{"sf1_id":998548,"sf2_id":null,"title":"Nervous Boys","author":"Aux Chiens","words":12960,"posted_at":"2016-05-12T21:25:00.000Z","tags":["Anal","Appalachia","Body Horror","Cat","Cock Growth","Cum","Impregnation","Lactation","M/M","Male","Male Pregnancy","Mythological Creature","Oral","Swimsuit","Tail Growth","Teen","Transformation","Underage","creepy","folklore","semen"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/998548-nervous-boys","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/view/998548","image_url":"https://www.sofurryfiles.com/std/thumb?page=998548\u0026ext=.jpg","description":"","content":"The\ninnocent mansion of a panther's heart! \nIt crumbles, tick-tick time drags it in \nTill now his arteries lag and now they start \nReverence with the frigid gusts of sin. _________ \nAllen\nTate, \"Idiot\"            Caleb was his sin and Caleb was soul.            He could not escape: he was\nthe protagonist of a ghost-folk tale of his own doing, he was trapped, look at this tangle of thorns, look at\nall this blood.\n            It was the stupidest fucking\nway he could have reduced this situation to its primary parts and yet - and yet - here John Thomas Anderson was,\nplaying out the role of the old man from Tailypo,\na story he first heard told by a masterful raconteur when he was in elementary\nschool and still young and pure, in the far-off time before he sank his teeth\ninto vice, boys, ephebophiliac delight.\n            The tale went - John Thomas\nremembered it, now, a fever-dream in the maelstrom of his drunken fear that was\nreaching an exquisite, infarction-like peak - that the old man in the woods was\ncornered and alone in his cabin and the furry ghoul of the wood, Appalachia\nincarnate, Tailypo, scratching at his\ndoor, stalking him, coming to take back what was rightfully its own.\n            That was him - that was John\nThomas, the victim you shouldn't feel sorry for, getting what was coming to him,\ncreeped upon by a horrid monster.\n            Tailypo, Tailypo, give me back my Tailypo!\n            Isolated from the world on the\nthird floor of a Comfort Inn in Wytheville, Interstate 81 heading to Roanoke\ncoiling around him - it was not a cabin in a woods, but it was lonely, lonely\nenough, with his whiskey that couldn't erase memories.\n            And the creature after him was\nno furred goblin that could be passed off as a metaphor for the latent, insular\nevil of the mountains, no, he - he\nwas the most beautiful thing in the world.\n            Caleb.\n            Too sleek and too feline\nalready to be Tailypo, he was an agile cougar - he had been a Pulaksi Cougar and now he was a real cougar - a\nprowling panther, a Cattywampus...centuries-old\nsettlers must have shivered at by their campfires thinking, seeing, in the fire\nthat reached to nighted Heaven, a future vision of the boy himself:\n            He was perfect - perfect. \n            John Thomas kept using that\nadjective to describe him because it was truer than anything else he could say:\nfive foot ten,\nsome inches shorter than John Thomas himself, bristly champagne-colored hair,\nlongish for a swimmer but fine for a diver, and with a diver's body - every\nsegment, every sinew, every muscle, toned to something so statuesque it\napproached the figure of a Greek divine.\n            The smell of whiskey was thick\non John Thomas' breath as he gasped back, choked back - and, then, cursed - not\ntwo months before, as the world grew cold and Caleb first came into his life.\n            Back then it was the middle of\nOctober, and Pulaski County had just hired him - fresh out of Virginia Tech\nwith a business degree, but with the stock exchange going apeshit and the\nfinance sector pouring gasoline on itself and lighting matches, John Thomas\nfigured that an MBA at Radford and gig at a high school coaching swimming would\nget him through this rough patch until he get an actual job later on. He had at excelled at long distance swimming -\nhis best event was the 3000 - and Pulaski County, not picky and caring only he\nhad a Bachelor's and a decent record on the Hokie swim team, hired him at once.\n            The crispness in the air made\ngetting out of the pool the Pulaski Cougars practiced at - barely heated - be\ngreeted with a cascade of shivers on youthful skin...John Thomas, broad-shouldered,\nbrown-haired, handsome face, the preppy Southwest Virginia package, was\ncomfortable in his North Face fleece and jeans and he would grin and tease\nthem, boys and girls, nothing improper, just enough to be a friend while still\nbeing a coach.\n            \"Can't be that cold!\" he'd call out, to be\nanswered by good-natured groans.\n            Not everyone started out with\nthe practices those weeks - they were still putting together the diving team,\nthere were tryouts some Saturday that John Thomas couldn't go to because he had\nan MBA class that day. His schedule was full and he was always commuting, but\nCoach Swope, the bearded redneck who talked with a grating Kentucky drawl but\nwho was tolerated for his near-magic ability to coach champions, seemed to like\nhim, cut him some slack. Diving wasn't what John Thomas was hired for, anyway,\nthe long distance swimmer whose glory days were a very recent memory.\n            There were a few - four, to be\nexact, three girls and one boy - that had made the diving team and would be\njoining the swim team for practices later, and John Thomas could see where they\nwould fit, their names on the spreadsheet on the clipboard where he kept his\nhandwritten swimming routines: warmup 10\nx 50 free, 4 x 200 bfly, 4 x 100\nbstroke, and so on. He would look down the list of names, the ink smeared\nand the paper wrinkled with up-slashed water, to keep track of who was there\nfor practice those mornings and those nights and who wasn't - who was on\ndiving, who was on swimming, who was on both...\n            ...and for some reason his eye would\ndrift to a name in the middle of the page, the only boy who didn't make the\nswim team but made the diving team instead: Jones,\nCaleb.            He puzzled over it, this\nanonymous figure - who was he, mysterious boy not good enough to be positioned\nin any one event but good enough to be a diver? \n            The smell of poolwater hit his\nnose in a wave over the choppy roar of so many swimmers in the pool practicing\nat once - he would tap his finger on the name. Jones, Caleb. Why did it vex him so? It was the weirdest thing...\n            A few days later Coach Swope,\nwho thought highly of John Thomas, his rapport with the kids and his work ethic\nfrom being on the Hokie swim team, took him to eat in some diner in town, and\nJohn Thomas used the opportunity to ask about the diving team, the four new\nmembers...stirring the ice in his sweet tea, he slyly asked about Caleb Jones, in particular.\n            Coach Swope nodded back, said\nsomething non-committal about Caleb being a quiet kid whose dad owned Toyota\ndealerships in Dublin and Blacksburg and Christiansburg, never talked to nobody\nbut did exceptional at diving tryouts. \n            John Thomas' inexplicably\nagitated curiosity - it bothered him that\nit bothered him, it bothered him he could tell nobody about it - was not\nsated, but he figured that was probably it. But he saw Coach Swope's face tense\njust slightly as he was about to take a sip of Coke: \"His mama,\nthough...\" He shook his head. \"That witch...\"\nJohn Thomas raised his eyebrows, leaned forward, wanted to know more - but\nanother shake of Coach Swope's head and that was the end of it.\n            It caused him no end of\nanxiety back then - weeks, months, how long had\nit been? - when he was a respectable Tech graduate and an MBA student and a\nfirst-year swim coach, how much Coach Swope liked him, how much the athletics\ndepartment at Pulaski County High liked him, how they all thought he was an\nupstanding young man or however the bullshit phrase went, how much they didn't\nknow about his hidden thoughts, the rampaging perversion that rocked his head\nevery second of being around those precious, pristine, irresistible, high\nschool boys.\n            In his heart only could he\nkeep the livid temptations that tormented to himself, for himself, he would let his eyes linger long, long enough, to\nstudy the Boys of Winter, just for him, their developing cocks perky and\nperfect and bulging in their Lycra packages - no religious man he, in Tantalus' Hell all the same, so\nclose, too close to touch, just out of his reach.\n            Their memories would haunt him\nlike ghosts that glowed like his own generous doses of spent sperm that wetted\ndown his sheets at night, dreaming, wishing, wanting, to taste their sweetness,\nto drink their piss and please them and coax their cocks bigger, bigger yet,\nwatching them mature just enough that they were still hairless and perfect but\neven more primed to drive deeper into his ass, splash more of his face with\nurine, letting these creatures of water and chemicals use him as only they\ncould see fit. \n            The smell - the stench - the\naphrodisiac, of chlorinated poolwater...\n            His comforter would be painted\nwith the passion of a sinner who was too far gone, late at night when the\noutside was dead quiet and the lights outside Fox Ridge Apartments were too\nwoozy to care - bodies, bodies he\nlonged to hold and press against him, wet,\nready, still youthful, everything where it should be, a hard, indefatigable,\nsexual prime.