Meat Market (musc)
by Aardvark
“Anybody up for drinks tonight?”
The IM pinged from computer to computer, cubicle to cubicle within the Columbia Paper Company. RSVPs shot back quickly: “yes,” “sure,” “I’m in, where?” “can’t, wife’s folks r in town,” and a range of others.
Careful consideration had been made to send out the invite only after all the women of the office had left for the day. Columbia’s office space had, in recent months, become a bit of a boys club. It was pure coincidence, really, with the revolving door of employment swinging to the male side as of late: women getting promoted, or quitting, and almost always getting replaced by a male.
The group began to lock in: Ben, Dave, Robby and Sid, the sales reps. Ollie, the IT guy. Nathaniel, the temp/intern. Fred from HR, Oscar and Mark from accounting, and Jameson, Assistant to the Regional Manager. They even landed the Holy Grail: a package designer, named Steven.
“Where should we go?”
“Casbah?”
“Too crowded.”
“How about Piciri’s?”
“Ugh.”
“NO.”
“Just making a suggestion, calm the fuck down.”
“What about Meat Market?”
The group looked at each other. This seemed like a good suggestion. Most of them had never been and were curious: with each beer came a free slider, plus the menu sported steak and chicken. Good things had been said around town, there was a rave on Yelp, plus there were cheap pitchers…it was settled. Meat Market was the place.
“It’s funny to see a building here,” Fred said to the group as they walked through the parking garage across the street from the bar. A bit of a townie, and the oldest in the group, Fred was full of facts. “This place was just a field for what feels like generations. There was some weird cult that worshipped there.”
“Not really a cult,” Sid corrected. “That goddess movement that’s around – you know, with the aromatherapy and feminist spirituality, not liking the way God is addressed as a ‘He,’ all that shit – it spawned this other movement that incorporated gods, too. All about sexual energies, powerful energies, controlling energies, yadda yadda. My ex-wife got into it.”
“That why ya left her?”
“Partially,” Sid laughed.
“We’re gods, guys,” Nathaniel laughed. “We were born with dicks, so we’re gods!”
“You use that dick last night?” Ben prodded, and Nathaniel fell for it. “Damn right, of course I did! Went out with my bud after the basketball game and we hit up…“
Nathaniel kept rambling about his conquest of the evening, as the other guys exchanged amused glances. Fresh out of college and with his first post-grad job, Nathaniel had yet to figure out the office gossip mill. He constantly bragged about all the vaginas he marched his cock through, even after being caught in a lie two weeks previous by Dave: Nathaniel had been showing off pictures of a girl he’d taken home the night before. Unfortunately for Nathaniel, the girl in the pictures was actually Dave’s next door neighbor. Dave had been taking out the trash at his house when the young woman had gotten home – alone – after work, rocking a wicked case of bronchitis. She’d stayed in all night.
After that, no one was ever sure if Nathaniel was telling the truth or not. He’d been seen around town with various girls, but all it took was being caught fibbing once to negate any sort of respect he’d garnered around the office. He wasn’t particularly handsome, and he didn’t work out, but he was tall and slender enough to be able to conceivably score.
“Think they have a velvet rope?” Mark, the most in-shape member of the group by far, chuckled. “You’re screwed if they do, Ben.” Tall and broad-shouldered from years of swimming as a youth, Mark enjoyed staying fit – and he enjoyed the look on people’s faces when he told them he was an accountant.
Ben – a rotund, curly-haired stoner straight out of a Judd Apatow movie – laughed back. “Fuck you man, now I hope they do, then I can ditch you assholes and go home to my Wii and ganj.”
“Masturbating,” Mark joked. “Typical. Has anyone ever made a Wii-d joke? Smokin’ some Wiid?”
Ben shook his head. “Not to me, nope.”
“Well, I just did.”
“Congrats.”
“No velvet rope,” Oscar piped in with a point. “Good, now my black ass has a chance at getting in.”
Everyone was still laughing at this as they sauntered in. The place was pretty empty, with a few random patrons scattered about. One table had smoke curling up above it, despite the city’s indoor smoking ban, while another had occupants doing shots so vigorously that a drinking game was obviously in progress.
The group seated themselves at the only big table in the place – dead center, with exactly eleven chairs. Sid and Mark were the only two at the head of the table, while everyone else was gathered around the sides. A few of the men headed to the bar. Nathaniel’s eyes scanned the restaurant for any hot girls, but found only disappointment.
“Dude,” Sid said, speaking discreetly to Mark. “Check out Oscar’s ‘fro. Some Earth, Wind and Fire shit.”
