Crimson Reborn

Humphrey sat on a stool in the kitchen looking at a grease covered book of crosswords. The pencil laid nearby, untouched for the better part of an hour.

First night of quiet in weeks,

he thought.

First day of feeling like my old self, too.

His head ached, and he wanted a drink. A deep fatigue pulled at every cell in his body, urging him to stay seated or even lie down. He'd looked at the dirty kitchen floor a few times and wondered if the coolness of the ceramic tile would offset the disgust of pressing his face into grime and grease.

The consistent clink of glasses moving from one spot to the next punctuated his thoughts. On the other side of the pass through, Oliver worked at the empty bar, preparing it for a crowd that clearly wasn't coming.

Should be relieved, finally a bit of quiet. Damned if this isn't worse, though.

All those folks coming in and laughing and singing and...goes it a bit blurry doesn't it. What do they do all night every night? They eat, sure. They drink, god they drink more than me. Then what?

A blur, he knew. Each night for the past weeks — how many was hard to say — started in raucous joy and ended in a hazy blur. A sober man would blame the drink, but Humphrey didn't think he'd been fully sober in twenty five years. A kip in the morning to get out of bed. A snifter when he got to work to get him through the day. Lowell thought his cook didn't drink on the job. Humphrey told his boss as much and believed he was telling the truth when he said it. No, Humphrey didn't drink on the job. He only took his medicine. Can't empty a deep fryer with shaking hands, after all.

He drank when his shift ended, though. A pint in the car on the way home. Six beers between dinner and bed on a good night. More on a worse one. His wife, Bertie, determined whether or not a night would be good or worse. As he sat on his stool, feeling all of his years weighing him down, he thought back to being a young buck. Early 90s, the world took the first steps toward moving on, but Humphrey and Bertie didn't feel much like moving. They'd been a good pair at the time. High school sweethearts, incapable of imagining a world without each other or one with anyone else. Their worlds were small, though, and it was easy to be comfortable in a small world. They didn't think they needed much other than a house and steady jobs. Lowell's father had one ready for Humphrey. Tending bar was the eighteen year old's dream. Not old enough to drink, but good enough to pass one down the bar to the farmer with more dirt under his nails than sense in his head. Humphrey could relate. He'd spent his childhood working fields and learning the taste of a cold beer at the end of the day.

Bertie tried a little harder, at least.

Probably why she learned to hate me so much.

She signed up for nursing school. Couldn't cut it, though, and dropped out after one semester. Bertie grew keen on getting married that spring, and Humphrey didn't have a good reason to say no. She was a pretty thing at the time, and they got on well enough. Neither of them knew a spouse was supposed to be something more than a paycheck or a regular roll in the sheets. No one bothered to tell them, either. Twenty years on, that missed knowledge festered into a mean type of hate. The kind which kept Humphrey at the bottom of a bottle and Bertie at the bottom of a bag of chips.

"Humph?" Oliver said, sticking his head through the kitchen door. "Customer out here wants to talk with you."

"What for?" Humphrey asked, not bothering to hide the disdain in his voice. "We ain't got specials, and I'm not Gordon Ramsey."

Oliver's eyes flickered. For a moment, they looked as black as pitch. The younger man grinned and looked entirely otherworldly. Humphrey didn't pay it any mind. He did need a drink after all. "C'mon, you old bastard. You'll want to talk to her when you see her."

Humphrey sighed.

I'll talk alright. I'll tell the bitch off for interrupting my sit.

He lumbered to his feet, amazed at the amount of effort and concentration it required to simply stand. The day before he'd been hopping down the sidewalk like he could float if he put his mind to it.

Small heart attack, maybe. That'd take the wind out of me. Dropping dead from exhaustion in front of this woman might learn her to leave those alone who want to be left alone.

He shuffled out of the kitchen and into the bar. As he looked at the woman sitting in the middle stool, some of the weight lifted off his weary shoulders. In the briefest moment of clarity, he wondered if everything which had happened for weeks could have something to do with the woman sitting at the bar. Humphrey wondered if every moment of joy had flowed from this woman's will, and if he'd become caught in a web beyond his understanding.

"Hi, Humphrey. I'm Lucy."

