Titanification

by JayPat   

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Titanification. I remember when they first came out with it. I was only a kid at the time, maybe 9 or 10. They made a big deal out of it on the news. Some European Gen tech company developed a way to turn any guy into a titan, in other words a walking, talking muscle god. Ok, so maybe not any guy could do it. There were qualifications, and every one of them was controversial.

1. You had to be genetically compatible. That brought in accusations of selective breading, genetic engineering and even racism.
2. You had to be in good health. That of course eliminated the process from being the answer to MD or MS or any other muscle wasting disease. Many pundits dismissed it at that point as being “an irresponsibly vain and frivolous manipulation of the human body,” like plastic surgery, only far worse.
3. The process was extremely expensive. I’m talking Italian sports car expensive, well beyond the reach of most ordinary mortals, which further bolstered its reputation of being frivolous—merely another toy for the ultra rich.
4. You had to be between the ages of 16 and 18. Apparently puberty was necessary to the process and most guys were finished with puberty by 18. The company refused to administer the process to anyone under 16 on moral grounds. Interestingly enough, it was an extension of those same moral grounds that got the process banned in the US, where it was decided the youngest age one could morally go through the process was 18. And, of course, by that age it was too late. So, the company would not be building any facilities in America.

Interestingly enough, an ultra conservative group wanted to raise the ban age to 21. It was pointed out to them that it would be a waist of congress’s time and the tax payer’s money since the process was not effective on anyone over 18 anyway. But this did not detour the conservatives, they wanted the age raised anyway.

It was one day, some years later, when I first saw him. I was in the city on a shopping trip with my mom and there he was. He didn’t look much older than me but he was massive, fully 8 feet tall and about 6 feet wide at the shoulders.

He was wearing a tight shirt, obviously tailored to accentuate his massive build. His chest stuck out so far in front of him, I wondered if he ever saw the ground any more. His neck was thick as a telephone pole and his massive traps were broader than a body builder’s shoulders. And his shoulders—? Massive segmented globes of shredded muscles nestled above huge thick, bulging arms, at least as wide around as my torso and covered in veins. And one of his huge, ripped forearms looked like it weighed more than my mom.

I could see his massive quads rolling and heaving around inside his light cotton pants, looking for all the world like they might burst out any second and leave him standing there in rags. Not that I would have minded that sight, not one little bit. The guy looked like he could lift a truck.

I remember my mom looking up at him and saying, “Why in God’s name would anyone do that to themselves?”

And I remember thinking why wouldn’t you? But I kept that to myself.

A few minutes later mom and I split up. She was off to get her hair done and I needed some new pants. It didn’t take me long to get what I needed and I still had an hour to wait for mom. So naturally, like any red blooded teenage boy, I stopped by the electronics department to check out all the new gadgets I couldn’t afford.

I was carefully scrutinizing the resolution on a 42 inch plasma screen when I felt him approach. It was weird. It was the same way you feel when a big truck or a bus pulls up right behind you. It was as if I could feel the physical dynamics of the room changing.

“Those things are terrible energy hogs,” he said, in a voice reminiscent of rolling thunder.

I turned around and looked up. holy crap… from a distance he had looked big. Up close he was fucking enormous. It was a good thing he was standing a few feet back or I never would have seen his face past those gigantic pecs. And it was a nice face. I felt myself getting light headed as all the blood rushed to my head. And all the blood that wasn’t going to my head was going someplace else.

“Yeah—” I said, falteringly, “I’d just heard the resolution was better with plasma and I was trying to see if it was true.” That was an amazingly lucid sentence considering my state of mind at that moment.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Hard to say,” I said, desperately trying to snatch back the threads of my thought process from a moment ago, when screen resolution had seemed so important.

“I think the resolution is just as good with LED and it takes up a lot less power,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said, “I just need to compare them a little more. Sorry, is my mouth hanging open?”

“Just a little,” he said, cracking a smile. “But don’t worry I get that a lot.”

“Just how fucking big are you?” I asked before I could stop myself.

“Pretty big,” he said, “but if you don’t mind, I’d much rather talk about Hi-def TVs.”

“Oh sure,” I said. “I bet you have a 3D TV.”

“Yeah,” he said as he shrugged. Fuck, earthquakes moved less real estate. “But I like my 2D TV better,” he continued. “It’s got a better picture and most of the movies out in 3D aren’t that good.”

“Alice in Wonderland was ok,” I said, “But I think Avatar sucked.”

“You too?” he said, his eyebrows rising. “I though I was the only one who hated Avatar.”

“Fear not, dude, you are not alone,” I said. “Most of my friends think it sucked. Your’s liked it, hunh?”

Suddenly he got this far away look in his eye. “Yeah… yeah they did,” he said. I suddenly got the feeling I should change the subject.

“What about Blu-ray players?” I said. “I bet you’ve got a sick-ass Blu-ray player.” And then we walked over to where the players were.

We spent the rest of the hour talking about movies and home theater systems. Of course all my knowledge was theoretical. I knew what kind of home theater I wanted, but with my parents… The only reason we upgraded to hi-def was because they thought we wouldn’t be able to get any TV shows without it.

But Matt, as I found out his name was, had it all, the finest surround sound, a huge, wall-sized flat screen, and the best disc player money could buy. I was very envious and I told him so.

“Well, you’ll just have to come over some time and check it out,” he said. He wrote down his email address on a piece of paper and gave it to me. “Friend me on Facebook,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, handing him my address in return. “You do the same.” Then I realized I was already 10 minutes late for meeting my mom. I excused myself and took off quickly.

Talking with Matt had been an experience. My neck was sore from constantly having to look up and around his massive muscles just so I could see his face as we talked. All he had to do was move a little to the right or left and suddenly his head was obscured by a gigantic pec or a colossal delt, and I would have to shuffle over to get a clear view once more. And that’s not even mentioning the effect all that heaving muscle straining against his clothing was having on my concentration. Visions of it haunted my thoughts for the rest of the day. And all that night I lay in bed jerking to the memory of it.

When I woke up the next morning I automatically booted up my computer, like I always did, and logged on to Facebook. I had to be up to date on all the drama before I went into school. But everything looked peaceful. There hadn’t been any break-ups or a major fight. And I was just about to get up and get dressed when I saw the friend request. He’d sent me a note with it, too. Matt from the electronics store, the note said as if it were possible for me to forget who he was.

Of course I accepted at once and took a detour over to his main page to check out any photos there might be. I was a little surprised not to find any. His profile photo was just a head and shoulders shot, and while the head was obviously his, the shoulders were not… or at least, not any more. The picture must have been taken before he’d had the process, and he looked like a regular kid. I guess he hadn’t had a chance to update it yet, which meant his change might be recent.

I found it a little fascinating. I was used to associating that face with impossibly massive shoulders and giant bulging traps, and to see it connected to an average pair of shoulders was a mind trip. It made me wish the photo showed more of him so I could make a proper comparison.

But the morning was wearing on and I had to get ready for school. So I shut down my computer and got on with it.

“Dude, where have you been?” said my best friend Scott as soon as he saw me. “I’ve been texting you all morning.”

I pulled out my phone. Yup, it had died. “Damn, I forgot to charge it last night.”

“Again?” said Scott. “Dude, you’ve gotta take better care of that thing.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “What’s up?”

“Jack’s back,” he said.

“What?” I gasped. “I thought they kicked him out!”

“They did, but apparently he’s back.”

Jack Nirrazian was a bully of the first order. He’d been expelled last year after he put a kid in the hospital, beat him to a bloody mess just because the kid wouldn’t let Jack cut in front of him in the lunch line.

“And I hear he’s looking for you,” said Scott.

“Of course he is,” I said, burying my head in my hands. “Some things never change. Why did they let him out of Juvie?”

“Because I did my time,” said a voice. I felt my skin crawl as I heard it. I turned and looked. There was Jack, large as life, actually he was a little larger than I remembered.

Not that Jack was ever really big, just hard as hell with a violent streak a mile wide. But now he looked like he’d put on another 10 or 15 pounds.

“What do you want, Jack?” I said.

“What I always wanted,” he said. “Take a hike, Scott.”

Scott didn’t wait to be asked again. I didn’t really blame him. Jack was scary. And I couldn’t believe I used to find that hot.

“We’re through, Jack,” I said.

“That’s a shame,” said Jack, “because not a day went by that I didn’t think of you. I actually hit the weights hard while I was in there because I know how much you like big guys.” He flexed. Yup, he was definitely bigger. I couldn’t understand why they let them have weights in Juvenile Hall. Was it because they wanted to produce a bigger, stronger thug? Looks like they succeeded.

“I don’t care how big you get, Jack,” I said. “You’ll never interest me again.”

“You say that now,” he said. “But maybe you’ll change your mind after this.” He pulled a brochure out of his pocket and dangled it in front of my face. “Here’s the other thing that got me through that year,” he said, “just knowing this would be waiting for me as soon as I got out.” I snatched the brochure from him and stared. Holy crap!

“Titanification!” I gasped. “No way. No way could you even afford this.”

“My dad took out a second mortgage on the house, and borrowed the rest from the bank. It’s a done deal. I go to Switzerland this weekend for my first treatment.” He grinned. “I’ll bring you back some chocolates.”

I just didn’t have any words.

“Cheer up, buddy,” he said. “Pretty soon I’ll be so fucking huge I’ll be un-fucking-stoppable. I’ll do whatever the fuck I want whenever the fuck I want and no one will fucking say shit to me—ever again. And just think of all the wild nights we’re gonna have—” and then he looked at me with a particularly dark glare, “because with the body I’m gonna have, no one’s gonna to say no to me either.” And then he turned and walked away.

Holy crap! How could this happen? How could they let someone like Jack take the treatment? Didn’t they have standards? Yeah, they had standards, six digit standards.

Damn, what do I do now?

“I don’t believe it,” said my friend Lucy later at lunch. “He was just messing with your head. He’s not going to have the treatment. No one’s dad is going to mortgage the house for something like that.”

“I don’t know,” said Scott. “I heard Jack’s dad is some kind of low level thug with the mob. Maybe he has bigger plans for his son, way bigger.”

“Don’t joke about it,” I said. “I met one of those titanified guys yesterday and just the thought of Jack getting that big makes me want to move to Aruba.”

“You met one?” said Scott. “Seriously? What was he like?”

“Huge, gigantic, beyond enormous. Just one of his arms was bigger than you and me put together. He could probably lift all three of us, plus the table, with one finger.”

“Damn,” said Scott.

“Damn is right,” I said. “I’m screwed.”

“I still don’t believe it,” said Lucy. “I just don’t believe it.”

“I know,” said Scott, “You can get the other titanified guy to take care of Jack.”

“I can’t ask him that,” I said. “I hardly know him. And Jesus, can you imagine two of those guys fighting. It would level a city block.”

“Sure I can imagine it,” said Scott. “It’s a big ticket item in Europe. They buy out some run down section of a city and just let them go at it, no holds barred. They throw old cars at each other, rip down buildings, and pull sewer pipes out of the ground and use ’em like clubs. And not one of those guys ever gets killed. It’s like it’s impossible to seriously hurt them.”

“And that’s what’s going to happen to Jack?” I said. “It’s a sick world we live in.”

I couldn’t concentrate much on school for the rest of the day. And when I got home I almost didn’t bother to log on to Facebook. But some habits are almost impossible to break. As soon as I logged in I got an IM from Matt.

Hey, it said.

Hey, I replied.

Want to come over and see my set up?

Sure, I said. When?

How about now?

I had to laugh. If anything, I imagined I would be chasing him.

I don’t even know where you live, I typed, and even if I did, I don’t have a car.

That’s ok, he said, I’ll send a car.

He’ll send a car?

You mean a limo? I typed.

Yeah, a limo. Is that ok?

I had to think about it for a few seconds. What was I getting myself into? As a rule, rich folks didn’t have a lot to do with people like me. We didn’t belong to the right country club, which in my situation was no country club at all. And let’s not forget the fact that this guy was as big as a house and could probably lift one as well. His kind was so strong, according to urban legend, that a building falling on him would be only a minor inconvenience. If I went there I would be completely at his mercy. What if the nice guy act was all a front? What if he had evil intentions? Then I found myself hoping he did have evil intentions… or at least one evil intention.

I quickly typed, a limo is fine. What time?

Should be outside now.

I jumped up and ran to my window. Sure enough there was a long black limo parked out front. Ok, that was a little creepy.

How did you know where I lived? I typed.

Your dad’s name and your city are on your Facebook page and you’re listed in the phone book.

That made sense. Though, it was still a little creepy that he’d done that kind of research and sent the car ahead.

How did you know I would come? I asked.

I didn’t. He replied. I just hoped.

The limo ride was actually kind of fun. The driver treated me like royalty. The back was luxurious with all leather seats, a fridge stocked with soft drinks, and a high def TV that got a full range of channels, not to mention internet access. There was even a PS3 hooked up to it, with all the latest games at my fingertips, plus an impressive movie selection. Hell, it was nicer than my room, and after five minutes I wanted to move in.

I’m not sure how long the drive was, but the time seemed to fly by. And before I knew it we were pulling up a long, circular drive in front of the biggest house I’d ever seen. It could have been a hotel.

The driver opened the door for me and I walked up the front steps toward the large hand carved front door. It opened before I got there and an actual, honest-to-god butler ushered me in.

“This way, Sir,” he said. Obviously I was expected.

I followed him to a huge wood paneled room, which had a floor to ceiling fish tank at one end. Then he closed the huge double doors behind me and left. I felt like I was in the lair of some James Bond villain.

“What do you think?” said Matt’s rolling thunder voice.

I jumped. He was standing right behind me. No, not standing, towering behind me. Damn, I’d forgotten just how huge that boy was. How he managed to get behind me without my noticing was beyond me.

He was wearing another of his tailored tees. It hugged his relatively narrow waist, giving just a hint of the immense blocks of muscle bulging out of his abdomen. The shirt broadened as it went up, enveloping his titanic pecs and monumental lats, showing off their perfect shape with a glove-like fit. His massive shoulders and traps were equally well showcased. And the tee’s short sleeves were pulled tight around those massive, veiny upper arms like they might rip apart at any second. Damn, I could see all the cuts and divisions in the exposed portion of his massive biceps and triceps, just as if they’d been carved there with a knife. I guessed there was more cloth in one of his sleeves alone than in my entire t-shirt.

“You’re staring,” he said.

“Sorry,” I stumbled, ‘but you take some getting used to.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “So what do you think?”

I was about to say he was huge and beautiful beyond reason, but I got the feeling that’s not what he was talking about.

“What do I think about what?” I asked.

“My set up,” he said, waving those massive arms around, gesturing to the entire room.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I haven’t—” Then it hit me. I whirled around and looked at the fish tank. It couldn’t be. I walked up closer to it, but I had to get two feet away before I was sure. I was looking at a giant video screen.

“Holy crap,” I said. “That gives new meaning to high def. Surround sound?”

“In the walls,” he grinned. “Come here.” He pointed to one of the panels. “You see that? It might look like wood but it’s not. It’s a kind of cloth that’s painted to look like wood so it will blend in with the rest of the room. The speaker’s behind it.”

“Subwoofer?” I asked.

“In the floor,” he grinned back. “When the building in Die Hard explodes, the whole room shakes.”

“Seriously?”

“You want to see?”

“Ah, that would be a yes.”

So he put on Die Hard. The image was so clear, when the bullets started flying I wanted to duck. And he was right; when the building blew up the whole room shook.

When it was over I turned to him and said, “That was one awesome movie.”

