Chapter 6: The Forgotten Passenger
Fergus groaned, a low rumble that started deep in his belly and rattled up through his chest. The world swam into focus—a bleary, throbbing mess of sunlight through grimy bus windows.His head pounded in time with the persistent hum of the engine. The memories of the night before were a blur of whiskey, loud songs, and a strange, tingling pleasure that felt almost like a dream. He remembered his thick fingers working between his legs, the shuddering release, the wet slap on his stomach.But the tiny, eager man who’d orchestrated it all? That detail had been drowned in single malt.
He stretched, his massive frame creaking, and felt the crackle of dried salt on his abdomen. He glanced down at the pearlescent flake glued to the coarse, gray hair of his belly. He scratched at it idly, a rough nail digging into the hardened residue.“Fuckin’ hell,” he muttered, his voice thick with sleep. “Mess.”
His finger caught the edge of the crisp packet tucked against his side. Stuck within its crinkled depths, Leo was jolted awake as the giant finger bulldozed towards him. He’d been slowly reforming, a pinkish smear coalescing into limbs and a head, but he was still fragile, gelatinous. The fingertip, a landscape of callouses and deep ridges, scooped under him.Pressure.Immense, sudden pressure.
Leo had no breath to scream. His half-formed body was crushed against the tactile bedrock of Fergus’s fingerprint, his world reduced to the swirling pattern of skin, the smell of old sweat and yeast. He was a piece of lint, a bit of gristle, utterly insignificant.
“Och, what’s this now?” Fergus mumbled, bringing his hand closer to his bleary eyes. He saw a tiny, smeared discoloration on his finger—a bit of dirt, he thought, maybe a stray bit of that dried spunk. He couldn’t make out the shape of a man; he saw nothing at all.He rubbed his thumb over it, grinding Leo into the pad of his index finger. The pressure was blunt and absolute, flattening Leo’s nascent form back into a sticky, shapeless film. The sensation for Leo was one of total dissolution, his consciousness a bright spark trapped in a paste of his own substance.Fergus, dissatisfied, looked for something to wipe his hand on. His gaze landed on Dougal’s bagpipes, abandoned on the seat beside him. The drone was propped against the window, the blowstick lying across the tartan bag.
“Aye, that’ll do,” Fergus grunted.He grabbed the smooth, wooden mouthpiece of the blowstick. With a rough, single motion, he dragged his finger along its length, smearing the tiny, pulverized entity that was Leo Pemberton across the polished wood. It was a casual, dismissive gesture, like cleaning a knife on a cloth.
Leo’s universe shrunk to the taste of aged wood and the ghost of Dougal’s spit. He was a translucent streak, a human stain on the instrument. The vibrations of the moving bus travelled through the pipe, a constant, low-grade tremor that kept his atoms from pulling back together. He was aware, horrifyingly aware, of everything: the coarse grain of the wood under his flattened cheek, the bitter, fermented tang of old moisture, the overwhelming scent of Fergus’s hand now receding.
“Mornin’, ya great lazy bastard.” Hamish’s voice boomed from the aisle, thick with his own hangover. “Pass the pipes. Need somethin’ to clear the fog.”
Fergus grunted, picking up the drones and bag and shoving them toward Hamish. The blowstick, with its newfound, minute passenger, remained attached.
“Cheers,” Hamish said, settling his bulk onto the seat opposite.He lifted the bagpipes, his thick, practiced fingers settling the bag under his arm. He licked his lips, dry and chapped, and without a second thought, sealed his mouth over the mouthpiece.For Leo, the world went dark, wet, and hot.
