I have to admit I spent a while wallowing in self-pity, just laying there overflowing that strange bed, staring at the ceiling. After I while, though, even the most morose teenager will get disgusted with his own self-victimization. To get my mind of the whole blowing-up-barns thing, I tried to distract myself with the other side of what had happened to me: my new body.

I stuffed a pillow behind my head and gazed down at my bod. It seemed to stretch away from me almost comically, but it was real. I could feel every inch of it, the weight and warmth of it, from the little itch on the crown of my scalp to the feel of my feet planted on the ground beyond the bed. I raised them up so my legs were straight. My feet were still huge, and they were still mud-caked and scuffed (though not cut anywhere) from last night's cross-country sprint. I was feeling a little sticky all over. Normally my sweat was barely noticeable, but this morning it was stickier, more pungent. I lifted my left arm to give my armpit a sniff, and quickly jerked my head away.

My arm was still raised, and now I was looking at it, examining it as if it were something new and strange to me, which, hey, it was. It was my arm, I guess—the skin, the general shape, the very light swath of hair on the forearms looked right. I checked with my other hand for the little mole that had always been near the top of my left arm on the back. It was there. But the arm itself looked like it had been pulled in a taffy machine, then reformed and beefed up. Tentatively I flexed the bicep. Up until yesterday, I'd only ever done this to prove to myself what a simp I was, 'cause nothing had ever happened—it had just sat there, like a lazy dog that wouldn't sit up. Now, though, Rover was sitting up, and somebody'd been feeding him 'cause Rover'd gotten big. I checked out other muscles—biceps, triceps, pecs, legs—and found the same thing: When I woke these muscles up and flexed them, they expanded and firmed to unexpectedly large sizes. My new height and lankiness had dominated my initial impressions, but overshadowed by my stature was a hell of a latent beef quotient, at least for me, the original 150-pound wuss. Yet, as I looked myself over, I still looked well-proportioned. Not a muscle guy but an athlete, or a gymnast. I'd always liked the gymnasts, especially the Germans and the Russians who trained to get perfect pecs for the rings and pommel horse. Though I'd never seen a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall gymnast before.

Through all of this my cock had been slowly waking up from a pleasant drowse, and my inspection had become increasingly erotic, as I caressed the firmness of my pecs or experienced the entirely new feeling of having ab muscles. My cock uncurled from its sleeping position and crawled, in a fairly leisurely manner, up my newfound abs, pumping up like a Ball Park hot dog. Damn it was big. Now this was a development I could definitely appreciate. As it firmed to full hardness I wrapped both my oversized paws around it, and there was still room for another hand. I grinned down at it, and it stared up at me, still filling out, gently pushing my fists open. I was wondering idly how long it was, when another measurement occurred to me: the head was only about five inches from my mouth.

Naturally, I did what any guy would have done: I leaned forward and went to town. At first I sucked enthusiastically, slurping the head and the top few inches as I stroked the rest of the shaft, then I slowed into a very erotic rhythm that lasted I don't know how long. I was amazed at how much I loved the feeling of having a cock in my mouth. It was big and wide, filling my mouth in a beautiful way that just turned me all the way on. And it was my cock, so I was getting double pleasure—except I think it was more than double. If I hadn't just come I don't think I would have lasted at all; as it was, I don't think it took very long before I felt another huge surge of cum welling up and then shooting through my long shaft, blasting deep into my throat. I choked, sputtering, and hauled the stiff pole out of my mouth. It continued spitting burning-hot cum all over my face, before finally it subsided. The hot cum felt good on my face. I could feel it was hot enough to burn me, but I wasn't getting burned. The towel was still beside me; I lazily rubbed most of the cum off my face and cast it aside. My cock softened slightly in my hands, and I let it rest on my abs, one hand still wrapped partway around it. I drifted off into a doze.

When I awoke the light in the room had changed. The sun had passed into afternoon, and sunlight was now streaming through the sliding glass door. I yawned, sated and content, my troubles forgotten. I felt sticky all over from cum and sweat. A shower would feel good.

