43 - The Familiar

Anya turned her right arm over, and held the candle close to the skin, so that the Fright Society could see the black ink image of a small rodent-like figure with a human face.

"In the Malleus Maleficarum, it is written how witches had familiars. Animals or spirits that feed from a witch's body and aid her. Those stories were wrung from poor, ignorant women under ****, but there is a hint of truth to such tales. Which is why I call this story...

THE FAMILIAR

Grumman House went cheap. Unsurprising, given the history. Yet the Victorian pile was perfect for college housing. Eight grad students could live there comfortably, every room rented, sharing common spaces. Parties could fill the old house with laughter in a way that it had never heard in all of its decades.

Jay Greenborough got the basement. He'd actually requested it. Civil engineering student. The way the place had been put together, no right angles at all, fascinated him. The vault in the basement made him curious. He noted the way it kept cool, though it might be some kind of cold cellar, but not of any design he recognized.

It was the end of summer, when he moved into the basement; and a hot summer it was too, with sticky nights. That first night, he left the door to the vault open, enjoying the cool air that flowed through. Listened to the creak of the people moving around above. The sounds of the house. Thermal expansion and contraction; the whole place seemed to breathe. A skitter in the wall that might be a mouse or rat.

Sleep came at last, in the dark. With sleep, dreams. A pale, naked woman seemed to sit at his bed. There was something feral in her face, something wild in the eyes. Jay saw cool hands pull his shirt up, revealing a pale, hairy chest. She leaned down, those cold lips closed on a nipple. He hissed at the sudden spike of pain.

Jay's eyes snapped open in the dark. His nipples throbbed. He pulled himself out of bed and staggered over to the basement bathroom, flicked on a light, and lifted his shirt.

The flesh around his nipples looked bruised. Jay winced as he explored the sore flesh. He couldn't see any puncture marks.

"Runner's nipple," he said to himself, as he turned away to slip into his shoes. It was a familiar affliction that Jay had read about on the internet, caused by chafing. Jay ran regularly, and had even run a marathon last spring. Six miles a day kept his tall body lean, and offset the occasional beer.

Yet the dreams did not stop. The same dream. The woman, the cold lips, the sharp pain. Yet each time, the dream seemed to last a little longer. Her eyes kept contact, and Jay could make out more detail. The shape of the pupils was like a turtle's eye, the pale hair white one night, silver the next. She raised her head a little, pulling at the nipple, and despite himself, Jay felt pleasure, the memory of an old girlfriend who liked nipple play.

He would awake, invariably, with his cock hard. Nipples stiff and sore. The flesh around them swollen. Not that anyone could really see it with a shirt on, but Jay frowned as, after a month, he could no longer deny how pronounced his tits had gotten.

"Moobs," he said. And the pink nipples were swollen, thicker, more prominent. Almost as big as the tip of his little finger when stiff. Stranger, they got stiff a lot easier, and were more sensitive. A minor brush sent an electric thrill through his chest. During late-night masturbation sessions, Jay found himself playing with and tugging at his nipples in ways he never had before.

Campus health services listened carefully when he described his problem, and then gave him a consult to an off-campus doctor, one that was in-network for the student health insurance. Dr. Ivel carefully examined the shirtless young man with gloved hands, listened to his heart with her stethoscope, and finally did a chest X-ray, hiding behind a wall as the radioactive particles were passed through his body.

"Well, the good news is, it's not cancer," she said, as she brought his chest up on the screen. "The bad news is, it's not runner's nipple either. My preliminary diagnosis is male breast gynecomastia. A hormonal imbalance, normally genetic, that leads to breast growth. That soreness you're feeling is from the stretching of the skin as fat and milk glands develop further."

Jay frowned. "Milk glands? Am I going to lactate?"

Dr. Iven gave a tight-lipped, neutral smile. "It's a possibility. Although really, we just want to monitor the situation. There are some options—hormone therapy to stop the growth, although it require surgery to remove the new tissue. That falls under gender-affirming surgery, which might get political."

"Yeah, okay," he said. "No surgery. Not yet."

He took the pills religiously. Ran every day. Played with his nipples at night. As the weather got colder, he transitioned to sweaters and hoodies. That helped hide the fact that the pills weren't working. The dreams continued. Sometimes, now, she would curl up next to him, suckling for hours at his swollen, girly tits. Jay no longer woke up in pain, exactly. He woke up wet. His cock half-swollen, like a sated slug, the jizz cooling on his stomach.

By the time of the winter break, things had gotten to the point where Jay had to quietly buy a sports bra online, just for running. He stayed over in the house, when the rest of the grad students went home for the holidays. Explaining to his parents that he'd gotten a work-study.

Which was half true. It was really Dr. Ivel who had offered him an opportunity.