Mark looked over and chuckled. “I think it just looks big ‘cause normally he just shaves it down.” They both stared at the black man with the afro mushrooming out around his head. Oscar was normally so trimmed and groomed, it was odd to see him with the natural look.
“It’s real warm in here,” Mark continued. “It feels like the heat went right into me when we walked in.”
“I noticed that too!” Sid loosened his tie a little. All the men wore collars, either polos or dress shirts, as required by the company uniform policy. “I don’t…hey, Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“You, uh…might want to slow your roll a little bit.”
“Hm?” Mark looked down at his lap, where Sid’s eyes were locked, and saw an obvious erection tenting the crotch of his khakis. There was no mistaking it. “Aw, dammit. Dead kittens, dead kittens.”
Sid chuckled. “I’m cool, but some of the other guys-”
“No, no, I know. I think I’ll just sit here for a second,” Mark said, red filling his cheeks. “This doesn’t usually happen to me. Maybe it’s the heat.”
“It IS a nice heat, isn’t it? Not uncomfortable.”
“Yeah. Makes me feel sexy.”
Sid snapped his head to the side and looked at Mark, who bit his lip. “Just kidding. That’s a joke that didn’t land.”
“Riiiight.”
The understated rock playing through the bar suddenly switched to a much louder, bass-driven pop track. There was a thumping pulse throughout it that made the panels of the ceiling shake. Some bar patrons cheered, others – including the eleven guys of Columbia Paper – rolled their eyes. “Ugh, really?” Sid looked up. “What kinda place is-”
An interruption came in the form of loud screams and shouts from the bar. Sid and Mark were the first to look over. “Is that…”
“I…” Sid was speechless. “Is he…”
There was a man standing on top the bar. He was taking his shirt off. Then he was taking his pants off. He shook his ponytail free and let wavy, processed hair shake around his joyous face.
“Shit, he is cut.” Mark was envious of the body being revealed – tall and lean and rippling with taut muscle, every inch sculpted, from the cover-model abs to the structure of his face. The light caught the underside of the stripper’s cheekbones and jaw, and made him look radiant.
“Forget him being CUT, what the fuck is he DOING here?!” Sid turned angrily to the table of men, who were all either speechless, staring, or jeering. “Did you guys know this place was a strip joint?!”
“It’s not!” Nathaniel shook his head insistently. “It’s not! Trust me, I’d KNOW if it was…”
No one could argue this point.
“If it were a strip club, I’d be cool, but it’s a gay bar,” Sid seethed.
Ben leaned in from down the table. “Maybe it’s Ladies Night, dude.”
Mark rolled his eyes. “Ladies Night means a bunch of gay guys and their fat girlfriends.”
“That would mean you were a gay guy, Mark,” Ben observed, trying to ignore the gyrating muscle man on top of the bar. Other members of the group started arguing about leaving, and where to go once they did.
“Only if it’s actually Ladies Night,” Mark shot back. “Maybe some gym bunny is just drunk as shit and taking his clothes off in rhythm.”
“Whatever it is, its freaking me out,” Oscar muttered. “I don’t wanna see that shit.”
“You don’t wanna see this?” Ben started rubbing his hands over his big belly, kneading the rolls of fat up and down. “Oh yeah baby, oh yeah,” he joked, pretending to toss his hair – the slightly overgrown curls - back and forth. “Yeah, check that out. 275 pounds of lard.” He did a shimmy and his moobs bounced around within his red polo.
“Nice titty shake. Got some tassles on your nipples?” Sid laughed at Ben’s display, which goaded the round-faced rep into dancing even more vigorously. Ben rose to his feet and began to shake his ass to the music, laughing loudly. “Check me out guyth! Oooh, I’m so thooo haaww-wwwt,” he lisped mockingly.
The men at the table were successfully distracted away from the actual stripper and turned their attention back to their friend, a big quivering mass of fat. Everyone was laughing now, hooting and hollering and secretly hoping that the stupid mimbo in the Speedo was taking notice of the way he was being sent up.
With every laugh he heard, Ben was encouraged to get wilder with his dance. The pelvic thrusts began with vigor. He ran his fingers up and down the sides of his torso and handled his moobs like they were a set of tits. He opened a button on his polo and teasingly ran his finger across where his collarbone would be, were it not hidden by his fat. The pale, rotund shlub looked hilarious.
“You’re not bad, Ben!” Steven yelled from his end of the table, some of his first words of the night. Ben grinned at this and stepped onto his chair, then, to everyone’s surprise, onto the table itself. The old wood creaked from the weight, but Ben was too enraptured with his performance to care. He began to play with the hem of his polo, lifting it up an inch or two to show the undefined pale stomach pouring over the waistband of his khakis.
