Product Description
Date (relative): Late Junior Year
Location: Locker Room, after hours
Current Body Snapshot: 5’9”, 182lbs, packed muscle clinging tight to compact frame; belly chiseled but taut from bulk shakes, glinting under overhead fluorescents
Tails Count / Fur Notes: Two tails now—second one still raw at the base, more weight to carry when walking fast
Memory Flashback
The bar snapped like a whip. Not loud—sharp. Metallic. It rang out and echoed in my bones as I locked out 315 for the first time. My arms didn’t shake. Pectorals blown up like armor, bare and burning under the lights. Fur along my biceps stood straight, wet and flared. The amber across my chest caught the light—bold against the plum like heat cracking through obsidian. I racked it and looked around like I’d shattered something. I half expected clapping, but Ryker just nodded. Small. Controlled. Like I’d done what was expected.
Later, stripped to my waist, I stared at myself in the locker mirror while the sweat cooled. My belly was slightly swollen, rounded and glossy from the shake I slammed before lifting. Not jiggly. Not soft. Just… swollen. Protruding. A dome that looked obscene under the harsh lighting. I rubbed my hand over it, claws dragging backward through the golden fur … until I caught them—those faint, firework-thin stretch marks etched across my lower lats. You wouldn’t see them unless you were trying to. Like I was.
Emotional Reflections
I never saw myself on a wrestling mat. Fall was for football. Spring was for track. I already had two uniforms, two bodies, two scripts memorized. Then Ryker caught me in the weight room after hours—no clipboard, just that clipboard tone—and slid the sign-up sheet across the bench like it was already decided.
“Upper bracket,” he said. “You’ve got the mass. You’ll toss these lightweights like lawn chairs.”
I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because I didn’t know how else to react to the way he was looking at me. Like I was a weapon. Like I was his. And maybe I wanted to be. Maybe I wanted someone to take credit for me. It was easier than asking who I was doing all this for.
So I signed. And the margin for error disappeared. I had to stay massive enough to look like I belonged on the mat, but hit the number exactly. Muscle was praise. Fat was failure. Every weigh-in became a judgment I couldn’t reason with. One pound over, and everything I’d built became too much.
That’s when I started managing myself like a machine. Not just the lifts—everything. Sodium, water, sleep windows. I weighed myself before class and again after lunch. Sometimes twice before bed, just to be sure the number was dropping, or climbing, or holding—whatever I needed that day to feel safe. Or acceptable. Or impressive. I don’t even know anymore.
The first time I missed weight, I jogged in sweats until my vision blurred and I could taste copper. The second time, I broke.
I ate everything I wasn’t supposed to. I remember how good it felt—greasy, sweet, warm. Then cold porcelain. My fingers down my throat. My chest heaving like I’d sprinted miles. When it was over, I sat on the edge of the sink with spit on my chin and my ears ringing. Eyes watering, but my jaw instinctually clenched shut in containment. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely unlock my phone.
I told myself it wasn’t real. Just a one-time correction. Just a way to get back on track.
But I memorized the numbers the next morning. Protein ratios, volume limits. I shaved off half my lunch before sitting down. I weighed in again before fourth period. And again that night.
Physical Sensations
Peanut butter scraped from the jar in the dark—thick, heavy, glued to my molars. Singlet fabric hissing over my hips the morning of a meet, tight in places I wasn’t sure were supposed to be tight. The dry leather rasp of Ryker’s wrist-wraps when he adjusted my grip—his voice even, his corrections mechanical.
The second tail had been probing to claim space for weeks. I told myself it was tightness from squats, bad form, maybe just stress.
Then it emerged. Right in the middle of a paused rep. A sharp internal pop. I dropped the bar without meaning to and the room froze with it.
I didn’t look around. I didn’t need to. I could feel the air shift. Could feel the eyes. Could feel it behind me—raw, heavy, swinging slightly, still unfamiliar.
I hated that it had happened here. That it didn’t ask me first. That now it was visible, claimable, something I’d have to explain.
I picked up the weight and finished the set. Not because I wanted to. Just because I wasn’t going to leave while they were still looking.
Self-Talk & Lessons
I used to think getting bigger meant getting closer to the version of me that mattered—the one people clapped for, the one Ryker nodded at, the one that earned space instead of being asked to shrink.
But now I’m not sure who this body is for. I track every calorie, every rep, every pound like it’s sacred, but none of it feels like mine.
I tell myself I’m in control. That I’m shaping something powerful. But the truth is, parts of me are changing without my say—on the scale, in the mirror, in moments I can’t undo.
If this is power, why do I feel like I’m vanishing inside it?
Foreshadowing
Gavin loaned me that old myth anthology again. Spine cracked, pages soft at the edges from use. One story was circled in pen: a selkie boy who kept his seal-skin hidden under the bleachers so no one would know what he really was. He moved between worlds, but belonged to neither.
“He could’ve gone back to the ocean,” Gavin said. “But maybe it was safer to stay in between.”
He looked at me like he already knew.
“You should write your own version,” he said. “One where he stops hiding.”
I didn’t answer, but I never stopped thinking about it.
You Might Also Like …
