ASTERWICK 06 - 1982 (Patreon)

07.17.82 – 6:04 p.m.

Ash Lake – Northwest of Asterwick, OR

Jennifer Blake              --Current: 5’7” 110 lbs

Michelle Mendoza      --Current: 5’5” 132 lbs

Stephanie Rhodes     --Current: 5’3” 120 lbs

Tara Whitman               --Current: 5’6” 170 lbs

By six in the evening, the north shore of Ash Lake had gone gold around the edges. Sunlight lay flat across the water, catching on every small ripple, while the firs crowded close behind the narrow strip of gravel as if the forest had come down to listen. The public beach and its concrete boat ramp were two miles south. Up here there were no picnic tables, no lifeguard stand, no families packing station wagons. There was only an old logging spur, a footpath through salal, and six local college kids who knew the better parts of the lake—the places tourists did not dare to tread.

They had come in together in Mark’s parents’ wood-paneled Jeep Grand Wagoneer, rattling down the logging spur with the windows open and everyone shouting directions. Now it sat beneath the firs with six sleeping bags and half their gear still piled in the back. Dome tents stood beyond the gravel, some green, others faded yellow and orange, their stakes hammered into the hard ground with a tire iron. A stack of split firewood waited inside a ring of lake stones for later, when the sun dropped and the mosquitoes came out.

Closer to the water, they had spread three towels around a rust-colored Coleman cooler and balanced a silver tape player on a driftwood log. The Cars warbled through tired speakers. Two inflated loungers bumped together in the shallows, one bright yellow and one striped orange and white. Jennifer Blake sat on the yellow float with her feet in the water, long legs browned by summer and a sweating can of Rainier balanced against her knee. Michelle Mendoza stood waist-deep beside her, trying to fix her ponytail without dropping her beer. Stephanie Rhodes and Tara Whitman were on shore arguing over who had forgotten the bottle opener.

“Nobody forgot it,” Mark Delaney said. He lifted the opener from the pocket of his cutoffs and held it over his head. “I’m encouraging problem-solving.” “You’re encouraging violence,” Tara said. She stood and came after him, quick across the gravel. Mark backed toward the water, laughing, until his heel caught the soft edge of the lake. Kevin Holt gave him one unhelpful shove. Mark went in with a shout and a broad splash that soaked Tara from the knees down.

“Traitor,” Mark said when he came up. Kevin raised his beer in salute. “You were holding the opener hostage.” “There are laws.” “Not on this shore,” Jennifer called. Kevin looked toward her. She was already looking at him, one eyebrow raised over the rim of her can. They had spent the night together after a party in May and the weeks since pretending it had been nothing. Jennifer was better at pretending. Kevin was better at finding reasons to stand near her.

“Your float is drifting,” Kevin said. “Then catch it.” Jennifer pushed off with both hands. The yellow lounger slid beyond him. Kevin waded after it while she kicked a lazy spray into his chest. Nearby, Michelle finally secured her hair and ducked under, surfacing with a gasp that made Stephanie laugh from the orange float. Tara splashed Mark in retaliation, and within seconds all six of them were in the lake—some swimming, some wading, some hanging from the floats while the tape player thinned to a distant metallic beat on shore.

Mark caught the striped float by one handle and pulled it toward him. Stephanie, still stretched across it, drifted close enough to plant one bare foot against his chest. “Tow service costs one beer,” he said. “You’re swimming backward.” “Premium tow service costs two.” Stephanie pushed him away. Mark let go with theatrical offense, and the float spun slowly toward Michelle. “Canceled for poor customer relations,” Stephanie said.

“He only charges girls he thinks are pretty,” Tara said. “That is a vicious accusation,” Mark said. “True, though,” Kevin added. Mark pointed at him. “You’re still a traitor.” Michelle folded her arms over the edge of Stephanie’s float. “What about me?” “Complimentary service,” Mark said at once. “Terrible answer,” Michelle told him, though her smile stayed. “Now Tara thinks you called her ugly.” Tara splashed a sheet of water into Mark’s face. “Tara already knows he’s stupid.”

