Chapter 1: The Punishment Begins
The grass wasn’t right. It felt spongy under Tyler’s cleats, more like pressed moss than turf. He took a hesitant step forward, the squish too loud in the empty stadium. The sky overhead wasn’t a sky at all, but a swirling ceiling of bruised plum and deep crimson, clouded like a dirty oil slick. The air tasted metallic, coppery, and carried the faint, sweet stench of a neglected locker room mixed with something worse.Something rotting."Hello?" His voice echoed back, flat and dead.
The goalposts at the far end seemed to waver, their yellow paint dripping like molten wax. The stands, usually roaring with life, were silent, their aluminum benches warped into jagged, grinning rows of teeth. A chill, thin and invasive, traced the length of his spine despite the oppressive heat.He was alone. Post-practice, he’d stayed for extra wind sprints, pushing his chiseled body because that’s what champions did. But the team had left.The lights had gone out.This… this wasn’t the field.
His white practice briefs felt clammy against his skin, the only clothing left from his full pads. He ran a hand through his sandy hair, a gesture usually meant for an audience, a testament to his perfection. There was no one here to see it.
A faint skritch-skritch-skritch sound began, like knives being slowly sharpened together.It came from everywhere and nowhere.
"Who’s there?"Tyler demanded, puffing his chest out. He planted his hands on his hips, the defined V of his torso flexing.The pose was pure instinct.A show of strength. A declaration.The skritching stopped. The only sound was the wet, fleshy ripple of the turf beneath him.
"Little star quarterback," a voice rasped, a dry sound like old newspaper catching fire.It giggled, a wet, phlegmy rattle. "All by your lonesome.No cheerleaders to whistle. No coach to pat your perfect ass."Tyler spun.Nothing. The voice seemed to come from the decaying mouth of the stands."Show yourself!"he yelled, but the bravado cracked at the edges.
"In my world, pretty boy, you don't get to give orders." The voice was right behind his ear now, breath reeking of burnt sugar and sewer gas.Tyler whirled again, stumbling back. And there he was. Leaning against the goalpost that wasn’t dripping anymore, just standing solid and wrong.The striped sweater, filthy and stretched. The fedora, shadowing the ruined landscape of a face.And the hand.The four knives glinted under the hellish sky.
Freddy Krueger tilted his head, a teacher regarding a slow student. "You spend so much time worshiping this," he said, gesturing with his bladed fingers at Tyler’s body. "Mirrors must love you.Let's see what happens when the mirror… warps."
Tyler’s breath hitched.This was a dream.It had to be. The panic was a live wire in his gut."This isn’t real."
"Oh, it’s real where it counts," Freddy crooned, pushing off the post and taking a slow, deliberate step forward. "In here."He tapped his own burnt temple."And soon, in there." He pointed the blades straight at Tyler’s groin.
Tyler wanted to run, but his legs were leaden. A sudden, peculiar pressure began low in his back, a tightness that spread across his buttocks. It was a deep, internal ache, a swelling sensation that reminded him of the pump he felt at the peak of a heavy squat, but wrong.It didn’t stop.
He gasped, hands flying behind him.The thin white cotton of his briefs was growing taut. The fabric strained, seams whispering in protest."What are you doing?" Tyler’s voice was a squeak."Deflating that ego," Freddy chuckled, circling him. "Pop goes the vanity."He made a casual flicking motion with his gloved hand.
The pressure intensified, blooming from a dull ache into a fierce, stretching expansion. Tyler cried out, staggering as his center of gravity shifted violently backward. He fell to his knees on the yielding turf, his hands scrambling to feel what was happening behind him. The curves of his ass, once firm and compact, were pushing outward, swelling against his palms like over-inflated balloons. The briefs dug cruelly into the burgeoning flesh, creating deep, painful creases."Stop!Please!" he begged, tears of shame and confusion springing to his eyes.
"The star player, brought to his knees," Freddy mused, stopping to loom over him."Not by a linebacker, but by his own backfield." He let out a sharp, loud cackle that bounced off the teeth of the stands.
The growth continued, relentless, absurd.Tyler felt enormous, grotesque. The sheer mass of it was humiliating, a cartoonish parody of his former athletic physique. But woven into the shock and the horror was another sensation, a traitorous feedback loop of intense, hyper-sensitive nerves. The stretching skin was alive with feeling, every fractional increase in size sending jolts of electricity straight to his core.
He tried to fight it, to clamp down, but his body was no longer his own. A hot, shameful thrill coiled in his belly, entirely against his will. A low moan escaped his lips, a sound that was equal parts agony and something else.
Freddy leaned in close, his burnt lips almost touching Tyler’s ear."Feels weird, doesn't it? Wrong… but a little bit right?That’s my special touch."The pressure hit a critical, impossible peak. The swollen flesh was a heavy, throbbing weight. The confusing, violating arousal spiked, white-hot and undeniable, a tidal wave crashing over the last dam of his pride. His back arched involuntarily, a strangled shout tearing from his throat as his body betrayed him completely, shuddering through a violent, humiliating climax right there on the twisted field, on his knees before the nightmare.
Tremors wracked him. He collapsed forward onto his elbows, spent and shaking, sticky warmth spreading inside the now-ruined briefs. The vast, exaggerated weight of his own transformed body pressed down on him, a permanent, shameful anchor.
Freddy’s laughter was the only sound in the universe, rich and full of delight."Oh, Ty.Look at you. All that pride, melting away. And just think," he whispered, the glee evident in every rotten syllable."This is only the first quarter."
The skritch-skritch-skritch started again, fading into the thick, foul air as Tyler squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the dream to end, knowing with a cold, certain dread that for him, it might just be beginning.