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Dario DeJong paced back and forth in the foyer of Jay Dee’s run-down house in Del City. The neighborhood had gone to shit, of course, especially after the tornado, and no one complained that Dee’s yard was covered in weeds and tall, dry grass - it matched the pothole filled street beyond.

The house belied Dee’s wealth. The Nigerian had built up quite an empire with just a strong arm and a few loyal thugs. But he kept a low profile, so the police didn’t know that he was the cause of the recent rise in prostitution in Oklahoma City.

Dario was pacing because his numbers had been low recently. He only had three hundred dollars for the week, and Jay wasn’t going to be happy. When he’d first signed up, Dario had liked the man. Jay wasn’t stingy, and he paid his whores with either a 30% cut or 15% and a little heroin, or meth if that was their shit. He also protected them well from the cops, hiding them for weeks, if necessary.

But the pressure of running a business, and competition from another pimp was starting to change Jay. He seemed angry a lot of the time, and where before he’d been understanding about a slow week, he was starting to crack down. Dario wasn’t slacking; there just wasn’t as much work for a twink like him right now. Money was tight, and most guys (women rarely hired him) wanted pussy.

“You may see him now,” Fenn Gopa said, looming at the now-open door. Fenn was an old - well, not friend - acquaintance of Jay Dee, also Nigerian, but unlike Dee, Fenn was huge. Both had the extra dark skin of Africans, and a thick accent that made ‘him’ sound more like ‘heem’. Fenn was something of an enforcer, though he rarely had to resort to the pistol in his waistband.

Dario nodded, walking meekly, fawn-like to the door. He’d learned long ago that too much confidence only made other men feel uncomfortable around him. He sashayed to the door, used to pretending to be exactly what people expected to put men at ease.

Fenn took up a post next to the entrance to Dee’s den, alongside another big, black man who rarely spoke. Dario took in a deep breath as he sought audience with the ‘king’.

“Dario, Dario!” Dee said in a big voice, standing up when his employee entered. “I am so glad to see you. Come in! Close ze door, you know I trus’ you.”

Even though Dee wasn’t as large as his bodyguards, he still had forty pounds on Dario. But there had to be some truth to what he was saying, because no one had bothered to pat him down for weapons. Not that he would ever consider such a thing! Slowly, Dario closed the door, turning to face his employer with a polite smile, and a “Hello.”

“Is a good day, no?” Dee boomed. “I zhink ze Gods are smiling. Have a seat.” He strode behind his desk, plopping into his office chair and leaning back with both hands behind his head.

Dario took the folding chair placed neatly in front. He didn’t mind - the chair was the right size for him. He sat at a perfect ninety degrees, hands resting on his knees. “I don’t have much,” he said, looking down.

Dee leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “Dario,” he said, composing his thoughts. “You know I understand. I say that when we first meet, no? Not every week is good. How much?”

Dario sighed. “Three hundred...and five.”

“Nyah! Tosk, tosk…” he said, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “A cute leetle boy like you? I find zhat hard to believe.”

“I…” Dario stammered.

“You take ze 30%? You know I worry about you, Dario. How you going to live on thirdy dollaz a week? Or … you ain’t holding back on me, are you …?”

Dario froze. Dee had couched the accusation in what sounded like genuine concern, but nonetheless, it was there. He was asking if Dario was stealing from him. He’d never felt the need to do that before. “No! No,” he repeated. “I would never do that.”

Clapping his hands together, Dee stood up. “Of course you wouldn’t. I know zhat. You are smarter zhan zhat. You want a drink? Beer? Whisky?”

Dario’s throat was parched, but not because he was especially thirsty. “Water…” he said, politely.

Dee gave him a wide smile, his bright, white teeth gleaming out against his dark, black skin. “I don’t zhink I have any.”

“Nothing is fine,” Dario explained.

Dee walked over to the mini fridge in the corner anyway, talking as he walked. “I am afraid ze contract, she will be changing, Dario. Of course I trust you - it’s ze ozzers I am worried about.”