Kevin finally reached the yellow lounger and caught its rope. Jennifer leaned back on her elbows, pleased with herself. “Congratulations,” she said. “You saved it.” “I was saving the beer.” “The beer was never in danger.” “You were holding it.” Jennifer pressed the cold can to his shoulder. He flinched, and she laughed. “Still nervous around me, Holt?” “Only when you’re armed.” “With a beer?”

He rested both forearms on the float, bringing his face level with hers. “You could say thank you.” “I could.” “You won’t.” “You like me difficult.” Kevin’s answer took a fraction too long. Jennifer saw it and smiled into her drink. From the other float, Stephanie called, “Just get a room, or in this case, a tent!” Jennifer threw a splash in her direction without looking away from Kevin.

“Race to the dead snag,” Tara said, pointing toward a silver trunk jutting from the water farther along the cove. “Loser carries the cooler back to the car.” “That thing weighs forty pounds,” Michelle said. “Then don’t lose.” Mark started swimming before anyone agreed. Tara shouted that cheating voided the race and launched after him. Michelle grabbed his ankle as he passed, buying Tara two strokes while Stephanie cheered for whichever person appeared least likely to win. For a minute the cove filled with splashing, accusations, and laughter loud enough to challenge the music on shore.

Stephanie noticed the light first. She had tipped her head back against the orange vinyl when something flashed beneath her dangling hand. Not sunlight. The sun was behind her. This came from below: a pale green shimmer moving over the stones ten feet down. “Hold on,” she said. Nobody heard her over Mark accusing Tara of attempted drowning. Stephanie sat up, making the float squeal. “Hey. Look under you.”

The others gathered around in a loose circle. At first it was beautiful. Threads of blue and violet wound through the green, brightening and dimming like the glow inside an opal. The bloom did not cloud the water so much as lace it. Fine luminous strands rose from the darker bottom, curled around one another, and opened into slow translucent fans. Michelle dipped her fingers beneath the surface and watched the color sheet around them without touching her skin. “Algae?” she asked.

Kevin looked toward the mouth of the cove. A soft current pushed south along the shore, visible in the drift of pine needles and the slow turn of the floats. The luminous strands moved north. Not quickly. Deliberately. They gathered beneath the six swimmers, folded inward, and climbed. “That’s going the wrong way,” he said. The joking stopped one person at a time.

The bloom widened across the bottom until there was no clear water between them and shore. Jennifer slid off the lounger. Her feet found nothing. The lake felt suddenly colder below her waist and strangely warm around her ankles, two temperatures occupying the same water. Jennifer was a biology major, and this defied everything she’d learned about freshwater ecosystems. “Everybody out. Get to shore,” she said. “Now.” Mark laughed once, expecting someone else to rescue the mood. Nobody did. They turned for the beach.

Kevin and Mark swam hard, arms chopping through the iridescent skin as if it were only reflected sunset. It broke around them and closed behind them without resistance. Jennifer followed three strokes back. The first strand touched her calf like warm silk. The second cinched around both legs. Her kick shortened. A dense pressure filled her muscles from ankle to hip, not pain exactly, but weight, like sliding on a heavy pair of pants. Beside her, Michelle made a startled sound and lost her rhythm. Stephanie rolled off the float. Tara reached for her and nearly went under herself.

Mark reached gravel first and stumbled upright, water streaming from his hair. Kevin came in beside him, lungs burning, and turned with the easy assumption that four shapes would be close behind. They were not. The women remained twenty yards out in water that now shone from beneath like stained glass. Jennifer’s yellow float drifted empty between them. Michelle’s arms slapped the surface without pushing her forward. Stephanie clung to Tara, both of them fighting to keep their mouths above the soft, radiant swell.

