Lophiformes Elapidae Cordyceps

A batch of contaminated eggs cause a series of strange mutations. Explicit, body horror.

T-0:30 to Patient Zero; six eggs remain.

 

Alice pushed open one of the few remaining cartons of eggs. The last one had two that were chipped, but these seemed all in order, except for one of the eggs which was smaller than the others by a centimeter or so and sitting at an angle to all the rest. Alice picked up the exceptional egg. It weighed fine in her hand and there were no marks or otherwise to hint that it was damaged.

Maybe then it was a sudden spasm of her hand, or she had misestimated the strength of the egg, but whatever the reason, the shell cracked open. She expected a mess of white and yolk to drip down her hand, but what oozed between her fingers was an opaque, sticky, whitish substance. Alice shook her arm and wiggled her hand and spread her fingers but the white goo only bounced and rippled and stayed stuck fast to her hand.

"Ugh!" Alice groaned. She wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. The goo was slorching around her fingers and stuck to her hand even when she tried to scrape it off.

Alice tried to close her mouth but her tongue was hanging out. It wouldn't fit back inside, and now her face was screwed up into a half-comical, brow-furrowed scowl. The skin of her hand soaked up the egg-goo like a sponge sucking up water.

"Whut? Wuth happening?" Alice's head darted from side to side, twisting on an elongating neck. Other shoppers could see her, but they stood silently or crept away through the aisles.

"Thumwuh helph me!" she said around her longer, darker, pointed tongue.

A blast of pain like a steel bar driven into her spine hit her and she lost her balance. She nearly fell, but she caught herself on the racks. The talons swelling from her fingers pushed cartons of eggs onto the floor, smashing open, pooling slick egg whites around her shoes. Her heels tore through the backs of her shoes, rising into the air, lanky and full of sinew that bulged beneath her pale skin. Her spine pushed against her skin, each vertebra sticking against her shirt as the fabric flowed between them, torn into widening holes by her growing back and thickening spines.

Her yellowed, bloodshot eyes spread open. She roared and twisted her body and twisted the metal racks she held onto. The metal was cardboard beneath her fingers, twisted into the shape of her fists. Her tongue wriggled at the end of her longer snout, her pink flesh still wrinkled, her lips frozen into a permanent sneer.

Her elongated feet already pitched her legs into a crouch, so when her legs themselves grew, her posture only worsened. Her growing spine forced her into a severe hunch, pushing her hands with her spindly fingers and thick knuckles to the ground without having to bend over.

Her breasts hung beneath her chest, swollen and fleshy and tender and tipped with swollen nipples like some dog in heat.

The ten-foot beast with a two-foot neck swiveled her head. Drool slipped down her tongue, splashing from the tip as her head snapped from one side to the other. Her slit-like nostrils flared and she let out an inarticulate growl. Her gait was slumped, walking on her knuckles, the bony spines jutting from her back swaying from side to side.

Ryan had held his phone steady to get a good shot, but now that the creature was coming toward him, he was trembling and backing away. What was worst about it wasn't the monstrous size, the huge maw, or the spindly, sinewy limbs. It was in the skull and shoulders and hands and feet, the unmistakable markers of humanity which made the savagery all the more terrifying.

What had been Alice roared and lunged forward. Ryan stumbled backward and dropped his phone and tripped over his own legs. Her claws scooped him up, raising him up to the beast's mouth. Her tongue felt almost rubbery against his skin. The touch made him shudder and squirm but her hands held him tight.

The claws tightened around him and he screamed and kicked, thinking he might be torn apart, when in reality, it was only his clothes being shredded.

"Let me go!" he yelled, but the beast no longer understood nor cared to understand speech. She shoved Ryan between her legs, where he sunk into her crotch, pushing into her gaping folds but still wriggling violently.

