Chapter 9: Show and Tell
The chemical lavender smell of the salon did nothing to mask the deeper, more intimate odor clinging to Donna. It rose from her in the warmth of the drying chairs, a musky, spent scent that seemed to seep from her very pores. She shifted on the vinyl seat, the stickiness between her thighs a brutal reminder of the dawn. Clark had left for work silent, his new, formidable shape a silent accusation in his slacks. She’d showered, scrubbed, but the feeling remained.
Brenda snipped the ends of an elderly woman’s blue-rinse curls, her movements efficient. She caught Donna’s eye in the mirror and winked, a silent promise. When the last client left, the bell jingling against the glass door, Brenda flipped the sign to ‘Closed’ and turned the deadbolt with a definitive click.
The sudden quiet was heavy. The hum of the neon sign outside buzzed like an insect.
“Okay, sweetheart,” Brenda said, leaning against her station, arms crossed over her ample chest. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost and fucked it. Spill.”
Donna’s composure cracked. The words tumbled out in a rushed, panicked whisper. “I used it again. The cream. After you told me to stop.”
Brenda’s red eyebrows shot up. “Donna, for fuck’s sake, I said that shit was shady. What, did you rub it on like hand lotion?”
“No.” Donna looked down at her hands, clenched in her lap. Her voice dropped even lower. “I’ve been… I’ve been applying it to Clark.”
Brenda stared, her lipsticked mouth parting slightly. “You rubbed it on his dick while he was sleeping?”
Donna shook her head, her face burning. “Not… not directly.” She took a shaky breath. “I put it inside me first.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Brenda’s face went through a series of transformations: confusion, dawning horror, then a stark, clinical understanding. “You’re using your pussy as an applicator? Jesus H. Christ, Donna. Do you have any idea what’s in that stuff? It’s leaching into you! Every time!”
“I know!” Donna hissed, finally looking up, her eyes wild. “But it’s working, Brenda. God, it’s working. He’s… well, he’s bigger. The sex is… it’s not even sex anymore. It’s like being taken apart and put back together wrong. In the best way.” A frantic, inappropriate smile touched her lips. “And it’s not just him.”
Brenda pushed off the station, walking closer. She pulled a rolling stool over and sat directly in front of Donna, their knees almost touching. “What do you mean, not just him?”
Donna squirmed under the intensity of her friend’s gaze. “The tingling. The warmth. It’s not unpleasant. It… it makes everything feel more. Richer. Deeper.” She hesitated, her voice dropping to a shameful whisper. “I think it’s… changing me too.”
Brenda’s eyes narrowed. “Changing you how?”
“Things feel… fuller. More sensitive. And…” Donna swallowed, the confession hovering on her lips, both terrifying and thrilling. “My clit. It’s… different.”
“Different how?”
“Bigger.”
The word hung in the perfumed air. Brenda didn’t flinch. Her hairdresser’s eyes, accustomed to assessing symmetry and detail, scanned Donna’s face, looking for the lie, the exaggeration. She found only a desperate, feverish truth.
“Show me,” Brenda said, her voice no-nonsense.
Donna’s heart hammered against her ribs. “What? Here?”
“It’s a closed salon, not a church. You come in here smelling of a three-day orgy and tell me your clit is growing, I need to see the evidence. Now. Before you both turn into something out of a fucking body-horror comic.”
The vulgarity, the sheer medical bluntness of it, broke through Donna’s paralysis. This was Brenda. Her confessor. The only person who knew the depth of her drought and now, the terrifying flood.
With trembling fingers, Donna unbuttoned her jeans. The sound of the zipper was deafening. She pushed the denim and her cotton panties down to her mid-thighs, then shuffled back on the seat, knees falling apart. The cool vinyl was a shock against her bare skin.
Brenda didn’t move for a moment. She just looked. The pinkish light from the neon sign outside bled through the window, casting a faint, hellish glow on the exposed flesh.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Brenda breathed finally. She leaned in, closer. “Holy shit, Donna.”
It wasn’t a monstrous transformation. It was a subtle, undeniable amplification. The little bud of flesh was pronounced, swollen-looking even in its resting state, peeking prominently from its hood. The skin there seemed darker, richer, more vascular.
“Touch it,” Brenda instructed, her voice hushed now with a kind of profane curiosity.
Donna’s hand moved, her own touch sending a jolt of electric sensitivity straight to her core. She circled the engorged nub with a fingertip, her breath catching. A tiny, slick pearl of moisture bloomed at the tip.
“Does it… feel good?” Brenda asked, her voice thick.
“Unbelievably,” Pleasure, raw and immediate, arrowed through Donna. Her hips jerked off the seat. “Oh! Brenda…”
“You’re soaking,” Brenda murmured, her own pupils dilated. “This isn’t just a side effect, Donna. This is like an infection. A fucking dangerous, addictive infection.”
Donna panted, pulling her clothes up with fumbling hands, the sudden absence of touch a physical ache. “I know. I know it is.”
“Then why?” Brenda’s question was a plea. “Why keep doing it? Look at what it’s doing to Clark. To you!”
“Because for the first time in years, I don’t feel like I’m begging for scraps. I feel desired. I feel consumed. He looks at me now like I’m a meal, Brenda. And I love it.”
Brenda leaned back on her stool, wiping her fingers on a nearby towel with a distracted gesture. She studied her friend—the fever-bright eyes, the flush on her chest, the way her body still thrummed with unspent tension.
“It’s in your system now,” Brenda said quietly. “You realize that, right? This isn’t something you can just wash off. You and Clark… you’re connected by this.”
The truth of it settled over Donna, colder than the vinyl seat beneath her. It wasn’t just a cream. It was a covenant. A hungry, living thing they had invited into the heart of their marriage.
Donna fastened her jeans, her fingers clumsy. The warmth between her legs was already fading, leaving behind a deep, unnatural thirst. Brenda was right. But the memory of Clark’s new weight inside her, the shattered sound of his voice in the dark, the way her own enhanced flesh screamed for more—it all coalesced into a single, terrifying certainty.
She didn’t know if she wanted it to stop.