\n            They were all passing things -\nnot disposable, but not permanent, each one, each boy who he had deceived into\nthinking was his friend, his coach, his mentor, taking a turn depending which\nnight, which desire...transitory ways to get off. It was the darkest of dark\nthrills, a little chuckle as he groped his dick until it chafed with pent-up\nsexual frustration - sometimes it would be slick-soapy in the shower and he would\nbeg gods he didn't believe in to let it happen, once, just once, just to touch, lick, put his mouth on an underage,\nstill-growing cock and taste it.\n            The tremors of pleasure were\nall the more intense because it was so abhorrently forbidden - actually,\nprobably statutory, something he could get fired over, imprisoned for, yet in\nhis head, his hands on his own dick, he was safe, he could do anything he\nwanted...and he wanted to do it all. \n            So it could be, that in the\nanonymity of a pleasant extra-collegiate apartment complex in Blacksburg,\nVirginia could he be the monster he always knew he was - an irony, too\ndisturbing to be real, because later, much later, he would discover the same\nabout Caleb...\n            ...not yet, not yet. There was a\nways to get there, but he had to recount how.\n            Before Caleb, he would sit in\ntraffic the morning after with his Starbucks - soy latte, nothing fancy - with\ndozens, scores, hundreds of people and none of them, not one, could guess he\nwas a pervert. He'd listen to the rattle and hum of his newish Explorer,\nwondering if anyone could tell that something was amiss, how worried, how sick\nhe looked. The guilt would come - a slow burn, the fire of his passion down its\ncomponent embers, the smudging smoke of a piecemeal conscience too hard to\nshake out from his head.\n            What was wrong with him? What\nthe fuck was wrong with him? Liking\nunderage boys - he could get fired\nover it, he could go to jail for it,\nall the crazier, all of the more out of fucking nowhere, was that no one knew,\nno one could guess, not from looking at, talking to, seeing him.\n            He looked, he seemed, so normal. They'd say that, too,\nif they ever found out: how upsetting it would be for just another Hokie\nfratboy who was indistinguishable from any other freshly-minted college graduate\nin the NRV to have a secret obsession for smooth teenage boys, healthy teenage\ncock.\n            He had taken this job for\nlogical reasons, but underlying it all was a secret, acted upon only in shame -\nall the more addictive.\n            So the charade went on: the\ncycle, the temptation, the fantasy, the remorse...on, on, on...\n            He felt he was safe this way,\nbeing able to get a handle on his sickness, this coaching thing wouldn't last\nforever and neither would his mouth watering at the sight of chubbed-up high\nschool freshmen dick in wet Speedos. \n            And he was safe - he was - until he met Caleb.\n            It was an important\nafter-practice meeting, because it was the first time that the diving and\nswimming teams would be together, practicing at the same time. John Thomas\nhadn't been around for the diving tryouts and he only knew the names from the\nclipboard - tapping his finger on Jones,\nCaleb. He was late that night because\na frat brother of his - Jesus Christ he couldn't even remember his name anymore\n- had been in town from Baltimore and drinks with him at Sharky's ran long, but\nCoach Swope had told him to take his time because this was the first joint\npractice and it, too, would take longer. \n            As he came to the gathering\ncrowd of the team, Coach Swope gesticulating to two girls about how to improve\ntheir reach on their Butterfly, John Thomas could see there were still laggards\nin the locker rooms taking their time showering or getting dressed - the\nlingering smell of chlorine was in the air and it stirred John Thomas' loins\nenough that he had to shake his head to shake the images away, a little hard to\ndo with the receding buzz from the beers he'd had. \n            Sighing, he took his place\nagainst a wall, leaning against it, nodding at some of his kids who said hey or\nwaved at him, letting his eyes float along the heads of the Pulaski County\nSwimming and Diving Team, girls and boys, peak of their lives so far, in a buzz\nof giggles and conversation, coming off their collective highs of endorphins -\nJohn Thomas knew the feeling well, and there was a thought, inchoate, never\ncompleted, that maybe his insidious sexual desires for teenage boys was a\njealousy, a keen reaction to his own declining youth with nothing to look\nforward to at all of twenty-two...\n            ...and then he saw him.\n            He came out of the locker room\nlast, the door swinging open, his face looking vaguely worried, vaguely\nanxious, a rime of showerwater glistening faintly on his hair that he was\nrubbing off with a towel - a long-sleeved shirt hung on his slender, sinewy\nframe, not fully on him in an apparent haste to leave, so that it was easy to\nsee his firm, toned stomach ripple as he breathed.\n            John Thomas was taken back -\nsuch a paltry, hackneyed, inadequate phrase for how time seemed to dilate,\nslow, then stop, all around him, and how his mouth fell open in frank, abject\nawe at this boy, this angel, this seraphic specimen of heavenly humanity\nunaware of John Thomas' own sullied, worthless existence.\n            Love at first sight - if such\na thing existed, it existed then. He knew, somehow, immediately, who it was.\n            John Thomas leaned in to nudge\nthe nearest kid, a girl who was trying to straighten her chlorine-desiccated\nhair with a comb: \"Is that - is that Caleb Jones?\" \n            And the kid had nodded with a\nsmile. \"Yeah, that's him.\"\n            And John Thomas moved back to\nthe wall, nodding himself, a feeling of resolution creeping into him, an eerie\nsense that something he could not, should not, understand was at work here.\n            Why had he fixated so much on\nCaleb's name, only for him to discover that the name belonged to someone he -\nsomeone he had to know?\n            It was too much a metaphysical\nquestion for someone like John Thomas, who would barely go through the motions\nat his parents' church in Christiansburg - the thought, like maybe why his\nsexuality need to be so well-hidden, went nowhere.\n            Well-timed enough, it was at\nthat moment that Coach Swope started calling out his welcome: \"Aight\ny'all, aight, now y'all settle up and listen--\"\n            John Thomas didn't hear a word\nhe said - he was introduced, and he gave a profound nod to those gathered, but\nother than this, the whole time, the entire time, he never took his eyes off of\nCaleb Jones. Sometimes he would have to dart them away if the boy, perhaps\nsomehow psychically sensing that he was being stared at, would turn his sad, distracted\nhead to John Thomas' direction, across a cluster of his sitting classmates.\n            He waited, patience instantly\nthinned, for Coach Swope to hurry the fuck up, droning on in that stupid\nKentucky accent about practice schedules, meet schedules, how and when to buy\nuniforms and hoodies, all that noise he had already shared with John Thomas\nweeks ago, he felt like...all the while, the entire time, studying intently,\nCaleb, the boy, the mystery, the thunderbolt of desire thrown out of some\ninvisible cloud to strike John Thomas dead and resurrect him to a world where\nonly the ability for them to be together, however remote and however risky,\nremained.\n            Back in the present - the\nmisery-drenched, whiskey-sodden present - John Thomas let out a strained,\nchoked shudder.\n            He remembered - now, now he remembered - the very first time\nthat Caleb and he's eyes met, how Caleb had turned his head one final time,\nslowly, and John Thomas had been careless not to look away.\n            And as he did - as Caleb\nlooked at John Thomas and John Thomas looked at Caleb, the boy's eyes, an\nunshowy green, had glittered faintly,\nso faintly, a light that was thrown off so small and fleeting it was easy, if\nyou weren't sure what you were looking at, to think it was a trick, an optical\nillusion, a momentary lapse of the way the human brain processes colors and\nshades.\n            But it wasn't.\n            John Thomas' hand was so shaky\nhe could barely hold the glass where his Jack had been.\n            It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't a trick, it was real, a hint at\nsomething more fucked up than he could have ever brought to life in his own\nstupidly depraved fantasies - and he had been too blinded by Caleb, Caleb, everything about Caleb, to understand the danger, before\nit was late enough that there was nothing he could do but hide.\n            But then - then, then, then,\nthat magical cessation of space in which there was only he, only him, only them\n- but then...he smiled, his best,\nconfident, college graduate, Facebook-ready grin, right straight into that\nboy's green eyes, what he was doing was predatory but in the act it was rustic\ncharm, what he'd learned across not one but three Virginian counties.\n            And Caleb's mouth went one\nway, then another, but - he smiled back.