I sat up in the bed, feeling a little disoriented, and rose to my feet—and cracked my head on the ceiling. Shit! I drew my head back and turned to look at the white-painted plaster. It was right in my face. I straightened up all the way and had to stoop my head. I was well over eight feet tall.

I looked down at my body. It looked the same. Maybe it was filled out a bit more, not very noticeably, just a few accents here and there. My shoulders looked a little broader. Out of curiosity I reached into the back of my mind and felt the energy flow. To my dismay, it was now greatly accelerated. It felt like it had when I first noticed it, when it was building toward the accident in the barn.

What to do? Clothes. I started looking for clothes. One of the closets contained some uniforms and some civilian clothes. None of them, of course, were my size. I felt like I was looking through a clearance table at the Gap—nothing but Smalls. At last I found a pair of extra-loose looking uniform pants. I pulled them on. Because I was so lanky I could wear them—in fact the waist on the slacks was a tad too big—but I was so tall the hem of the pants rode just below my knees. I'd turned another man's pants into baggy Bermudas. An XXL tee-shirt similar exposed my midriff. Shoes would be impossible, but on the other hand I didn't seem to need them.

I sat on the edge of the bed, pondering my next move, as I adjusted my sausage in the unaccustomed restriction of the pants. If I was going to "blow" again I had to get out of there. But I also really needed to wash up. I was uncomfortable and I stank, not altogether unpleasantly (but still), of semen.

I stood up suddenly (remembering just in time not to stand up all the way) and walked over to the door, unlocked it and went out. It was a fine day, warm and pleasant after last night's storm. I walked slowly around the house until I found what I was looking for: a garden hose, hooked up on the back side of the little building. Quickly I undressed, feeling a strange and unpleasant sense of déjà vu as I set my new clothes aside—carefully, on a crate near the door. Then I proceeded to give myself an invigorating shower with the garden hose's startlingly powerful sprayer attachment.

I'd been cleansing myself for several minutes before I noticed I had an audience. Three hikers had emerged from the forest onto the upper observation deck and, having rounded the corner of the main building in the spirit of exploration, had discovered me. They were now watching me with great interest. There were two guys and a girl, college age. One of the guys was wearing a sweatshirt that said LASALLE, the community college in Torrence. The girl and one of the guys were regarding me with frank admiration, but the other guy, the one in the sweatshirt, had the furrowed brow of someone disturbed by the unexpected presence of a freak, like he'd happened on Jeffrey Dahmer at the local McDonald's, tucking into a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

The first guy looked familiar. With a sinking feeling I suddenly realized I knew him. He was my friend Pete's older bother, Todd. He did go to LaSalle. I'd caught him checking out my older brother Mick a couple times (Mick's a year older than me and an absolutely typical high school football jock—'nuff said), so I'd always known what planet he was from. In fact, I'd hoped to get up the nerve to talk to him about being gay. Todd, though, obviously did not recognize me. I wondered about that. I'd certainly changed a lot. Plus he wasn't really looking at my face.

Between that and the second guy looking at me like I was literally a pile of shit I was pretty unnerved. I stood rooted to the spot, my mind a blank. I should have just dashed inside, but in spite of everything that had happened to me I reverted right to that same deer-in-the-headlights auto-response that had gotten the crap beaten out of me four times since grade school.

The sweatshirt guy took a step forward. "So who are you supposed to be, Bigfoot?" We both glanced down at my feet. They did look large even for my new size. We looked up again simultaneously, and he said, "I guess so."

The other two were both looking at him as if he'd suddenly started speaking in Finnish. "Cameron..." the girl said. She was pretty, with long blond hair and a pink sweater. She looked almost anachronistic, like she'd stepped out of a hygiene short from the sixties about good girls who had emery boards with them at all times. In fact she looked a lot like Olivia Newton-John in the first half of "Grease."