Ryan gritted his teeth and tried to pull away but he was held tight and...and he was starting to feel good. His eyelids fluttered and his mouth hung open. His hips rolled lazily, pushing his shaft into the monster's pussy. She was warm and comfortable and he fit in her so well. He leaned his head against her and closed his eyes and went to sleep. A blanket of flesh wrapped around him and he slipped into pleasant oblivion. His body was broken down until just a thin sheet of flesh, covering the creature's stomach and groin, remained. Her stomach slowly bloated, swollen, hanging between her legs, as the seed which had once been his body flooded her womb.

 

T+34:20 since Patient Zero; five eggs remain. Local police on initial scene, federal authorities notified.

 

Sure, it meant she cared for him, but Michael was tired of his mom deciding whether or not to pack him lunch every day. He was a senior, damn it. Next year he'd be buying his own meals at college, but she still insisted on packing up a lunchbox when the school lunch wasn't healthy enough for her standards.

His lunchbox didn't explain away the fact that he sat alone at lunch but it definitely made a good scapegoat. He sulked behind the purple box that smelled like cold cuts and stale ice packs, picking at the shell of the hard boiled egg his mom had packed.

Maybe if he finished early he could sneak off to the library and read. Or get his homework done so he wouldn't have to bother tonight.

He bit into the egg and his teeth squeaked against the rubbery white. Where was the yolk? Whatever, just a weird egg, he figured. He swallowed messily and stuffed the rest into his mouth in a sudden bout of hunger. In the midst of zipping up his lunch box, a sudden dizzy spell struck him, the floor wobbled beneath his feet and he plopped back into the chair.

Michael ran his palm over his forehead and combed his fingers through his hair, fighting back the lightheadedness. A few dark strands floated onto the table. He looked at them, then ruffled his hair briefly. At least seven more hairs drifted down from his scalp. Oh, god. He wasn't going bald, was he? Just what he needed to be, an eighteen year old outcast with a receding hairline.

His heart hammered against his ribs twice and Michael's hands drooped to his sides. His legs relaxed, spread lazily. He felt sluggish and weak and tired and could hardly tell why. Maybe he was going to pass out, he thought. There was a pressure beneath him, the feeling of something sliding underneath his ass, spurring him to lift himself and allow the fleshy tail to roll down along one of the legs of his shorts.

The tail wasn't right and shouldn't have been there but the cafeteria was swimming before his eyes and he felt like he was going to faint into his lunchbox. His shirt hung loosely on his dwindling shoulders, and webbed, pale, primordial skin clung to the underside of his arms running all the way to his armpits. His hands were numb, he couldn't move his fingers, and his feet no longer sat inside his shoes.

Michael's eyes rolled back to the white. His body, thickening and narrowing into a more cylindrical form, could no longer sit on the chair. He flopped off to the side and landed on the floor with a meaty smack, drawing attention from the wider cafeteria.

His face twisted as he tried to push himself to his feet. He found two problems with this: he had no arms, and he had no feet. His eyes refocused, slit like a snake's, an albino red. His hair came out in clumps. While he went steadily bald, his body twisted and thrashed with a serpentine dexterity and a growing rage. His shorts were gone, pushed off by his growing tail, and his shirt had ripped open around his transformed torso.

Michael's body thickened with muscle, but it was rounder, smoother, uneven but cylindrical, and completely unlike a human's musculature. The only parts of him that still looked human were his head and his flesh, the latter being pinkish, blotchy, occasionally cut across with a bluish squiggle of a vein. Someone was leaning in close to him and he couldn't see who it was. Instinctively, he lunged, landing hard on the floor but startling the student enough to send her running and screaming. There were more screams from elsewhere. The cafeteria was becoming loud and the sound pounded against Michael's ears and infuriated him.

What had been Michael reared back and hissed violently. Flaps of skin stretched from his neck, catching the light, translucent like the thin flesh of an ear. His hood curled as he rose into the air, nearly ten feet off the ground. He came down onto the floor with a loud slam. The cafeteria was nearly empty now, but the others...but the humans were running and screaming and struck right at the hunting instinct buried within his animal mind.

The great fleshy snake-beast crashed through the cafeteria doors, flowing down the hall like a wave of terror. There was screaming and running but one young woman stood transfixed. Michael had known her. Lily was one of the few girls at school—one of the few people at school—who had actually talked with Michael. He had considered her a friend, which was a high honor coming from him.