“Best action flick ever,” he replied.

“And your setup is better than any theater I’ve ever been to.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I think so. Of course there are a few in LA and New York that are better but outside of that—”

“Whoa, you must go to a lot of movies,” I said.

“Yeah, not so much anymore,” he said and then he got a kind of sad expression on his face. And I realized with his size he probably wouldn’t fit in a theater chair. And just think of the poor slob sitting behind him… or even 4 or 5 rows behind him. Of course I could stare at that view for a couple of hours, but I’m sure most people would object.

“So where do you go to school,” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“I have a tutor,” he said. “I don’t go to school.”

And suddenly I realized that had to be because of his size, too.

“Look,” I said. “This is ridiculous. I’m trying to dance around it but I just can’t anymore. Why don’t you like talking about your size?”

Suddenly he looked very uncomfortable and he stood up… and up—and up. Damn, what a mountain.

“I think you’d better go,” he said, and then he started slouching toward the door, his massive back slumping and his impossibly thick arms dragging at his side. “Randall will show you out,” he said and was gone. A moment later the butler was standing by the door. Without a word I followed him to the front door. Outside the limo was waiting.

The ride home took 45 minutes. For some reason I never turned on the TV.

The next day at school I didn’t say a thing to Scott and Lucy about my mysterious evening at Matt’s. It was all kind of weird and depressing and I didn’t really feel like talking about it.

And I didn’t see Jack all day. In fact there was such an obvious lack of Jack that I began to wonder if seeing him yesterday was only a bad dream.

When I got home there was a limo waiting outside my door.

I didn’t have to look at the driver to know whose limo it was. It’s not like limos were common place around my neighborhood. I bypassed it and went straight to my room. No sooner had I logged on to Facebook than I got the IM.

Sorry about yesterday.

I wasn’t sure I even wanted to respond.

What exactly are you sorry about? I typed.

Sorry I was rude.

Well that was a start.

You can’t go around pretending like you’re not 8 feet tall, I typed. It’s bound to come up in conversation once in a while.

I know. I’m sorry.

And—?

I’ve got an advance copy of Harry Potter 8. You want to come over and watch it with me?

Harry Potter 8! Holy crap!

Where did you get that?

My Dad has connections. Will you come?

I wanted to, very badly. It was kind of amazing to be around Matt. I mean, I don’t think I had a sense he didn’t rattle. And I’d been looking forward to that movie for months. But I had no interest in another evening of dark weirdness.

If I come, will you tell me why you don’t like to talk about your size?

With all due respect, that’s very personal and I hardly know you.

That’s how we get to know each other, I replied, by sharing personal stuff.

I waited over a minute for a reply.

Maybe, he said. We’ll see.

I figured that was the best I was going to do and I accepted.

As I climbed into the limo and sank into the plush leather seats, I realized that I could get used to this, very easily.

When I arrived Randall showed me right to the theater. When he opened the large double doors Matt was watching something on the big screen. I only caught a flash of it because he switched it off as soon as we came in. I guessed it was the news because it was at night; there was a lot of shaky camera work, police lights, and people running around screaming.

He stood up, rising to his full, impossible height. I almost laughed. He was wearing a camp shirt and loose fitting kakis. It was such a contrast from the form fitting clothes I’d seen him in so far, I could only assume he was trying to deemphasize his titanic build—like that could ever work. That camp shirt hung over his monumental pecs like a tent. I was pretty sure there’d be enough space for me under there. If anything the shirt made him seem even larger. And those enormous, impossibly thick, corded forearms were still completely exposed. Alone, they were enough to spoil any attempt at modesty.

“I’m glad you came,” he said

I guess I was still feeling a little of the burn from last night, because my answer was, “Really? Why?”

He took a minute before he answered, but then he said, “Because watching this alone would suck.”

Then one thought-pebble rolled into another thought-pebble and pretty soon I was having a brain avalanche.

He was lonely.

Now that I thought about it, on both occasions I’d been to this house I hadn’t seen a single other person except for Randall. Not that there couldn’t be other people. The place was so big, an army could be living there and I might never see them. But the house did have a quiet, empty feel to it.

And if he didn’t go to school, he might never see any other people at all. But he had to have friends. Everyone had friends. Sometimes they were awesome and sometimes they were lame, but everybody had them. Where were his?

“So which is your favorite Harry Potter movie,” he asked me.

“It’s hard to choose,” I said. “one through four were pretty good, but they pretty much went down hill from there.”

I was about to elaborate when my stomach interrupted us by letting out a growl.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m being rude again. Are you hungry?”

Well, now that he mentioned it, I was.

“What would you like,” he asked.

“Whatever you’re having,” I said.

Then he laughed. I hadn’t seen him laugh before. It was kind of nice. “I’ve already eaten,” he said. “But you can have anything you want.”

“Just whatever’s in the fridge,” I shrugged.

He laughed again. “How about seafood? Do you like seafood?”

“Sure, seafood’s great.”

Then he hit a button on the wall and a moment later the door opened and Randall came in.

“Randall, some Lobster bisque and poached salmon with asparagus for my guest, please.” Randall just nodded and left without a word.

“Oh no,” I said, “don’t go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble,” he smiled.

I couldn’t see how poached salmon and lobster bisque could possibly add up to no trouble, but I decided not to protest any further. It might come across as rude.

“I think my favorite Potter was Goblet of Fire,” he continued, and we spent the next half hour amiably discussing the pros and cons of all the Harry Potter movies.

When my dinner arrived it was amazing. Another butler-dude came in with a little table and put it by my chair. Then he draped it with a cloth, left and came back with a place setting. A minute later Randall showed up with the food. I felt like a king. And I don’t think I’d ever had a better meal.

“You should try some of this,” I said through a full mouth. “It’s incredible.”

He smiled. “That’s ok,” he said. “I already ate.”

“What did you have?” I asked.

“A cow,” he said.

I almost choked on my salmon.

Then he broke up laughing. “I’m kidding,” he said. “—mostly.”

Well, at least he had a sense of humor. That was nice to see. And that had to be the first time he referenced his size—even if indirectly. That had to be progress.

After I finished eating, we watched the movie. It was actually pretty good. Well, at least it was better then the last few.

When it was over, Matt walked me out to the limo. We were still deep in conversation about the movie. We both thought some of the character deaths were gratuitous. We must have stood out by the limo for about 20 minutes just talking about it, before I opened the door and got in.

“You know,” I said, “this is the sweetest ride I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah,” he said. “This used to be my car. I loved it, too.”

“Used to be?” I said, raising my eyebrows.

“Yeah,” he said, looking wistful. “I don’t really use it anymore.”

Of course, he didn’t. It was way too small for him. Here was another thing he’d lost because of his growth. I decided it was my opportunity to broach the subject.

“Are you going to tell my why you don’t like to talk about your size?”

Suddenly he got very serious and for a moment I thought he was just going to walk away. But then he leaned over, way, way over. In fact he got about three inches from my face. And when someone that huge gets three inches from your face you develop a new understanding of why moons orbit planets.

He looked me in the eye and when he spoke I could feel the warm breath of his whisper splashing on my cheek.

“Because I’m a monster,” he said.

Then, before I could react, he straightened up, closed the car door between us and signaled the driver to pull away.

As the car rolled down the drive, I watched him standing there, like a small building, his camp shirt fluttering like an awning in the breeze. And despite his humongous size and the raw physical power those colossal muscles must command, I couldn’t think of anyone who was less like a monster than Matt. I lost sight of him as we pulled out onto the street, but the image of him standing there watching us drive away, was emblazoned in my mind for a long time after.

When I got home I hopped right on the internet. I decided it was high time I found out more about these titans. I was actually amazed about how much information there was. I’d never really thought much about them before, maybe because there were so few of them in the United States. But in Europe they were huge… pun intended. There were fan clubs, reality shows, and even a watch dog organization which was pretty much a bunch of cranks convinced the titans wanted to take over the world. I saw no sign of that. It looked like they were all too busy having fun.

And boy did it look like they knew how to have fun. Besides the demolition derby Scott had been talking about, they had their own soccer teams, wrestling teams, strength competitions, the works!

There were even some women who had been through the process. The only problem was, as they grew huge and massive, their voices dropped, they developed facial hair and their breasts were swallowed up by massive pecs. In short they became practically indistinguishable from the male titans. You’d actually have to pull down their undies to tell—not that I’d recommend anyone try—

And then I found what I was looking for. Some of the titans didn’t take well to the change. They developed a condition termed as “Titan’s Remorse.” They actually felt disconnected from the rest of the world, like they didn’t belong anymore, like they weren’t human. They longed to go back, but there wasn’t anyway back. These titans developed low self esteem and eventually came to hate themselves. They led reclusive lives and avoided friends, family and the general public.

Now who did that sound like?

There were some psychiatrists treating the condition, but currently it was mostly treated with antidepressants.

So there was my answer.

I logged on to Facebook. I was in luck; Matt was logged on, too.

You’re not a monster, I typed.

That’s very kind of you to say, but what makes you so sure?

Because I like you and I wouldn’t like a monster.

But then a voice in the back of my head piped up and said, “You liked Jack.” But I blocked it out because this was completely different. Matt was nothing like Jack.

With all due respect, you don’t really know me at all.

I know about Titan’s Remorse.

There was a pause before he wrote, Someone’s been googling.

I just want you to know that if you want to talk, I’m there for you.

Thank you, but I don’t have Titan’s Remorse.

Then why do you think you’re a monster? I typed.

I had to wait a long time for a reply.

You really shouldn’t ask me that.

Too late. I already did.

You’re not going to let this go, are you?

Nope.

Then I guess I’d better explain it to you.

I’m listening.

Not over IM. I’ll send the car for you tomorrow. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

So it was another 45 minute ride in the lap of luxury. I confess to whiling away some of the time on the PS3. After all, it’s not like I had one at home.

This time Randall escorted me to what I can only assume was the ballroom. It was a huge wide open space that just looked like it was made for dancing. And for an instant I thought Matt was standing in the center of it. But it wasn’t him. It was a statue of him. He’d been depicted naked except for a small pair of tight shorts. And what a statue it was. Every aspect of every titanic muscle on him was carved in amazing detail. I could see every striation on those massive pecs, the amazing separation between each of those boulder abs, the startling width of those bulging shoulders and every hill and valley across that massive back. And I could not get over the size of those arms. Each one looked like it had as much muscle as an entire pro wrestler. His legs were immense pillars of muscle, and those shorts did very little to mask a startling package. The whole thing was overwhelming and I felt myself getting hard at the sight of it.

After a minute or two of circling and staring at it, the door opened and the real thing came in. Matt walked up to the statue. He wasn’t dressed for modesty today. Once again he was wearing a form fitting tee and a tight pair of pants. It was pretty clear the statue was no exaggeration.

“What do you think?” he asked. The question was the same one he’d asked me about his setup only this time he was talking about his body… or at least a statue of his body.

“It’s amazing,” I said. “Who did it?”

“The company,” he laughed. “Its computer generated based on a digital model. I know it looks like bronze but it’s actually a resin colored to look that way. Their computer modeled it based on my genetic information and their projection of what the titanification process would do to me. They sent it as part of their final sales pitch. In short, it’s their estimate.”

“You mean this was done before—?

“Before I underwent the process, yes. I wanted you to see it so you might better understand how I felt when I first saw it.”

“Overwhelmed,” I said.

“More than that,” he said. “I was mesmerized. I was in love with it. I spent hours in here just staring at it, imagining what it was going to feel like to be that big. I couldn’t wait. And at night in bed, I fell asleep thinking about… well, this.” He brought his arms to his side and flexed those insanely massive biceps of his. They bulged up to enormous proportions, all cut up with peeks the size of grapefruits. And suddenly I felt a little light headed.

“What were you like before?” I asked.

“Come with me,” he said.

He led me into a much smaller room. It was actually quite cozy looking with a fireplace and a more conventionally sized flat screen. I did notice, however, that the door to this room was also smaller—more ordinary sized—and he had to duck and squeeze to get through it.

He pointed to the fireplace. On the mantel was a photo of a small, sad-looking kid in a school uniform, the kind they wear at expensive private schools. It was a burgundy blazer, a white shirt with a striped tie and a grey pair of pants. I recognized the face at once, but the rest of him… Holy crap, he was just skin and bones, and so very short. His jacket was narrowly cut but it still hung loose on his gaunt frame like an old blanket. And his shirt was baggy and wrinkled, almost as if there wasn’t anything beneath it to give it shape. It looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over and half way across the lawn.

“We are not large in my family and I was even smaller than most,” he said, “I used to get bullied a lot in school, everyday and twice on Thursdays. The school just turned a blind eye because every kid there was from “a good family,” and no one wanted to risk unemployment by pissing one of them off.

“My life was pretty much a living hell. There was no way out for me. I was being mercilessly beaten day after day after day and no one would do anything about it. So, when my 16th birthday was approaching and my dad told me he was getting me a Maserati. I told him I wanted this instead.” He gestured toward his massive body. “Titanification.

“At first he wouldn’t hear of it. “I know you’re having a tough time in school right now, Matt,” he’d say, “but it’s only for another couple of years; and then you’ll be out. Titanification is forever. You’d be a freak for the rest of your life.” I don’t think he knew how excited that thought made me. So, I kept at him, every time I saw him, showing him my bruises, cuts and scars, wore him down until finally he gave in. I wanted to do it right away but the earliest I could have it done was my 16th birthday so we scheduled it for then. I counted the days, literally crossing them off on my calendar. I couldn’t wait to go to Switzerland. ”

“Did it hurt?” I asked, “the process?”

“No,” he said. “Actually it felt good, really, really good. I’m not sure if it was the process or the drugs they gave me, but I pretty much loved it. And when I came back from the first treatment, I thought my problems were over.”

“Were you bigger?”

“Not immediately,” he said, “but it happened fast, really, really fast. I don’t know; maybe if it had happened slower—” Then he laughed. “Funny, at the time I didn’t think it was happening fast enough.”

“How fast was it?” I asked.

“Here,” he said, “Check this out.” He picked up a TV remote and started fiddling with it with his massive fingers. But after a moment he gave up and handed it to me.

“Here you better do it,” he said. “I have trouble hitting just one button.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

It was some kind of DV system. He told me what to punch into the remote, and in a few seconds we were looking at a home video. I had to look twice. Holy crap! It was him, it was the kid in the photograph, but damn, he was bigger, much bigger. He was taller, and about 4 times as thick, thick with muscle. It seemed to have exploded out all over him, his shoulders, his chest, and his arms. He was practically bursting out of his school uniform.

And there was another huge difference. The kid in the photo had looked sad, even morose. But this Matt was all grins, strutting up and down in front of the camera, doing a kind of mock fashion show, showing us every angle of his school uniform, now pulled tight in some places, bunched up in others, and on the whole, distorted from the inside by big, bulky muscles it was never meant to contain.

His wide back and broad, rolling shoulders were stretching his jacket to the tearing point. His corded neck was so thick, he had to unfasten his top two shit buttons just to make it fit it in the collar. His tie was undone and hung loose around his neck, dangling off the burgeoning chest that was bullying his shirt front. Buttons straining, his shirt had been pulled almost open by his substantial pectoral mounds which now thrust out several inches beyond his jacket lapels, shoving them to the side. His sleeves were being stretched to their limit by a pair of sizable upper arms which were just begging to be released from their undersized prisons.

Every once in awhile he would stop and do a side flex of his bicep. It would swell up big as a baseball pulling that sleeve so tight you’d swear it was going to rip wide open. You would hear threads pop and then he would chuckle before starting his strut once again.

