So this happened a while ago, back when I was still in high school. I was on my high school’s football team, but wasn’t exactly the star player. At every turn I kept getting out classed by this jerkoff named Pete Sullivan. God, I loathed that fucker. It wasn’t enough that he was the best and most popular player; he had to let fucking everybody know it. Day in and day out he’d flash that cocky smile, come into gym trailing a herd of fan girls, and complain about all the scholarship offers he received. I couldn’t stand a second of it.
Not like there was a lot I could do, though. I trained my ass off, wasting entire days out on the field and even missing school to put in my hours, but it was never enough. There was just something about Pete that kept him five steps ahead of me. Call it genetics, luck, or honest skill, I was never going to beat it on my own. Which is where Allison came in.
Allison was sorta the deadbeat at my school. The kinda person who you knew would end up flipping burgers for the rest of her life. Until that time, she was our school’s resident dealer and sold everything a kid shouldn’t have. In my case, top of the line, black market steroids. They cost me a fortune, but boy did they get results.
I went from 155 to 175 in a little under a month and it was all muscle. Coach even moved me from safety to tackler where I got to really show what I could do. I must’ve broken bones in at least a dozen kids that season and boy did it feel wonderful. My name even started making the rounds in school. There was just one problem; it wasn’t enough.
I saw the way Pete looked at me. He was threatened, but amused. Like I was some fucking puppy looking to do a trick for him. I could have easily bench pressed him and yet he was still the superstar. He was still the only one who deserved any praise.
So I started upping my dosages. Just a little, but soon I’d used up so much I was starting to draw attention. Turns out there’s a reason steroids are illegal. I started getting dizzy spells, my vision faded, and my mood swings got so bad my Doctors thought I was bipolar. But even all of that wasn’t enough to nudge past Pete and so back to Allison it was.
I started taking some really weird shit. Forget the pills and needles, I was eating monkey balls and snorting alligator bones. I’m not even sure where she got that stuff and I didn’t care to find out. Day after day I returned to her demanding stronger stuff until even she started getting nervous. Not for my health, though I bet she didn’t want her best customer keeling over. No, she was worried because she was starting to run out of supplies. She had to start digging deeper and deeper into the steroid trade in order to find new stuff. Then, she came across Bloodmilk.
“The fuck kinda name is that?” I remember asking her during our usual meet up.
“I don’t know. I didn’t name it. But apparently it’s this new stuff from, like, Asian or some shit. Said to be real good too. One dose should be enough to give you the edge you need.”
“That’s what you said about the gator bones.”
“But this isn’t gator bones.” She held up to me a vial. Inside was this murky red liquid that kinda looked like tomato soup. “I checked it out myself. All my guys say it’s legit. So, you wanna try it out?”
I shuddered. “I ain’t putting that stuff in me. What if it’s, like HIV blood or something nasty like that.”
“Jesus, dude. Okay, you know what, how about I give you this one for free, alright?” She plopped the vial in my hand. “If it’s bad, you don’t gotta buy anymore. If it is, you know where to find me.”
I looked over the vial again. It was strange looking, but I’d taken stranger and anything was worth it to get that edge. So I took Allison up on that deal and walked off not a penny poorer.
Strange thing was I didn’t need to inject this stuff, either. Only instructions were that I had to drink it. Tasted like rotten eggs and sardines going down and had this weird texture to it. It wasn’t no liquid and clumped together in a fishy mess as it went down. There was also this heat to it that was just disturbing to feel crawl down me. But I couldn’t complain for long.
Bloodmilk was the thing that finally did it. I start putting on pounds like crazy, easily breaking 200 all from pure muscle. On the field, I was a demon. Forget broken bones, I was knocking kids clean out. And before you panic, nobody died. At least nobody I got blamed for. Soon, my name was on everyone’s mouth. The coach wouldn’t stop talking about me to our team and colleges all over started begging me to sign with them. By the end of the season, nobody even knew who Pete Sullivan was.
He was the cherry on top. I could see the way he stared at me; like a man watching someone bang his wife and do a better job of it. He seemed so scrawny and small and he fucking knew that’s how he came across now. It was perfect. Every sideways glance he shot at me was like getting blown by an Angel. So long as I took Bloodmilk, even he couldn’t touch me.
There were some “side effects” I guess you could call them and not little ones either. My moods and nausea were all gone, so at first I thought I was getting better. But then my muscles started to tremble. It’s weird.
One night, I was out lifting in my garage when suddenly I felt something moving under my skin. I look down and see nothing. So I think it’s just a vein tremor and kept pounding. But then I felt it again and this time I knew it was no vein. I look down and see this shape sliding around inside me. It took me a while to realize what it was. My muscles were moving. Not the normal kind, not like I was flexing them or anything. The fibers were all shifting and thrashing like a tangle of maggots. I slapped them to try and make it stop, but instead I got to feel each and every sinew slither around inside me. It almost vomited from the feeling when suddenly, they were gone.