\n            It was the smile of something\nalready broken, a music box that only knows its own song and twinkles out the\nmelody pleadingly, asking, asking, but never telling, because it doesn't know\nthe answer, a puzzle that begs to be solved with half the pieces missing.\n            It enslaved John Thomas as\nnothing else ever would again.\n            From there it was simple - as\nsoon as Coach Swope had finally shut the fuck up it only took a hello, it only\ntook a few more words after that, disingenuously asking Caleb where he'd been\nall this time, his absence from practices.\n            \"I been - um, I been\ns-sick, sir--\" the boy said, his Pulaski County twang, that humble little\nnoise, melting John Thomas' heart.\n            \"Well what kinda\nsick?\"\nCaleb smiled again - the humility, John Thomas knew without really knowing, of\nsimply being paid attention to at all. He shut his eyes and again that illusory\ngreenish glitter was thrown out from his eyelids before he answered:\n            \"I can't - I can't\nrightly say, sir.\"\n            \"Don't call me sir, okay Caleb?\" John Thomas\ngrinned. It was predatory - so predatory - John Thomas was acting on\nthe darkest of instincts to be this much of a son of a bitch in getting what he\ndesired.\n            \"Well - what should I\ncall ya?\"\n            \"How bout Coach, for a start?\"\n            He put his hand on the boy's\nshoulder and kept grinning, not caring that the crowd of other swimmers was\ndispersing and this was beginning to look a little odd, not caring that his\nskin was thrilling in the electricity of just being able to connect flesh to\nflesh with this masterpiece, this Adonis, this Caleb.\n            Already he was losing control\neven when it seemed like he was keeping it together.\n            \"O-okay C-Coach,\"\nCaleb stuttered, clearly unsure of himself, trying to force a poor smile.\n\"I - it's - I can't really talk about it...\" His voice trailed off, and\nhis face lost all expression before collapsing into something worried. \"I\nain't - um, even talked to Coach Swope - I - I dunno...\"\n            John Thomas would never forget\nit - could never forget it, the fire\nthat was lit under him to protect this precious jewel, this angel in flesh,\nthat no matter what would happen to him he would be there and he would heal his\nevery wound.\n            They had barely met when John\nThomas dropped his hand from Caleb's shoulder, leaned in, whispering:\n            \"You can tell me\nanything, okay Caleb? Anything - anything at all. I'm your coach, right?\"\n            Caleb's eyes seemed to search\nhim, and John Thomas found himself with an erection growing in his pants - how\neasy this was, how wild was his success!\n            \"It's - um--\"\n            A very small twinge of guilt\ncame to John Thomas as he realized that he was using his own station as Caleb's\ncoach to get close to him, to hopefully get sexual with him, that this was an\nentirely new galaxy of wrongness and he should be ashamed.\n            \"It's real complicated\nsi--uh, Coach, it's--\"\n            But he wasn't - as Caleb kept\nhesitating he leaned in closer, an action that pressured the boy as well as\ncomforted him.\n            \"See, I been real\nw-worried, and my dad don't really--\"\n            \"Do you need to call\nme?\"\n            Caleb frowned - even when he\nlooked upset he was still precious. \"Ain't that against the rules?\"\nHe thought for a second. \"Some - some\nrules, gotta be--\"\n            \"Don't worry about\nthat,\" John Thomas pressed gently. \"If you need someone to talk to -\nI can do that.\" He smiled some. \"It's important to have someone to\ntalk to.\"\n            Caleb seemed to consider the\nidea before nodding quickly. \"O-okay - I have - um, I have an Ntelos\nphone--\"\n            \"Me too - free nights and\nweekends.\" John Thomas chuckled, and Caleb, taking the cue, forced a\ngiggle back. \"Lemme give you my number, okay? And you call me tonight, or\n- anytime you wanna talk.\" He lifted his eyebrows.\n            \"Okay Caleb?\"\n            Caleb nodded, a confidence he\nclearly did not have, but was trying to summon. \"O-okay, Coach.\"\n            John Thomas waited until\neverybody had left that night, and, alone in the parking lot, hidden by the\nshadows of his lonely Explorer's interior, he masturbated furiously in his\nexcitement and his euphoria - in the afterglow, trying not to get the cum on\nthe seat leather, he sat, wracked with something that approached, but never\nbecame, the guilt he should have felt earlier that evening...it was beaten back\nby waves of selfishness, of finally deciding that this fifteen year old boy was\nworth the Hell that would surely come.\n            And Hell would come indeed -\nthe first licks of its fires burning John Thomas' soul that very night.\n            His phone vibrated in its\ncupholder and John Thomas started violently at the noise - he looked down and\non the caller ID, and there he was.\n            He smiled, a happy, nervous\nlaugh escaping him - he swiped to answer.\n            \"Hey, Caleb!\"\n            \"H-hey Coach.\"\n            \"Are you okay? Talk to\nme.\"\n            \"Y-yeah, I'm--\" There\nwas a silence, a series of sad, short breaths. \"N-no, I ain't - I fine at\nall.\"\n            A feeling John Thomas had not\nexpected - like having a bucket of ice water poured overtop him, a plunging\nfeeling of genuine concern - overtook\nhim. \n            \"Well, I - I'm - I'm\nhere, Caleb. I'm here for you.\"\n            \"You promise,\nCoach?\"\n            \"Yes--\" He sighed.\n\"Yes, yes of course.\"\n            \"Okay - okay. Here\ngoes.\"\n            And then he told him, he let\nit all out.\n            For some months now Caleb had\nnoticed a change in himself - he had already gone through puberty and all that,\nbut he felt, actually he knew, that things\nwere happening to his body that were not at all normal for a boy of his age or\nany age.\n            His foreskin was thickening,\nit was losing its elasticity and bit by bit it was attaching itself to his\nlower belly. And worse than that, his cock - was growing spines on it, like a cat's, facing backward. It was easy to hide,\nbut how \n            John Thomas listened to it\nall, gripping the phone so tight he was sure he could bend it. This was unreal\n- this was almost too hot, too sexual, for mere human words.\nAnd yet at no point could he ever tell Caleb to stop..\n            Caleb's dad tried to seem interested in Caleb\nbut he wasn't, her never was, it was always his business - cars and selling\ncars and sales orders and clients and money - and the possibility of getting\nback together with his first wife, who divorced him twenty or more years ago\nbecause back then he had been a cokehead and a spendthrift.\n            If anything, Caleb had raised himself. John\nThomas was filling a void - their relationship was incestuously paternal even\nwhen they weren't related by blood. Caleb was John Thomas' son as well as his\nsin.\n            That's why Caleb was so shy, he was so unsure\nand so fragile and so brittle inside himself, the soul that quivered with his\nbody that nobody seemed to want to love - but he, John Thomas, he loved him, as unequal as it was...as\nmuch as it reeked of taboo.\n            That night became the\nfirst of many nights Caleb would call him, after practice or not, and vent to\nhim, everything, everything about his body and his dad and his future -\neverything. \n            Suddenly, problematically,\nJohn Thomas found himself caring far more about Caleb past the perfect body,\nthe freakish penis.\n            There was a blurring, somewhere, of whether he\nhad just wanted to get in Caleb's pants, or whether he wanted to marry him -\nbut this called to mind an awful question, whether would he grow tired of Caleb\nwhen he aged, when he became a man and shed the morning's dew of youth that was\nstill fresh upon him.\n            Never, John Thomas though. Caleb\nhad passed into something eldritch and abominable, a disease of the blood after\nall of a few hours.\n            Caleb had told nobody\nelse - he was afraid to, deathly afraid, that they'd treat him differently,\nthat he'd be branded a freak.\n            \"Do ya think I'm - I'm a\nfreak?\"\n            The question cut into John\nThomas and gave him pause - his agitation was so great that Caleb thought he\nhad hung up:\n            \"C-Coach? Hey - hey are\nyou--?\"\n            \"Caleb, I - I would never\nthink you were a freak. From what you told me--\" He paused, and he should\nhave chosen his words more carefully, but he didn't. \n            Stunned silence - then a\nlittle cry.\n            \"Are - are - are you sure?\"\n            John Thomas shut his eyes,\ntrying to steady himself against his own emotions - he nodded, and though Caleb\ncouldn't see it, it was giving him a kind of self-affirmation to answer back.\n            \"Yes. Yes I'm sure.\"\n            And then Caleb cried, again,\nharder - a sob of relief, of joy, of a trust that John Thomas had earned only\nbecause he had wanted to abuse it.\n            From then on, John Thomas was\nutterly enslaved to Caleb, his every word, his every fear, taken personally so\nthat John Thomas would be his protector, his defender, his vassal, their deep\ntalks over the phone a nightly, expected occurrence, always ending the same\nway:\n            \"Night, Caleb.