“Jen!” Kevin plunged back knee-deep before Jennifer shouted at him to stop. Her voice came out lower than she expected, thickened by effort. The bloom climbed her body in bands of cold light. Her shoulders drew wider beneath the water. Her arms felt packed and heavy, every stroke pulling more lake than she meant to move. Around her, Michelle, Stephanie, and Tara were changing in the same restrained, impossible increments—backs broadening, legs lengthening, muscle settling onto their frames with the dense certainty of something lost and suddenly found.

The light released them all at once. Jennifer’s next kick drove her forward so violently she struck the shallows on both hands. Michelle found the bottom and stood too fast, rising higher from the water than Kevin expected. Tara hauled Stephanie upright with one arm around her waist, and the two of them staggered toward shore together. Each step came heavier than the last. Gravel crushed beneath their feet. Water ran from limbs that looked familiar until they moved, and then the new weight showed itself in the set of a thigh, the pull of a shoulder, the firmness gathered across a stomach.

No one said bigger. Not yet. Mark asked if they had been stung. Kevin wrapped Jennifer in a towel and stared over her shoulder at the lake. She had been eye to eye with him that afternoon. Now, barefoot on the darkening shore, she stood close enough that he had to lift his chin. Behind her, the last iridescent color folded under the surface and sank against the current. The tape reached the end of its side. With a small mechanical click, the music stopped.

By the time the last strip of sun disappeared behind the western ridge, Mark had coaxed the fire into a steady orange roar. The lake had gone from copper to black glass, and the trees beyond the tents stood in one solid wall. They gathered on split logs around the stone ring with blankets over their shoulders and sharpened branches held toward the flames, each branch skewering a hot dog that hissed and blistered above the coals.

The women had changed out of their swimsuits, though changed was generous. Jennifer wore one of Kevin’s old Asterwick Track shirts and her gym shorts. The shirt stopped short of her hips, its sleeves pulled snug around arms that had never filled them before. Michelle had donned a faded gray tee, which hung loose at the waist but caught across her shoulders. Stephanie’s shorts rode several inches above her knees, and Tara’s red camp shirt stretched across her chest while the hem kept creeping upward whenever she moved. Nothing fit the way its owner remembered.

They pretended not to notice. Jennifer complained about Mark burning the first batch of dogs. Michelle peeled the blackened skin from hers in neat strips. Stephanie laughed when mustard ran over her knuckles. Then each of them reached for another. And another. The first hot dogs disappeared too quickly to taste. The second barely slowed them. By the time Tara pushed a fourth onto her branch, the opened package lay empty beside her boot and Mark was digging through the cooler for the spare.

The hunger felt deeper than an empty stomach. It sat in their arms and legs, a hollow demand inside muscle that had not existed that afternoon. Firelight made the changes harder to dismiss. Jennifer’s knees rose higher above the log than Kevin remembered, her new height carried through a longer line of thigh and shin. Michelle had to hunch to rest her elbows on her knees. Stephanie’s shoulders rounded her shirt into a shape that looked earned over months beneath barbells, not assembled in an hour splashing in the lake.

None of them had become enormous. That almost made it worse. They looked plausible at a glance—only a few inches taller, only broader through the shoulders, only firmer through the arms and legs. But the differences accumulated. Jennifer’s forearm tightened when she turned her poker, tendons shifting beneath new muscle. Michelle’s thighs pressed against the edges of her shorts. When Stephanie leaned forward for the mustard, the fire outlined a back and shoulders that belonged to someone who had spent a season lifting heavy and sleeping well.

Tara had gone quiet. She set her poker across the stones and ran both hands down the front of her shirt, palms flattening over her stomach. That stopped her. The familiar softness was gone. Not hidden by the shirt or pulled tight by posture—gone. Beneath the cotton, her middle felt lean and solid, narrowing into hips that no longer carried the same weight. She pressed once, cautiously, then slid her hands over her thighs. The legs beneath the shorts were longer and hard with new muscle, the loose flesh she had always felt when she sat replaced by dense curves that did not yield beneath her fingers.