“Maybe you should consider a second job, man!”
Only the men facing Ben’s front could see that this latest remark from the crowd made Ben’s penis harden in his pants. The outline became more clear as time went on, and Ben’s hard dick flopped more and more heavily within the constraining crotch of the khakis. His smile was getting more genuine, and his dancing was losing the satirical edge. His moves were fluid, even graceful, and perfectly in rhythm. When the tempo of the song increased, so did Ben. When there was a random clap of drums in the song’s production, Ben matched it with a perfectly-timed pop of his ass.
“Alright Ben, that’s enough, show’s over.”
Ben didn’t get down. He pulled his shirt up to his chest and his white gut flopped out – and along with it, two single dollar bills fluttered to the table.
“Did anyone see that?” Mark looked at the face of George Washington that lay in between Ben’s bouncing feet. “Where did those-”
Mark stopped speaking when he noticed more dollar bills – and a few fives, even a ten – stuffed into Ben’s khakis. That asshole was bringing props into his parody.
“We’re not here to see your cardio, dude, get off the table so we don’t spill our fuckin’ drinks,” Sid yelled, but Ben didn’t hear, or at least made no indication that he did.
Oscar’s full afro tickled Mark when he leaned over to speak to him. “Does Ben look skinnier to you guys?”
“He’s dancing so fuckin’ hard he’s burning the fat right off.”
Ben started fondling his gut again, giggling with true mirth. Then, as all the men at the table watched, his hands pushed the ring of fat up – and up, and up, to unnatural heights. Like an inner tube moving up someone’s body. The donut shape moved up out of Ben’s stomach and into his chest region, leaving his waist narrow and stomach flat.
“What the fuck-”
“Did anyone just see that…”
“B-Ben, dude!”
The fat was re-proportioning itself around Ben’s body. The bulbous, misshapen collection of lard flushed itself out of Ben’s neck and chin and gathered around his shoulders. Nobody at work had ever seen Ben’s face without any fat – he was, in the blink of an eye, rendered unrecognizable. The squinty eyes were now round, framed by pointy cheekbones. His mouth was prettier and his nose had a bridge. And, finally, he had a chin and a jaw.
“Unnnnghh!” Nobody could hear Ben’s pleasured moans over the music, but they could see his mouth opening and his tongue lolling about inside of it – and there was no missing the growing wet spot at the front of his pants.
Steven literally fell out of his chair and sprawled across the floor, staring upward in confused horror. Oscar and Mark leaned back as far as they could, dumbstruck. No one could look away.
Ben’s flat stomach, worming like a belly dancer’s, was now rippling with new definition. The dose of physical activity had taken the gut directly down to a shredded eight-pack, the bottom two abdominals running down into the dollar bills, framed by parenthetical obliques. Ben ran his fingers over the grooves of his stomach, feeling the deep indents of his abs. The mottled grape-like shapes of his serratus were bobbing like the waves of a choppy sea.
Nathaniel took a button right between the eyes. It had popped off Ben’s polo as the fat had hardened into a solid set of pecs, hard as steel, then thickened into a far larger size than his moobs had ever been. The open collar showed off his clavicle and the way the pecs separated symmetrically underneath it, the deep divide between them puckered with striated muscle. Ben’s hard nipples were poking shapes in his shirt. Like needles, they soon tore through the cheap cotton, pushed out by the square shapes behind them. Ben flexed his pecs and began popping them up and down for his audience, caressing them with his big hands. Fingers that had looked like mini sausages were now long and thick. Ben’s forearms were normally so fat they had rubber-band rings of fat around them, but now they were thick and big, like a ham hock, each individual vein popping with precision.
Ben curled his arm up to his face and gave a flex. A bicep as big as a melon burst through the sleeve, supported by a thickly-knotted tricep that stuck out of his arm like a shelf. His tongue licked the giant vein that bisected his upper arm. Shreds of red fabric fluttered to the table, but by the time they landed, they were dollar bills.
Sid was noticing that Ben didn’t jiggle anymore. The dancing body looked hard and fit, and was now far too large for the tight clothes it sported. Ben’s pectorals were working their way through the collar of his shirt. The bottom of the polo was stuck in between the cracks of his abs. His crotch distended outward in a huge pouch, moving in perfect tandem with his ass. The khaki pants were too short on Ben’s new, leggier frame, and as Sid watched, they shrank up to Ben’s knees, then his mid-thigh, getting tighter as they went. Quadriceps and hamstrings fleshed out of the tight little shorts. Ben threw his head back as he groped his nipples and yanked on them. His body gleamed like he’d just stepped out of the shower.