\"\n            \"Night, Coach.\"\n            ...yet all the while John Thomas\ncould not connect how totally fucked up it\nwas that a boy his age would make the claim that parts of him were turning\ncat-like, feline.\n            Never once did he seek medical\nhelp for Caleb and Caleb never once sought medical help for himself - John\nThomas chose to believe Caleb from the hints that he saw, the glowing in his\neyes that would hypnotize him when they struck the light just such a way, the\nteeth that really did look a little sharper. This way, they both knew he was\nchanging, they both knew there was some kind of insidious second puberty, but\nthey just let it happen, let this hideousness boil over and steam.\n            Maybe because John Thomas\ncould recognize this was changing Caleb's inner as well as his outer body - how\nhorny the boy was getting, how frankly sexual his talks with John Thomas were\nbecoming, pushing the boundaries farther and further. Caleb would say things\nlike how his penis was getting bigger, the barbs getting sharper, how they felt\nagainst his fingers and how his shaft seemed firmer, like a bone was growing\ninside it, how his whole cock was now attached to his belly in a kind of sheath, how his tongue seemed rougher\nthan before and his teeth sharper too...all because John Thomas pressed him to\nsay it. He knew that it all made Caleb more self-conscious and more shy and\neven less likely to speak up, but with the result that it made John Thomas all\nthe more his mentor, his secret-keeper, his guardian, in the absence of his\ncompletely absent father.\n            John Thomas was being selfish\nagain, had found a way to be even more grotesquely selfish than before, but he\njustified it in his head, that anyone else would treat him as a freak - just\nlike Caleb had said. John Thomas the only one who could really be trusted with this - right?\n            What he would never, ever\nadmit - in other, deeper, more unexplored parts of John Thomas' psyche, having\na monster boy made his own love for boys just that less monstrous.\n            In the present - only a month\nafter, maybe - John Thomas was shaking again, his breath ragged again, his\nhands to his head in existential agony...again.\n             John Thomas knew it would happen somehow, but\ndid Caleb? Was Caleb always gay and was just too inexperienced to know what being gay meant?\n            It was inevitable, it was\ninevitable like some wars are inevitable, a collision course that everyone sees\nand everyone watches but nobody stops, nobody says a word.\n            What a stupid way to think\nabout it - it was just Caleb, it was just John Thomas, it was just the locker\nroom, one night after practice, just them, awkward, tense, inside a bubble\nneither were too strong to burst.\n            The rest of the boys had left\nbut John Thomas had chosen to stick around, knowing Caleb always undressed\nlast, so nobody could see his changing, morphing genitals - he had come in the\nlocker room and rounded the corner, Caleb was naked, his smooth, muscular ass\nturned toward him.\n            He turned around with a start\n- the light caught his eyes, the green glitter appeared and vanished in the\nspace of a breath.\n            John Thomas' heart wouldn't\nstop beating, any harder and it would have leapt out of his bones and flopped\nto the floor.\nCaleb turned and kept the towel he was using clutched, tightly, to his chest.\n            \"C-Coach!\" he\nexclaimed. \"I didn't - I mean I--\"\n            \"Caleb - buddy, listen, I\nthink we need to talk.\"\n            He saw Caleb's ears perk up,\nunsure. \"Wha - whattya mean?\"\n            \"You've, um--\" He\nswallowed hard, surprised at his own apprehension. \"Well all this time,\nyou've told me about - how you've been changing, and--\"\n            \"Oh, y-yeah, I\nmean--\"\n            \"I'd like to see\nit.\"\n            Caleb stared at him, his face\nturning a rosy pink. \"C-Coach, I really--\"\n            \"I wanna see it,\"\nJohn Thomas insisted, willing his heart not to burst then and there. \"With\n- with my own eyes.\"\n            Caleb turned away, his bare\nrear still bare - he shuddered, in his virgin purity he was a perfect animal\nalready, in his nakedness he was a work of divinely-inspired art.\n            He hung his head - he shook\nhis head, halfway - before looking back up and, as John Thomas had done,\nswallowed, hard. \n            \"Ya - ya promise ya won't\nf-freak out or nuthin?\"\n            John Thomas nodded his\nsincerity. \"I promise.\"\n            Caleb shut his eyes - he\nhesitated, he hesitated again, and then, in one motion, threw away the towel -\ncoming forward to show the only man in the world he felt, rightly or wrongly,\nthat he could trust, who he really was.\n            The sight made John Thomas\nsalivate.\n            It was indeed some bestial,\nsomething animal on a human being - a heavy, plump sheath, fleshy and thick,\nattached to his lower abdomen, just before his stomach. Blooming from it was\nfine, barely noticeable hairs - grey, the colour of stormclouds that rest aside\na mountaintop. \n            John Thomas fell to his knees\n- Caleb started, but John Thomas jerked his head up to silence him.\n            \"I want - I'd like to\ntouch it.\"\n            Caleb looked at him with a\nfear of something new, a fear of the dark in the light.\n            John Thomas' mind was an\nabsolute blank, his decision absolute - he nodded, once more, his decision.\n            \"I - I - o-okay...\"\n            His cock stirred in its\nsheath, bigger, bigger, until its sharp tip peaked through his heavy foreskin.\n            John Thomas watched it, his\nown penis tenting inside his jeans - he reached out, he held it in his hands,\nparalyzed with an ecstatic need for it, the cock, the boy, the beautifully\ndemure animal caught in front of him. \n            His eyes were still locked on\nit when he heard Caleb whimper:\n            \"I know, I know it - it\nlooks so w-weird--\"\n            \"No,\" John Thomas\nsaid, barely a word at all, dying on his breath as he spoke it. \"It looks awesome.\"\n            \"Coach? What are\nyou--?\"\n            John Thomas could take it no\nlonger - he needed this, he needed this more than however dire the consequences\nwould be, he needed this and he needed it right\nnow.\n            Acting on raw instinct, John\nThomas parted his lips to let his tongue drag up the side of Caleb's growing\nshaft, lapping at his foreskin before he took in the head of his cock. \n            When was the last time he had\ndone this? Years - years ago. His\nsexuality was still stuck in the pathology of his first times being sexual with\nanybody...but you never forget how to do it. Not ever.\n            As Caleb let out stifled\nmoans, John Thomas indulged himself: he kissed the cockhead, pushing back the foreskin\nwith his lips, letting his tongue lap across the underside. He took his time,\nslurping back and forth over the fat ridge of Caleb's felinid phallus.\n            Caleb let out a strange noise\n- like a hiccup, his palms splayed against the lockers - it coalesced around a\nsingle word:\n            \"Coooach!\"\n            Caleb's dick thickened in John\nThomas' mouth to become fully hard, stretching his lips to keep it in. He knew\nwhat was coming - what Caleb had said, that little article on feline\nreproduction he'd read just in case Caleb was lying - he knew what was coming\nand he braced for it, the barbs that flared across the head of his penis. They\nwere smooth when Caleb suckled them, only flaring out in sharp strike when he\ndrew back. \n            He knew what it would do to\nCaleb just from an educated guess - and he was right: his taut, youthful body\nbecame near-flush to the lockers in euphoria.\n            \"Coach - oh - oh God I\nlove you Coach, I love--\"\n            The phrase made John Thomas'\nheart implode with happiness but he had mere seconds to enjoy it: Caleb lost\ncontrol, John Thomas' mouth too perfect a home for his cock - he let himself\ngive an immodest cry as he spurt his semen, greyish and smelling weird already,\nhis second puberty making what should have been his sweet boyhood instead\nsomething wild already, something animal already, musky and woodsy and\nstrange...and delicious.\n            John Thomas swallowed it all,\ngreedily, hungrily - all to absorb this boy, all to be in union with this\nperfect demi-human creature.\n            Caleb's knees grew weak, his\nlegs threatened to collapse and in a spare second he did - John Thomas caught\nhim, the boy's oversize, almost-feline dick belching out one last glob of grey,\nmusk-laden cum.       \n            Now they were truly alone -\ntogether, in each others' arms.\n            It was hard for John Thomas to ever wrap his head\naround how good pool chlorine smelt,\naromatic chemical cleanliness - it had been implanted in his head from the time\nhe knew what sexuality was, over a decade ago: frankly, unapologetically sexy,\nthe scent of boys, wet boys with\nripe, polished physiques stretched onto lithe frames, dripping damp with that\ncaustic chemistry-set that passes for recycled pushed-suction water. It mingles\nwith the steam of hot showers and passes cloud-like into the hollow\nreverberations of voices, teasing youthful laughter, in the locker room, the\npercussion of shutting metal doors a constant rhythm...few would ever compare it\nto a chemically engineered kyphi, a voluptuous incense of a fabled harem from\nArabia brought to the Industrial Age - and\nyet: the steam, the laughter, the echo, all merges into a solitary image of\ndrugged erotica.