Chapter 2: The First Mutation
Silence pressed down on the room, thick and suffocating.The only sounds were the low murmur of the television news and Fin’s ragged, uneven breathing. He kept his back pressed to the wall, as if he could push himself right through it and out of this nightmare.Vee stood frozen a few feet away, his hands held up, palms out. A silent plea.“Fin.Your voice.”
“I know,” Fin croaked. The words were a betrayal, too light, too smooth in his throat.He swallowed again, the sensation alien. A profound wrongness settled in his gut, cold and heavy.This wasn’t a chest cold. This wasn’t the flu.This was something unspooling him from the inside.
The heat in his chest hadn’t subsided. It pulsed, a low, deep warmth that seemed to be spreading, soaking into the tissue.He looked down.The flannel hung open. In the soft, multi-colored glow of the fairy lights, the change was unmistakable. The softening had progressed. His pectorals were no longer just softer; they had a rounded weight to them now, a fullness that pushed against the fabric. They ached with a dull, deep sensitivity, a feeling both entirely new and horrifyingly familiar. He watched, detached, as a gentle shift occurred beneath the skin, the shape settling into something that was no longer his.
A sharp, tingling pinch radiated from his nipples.He gasped, the new, higher pitch of his own voice startling him again. They were erect, pushing visibly against the soft cotton of his undershirt, darkened and almost… prominent.He wanted to tear them off. The thought was visceral, a flash of panic so bright it whited out his vision for a second.And then, a new sensation. A flicker.A deep, internal twinge between his legs.Not pain. A phantom pulse, a strange, empty tingling as if something was receding, drawing back inside him. His hands flew to the waistband of his work jeans, fingers hooking into the denim. He couldn’t breathe.“Vee,” he whispered, the name a prayer and a curse.
Vee took a step forward.Just one.His eyes were huge, swimming with tears he wasn’t shedding. “Let me help you.”
“You can’t!” Fin’s voice broke, splintering into a sob that sounded like a stranger’s.“It’s in me. It’s changing me.Don’t you get it? What if it… what if you catch it?”
“I don’t care.” The words were simple, absolute.Vee took another step. He was within arm’s reach now.“You’re shaking.”
Fin was. A full-body tremble had taken hold, starting in his core and rattling his teeth. He was cold, so cold, despite the internal fever. He watched, paralyzed, as Vee’s slender hand, with its delicate fingers and neatly trimmed nails, reached out.Not for his face. Not for his monstrous chest.For his hand.The one still clutching his jeans.Their fingers brushed.
It was the lightest possible touch.A fleeting connection of skin.Fin’s world exploded.
A searing, white-hot current shot up his arm from the point of contact, blazing through his nervous system like a live wire dropped in water. He cried out, a shredded, guttural sound that morphed mid-wail.It wasn’t pain.It was velocity.It was unraveling.
He convulsed, his back arching away from the wall before he crumpled. The floor rushed up to meet him, the polished wood hard and unyielding against his hip, his shoulder. He gasped, trying to draw air, but his lungs felt compressed, reshaped. A crushing, grinding sensation rolled through his ribcage, a tectonic shifting. His breasts, now undeniably breasts, heaved with the effort, the sensitive flesh rubbing rough against his shirt with each frantic breath.
He heard Vee scream his name from far away.His vision blurred, tunneling. He looked down at himself, his head lolling on the floor.His torso was a landscape of nightmare. The strong, straight lines of his abdomen were gone, replaced by a cinched, tapered waist that flared into the soft, full curves of his hips.His hips. The bony, masculine points had smoothed out, broadening, becoming rounder. His work pants, always snug, were now straining at the seams across this new, alien topography.He was naked from the waist up, his shirt torn open during the fall. The skin there was smooth, hairless. The muscles that once layered his frame had softened, melted away, leaving a slope of shoulder that led to the shocking reality of his chest. He brought a trembling hand up, his calloused, rough fingers hovering over the pale, full curve. He touched it.The sensation was electric, overwhelming.It wasn’t his.None of this was his.
A fresh, sharper pang echoed from between his legs, a final, definitive click of internal architecture giving way.He felt a hollow ache, a vacancy where solidity had been. He squeezed his thighs together, a reflexive, desperate gesture, and felt only the unfamiliar brush of soft inner flesh. He knew, without looking, without checking.That part of him was gone.
He was sobbing now, harsh, wrenching sounds that shook his strange new body. He curled onto his side, fetal, trying to hide, to make himself small.Vee was on the floor beside him, weeping openly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I touched you, I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t,” Fin managed, his voice a hollow, broken thing. It was undeniably feminine.A low, smoke-rough alto that didn’t belong to him. “Not your fault.”
“What do I do?” Vee’s tears dripped onto Fin’s arm. “An ambulance?The news said…”
“No.” The word was firmer. Fin forced his mind to work through the shock.The news.The warnings.Do not approach. Do not make contact. He pictured men in hazmat suits, quarantine plastic, his body on a gurney in a sterile room, Vee left alone outside.“No hospitals. Not yet.”
“But you’re—”
“I’m what?” Fin laughed, a bitter, choked sound. “A medical mystery?A monster?They’ll take me. They’ll lock me away to figure it out.” He tried to sit up.His center of gravity was off.Everything was off. Vee’s hands fluttered around him, afraid to touch but desperate to help, finally settling under his arm to support him.The touch was gentle, and it didn’t trigger another shift. The damage, for now, was done.
He sat there on the living room floor, his husband’s arm around his back, staring at the ceiling. His body felt like a borrowed suit, ill-fitting and strange.The fairy lights twinkled, oblivious. The TV showed a shaky map with spreading red dots.His phone, still in his back pocket, buzzed against his new hip. Then Vee’s phone, on the coffee table, chimed in unison. A jarring, normal sound in the profound abnormality.Vee reached for it, his hand shaking. He swiped the screen, his eyes scanning a notification.His breath hitched.“Shelly from next door. She’s on the building’s group chat.” His voice was thin with dread. “She says… she says her brother just collapsed on the subway.That his skin was… melting. That people were screaming.”
Fin closed his eyes.It wasn’t just him.This was everywhere. Out there, in the world. And in here, in the warm, lavender-scented safety of their home, he was now a stranger to himself.He leaned into Vee, into the only anchor he had left.
“We need to lock the door,” Fin said, her new voice quiet but clear. “And we need to decide what happens next.”