Chapter 2: Dream of the Giant
The chant was a soft, sticky thing in the morning air. “Grow larger for Clara. Grow larger for Clara.”
Rich’s heart hammered against his ribs. The dream’s aftershock—the feeling of concrete powdering under his heels, the weight of a skyscraper crumpling in his fist—still vibrated in his bones. But the reality was worse. The reality was Clara’s breath, hot and focused, on skin that was already stretching taut, already thrumming with a deep, internal heat.
He looked down his body. It wasn’t just his cock, though that was the undeniable centerpiece, a thick, veined column of flesh that now reached past his navel and lay heavily across his thigh. His entire frame felt… expanded. The muscles in his chest and arms were fuller, harder, straining against the confines of his own skin. When he moved his head, the tendons in his neck pulled with a new, unfamiliar tension.
“Stop,” he rasped. The word was dry, cracked.
Clara didn’t even look up. She was fixated, her eyes wide and unblinking. She placed a hand on his sternum, then slid it down, mapping the new terrain of him. “You’re so hot,” she murmured, not to him, but to the flesh itself. “Like a furnace. Can you feel it? The power?”
“Clara, what did you do?” Panic began to thread through the lingering haze of sleep and shock. He tried to sit up, but his movements were clumsy, his balance off. The bed groaned in protest. He was heavier. Significantly heavier.
“I told you,” she said, finally meeting his eyes. Her smile was radiant, triumphant, utterly unhinged. “I’m making you a god. My god. Look at you.” She wrapped both hands around his shaft, her fingers not meeting. “It’s working. It’s really working.”
“It’s not working, it’s a fucking nightmare!” He shoved her hands away, the motion sending a jolt through the mattress. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his feet hitting the floor with a solid thump that shook the nightstand. A half-empty coffee mug teetered and fell, shattering on the hardwood. He stared at the pieces. The sound was too loud. Everything was too intense.
He lumbered to the full-length mirror on the closet door, his gait a slow, careful shuffle. The man reflected back was him, but distilled, amplified. His shoulders nearly filled the width of the mirror. The definition in his abdomen was like carved stone. And his cock… it was a grotesque, pendulous weight. A thing of sheer, dumb mass.
“I can’t… This can’t be real.” He pressed a hand to the cool glass. The reflection mimicked him, the hand massive, capable of palming his own head.
Clara came up behind him, a slender phantom in the morning light. She pressed her body against his back, her cheek between his shoulder blades. She wrapped her arms around his waist, her hands splaying across the new hardness of his stomach. “It’s real, baby. It’s the most real thing that’s ever happened to us. Don’t you see? No one will ever laugh at you. No one will ever ignore you. They’ll see you.”
“I’m a freak!”
“You’re mine,” she corrected, her voice hardening. Her fingers dug into his skin. “And we’re not done. It’s just morning. Imagine by tonight.” Her hand drifted lower, curling around the base of him. He flinched, but there was nowhere to go. “Grow larger for Clara,” she whispered directly into his skin.
A wave of nausea rolled through him, followed immediately by that treacherous, electric tingle. It started deep in his core, a reactor spinning up, and radiated outward. He watched, helpless, as the muscles in his reflection seemed to swell infinitesimally. The sinew in his neck grew more pronounced. A low, sub-audible creak emanated from his own skeleton.
“No. No, don’t say it. Stop saying it!” He whirled around, breaking her hold. The motion was too forceful. His elbow struck the doorframe, and drywall dust puffed into the air, a white cloud against the sunbeam. A long, jagged crack now ran up the wall.
They both stared at the damage.
Clara’s expression shifted from awe to something hungrier. “See?” she breathed. “You’re not just big. You’re strong. You’re changing the world just by being in it.”
Rich’s breath came in short, sharp gasps. The room felt small, the ceiling too low. The scent of their sweat, of sex and fear and the drywall dust, was overwhelming. He needed air. He needed out.
He turned and stumbled toward the bedroom door, his head brushing the top of the frame. He had to duck. He’d never had to duck in his own home before.
“Where are you going?” Clara’s voice was sharp, a needle in the fog.
“The kitchen. Water. I need water.” It was the only ordinary thought he could grasp.
The hallway seemed narrower. He was acutely aware of the walls on either side, the family photos shaking slightly with each thudding step. In the kitchen, the fluorescent light buzzed like an insect. He went to the sink, fumbling with a glass. His fingers, thick and clumsy, felt alien. He dropped the first glass. It exploded in the stainless steel basin.
“Damn it!”
He turned on the tap and drank directly from the stream, the water cool and useless against the internal fire. He caught his reflection in the black window over the sink. His silhouette was a hulking shadow, a monster in a suburban kitchen.
Clara leaned in the doorway, watching him. She’d put on one of his old t-shirts. It swam on her, the neckline falling off one shoulder. She looked small. Fragile. The contrast made his condition feel even more obscene.
“It’s scary, I get it,” she said, her tone softening into something that almost sounded like concern. “But it’s a gift, Rich. This power… I can feel it when I touch you. It’s alive. We can direct it. We can control it.”
“We?” He turned off the tap, the silence sudden and heavy. “You’re chanting. I’m… I’m inflating.
He backed away from the sink, the linoleum creaking under his new weight. “I need a doctor. Or a scientist. Something. This isn’t right, Clara.”
“A doctor?” She let out a short, sharp laugh that held no humor. “What’s a doctor gonna do, measure it? They’d lock you in a lab. They’d take you from me.” Her expression darkened, the concern evaporating. “I won’t let that happen.”
She moved toward him, not with a rush, but with a deliberate, predatory grace. He retreated, his back hitting the refrigerator. The magnets rattled. “Stay away from me.”
“You don’t mean that.” Her voice was a low purr. “You loved it last night. You came so hard you passed out. Your body knows what it wants. It’s just your head that’s scared.”
She was right in front of him now. He could have pushed her away easily. His hands, big as dinner plates, twitched at his sides. But he didn’t move. A part of him was still trapped in the heat of last night, in the awe of seeing himself disappear between her colossal breasts. That memory warred with the chilling terror of the morning.
Her hand came up, not to his face, but to his chest. She laid her palm flat over his heart. “It’s beating so fast. For me. It’s always for me.” Her other hand slipped down, fingers tracing the line of hair leading to his groin.
A jolt, equal parts revulsion and electric need, shot through him. He gasped.
“See?” she whispered. “It’s not just the words. It’s me. I’m the key. Now come back to bed.”
She took his hand, her own vanishing in his grip, and led him. He followed, numb, a ship towed by a tiny, relentless tugboat. The journey back to the bedroom was a blur of brushed doorframes and his own thunderous heartbeat.
The disarray of the room—the tangled sheets, the cracked wall—felt like a crime scene. Their crime scene. She guided him until his knees hit the mattress and he sat down heavily, the bed frame groaning in protest.
“Lie back, Rich.”
He didn’t want to. But his body obeyed, sinking into the mattress that now felt too soft, too insubstantial. The ceiling spun slightly. Clara climbed over him, one knee on either side of his hips. She didn’t settle her weight on him. She hovered.
“You think this is something that’s happening to you,” she said, her eyes locked on his. “It’s not. It’s something we’re doing together. You have to want it, too. Deep down. I know you do.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, but no sound came out. The dream of crushing buildings flashed behind his eyes. The power of it had been terrifying. And exhilarating.
Clara saw the hesitation. She smiled. It was a victory. In one fluid, surprisingly strong motion, she seized his wrists. She slammed his hands down onto the mattress above his head, pinning them there. Her strength wasn’t supernatural.