Once he stopped and showcased his leg, flexing his thighs for the camera. Powerful looking quads could be seen bulging up beneath his feeble looking trousers, stretching them to the tearing point too.

“I shot this about a week after the first treatment,” Matt said from beside me.

“A week?” I gasped, shocked at the dramatic change in him.

The Matt on the video turned to the camera, and started growling and pulling most muscular poses. He was trying to look fierce but he was grinning so hard he wasn’t pulling it off. Then he reached round with one hand and tried to pull off his jacket. I could tell he was trying to do it with one smooth move, but his large muscles were wedged so tightly into it that it turned into a bit of a struggle to remove it. But he got it off eventually and threw it to the ground. Fuck, I could see his body a lot clearer now and I got a much better idea of how much bigger he was. His biceps were definitely baseball sized and his chest was a couple of softballs. He started pulling most muscular poses again. I could tell he was trying to pop his straining top shirt buttons and on the 2nd try he did it.

“Yeah!” he cried. He grabbed his shirt front and yanked it open the rest of the way, scattering buttons and fully revealing those big striated pecs and his raging six pack. Then he flexed his abs while he gyrated his waste around.

“Here comes the titan! Here comes the titan!” he started chanting. And then piece by piece he ripped off the rest of his shirt.

“Here comes the titan!” Riiip! Off came the sleeve revealing his large segmented shoulder and his tore up bulging bicep. “Here comes the titan!” And then he tore his shirt away at the neck revealing his intercostals and his burgeoning lats. “Here comes the titan!” Then he pulled off the rest of his shirt revealing the remainder of his muscular torso. “It’s titan time!” And he started posing. It was awkward and clumsy but damn, those washboard abs, those bulging bis, those jutting pecs, that boy was buff and shredded all over. And he never lost that grin, not for a second. After about a minute of posing he waved at the camera, reached over and shut it off.

Man, his little display had my blood rushing to all kinds of inconvenient places. What if Matt should see? This was difficult enough for him without throwing that into the mix.

“Yeah, I was king of the world back then,” said Matt, towering beside me. “I feel kind of stupid looking at it now.”

“So you were acting a little goofy. Everyone does that once in a while.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t stay like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“As I got bigger, things got darker, a lot darker. I’m warning you,” he said, “stop now. Don’t ask anymore questions. Walk away from this. We’ll go to the theater. I’ll put on Lord of the Rings or something. And later we can eat. We never have to talk about this again.” He was almost pleading with me.

But I couldn’t stop now. I’d gone too far, seen too much, and now—

I had to know the rest.

When I told Matt I needed to know the rest of his story, he sighed and got an expression like Christmas had been canceled. “Here,” he said indicating the remote, “punch this in.” he gave me a new code, and I put it in.

Another video started and I had to stifle a gasp. I was looking at a shirtless back, an enormous, wide, ripped and bulging, shirtless back. Was that Matt?! If it was he was way bigger than he’d been in the last video, way bigger.

It was night on the screen and the huge, muscle-ridden back was outside by the front door of some building.

“Hey Matt,” I heard a voice on the video call.

“That’s my best friend Nick,” said Matt from beside me. “He shot this.”

“Matt, turn around,” said Nick. And the mammoth back on screen turned around.

Holy crap. That big ripped kid in the tight jacket was now freakin huge. He towered about a foot over his camera man and his striated pecs were the size of soccer balls, his six pack had evolved into eight bulging muscle bricks and his shoulders were twice as broad with delts larger than a normal guy’s head. And thick lats spread out behind him like a cape.

“Hey Matt flex,” said Nick. “Flex for the camera!”

Matt grinned and brought up his arms into a heart stopping double bi. Fuck, another set of soccer balls. They looked rock hard and covered in veins.

“Whoa, Matt, your fucking huge,” said Nick, “fucking huge!”

“Fuck yeah, I am,” said the Matt on the video. “Fuck yeah!”

“Pause it,” said the Matt standing beside me, and I did.

“I was two weeks into the process,” he said. “Everyday I’d get substantially bigger. And I could feel it happening, every waking minute of every waking day, like a kind of boiling vitality inside me. Sometimes I would just sit there, close my eyes and enjoy the feeling of it raging through me. I would slide my hand under my shirt and I swore I could feel my muscles just surging out of me. It got so I couldn’t wait to go to bed at night because I knew when I woke up the next day I’d be bigger, a lot bigger. I was probably about 6’ 6” when we shot this. I thought I was so fuckin huge. I didn’t know what huge was.”

I looked up at the colossus standing next to me and could almost sense Matt flexing those continent-sized muscles beneath his tee. I wanted to sneak a peek at his crotch because I had a feeling he was getting off on himself. But I didn’t dare.

“But next to Nick I was huge,” he continued. “He wasn’t more than 5’ 6”, the same height I was… before.” He nodded at the mantelpiece again and I saw another photo there. This one was of skinny Matt and some other short, skinny, dark haired kid—I’m guessing Nick. They were on some beach somewhere in swimming trunks, posing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Boy talk about the embodiment of skinny. Both these guys had narrow, bonny shoulders, stick-like arms and legs and flat featureless torsos. And they didn’t look too happy, either.

“We were both pretty mercilessly bullied back then. This guy, Crosby, you’re about to see was one of the worst. He had this game he’d play with us. He’d throw us down on the ground and as soon as we got up, he’d throw us back down again. And he kept repeating, “Why aren’t you standing? Why aren’t you standing?” Sometimes he’d so this for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. And I’m not going to lie to you, one of the main reasons I wanted titanification was for revenge. I wanted to get even, to do to them what they had done to me.”

“I guess that’s only natural,” I said.

“I tried to get Nick to go through the process with me, but he was too scared. I didn’t give up though. I had it all planned out. I figured once he saw what it did for me, he wouldn’t be able to get to Switzerland fast enough. Almost worked, too. Almost. I don’t know, though, maybe he’s better off.”

He was silent for a moment and then he said, “You can start it again. I just wanted you to be prepared.”

I hit the play button and video Matt launched into a frightening most muscular. Damn, he was so much bigger now than he had been in the previous video. Huge masses of sinew covered with throbbing veins exploded up all over him, turning his body into a veritable landscape of huge, ripped, bugling muscles. His face was the same as that wispy kid in photograph, but his body… There was no trace of stick-boy at all. There wasn’t even a trace of the muscle kid who had strutted up and down in front of his camera. He’d more than doubled in size and in only a week. His face was turning red from the effort of flexing, but he still had that grin, wide, toothy and from ear to ear. He was loving it, every ripped and bulging inch of it; that much was clear.

“Should we knock?” came Nick’s voice.

“What?” said Matt. “Hell no!” Damn, his voice had already dropped an octave. Then he brought up his fist and slammed it against the door. SPLIIIIT! CRACK! BOOM! The door not only flew open but it flew off its hinges and half way down the corridor beyond.

“Fuck yeah!” Matt roared and flexed his huge veiny arms once again.

“Alright!” shouted Nick. “Go get ’em Matt!”

Mat grinned at the camera and then leapt through the door and thundered down the corridor. Fuck, the size of him. Already he was so big and so broad he filled that corridor; His massive back was thick with muscle, and he was so wide his giant shoulders were practically scraping opposite walls. And his head looked unnaturally close to the ceiling.

And damn, for the first time I noticed he was still wearing his school uniform pants—or what was left of his uniform pants. The waste band had snapped in several places and was peeling away from the colossal, muscle-ridden trunk it could no longer contain. The legs were in tatters. There was nothing left of the cuffs. The bottoms were just shreds of cloth, swaying around and bouncing off of the huge ripped globes of his calves. And as you looked further up, it didn’t get much better. Huge rents and tears had opened up all along the trousers’s length. The cloth had simply been torn apart, decimated by his quads, which engulfed his legs in huge masses of rippling sinew.

Nick followed Matt with the camera into the building, which was obviously a school dorm. Matt went straight to one of the doors and brought his fist up again. Bam! It connected with the door. Only this time his fist went right through it—obviously a thinner door. But that didn’t stop Matt. He pushed his arm through all the way to the elbow and then pulled back, ripping the door right out of the frame and into the corridor with him.

“Knock, knock,” he said, tossing the door aside like it was nothing, then he pushed his way into the room. Nick followed after him, causing the camera to shake as he ran behind his gigantic friend.

“Are you home Crosby?” Matt bellowed. “Oh look, you are.”

Matt was looking down and Nick swung the camera so it was facing in the same direction. There was a beefy kid reclining on the bottom bunk of a set of bunk beds. It looked like he’d been reading a text book with a highlighter in his hand when Matt had busted in. He’d looked up, his mouth had dropped open and he’d just frozen in place, just staring up at the colossus that was now taking up half his room with his ridiculously huge, ripped muscles.

“Wha… what do you want, Billingsly?” asked Crosby.

“What do I want?” laughed Matt. “What do I want? My fucking massive lats just tore out of my last uniform shirt and I was wondering if you had a spare one I could borrow.”

“Oooooooo,” said Nick. “Crosby you are so dead!”

Then Matt did a big show of looking all around the dorm room.

“Oh look, there’s one,” he said pointing to a shirt draped over a chair. He lifted it up and put his massive bulging arm into the sleeve. RIIIIIIIIP! The sleeve just shredded into tatters as his enourmous rock hard arm ripped it apart from within.

I heard Nick giggling from behind the camera. “This is too fucking awesome,” he said.

Then Matt pulled on the other sleeve. RIIIIIIIIP!

“Oh, gee, sorry about that bro,” said Matt. “Looks like my arms got a little bigger than yours.” The he flexed those mighty guns of his making his biceps swell up hard and huge.

“Yeah, they’re bigger than his arms!” shouted Nick, “Fuck, they’re bigger than his legs!”

Matt finished up by spreading his huge lats and tearing out the back of the shirt.

“Well, I’ll be fucked,” he said. “That’s exactly what happened to mine.”

Then he looked down at Crosby and scowled. “You know, Crosby, I’ve been here 5 whole minutes and you haven’t stood up. That’s kind of rude.”

“Make him stand!” shouted Nick.

Then Matt reached over with one huge, bulging, ripped-up arm and yanked the guy off his bed. Matt lifted Crosby up with one massive arm, suspended in the air in front of him, feet dangling a foot off the floor.

“Yeah! Yeah!” shouted Nick.

Matt’s grin had never been wider. “That’s better. But wait, you’re still not standing.” Then he took Crosby and threw him against the wall. There was a tremendous THWACK as the wallboard buckled behind him, and Crosby slid to the floor. He looked dazed and terrified as he stared back up at Matt.

Nick was laughing behind the camera. “Oh, Crosby, you are so screwed!” Matt looked over at the camera and grinned before turning back to Crosby.

“You’re still not standing,” said Matt, reaching down and hauling Crosby off the floor again. He picked him up and threw him against the other wall. TWACK! There went another section of wallboard. Crosby was definitely hurting as he slid to the floor this time.

“Get him again. Get him again,” said Nick.

“Holy shit!” said Matt. “You’re still not standing.” The he grabbed Crosby swung him around the room once and let him fly into the bunk beds. Crosby connected with one of the posts and SNAP it broke in two, bring the upper bunk cashing down on top of the former bully. You could hear him moaning underneath as his arm slowly crept out from underneath.

Nick was in hysterics. “Oh my God that was awesome! That was so totally awesome!”

He panned the camera back up to a grinning Matt who stood there, his massive chest heaving in and out and his brick-like abs glistening with sweat. He gave the camera a thumbs-up and then the screen went black.

“I broke three of his ribs and dislocated his shoulder,” said Matt.

“Oh… well—” I said trying to find something to say. “It sounds like he gave you a really hard time.”

“Oh he did,” said Matt. “But he wasn’t the worst. There was this guy—Tony Bensonhurst—he was the worst of all. One time he pulled up the grate and knocked me down a storm drain. He put the grate back and walked away. I was down there for two days before they found me. There was a big storm coming and the janitor was just checking to make sure all the storm drains were clear. If the storm had come and I had still been down there, I would have drowned.”

“Jesus—” I could feel him tensing up beside me. The memory obviously still haunted him. Those massive slabs of muscle were shifting and bulging beneath that fitted Tee. And at the moment I was very glad my name was not Bensonhust.

“I finally cornered him in the cafeteria about a week after Crosby,” Matt continued. “I have it on video, too, but I won’t make you watch it. At that point, I was over 7 feet tall and weighed about 500 pounds. I was intoxicated by my own body. Everything I had was massive and ripped. I took one of my old tees and stuck my arm up through the bottom and out through the neck. A single flex and my massive bicep ripped out the chest. One twist of my wrist and my iron forearms tore out the neck. My arm was officially bigger than my torso used to be, and I was still getting bigger.

I was pretty high on life. I had been beating the crap out of my tormentors for over two weeks now, and getting away with it. The same rules that had once protected them now protected me. Life was sweet for the first time in years. Nick had even started the Titanification application process and gotten as far as the genetic test.

“The cafeteria where I finally caught up with Bensonhurst was a small one-story building at the edge of the campus. He must have been expecting me. I mean, how could he not have been? I’d already put most of his friends in the infirmary and he must have known it was only a matter of time before I’d come for him. I remember shouting his name and rushing through the cafeteria toward him. Just as I got to him he pulled out a gun and emptied it into me. It was only a BB gun, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew is that I was bleeding and it hurt like hell. I totally lost it.

“I let out a roar that shook the building and Bensonhurst took off running. I went after him. I didn’t care what was in my way, tables, people, anything. All I could see was the scum bag who’d tormented and then shot me weaving through the cafeteria, and anything that got between me and him… was crushed.

People were screaming, running for the exit, but I was blind to them. I started picking up chairs tables anything I could lay my hands on and throwing them at Bensonhurst, trying to bring him down. I grabbed a post, ripped it out of the floor and threw it at him like a javelin. But he dodged it. I grabbed another post, tore it free and tried again. The ceiling above me started to buckle, but I hardly noticed.

I grabbed a third post and huge chunks of roof began falling in all around. I didn’t care. After I threw the post I just started picking the ceiling chunks up and using them as missiles, but that fucker was fast.

By the time I took him down the building was in ruins. The roof was entirely gone and the south wall had collapsed. I put 63 people in the hospital that day, 63—including Bensonhurst and including Nick. That poor guy never left my side with the camera—until a piece of wall fell on him. I didn’t even notice when it happened.

I could see he was upset, so I reached up and put my hand on that iron piling of a forearm and said, “You lost control and got a little carried away. For most people an apology and a hand shake would fix things. For you, it takes a little more. But that does not make you a monster. For better or worse, you’re a titan now. You have to accept who you are, because there’s no going back.”

He looked down at me for a second and suddenly started laughing. “You don’t get it, do you?” he said. “I don’t hate myself because I’m big. I fucking love being big. Look at this!” and suddenly he ripped off his t-shirt, just tore it right from his body.

HOLY FUCK! I’d thought I’d had a good idea of what lay under that shirt, but I was wrong. My most insane imaginings fell far short of the muscle perfection now revealed before me. The statue hadn’t been an exaggeration; it had been a pale imitation. He was just one gargantuan muscle after another, fitted together in perfect unison with almost no body fat at all. He was like some kind of sculpted impossible ideal, unbelievably massive and powerful and yet painfully beautiful and graceful at the same time. They say the titans were fathers to the gods. I could easily see the being in front of me being father to a god. He was beyond magnificent.

“Look at this body!” he yelled. “It’s fucking beautiful, every massive bulge of every massive muscle, and it’s stronger than fuck!”