Hamish’s lips were a fleshy prison, sealing him in a chamber of saliva and pressure. The first blast of air was a hurricane. Leo was sucked flat against the inlet hole, his body stretched taut over the opening. The moist, cavern-like space was suffocating, reeking of stale beer and tobacco.Then, the drone started. A low, grinding hum that built into a soul-shaking wall of sound.The vibration conducted through the wood and into Leo’s very core. It shook him apart, holding him in a state of permanent, quivering disintegration. He wasn’t a man; he was a resonance, a shudder in the machinery of the instrument.Hamish began to play. A skirling, defiant melody filled the bus, drowning out the engine. Each note was a seismic event for Leo, his consciousness flickering with every pulse of air, every shift of Hamish’s tongue against the wood just inches from his face. He was a part of the music now, a raw, unintentional component in the chaos. The physical memory of Fergus—the weight, the sweat, the brutal, drunken intimacy—was just a ghost.This was new. This was being consumed by sound, reduced to a filthy harmonic.
He tried to think of Boston, of his old height, of anything solid. But all that remained was the relentless, vibrating drone, the taste of a stranger’s mouth, and the faint, salt-and-sex scent of Fergus that still clung to him, a forgotten souvenir from a night nobody but he remembered.
But all that remained was the relentless, vibrating drone, the taste of a stranger’s mouth, and the faint, salt-and-sex scent of Fergus that still clung to him, a forgotten souvenir from a night nobody but he remembered.Then, a new pressure began, rhythmic and invasive. Hamish’s tongue, damp and muscular, probed against the wooden mouthpiece as he sought better suction, pressing directly into Leo’s spread-eagled form.
The fleshy tip mashed into him, a hot, wet bulldozer of muscle. It smeared Leo’s pliable body even thinner, forcing him into a slick, translucent film over the blowstick’s opening. Each firm lap of Hamish’s tongue stretched Leo tighter, plastering his face and torso against the wood grain in a desperate, airtight seal. He tasted the sour remnants of breakfast ale and tobacco juice as his own microscopic form thinned and spread.
“Fuck’s sake, Hamish, give it a rest!” a voice shouted over the skirling pipes.
“Piss off, Dougal,” Hamish spat, removing his lips for a second.Cool air hit Leo’s molten skin. “Gettin’ the reed warmed up.” The brief respite ended as Hamish sealed his lips back over the mouthpiece, his tongue coming back with purpose. This time, the tip worked more deliberately, rubbing back and forth over the very spot where Leo was fused. The friction was immense, a brutal, wet massage that ground Leo’s consciousness into the wood. He wasn't a man; he was a lubricant, a filthy patch of spit and resilient tissue being worked by a calloused muscle.
Hamish blew, and the drone shuddered to life again, louder now. His tongue kept working, a constant, grinding pressure flattening and reforming Leo with each unconscious movement. For Leo, it became a sickening cycle: the crushing flattening, the searing wet heat, the deafening vibration of the note, then the tongue’s relentless kneading before the next blast of air. He was an instrument within an instrument, played in a way he’d never conceived. Pleasure was irrelevant; this was raw, mechanical obliteration.
“Sounds like a goose in a fucking mincer,” Fergus chuckled from the seat behind.
Hamish just grunted, a vibration Leo felt through the wood, and played on. His tongue explored more vigorously now, a reflexive, idle movement as he concentrated on the melody. It dug harder, the papilla like tiny, blunt teeth scraping over Leo’s impossibly stretched skin. The pressure peaked, and Leo felt a part of himself—thin as a molecule—slip into the humid darkness of Hamish’s mouth, peeled from the wood by the tongue's sticky surface. A fraction of his substance, a smear of his being, was dragged across the threshold of Hamish’s lips.It was a violation so complete it bypassed horror. He was being tasted, consumed in microscopic increments, lost to the warm, enzymatic swamp of a giant's mouth.The taste of his own salt mixed with the bitter wood and Hamish’s saliva. The bagpipe’s wail was inside him, and he was inside the bagpipe, and a part of him was now dissolving on a stranger's tongue. He tried to scream, but his breath was the drone, his voice the filthy, vibrating squeal of the reed. The world narrowed to the push of the muscle, the roar of the sound, and the slow, grinding absorption of his self.