The space that had once contained his life now felt like a child’s playpen constructed for a grizzly bear.
He pushed himself upright, sitting on the floor because the futon groaned in mortal protest under his weight. The memories of the night before flooded back—the violent expansion, the humiliating, ecstatic release, the manic laughter. It hadn’t been a dream. The evidence was all around him. The torn clothing. The dried, milky streaks on the floor and his own abdomen. The coin, resting innocently on the desk, a silent accomplice.
And the body. Good God, the body.
In the harsh morning light, it was even more absurd. He was a sculpture of exaggerated masculinity, carved from oak and wrapped in coarse dark fur. His hands were monstrous, the fingers thick enough to make his phone look like a toy. He looked down at his cock, resting flaccid against his thigh. It was the size of a respectable erection for the man he used to be. The sheer, quiet bulk of it was more shocking than any state of arousal.
A different hunger announced itself, sharp and guttural. It wasn’t desire. It was a raw, animal need for calories. His metabolism was a furnace now, burning through everything. His stomach let out a roar that echoed in the small room.
He needed food. An immense amount of it.
Navigating to the kitchenette was like piloting a tank through a dollhouse. He moved with a slow, conscious precision, acutely aware of his own destructive potential. He opened the fridge. The contents—a half-empty jar of pickles, a fossilized pizza slice, a six-pack of cheap beer—were a pathetic insult. He grabbed the entire six-pack, his hand swallowing it whole. He popped the top off a bottle with his thumb, a trick that would have broken his finger yesterday, and drained it in three long gulps. It did nothing.
He needed real fuel.
Dressing was another comedy. His work pants were a lost cause, split at every seam. He rummaged in a box of old clothes and found a pair of grey sweatpants from a forgotten gym phase. He managed to get them on, though they were obscenely tight across his thighs and rear, the fabric straining to contain the mass. A single, gigantic hoodie, its university logo faded, just barely zipped over his barrel chest. No shoes would fit. His feet, broad and long, would have to remain bare for now.
He stared at the door. Going out was a risk. He was a spectacle. But the hunger was a sharpened spear in his gut, overriding caution. He had to know how the world would see him now.
The hallway of his apartment building seemed narrower. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead. As he lumbered toward the stairs, Mrs. Gable from 3B stepped out of her door. She was a tiny, birdlike woman in a floral housecoat, her arms full of recycling.
She looked up. Her eyes traveled from his bare, hairy feet, up the tree-trunk legs, over the mountainous torso barely contained by the hoodie, and finally to his face—the heavy brow, the widened jaw, the eyes that seemed to glow with a feral, amber light.
She didn’t scream. She just froze. A plastic bottle clattered from her arms and rolled to his foot.
Leo forced his new, rough voice into something approximating civility. “Mornin’, Mrs. Gable.”
She blinked, her mouth working silently for a second. “Leo? Is… is that you? Goodness. You look… different.” Her voice was a whisper.
“Been hitting the gym pretty hard,” he said, the lie feeling flimsy as tissue paper.
“Must be quite a regimen,” she murmured, not moving, her eyes still wide. He gave a curt nod and maneuvered past her, his bulk forcing him to turn sideways. He felt her gaze on his back all the way to the stairwell.
The outside air was a shock. It was cool, carrying the smells of traffic, wet concrete, and distant food. His senses catalogued it all, separating each component. His bare feet on the sidewalk felt every pebble, every crack. He kept his head down, a habit from his invisible life, but it was useless. He was a walking event.
A group of teenagers on the corner fell silent as he passed, their phones forgotten. A construction worker loading a truck stopped, a cable slung over his shoulder, and let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Hell of a build, brother,” the man called out. Leo just grunted, the sound feeling appropriate.
He saw his reflection in a store window—a hulking, fur-covered anomaly shuffling past displays of bright summer dresses. He looked like a myth stumbled into the wrong reality. The hunger gnawed harder.
He beelined for the all-night diner two blocks over, a place called ‘The Greasy Spoon’ where he was formerly a ghost. The bell above the door jangled violently as he pushed it open, having misjudged his strength.
Every conversation in the booth-lined room died. The clatter of cutlery ceased. All that remained was the hiss of the grill and the low hum of a refrigeration unit. Every eye was on the doorway, on him, a creature from a different scale of reality crammed into the frame.
Leo ducked his head, the motion instinctual, but his shoulders still brushed the doorjamb. He focused on the black and white checkered floor, on the path to the counter. His bare feet made soft, sticky sounds on the linoleum. The air was thick with the smell of frying grease, coffee, and syrup—a perfume that made his stomach clench with a painful, hollow yearning.