“Feel this!” he said leaning over and flexing his massive bicep in front of me. Holy crap, it really was bigger than my upper body, maybe twice as big. Its ponderous mass was sculpted into two glorious heads with an impossibly perfect peak the size of a softball with a vein running up over the top and disappearing into his exceptionally gigantic segmented delts.

Having it so close was overwhelming. The heat of him was making me dizzy.

“Go on, put your hand on it!” he ordered.

I tentatively reached out and placed my hand on that thunderous mass. Fuck, oh fuck, it was amazing. It felt hot, smooth, curved and impossibly hard, like steel that was minutes out of the forge.

“How could I not want this?” he roared. “Look at your tiny fucking hand on my bicep. It’s like an ant on a watermelon. How could you think I’d ever want to go back to being that puny?”

“No dude, I fucking love being like this! I love towering over everyone. I love feeling all this huge muscle heaving up all over my body, going to sleep with it, waking up with it and seeing it in the mirror everyday—and the things I can do—” he clenched his fist making his mammoth arm explode with insane size and veiny hardness. “ripping down buildings is only the start—

“As for those fuckers at the school, I’m glad I put those assholes in the infirmary. I enjoyed doing it, every time they’d scream, every time they’d beg for mercy, it was bliss. And I loved destroying the cafeteria with my bare hands. I liked the terrified screams of everyone running away from me, and those 63 people, I don’t really give a fuck.

“That’s why I’m a monster, dude, not because I feel bad about what I did, but because if I had to do it all over again, I’d do exactly the same fucking thing! In fact, I wish I had it to do over again. Only now I’m about 10 times stronger. Now, I don’t think I’d stop with the cafeteria; I’d probably rip down the entire fucking school!

“So watch out if you want to be friends with me, buddy, because if you piss me off, I might just pull down your house, break you in two and not even think twice about it!” He pulled a most muscular and his already gigantic frame exploded with even more ripped bulging, veiny size.

And suddenly I was running, I tore through the house and right out the front door. I leapt into the limo and the driver didn’t wait for instructions. He just pulled down the drive and out the front gates. I looked out the rear window but this time Matt did not come to see me off.

I was completely terrified and at the same time turned on beyond belief. Man, why did I always go for the dark ones?

As soon as I got home I dove into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I spent half the night alternating between shivering and jerking. I didn’t know what was up and what was down. It was Matt. I couldn’t get him out of my head. I was definitely attracted to him, but at the same time I was scared shitless of him. I tried to reconcile the friendly big guy and his tricked out home theater system with the huge raging muscle beast with a passion for destruction and I just couldn’t do it. It was almost like they were two different people. He couldn’t have terrified me more if he tried… And then it hit me.

He had tried.

He was trying to scare me off. But why? Was it all an act?

No. I had seen the expression on his face when he was terrorizing that bully. That was no act. He had loved it. There was no doubt about it. But did that make him a monster?

Then there was his best friend Nick, whom he’d accidentally put in the hospital. Was that it? Was he afraid of accidentally hurting me? No, that didn’t ring true either.

There were obviously missing pieces here. There was more to the story, things I didn’t know. The question was did I want to find out?

All that day at school, I couldn’t get Matt out of my head. Even Scott and Lucy noticed.

“What’s up with you?” asked Scott.

“Is it Jack?” asked Lucy. “Are you worried about Jack?”

Jack? Oh yeah, I was worried about Jack too. I’d seen him earlier that day by the gym. He had some poor little freshman shoved up against a wall terrorizing him. I was about to do something when I saw Mr. Griggs, the gym teacher. He was a bear of a man, probably about 6’ 2”, plenty of muscle, but he had a big gut on him, probably from one too many beers. Anyway, he was a giant next to Jack. He marched over to him, grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him away from the freshman.

“Nirrazian!” yelled Mr. Griggs. “Trying to get kicked out your first week back?”

Jack just calmly and coolly looked Mr. Griggs up and down. “You like pushing me around, don’t you Griggs? Well, enjoy it while you can,” said Jack. “Things are gonna change.”

Damn, when Jack gets huge, he’ll make Matt look like a boy scout! What should I do? What should I do?

When I got home the first thing I noticed was there was no limo out front. I don’t know why, but I was half hoping there would be. I went up to my room and booted up my computer. I wanted to log onto facebook but I wasn’t sure what I would do if Matt were logged on. What if he IMed me?

I logged on but he wasn’t there. Was I relieved or disappointed? Oh my God, I seriously didn’t know if I was coming or going.

Finally, I decided I had to finish things with Matt. I had to know what was going on with him? Was he really a monster? Something inside me refused to believe it. But there were too many unanswered questions. I had to go back.

I borrowed my mother’s car and I drove out to his place. I mostly remembered the way, but there were one or two spots were I got lost. I found myself wishing I paid more attention to the route when I was in the limo and less to the PS3. But finally I made it.

There it was, that huge house behind the gate. Now that I was here, I felt fear welling up inside me. I was literally taking my life in my hands here. He could squash me like a bug. What if he was a monster? But no, I really didn’t believe he was. Still I drove past the house two or three times before I drove up to the gate and hit the buzzer on the intercom.

“Can I help you,” came a voice.

I gave my name and told him I was there to see Matt. Then I waited. It seemed like an eternity. I began to wonder if maybe Matt wasn’t home or if he was maybe he didn’t want to see me. But they had to tell me. It wasn’t right just to leave me sitting there. I was about to ring the buzzer again when suddenly I heard an electronic hum followed by a click and a rattle as the gate began to roll open. I drove in and parked right up near the front door. I wanted the car close by in case I had to run for it.

I rang the front door bell, fully expecting to see Randall when it opened.

It was Matt.

Oh my God, he was fucking huge! Why did that still take me by surprise? And today he was in a skin tight black wife beater and shorts. Hell, his arms and shoulders were fully exposed. His biceps were freaking land masses! His shoulders seemed bigger than his head. His traps were mountains next to that impossibly thick, corded neck. I could see the tops of his pecs exploding out of that low cut wife beater, and the muscle bricks of his abs pushing out of the shirt and stretching it tight across his massive trunk. He was an 8 foot wall of fucking muscle. God, he had such an effect on me just standing there.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“I… ah… came to apologize,” I managed.

“For what?” he said.

“For running out on you like that.”

“You were smart,” said Matt.

“No, I said, “I was rude. I shouldn’t have left before you were done.”

“I was done,” said Matt, flexing those planetoid pecs and making that wife beater groan.

“No, you weren’t,” I said, doing my best not to be intimidated—and let me tell you, that was not easy. “You never said what happened to Nick and the rest of your friends.”

“What makes you think anything happened to them?” he said.

“Maybe because you asked some strange guy you just met at an electronics store to come watch Harry Potter 8 with you.”

Matt let out a long sigh, and stood aside from the door. “You’d better come in,” he said.

As I followed him in, I couldn’t keep my eyes off those tectonic plates of back muscle shifting beneath his tight shirt as he swung those monolithic arms. He led me through the house and out the back door. There were some beautiful formal gardens out there, but we bypassed those and went around to the side of the house where we found ourselves in what I can only describe as a junk yard. At first I thought it was a train yard of sorts because there were there were old train track rails and a couple of box cars. But there was other junk there as well, some old autos, rusty looking big rigs and 2 giant steel boxes that looked like big industrial furnaces. Everything just looked so amazingly out of place.

“This is my playground,” said Matt.

“Your playground?” I asked.

“That’s right,” said Matt bending over and grabbing a 20’ section of rail. I watched those massive muscle arms bulge and expand as he lifted it up and then hoisted it up over his head. Holy crap. Then he lowered it behind his head and laid it across his massive shoulders, wrapped his humungous arms around it and squeezed. I watched in awe as he bent the iron rail into a U across his back. Then he tossed it aside where it fell to the ground with a rolling thud.

“Any questions?” he asked.

“No,” I squeaked. Then it hit me. He was still doing it. He was still trying to scare me off. I didn’t get it. But I bolstered up my courage and I asked, “So, what happened to Nick?”

“Don’t know,” he said shrugging. Then he walked over to one of the old cars and tilted it up on its side with one massive bulging arm. “He wouldn’t return any of my calls. I kept calling but eventually he changed his number.” Then he grabbed the other side with his other giant hand and lifted the whole thing up above his head. Fuck, I thought his enormous rippling back was just going to explode out of his shirt. “I called Switzerland but found out his Titanification had been canceled.” Then he threw the car about 30 yards where came to the ground with a CRASH and rolled over two or three times before it came to a stop. “A week later I got a letter from a lawyer saying they’d taken out a restraining order on me. I wasn’t to try contacting him anymore and I couldn’t go within 5 miles of him.”

Then he started to walk out towards the car. I followed after him as best I could, jogging to keep up with the giant strides of those titanic legs.

“And you never heard anything from him?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“What about the rest of your friends?”

“I never had that many. I mean who wants to be friends with a sniveling wimp?” We reached the crater the car had made when it landed and then he started to search the ground for something. It didn’t take him long to find it. About three yards further out was another, similar crater.

“Damn!” he said. Then he pulled out a tape measure and started measuring the distance between the two craters. “I must not be getting enough vitamins.”

“But you had to have some other friends,” I said, refusing to be distracted.

“Oh sure,” said Matt. Waking over to the junk car and turning it on its side once again. He hefted it up and balanced it on his massive shoulder with one hand grabbing the undercarriage to keep it steady. Then he headed back for the starting point.

“They kept coming around acting like I should be sorry about what happened at the cafeteria,” he continued. “And when I wasn’t; when I told them I was glad it happened, that I actually enjoyed it and I wished I could do it again, that’s when they stopped coming over, stopped calling, and started being busy any time I called them.”

We’d come back to the place where we started. He looked down at me and said, “But they didn’t understand. At one point or another every guy in that entire hellish school had walked past me getting my ass kicked, and never did a thing to stop it. So, why should I care if 63 of those assholes wind up in a hospital? Short answer: I don’t. And I’m not going to pretend to be sorry either, not for anyone!” He slammed the car to the ground with a CRASH, and the undercarriage broke away from the body. “Damn!” he said. “They really need to make these things better.”

“And no one ever calls you… ever?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Guess they didn’t want to be friends with a monster.”

“You’re not a monster,” I said.

“Yeah? Well, you’re the first one to say so. Even my parents manage to stay away most of the time. I’m pretty sure I scare them now, too.”

“You don’t scare me,” I said, “not anymore.”

Then Matt stopped and looked at me, as if he were trying to see if I was serious or not. Maybe he thought I was playing a joke on him. But I could have told him, no one, but no one would play that kind of a joke on him.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“I could eat,” I said.

“I’m starved,” he said. “Wanna stay for dinner?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m really looking forward to seeing you eat a cow.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Tonight, I’m eating a whale.”

“That’s disappointing,” I said. “I had seafood last time.”

He laughed and we went back inside the house.

He had a large dining room and a large dining table and they needed it. There was food everywhere. Roast beef, sucking pig, several whole turkeys, and every kind of vegetable dish you could imagine. They looked like they were having a huge party.

Matt sat on a cushion on the floor and he still loomed up over the table. They had a huge plate for him, about the diameter of a car tire with an oversized knife, fork and spoon. I had a much more conventional chair and place setting. Everything was delicious, and there were a lot of different things to try. I ate till I was bursting and still did not make a dent in all there was to offer.

Matt spent so much time eating that there wasn’t a lot of room for conversation, but I told him he needed to get out more.

He kind of shrugged and said, “I guess.”

“No really,” I said. “It’s not good for you to stay here all by yourself all the time. You need to get out and meet new people. So maybe you got kicked out of your old school, but maybe you could find a new one, someplace where you don’t have any history, where you could start fresh.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“You don’t need to make up your mind right now,” I said. “Just think about it.”

“I will,” he said.

It took me 20 minutes to stuff myself to the gills. Matt went at it for well over an hour and by the time he was done, there wasn’t much left. It’s not like he wolfed it down or anything. He had very good table manners. It’s just that all his helpings were proportionately larger and so were his mouthfuls. And damn, that boy could eat.

After diner we went to the theater where he had an Xbox hooked up to his big screen. And I can tell you, game play is a lot different when all the characters are life-sized.

We played for about an hour. I have to confess I kept stealing glances at him. He was pretty damn amazing to look at, all those humungous muscles bulging and writhing where I could see and even where I couldn’t.

Finally I had to ask, “How much do you weigh?”

He looked at me with a kind of half smile and said, “About as much as a small car.” Then he shifted position bucking his hips slightly. I looked and damn, in those form fitting pants, you sure didn’t need a magnifying glass to see he was getting hard.

“You liked that question, didn’t you?” I said.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “When I think about my size it just happens. I can’t help it.”

Oh really? “Remember the other day when you were talking about your bicep. You compared it to a watermelon. What would happen if I told you I think it might be bigger? It sure as hell is harder and has those huge veiny peaks.”

“Oh shit,” he gasped. He bucked his hips again and this time he spread his mammoth legs wide. Damn, there was a monster growing in his pants. “Dude,” he said, “I’m not sure you really want to do this.”

“Why not?” I said. “Is it because your legs are a lot like massive steel pylons?”

“Fuck!” he yelled, as the thing in his pants became a huge mound and I could hear his zipper stressing. “No, dude,” he said, breathing hard, “You don’t know what you’re unleashing! Ahhhhh ahhhhh, OH FUCK!”

Suddenly there was a huge RIIIIP at the front of his pants exploded and a huge cock erupted out. Dam that thing was the length of my arm and twice as thick! I couldn’t help but wonder how far this could go.

“And your chest is like a couple of wrecking balls, except I bet way more powerful,” I said.

“AHHHHH!” He cried, his hips thrusting toward the air, “You don’t understand. When titans get hard, it isn’t just our cocks that get bigger and harder… It’s everything… OHHHHH!!”

And then I saw it. His entire body was swelling beneath those form fitting clothes, pulling them tight, stretching them out. Damn. Those muscles… They were fucking incredible… And were just getting bigger.

“So, if I were to say your stomach is a massive wall of titanium bricks, what would happen?”

“OOOOOH GOD!” he shouted and suddenly rips and tears started opening all over his clothes as his colossal muscles just tore free of their cloth prisons. He stood up. “AHHHHHRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!” he yelled as he pulled a most muscular and every scrap of cloth on his massive swollen body just exploded into shreds, leaving him completed naked, beyond enormous, with a cock as hard and straight as a cannon! Damn his stomach really was like a massive wall of titanium bricks—

“See what you’ve started?” he cried. “I should make you finish it, but I would snap you like a toothpick!”

Fuck, compared to him I really was a toothpick. But I thought maybe I could help anyway. I grabbed his colossal cock and started caressing and licking the giant bulbous head.

“Damn! Oh Damn!” he yelled and in a minute I was dropping to the floor to avoid the gushing torrent that was erupting from his giant member.

As soon as it was over, I looked up at him standing there, mammoth chest heaving in and out, and he started to deflate, not just his cock but all over. In a minute he was back down to his usual gargantuan size. He looked down at me. “That was amazing,” he said.

I had to laugh. “Well that goes double for me.”

“I should probably get some clothes.”

“Don’t bother,” I said. Then he got this kind of half smirk.

I blushed and said, “What I mean is it’s getting late and I should probably be going.”

“I’ll get some clothes and see you out.”

“It’s ok,” I said. “I know the way.”

I got in my car and drove off. I was on cloud 9. I couldn’t remember when I’d felt happier. And to think I half-thought I was going to my death. It was almost enough to make me laugh.