She looked down as if the firelight might explain what the lake had done. For years, Tara had known the exact pinch of a waistband, the rub of her thighs on hot days, the instinct to tug a shirt away from her stomach before anyone took a picture. Now the waistband gaped at her back. Her thighs touched differently. When she flexed one bare foot against the gravel, a clean line appeared along her calf. Wonder crossed her face before she covered it with a crooked smile and reached for the fresh package of hot dogs.

Across the fire, Kevin watched Jennifer bite into her third hot dog and stop pretending he was not counting. Mark had gone still with the cooler lid open against his knee. Their eyes met over the flames. Kevin glanced toward Michelle, then Stephanie, then Tara, measuring what nobody had said aloud: each woman had become taller by inches since entering the water, and every one of them now carried the compact strength of months spent lifting heavy weights. Mark’s jaw tightened. Kevin gave the smallest shake of his head. Neither spoke. On the other side of the fire, the women kept eating while sparks climbed into the dark.

              Kevin stood first, crushing his empty Rainier can. “I think I’m going to call it a night.” Mark said nothing, glancing at Stephanie as she finished the last bite of her fourth hot dog. Kevin turned toward his tent, the one farthest from the fire, when Jennifer shot up from her log. “I’ll join you!” He stopped and turned slowly. Everyone did. The implication was clear, and it was brand-new territory for the group. No one spoke. Kevin blinked hard.

              Jennifer had always been the tallest of the girlfriend group and now she stood nearly six feet. The track and field logo of Kevin’s old shirt distorted around fuller breasts that defied gravity; lifting the hem of the shirt upward to reveal dancing shadows across chiseled abs in the fire light. She shifted her weight, thighs and glutes pushing against the confines of the light cotton shorts. For a split second, Jennifer became suddenly aware of how forward she had been.

              “O-Ok, yeah” he stammered. She bounced over to him with the giddy energy of the child. Mark stared daggers at Kevin with a slight shake of his head. Kevin gave a little shrug and they both disappeared into darkness toward his tent.

For a long time, no one said anything. Playful and intimate sounds of Kevin and Jennifer soon drifted toward the fire and broke the silence. Mark cracked another beer with a hiss and dropped a different tape in the boom box. The fire settled with a wet pop. Mark looked down at the frosty beer in his hand, then toward the dark path the couple had taken, as if Kevin might reappear with an apology. Michelle cleared her throat. Tara concentrated on turning her fifth hot dog above the coals. Stephanie stared into the flames and felt heat gather in her pelvis.

It was not the fire. This warmth began too deep, a small bright pressure that divided and traveled outward and upward through her stomach to her shoulders, down her arms, and into the muscles of her legs. Stephanie lowered her poker. Across from her, Michelle rolled one shoulder and frowned. Tara stopped chewing. Without speaking, all three women looked at one another.

“You feel that?” Michelle asked. Stephanie nodded. The pressure came again, stronger, tightening every muscle at once before releasing it. She remembered the lake closing around her legs, the helpless drag toward the bottom, then the violent strength with which she had crossed the shallows. Her shirt seemed suddenly close around her biceps. The gravel beneath her flip-flops felt too distinct, every stone announcing itself through the soles.

Tara set her food aside and stood, restless despite everything she had eaten. Michelle rose with her, flexing her hands as if they had fallen asleep. Neither looked tired now. The long swim, the fear, and the heavy meal should have left them sagging toward their tents. Instead, an alert current moved among them. Stephanie felt it stripping hesitation from each thought before she could decide whether the thought deserved to be spoken.

She looked at Mark. He was still kneeling beside the cooler, one hand braced on its lid, watching the three of them with the careful expression he had worn since the lake. Stephanie heard herself say, “I have feelings for you.”