He took a stool at the counter, its chrome frame groaning in alarm as he settled his weight. The laminated menu was a joke, a tiny placard in his massive hands. He set it aside.
Cheryl, the day-shift waitress with a permanent look of weary amusement, approached. Her eyebrows, thinly drawn on, climbed toward her hairline. Her gaze did the same tour everyone’s did: feet, legs, the sweats stretched to their absolute limit, the chest that threatened the zipper of his hoodie, the face that was no longer Leo’s.
“Holy shit, Leo?” she finally said, her voice cutting through the diner’s silent suspense. “What in the ever-lovin’ hell have you been putting in your protein shakes?”
A few nervous titters came from the booths. The tension broke, but the attention did not.
Leo found his voice, a low rumble he had to consciously smooth. “Just… hungry, Cher. Real hungry.”
“I’ll bet. You look like you could eat the grill and the short-order cook.” She pulled her pad from her apron, her eyes wide. “So? What’ll it be, big guy? Triple everything?”
“Quadruple,” he said, the word leaving him in a hungry sigh. “Bacon. Sausage. Pancakes. Hash browns. Eggs scrambled. And a whole pot of coffee. Just leave the pot.”
She scribbled, a slow smile spreading. “You got it. This I gotta see.”
The food arrived in waves, plates covering the counter in front of him. He abandoned the fork after the first clumsy attempt, his fingers too thick to manage it. He ate with his hands, a focused, deliberate devastation. Strips of bacon were entire mouthfuls. Pancakes were folded and shoved in. He drank the steaming coffee directly from the carafe, not feeling the heat.
He was a machine processing fuel. The sounds of the diner returned around him—murmured conversations, the scrape of plates—but they were underscored by the spectacle of his consumption. He heard the whispers, felt the glances like physical touches.
“...on some serious gear…”
“...like a damn bear…”
“...knew him when he was a twig…”
A man in a trucker hat at the end of the counter swiveled on his stool. “Hey. Serious question. You ever consider strongman? Atlas stones? That’s a natural frame for it right there.”
Leo paused, a sausage link halfway to his mouth. He looked at the man, seeing genuine curiosity, not fear. It was a new sensation. “Just… eating,” Leo grunted.
“Well, keep at it,” the trucker laughed, turning back to his eggs.
When the last smear of yolk was wiped up with a final piece of toast, a deep, resonant fullness settled in him. It was more than sated hunger. It was a sense of solidity, of immense potential energy lying in wait. He pulled a crumpled wad of bills from his hoodie pocket—most of his last paycheck—and left it on the counter.
“Keep the change, Cher.”
Her eyes widened at the sum. “Leo, this is too—”
He was already moving, the stool screeching backward. The attention was no longer entirely uncomfortable. It was a current he could feel, and part of him, a part growing larger by the minute, wanted to swim in it. He pushed out into the morning, the bell jangling less violently this time.
The walk back was different. He didn’t hunch. He let his shoulders fill the space they needed. He met the stares of passing drivers, a slow, deliberate turn of his head. His reflection in windows no longer looked like a mistake. It looked like a statement.
Back in the claustrophobic silence of his studio, the adrenaline faded. The room was a pathetic shell, unable to hold him. The grime, the clutter, the sagging futon—it was the life of the man he had erased. He stood in the center, his newfound fullness curdling into a restless agitation.
He was a god in a broom closet. It was absurd.
His eyes fell on the desk. The coin sat exactly where he’d left it, a dull, ancient disc of tarnished silver. He walked over, his movements less careful now, his knee bumping the desk and making the cracked mirror upon it shiver.
He picked it up. It was cool, inert.
As his fingers closed around it, a thin, desperate thought slithered through his mind. This room. This tiny, stupid room. I need… space. Air. A place that fits.
The coin glowed faintly.
A warm, subtle pulse of crimson light emanated from between his fingers, bleeding out into the dim room. It was not the violent explosion of the previous nights. This was a whisper, a promise, a quiet acknowledgment of a new desire taking root.
It lasted only a second. The light faded, leaving the familiar metallic coolness behind.
Leo stood perfectly still in the sudden dark, his breath loud in the silence. The coin had heard him. It was just waiting for the sun to go down. A slow, knowing smile spread across his broad, unfamiliar face.
The walls seemed to press in a little tighter, a little more insistently. He didn't mind. Not anymore. He had all day to think about what ‘space’ really meant.