I was even in a great mood the next morning when I got into school. And I don’t think I need to tell you how rare that was.

I was just settling into my seat, trying to figure out how I was going to explain to Mr. Petersen that I didn’t have my homework from last night, when I felt the ground shake a little. I looked up just in time to see a HUGE figure squeeze in through the door. Holy crap, that couldn’t be, but it was! It was Matt! Was I hallucinating or was he really here? And if he was here, what was he doing here?

Well, if I was hallucinating everyone else was too, because they were all staring slack jawed at the front of the room.

A second later Mr. Petersen squeezed in behind him. “Everybody,” he said. “We have new student.”

After Mr. Petersen introduced Matt to the class, he told him to find a seat. How the hell was he going to do that? No puny desk in that room could contain him! But, as if it had been the most natural suggestion in the world, Matt started making his way down the aisle right toward me. Even the aisles were too small for him. He had to walk sideways to get down one and even then it was a squeeze. I looked around. Even if he could fit into a desk, there weren’t any empty ones near me. What was he thinking?

When Matt reached me, he looked down and said, “Hey.”

“Hey Matt,” I said, trying to appear as calm and cool as I could even though inside I was FREAKING!

Mat looked over at Charlie Pitka, who sat next to me and said, “Would you mind moving over a row. I’d like to sit next to my friend, here.”

Charlie’s eye bugged so wide I thought they might pop out of their sockets. “N-n-n-no problem,” he stuttered and practically knocked the desk over trying to get to the next row. Matt picked up Charile’s empty desk with one giant hand and set it in the back of the room. Then he opened his huge back pack and removed a cushion which he placed on the floor where Charlie’s desk used to be and sat on it. Then he pulled out a board and placed it across his lap so he’d have something to write on.

“Matt,” I said, unable to hold it in anymore, “what are you doing here?”

“You told me I should get out, start fresh.”

“Yes, but what are you doing here?”

“You wouldn’t want me to go someplace where I didn’t know anyone?”

“Ah… I guess not.” But why did he have to come here? I mean I liked Matt and all, but it’s one thing to go see a lion in Africa. It’s another thing to come home and find one in your living room.

Let’s face it; Matt was dangerous. What if he got mad at someone? He could tear down the school with his bare hands. Not that I had any great love for the school, but I was kind of used to it. And I didn’t want to see anyone get hurt.

I wanted to ask him a couple more questions but we really couldn’t talk more because Mr. Petersen started the class.

By the time the class was over I had calmed down a little and as Matt was packing away his cushion I said, “I’m sorry about the way I acted before class. It’s just that you caught me by surprise. Welcome to Milton Gower High school.”

“Thanks,” he grinned. “I guess I probably should have called you this morning and warned you, but I like surprising people.”

“I hope you don’t have too many more surprises for me. I don’t think I could take it.”

“Sorry,” grinned Matt, “no guarantees.”

What did that mean? “So what class do you have next?” I asked.

“Chemistry with Mr. Brolin,” he said.

“Yeah?” I said, “me too.”

“I know,” said Matt. “I’m in all your classes.”

“What?” I said. Suddenly that stalked feeling I’d had when he first sent the limo for me was back. “Why did you do that?”

“I checked your schedule. I needed the same classes and your schedule looked like a good one. Any way, I was hoping you could show me around the school; maybe introduce me to some of your friends. Is that ok?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. I was definitely a little wierded out.

And as we walked down the corridor toward the chemistry lab, people practically leapt out of our way. I mean they parted in front of us like the Red freaking Sea. I guess I couldn’t blame them. Jeeze, just one of his legs was bigger than the largest guy we passed. And you could see all that muscle bulging and shifting around in his pants as he walked. His massive shoulders were so wide, that with me walking next to him, we practically took up the whole hall. Kids almost had to flatten themselves against the wall just to get past us. And me, I was conscious of every swing of those tree-trunk arms, those arms with bulging, veiny biceps that were heavier than my entire body. If one of them should accidentally brush me, I’d be smashed to a pulp. I’d be the 64th kid he sent to the hospital.

But Matt seemed to be aware of all this. He was being very careful not to accidentally brush up against or crush anyone. Of course he was showing off, too. If a kid stared at him too long he responded by either bouncing his pecs or by clenching his fists and making his arms bulge. Either way it usually sent the kid scampering away.

As we walked I pointed out the nearest restrooms, any classrooms he needed to know about, the hall that led down to the gym, and last but not least the cafeteria—

Oh my god, the cafeteria. Kids got bullied in there all the time. What if he saw one and lost it? What if he pulled down our cafeteria just like he pulled down his own? I know he didn’t have any personal vendettas against any of our bullies, but what if he just hated bullies altogether?

Finally we got to chemistry class. I’d never imagine walking to chemistry could take so long. Inwardly, I was glad I already had a lab partner. I mean I liked Matt and all—just walking next to him was an awe inspiring experience—but I still had that weird creepy stalked feeling.

It turned out, however that my relief was premature. Our class already had an even number of students so they had to stick Matt with an existing team, and you’ll never guess whose team he requested.

I guess I couldn’t blame him. I was probably his only friend in the world. I knew exactly who he was and what he’d done and I accepted him anyway. I guess it was only natural that he’d want to be around me as much as possible. I reasoned the only way out of this was to help him make more friends. And when lunch time rolled around, that’s exactly what I set out to do.

I introduced him to Scott and Lucy. Lucy seemed to take him in stride where as Scott stared at him open mouthed.

“Can I feel your—” started Scott.

“Feel my what?” asked Matt.

“I don’t know,” said Scott. “I’m trying to decide.”

“Ok, Scott,” I said, “down boy. It’s only his first day. Let him at least get to the end of his first week before you start groping him.”

Matt laughed. “That’s ok. I don’t mind.”

“Then can I—?” shot out Scott.

“Scott,” I said, severely.

“He said he didn’t mind,” protested Scott, but one look from me and he withdrew his request.

Matt didn’t eat the cafeteria food. He had convinced the school that he needed a special gourmet catering truck brought in for his special dietary needs—in other words, fucking huge amounts of food. They just started bringing it in, tray after tray after tray of it. And he would eat it as fast as they could bring it.

He offered to let us eat off his truck and we gratefully accepted. The food was fantastic way better than anything the school cafeteria ever even thought of producing.

And Matt did attract a lot of stares as he was wolfing it down. Some people were trying to be subtle but most just out and out pointed and gawked.

We had just about finished lunch when I heard, “Well, well, what have we got here?” Oh my God, it was Jack.

“What do you want, Jack,” I said.

“You’re a self-centered little fuck, aren’t you?” said Jack. “Who said I wanted to talk to you? I’m here to say hello to Matt.”

“Hello, Jack,” said Matt, not looking at all pleased.

“Wait a minute,” I said to Matt, “you know Jack? How do you know Jack?”

“How do you think he knows me?” said Jack. “I got sent to juvie for putting one kid in the hospital. What was it for you, buddy, 100?”

“63,” said Matt, “and in a minute I’m going to make it 64.” And then he stood up… and up… and up. I heard chairs scraping across the floor. All across the cafeteria, kids were making for the exit. Oh God, I thought, there goes our cafeteria.

“Whoa. Easy there, big guy,” said Jack. “Don’t get your panties in a twist. I was just being friendly.”

“Then go be friendly someplace else,” said Matt.

“Ok, ok,” said Jack, and he turned and walked away.

“Excuse me,” said Matt. “I’ve got just enough time to hit the boy’s room before class.” Then he picked up his stuff and made a quick exit.

As soon as he was gone, Lucy turned to me and said, “He put 63 kids in the hospital?!”

“Ahhhh—” I said, “It’s kind of a long story—”

“You knew?” said Lucy.

“It’s not like that,” I said. “There was… an incident. Matt got a little carried away and kind of tore down a building.”

“He tore down a building?!”

“Kind of. And that’s how the 63 people got hurt. He didn’t mean to hurt them… well, most of them.”

“Terrific,” said Lucy. “And here I thought we had someone who could protect us from Jack. Now it looks like we’re going to need Jack to protect us from him!”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said, starting to get mad. “Matt is nothing like Jack.”

“Yeah,” said Lucy. “He’s 63 times worse!”

“I like him,” said Scott.

“Oh, shut up,” said Lucy. “You just like his muscles.”

“And your point would be—?” asked Scott.

I left the cafeteria to try and waited for Matt outside the bathroom. I didn’t go in mostly because I was imagining Matt trying to use one of the urinals and the mess that would probably make.

That’s where Jack caught up with me.

“What do you want now, Jack, or are you waiting for Matt, too?”

“Take it easy, buddy,” said Jack. “I only want to warn you.”

“Warn me about what?” I asked.

“You’re new giant friend there isn’t everything he pretends to be,” said Jack.

“If you’re talking about his tearing down his school cafeteria, I already know.”

“Do you? Are you sure you know everything? When it comes right down to it, how well do you really know him?”

“I know him better than you,” I said.

“You think so?” said Jack. “Does he still get all hot and bothered when you tell him how big he is?”

I was stunned. I’m afraid I’ve never had a very good poker face, and when Jack revealed his knowledge of such an intimate detail, my shock showed clearly in my face.

“I can see he does,” said Jack, smiling, winking and then walking away. I was still in a stunned kind of shock when Matt came out of the boy’s room. He saw me and said, “Thanks for waiting, bro. Those urinals… so fucking small.”

“So, where did you meet Jack?” I said, just blurting out what was on my mind.

He looked a little uncomfortable. “You heard him,” said Matt. “In juvie.”

“You didn’t tell me you went to juvie.”

“It’s not exactly something I’m proud of.”

“How well did you know Jack?”

He looked really uncomfortable. “Not that well,” he said. “I wasn’t in there too long. I had good lawyers.”

“Are you the reason he’s going to have Titanification?”

“Jack?” laughed Matt. “He could never afford it.”

“Apparently with second mortgages and bank loans, he can,” I said.

Suddenly Matt got serious. “That idiot,” he said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Matt. “Do you know where he lives?”

“Sure,” I said. “Jack and I… We used to… you know. Anyway, it’s over now.”

“Ok,” said Matt, apparently completely unfazed by my confession, “I’ll pick you up tonight at 7:00 and you can show me where he lives.”

“Ok,” I said just as the bell rang and we had to run to make our next class—and that was a harrowing experience. If Matt had known were the classroom was I’d have lagged behind him a good 15 feet at least. As it was I had to run right up next to him. When you’re running along side someone who’s eight feet tall and weighs about a ton, you’re conscious that every step could be your last. If Matt should accidentally step on my foot, he’d turn it into hamburger meat.

And the building was shaking from the force of his foot falls. It was like running during an earthquake. The building was shaking so hard that lockers were popping open as we passed. I couldn’t help thinking that if I slipped and fell in front of him, it would be the end of me.

And just as we got to the classroom someone hit the fire alarm. Apparently Matt’s little jog had been mistaken for a real earthquake and the school was being evacuated. Oh well, I don’t think I could have concentrated in class anyway. All I could think of was Matt and Jack. There was something between them that neither one was talking about. What was it? How well did they get to know each other in juvie? What was really going on? Who knew? Maybe I’d find out tonight.

When I got home that afternoon I went straight to my room and booted up my computer. Jack’s words from earlier were haunting me. How well did I really know Matt? When it came right down to it, did I have any proof, besides his word, that anything he told me was true?

I started by googling his name. Damn, he had a pretty common name and I was hit with a ton of entries. Were any of them him? It wasn’t until I used his full name, Mathew, and added in his home town that I found something. But it wasn’t an article on him. It was actually an article on his dad. Holy crap, his dad was part of the Russian mob! I had no idea. Matt didn’t say a thing. Of course, why would he? That’s not the type of thing you advertise. Again, Jack’s words, “How well do you actually know him?” echoed in my brain. I guess I didn’t know him as well as I thought. But I couldn’t blame Matt for what his dad did? He didn’t have any say in it.

But still, how much was the son like the father?

I brooded on this question until about 7:00 that evening when a huge bus pulled up outside my house. It looked like the kind of tour bus a rock star would have. Except it was painted all black. There was little doubt in my mind about who was in the bus and I made my way to the front door just as the bell rang. It was the chauffer.

I was just about to follow him out to the bus when my mom came running up behind me. “I can’t believe you were just going to slip away without saying goodbye,” she said.

What? I went out all the time without saying goodbye. What was she talking about? “Bye,” I said. “See you later.” Then she pulled me up close and gave me a big hug and a kiss and said, “Good luck.”

Good luck? What the fuck? “err… thanks,” I said. “Bye.” Sheesh. Moms.

I followed the chauffer out to the bus and climbed on board. Yup, it was just like one of those tour coaches, wood paneling, plush seats, wide screen TV, the works. And there was Matt, bulging all over as usual and sitting in an oversized chair in the back next to some giant-sized object. It was about the same size and him and covered with a tarp.

“Hey Matt,” I said. “What’s that?”

“It’s a surprise,” he said. “I’m full of them. Come sit down.” He indicated a more conventionally sized chair placed opposite him. The bus started to move as I sat down.

“Oh yeah,” I called to the driver in the front. “You want to go up here and take a right on Elm.”

“Just give him the address,” said Matt offhandedly.

“221 Groober street,” I called. Then I turned back to Matt. “You didn’t need me to show you the way,” I said to him. “All you needed was the address.”

“I like the company,” said Matt. Then he kind of laughed to himself. “After all, that’s really what this is all about.”

“What what’s about?” I asked.

“You worked most of it out already,” he said. “Being a titan is kind of lonely. I just don’t relate to most normal people and because Titanification is banned in the US, there aren’t many other titans around. You’re the first person I’ve actually felt close to since I went through the process.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling flattered but also confused. “But what has all this got to do with going to see Jack? What actually happened between you two?”

“Our dads,” said Matt. “I never intended to be a titan by myself. At first there was going to be Nick… But you know how that ended up. And then after I grew and I ripped down that building, my dad… well my dad started to get… ideas.”

“Your dad works for the Russian Mafia, doesn’t he?” I said.

Suddenly Matt got serious. “How long have you known?”

“I just found out tonight,” I said.

“And you still came?” said Matt, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Sure,” I said, shrugging. “Why not? Was there a reason I shouldn’t have?”

Matt grinned. “I’ve always liked you,” he said, “but not as much as I like you right now. You’re not afraid of anything, are you?”

“I wish,” I said laughing. “There’s plenty I’m afraid of. But we can go over my fears later. I still want to hear about Jack.”

“My dad got this idea to set up a black market Titanification center here in the US. But to do that, they’d need to study somebody going through the process. I was already finished by then so they couldn’t use me.”

“Jack?” I said.

Matt nodded. “His dad worked for my dad. Jack was the right age and was willing. But my dad also wanted a companion for me, so I had the final approval. I was in Juvie at the time, so Jack beat up some kid so he’d get tossed in there with me.”

I was stunned. I’d always thought Jack lost control of his temper when he beat up that kid. Now I find out that it was a calculated act of violence. It sent a shiver up my spine. It wasn’t just Matt I didn’t know, it was Jack, too. Was no one whom they seemed?

“Jack and I never really got along,” said Matt. “And when I didn’t give my approval, I guess his dad decided to go forward anyway, probably hoping that once Jack began the process, my dad would simply accept him.”

The bus pulled to a stop, and Matt peered out the window. “Looks like we’re here,” he said. “I shouldn’t be long. Have a soda.” He opened the fridge and handed me an ice cold Mexican Coke.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, suddenly afraid for Jack and his dad.