***

Lucy was unlike any woman Humphrey had ever seen, and yet he thought he'd seen her before. He moved down the bar until he stood opposite her. She wore a tight fitted red dress which put her enormous breasts on full display. Leaning against the bar made them squish forward around her folded arms. A curtain of deep red hair obscured half of her face in shadow. Red lips opened into a perfectly white smile. "You can go, Oliver. Thank you for waiting for me."

"Hang on," Humphrey said. "Who the fuck are you to tell him to do anything?"

"I am his mistress, Humphrey," she answered. "Don't worry, I'm going to explain everything. I can make him wait, if you like. Of course, that fat cock of his might burst if he doesn't get a load in something pretty soon. I would like to have our conversation a little more...plainly, before we move into the other affairs, but I can't deny one of my faithful the opportunity to relieve himself inside me. So, would you like him to wait? I can bend over one of the tabletops. You might be a little uncomfortable with Oliver's true self, especially when he's inside me."

The words caught in Humphrey's throat. He looked over at Oliver, but did not see the fresh faced young man who had come to work at the bar. Instead, he saw a black eyed demon, eager to feast on his mistress's flesh. "No...no, he can go."

"Excellent, now why don't you pour us a drink, and we'll talk." The shadow of Oliver disappeared out the door with a deep laugh. She eased back from the bar, letting her full form come into view. Humphrey gasped to see her perfect body. "Yes, I can be a bit much for some people. Perhaps a little less of me might help this conversation go smoother." She drummed her fingers on the bar, and she started to change. Her breasts withdrew down to B cups. Her skin lost some of its luster, and a few wrinkles appeared around her eyes and chin. Her shoulders slumped as her dress became slack and ill-fitted, fading from vibrant red to maroon. "There, does that make you more comfortable? Do I blend in with the regulars a little more? Humphrey, are you with me?"

His hand shook as he grabbed a bottle of whiskey. He poured a full glass, brought it to his lips, and stopped. Lucy stared at him with disappointment. Despite her sudden transformation to a lesser self, Humphrey knew the immaculate beauty remained underneath. He dropped the glass back to the bar. Pulling out another tumbler, he poured a drink for Lucy, passing it to her while trying to subdue his shakes. "Have I gone insane? Or died?"

Lucy shrugged. "Maybe one. Maybe both. I'm not sure myself anymore. A few months ago, I had a great plan to light a fire in my marriage. A ghost or a demon or a spirit came to me in the woods, told me to drink a vial of red stuff, and now I'm...something else. My husband is little more than a living cock. The woman he wanted to have an affair with spends most of her days getting fucked by a minotaur. Your bartender is what I imagine a demon would look like if they're real. Of course, they must be real because Oliver is one, I think. The specter which gave me this power didn't provide a guidebook. I'm not sure she could have given much advice anyway" She picked up the glass and raised it toward Humphrey, "Cheers."

He grabbed his own and slugged it down in a long gulp. "Look here, lady, I don't know what the fuck is happening. Is this some kind of gag? Oliver having a laugh at my expense?"

"No, no. Let's dispense with all those rationalizations, please. I want to have one normal conversation, that's all. No, you're not on drugs. No, you're not hallucinating. You're probably not dead, and you're probably not insane. I say probably because I have a bizarre amount of power telling me things which shouldn't be possible are, in fact, possible. I might be a goddess, Humphrey, an actual goddess. Like some old pagan thing reborn after thousands of years. I can tell you that I get stronger when other people give themselves over to me. I get weaker when I sense a strong soul resisting me. My milk corrupts or purifies, depending on how you look at these sorts of things. It's all a bit jumbled."

"Why are you telling me this, then?" Humphrey asked. "What's it got to do with me?"

"Nothing. Everything. Like I said, it's a bit jumbled." She paused and took a slow sip of her whiskey. "I can see into your soul. I can see all the lost dreams and the wasted years. I can see the rot all over you. I can see the pickling of your liver. You have maybe four years left, I think. Not sure how I know, but I do. I can smell death on you, and I can smell the difference between a death coming tomorrow and a death coming four years from now. I can smell death on

everyone.

Every single person I meet has an expiration date above their head, mocking me."

Humphrey turned pale. He'd known his drinking would catch up with him. It caught up with everyone. A number made it worse, even a number from some lunatic witch. "Four years?"