Dario blinked. Dee had never suggested a contract change before. Finances must be really bad.

He continued, “You see, I know you got more potential. You jus’ need zha motivation! You will have a minimum, Dario, but nothing you can’t get.”

“But -”

“A cute boy like you will figure it out. Cruise the parks for desperate pedos, you know. Truck stops. Look, I don’t need to tell you how to do your job.” Dee had opened the fridge, grabbing himself a beer and rooting around.

“...how much?” Dario asked, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

“Five hundred. A week.”

Dario felt his pulse slow. That was doable. He averaged almost a grand. But if times were tight, that number would go up - he knew it would. “And if I miss it? Some weeks are slow.”

“One or two times, no problem, Dario. Ah, Vitameen Water. Is zhat okay?”

“Yes. But after that?”

Dee stopped at his desk to plant the beer there, then walked over to Dario, saying, “I will have to reevaluate my trust in you.” This time, he wasn’t smiling.

Dario gulped, finally feeling thirsty. He grabbed the bottle from Dee’s hand, surprised to find a corked bottle. Something...Polish? He twisted the cork out. “That won’t happen,” he promised, though he couldn’t really know for sure. He’d always liked Jay Dee, but this new look he was giving was unsettling.

“No, I don’t suppose eet will,” he replied, walking back to his desk.

Lifting the bottle to his lips, Dario took a quick sip. “Blech!” he said, lowering it immediately. It was sour and bitter all rolled up in one. Whatever passed for health sure tasted bad.

Dee sat in his chair and swivelled so that he was turned away from Dario. “Gavin Lebaron is getting on my turf. He’s giving away crack to my whores and taking zhem from me. Don’t you go to him, Dario.”

Dario coughed, his hand to his lips. He wanted to acknowledge his employer, but he was having trouble talking. His skin started to ripple and his head was swimming. He had to set his feet apart to keep from falling off the chair. The bottle, still uncorked, landed on the carpeted floor, but amazingly, stayed upright.

“I do trus’ you, Dario, because you always take ze money, and not ze drugs. But times are tough, and Lebaron is not a good man. He wants all his boys and girls hopped up and depend on him. I don’t.”

Dario fell to the floor, but he was small, and the carpet muffled the impact. He crawled on all fours, watching as his arms began to grow, and his skin turned deathly black. The color washed over him like a plague, and he knew he must be dying. Had Dee poisoned him? Why would he be talking like this if he had?

Or maybe someone had given him the Vitamin Water in an attempt to poison him. Perhaps Fenn? It didn’t matter anymore, as Dario reeled wordlessly on the ground, his entire body aching as he lay there.

“I don’t want to hurt zhem, or you, or anyone, but I will. I have. But you won’t make me hurt you, will you, Dario?”

“Nnnrgh!” he gasped, trying to stand on legs that were straining at his white capris. His loose tank top wasn’t so loose anymore as he grew bigger and bigger. Desperately, he kicked off his shoes to free his feet.

Finally, Dee said, “Dario?” and spun around, eyes wide as he looked upon the young man, shifting in front of him, turning black, bulging in every direction, and struggling to breath. “My...God…” he gasped once, and then, amazingly, he fainted.

“Heeeep…” Dario gasped, but his employer would be no use like he was. Instead, he writhed, slowly dying, until finally, the sensations were done.

He wasn’t dead.

He was more than a foot taller, and forty pounds heavier. The blackness of his skin wasn’t a disease, he realized. He was just black. Frantically, he ran to the back of the room where there was a mirror and his jaw dropped.

He looked like Jay Dee.

Not exactly, no, but same skin color, height, weight, build. His facial features bore more than a passing resemblance. Anyone who looked closely would tell immediately that he was ‘off’, close enough to Dee to be his brother. The water wasn’t poison - it was magic!

“Oh, fuck…” he said softly, not wanting to alert the guards. He had no idea what they would do, or think, about what had just happened, but the odds that they would kill him were pretty fucking high. Dee himself might, if he hadn’t fainted. Was this going to...wear off? Would Dee remember it, or forget why he fainted? How long would he be out?