Next morning, I thought I’d just hallucinated from working too hard. But then I happened again when I went on my jog and another time when I was at practice. Pretty soon, I started getting those feelings out on the field. If I wasn’t too big to fail, they might have thrown me off my game plan. Every time I exerted myself, my muscles would crawl and thrive like worms settling into dirt. Still, I couldn’t argue with the results and it wasn’t like any of this stuff was hurting me. I convinced myself it was all in my head and kept coming back to Allison’s for more. Until one night, that is.
“What do you mean ‘out’?” I remember barking at her. It was one of the last meetups we’d ever have and I couldn’t have been more important. The last game of the season was just around the corner and I needed my edge for what was gonna be the biggest crowd of my life. I heard there were even gonna be some Ivy League scouts in the stands. I couldn’t blow this chance. So of course now things would start going wrong.
Allison took a drag of her cigarette. “What do you mean ‘what do I mean’? I mean I’m out. No more Bloodmilk.”
“How the hell are you out?!” I demanded.
“Maybe calm the fuck down and I’ll tell you.” She took another puff. “Some guy came before you and bought out my whole stock.”
My eyes went wide with shock. “What do you mean, some guy?”
“I mean some guy. I have other clients than you, dude. And this guy paid a shit load for, and I’m quoting him here, all of the Bloodmilk I had left.”
I curled my hands into fists. “How the fuck did he know about that!?”
“Because I told him. Duh. I’m running a business here, big guy.”
“Then tell me who he fucking is?”
“What’re you crazy? I’m not just gonna go around ratting out my clients.”
That was where I lost it. I grabbed Allison by the neck and shoved her up against the wall, hard. Her head bounced against the brick like a pinball and with a solid crack. She screamed for a moment, face contorting with pain, but in the moment, I didn’t care.
“Who the fuck was it?!” I sounded like a rabid bear. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if Allison hadn’t been smart enough not to fuck with me.
“Pete Sullivan! He came to me a few days ago and bought up all my supplies! I don’t know what he did with it, but that’s all I got. Believe me! My supplier’s not gonna get me more at least for another week!”
“I don’t have a fucking week! Where is the Bloodmilk!?”
“I don’t know! Ask the Golden Boy! He’s the one who’s got it all.”
I had half a mind to cave Allison’s skull in then and there, but as much as I hated her, I hated Pete. So I let her go and stormed off into the night. I hope now that I didn’t hurt her too badly. She was a screw up, but she didn’t deserve what I did.
Anyways, the next day, I had one goal in mind. Problem was, Pete wasn’t cooperating. Apparently he’d come down with a cold, the fucking liar, and wouldn’t be coming out of bed until, what a shock, the big game. I thought about going to his house, but barging into and demanding my very illegal drugs didn’t seem like the best idea. I already had a decent amount of Bloodmilk in my system, so I figured that’s be enough to hold me over. The plan was to jump Pete at the game. If he had any Bloodmilk left, then I beat his ass and take it. If not, it’d suck it out of his veins if I had to. That guy was not gonna fuck with me.
The day of the big game arrived and I was on the warpath. I’d been parked outside Pete house, waiting for him to come out and play. Much to my luck, he didn’t step a foot out. Instead, he got into his car from the garage and drove off to the stadium. Undeterred, I pursued him all the way to the field.
We were a good hour or so early for the game, so we were the only two guys still out there. Pete stepped outta his car with a duffel bag full of what I assumed was Bloodmilk and dashed into locker rooms. I quickly followed him inside, drooling at the thought of finally giving that fucker the beating he deserved.
“Guess who, you little shit!” I said as I stepped into the locker room. It still smelled of BO and shower soap and the dirty lights showed every gunk filled crack in full detail. Not that I cared about a little grime anymore.
I couldn’t hear a thing as I stepped inside, so I thought Pete might have been hiding from me. Fucking perfect, I remember thinking.
“Yeah, it’s me.” I started walking down the rows of lockers. “You think you could steal my shit without me knowing? You think I’m fucking stupid! You ain’t taking anything from me!”
A noise interrupted me; the sound of skin slapping against tiling. I smiled.
“You had your fucking time, asshole. You ain’t hot shit anymore and you ain’t never gonna be. No lousy milk or whatever is gonna change that. So why don’t you just give me what’s mine and I won’t-” I never got the chance to finish my threat. I’d realized the sound had come from the shower and was marching my way over when I turned the corner. Inside was a scene that haunts me to this day.
Pete was there alright. At least, what I thought was Pete. I looked like his face, but the rest of him was swollen with muscle and not in a good way. I mean it was literally swollen like a balloon, his limbs all vanishing beneath gigantic mounds of meat. Already he’d grown until he was crushed between the floor and ceiling and it didn’t look like he was gonna stop growing. His muscles all tensed up as they swelled out even more, causing Pete to let out a pained moan.