Lucy's gaze softened, "Yes." She nudged her glass, and he refilled their drinks. "I can offer you a different path, of course. It comes with a price, but how can you really put a price on a functioning liver."

"What sort of price? My immortal soul? A deal with the devil?"

She shrugged. "Souls are more complex than good and bad. I'm still figuring them out. One of my ideas is that souls have a shape. Some people are squares. Some people are circles. Obviously the shapes aren't that simple. Maybe its better to say that some people are forests and other people are bird feeders and other people are cameras. No — wait — souls are jigsaw puzzles. Massive jigsaw puzzles with each different piece a different part of someone's pure being. My price? My price is rearranging a few of the pieces to help bring out the true self without all the clutter of morality or humanity in between."

Humphrey kept drinking. "Why? What do you get out of it?"

Her smile fell away into a scrunched face. "I'm not sure. Maybe I get to keep the pieces you're not using any more. Or I get to connect you to a larger puzzle. I'm not sure it matters. Or that I'm good at metaphors. I'm not a goddess of metaphors."

"You haven't said exactly what you're a goddess of at all," Humphrey said with a laugh. The whiskey was working wonders.

No, I'm not drunk, it's her. She's doing something, a little bit at a time. The wrinkles have gone again, and her tits are a little bigger. She wants to ease me in.

Lucy straightened up. "I didn't come here to philosophize, believe it or not. I have enjoyed the conversation. It's rare for me to get a chance at it any longer. My subjects are dear to me, but they are also...ravenous in their appetites. It doesn't leave much time for speculating on the nature of existence. I came here to make a deal."

"For my soul, you mentioned that."

"No, not only that. For this place. The Spanish Moss."

"Barking up the wrong tree. I don't own the place. You should be making your devil's bargain with Lowell."

"You don't legally own it, no, but I don't exactly deal with legality or real property or any of that. Places have power just like people, and I think places can borrow from people who give to it. Lowell owns the place, yes, but you've given more of yourself to it than anyone else. You've worked your whole life in this bar, Humphrey. All your good years and all your bad years have soaked into the stove, the floorboards, and this bar." She tapped her fingers on it again. "You own this place, and I want to buy it."

Humphrey rubbed his chin as he looked across the bar at the slowly rejuvenating woman. "Why not take it? You've got some kind of magic. I've got nothing but an old shotgun."

"I cannot take what isn't given. Some people can be pulled, some can be pushed, but some are so rooted to one spot that I can't budge them an inch. You've been rooted to this spot for twenty years. I could parade every slut and vixen at my disposal in front of you, and you'd probably do little more than grunt and laugh. As much as you've come to loathe her, you're entirely too bonded to Bertie for me to pull you away. I could swap every bottle of booze in here with a bottle of my milk, and you'd spit it out for lack of the proper taste. You, Humphrey, are so stuck in your ways that a goddess cannot move you unless you want to move. Stubborn as an old hog, you might say." She giggled.

He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. "Alright then, make me a deal. If you want the Spanish Moss, what do I get?"

"Eternal life of unimaginable bliss? No more pain, no more weariness. A bevy of wanton harlots at your disposal day and night. Your own wife remade into a being of pure sex. Unlike you, she's easy to move. You can both live in my new world, beholden to nothing but your own whims of pleasure. What more could you want than that?"

"I want to own this bar. Not magically or what the hell ever you're talking about. Legally. I want Lowell to sign it over to me proper. I want to say that I made something of myself."

Lucy grinned as her full resplendence returned. Her breasts swelled forward to their impossible size as her dress populated with vivacious red feathers. She clapped her hands. "How perfect. How absolutely perfect. We can certainly manage that. Now, lets seal the deal, shall we?" Lucy pulled down her dress, letting her magnificent orbs spill into view. Humphrey's jaw dropped as she leaned over the counter to get two shot glasses. He'd never seen such perfectly shaped breasts in all his life. Still standing, she positioned her nipple over one of the glasses and squeezed. A rich stream of creamy milk gushed into the glass. Humphrey's mouth watered as she repeated the act for the second glass. She didn't bother pulling up her dress. In fact, it seemed like the dress never had a top to begin with. "To our agreement," she said, picking up one of the glasses.