In those glassy eyes staring at her and the twisted scrawl of his face, there was only a dull recognition. This wasn't like the other humans. This one was a thing that he wanted.

Lily had only gotten out a half-stammered "Michael?" before the creature's tail snapped around her and she felt as if she was being squeezed from all sides. A thick, slimy secretion with the smell of rubbing alcohol crossed with stomach acid burned straight through her clothes. She could feel as she was rocked from side to side as the creature moved, but couldn't see where they were going.

Then a cock was grinding against her ass. She had no idea where it had come from, as the creature's body had been featureless, lumpy, but all a smooth, tapered cone of powerful flesh. She learned where it came from when another shaft emerged, budding and swelling out of the creature's very skin in front of her, forcing her jaw open. She had little choice, bound and trapped within the creature's coils, but to take it.

First there had just been the two but there were three now, one for each orifice, pumping into her all at the same time, like some massive heartbeat her body was being forcibly attuned to. A rush of pungent cum flooded her mouth and she twisted but was caught between the shafts. Her eyes rolled back. She was starting to like this. She welcomed the feeling of her nipples gaping open, taking in another pair of shafts, letting more cum flood into her, more overflowing around her, more openings forming for the creature's shafts as her mind grew dull and her body gaped open to be filled.

On the outside, she was little more than a knot in the creature's coils, a thick bulge that was slowly being sealed over with flesh. She was like a grain of sand inside of an oyster, or a piece of coal in the fiery heart of the earth—an annoyance transmuted into a precious thing. Something to be treasured. But only a thing, nothing more.

 

T+1:10:15 since Patient Zero; four eggs remain

Jason knew that there had been something strange with that sandwich. Bacon, egg and cheese? More like bacon, egg, cheese and rat poison. Maybe antifreeze? Whatever it was it was his fucking bitch wife probably after his money, he knew it. If she doesn't sign a prenup she's after your cash—that's what he always told everyone and he was too stupid to take his own advice because he thought he loved her and now she was trying to poison him.

"Call a medical team!"

His secretary looked up at her boss stomping out of his office, her eyebrows arched higher than usual.

"What the hell are you waiting for? I want a helicopter to meet me on the roof, now," he said.

"Okay, sir," his secretary said. She nodded and watched him leave, clutching his gut, before putting in the call.

At least there'd be his will, he thought. He leaned against the wall, then propped himself up, pushing toward the elevator. His wife would contest the will, but at least there was something. Make her work for it.

Jason's legs crumpled beneath him.

"Shit!"

The whole firm probably heard that. And they figured Jason was having another fit and were desperately hoping the man who was a role model for asshole lawyers wouldn't try to vent on them.

For once, it wasn't his firm's incompetence, though. It was the pain in his groin.

His wife was the only woman he knew who could kick someone in the balls without being there, he thought through clenched teeth. He clutched at his dwindling shaft and his swollen balls and cringed and grit his teeth until they squeaked together. He was back on his feet, limping but moving, inside the elevator, pushing the button for the top floor and falling to the elevator floor.

He needed to get to the helipad. He needed to get to the roof. He needed up. Up. UP.

He blinked violently to clear his vision. His chest rose and fell quickly, his voice was torn, but he still cursed under his breath.

A pair of breasts blossomed underneath his suit and lifted his coat with their growing girth. A few expletives passed his lips at the prickling tenderness of his swollen nipples, then he grabbed at his shirt and pulled it open. There they were, rounded, perky, the sort of rack he'd love to see on a woman.

On top of having breasts, his flesh looked green—not just the pale green of being sick, but a vibrant, glossy, wet sort of green. His hair vanished beneath a membrane that was growing down across his head, a sticky purple mass of flesh that covered his ears, inching down toward his brow.

The elevator chimed when it reached the top floor. Jason pushed himself to his feet, wobbling as he walked forward with a body made for gracefully swaying hips. His oversized balls jostled between his thighs, draining their contents into his body. By now, he only had a pair of soft folds sitting above those balls.