“What do I do?”

Choices:

A) Head out the window and hope he isn’t noticed.

B) Tell the guards to go home, impersonating Jay to wait for him to wake.

C) Drink the potion again...

* * * * *

Terell and Cynthae Harris were sitting quietly, watching Survivor: Antarctica. But the antics of the ‘real people’ starving and freezing as they shot paintballs at little targets to gain the “Immunity from the Cold” idol didn’t really register. They were waiting for test results that never came.

“It’s 7:00, Terell. They’re not gonna call.”

He clapped his brown hands to his face, sighing deeply. “They still - no, you’re right.”

Cynthae wrapped her arm around her husband, squeezing him tightly. “They’ll call tomorrow.”

He held back tears. “I just wanted to know. It’s not knowing that hurts. I need to know!”

“I know, honey, I know,” she replied, resting her braided hair in the crook of his neck. She put her other hand on his leg. “Does it really matter?”

“If it isn’t my fault - if your eggs... Damnit, Cynthae, I know you want to have a baby.”

“We can adopt. If I’m the problem, there’s nothing we can do about that,” she said, reasonably.

“And that’s why I gotta know. Once I know I can come to terms with it. This is torture,” Terell said firmly, grabbing the remote and clicking off the television. “This show is garbage.”

Cynthae laughed. “Hey, now, don’t take it out on Survivor: Antarctica. It never did us wrong.”

Terell couldn’t suppress a loud chuckle at that, and he pulled his wife into his arms, kissing her lips. “I love you.”

She returned the kiss with fervor. “You know I love you.”

The two young African Americans had been blessed with two affordable college degrees, two excellent jobs, a beautiful suburban house in Ohio, a large backyard with upright garden plots, and their very own henhouse. Nine out of ten people agree that local, grass-fed eggs tasted better, after all.

But despite all their blessings, Cynthae and Terell couldn’t get past the one thing missing from their perfect future: kids. They’d tried, sure enough, but a year had passed without success, despite watching all the timings, cycles, positions, eating the right foods, playing the right music. Cynthae had even taken to lying on her back with her legs up against the wall after intercourse.

Something wasn’t working, and they didn’t know who.

They’d decided to find out together, using the same clinic to test both his sperm and her eggs and return the results at the same time. But another night of uncertainty awaited the two.

“Speaking of eggs,” Terell segued smoothly, “I want to make you an omelette.”

Cynthae smiled. Their first date had been a bit unorthodox - they’d met at 5:00 in the morning at an all-nighter study session for Anthropology 101. Neither of them cared about Anthropology, and they’d never have met if it weren’t required. He was a lawyer, and she was a chemist. But he offered to walk her home. When he found out that she lived just off campus in a house with a kitchen, he had insisted he come inside and make her an omelette, and his omelettes were damn good.

The rest, as they say, was history.

“We’re out,” he said, looking in the fridge.

“The hens should have laid some.”

Terell reached in and grabbed a little, corked bottle of vitamin water. “This new?”

“Found it online. Supposed to be healthy - thought it might help with...you know,” Cynthae explained.

Shrugging, he grabbed the bottle and headed toward the back door. His wife followed along. “I’ve got to check on the chicks anyway.”

Together, the young couple travelled the grass to the back of their yard and the rather well-constructed hen house. They’d had to call in for a rooster, and bred Henna and Checka. Their eggs had just hatched, and the chicks were kept under a heat lamp as they adjusted to life outside their shells. While Cynthae spread out new food and water for the chicks, Terell went to the unfertilized eggs, grabbing the brown eggs and placing them carefully in a bowl.

“Six eggs,” he said.

“Another chick died,” she said, sadly, dumping the body into the waste basket. Still, they were ready and able to hold a few more hens, and they could eat or sell the young roosters.

Terell paused at the front door, glancing back at his wife. “It happens…” he said slowly, not sure how to comfort her. He held out the bottle of water and said, “Here, have a drink.”