\n            Caleb's hair smelled like\nit.\n            John Thomas inhaled it,\nletting himself linger to savor it, so exquisite...his cock was hard and his\ninherent guilt - being here, alone, in the locker room, pressed against each other,\nwith this perfect boy, younger than he yet separated by the impassable gulfs of\nhigh school, college, being his coach -\nburning, still, a glowing ember that would not die.\n            He pulled back - Caleb had\nrisen, nudging him away, standing once more back against the locker, his\nbreaths were small and worried, the panting of a fearful animal, the animal\nJohn Thomas knew he truly was and swore to protect, swore to hide away. \n            Yet - his eyes were bright\nand liquescent and they glimmered, the eyeshine, the noctilucence of the\nprowling cat inside him, only because it was dim enough, only because the light\nstruck the surface just right, green star-gems plucked from a night sky.\n            Then as now he was\ngrizzle-bearded, still wearing his Northface jacket, fleece, that brushed\nagainst Caleb's bare skin in the growing chill, surrendering to the still cold\na short distance outdoors.\n            They regarded each other\nlike this - John Thomas in a fever of arousal, his throat dry, heart pumping\ndeafeningly through his ears, and Caleb, his lips pressed together, an\nenigmatic expression, breaths through his nose coming in blasts of quiet\npanting.\n            \"Are you okay?\"\nJohn Thomas whispered.\n            Caleb nodded, briskly.\n\"Yeah - yeah.\" And he smiled - a faint, hesitant thing, unsure of its\nown existence. His lower lip quivered. \"That - that was really - I never\nknew s-sex could be--\"\nJohn Thomas smiled warmly. \"I'd do anything for you Caleb.\"\n            \"I - y-ya told me that\nand--\" Caleb giggled, but there was a choke of emotion in the middle.\n\"I - I - I love ya, Coach...\"\n            A flush of warmth, a\nsqueezing euphoria around his heart - John Thomas let his hand come up and\ngently scratch the back of the boy's head, pulling it down, a commanding but\ncomforting action, to his chest, to feel the beat of the cardiac rhythm that\nsang in blood for him, Caleb, the most beautiful boy in the world.\n            \"I love you too, Caleb,\"\nJohn Thomas whispered - and then, with a self-effacing chuckle: \"And don't\ncall me Coach.\"\n            He heard Caleb giggle, his\nface buried between John Thomas' arms...\n            ...the memory hurt him -\nphysically, physically hurt him, a\nsore that would not stop oozing.\n            The bottle of Jack clinked\noff the desk, he pressed to his lips to it - warm, unrefrigerated, the taste\nhit him, the Southern bitterness that defined his family only recently, that\ndefined him in this too-cheerful Wytheville motel room completely, now, right\nnow.\n            John Thomas swallowed hard,\nhe slammed the bottle down, and his bleary eyes - damp with bourbon, salty with\ntears - blinked wetly as he saw the view, a scattering of sodium-vapor\nstreetlights that shone drowsily on a near-empty parking lot, and beyond it the\nblank voids of I-81, a dark river interrupted by the muted roar of cars,\ntractor-trailers.\n            \"Caleb...\" he\nmurmured under his breath - the familiar feeling, his chest tightening, eyes\nshutting, fresh tears that reeked of fermented corn streaming thickly down his\ncheeks.\n            That first time in the\nlocker room was how it all began for them to have a sexual relationship - a\npassionate, decadent orgasmic trainwreck that neither could, or wish, to stop.\n            John Thomas ate Caleb's cum\nas some people would eat a rare delicacy - the rank woody musk, thick and\nvirile and grey like a rare and delicious gravy. He'd go down on him often, too\noften, his stomach would hurt, as he sat in traffic some mornings, again, he'd\nburp, he'd taste Caleb's cum and shut his eyes and breathe heavy and wonder if\nany of the perfectly normal, perfectly conventional people all around him could\never guess - could ever guess what kind of nightmare lay before them, in utter\nplain sight.\n            John Thomas now remembered\n- he did not want to remember, but he\nremembered - the first time they really made love, the outrageous violation of\nthe coach-athlete trust in the name of what they thought was something purer\nthan what it really was...\n            \"Am I hurting you?\" Caleb had\nwhispered, and then he must have felt the trickle of blood, because John Thomas\nheard him whimper, the sound of a cringe screwing up his face. \"T-too -\ntoo much?\"\n            \"No Caleb...\" John Thomas murmured back.\n\"You're fine.\"\n            He wasn't, of course - his asshole was, this\ntime and every time, raw as Hell when\nthey'd fuck. Caleb's cock too large, too sharply\nbarbed to ever be comfortable - each time was agony, each time was ecstasy\nbut brutality also, the way of the cougar, wildcat, catamount, in the\nAppalachian wilds beyond their hills and into the mountains.\n            But John Thomas kept doing it - kept submitting,\nit felt good to submit, knowing his body was relieving this boy of wild animal\nstresses and urges that were tearing him apart, knowing that this would keep\nCaleb closer, closer to him...\n            ...he clutched the bottle of Jack so hard it felt\nlike it would shatter in his hand, and he wanted it to, he wanted it to slice\nopen his skin and let him bleed, let Caleb - the boy, the cat, the smell, the\nmemory - bleed out of him, pool down into an anonymous puddle and let him die\nin peace.\n            But it didn't.\n            He slammed the bottle down, arose from the\ntasteful motel chair, deep breaths, more tears, and paced back to the hotel's\ndresser - the large mirror caught his reflection, startling him when he saw it.\n            It was him - what passed for him, these days.\n            He was unkempt, he was gross, he could have been\nhomeless - the same wild, crazy stare, that bums have, the same one, possessed\nhis face, indwelt in his eyes, it left him changed, changed like Caleb had\nchanged...the same man, the same boy, but with some inner taint, some noxious\ncreeping poison, that was making him something, someone else.\n            His plain VT shirt was matted with stains - some\nof them alcohol, some of them food, some of them vomit, because he had been\ndrinking til he puked but he was also puking on his own, and he didn't want to\nthink it was symptomatic of something else other than the booze, but maybe -\nJesus, maybe, maybe...\n            ...it was his shirt that told people where he went -\nhow normal, how successful he was.\n            Not the monster he lived a double-life as.\n            Not the monster he longed to live with.\n            Monster\n- should he really call Caleb that?\n            His Biology classes at Tech, the absolute best\nin the Commonwealth - or so went the reputation - never prepared him for\nfalling in love with a teenager who was mutating with a second puberty.\n            Those classes, the people in them, the\nprofessors...they were a vanished blur that he badly wished he could remember -\nsomething about mutation, something\nabout evolution...Hell, a lot of people\naround here didn't even believe in evolution but here it was, something, something happening to this boy in\nlate-stage puberty, a riot of alien hormones that was causing him to evolve -\nbut to evolve into what?\n            A man? A cat? A cat-man?\n            What\nthe fuck had his mother been?            What had Coach Swope meant - that witch - was Caleb's mother really...?\n            Whatever it was, it wasn't normal, Caleb knew it\nwasn't normal and that is why he came to John Thomas in the first place, John\nThomas tried not to alarm him by just how really\nfucking abnormal it really\nwas...all he could do was listen, listen as intently as he could and then let\nCaleb's sexual urges overtake him again, the shortness of breath and the hard\nswallowing and the weird low noise in his throat that sounded like a purr, then\nhere it would come, John Thomas would feel that equally abnormal need to let\nCaleb use his body, again...\n            It got more and more dangerous, less and less\ncontrolled - each day passed as something truly twisted, John Thomas could\nnever shake that sinking, wretched feeling this was actually bestiality, not to\nsay something to quite literally fuck his career into an undiggable hole, but\nhe kept on with it, day after day after day, and why? Really, dammit to Hell, why did he just - just go along with it?\n            Why he couldn't ever say no...?\n            ...because - because\nhe was in love with Caleb. \n            Deeply, passionately, obsessively in love with\nhim, his name whispered out in ecstasy in his one bedroom apartment, his sheets\nstained nightly - the age difference wasn't that big, what of it? Couldn't he\ngo public? Couldn't he tell someone else and not have Coach Swope's suspicious\neye linger on him - just - long\nenough to make him think he knew, he really knew, the truth?