He had to get up to the helipad. He had to get up. He had to up. Up, up up up up up up up.

There were three flights of stairs between the elevator and the rooftop. He'd made it up one flight when he felt his legs grow weak, but he caught himself on the railing and propped himself up.

"Holy shit," he hissed between his teeth. His thighs were so tender the pants he wore chafed and made them sore; he squirmed and dropped his pants but his underwear too was irritating his skin so he tossed that aside as well. Finally he felt—she felt okay, with a hand buried into her sopping wet folds.

Echoing through her body, she could hear a starchy stretching sound like vines being twisted. She grabbed the railing with one hand, then another; another hand grasped at a breast and the fourth was between her legs.

With four arms she had enough hands to focus on tending to her immensely aching pussy while still pulling herself up along the railing.

Jason, or what had been him, stumbled out into the light he could feel on his face. He couldn't see the sunlight; the purple fleshy membrane had crept down over his eyes and his nose, leaving only his mouth distinct on his otherwise featureless head.

There was nowhere further up to go, so the urge to climb subsided. Now she needed a place where the wind was strong. She had no idea why but thinking and reasons were secondary. Blindly, swollen breasts wobbling like water balloons, all four arms outstretched, she followed the wind, tearing off the last bits of clothing that still clung to her.

Her feet splashed into a puddle and her pores soaked up the water. Wordlessly, her mouth moved as the stretching, crunching sound filled her body again. A new pair of breasts, as large as the first had been, and slowly swelling bigger. Another pair of arms, six in all now, moving naturally.

Euphoria flooded through her as she felt her stomach start to bulge. Fertilized by her own seed, her stomach sagged gently, visibly swelling and showing no signs of slowing. Five of six arms (the last still pleasuring herself) reached out into the wind. They dug against the metal grate, tearing screws from their threads and wrenching the vent open. The air filter shared the same fate, pulled out and tossed aside. She stood where the wind was strongest, in front of the intake for the air conditioning system.

Her face was an amorphous mass now, swallowed up by the membrane, still shaped like a head but missing any features, like a poor simplification of the human form. Her legs were no longer separate, nor could they move. She had grown rooted to the roof.

Of her six arms, four of them moved to her breasts, squeezing and pinching, coaxing them to swell thicker, to jut out further, to fill with that mass that made them warm and ache to be touched even more. The last two arms took her belly and her pussy, one stroking the distended pregnant stomach bulging from her body, the other keeping the steady supply of sexual bliss flowing. The only instinct left in her rudimentary nervous system was to grow.

Jason's private helicopter wobbled down onto the helipad. The paramedic climbed down the steps of the pad, glancing around the roof, which looked deserted from his point of view.

"I'm going in to look for him," he said into his radio. "Roger that," the pilot's voice crackled back.

He gave one last look around the roof as he reached the stairwell, and spotted a human figure, hunched over slightly and rocking back and forth, in front of the air conditioning system.

"Hey!" he shouted, jogging toward them. He blinked a few times as he came closer. Two elbows—no, three, five, six? He slowed to a walk, jaw loose as he walked around the fungal...thing with its six arms and grossly swollen stomach and breasts, almost human but moving without any sign of intelligence.

The creature that had been Jason trembled. It was so close. Every impulse was being gathered, synchronized, combined into a single waveform. The stretched flesh around her strained breasts and stomach creaked. There was a moment of infinite bliss wrapped around her consciousness, and then it was snuffed out, reduced to that simple, singular wave rippling into existence, dead and reborn.

The creature's skin exploded open and thick purple haze swirled into the air, most of it sucked up by the air vent. The paramedic reeled backwards, coughing violently, the bitter taste of spores filling his throat.

Twenty minutes later, as a military helicopter passed over the building, there were approximately twenty-five figures on the roof, standing along the edge and rocking back and forth.

 

T+15:33:04 and counting since Patient Zero; three eggs remain.

Quarantine radius currently 200 miles.