“I’m fine,” she said, but she took the bottle anyway, popping the cork and tipping some into her mouth. “Blech! None of the Etsy reviews mentioned anything about the taste.”

Terell took it back. “That bad, huh?” He sniffed it briefly, then took a taste of his own before grimacing and putting the cork back in. “How much did this cost?”

“Too much.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, leaving the door open as he stepped up behind his wife, placing the bowl on the counter and wrapping his arms around her. “It’ll all be okay.”

Cynthae took a deep breath, leaning back into his arms. She said, “It hurts to look at the dead chicks. I can’t help but think -”

“Then don’t look at them. Look at the thriving ones,” he said, pointing toward the cute, yellow chicks that walked around and poked at the ground, the walls, each other. She couldn’t help but laugh.

That laughter was abruptly cut off as first she, then he started to cough, a tingling sensation overwhelming them. Terell fell away from his wife, arms reaching out for anything before he collapsed on the hay floor. Cynthae screamed for a few seconds, staring back as her husband started to change in front of her, his body contorting and skin developing a terrible rash. That’s when she realized the same thing was happening to her.

Terell wanted to yell, to plead, to question everything as he watched his wife through bulging, warping eyes. She’d curled up into a fetal position on the ground, her arms tucking in at her sides. He could only be grateful when she began to shrink enough that she disappeared into her clothing. A second later, he was cloaked in the darkness of his own shirt.

When the pain finally stopped, he squirmed his way out of his clothes, only to find the shed had grown ten times as large. The roof was barely visible! The hay all around him stuck out like poles, and the trash bin was as big as a garage. This is impossible!

Cynthae noticed him before he noticed her, and she squawked. Out of the light blue shirt emerged a perfect little yellow chick. Terell, no!

But it was him, and worse, she looked down to find her body covered in soft, yellow down. They were chicks. There was no questioning this. She prayed this was a dream, but it certainly didn’t feel like one.

Terell chirped in shock at his wife, hopping over to her.

Overwhelmed, they embraced, shivering from fear and from the overwhelming cold. How were they freezing!? It was 70 degrees out! But their chicks were in a 80 degree bath. Terell wished more than anything that he could talk to her, comfort her, tell her that whatever was happening, they would be all right.

Cynthae glanced up what appeared to be 100 feet to the counter where the other chicks basked in warmth. There was no way they could get up there. But the hens were only a foot off the ground in their boxes. They might be able to climb the apparently fifteen foot wall if they jumped or moved hay over to make a ladder. But would the hens protect chicks that weren’t their own?

Terell had a different idea. Looking at the open door to the outside world, he saw how the fifteen second walk across the yard had turned into a mile trek through the grassy plains. They couldn’t even get into the house once they got there. But he racked his brains and realized their neighbors, the Husby’s, would be home. Did they have a cat? If they could peck at the door, they might come and see the chicks. They’d know immediately that the two chicks must ‘belong’ to Terell and Cynthae, and they’d either take care of them or put them in the incubator. If lucky, they could convince the Husby’s that they weren’t just normal chicks.

Cynthae hopped over to the bottle that must have started this all. It was as tall as she was now, and the cork was in tight. But if they could work together to open it, they might be able to drink it again - to...some effect.

Together, the two looked in each others’ eyes as if asking the key question:

What do we do now?

A) Try to open the bottle (unlikely, but keeps the other options open at a small penalty).

B) Try to get up to the hens, or chirp enough to draw them down (most likely).

C) Cross the yard to alert the neighbors (dangerous, but the best payoff).

* * * * *

Luther grunted and ate his slop. He’d grown to quite a nice size in the muddy old pen, and he was fairly content, for a pig. The only thing he didn’t particularly like was Fenner. The young farmer liked to strike Luther and the other pigs with a switch on his way to the feed trough, and he didn’t really appreciate it.