\n            Whatever anybody, teachers, parents, students,\ncoaches whispered about, if they cared at all and if they whispered at all and\nCaleb was so shy and lonely they probably didn't care either - whatever anybody\nwhispered about they never knew how deep it was going, how weird it was\ngetting.\n            As Caleb kept on changing, his symptoms getting\nweirder - soft hair coming up on his legs that he'd shave off and then watch\nrapidly grow back after a day or two - he confided to John Thomas that now, now\nhe was getting afraid, fearful of what was happening to him, fearful enough\nthat he thought if he went to the doctor they'd do awful things to him, and he\nwas probably right, so he had to just keep it all to himself, and not tell\nanybody.\n            Anybody but John Thomas.\n            He was already shy and Pulaski County High was\nnot exactly known for educators that were compassionate or observant - only\nJohn Thomas, he felt like, and then only at practice, saw how much more\nwithdrawn Caleb had become, even more shy than he was already. \n            When he was out in public John Thomas would\nwatch with a steadily growing apprehension the furtiveness in Caleb's actions, the flash of discomfort when his\nroughening tongue - which would be scraping John Thomas' ass, making it bleed\nworse, what have I gotten myself into? -\nwould brush against the still-tender roof of his mouth...the reluctance in going\nback to the locker room after practice because he'd have to put on clothes over\nhis sopping-wet jammers for fear anyone would\nsee what he looked like naked - and afterwards Caleb would complain over the\nphone to John Thomas how weird he felt, how he felt hot and would get sweaty\nwhen they turned on the heat in now that it was December and it was getting way\ntoo airish and chilly, how he'd get angry, so angry, for no reason at all, and\nthen cry about it alone at home...\n            ...it occurred to John Thomas in the back of his\nmind that if he hadn't seen Caleb's penis, if he hadn't watched Caleb's eyes\nturn green in the right light he'd think that Caleb could just be faking all\nthis, a kid acting out because his dad never really paid him a whole lot of\nmind with his car dealership business and his mom dead in circumstances his dad\napparently paid a lot of money to\nhush up.\n            Other kids noticed his eyes too, John Thomas\noverheard, but Caleb had lied to them saying he had to wear contact lenses now\nfor some reason he never elaborated on - it was easy to lie that way, it was\nimpossible to lie the way that John Thomas and Caleb were now. \n            They should have been\nway more gullible. John\nThomas' parents were from New York and they had moved to Christiansburg awhile\nback, he was born on Virginian soil but Yankee, foreigner blood trickled out\nhis asshole every time he let Caleb penetrate him - Virginia, this part of\nVirginia that gets darker and spookier and weirder than the D.C. suburbs or out\neast like Richmond in the Autumn and Winter, never made much sense to him...maybe\nthe other kids, maybe even Coach Swope, had a better understanding, even a tiny\nbit, of just what in the fuck was going on around them all.\n            Now - back in the\npresent, once again - he blinked.\n            He blinked and the lights, the lights outside in\nthe parking lot gave off a keening edge to their illuminating beams and he\nrealized how drunk he was, how his hand was shaking and he was unsteady on his\nfeet and he just - no, he should sit down, he should sit back down in the chair,\nanother drink, maybe, something, something\nto take the fucking edge off...\n            ...he blinked again and he could see I-81, the\ninky stretch of nothing that came from nowhere, vanished to nowhere. \n            Beyond it were hills - forests - mountains. \n            Now he remembered - but why now, why like this?\n- now he remembered awhile back he had picked up a book of folklore at Tech's\nlibrary, bored and waiting on a tutor, and when he thumbed through it, the\npages yellowing and pockmarked with foxing of unidentifiable stains, he realized\nit was a book about Virginia folklore,\na bestiary of weird monsters that supposedly crawled all around the hills -\nforests - mountains of these parts.\n            He had thought at the time it was some hayseed\nbullshit scrawled down by gullible anthropologists who didn't understand what\nbasic science was - Virginia never made sense because Virginians never made sense, with their hushed rumors all the time\nabout ghosts haunting malls and giant monster catfish that live in lakes and\nall this. \n            One of the monsters - no, two of them, there\nwere two - were cats, or looked like cats, or sounded like cats, that's the\ngreat thing about the nonsense people believe, they can't really agree on any\nof it, just that it maybe might be something.\n            John Thomas took his hand and buried his face in\nit, elbow digging into the table.\n            He was thinking - he\nwas thinking, he was making a connection, his eyes were shut and he was trying,\nsunk in a misery that had no name, to not really know as much as he knew, to\nnot understand as much as he understood.\n            Tailypo - mountain monsters that looked like cats and\nhad glowing eyes and weird tails and scared the first settlers totally\nshitless...cats, cats that were bigger and stranger and meaner than any big cat\nout here, mountain lion or cougar or puma. They were monsters in the original sense, gruesome and ugly and horrible.\n            Like - Caleb\n- had become.\n            John Thomas shuddered, he slouched back in the\nchair - that wasn't fair, Caleb was still Caleb, he was still precious and\nstill beautiful and he couldn't be, couldn't\nbe a monster, even when...even when he started to act different, was different...\n            Caleb had changed, and then Caleb had changed - he turned obsessive, his\nneed for sex was unquenchable, his need to be around John Thomas and with John\nThomas the stuff of a sick, sad kitten - abnormally clingy, disturbingly close.\n            He felt like at any minute Coach Swope would do\na whole lot more than let his gaze linger on he and Caleb, that he would have\nto do some explaining, but it never happened - never. \n            If they - anybody, anybody at all - only knew...\n            One of the last times they were together, it was\na motel room like this one, and Caleb had been insatiable - he had fucked John\nThomas like he meant it, like there\nwas something in him he needed to get out, raw and savage and brutal and John\nThomas knew he was bleeding badly from it but didn't care, he was enthralled,\nthe barbed cock wounding him, making his hole suitable only, only for Caleb.\n            But then - and then they had taken a break, they\nhad been cuddling and John Thomas had let Caleb's teeth, that had grown much\nsharper, more feline, graze his neck...there was a vampiric thrill that he might,\nand then he did, draw blood. \n            He could hide his teeth, he could clip away his\nfingernails that were getting sharper and longer no matter how hard and how\nmuch he tried - but now - here, with John Thomas, he didn't have to.\n            John Thomas saw the change in Caleb's face - it\ngot serious, it got concerned, there was determination drawn up in his mouth.\n            \"Caleb, what's - what's wrong?\" John Thomas\nhad asked.\n            Caleb hesitated,\nhesitated badly, before he could answer. \"I want--\" he stopped, he swallowed\nhard, and he blinked, and in the fragment of time it took him to do so the\nlight hit his eyes again, just right, and the green nebula-like shimmer\novertook it: cat's eyes, glowing in the dark, radiant in the light. \"I - I\nwant--\"\n            \"What do you want,\nCaleb?\" John Thomas shifted underneath him, adjusting in the covers, the\ndiscomfort he felt earlier getting worse.\n            Caleb knelt his head down\nso that his mouth was level to John Thomas' ear:\n            \"I want - to - make\nyou - pr-pregnant.\"\n            John Thomas felt his blood\nrun freezing cold, and he pushed Caleb off of him, flinging him backward - the\nboy corrected himself and straightened, gripping the sheets of the bed tightly\nto stare at John Thomas as he rose somewhat against the pillow, agitated, his\neyes widening in strange, gnawing fear.\n            \"Caleb, what are you\ntalki--\"\n            \"I don't know,\" Caleb whispered back, his\nvoice low but shrill with what sounded like panic. \"I just, I - I keep\nthinking about it, I keep--\"\n            \"I'm a guy, Caleb,\" John Thomas\ninterrupted coldly. \"I can't get\npregnant.\"\n            Now the boy hung his head,\nhis breaths deepening. \"I - I know - I guess I know, but I--\" \n            His head jerked up again\nand his eyes, which glowed again, brighter than before, the last thing a small\nanimal sees in the wild before the cougar eats it up.\n            \"I - I keep seeing it,\nseeing - you - l-like that, w-with your stomach big and - stuff - when I...\"\nHis lip trembled. \"M-masturbate...\"\n            John Thomas felt a chilling\npall spread from his head to the rest of his body.\n            The worst part - the part\nthat made him shuffle awkwardly away, scoot to the edge of the bed, not even\nable to look at the boy anymore - was that John Thomas believed him. After everything he had seen and after everything he\nhad been put through, put himself\nthrough, with Caleb, for Caleb - what other choice did he have?