"You're really quite pronounced now," she said. "When did your chest hair fall out?"

"Thanksgiving," he said, staring down at his chest. His moobs stood out as definite tits now. The nipples swollen hugely, as big as Jay's thumb tips now. He couldn't feel the weight of them in his neck or shoulders, but they jiggled side-to-side and up-and-down.

"And the lactation?"

Jay let out a breath. There were white drops that glistened at the tip of each nipple.

"About a week ago," he said. "Which is why I made the appointment."

"If you're amenable, I'd like to study your hormonal balance," she said. "It's compensated. And I can get the university to include it as an elective credit."

Which is how, over the winter weeks, Jay found himself attached to a breast pump. The little cones sucked at his growing tits, the sore, swollen nipples filling the little space as the milk was slowly expressed, drop by drop. It was a fascinating design. With nothing better to do during his "shifts" in the clinic's bare testing room, Jay found himself looking up more about such work on his smartphone. Getting ahead on his upcoming coursework. Shopping for bras.

There were bad days. When Jay would just get up and cry, warm tears dripping down over his tits. Shoulders hunched, unwilling to go out except in heavy outerwear. He felt ugly. He hated how good it felt to tug on his huge nipples, his cock spasming when he tugged hard sometimes, letting out a weak, watery dribble from his shrunken cock. Jay wasn't sure when it had started to get smaller. But he remembered the day his tits were big enough he could fit a nipple in his mouth. Tasted his own body-warm milk.

Alex was the first back to Grumman House after break. Her eyes widened when she saw Jay.

"Oh...wow. I didn't recognize you," she said, eyes wide. "I knew you'd been growing your hair out, but when did you lose the beard?"

Jay's hand went to his face. It was smooth. He blinked, unable to remember when the hair had fallen out.

"Needed a change," he said, and now that he spoke aloud, found his voice sounded wrong. Too high-pitched. Feminine.

"I can definitely see two big changes," Alec said, and her eyes drifted down his chest. Jay realized he wasn't wearing a bra. He turned away, suddenly self-conscious, and headed back to the basement. Laid in the bed.

Except he couldn't sleep. He didn't close his eyes. The temperature dropped, noticeably. His breath fogged the air. Strange, terrible lassitude filled him, arms and legs too heavy. He felt—and saw—his chest rise and fall, saw the nipples tent the fabric, the little wet spots.

Then there was skitter. Something slid beneath the hem of Jay's shirt. Except it wasn't a hand, wasn't a cold, pale body. It moved on small, jointed legs. The cold, heavy body moved against his, which made Jay shudder involuntarily, even as he couldn't move. The cold grew more intense as he saw the shirt distend more and more as the long, sinuous body with too many legs moved toward his right tit.

The shirt, a simply grey tee, worn and comfortable, stretched as tiny feelers clamped his milk-swollen teat. Jaw caught a glimpse of the face of the thing through the distended neckhole as tiny mandibles found the nipples. Too many eyes. Like the dark eyes of a tortoise. It latched onto his nipples and began to drink.

Sharp pinpricks. Jay could see the veins stand out more on his tits, veins swollen and darker with some kind of venom. Pain and pleasure mingled in what should have been a fever dream, but instead was an impossibly cold reality.

Where had it come from? What was it?

Then it seemed to see him, seeing it. It stopped feeding. Crawled forward, through the neckhole. It wasn't a centipede, exactly. A centipede doesn't have a woman's face, the little mandibles retracing inside to show cold, familiar lips. The extra eyes don't recede, so only one pair of oddly inhuman pupils stared into its own. Something—not a tongue, possibly a tentacle—slithered out from her lips and between his. He tasted something impossibly bitter on his tongue.

Sleep came. Dreams. A cold body next to his suckling gently at his growing breasts. Images without words flowed through his mind. An old, bearded man. A chest buried in a corner of the basement. A pale woman on the table of the vault. A fevered man pulling the railroad spike from her chest. She walked out of the vault, naked, something white dribbling from the hole in her chest.

Yet she left something behind. Cold. Hungry. Starving.

In the morning, the weight of Jay's tits weighed on his chest. Shirt wet around the nipples, veins prominent. He rose carefully, and moved toward the spot he had seen in his dreams. Where the old man had buried the chest.

There was an irregular crack in the concrete...a hole. He reached down, slid his finger down, and pulled. There was a small cavity, an old iron box. It wasn't even locked. Heavy as he hauled it out. He opened it, the bright reflection making golden shadows on his face.

Somewhere in the basement, something skittered.

"Greenborough bought Gumman House," Anya said. "Something of a recluse. Gynecomastia can be harsh on a man's self-image. Especially when the breasts get...particularly large. I don't think he's planning to have a mastectomy, or leave Dagon's Hollow, anytime soon."

So saying, she blew out the candle.