Nervous, but unwilling to turn back, Humphrey picked up the other. He'd told himself a lie till that moment, a lie about it all being a gag. When he touched the glass, the lie vanished instantly. Holding it sent a shock of pure energy through his body. The deal had been struck when he decided to drink, not when he actually drank. But then, he wanted to drink. He wanted to taste his mistress's milk for the first time. "To our agreement," he said. The milk came to his lips, and a divine warmth spread across his body. He wanted more. He wanted to pin Lucy down and drain her while shoving his cock in any crease he could find. The growing song in his mind urged him to do it as well.

"Alas, you'll have to wait to taste the nectar directly from its source. You have a wife waiting at home." Lucy stood and walked toward the door, her breasts and ass swinging obscenely with each step. "Lock up, drive home safe, and show Bertie the new you." She paused at the door. "You know, we might consider renaming the place. Hogshead is always a classic for a little pub. Something to think about. In case you find inspiration, that is."

Lucy drifted out of the bar, leaving Humphrey alone. He surveyed his new kingdom, feeling a new sort of power in the wood and brick around him. He locked the front door, though he doubted anyone would dare enter a domain of his goddess uninvited. He grabbed his keys and headed out through the back. His body tingled with raw energy. He could feel the changes coming.

***

The headlights in the front windows of their small house roused Bertie from her daze. How long had she been sitting on the couch? A strange feeling flowed through her body, reminding her of her youth.

Am I horny?

So many years had passed without even the hint of true arousal, she'd forgotten what it actually felt like. A few times a year, she'd let Humphrey flop around on top of her, but she never enjoyed it. She hadn't enjoyed sex since their twenties. Even when the physicality of it remained, the spark of love and lust faded. Now it came rushing back. Humphrey was in the driveway, and for the first time in decades, she wanted to see him.

His footsteps thudded on the porch. The front door swung open. A monster stood in the doorway. A scream caught in Bertie's throat as new thoughts and a new song invaded her mind. Humphrey stepped forward into the light, and she saw the creature he'd become. His face was elongated into a snout. Two crude tusks rose out of either side of his wide grin. A thick mane of black hair covered his head and ran down his back. Two pointed ears flopped out from within those wiry curls, flicking back and forth unconsciously as beady, piggish eyes looked at his wife. Humphrey snorted as he shut the door behind him. "Honey, I'm home," he said with a gruff voice.

Bertie's mind raced with questions as her body struggled with competing urges. She wanted to run, scream, or hide. She also wanted to tear off her clothes and kneel before her transformed mate. Her pussy grew wetter by the second as she looked over his changed physique. The shirt which he'd worn out that afternoon stretched to its limit with a few of the buttons already torn off. His gut bulged forward, a thick layer of fat covering a hard core of strong muscle. His arms strained against the sleeves with three visible tears along the seams. She didn't know how he'd fit in the cab of his truck. He strode toward her, and she looked down at his feet. The shoes he'd worn the soles out of had torn away. Humphrey stood on arched feet ending in two toes rather than five. A whine started in Bertie's throat. As her husband's strange hands grabbed her arms, the whine became a low squeal.

With no effort, he lifted her to his shoulder and carried her into the back of the house, snorting with laughter as he walked. Bertie didn't resist. She didn't want to resist. Her husband's strength amazed her as much as his bulk did. From her position on his shoulder, she could run her hands across his back. Beneath the ripped shirt, she could feel the rest of his pelt spreading out over his shoulders and muscular back. They reached the bedroom. Humphrey tossed her onto the bed with a loud thump. He stood at the foot looking down at his plump wife with a hungry grin on his pig face.

His tongue lolled out, a long, broad thing of pale pink. He crawled onto the bed and grabbed hold of Bertie's pants, yanking them down and exposing her hairy pussy. Humphrey lowered himself down between her legs and let his tongue go to work. Within seconds, Bertie squealed properly. Her husband hadn't gone down on her since they were still teenagers, and his new form clearly came with new skills. One of his fat fingered hands squeezed her thigh while the other moved to assist his tongue. Bertie felt it pressing against her folds and knew his finger was bigger than his cock had ever been. With a grunt, he pushed inside of her, drawing out a guttural moan of pleasure. His tongue continued lapping at her folds as he stroked her insides in slow, deliberate rhythm. It brought her no completion, though, only moved her closer to the edge. She knew something else had to happen in order for her to finally cum. She wanted to see what had become of the rest of the man she'd married.