The sentence dropped into the clearing harder than a log. Mark’s hand slipped from the cooler. Michelle looked sharply at Stephanie; Tara went very still. Stephanie’s own surprise arrived a beat late. She had imagined telling him before, usually in safer versions of the future where she had better timing and he had given her some unmistakable sign. She had never imagined announcing it beside an empty package of hot dogs while something unnatural tightened beneath her skin.

Embarrassment heated her face, but the strange current inside her would not let her retreat. She squared shoulders that already felt too broad for the shirt. “That came out faster than I meant it to,” she said. “It is still true.” Mark opened his mouth, closed it, then stood. Whatever answer he had was interrupted when Michelle gasped and gripped the edge of the log. Tara’s poker fell into the stones. A pulse of pale green light moved far below the black surface of Ash Lake, and the pressure deep in Stephanie’s pelvis spread through her entire body.

Stephanie took one step toward Mark and missed the ground. Her ankle folded sideways in the gravel. Mark caught her beneath the arms before she struck the log, absorbing her weight with a grunt. She clutched his shoulders, breathing hard, and lifted her face to his. In the firelight her pupils flashed a faint green-white, not glowing so much as reflecting light that was not there, the way a cat’s eyes answered headlights from the dark.

“Steph?” Mark said. The name sounded distant to her. Another pulse climbed from her chest into her neck and jaw. Her teeth clicked together. Mark tightened his hold as her spine drew straight against him, each vertebra seeming to find new space with a rapid series of small internal shifts. The top of her head rose past his cheek. Then his eyes. Her flip-flops scraped backward as her feet lengthened over their edges.

Michelle cried out behind them. She doubled over with both arms wrapped around her middle, then rose inch by inch as if an unseen hand had pulled her upright. Tara braced one foot on the fallen poker and nearly snapped it beneath her heel. All three women were stretching at once. Knees shifted higher. Torsos lengthened. Shoulders climbed and widened. The logs, the tents, even Mark seemed to sink around them while the green light beneath the lake beat in time with the pressure inside their bodies.

Height was only the beginning. Stephanie’s arms hardened beneath Mark’s hands. Muscle crowded onto her frame in heavy layers, rounding her shoulders and thickening her upper arms until his fingers could no longer meet around them. Her back spread with a steady, unstoppable pressure. Her shirt pulled flat between her shoulder blades. One sleeve seam ticked, popped, and opened from shoulder to cuff. The second followed, leaving the fabric hanging loose around arms built on a scale neither of them recognized.

Michelle’s gray tee lasted three breaths longer. Her traps bunched and rose; shoulders drove outward, raising the sleeves and drawing the collar tight against her throat. Dense cords formed along her arms as she gripped the collar. She grunted and pulled, ripping the shirt halfway down the front. Heavy breasts, formally confined, pushed against the new opening, ripping the fabric further down. Her legs thickened with the same competitive mass, forcing the shorts higher toward her hips, revealing powerful quads.

Tara planted both feet and tried to ride out the surge standing. Her new height came in a single visible climb. Then her frame filled with mass. Her shoulders broadened until the red shirt drew tight as a drumhead across her back; thick muscle assembled along her arms, waist, and legs with the compressed scale of a heavyweight competitor. Her shorts split apart along her thighs, the fabric drifted loosely between her legs and across her backside like a sad loincloth.

Stephanie convulsed once in Mark’s grip. “Oh god Mark, what’s happening to -- Mhhmmgguhh.” Her words devolved into groans that could have been pleasure as her calves and thighs swelled with abrupt, crushing force. Her flip-flops could’ve been a child’s now; one strap tore free around growing feet before the other snapped with a pop. Mark staggered as her weight climbed. A moment earlier he had been holding her upright; now he was bracing himself against someone taller than he was and built with the dense symmetry of a championship bodybuilder. He had to keep raising his chin to maintain eye contact with Stephanie. She was scared at first but now there was something else in her expression. Pleasure. Lust.