“Holy fuck.”
It was inconsequential who said it – they were all thinking it. Ten grown men had been rendered completely speechless. Sid was the only one able to tear his eyes away long enough to see the row of stupefied faces staring up at Ben.
Or the guy who had once been Ben. The beefcake archetype dancing gleefully atop the table was not Ben – he couldn’t be. His face was still sharpening – cheekbones and a jaw that looked made from solid diamond, with a smile as white as sunlight. His waist was small but flared up into a wide, flawless upper body, pecs and arms of equal size. Every muscle pulsed with its own life, the veins highlighting the years of work that had to have been poured into the creation of such perfect symmetry. He looked like a magazine cover, a porn star. His big feet were covered by a small hill of dollar bills, the remains of what had once been the clothes that his muscles had exploded through. All that was left on his body was a red g-string bundled around his dick – the last part of his body to get hit with growth, sprouting into a long sexual python.
Sid and Mark had been so distracted by the muscles fitting themselves to Ben that they only noticed his hair at the end, and by that point it was already altered: as blonde as was expected, what with his crisply-tanned skin and bleached teeth. The short blond spikes were gelled to his head and gleamed in the light, like plastic hair on a mannequin or action figure.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to our newest dancer, Ken Doll!”
If the co-workers hadn’t been horrified, they would’ve laughed. It was a perfect stripper name, and it fit Ken like a skintight Speedo. He was a 6’2” Ken doll with a beating heart underneath his shiny, smooth skin.
Ken dropped to his knees gracefully, then stretched his muscled body out across the table. He humped and smiled. Ken’s booty shot up in the air and then back down, over and over. “C’mon guys! Dance with me! Don’t be such stiffs…”
The sexy voice coming out of Ken was not Ben’s. All the men had to hear was that baritone – and the implications of what it was saying – to get them scattering away from the table like roaches.
Robby, the most quiet and reserved of the group, was the first to head for the door. He reached it and stood there, standing, hesitant to go out. It didn’t feel right to go out. Robby wasn’t sure what was holding him back, but he could not make himself leave. He needed to stay. He was right where he needed to be, in fact…the door was safe because he could leave immediately if things got weirder, but he was still technically inside the club. Er…bar. Whatever.
Mark, Sid, Nathaniel and most of the guys could see Robby standing by the door, just hanging out. They all stared anxiously, feeling, for inexplicable reasons, that it was Robby’s job to leave first. He had to set the precedent, and then they’d follow. But Robby wasn’t leaving. He was even in the opening sentences of a conversation with a short, beefy guy in a black tank who wouldn’t stop flexing his pecs. Robby seemed to really be enjoying the chat – he was laughing and smiling, forgetting why he’d been freaked out in the first place. Soon he had his arm around the guy, slapping him fraternally on the back. The other guys wondered what they could be talking about that would get Robby so animated – most of them had never even seen him smile. He was a somber guy, not unpleasant, but mostly deadpan.
A stacked blonde girl walked through the door and showed her ID to Robby, who took it with a chuckle and waved her through. From across the room, Mark laughed for a moment along with Robby – that dumb bimbo thought bookish little Robby was a doorman.
Robby and the actual doorman, the stocky boulder of a man in the black tank, were laughing about it. The officemates could hear Robby’s deep, loud laugh booming through the bar. A line was forming out the door and Robby was handed another ID – a flat-chested girl with eyebrows that needed to be tweezed. Robby shook his head ‘no’, she wasn’t on the list and would have to go to the back of the line.
It wasn’t until Robby was handed a third ID and had to turn around to shine more light on it – it was getting oddly dark inside the bar – that the group of Mark, Sid and Nathaniel could see that Robby had sprouted a silky five o’clock shadow, black as night, covering his jaw and lower cheeks. His eyes flicked upward and made contact with the group, and he smiled broadly.
“Oh sh-sh-sh…” Mark couldn’t get the word ‘shit’ out before they all saw Robby shoot up like a cornstalk, growing a half-foot, so tall that the other bouncer was only level with Robby’s middle chest. Robby expressed no fear, laughing heartily instead.
The black of Robby’s whiskers ran up into his light hair and quickly deepened the color dark as pitch. The men were too far away to see the new waves in Robby’s hair, or the surprising thickness of the follicles – but they could see the short, basic style growing out long and sleek, black waves hanging down to Robby’s shoulders. The light shining on Robby’s dark, dense hair made it glisten with blue highlights.