“Don’t worry,” said Matt. “Everything’s gong to be fine.” Then he picked up a brief case and made his way to the door. I felt the bus shake with each foot fall. Damn, his back was so wide, his massive shoulders were brushing opposite walls. And that tiny briefcase looked ridiculous in his massive paw.

I watched him walk up to the house, ring the bell and be admitted. Then suddenly I was alone and silent. Of course, I could have always turned on the TV or found a movie to watch or something. But for some reason I just didn’t feel like it. I sat there alone with my thoughts, sipped on my Coke and waited. I don’t know maybe I was expecting the sounds of destruction to start coming from the house. But there was nothing.

Eventually my attention turned to the huge draped object in the back. What was it? Matt had said it was a surprise, but for who? For me? I knew I should have left it alone but I couldn’t help myself. I got up and I walked over to it. It was about 8 feet tall, bulky and bulgy. I couldn’t make out any discernable shape to figure out what it might be. There were a couple of cords tied around the big, ungainly object to hold the tarp in place, but they weren’t really an obstacle. I could easily lift up the tarp for a peek. But should I? Did I want to? The last surprise Matt sprung on me was when he suddenly appeared at my school. That just about stopped my heart. Was this another surprise like that?

I decided I’d really rather not risk it and I lifted up the tarp for a peek. What I saw was the lower half of a massive leg, or the bronzed sculpture of one. I was looking at a huge, meaty foot with enormous toes, thick bones and bulging veins attached to steer-sized ankles and massive shredded calf muscles the size of beach balls. I realized at once I was looking at the statue of him that he’d kept in his ballroom. What was it doing here? I let the tarp fall back into place. How was this a surprise and what did it have to do with me? Was he planning to give it to me? I chuckled inwardly imagining what my mother would say when I showed up with it and announced I would be putting it in the backyard. It sure as hell wasn’t going to fit anywhere in the house.

I had just made it back to my chair when Matt returned with a smug look on his face. “That went well,” he said.

“What did you do,” I asked, “threaten Jack’s dad within an inch of his life?”

Matt shook his head, as he sat down and the bus started up again. “It wasn’t necessary,” he said. “I simply told him that dad would never accept Jack and that he would be stuck paying for the whole enterprise on his own. Then I showed him these.” Matt opened the brief case and pulled out a pile of papers, formed them into a fan and waved them around.

“What are those,” I asked.

“Invoices,” he said. “My tailor bill, monthly food bill, some compensation for accidental property damage, all of them way beyond his means. You should have seen the color drain from his face. And then there was the reality of having a full sized titan sitting in his living room. I not-so-accidentally crushed one of his chairs when I sat on it. Paid him for it on the spot, of course, and it segued nicely into this.” He pulled out another sheet of paper. “Bill for custom furniture. By the time I was done with him, he couldn’t call Switzerland fast enough.”

“He canceled Jack’s appointment?” I asked.

“Not exactly canceled it,” said Matt, looking at me, his expression changing to something I just couldn’t read.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s time for me to confess something,” he said. “All the time Jack and I were in Juvie, he kept talking about some guy who was waiting for him on the outside. Apparently they’d split up, but he was certain they’d get back together again once he’d had the Titanification.

“Jack never stopped talking about this guy, and he described him in such glowing detail that I found myself wanting to meet him, just to see if he lived up to the hype. So, when I got out, I tracked him down and arraigned to run into him in an electronics store. And I’ve got to admit Jack was right. He lived up to the hype.”

Holy crap, I was going numb. I actually felt myself going numb all over. No wonder I’d felt like I’d been stalked. I had been stalked. And I wasn’t just stalked; I’d been lied to and manipulated on top of it.

“I think you should take me home now,” I said.

“Please don’t take it like that,” said Matt.

“And how exactly should I take it?” I asked.

“As a tribute to what a truly amazing person you are,” he said. “Most people would have run away screaming from me—and most of my friends did. But not you. You were able to look past my size, to look past the mistakes I’d made and see the actual person, to really see who I was inside.”

“I have no idea who you are,” I said.

“Yes, you do. I’m the guy who loves movies and jokes about eating cows. And I’m someone who cares very deeply about you.”

“You also someone who lies and who bends and twists people’s lives like they were… like they were rails in that “playground” of yours. Not just my life, but Jack’s and probably your friend Nick’s and I don’t know how many others!”

“You’re not being fair,” said Matt. “I never wanted to lie to you. I just didn’t know how else to approach you.”

“You could have just told me the truth. Why didn’t you just send me an email or something?” I said.

“Oh sure,” said Matt. “Hi, you don’t know me, but I met your friend Jack in Juvie and he told me what a great guy you are. I was wondering if maybe we could get together sometime.

“I’m sure you would have rushed to answer that one.”

Ok, so maybe he had a point.

“You should have told me sooner,” I said.

“I told you as soon as I could,” said Matt. “The timing had to be right.”

“And the timing is right now?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Matt, his eyes lighting up. “It couldn’t be better.” He walked over to the covered statue. “Time for your surprise,” he said and ripped the tarp from it. He didn’t bother to untie the cords or anything, but they snapped like threads at the slighted pull from those gargantuan muscled arms.

I opened my mouth to comment but what I saw wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. It was a statue of a muscle monster alright. It had huge monolithic legs and arms the size of tree trunks with veiny hard peaked biceps the size of truck tires, a stomach made of ten ponderous muscle bricks and a chest as broad and deep as a mini cooper, but the pose was slightly different from the one in the ball room. And then I saw the head.

It was my head, my face on top of that muscle giant of a body. I think my chin hit the floor. “What the fuck is this?” I gasped.

“What do you think?” grinned Matt. “It’s you… or how you will be soon, very soon.”

“But, but—” was all I could get out.

“Don’t worry, we’ll cover all the expenses,” said Matt. “All you have to do is let us examine you during the transformation.”

“I… I don’t know,” I said. I was finding it very hard to form words.

“Oh come on,” said Matt, “who wouldn’t want to be like this?” Then he tore off his shirt, once more giving me an unobstructed view of his beyond perfect body, those impossibly huge peaked biceps, those mountainous segmented shoulders, his brick wall stomach. I was really finding it hard to concentrate.

“I… I need time… I need to think,” I said.

“Sorry, bro, but there is no time. Jack’s appointment was for tomorrow and it could take us as much as a year to get another one if we miss it.”

“But the genetic tests—?” I stammered.

“Already done,” said Matt. “We were really lucky to get a cell from the inner lining of your cheek. Those are the best kind. We got it off your fork after you had dinner at my place the other night. You’d be surprised at the amount of genetic material you leave behind you wherever you go.”

“Why am I finding it so hard to think—?”

“That would be the first medication taking effect. You’re supposed to start taking it 12 hours before the process. We were a little behind schedule so I thought I would just save us some time and slip it in your coke.”

“You drugged me?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. I medicated you. You’ll probably drift off pretty soon, but don’t worry. Everything’s under control. By the time you wake up you’ll be in Switzerland and the process will have already begun.”

“No,” I said, feeling fuzzier by the second, “too soon—”

“You’ll love it,” said Matt, “you really will. And when you’re done, we’ll be closer than ever. We can really be together then, in every sense of the word.”

“I’m scared,” was all I could manage to get out.

“Soon you won’t be,” said Matt, “not of anything.”

And then the world faded and went black.

When I opened my eyes everything was white, a white room, white people in white lab coats; everything seemed to glow.

A balding man with round glasses and a thin mustache was peering down at me intently. “He conscious,” he announced in English but with a thick European accent. “How do you feel?” he asked me.

I opened my mouth to respond and suddenly I realized I felt great! I was so happy. Everything was fantastic! I loved everybody in that room. I couldn’t imagine a better place to be.

“I feel amazing,” I said.

“Good, good,” he said, “now just relax.”

Relax? I could do that. I could do that all day. Man, I felt like whistling. Wasn’t life incredible? I couldn’t quite remember why I was there but at the moment it just didn’t seem important. What was important was that I was there in this fantastic place and life just could not be better.

“He’s ready,” said the guy in glasses as he checked a monitor. Wow, I was hooked up to a lot of machines. I wondered what they were for. I had a feeling I should know, but again, I really didn’t care. I just felt too good.

The door opened and a really big guy came in. Did I know him? I was pretty sure I did. And wasn’t it fantastic that he was here too?

“Can I talk to him?” the big guy asked.

“You can try,” said moustache guy. “But right now I doubt he remembers his own name.”

Now that was a mistake. I was pretty sure I didn’t actually have a name.

“Hey, how’re you doing?” asked the big guy.

“Amazing,” I said.

“So, no hard feelings?” said the big guy.

“Right now, nothing’s hard,” I said, and giggled. “Did I really say that?”

The big guy smirked. “Don’t worry;” he said, “soon everything will be.” And he turned and left.

“You might feel a slight tingling sensation,” said Moustache guy, “but don’t worry; that’s perfectly normal.”

And then I did. Man did I feel a tingling all over, but it was nice, really, really nice.

I don’t know how long I was in that room. It felt like an eternity. But it was wonderful so I didn’t mind. I think I drifted off again at one point and when I woke up, my head was a lot clearer, and damn I felt like I was boiling inside., like everything inside my body was dancing with a kind of orgasmic electricity. It was an intense feeling, awesome in fact, and I just spent a few minutes in bed just laying there and enjoying the powerful sensation.

And then I remembered.

I sat up like a shot and looked around. It looked more like a fancy hotel room than a hospital room, but the fixtures in the walls by the bed revealed the room’s true nature.

Damn, he’d done it. Matt had actually done it. I’d been titanified. Fuck.

I got out of bed and wondered over to the mirror. I was only in a hospital gown so it was easy to remove. In a second I was standing there naked. I couldn’t see any difference. I didn’t look any bigger. I didn’t feel any bigger. But then there was that boiling. I could still feel it, strong as ever, maybe even stronger.

I remembered Matt described something like it from when he went through the change. Damn, I was going to be a titan, a real muscle monster, a behemoth. Damn.

I remembered how huge and powerful Matt was and some of the things he could do. To think I was going to be like that soon… Fuck… How did I feel about that?

Actually I felt pretty good. In fact, I was kind of excited about it. To be fucking 8 feet tall with massive muscles exploding out all over me… Yeah, I was pretty sure I could live with that. Fuck yeah, I could live with that! Ok, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the road I took to get here, but…. well…. FUCK YEAH!

Then there was a knock at the door, and for the first time I noticed how big it was, at least 10 feet high and 4 feet across. And the ceilings were high too, at least 12 feet. And two chairs in the room were titan sized.

The knock was repeated.

I pulled on my hospital gown and replied, “Come in.”

The door opened and in strode a colossus. I gasped. I couldn’t help myself. After all, this was the only titan I’d seen, besides Matt. All that muscle bulging up all over him and he wore a shirt that was just tight enough to show them off, but loose enough so he didn’t look too… Vegas. He was just as massive as Matt with a giant chest, ripped up abs, enormous shoulders, and ridiculously thick powerful legs, but he had chiseled features with black hair and sultry brown eyes. He was clearly a lot older too, at least 25. I couldn’t help notice how the two day stubble on his face offset his high cheekbones marvelously.

“Good morning,” he rumbled in a thick accent. He sounded Italian or Spanish. “I am Paulo. I am your… how do you say?… guide.”

“My guide?”

“Si, I am here to answer your questions, to give you the tour, to help you in anyway I can.”

He picked up and started flipping through a chart I hadn’t seen him bring in with him.

“Oh, what is this? I see you are leaving us very soon. What is the hurry?”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Most people choose to remain during the transition. Here they can be with others who are also going through the transition and those who have experienced the transition before. It helps makes things… how do you say?” smoother. People who leave… Things do not work out so well.”

I didn’t know what to say. At that moment I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay very much. But I knew it wasn’t possible. Matt and his dad had other plans for me and considering what they’d already done to get me here, it was obvious staying just wasn’t going to be an option.

“I want to stay,” I said. “I just don’t think it can happen.”

“Hmmm,” said Paulo stroking his chin and looking at me thoughtfully. “I see there is more going on here than meets the eye. I will not pry. But please tell me… I am curious because everyone’s answer is different… why did you choose Titanification?”

“I didn’t choose it.” I blurted out without thinking. “—not that I wouldn’t have. I just wasn’t given the chance.”

Paulo looked a little shocked. “You did not choose? This is not good. In fact it is a grave matter indeed,” he said, sitting down in one of the titan chairs and stroking his chin while he regarded me thoughtfully. “This has happened before, of course, although it is very, very rare. You see people think because we are so large and strong, we cannot be exploited.” Paulo flexed a massive veiny bicep the size of a beach ball to illustrate his point. “But this is puppy cock!”

“Ah—”I said, “I think you mean poppycock.”

“Yes, so I have been told by others. But I do not understand this expression. Poppies do not have cocks.”

I laughed in spite of the situation. “Yeah, you’ve got me there. I guess I don’t understand it either.”

“Then, if you do not mind, I will continue to say puppy cock.”

“Be my guest,” I said.

“Are you being exploited my young friend?” he asked, his big brown eyes overflowing with concern.

Was I? I suppose I was. After all as soon as I got back I knew Matt and his dad were just going to throw me in some lab somewhere for tests and observations. If that wasn’t exploitation, what was?

But did I dare tell Paulo? The Russian Mafia was not above going after people’s families to get what they wanted, and I saw no reason to put mine in that kind of danger.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

Paulo gave me that penetrating stare again and said, “I see whatever it is you are already deep inside it.”

He handed me a business card. “Call me if you need to, anytime day or night, and we will extract you from your unfortunate situation.”

I looked at the number on the card and then back up at Paulo’s concerned face.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I am quite serious in this,” He said. “We look after our own and you are one of us now, even if you do not yet look it.”

Suddenly I was aware of how small I was next to him.

“How long does it take… to happen?” I asked.

“It is different for everyone,” said Paulo. “Usually it takes 3 to 4 weeks. But in some it has taken nearly 6 months and in others it has happened virtually overnight. Who can say how you will react.”

Just then there was a knock at the door, a brief pause before the door swung open and in strode Matt. He took one look at Paulo and his eyes nearly exploded with fury. “Who the hell is this?” he demanded.

“But excuse me,” said Paulo. “I am Paulo. I am… guide.”

“Oh,” said Matt, visibly relaxing. “Well, you won’t be needed anymore. I’ll be guiding him from here on out.”

“I see,” said Paulo using his penetrating stare on Matt. “Things are much clearer to me now.”

Then Matt turned toward me apparently dismissing Paulo completely. “How are you feeling?” He asked.

There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but with Paulo standing there it didn’t feel like the right time. “I’m fine,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “You should get dressed. We have to leave soon.”

My stomach answered him by letting out a low growl. “Actually, I’m really hungry. Could we at least eat before we go?”

“Of course,” said Paulo. “I’ll take you to the dining room.”

“I don’t think so,” snapped Matt. “I know where it is. I’ll take him.”

“As you wish,” said Paulo. He bent down, shook my hand and said, “It was very nice to meet you. I wish you good luck.” Then he straitened up and left.

“You were kind of rude,” I said to Matt.

“Oh him?” said Matt. “Don’t worry about him. You better hurry up and get dressed if you want to eat before we have to go.”

Again I thought of words I wanted to say but hunger was foremost in my mind at the moment. Matt just stood there expectantly, so I cleared my throat. “A little privacy, please?”

“Oh sure,” said Matt and he left the room.