He also missed his friends. Every once in a while, they disappeared. One day, Sherlock was in the pen, rooting around and snorting, and the next, he was gone, with no explanation. Luther dug in at the trough, but he had to wonder where his friends kept going. At least each time a young boar disappeared, he was replaced quickly.

Luther also liked when the sows came into heat. His female pig-friends were even better recreation, but they only stayed around for about three days. Still, the games they wanted to play were especially fun.

In the last two months, a new person had been hanging around. A young woman named Crystal. She was even more annoying than Fenner. She just dawdled around at the fence and never even fed Luther. She liked to bother the man, but Fenner didn’t send her away. For some reason, he seemed to like her.

Luther couldn’t understand them, but the words still went through his ears and stuck in his brain.

“Come on, let’s go to town. This farm is so boring!”

Fenner groaned. “Look, I don’t like farming any more than you, but it makes some money, and I don’t see you working!”

She laughed. “You’re my full time job.”

“If that’s true, then you’re sleepin’ on the job.”

Crystal tittered, her mammaries bouncing up and down. “Sleeping with you is the job.”

Fenner smirked. “That explains why I spend so much on you.”

It took Luther a while to recognize what Fenner saw in the woman. Eventually, the pig’s sniffer realized that Crystal was his sow, and it all became clear. He couldn’t help but feel a little jealous that Fenner got to stay with his sow every day. The oddest thing was that every few days, Crystal would leave the house with water leaking from her eyes, and her face looked puffy and red. Sometimes, she’d get a bruise or two. Luther didn’t know what was going on in that house!

The adolescent boar with him was called Grantham the day that everything changed. Fenner was walking toward the pens with a bottle in his hands, grumbling. “Twenty-five dollars for health water?”

He’d heard the humans grunting loudly at each other through the walls of the house, and at first he’d suspected they were breeding again, but the man was still oinking angrily outside. “This shit isn’t good enough for the pigs!” With that, he uncorked the bottle and poured half of it out in the mud beside the drinking trough.

Thinking better of wasting it all, he sighed and corked the bottle, tossing it at the barn where it landed with a thud. “I swear, sometimes, that bitch has no sense.”

He was supposed to feed Luther, and the pig grunted when the man turned and walked back to the house without a second glance at the slop feeder. Luther tromped over to the odd smelling liquid even now leaking into the mud and gave it a lick. Maybe this was the food?

He lapped it up quickly, but the taste wasn’t anything special. He glared at Fenner’s back, stomach grumbling. This wasn’t right! But glaring and grunting had no effect on the man, who walked right back into the house.

That’s when he began to feel sick. He’d been sick before, and thrown up every now and again. This wasn’t much worse, but it wasn’t just his stomach. His legs tingled and his tail twitched, and before he knew what was happening, he was changing. His light white hair faded away, his skin turning the same color. Odd, he thought.

Even weirder was the thought. He’d had thoughts before, but never running through his head. This is...new… he realized, legs stretching out in front of him. In just a few moments, he was sprawled out in the mud, feeling surprisingly cold in his new skin.

Luther stood up and everything was much, much farther down than usual. Grantham looked tiny. While he enjoyed the mud coating his skin, he felt the urge to wipe it off. Where was that? Luther walked over to the hose that he’d seen Fenner use a thousand times before. Ah, so that’s what this does, he thought to himself, turning on the stream and wiping the mud off his body.

Once he was clean, he thought about what had happened. There was no doubt about it - he was a human now, and after a hard think, he realized it must have been that liquid that did it. He walked over to the bottle and picked it up. This might be useful.

Hiding the bottle beside the trough, he disregarded Grantham and looked at the big house. He’d never been inside before. He glanced at the pen full of sows to his left, wondering if any of them were in heat, before he heard yelling and screaming from the house yet again. To his right, he saw the locked shed where all his friends had been taken but never come out of.

“Hmm,” he said, using an inflection he finally understood after years of hearing Fenner say it.

What should he do?

A) Visit the sows.

B) Go check on the human sow and Fenner.

C) Try to get into the shed and find his friends.