\n            Involuntarily, back in the present, back in\nreality - gritting his teeth, feeling tears ooze out of his eyes - he pressed a\nhand to his belly, the little pooch there from being somewhat out of shape but\nJesus, Jesus Christ was it hardening?\nWas something in there? Was Caleb\nright?\n            And what would it be, if he was? Another thing\nlike whatever Caleb was - Tailypo, or something worse, a mountain monster just like - yes, fuck, why bother denying\nit any fucking more? \n            Just\nlike Caleb was.\n            As though his name were\nsome dread power to summon something, John Thomas heard it - a sound at his\ndoor, on the wood, something at the surface, on the outside.\n            Scratching.\n            He leapt up out of his\nchair, the bottle of Jack knocking to the ground, the whole room awash in the\nacrid smell of the fermented corn.\n            His eyes were wide as they\ncould go, a cold sweat bursting out of his skin.\n            Scritch-scritch-scratch-scratch.\n            Quiet, deliberate noises.\n            Mocking noises.\n            Like what was on the other\nside knew that John Thomas was listening, it knew what John Thomas was feeling.\n            John Thomas breathed in,\nbreathed out, deep and rattling breaths of a terror that struck to the utmost\nprimal fears of all humans: darkness, devourment, harm untold, a song of blood\nspurting from the rankest, most ancient parts of mankind's imagination.\n            This was how the old man\nfelt in the Tailypo story - this was how John Thomas had felt all night,\nhiding, hiding from Caleb who had kept calling and texting and texting and\ncalling and wouldn't leave him the fuck\nalone, so John Thomas had smashed his iPhone and holed himself up trying to\nescape, like a little prey-animal trying to avoid the inevitable...\n            This was how the old man\nfelt in the Tailypo story - an outsider, stalked, cornered, by a relentless,\npurely Appalachian predator.\n            They never found the old\nman, in the story - they'd never find John Thomas, either, Caleb too. He hadn't\nshown up to practice in a week, same as Caleb - it would get the attention of\nsomebody, they would incompletely piece this mystery together and nothing would\never come of it, no evidence, no trail, just two people that, for no reason at\nall, disappeared into the night like a sliver of moonlight in shadow.\n            He sprang to the door, he\nswung it open, he stumbled out into the hall.\n            Nothing.\n            He stood there, still\npanting, still drowned in adrenaline, that it took seconds, minutes, to realize he was alone.\n            Nothing.\n            There was nothing there.\n            In his abject desire to\nstill be Caleb's he had imagined the scratches, had imagined the noises - he\nhad been the hunter, but his depravity and his neurosis had made him the game.\n            He sank to the floor, next\nto his open hotel room, his chest heaving, and in his drunken oblivion with\nnobody to hear and nobody to see - wept.\n            Caleb was still out there -\nsomewhere, somewhere close, he could feel it, he didn't know why but he could\nfeel it.\n            He rose - shaky, unsteady,\na rickety mess of a man - but he rose, he took the door to his hotel room and\nhe slammed it shut, he staggered down the hall, to the stairwell, down - down -\neach step an impossibility in his drunken stupor but he did it, eventually he\nreached the bottom and he straightened himself up, he combed his hair over with\nhis hand, he would nod at the nice lady at the front desk and make it seem like\nit was the normal fucking thing in the world he was leaving the hotel at this\ntime of night and in this kind of weather in nothing but a messy shirt, jeans,\nand shoes.\n            Good for him - good for him\nfor still pretending to be as normal as possible. Still.\n            From the hotel he went\noutside, he stumbled about the parking lot, aimlessly, looking, searching, for\nsomething - someone - it was Caleb, it had a name and it had a face but he was\nso drunk, so desperate, all his senses misfiring and betraying him, that it\nlacked shape, lacked words.\n            His eyes fell on the hill\nnext to the hotel and he sprinted toward, stopping to catch his breath,\nunwilling to feel the snow crunching and melting into his shoes, biting them\nwith the cold, the breeze harsh and chapping on his face - the hill hosted some\nwoods that got unusually deep only some yards inside it, and he ventured into\nthem with the same blind instinct. \n            Deeper, deeper - he moaned\naloud as he smacked against a tree, crying out as he fell to the ground, the\nsnow, the ice, the dirt, piercing the skin of his face.\n            He breathed like a dragon,\nsteam from his mouth and his nose, cry and in his drunken fancy he thought that\nhis tears - for his life, his whole fucking\nlife - would freeze to his skin.\n            The night was silent - no\ninsects, no animals, that dull roar of cars and trucks a distant note of a\ndying dream.\n            \"Coach.\"\n            John Thomas yelled out in\npanicked surprise - he whirled around, thrashing on the snow, this way, that\nway - until he saw him.\n            \"Caleb.\"\n            From behind a fat pine tree\nwhose evergreen branches made whitened brushes with refrozen snow, he appeared\n- Caleb, the boy who had been Caleb, now Caleb the monster, Caleb the animal, Caleb\nthe Appalachian, Caleb the Tailypo.\n            From above the waist he was\nnominally human, his shoulders and arms dusted with greyish fur that mingled in\nwith the blond he had been born with - his fingernails were long, sharp claws,\ncruel and ivory like a crescent moon. His pupils, his irises, the whole of his\neyes had been swallowed by the devilish green-glitter eyeshine, glowing bewitchedly\nin the dark - his ears were long and pointed, elfin and eldritch, tipped, like\na lynx, with fur.        His body was, somehow, even\nmore toned, even more perfect than it\nhad been - every sinew, every lean muscle, perfectly flexed, perfectly toned.\nBut below the waist he was all an animal - neverminding his penis, which had\ngrown even more, a feline lance with razor barbs that jutted well above his\nnavel, bright pink like rose quartz above fat, plump, fur-covered testicles.\nHis feet, which had devolved into something like paws had, like his hands,\nlong, sharpened claws.\n            And then there was his tail\n- easily the size of him, four feet\nlong if it was an inch, gorgeously plumed and dexterous, stirring up a frigid\nbreeze as it wagged...Tailypo, Tailypo, now\nI've got my Tailypo.\n            John Thomas stared at him,\ntrembling, shaking with bewilderment.\n            \"Where - where've ya\nbeen? I been lookin for ya--\"\n            \"What the fuck,\"\nJohn Thomas managed flatly, his throat dry, his lips parched in his maelstrom\nof disbelief.\n            \"Coach - hey - it's\njust me, it's just Caleb--\"\n            \"What the fuck is going on,\" John Thomas repeated.\n\"This can't - this can't be - real--\"\n            Yet it was real - this was\nno dream, this was no inebriated revelry, this was the blurring of reality as\nit truly exists: the dark side of the normal human existence come into being\nwith the presence of a hidden, endangered creature that for too long as thought\nof only as a legend.\n            There was a painful silence\nbetween them, which Caleb at last broke:\n            \"Ya - d-didn't answer,\nCoach - I th-threw away my phone, ya wouldn't answer--\"\n            Now an unthinkable,\nballed-up outrage built inside him - a fury at himself, at Caleb, at his\nsexuality, at his life, at every bad decision that ended up in such a way to\nclimax exactly like this.\n            \"Be - cause - dammit to Hell I - I - I want you to leave me the fuck alone!\"\n            He screamed it, he flung\nforth every last bit of anger he could muster - but he stopped, he stopped as\nhe saw the shock, the flash of sadness appeared on Caleb's face: \"No -\nn-no way, Coach - that's not true...\"\n            John Thomas shut his eyes\ntight and jammed his teeth together so Caleb wouldn't hear him sob - it didn't\nwork, the sound came out and he too sounded like an animal, him, a cornered,\nwounded animal. And then, high-pitched, ashamed, an apologetic squeak, came his\nanswer:\n            \"I know.\"\n            He felt Caleb leap upon him\n- they went backward, he crashed into the snow, Caleb atop him, his fangs\nbared, glinting, pearlescent, in the half-light of the woods.\n            \"Then come - with me!\" he growled, at last the transformation\ncomplete in his voice, the shroud across the Moon, the human Caleb had been\nsnuffed out.\n            \"N-no,\" John\nThomas groaned. \"Please, god, no--\"\n            John Thomas could hold it\nin no longer - the abject misery, the guilt, the wrenching anguish that had been\nkilling him from the inside - he sputtered, shutting his eyes again, feeling\nthe tears well up and push out behind his eyelids, the first heaves of\nunutterable sorrow making his chest do a slow bounce.