I found my clothes waiting for me in the closet. They had been laundered and even pressed. I got dressed quickly and met Matt in the hallway. He led me to a large elegant dining room where seats of all sizes held guys of all sizes. There were full blow titans, normal looking guys like me and a host of guys who fell somewhere in between. There was a lot of talking, and so much muscle. Some guys were just letting it rip out of their shirts while others were wearing very little at all. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and suddenly I was sorrier than ever that I had to leave so quickly.

We had no trouble finding a table that would seat both of us and the two of us wasted no time in digging in. The food was great and there was plenty of it. I surprised myself be eating almost half as much as Matt.

But soon the meal was over and we were hustling our way to the car. I looked out at the city as we drove through it and wished I had more time to see some of it. I’d never really been out of the country before and I would have liked to see some of Switzerland.

Well, I guessed the time had come.

“You kidnapped me,” I said.

“What?” said Matt. “No, I didn’t.”

“You drugged me and took me to Switzerland against my will. I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” said Matt. “Are you saying you don’t want Titanification?”

I paused. “No, I’m not saying that exactly—”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“My problem is I’d like to be asked before being drugged out of my mind and dragged off to a foreign country for a life changing procedure.”

“Fine, next time I want to give you the gift of a lifetime, I’ll beg your permission first.”

This was pointless. He just wasn’t getting it.

“How long have I been gone anyway?” I asked.

“3 Days.”

“3 Days! My mom is going to freak!”

“No, she won’t. She thinks you were selected to be a contestant on a game show, a sort of European version of The Great Race. Congratulations, you won the grand prize.”

“She’s still going to freak once I start to… change.”

“She’ll get used to it.”

Ok, I’d really had enough of this conversation. The way he manipulated things and just casually disregarded the feelings of other people… well, I just couldn’t take it anymore and I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the trip.

The car drove us straight to a private aircraft. Once we were onboard I was introduced to Her Doctor Schmidt, who I was assured was a genius in the filed of genetics. He was also very tall, at least 6’ 4” and I found myself slightly intimidated by him. As soon as we were airborne Dr. Schmidt led me to the back of the plane where they had a sort of examination room set up.

They certainly wasted no time.

“Young man, please lie down,” he said, indicating a table. I did and he said, “Please relax. There’s really nothing to worry about. I have been studying this process for some time and all I’m really going to do here is confirm a few things.”

He produced a syringe and proceeded to take some blood from me. “I’m just going to compare this with a sample I took on the flight over.”

I didn’t remember him taking blood from me before but then I didn’t remember the flight over either.

He didn’t say much else for hours. I slept or ate most of the time—boy, could I eat—and occasionally he would take blood and tissue samples from me. Matt would come by from time to time, but I didn’t have much to say to him so his visits were short.

When we were just a few hours from landing, some executive assistant-looking guy burst in and switched on a monitor. It was some kind of video conferencing and the guy on the other side was a short, dark man who looked like he was having a really bad day. But somehow I got the impression that he always looked like that.

“Have you made any progress, Dr. Schmidt,” the guy demanded.

“Of course, Mr. Billingsly, it is just as I suspected,” said the doctor.

Billingsly? So this was Matt’s dad—

“So, you can duplicate the process?” asked Matt’s dad.

“Duplicate it? I can improve on it. They’re using a very crude genetic process, probably the same one they originally developed 10 years ago. We’ve made a lot of strides since then. Personally, I’m surprised they haven’t moved with the times.”

“Improve on it? How?” asked Matt’s dad.

“Currently they set a basic genetic program in motion and just let it play out. It should be possible to introduce controls. We can vary the ultimate size. The subject doesn’t have to be 8 feet tall, we can make the subject smaller, closer to normal human dimensions. Or we can make him larger—“

“Larger?” interrupted Matt’s dad. “How much larger?”

“Difficult to say. These are boundaries no one has approached before. We can certainly study the question.”

“Do that,” said Matt’s dad. “How else can you improve the process?”

“We can vary the speed at which the process happens. We can slow it down to years or speed it up to a day.”

“You can change guys in a day?”

“I don’t see why not?”

“Doctor, if you can do half of what you’re saying we’ll all be very, very rich men. When can I see a demonstration?”

“Well, first I’ll need a suitable subject,” said the Doctor.

“What about him?” said Matt’s dad, nodding at me. “Can you alter him?”

“Yes… I suppose I could—”

“Good,” said Matt’s dad. “Call me when you’re ready.” And then the monitor went blank.

“Alter me?” I gasped. “What did he mean alter me?”

“Don’t worry about it, young man. Like all business men, he wants to see something big and dramatic—to convince him he is spending his money well. I think I can accommodate him.”

“Him? What about me? What are you going to do to me?” I demanded.

“We’ll just give you a nice dramatic growth spurt, maybe up your ultimate size a little. That should please him.”

“Again, your emphasis is on the wrong person,” I insisted. “This is my body we’re talking about.”

“Don’t you want to be big and strong?” asked the Doctor. “After all, that’s what Titanification is all about.”

Well, I had to admit big and strong had been on my mind a lot lately.

“We’ll just make it happen a little faster; that’s all. And maybe make you a little bigger while we’re at it. You’d like to be the biggest titan in the world, wouldn’t you?”

That did actually have its appeal.

“Ok,” I said. “Do your thing.”

“Thank you,” said Dr. Schmidt. “This is going to take a while so in the mean time, just relax.”

More relaxing. I guess I could do that. But I was starting to get excited. He was going to turn me into a titan, right here, right now. Holy crap, in just a little while, I was going to be massive. And oh my God, I could hardly wait. Who’d have thought?

The time just seemed to crawl by while the doctor worked at his portable lab table. I just sat there in a chair and tired to relax. I wasn’t doing a very good job. After what seemed like an eternity, he called the executive assistant guy back and instructed him to set up the video call.

Oh man, it was time.

“Are you ready, young man,” the doctor asked me.

“I guess so,” I said. “Do you need me to lie down or something,” I asked getting out of my chair.

“You can stand if you want. It shouldn’t make much difference. In fact standing will probably make a better show for the camera.”

Just then, as if on queue, Matt’s dad appeared on the monitor. “What have you got for me, Doctor Schmidt?”

“Something I think you’ll like very much,” he said, displaying a syringe for the camera.

I’d rolled up both my sleeves, but he gave me the shot in my right arm. I felt the slight prick then… nothing.

“What am I looking at, Doctor?” asked Matt’s dad.

“Wait for it; wait for it,” said Doctor Schmidt.

Then I felt it.

Suddenly the boiling I felt inside me started getting more and more intense. It became a kind of rumbling and churning at my core, and became more and more extreme as my skinny frame began to shake with it. “Ahhh! Ahhhh!” I cried. My whole body was just quaking, faster and faster and faster. But it was fucking amazing. It was this incredible orgasmic throbbing and pounding all over me.

“Awwwwwwwe fuck,” I said. “This is… This is awesome.” And then I started having this kind of crawling sensation all over.

The veins were rising out of my hands, getting thicker. And fuck, on my forearms, the same thing. I watched as veins emerged from my smooth skin and wrapped my forearms in heavy pattern like a road map. And then I felt this weird kind of squeezing and pushing under my skin. I could feel these hard lumps swelling up all over them. And not just on my arms. I could feel my skinny torso beginning to bulge out beneath my shirt. And my legs… I sensed new cords of sinew thickening up on my needle-thin legs. It was happening all over me!

And then I felt my hands tingling like mad. They were getting thicker. My hands began throbbing as I heard a creaking, stretching kind of noise and they began getting larger and longer and wider. Oh fuck. It was a freaking incredible sight.

And then my feet… I felt a burst of extreme pressure as they pushed out against my shoes. And a ripping and popping sound as the sneaker top tore free from the sole, wedged apart by my expanding feet, thick, with wide sturdy toes, and they were just gigantic.

The throbbing and pounding was getting stronger and stronger. I could feel my body getting harder and thicker from top to bottom as muscles surfaced and swelled, turning my ordinary limbs into bulging masses of sinew. I could feel my sleeves getting tight as my upper arms bulged into large, hard masses. And under my shirt, flat, knobby pecs were pushing out of my chest, growing rounder, fuller, and harder. It felt amazing. And then I started to sway on my feet. It was like I suddenly couldn’t keep my ballance… fuck, was I—? Yeah, I was. I was getting taller. I felt myself stretching, inching up.

“Yes!” I shouted, my new, deeper voice cracking. “This is awesome!’

I felt the rumbling, tingling rip through me again. “Ahhhh. Oh shit! Oh shit!” And then I felt my hard body surge inside a shirt that was suddenly way too tight. I could feel my iron-hard body pressing against it. The cloth was straining. Seams were stressing. I flexed my arms and felt my steel-like biceps bulging up bigger and bigger, stretching my sleeves tighter and tighter until the cloth was practically cutting into them. And suddenly RIIIIIIIIP! The sleeves exploded as big veiny balls of rock hard muscle just erupted out of them.

“YEAH!”I yelled, staring at my magnificent, bulging arms. “Check this out! I’m huge!”

Fuck, I couldn’t believe it as I stood there staring at those huge, ripped biceps rising out of the shredded sleeves of my ruined shirt. Damn. I could feel them sitting on my arms like big lumps of iron.

Oh fuck! The throbbing was back. Now I felt two boulders pushing their way out of my chest. I watched the front of my shirt balloon out as my pecs grew inside it like expanding globes of steel, pulling it tighter and stretching it to the limit and damn, it felt awesome!

I flexed my new huge iron-like chest, and enjoyed the feeling of it bullying the flimsy cloth, pushing the front open, making those buttons hold on for dear life. Then POP! One of the buttons exploded off. POP! POP! POP! The rest of the upper buttons flew off and my shirt peeled back revealing those two expanding striated mounds of muscle thrusting out from beneath. “Oh yeah,” I said, rubbing my hand over my giant pecs. They felt like iron.

I ripped open the rest of my shirt, sending buttons flying and checking out my stomach. I felt steely lumps forming under the skin as the outline of a six pack appeared. Man I could feel the muscles just growing bigger and harder until I actually had abs. I passed my hand over them. They felt hard and solid. But it didn’t stop there; they kept getting larger, pushing out, and bulking up, like huge iron rocks. In seconds my stomach had solidified out into a wall of powerful, brick-like abdominals. “Oh man, oh man, oh man,” I said as I ran my hand over the hard, bumpy surface, “unreal.”

Jesus, look at my fucking muscles, those hard full pecs shoving their way out of my torn, open shirt and shadowing those carved abs, and my thick arms, bulging out through my shredded sleeves. Damn, I felt really fucking powerful.

I looked over at the doc and grinned; and I suddenly noticed that the two of us were eye to eye. Holy crap, in the past few seconds I had shot up six inches, and God only knew how much heavier I was. With all that fucking muscle I felt a lot heavier.

And suddenly I was dizzy again. I could feel myself stretching upward. Legs, arms, everything was getting longer, and the cabin seemed to be getting smaller, shrinking away from me. And the Doc, Fuck, he was standing up and I was looking straight over him.

He looked up at me, gaping, as I pulled a double bi. Man, look at those enormous ripped peeks. Damn, I wasn’t just tall; I was fucking colossal!

“I could get used to this,” I said looking at my huge, bulging arms. This was awesome. But then… fuck. I felt the vibration again. No way! I was growing again! I began shaking. “Yes!” I shouted. “ah ah ahhhhhhhhh!” I cried as I felt my back grow wider and thicker, and stretch the hell out of my shirt. Threads began popping and cloth began tearing as I felt great, thick lats erupting out from my body. “Oh fuck!” I cried. Seconds later I felt my shirt rip open right down the center of my thickening muscular back, “OH FUCK ME!” I yelled and huge globular shoulder muscles exploded from my body and tore out of the sleeves. “FUUUUUK ME!” I cried as my expanding muscled torso continued to rip my shirt into shreds and reduce it to a pathetic rags which slid off me and into a heap on the ground.

“Oh my fucking God, LOOK AT ME!” I shouted and flexed. My upper arms swelled into gigantic twin granite peaks. The shoulders above them were the size of cannonballs. My forearms were great wedges of muscle leading up to my thick heavy fists. I was over seven feet tall now. The doc was now looking up at me past my huge shredded pecs—fuck, I was bending my neck to look down at him. I was fucking gigantic.

“Yes!” I shouted. “Oh God, yes! I feel like I’m fucking stone! I… I—” Suddenly my eyes went wide again. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s starting again! Ahhhh… Ahhhhh….AHHHHHHHHH! FUCK YEAH!” I yelled and exploded upward, my mammoth muscles expanded to keep pace, making my monstrous frame unbelievably massive. “SO FUCKING HUGE!” I shouted as my shoulders stretched out further and further as grew into huge balls of rock hard flesh. Colossal traps rose up and merged with my thickening neck and I could feel my back getting thicker and wider behind me. And God, I had to be almost 8 feet tall!

“UUUUAAAARRRRGGGGHHH!” I yelled asmy pants tore up the sides, releasing two mammoth thighs which were bulging out to an unbelievable volume. In a moment those huge muscles, writhing and swelling under my skin, blew my underware away completely, leaving me naked in the center of the cabin. I had a dick that would put a bull to shame.

“FUCK, YEAH!” I shouted looking at it. I was completely naked but I didn’t care. My body was a fucking thing of beauty and unbelievable power, and I loved it.

“Holy fuck!” I shouted and I began to shake. “HERE IT FUCKING COMES AGAIN!” I flexed my already massive arms and watched them bulge up into veiny peeked mountains and then grow even larger. My shoulders continued to stretch outward, further and further, exploding into incredible globes of unbelievable size that flowed down and melded with my titanic pecs. My back pushed out further, causing my entire upper body to grow wider and wider as I continued to grow taller and taller. I was just fucking mountainous now. I looked down at the doc now, way, way down. He was like a doll, a miniature toy version of himself, looking up from the shadow of my massive, bulging muscles.

And then it was over. I pulled a most muscular and every one of my incredibly large, incredibly powerful muscles bulged out all over me. It was a feeling not to be believed. I felt like a mountain of iron boulders, impossibly hard and strong. I had to be about eight feet tall, weighing more than a ton. The fucking size of me… I was a fucking monster.

“Jesus, look at him,” said Matt’s dad from the monitor.

“Yeah, look at me,” I answered, flexing my right arm, running my left hand all over it and enjoying the impossible hardness. “I’m fucking awesome.”

The doc gulped.

Hahaha! The little runt was terrified. I guess I couldn’t blame him. A minute ago I had been wimp-boy. Now I was an incredibly wide, impossibly thick towering mass of heaving muscle, and it felt awesome! My massive, striated shoulders were brushing the cabin walls. My head was denting the ceiling. I must have more strength in the tiniest of my muscles than I used to have in all of them. I felt like a muscle mountain.

And then… fuck… I felt it happening again. My first though was FUCK YEAH! But then I suddenly realized why the doc looked terrified. It wasn’t just because I was an instant muscle monster, it was because I was already filling the plane cabin and now I was growing more.

CREEEEEEK! I heard as my massive shoulders began pushing out at the walls. POP, POP as my head began pushing up the ceiling.

The executive assistant guy burst in shouting, “What’s going on in here? The pilot says the weight ratio has… HOLY FUCK!” he shouted as he saw me. But he didn’t have time for much more because that’s when my giant steel-like shoulder ripped through the cabin wall like it was tissue paper.