It was a struggle for Robby to stand up straight now, with so much extra height to deal with. He had to consciously pull his spine up high and roll his shoulders back, planting his feet wider so that he wouldn’t topple over. With his chest high and proud, it was easier for Robby to notice how small his clothes felt. He reached down, down, down to pick out his wedgie, and pull on the hem of his shirt to cover his stomach.
The doorman in the black tank ascertained that Robby was distracted, and stepped in to check the IDs that people kept offering the taller man. Robby took a step back and right then, his chest swelled up like a pair of balloons. The hem of his shirt rose from its already too-short navel length, to barely being able to cover the underside of his pecs. Not only did Robby’s pecs round out at the bottom, hanging as far outward as they did downward, but they assumed the same shape up top, the muscles swelling past his collarbone and almost looking like a ledge for his chin. The collar of his shirt shredded over the two boulders but sank in loosely in the middle, over the deep cleft of his pecs. These muscles weren’t square and flat like Ken’s, but solid cinderblocks hanging from Robby’s shoulders.
Shoulders that had no choice but to grow just to accommodate the size of the chest below them. It looked like Robby was shaking back and forth, but that was only because of his shoulders bulking up huge and broad. The stages flew by fast: emaciated boniness, to a normal man’s breadth, well past that into serious bodybuilder territory. The delts exploding through the sleeves were as big as bowling balls and just as hard. The traps stretching out the width of Robby’s shoulders looked broad enough to be used as a bench to lay down on.
Modest to the end, Robby was still pulling on his shirt, trying to cover up the bulging masses of flesh that were ripping through. He pulled on the bottom of the shirt and it stretched out like taffy down to the waist of his jeans. He awkwardly pulled the tear over his chest back together, and it buttoned itself before popping back open. Adjusting the tears around his neck made a collar sprout.
Thicker and thicker he grew. The other guys couldn’t not watch. Robby’s baggy pants now looked like leggings on his massive legs – his ass wasn’t a booty, it was just solid shredded muscle, dimpled glutes so large they folded over the fabric in spots. It took some long moments before the growth of Robby’s shirt spread downward and made his pants start fitting again. This Robby couldn’t be a quiet desk-dweller, he had to like squatting as much as he liked to breathe, or eat. It was the only way to develop the Redwoods that supported his mass. And the deadlift was second nature, it was what made his back flare out like the wings of a jet plane, and his arms swell as large as his head, pulling the shiny silver sleeves of his paisley shirt tight. Robby leaned back and had to tuck his shirt in underneath the swollen sphere of his stomach, each ab pushing against the metallic fabric like a brick in a wall. The thick veins spreading over his chest, arms and shoulders made him itch, but not as much as the curly black hair that was growing evenly over his formerly-smooth body.
The shirt struck the other men as obnoxiously flashy – like something from a ‘70s film, paisley swirls on fabric as shiny as a disco ball, four buttons open to show off the pecs and shoulders. Robby was trying to button it back up, but he was just too big, this massive beast of a bodybuilder with muscles twice as large as most men dared to dream of attaining. He walked back further into the bar, in his own little world, moving his attention to the fly that his swollen cock was pushing apart. “Fuckin’ button flies,” he muttered, having difficulty getting his thick fingers underneath the metal buttons.
The light let Mark see Robby’s face – the same face as always, just cross-bred with jarhead and dosed with HGH. And more hormones seemed to seep in as Mark watched, changing Robby from a mousy milquetoast into a titan. The bridge of his nose popped out and grew out with a large bump, pushing his eyes further apart on his face. Cheekbones squared off and pushed out to run parallel with the dense stubble on Robby’s jutting jaw. Eyebrows that had been practically invisible to the naked eye were now two black caterpillars, separated by only a few centimeters. A small mouth became wide, full, framed by a smear of whiskers. Even his temples squared up along with his jaw and freshly-dimpled chin.
Mark thought a light had burnt out above Robby, before realizing that Robby’s porcelain skin was now a crisp, burnt cinammon, darker than any white person could ever tan. It made his muscles stand out obscenely, the whites of his eyes and teeth glittering against the silver shirt and brown skin. A gold necklace, with a crescent moon and star pendant, gleamed from the center of his chest, surrounded by dark hair.
The hulking bodybuilder headed straight for the group of men that had just watched him transform. They tried to run, but his strides were too long for them to be able to get much distance. “’scuse me,” the giant said, his shirt smoothly sliding against Mark’s skin as he tried to squeeze by. “Time for prayers.”
Mark watched Rabih head for the back room of the bar, the musclebound Arab’s back shoving people out of the way all on its own. Rabih had to pray fast – there were IDs to check and fights to break up, but he’d mastered the timing by now and would be back working the door within minutes.