Peter woke up with an elongated yawn. He was greeted by the sound of his older brother’s whining voice drifting from downstairs.
“Mo-om! Where did you put my package?”
Still yawning and dead to the world around him, Peter planted two heavyset feet onto the floorboards and stood up.
He hit his head against the sloped ceiling of his attic room with a resounding and painful thump.
“What package, James?” replied the distant voice of his mother exasperatedly.
With a hand massaging his smarting head, Peter finally took in his surroundings. His eyes widened in shock.
Was he… …taller?
“It was on the kitchen table yesterday evening,” explained his annoyingly shrill brother. “You must have moved it!”
“I did no such thing, dear,” replied his mother calmly. “What was in it?”
There was an awkward pause in the conversation.
Peter gazed downwards.
His heart skipped a beat as he saw the two massive, craggy cliff faces that were now his pecs. He gave them an experimental flex. They immediately solidified into two grotesque pillows of bulbous sinew and bloated veins.
“Don’t tell me you’ve wasted all your money on one of those stupid mumbo-jumbo potions again!” said his mother with a knowing sigh. “You know how that really upsets you father.”
Peter ran a rugged hand over his unfamiliar abdomen. He gently massaged his midsection’s freaky paper-thin skin, marvelling at the hardened, furrowed flesh beneath.
“Well,” she continued. “What was this magic potion supposed to do?”
Peter looked down at the torn up scraps of packaging by his bedside. A thick glass bottle lay among the scraps of brown paper.
It was empty.
Memories of yesterday evening came flooding back…
…He had found his brothers latest occult elixir lying on the kitchen table and decided to play a childish prank on his gullible older brother.
Pete wasn’t a total jerk. He simply planned to hide the bottle for a day. But as he held the bottle in his delicate skinny hands, something strange happened.
The bottle was labeled “Everlasting Vigor Tonic” in laughable archaic, spidery writing. The thick glass looked old, musty and had numerous hairline cracks. It’s mud-brown contents looked congealed and speckled with dirt. No one in their right minds would dare risk tasting a sip from this foul-looking concoction.
Without warning, the liquid inside started to glow a pulsating amber. The timid little dweeb felt the deepest pang of thirst he had every felt in his life and he knew that it could only be quenched by the strange, hypnotic liquid. He clumsily carved out the deeply-wedged cork with an old pen knife and tipped the neck of the bottle to his mouth. He watched the thick fluid inch leisurely to his lips as he prepared to down the entire bottle…
…Then everything went blank.
“It’s a virility potion,” mumbled his older brother. “It was supposed to make me muscular and confident. I wanted to become a real stud. You know…”
“…like Peter.”
Peter ears pricked up. What did James just say?
He grabbed the bottle from the floor in a large, calloused hand and quickly skimming through the decorative writing of it’s enormous back label. His face radiated into an evil grin as he read it’s final warning.
“But be cautious mortal! Testaments to your erstwhile frail constitution will be supplanted forever more by your new, more mannish semblance. Henceforth you alone can recall the history that has been perpetually expunged.”
He glanced around the room, his smirking face growing smugger as he finally took in all the subtle changes that had eluded him. His dorky hand-me-down clothes had been replaced with the very best of designer sportswear. His geeky movie posters were gone - replaced with motivational bodybuilding posters and pinups of seriously-hot scantily-clad girls. Jars of protein powder, creatine and God knows what other chemical powders littered the floor. His computer, ordinarily the pièce de résistance of his bedroom, now lay by a wall, untouched and abandoned, hidden behind a set of well-used and impressively bulky-looking dumbbells.
Fuck off! He had actually gotten away with it! No one can even remember scrawny little Pete any more - they only know him as this amazing badass motherfucker!
“Oh James, stop wasting your money on these things,” said the soothing tones of his mother. “I know you are jealous of Peter, but he never drank a magic potion to become the man he is today. Wasting your savings on these snake-oil bullshit will not suddenly turn you into muscle stud. Why don’t you try to exercise, like your brother…”
His mother’s voice faded away into distant muffles. The newly-minted stud was too busy preening at himself in the mirror to pay attention to the downstairs world anymore. Too busy groping every inch of muscle fiber and tracing each sick-looking vein. Too busy “mirin” his badass tattoos. Too busy licking each of his bulging biceps with his long, sensual tongue. Too busy jacking off his immense 9-inch pussy-splitter when he discovered the long list of hot chicks on his phone’s contact list.
Too busy dreaming of ways to torment his jealous brother.