Suddenly everything was chaos. Anything not bolted down was flying through the cabin. The whole plane began to shake. I could hear the whine of struggling engines. KATHUMP! My other massive, striated shoulder ripped through the other wall. There was so much going on I couldn’t tell if I was still growing. I thought I might be. I tried to twist my body to the side, but that only ripped larger holes in the fuselage. The executive assistant guy got sucked right out of one of the holes, as did the monitors and most of the lab equipment. I grabbed the doc with one giant hand just as he flew into the air, and fell back toward the front of the plane into a seated position. The weight of my massive mountainous body seemed to be enough of an anchor to keep us from being sucked out, too. But I could see the rear section of the plane twisting from side to side. I heard the buckling and bending of metal seconds before I saw the tail of the plane rip right off and go tumbling away.

“Uh oh,” I remember thinking, “we’re in serious trouble now.”

When I opened my eyes, everything seemed gray. I suffered from the usual disorientation I always get from waking up in an unfamiliar place. But usually this sensation is quickly followed by a feeling of relief when I realize where I am. Except his time it was the exact opposite.

I remembered the plane, the crashing plane! But where was now? I could feel my heart beating really fast. Damn, could I feel it beating! I mean I’ve felt it beating before but it was nothing like this. This felt like bombs were going off in my chest several times a second and yet the explosions were being easily contained. I could feel a tremendous raw strength and energy coursing though my body. Damn. I felt amazing, so powerful, like I was some kind of huge machine being powered by a nuclear engine.

But where was I?

There was stuff covering me all over, big pieces of metal, fiberglass, plastic. In fact it was safe to say I was buried in it. It must be wreckage, fucking plane wreckage! Suddenly I heard a voice calling my name. It was kind of soft and in the distance but there was no doubt it was Matt. I tried to move. Fuck it was easy, way easier than it should have been! There was a big metal piece of superstructure across lying across me. If I had been the old me, this thing was big enough to have crushed me into a red pulp. I grabbed it with one hand and lifted like it was nothing. Fuck my hand was enormous… to say nothing of my fucking forearms. Damn! Every fucking muscle in them was hugely overdeveloped, just fucking massive. I squeezed the piece of superstructure, and watched the gigantic masses of muscle roll and writhe under my skin as my fingers just mashed the metal like it was Playdoe. Holy crap!

I pushed the piece of superstructure aside and a whole shit load of debris went with it. A sweep of my arm and I cleared enough away that I could see the sky. An instant later I saw a head peering down at me. It was Matt.

“Oh thank God,” he said. “I was afraid you were dead. Everybody else is.”

“Everybody?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Matt. “I was hoping you’d changed enough to survive.” He began clearing away some of the debris from on top of me. I didn’t feel like telling him that my change was the reason the plane had crashed. He didn’t seem to know and I didn’t like thinking about it. Everyone was dead? Jeeze.

“Titans are very hard to kill,” continued Matt. “We’re immensely strong, we heal really fast. Hell, we’re almost indestructible.”

We’d have to be to survive a plane crash. Fuck. How fucking powerful was I?

“Do you think you could help me with some of this?” asked Matt as he casually tossed another piece of superstructure to the side.

“Sure,” I said and I sat up. All that debris just fell away from me as I moved. Fuck, I felt my abs contracting and it felt like massive blocks of muscle bulging and heaving under my skin and it felt like they were moving a ton… easily. I looked down on myself and… oh my God! I was fucking immense! I thought “moving a ton” was an exaggeration. It wasn’t. I had to weigh at least a ton—probably more!

The first things I saw were my pecs. Holy crap, they were gargantuan globes of striated muscle, three, maybe four times the size of a basket ball! I tensed them and watched them leap and dance. Fuck, what a sensation… all that hard muscle moving around under my skin.

And my shoulders… they looked like they were a mile away on either side of my head and they were fucking enormous—to say nothing of my ridiculous traps. They buldged up and up… Fuck, I could barely turn my neck, which I knew it had to be a fucking tree trunk!

Then I couldn’t help myself. I brought my arms up into a colossal double bi. I don’t know what was more awesome, the sight of those ridiculous mountains of flesh exploding out of my arms, or the feeling of the rock had mass bulging up under my skin.

Fuck. I was massive beyond belief, and so fucking strong. Fuck.

Then I saw Matt. If I was thunder struck by my new body, he looked ready to pass out. It was then I realized I was looking him in the face. I was sitting. He was standing. And I was looking him in the face.

I shook the rest of the debris off and stood up. Man, I kept rising up and up and up. How fucking tall was I? When I finished I realized I had to be about 4 feet taller than Matt. Damn, that would make me 12 feet tall. Holy shit! I had to be more than six feet wide at the shoulders! Damn look at me, bulging out all over with ridiculous granite masses of immense bulging muscles. I was a fucking giant, a fucking muscle giant! And damn, it felt amazing!

“What’s the matter Matt?” I said, turning a cocky eye toward him, “not exactly what you expected?”

“No,” he said, “I mean—shit! I mean this wasn’t supposed to happen… damn!”

“Yeah?” I said, enjoying his discomfort. “What was supposed to happen?”

“You were supposed to be a titan like me, not like that, not so fucking massive. I mean… damn! You’ve got to be the biggest fucking titan there ever was!”

“I guess Dr. Schmidt got a little carried away,” I said. I flexed my planet sized bicep, just enjoying feeling the colossal size and impossible hardness of it on my arm. “But I think I’ll like this.” Matt gulped.

“Yeah,” I said, “I think I’m going to like this a lot.”

I looked around. The devastation was horrifying. The plane was nothing but smoking, burning debris now. There were even a couple of bodies scattered around.

“You sure no one else survived?” I asked Matt.

“What?” he asked like he’d been startled out of a daydream. “Oh… yeah, they’re all dead. How fucking big do you think you are? I mean you’ve got to weigh… tons.”

“Did you even check to see if anyone else survived?” I asked, unable to believe how casually he dismissed the death of so many people.

“What for?” he said. “It’s obvious only the two of us could have survived. I mean look around.”

I did and he was right. It did look pretty bleak. But I had to be sure.

I got up and started shifting through the wreckage. I was seriously trying to see if there were any survivors, but I have to admit… lifting, throwing and crushing huge pieces of airplane like they were cardboard definitely had an appeal.

Of course the first body I found killed any enjoyment I was having. But I kept at it. In the end Matt had been right. There was no one but us.

“Satisfied?” he asked, sitting on the ground. He hadn’t done much to help.

“Unfortunately,” I said, because now I had guilt. If I hadn’t grown on the plain, it wouldn’t have crashed and everyone would still be alive. But I think Matt mistook my guilt for grief.

“Dude, you shouldn’t feel bad that everyone died. I mean everyone dies eventually. It was just their time.”

Once again Matt’s callousness shocked me, but not so much as the fact that I wasn’t really feeling any grief. I mean I guess I should have felt grief, but I hadn’t really known anyone on the plane. I’m sure there was some grief mixed in with the guilt somewhere but I felt kind of like you do when you see a tragedy on the news, sad but somewhat disconnected.

Plus the fact that I was now this massive muscle giant also helped with the disconnection. The whole thing just felt so unreal.

“I’m sure they know where we crashed,” said Matt. “I mean they must have been following us on radar. I bet they’ll be flying in with choppers any minute.”

I glanced around. Trees everywhere and no sign of any choppers.

“Whatever, Matt,” I said.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

“I’ve had kind of a big day,” I said. “When I woke up this morning I was in a hospital in Switzerland. I was all of 5’ 8” and 135 pounds. Now I’m fucking massive, maybe the biggest fucking man who ever fucking lived, easily as strong as a fucking truck!” I flexed my incredibly massive arms and watched those ridiculously gigantic biceps explode out of them. The look and the feel of them were just awesome.

“Jesus, you don’t sound like yourself,” said Matt.

“Yeah? Well, I don’t particularly feel like myself either. I feel bigger, much, much bigger. And when you’re this fucking huge the world looks a little different. And on top of that I’m a little pissed.”

“Pissed? Why are you pissed?”

“Oh I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m stranded in the wilderness with nothing but dead people and an oversized asshole for company.”

“Asshole?”

“That’s right, asshole! You fucking kidnapped me!”

“Kidnapped you? Are we going to go through that again?”

“Damn right we are!”

“I don’t believe this. Where would you be right now if I hadn’t kidnapped you?”

“Safe at home.”

“Yeah, and 5’8 and scrawny. Is that what you would’ve wanted? Jesus, look at you! You look like you could rip down buildings with your bare hands. Are you saying you don’t want that?”

“No, I’m saying you should have given me the choice.”

“And if I had, what would you have chosen?”

He had me with that point and he knew it.

“Probably this,” I said, “but the point is you shouldn’t have made the decision for me. It shows a lack of respect and consideration.”

“Alright.” he said, throwing his arms in the air. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first. Are you happy now?”

“Almost,” I said.

“Jesus Christ!” he swore. “What else do you want?”

“Not much,” I said, “just to beat the living crap out of you.” I wasn’t really serious. I never actually intended to lay a hand on him. But I never saw the color run out of anyone’s face quite that fast.

He got up and started stumbling backwards. “Don….don’t come near me—” he stuttered. “I’ll tell my father and then you’ll be sorry.”

And as I watched, he mentally reverted into that bullied school boy, a pathetic child who would say anything to keep from getting the shit kicked out of him. All that size, those incredible muscles, in the end they meant nothing. He was still a sniveling wimp.

Looking at him I felt a disgust which strangely morphed into a genuine desire to beat him up. As if my pummeling him would somehow cause his balls to drop, and awaken some masculine desire to stand up for himself, to push back, to not be such a pathetic loser.

I actually balled my fists and took a step toward him.

“My… my dad will get you,” he said.

I raised my arms out to my sides. Damn, they were exploding with massive, hard veiny muscles and they felt huge, thick, heavy, solid, and so fucking strong. “Dude,” I said, “I just fell ten thousand feet in a burning airplane and walked away from it. What exactly do you think your father can do to me?”

I saw his eyes dart from one of my colossal arms to the other, and I think he started trembling.

“Then he’ll get your family! Yeah, maybe start with your mother. How’d you like that?”

In a flash I felt myself get angry. I go so fucking angry I almost lunged at him right there and tore his lungs out. But I stopped myself. Even if I could manage to hurt him seriously—and I had every confidence I could, despite the fact that he, too, just walked away from a plane crash—it wasn’t worth risking harm to my mother. So, I held it in.

Matt saw that he had scored a point and then just started running off his mouth. “And don’t get any ideas about your future because you belong to us now. After what we paid for the Titanification process, we own your ass. We may not be able to study your change like we planned, but there’s tons of other things we can use you for. I may need someone to tidy up my playground… yeah, you’d be just about perfect for that job.”

At this point I just turned my enormous back on him and walked away. I knew if I listened to anymore, I’d just loose it and rip him apart. So I walked all the way to the tree line about a hundred yards away and just sat down, waited, and thought about what I should do.

Things looked pretty bleak. I had one idea but I wasn’t even sure if it would work.

Eventually the rescue vehicles arrived and began cleaning up the scene. There was nothing they could do for the dead people and Matt and I didn’t really require any medical care—pretty amazing, hunh?

I thought getting us out of there would be a problem but it didn’t turn out to be. They had huge helicopters designed to lift out the plane wreckage. But the first trip they took was to haul us to civilization. Matt and I kept getting stares. Everyone had to know what we were, but no one had seen anything as big as me before. Somehow they managed to throw together a rough loin cloth for me. I had fun looking down and flexing at some of the guys, and after a while no one came too close.

Of course they interviewed us about what happened. That seemed to take hours, but finally they let us go home. That was easier said then done.

Matt offered to drive me home in his custom bus, but I didn’t want anymore to do with him than I could help. I had to call my friend Scott and ask him to bring his dad’s pickup truck. Even then I wasn’t sure I’d fit in the back. Scott nearly dropped dead when he saw me. I sort of explained what happened but I don’t think he was listening to me. He was too busy soaking up my gigantic bulging biceps, my massive pecs, my brick wall stomach and the rest of my enormous muscle body with his eyes. And on the ride back to my house, he kept swerving all over the road. I imagine it was staring out his rear window a little too much.

And there was this one guy who just followed us staring at me. Eventually I got tired of it and decided to give the guy what he was obviously after. Maybe that would make him go away. I brought both my mammoth arms out to the side and flexed my gigantic hard bulging biceps. Fuck they felt awesome on my arm. The sight was obviously too much for the guy. He swerved and hit a fire hydrant which instantly started spouting. I had a feeling that wasn’t the only thing that was spouting.

There were a couple of other traffic incidents caused by my ridiculously huge, massively muscled body, but I guess a two ton bulging muscle beast like me was a bit of a distraction.

Mom took it hard. I mean they contacted her and told her about my “prize,” but she still burst into tears the minute she saw me and didn’t stop crying all night. I had to sleep on the living room floor. I didn’t want to try my luck on the stairs or the upstairs floor. I wasn’t really sure if they would hold me.

The next day bright and early we received a call instructing me to report to Matt’s house at 2:30 that afternoon. Apparently Matt’s dad wanted to see me. Who the hell knew what he wanted, but I had no intention of going. I still had one idea about how to get out of this.

I lost Paulo’s card during my transformation and the subsequent plane crash, but finding the Titanification company’s phone number was simple and they were able to connect me with him.

I told him everything, from Matt’s stalking me to his dad’s plan to pirate the Titanification process to their threats on my family. Everything.

All he said was, “Don’t worry. You are family now. We will take care of it.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do, but then it struck me. The Titans weren’t just ridiculously huge guys, they each came from the most wealthy and influential families on the planet. If they couldn’t help me, no one could.

I didn’t go to the 2:30 appointment and I have to admit I was a little nervous about what might happen. But as it turned out, Matt’s dad had a lot more to worry about then whether or not I made a 2:30 appointment. His little empire had started to crumble. And in a weeks time he had been completely ruined. Can’t say I was sorry to hear it. I honestly couldn’t say I felt sorry for Matt either. I knew he’d be alright. Being a Titan made it really easy to make a buck.

Paulo contacted me a few days later and invited me to come back to the company headquarters in Switzerland—all on the company of course. I was really freaking people out at home so I decided to take him up on it.

They sent a special plane but it was still a little bit of a squeeze. Still I managed to make myself comfortable enough for the long flight. When I got there, they had a hero’s welcome waiting for me, a full on party with bands, a feast, everything, and the guests were almost all other titans. For the first time in weeks, I felt a little normal, even though I was bigger than any of them.

Everyone wanted to meet me and I finally got a tour of Geneva. The people there didn’t stare at me quite the way they did back home. I guess since Geneva was the home of the Titanification process they saw plenty of us muscle beasts and it wasn’t any big deal.

Of course the company doctors wanted to look me over. They told me that they had long known it was possible to push the process further and create someone as big as me, but they were worried about the long term effects. There was only so far they could push human organs before they risked health issues. They cautioned me that I might develop problems later in life.

But for the time being I was the biggest, badest, most massively muscled Titan around. I soon became very popular. I learned a lot of the Titan sports, and pretty soon I was winning at them all—mostly due to my superior size and strength. I made a lot of money playing the sports professionally and I had a lot of new titanic friends.

I never saw Matt again, but I heard about him from time to time. He was deep into the mob back home and slowly rising up the ranks. I understood Jack was now his right hand man. I guess they deserved each other.

My friends and family came to visit me often. I didn’t like going back home because I really felt like a freak there. Fortunately I had enough money so they could come visit me whenever they wanted.

Even though I had a lot of titanic friends here, there was no one special yet. I think it was because I didn’t really trust my own judgment after Matt and Jack. And the darker, angry or sad ones seemed to be the only ones who really attracted me, but I was determined not to get involved with any of them.

Oh well, if I keep looking I’m sure one day I’ll meet a nice guy who’s right for me.

One day.

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