She adjusted her grip on his shoulder and the t-shirt split apart around her armpit. The tear quickly traveled to the hem, leaving the small shirt hanging across her broad shoulders and round breasts. Her shorts lost the fight to her glutes and were quickly swallowed, getting shredded and cinched between smooth, bulging cheeks.

Then the pressure stopped. Not gradually. One second their bodies were remaking themselves; the next there was only the crackle of the fire and three women dragging air into larger lungs. Michelle stood roughly six inches taller than she had moments before. Tara had gained as much, looming over the log she had been sitting on. Stephanie looked down at Mark from above, the strange reflection fading from her eyes as the distant light beneath Ash Lake went dark.

Mark kept both hands at Stephanie’s arms until he was certain her legs would hold. Even then, neither of them stepped away. Michelle stared at the torn seams hanging from her shoulders. Tara tested one foot against the earth and left a deep print in the gravel without meaning to. No one asked whether this would pass. The first change had left them hungry and altered. This one felt settled, immense, and permanent.

“Steph, why don’t you sit down?” Mark gestured toward the log. She studied it, then glanced over her transformed body and lowered herself carefully, testing whether the narrow wood would support her new weight. The others remained standing around the fire. “What in the holy hell is happening to us?” Tara asked. “This afternoon, I was the fat girl at school, and now…” She looked down and tightened her abdomen into an impressive six-pack. Next she flexed one arm. Her thick biceps pulled apart the last threads of fabric around the sleeve, and the loose cotton drifted to the ground.

“Hey guys.” The voice was Jennifer’s but deeper with a velvety tone. Kevin and Jennifer walked into view. The size difference was dramatic. Jennifer dwarfed Kevin in every way. She was easily a head taller than him and beefier throughout. Her strides were long and each step popped quads set wide over her knees, with calves of chiseled diamond that tapered deeply to slim ankles. Her clothing fared no better than the rest of the women and little was left to the imagination. Nothing in either guy’s wardrobe would fit these Amazons anyway.

“Should we take you to a… a doctor or something?” Kevin managed. They were all sitting around the fire now. No one was sure what to do. “Maybe we’ll shrink back down. Doesn’t Bruce Banner do that after a while in those comics?” Michelle offered. “Maybe,” Stephanie said. “But I’m not sure I want to. I feel amazing. I feel like I could lift the back of your parents’ Jeep, Mark!”

Mark’s eyes widened. Stephanie blushed and kicked a stone into the firelight, suddenly aware of everything at once: her size, her strength, the confession she had blurted out, and Mark standing close enough to hear all of it. Kevin looked over his shoulder toward the lake. “It was definitely that stuff in the water earlier, right? Had to be.” Mark followed his gaze. “Probably. But it touched us too, and it didn’t do anything.” He flexed one arm, glanced at Stephanie, and immediately lowered it.

None of the women were mean enough to crush his ego by flexing themselves but they didn’t have to. Even at rest and unflexed, the power each of these women now had throughout their bodies was brutally obvious. “You’re right, though, we both had that stuff on us and it didn’t do anything. Weird.” Kevin agreed.

The chop of helicopter blades cut across the clearing before anyone could answer. Two UH-1 Hueys broke over the treeline, low enough that their rotor wash flattened the tents, scattered beer cans, and drove sparks sideways from the fire. Both aircraft banked hard over Ash Lake, circled, and came back facing the campsite. Searchlights snapped on beneath their noses, bleaching the shore in white glare.

They threw up their hands against the glare as military vehicles tore onto the beach from the logging spur and sealed off the campsite. Soldiers poured from Jeeps and transport trucks with M-16s raised, shouting over the helicopters for everyone to get on the ground. The first men to reach the fire faltered when they saw the transformed women. Their rifles wavered, then rose again. One young soldier stared up at Stephanie, swallowed, and screamed, “DOWN! ALL OF YOU, GET DOWN NOW!”