Cameron followed my glance and realized I was looking at what I'm sure he referred to as "his girl." An ugly anger transfigured his face. "Hey! Don't you look at her!" He took another, more menacing step toward me. Todd grabbed his arm and told him to stop acting like a fool. (Later I wondered whether he mean that Cameron was behaving like an infant, or that it was suicidal to go up against an eight-and-a-half-foot tall stranger who was built like a gym rat to boot. Upon consideration after the event his behavior didn't perplex me too much, when I realized that he was simply scared of his girlfriend getting attention from someone who "brought more to the party" than he did. At the time, though, I was flabbergasted.)

Cameron shook him off and then, without warning, charged me like an enraged rhino.

And like someone on the receiving end of a rhino charge I stood gibbering like a mental defective. It must have been through pure luck that one synapse fired in my brain—the synapse that was frantically trying to remind me I was still holding the hose sprayer.

I squeezed the trigger and blasted him in the face. He floundered, spluttering, and stopped his advance. Roused by my success I twisted the nozzle from "spray" to "stream" and blasted him again, this time with a concentrated jet of water so powerful it must have really stung. This time he started spouting obscenities and tried to get out of the spray, but I kept it on him. I was getting angry in my turn.

"I'm gonna slaughter you, you freak!" raved the idiot.

"Bite me!" I answered, by way of witty riposte. (Sitcoms to the contrary, teenagers usually don't think of clever backtalk until the next day, sad to say. An hour later at the earliest, but it amounts to the same thing.)

I was getting really angry. I advanced toward him now, which was a big mistake. As I moved the spray around his face he got one eye open, enough to judge distances. Without wasting a second he leapt forward and slapped the sprayer out of my grasp with one hand and lunged toward me with the other.

Now I was really pissed. Scared, too, but being able to look down on this guy made me more angry than scared. I grabbed his head with my big right hand, palming it like a basketball. At first I just held him at bay, but thanks to the combination of leverage and strength I was able to force him to his knees. His arms were flailing viciously the whole time, but mine was so long I was completely out of reach. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" I bellowed. And then I felt it—the surge of raw power had been welling up in me without my paying it any attention. It was suffusing me now, coursing through me, and before I could yank myself away I imparted some kind of electric jolt to Cameron. As I pulled back, appalled, I saw sparks dancing in his wet hair. He collapsed, eyes open but unconscious.

"Shit!" I swore. I heard Sandra Dee say "What did you do to him?" but I barely noticed. I turned to the other two, about to tell them to run away; but Cameron couldn't run. I had to make a break for it. I bolted into the woods, speeding through the trees as fast as I could. Only a few seconds passed before the power inside me had built up too far for me to hold back any more. I burst screaming into a small clearing and then—everything went white.

I came to a little while later and looked around. Several of the trees near me were reeling back from me at crazy angles, partly uprooted. Dirt and dust hung in the air, stinging my eyes. Birds were scolding me angrily from a safe distance.

I felt spent. I made my way wearily back to the cabin and hid near the edge of the forest.

The three hikers were still there. Cameron was awake, struggling to his feet, mouthing off about me. The girlfriend was still trying to figure out what had happened. Cameron, amidst a flood of expletives, said he'd been "zapped." Todd suggested that maybe a nerve had been pinched when I pushed him down. I don't think he believed it, but the others seemed to. He asked if the others had heard that scream, and they said they had. Cameron suggested hopefully that it might have been me falling into a pit that went straight to hell.

The girlfriend wanted nothing more to do with this place, and the others were inclined to agree. Still, as I watched fretfully from my hiding spot, I noticed Todd lagged behind the others a little. He was scanning the forest, looking for me. Suddenly his eyes met mine. We exchanged glances for a long moment. It was a quiet moment, the two of us separated by thirty feet, no one else in sight. I saw his eyebrows go up; even as I was wondering if he'd recognized me he mouthed my name, Hank, in an amazed query.

I closed my eyes, willing the moment to end. I heard Todd's friends calling to him. When I opened my eyes he was gone.

Continued in Shockwaves 4