Chapter 1: Stolen Gold, Growing Folly
The steam clung to everything. It hung in the air, a wet, warm blanket smelling of chlorine, ancient sweat, and the faint chemical tang of cleaner that had long since given up the fight. John ran a hand through his damp brown hair, watching the droplets fall onto the grainy, perpetually damp wooden bench. He smirked at his reflection in the long, foggy mirror, its silvered backing peeling at the edges to show the warped plywood beneath. It made his image look fractured, like a better version of himself seen through prison glass.
He was alone. The last of the team had shuffled out twenty minutes ago, leaving the cavernous locker room to the hiss of showers and the slow drip-drip from a broken faucet. Perfect. He stretched, the muscles in his back and shoulders rippling under skin still flushed from his workout. His white briefs were damp in places, clinging. He adjusted them, admiring the line they cut.
Then his hand went to the pocket of his discarded jeans, rumpled on the bench. His fingers closed around it. Cold. Unnaturally so. He pulled it out.
The coin caught the sickly fluorescent light, winking a dull, brassy gold. It was heavier than it should be, roughly the size of a half-dollar, but with no recognizable stamp. Just intricate, spiraling knots etched into the metal, so fine they seemed to move if you stared too long. He’d found it last week, just sitting on the floor by his locker. Finders keepers. It felt significant, like a trophy. He liked the weight of it in his palm.
“Admirin’ yerself, are ye?”
The voice was like gravel and peat smoke, scratchy and ancient. It came from right behind him.
John spun, his heart doing a single, hard thump against his ribs. The locker room was still empty. Steam swirled in the empty space between the rows of lockers.
“Down here, ye great lumberin’ tit.”
He looked down.
The man was maybe three feet tall, standing between the bench and the locker banks. He was old, his face a roadmap of wrinkles so deep they seemed carved from brown leather. A crooked hat of faded green felt sat askew on a head of wild, white hair. His eyes were a luminous, terrible green, like moss on a grave. He wore a battered brown jacket and trousers, and his smile revealed small, sharp-looking teeth.
“What the hell?” John breathed, taking an instinctive step back. His bare shoulder bumped a cold locker with a metallic clang.
“What the hell, indeed,” the little man said, his grin widening. He took a step forward, the old floorboards creaking under a weight they shouldn’t have felt. “Y’have somethin’ of mine, boyo. I’ll be takin’ it back now.”
John’s fist clenched around the coin. The cold bit into his palm. His initial shock was melting, replaced by a hot surge of irritation. This was a prank. Had to be. Some idiot from the team in a costume.
“Get lost, man,” John said, forcing a laugh. It sounded hollow in the wet air. “Costume’s good. Really. But the locker room’s closed. Beat it.”
The little man—Seamus O’Malley, though John wouldn’t learn the name until it was too late—let out a cackle that echoed off the tiles. “Costume? I’ll give ye a costume.” Those green eyes fixed on John’s clenched fist. “The coin. Last ask. Polite-like.”
John’s arrogance, that familiar, comfortable armor, snapped back into place. He looked down at the tiny figure, all his height and muscle feeling like an unassailable advantage. He dangled the coin between his thumb and forefinger. “This? You mean my good luck charm? Finders keepers, little dude.”
Seamus’s grin vanished. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. The steam stopped its lazy swirl and just hung, frozen in the air.
“Luck,” Seamus said, the word flat and final. “Ye’ve no idea the meaning of the word. But ye will. I’ll be teachin’ ye a lesson in manners. And in theft.”
He didn’t move. He just lifted one gnarled hand and snapped his fingers.
The sound was like a bone breaking.
A tingling warmth erupted on John’s mouth. Not painful, but insistent, a weird, internal pressure. He dropped the coin. It hit the damp floor with a dull clink and rolled under the bench.
“What did you do?” John’s voice came out muffled. He lifted his hands to his face. His lips felt strange—thick, spongy. He turned back to the fogged mirror, wiping a frantic streak across the glass with his forearm.
His reflection stared back. His lips, normally thin and set in a confident line, were swollen. Puffy. They looked bee-stung, a ridiculous, glossy plum color against his skin.
“A wee start,” Seamus said, leaning against a locker leg now, looking unbearably casual. “The mouth that uttered such disrespect. Seems fittin’ it should be… emphasized.”
“Change it back!” John commanded, the order garbled by his new lips. Panic, sharp and acidic, began to bubble in his gut.
Seamus just laughed. “Or what? Ye’ll flex at me? Aye, yer a mighty specimen. Let’s see how the world appreciates yer particular gifts.”
Another wave of sensation, but this one was lower. A deep, spreading heat at the base of John’s spine, a feeling of expansion, of soft tissue inflating. He gasped, his thickened lips making it a wet, sloppy sound. He twisted, trying to look over his shoulder at the mirror.
The tight white cotton of his briefs was growing taut. Strain lines appeared in the fabric. He watched, horrified, as the material began to stretch, obscenely, over a curve that was swelling, rounding, pushing outward with a slow, inexorable momentum.
“No… no, stop it!” The plea was pitiful.
“Stop?” Seamus chuckled, taking out a small clay pipe and lighting it with a touch of his finger. The smoke smelled of burning leaves and damp earth. “We’re just gettin’ warmed up, lad. Y’thought yerself quite the prize, din’t ye? A collector of trophies. So we’ll make ye a proper collection. One piece at a time.”
John’s hands flew to his backside, feeling the firm, swelling flesh pushing relentlessly against his palms. The briefs were now critically tight, a thin white membrane straining to contain a absurd, growing mass. The seams whined.
He looked in the mirror again. His face was a mask of stunned terror. His lips were now cartoonishly large, two bloated, purple sausages that made his once-handsome features look smeared and silly. And below his waist, his silhouette was no longer that of an athlete. It was a grotesque parody, top-heavy and narrow, then exploding into a huge, round shelf of flesh.
A button on the waistband of his briefs popped off, pinging against a locker.
“They’re gonna split,” John whimpered, the words barely intelligible.
“Aye, likely,” Seamus agreed, blowing a smoke ring. “But the lesson’s not in the split, boyo. It’s in the wait. The anticipation. The humiliation of feelin’ it happen, slow as honey off a spoon, and knowin’ there’s not a thing ye can do.”
John made a desperate lunge for the locker room door. His movement was wrong—his new center of gravity was off, throwing his gait into an awkward, waddling stagger. He grabbed the handle, yanking with all his strength.
It didn’t budge.
It was just a standard push-bar door, but it felt welded shut, sealed by something older than iron. He threw his shoulder against it. Nothing. The solid thud echoed in the silent, steamy room.
“Let me out!” he screamed, his voice a high, panicked thing muffled by lips he could barely move.
Seamus O’Malley took a long, satisfied draw from his pipe. He watched the proud, arrogant jock in his tortured underwear, lips like overripe fruit, backside swelling by the second, weeping and pounding on a door that would not open.
“Now,” the leprechaun said softly, his green eyes gleaming with malicious joy. “Now we’re havin’ fun.”