\n            How long Caleb held him\ndown like this he could not be sure, for time did not seem to pass, as he felt\nthe boy who had ruined him, who had taken him as his own outside of every\nacceptable parameter of health, morals, and decency - his body heat so fierce\nand so volatile it was like being pinned down by a dying ember in a mountain\ncampfire.\n            His breathes were pained,\nand through his quiet, restrained sobs - still in his tumult of drunken\nemotions, still in fear of being found and heard - he remained blind to\neverything, to the room, to Caleb and his rank, woodsy smell, to his future,\nhis darkened, desolated future that, second by second as it ticked by, threw\nhim into anguish...he was enslaved, he was a\nslave.\n            All because he loved a boy...\n            ...his thoughts were loudly\ninterrupted by Caleb leaning down, snuffing harsh into his neck, smelling -\nsmelling for something, for something specific.\n            \"Wha - w-wha--?\"\n            \"I...I dunno\neither,\" Caleb murmured, hesitant, breathless, like he had been their\nfirst time in the locker room - but mystified, deeply entranced, at something\nthat was reaching his nose, making his increasingly feral mind alive with some\nnew purpose, new activity.\n            Without warning he flung\nhis arm backward, claws appearing where his nails were - Jesus Christ, they're retractable, like a cat's - and he dove to John\nThomas' shirt, ripping it, tearing it, to little cloth bits, ruined, at only a\nfew strokes, by his savagely efficient, newly feline claws.\n            \"What the fuck are you doing?!\" John Thomas\nhollered - but Caleb ignored him.\n            \"I smell - I smell...\"\n            He pressed his hand to John\nThomas' breast, where a pressure built - John Thomas writhing at the strange,\nuncomfortable sensation - until something, something liquid that caught the\noutside light in a sprinkling glow, erupted from his nipples.\n            John Thomas' eyes flew\nopen.\n            Milk.\n            The snow melting against\nthe back of his shirt was not as cold as the hellacious iciness that slowed\nJohn Thomas' blood at that exact moment.\n            \"N-no--\" he\nstammered. \"No - God - no!\"\n            \"It happened!\"\nheard Caleb whisper triumphantly \"It happened - I did it, I - I made you pregnant!\"\n            In his drunken hysteria\nJohn Thomas let out a high whimper that encompassed in his racing,\ndirectionless thoughts a thousand theories, a thousand ways that this could\nhave happened - that it was just such a complete coincidence he had met a\nhalf-human, half-Tailypo, a witch's son, and by an agency of biology that was\nclearly witchcraft, clearly nighted in the understanding of warlocks and\nalchemists, he, a male, was now pregnant with\nthis boy's offspring.\n            But all that came out of\nhis mouth was a long, low denial of this reality, as unreal as it was and\nforever had been:\n            \"Noooooo...\"\n            He went limp, playing\npossum, stalked by a cat - he felt himself go down to the snow and remain\nthere, motionless, wishing for a swift death that he knew, now, would forever\nevade him.\n            He felt Caleb pull him,\ndeeper, through the snow, the frozen underbrush - he felt his skin scrape\nagainst the cold, and where blood was drawn, fur was growing, he felt it, he\nfelt his pores, his follicles, replaced with\nwhat had been sleeping inside him for weeks, latent, ready, waiting for a night\nlike tonight, a marriage night, a night to be wed.\n            \"C-Coach - Coach - s-so happy, Coach - we'll be together\nhere forever, Coach - you - me - babies--\"\n            He wailed as loud as he\ncould, knowing nobody would hear him, he would vanish and he would never be\nheard from again - still drunk, still sobbing, his jeans ripped off of him by\nCaleb's preternatural strength, going down with his ass up in the air in the\nsacred and profane behavioral lordosis of every cat, even this cat, the\nTailypo, the mascot of the Appalachians as a wild land of wooded American\nnightmares.\n            In doing so, he was\nenacting something that had been done before, maybe something that been done\nhundreds of times - people like him, freaks, outcasts, becoming more freakish, more outlandish, answering a call they did not know the language to\nbut heard, heard loud, voiceless though it was.\n            Caleb would have\ndisappeared by himself, alone and lonesome - but he had somebody with him now,\nsomebody forever, a devil to torment a sinner for eternity.\n            \"Love - you -\nC-Coach.\"\n            \"Caleb - Caleb--\"\n            The boy's name, John\nThomas' venial sin's truest name, was the last human word he would utter.\n            Now it was time: the\nmutagens in his body, hidden in Caleb's semen that would have gone mateless and\nalone but for how had been preyed upon by John Thomas even when John Thomas\nthought it was he who was doing the\npreying - the mutagens all exploded, overriding his DNA, frying his genetics,\nrebirthing him into a species that he would help propagate for newer\ngenerations of doom.\n            The last thing he ever did\nwhile he was still human - was laugh.\n            His toenails and then his\nfingernails grew and grew and glinted in the Winter's moonlight as the claws\nthey were becoming, his feet swelled and burst his shoes to become paws, his\ncoccyx exploded out of his skin like a wormy hairless tentacle before blooming\nwith fur to become a long, long fluffy tail - Tailypo, Tailypo, now I've got my Tailypo! His teeth jutted out of\nhis skull awkward and misshapen and sharpened, as whiskers ripped their way out\nof his face - his cock lengthened to taper and bloom with barbs of its own, and\nthen retreated to a newly forming sheath. Fur appeared everywhere, hot and\ninsistent out of his skin, brownish with the grey streaks of his new species.\nHis teats swelled obscenely, raised feminine mounds on his torso, new fur to\ndust them blooming out of his follicles, bursting out with glistering lactation\nto nurse the abominable devils growing inside his belly, slipping into the\nsnow, the blood and milk soon to freeze.\n            He laughed.\n            He laughed as Caleb tackled\nhim, biting his neck in the marital bliss of cats as they, and ruining the\nromance by shoving his penis deep inside, ripping his hole with his barbs, he\nlaughed as his vision blurred and his mind warped and exploded into primitive\nurges to submit, to be claimed, to join the forest that had called Caleb home -\nhe laughed, and laughed, and laughed, his voice rising to something hysterical,\nsomething panicked, the ecstasy of fear that the shaking hares feel when they\nsee the maw of the cougar open and feel the dripping jowls above their helpless\nfaces.\n            And he laughed as Caleb let\nloose, on command, with the virility of youth that John Thomas' had always\ncraved, a spurting fountain of feline semen, into his bowels - there would be\nmore, more Tailypo that would be the\nfamiliars of witches and would exact revenge on outsiders and would foster\nforever the cautionary tales that little children wrongly and dangerously laugh\nat as just being spooky stories.\n            It was good that Caleb was\nso ferocious, so endlessly horny, his need to breed impossible to sate - it was\ngood he was so fertile, so virile, so large with such sharp barbs to help John\nThomas ovulate - it was good for Caleb,\nthat was all that mattered.\n            He wouldn't stop - he would\nnever stop. John Thomas in Hell: all\nthe Caleb he wanted, forever, but trapped in a cycle of brutal sex and\nreproduction, over, and over, and over, and over.\n            How could he stand it?\nHis ass hurt so much, Caleb was fully evolved and fully changed, his thrusts were\nwild and they were violent, his barbs and blades ruining John Thomas' hole,\nmaking it hardly his at all, new territory for Caleb to claim.\n            John Thomas' nipples spewed\nmilk helplessly as he came a second, a third time, his new teats were unruly\nand uncontrollable in his throes of primal arousal, they would embarrass and\nhumiliate him by trickling and swelling when Caleb would approach him with that\nerect, barbed cock - he was already groping and squeezing them now...\n            ...it didn't matter. Nothing\nmattered.\n            Anything for him, anything\nfor Caleb, anything to be accepted, anything to stop being a human monster,\nthat's why this was so funny, so fucking funny it's like he could die and he\nwas, he was dying, he was no human monster\nanymore, no fucked up pedophile that other humans called a monster, but a true monster to join with the boy he\nalways wanted, and be himself, a freak though he'd be, less of a freak than he\nwas.\n            It was his last thought as\na man, his first thought as an eldritch Tailypo\n- this is how he, a foreigner, naturalizes, this is how the outsider in\nAppalachia finally finds his home here.\n            His laugh went upward in\npitch until it was a ripping shriek, a cry of something transcendently wild he\nwas unable to ever be as a man, and Caleb joined him, and together they echoed\nacross I-81 into the world of men that John Thomas Anderson was now divorced\nfrom and Caleb Jones had never, ever, belonged to.\n            At the least, at the very\nleast, they could be happy now - as monsters in a monster's world, happier and\nmore complete than they were before anywhere else, monsters in a human's world\ninstead."}