“Wha….what the fuck!?” I cried out as I stumbled back. “What the fuck, dude!? What the actual fuck.” I got my answer, but not from Pete. Lying around him were dozens, maybe even hundreds of empty vials. His muscles grew even further, even tearing through his skin in some places. At that point, I began to notice something weird about them. They weren’t just growing, no. They were moving.
All over Pete, I could see little bodies wriggling as they swam throughout him. They looked like a whole bunch of snakes or something all trapped in a bag of human skin and every second, they were getting bigger and bigger.
I thought eventually, Pete was just gonna pop and whatever was in him would spill out. What ended up happening was so much worse. There was pain written all over Pete’s face as it was crushed against his expanding flesh, but he didn’t scream or speak. Most he ever made was the occasional groan that sounded like it too was crushed under his muscles. So when he opened his mouth, I thought he was finally gonna say something.
Instead, what came out was a massive flood of muscle fiber spewing out from Pete. It was like water erupting from a balloon, but what came out was so much worse. They looked a lot like muscle fibers all lined up next to each with that deep red color. If they weren’t moving, I’d think that’s exactly what they were. Only those guys were thrashing and swirling together. What came out of Pete was a goddamn swarm.
Those things didn’t just scatter either. As they hit the floor, they stayed together, balancing on each as the mass stood up on the shower room floor. It started as a blob of the muscle looking things before the direction of the worms changed. They all stretched out until forming into three king limbs, two in the front and one big guy in the back, that planted themselves firmly against the ground. They organized themselves until they resembled the muscle system of some strange three legged animal. It had biceps, abs, pecks, everything that a normal animal would. I had to remind myself they were worms, their mimicry was that good.
From, I guess the collar of the creature, something resembling a heart emerged from the swarm. To help you picture this, the heart was flipped upside down with the veins at the top connecting it back to the creature and the rest of it dangling from the neck. That wasn’t it, either. On either side there were two pitch black holes that kinda looked like eyes. Inside I couldn’t see a damn thing, but I still swear there was something slithering within. A lot of ‘something.’
When it was done, all that was of Pete was a massive, empty sack of skin lying on the shower floor. The creature took one step towards me, empty eyes staring into my soul, and I just fucking booked it. Can you blame me? I ran back to my car and started driving anywhere I could. I didn’t stop at home either, just got on the freeway and drove as far as I could until I ran out of gas. Eventually, some cops picked me up on the side of the road with an empty tank of gas and looking like I’d just seen the face of death.
First things first, Pete didn’t make it. Obviously. Not least of which being he seemed to be missing a heart. As for what actually caused his death, well, no one’s really sure. They tried pinning it on me, but because of the shape he was in, that proved difficult. None of them could figure out how I would have done it.
Second, I said fucking nothing. They didn’t have anything on me and what I could tell them wouldn’t put me in a looney bin. I bet your thinking “wait, why didn’t you just show them the worm, meat, thing” Well, you little smart ass, that’s the fucking problem.
There were no signs of anything but me and Pete in that locker room. By the time the team started filing in, all they found was him lying in a giant bag of his own skin. There were no cameras, no footprints, not even a speck of blood. As far as anyone is concerned, that thing does not exist. And for thirty years, things had stayed that way.
You can say that monster, whatever it was, was something of a sign for me. Naturally, I stopped taking Bloodmilk and after that, any sort of steroid. In fact, I quit sports altogether. Yeah, I found myself a sleepy engineer program and got hired to work IT in some skyscraper you’ve never heard of. Never touched a football again. I lost all the muscle thank god and haven’t tried getting even some of it back. I’m 265 pounds of pure fat and I’m fucking proud of it.
I tried not to think about what happened back then. It only makes it harder to stay comfortable in my skin. All I can imagine is those things squirming around inside me too. I wonder how close I was to ending up like Pete and I never get a good answer. But I’m alive, I’m sorta healthy, and I’ve never touched that Bloodmilk stuff again.
It wasn’t until a few days ago I felt the need to tell anyone this. It was the dead of night and I’m lying in my bed when I turned on my side. You see, my window is right next to my bed and out of it, Icsee this shape resting on the fire escape. But fucker too, absolutely bristling with muscle and staring at me through the glass with hollow eyes. Then, it leapt from its perch and disappeared into the night.
Now, I’m not sure I imagined that, but I ain’t taking any chances. So I’m writing this down just in case something happens. I don’t really know why either. Whoever ends up reading this, I don’t expect you to believe me. Guess I feel like I gotta make an effort at least.
You know, it’s funny, I don’t even remember what Pete looks like anymore. My most hated enemy for years and I can’t recall a single fucking detail. Ain’t that some shit. I wonder if he would have remembered me. Well here’s me being the bigger man for once. It was all this Bloodmilk’s fault, just so you people know, and it’s still out there somewhere. Not sure who’s taking the stuff, but for the love of God, stop. You don’t deserve what’ll happen to you. Pete didn’t. Nobody does.