You know that queasy sensation you get when you don't have shoes on and you accidentally step on a worm? Well, I'm just the opposite. I grew up watching every movie and TV show I could find that had giant monsters in them, and any time I saw them stomping after fleeing people I got to feeling funny. I never could understand it until puberty hit. Naturally, a fear years after that, when I started hearing all the stories about actual giant monsters showing up, I had to pretend to be all alarmed and horrified while not letting anyone see that I had a raging hard-on.

By the way, you can call me Axel. And you can relax. If I was going to kill you, I wouldn't be talking to you. I don't waste my time talking to bugs.

Anyway, when I saw the first footage out of China after the first attack, the first thing I did was run and lock myself in my dorm room. People probably thought I was some kind of fragile snowflake, and that's just fine. Better for them to believe that than to know I was in there furiously jerking off while watching a loop of that big scaly foot coming down, boom boom boom, again and again and again. That was the one they called Den Long, "Dragon Man." He was actually a crocodile, as I found out later, but whatever. From that day on I lived in a totally different world. I only did as much work as I needed to keep a passing grade, and spent the rest of the time cruising the web to try to find more footage. Then, right around the end of the semester, that horse dude showed up in Siberia. Do you know why they never showed any video footage of him on the news? It's because every frame of it was filled with squirting blood. You can't show that kind of shit on television, but the internet, it doesn't care. I never was really into hooves that much before that but this guy totally changed my mind. I grabbed as many images as I could, even made my own jerky movies out of still shots, but I was never satisfied by them. The more I found, the more I wanted.

That got me diving deeper and deeper into darker and darker corners of the web, until at long last I happened across F-4. It's the kind of site that you'd normally never find unless you knew someone, but what can I say? I'm that good. It took a lot of doing to get in, what with it being members only and thousands of dollars just to sign up, but there was no way I was going to let any of that stop me, and once I got in, it was like I had stepped into my own twisted version of Heaven. Remember the Siberian Horse-Dude? They had the whole fucking attack, beginning to end, from five or six different camera angles. I watched that big bastard murder a thousand people over the course of twenty minutes. It's a wonder that I still had any skin left on my dick by the end. I managed to crack the protection, downloaded a copy, and kept on searching.

It was a gold mine, only way better than gold. They had video from attacks that I'd never heard of before. Probably no survivors to tell the story, from the look of them. There was a wolf guy in some place in the mountains, maybe Italy or something. A fox chick -- not my thing, but meh, I grabbed a copy anyway. They even had a second Den Long attack, and while I was ripping that one I came across a hidden link to a directory that I'm pretty sure you had to pay a lot extra to access. You would think that guys who could make movies like that would have better encryption technology. There were hundreds -- hundreds -- of videos in there, but these were different. They weren't any shaky-cam outdoor shots, but instead they looked like professionally-produced green screen productions. I figured that's what they were since there'd be no way anyone could get shots like that in real life. They had close-ups, zooms, viewpoint cuts, the whole works. But after a while I started to notice that some of the victims were showing up in more than one clip. There was one Goth kid with black hair with a white streak in it -- pretty distinctive. I watched him getting jerked against a tiger's cock in one video, and ten minutes later there was the exact same guy falling into the mouth of a cheetah guy, or leopard guy -- I don't know, something with spots. That's when I thought, "These sons of bitches are cranking these out in a studio," and that got me to thinking that maybe the whole story of giant monster attacks in far-off corners of the world was just a big publicity stunt for their videos. These guys were probably making a fortune off of them, not that it mattered to me. I ripped every single one of them, even had to buy a second storage drive just to hold them all.

Now, you know the old stereotype of the starving college student, right? It's true. That was me. I figured that if someone was putting in that much work to make these movies and had them hidden behind a pretty steep pay wall, that meant that there had to be buyers. Guys like me. All my life I had thought that I was some sort of freak, the only one in the world who got off on giants doing evil shit, but the more I cruised around the dark web, the more people I discovered who had the same kink. You'd be surprised at how common it is. Ever wonder why kaiju movies are so popular? Anyway, I needed cash, and there were people out there who had cash, and I had something they wanted, so I started editing together clips into short segments that I sold for a couple bucks each. I thought that I could take in maybe a hundred bucks a week, but, no shit, I had orders for fifty times that in just a day! All it took was about an hour each day on an editing deck, and by the end of the month I was almost able to pay off my whole semester's tuition. Imaging pulling in such stupid amounts of money for a product that made you so hard it was almost painful. I was living the dream.

Was. Yeah. You knew that was coming, didn't you?

Maybe I should have been a bit more discreet about it. Thinking back, it was pretty stupid to think that the people who were making these flicks weren't going to notice that some college kid was ripping and selling them. I guess I thought I was slick and that nobody would ever in a million years figure out who "MonsterKing74893" was. I thought that right up until I got back to my dorm after my Economics-201 midterm and found a card stuck to it with a pin that sure as hell looked like it was made of real gold. The lettering was all neat and flowery, like they use in wedding invitations, and it said, "Please be at your computer tonight at 8. Would love to talk."

And it was signed "F-4."

I had not told anybody about the site and I was sure that the software had totally gotten rid of the watermark on the videos, but here was this card. I felt sick, and decided not to go into my room. For all I knew there were three guys with baseball bats waiting in there. I ran into the library and hid out in one of the old study carrels back in the stacks for, I don't know, maybe two hours, just trying to think of what to do. I thought about leaving town, but that wouldn't do any good. These guys had somehow tracked me down not just to my town, not just to my college, but right to my fucking dorm room. No, the only thing that made sense was to hand over all of the money that I'd made, or as much as I had left at least. I would apologize, act all contrite and respectful, and even offer to show them how I cracked their security so that they could fix it and nobody else could get in. Yeah, that would do it. Having a plan calmed me down enough that when it came up on eight o'clock, I snuck back into my room, locked the door and turned on the computer.

It didn't boot up like normal. Instead, right as soon as the screen came on, there was a man's face staring back at me. "Hello there," he said, all cheery-like, and called me by name.

I practically shit my pants. "Dude!" I said. "What the fuck? How are you here?" and stuff like that, and then I went right into "I'm really sorry! I won't do it again! I can give back all the money I made!"

He smiled at that. It wasn't an evil Bond-villain smile, but more like a grandfather whose bratty kid had gotten caught stealing a cookie, and for some reason, that just made it more unnerving. "Settle down," he said. "You aren't in any trouble. I just want to talk to you."

"...Seriously?"

"Seriously. I suspect my note might have given the wrong impression. I probably should have drawn a smiley face on it. Regardless, Is this a good time? Can we talk now, or should I call back?"

"No, it's...it's cool. Yeah, it's cool. Now's good. So, um...I guess you're mad that I stole your videos, but I feel awful about it and I'm willing to make it up to you."

He gave me that terrifying oh-what-a-scamp-you-are smile and shook his head. "Maybe we were a little mad at first, but once we started tracking your sales, we realized that we were missing out on a much broader market. Your little scheme might have been naughty, but it turned out to be to our advantage."

I said something stupid like "Oh, shit, really?" and then I got nervous again. "Wait, you were tracking my sales?"

"Yes. We have actually been watching you for quite a while." The camera that was on him started to pull back. The wall behind him came into focus, and it was covered with fur. "In fact, we have had our eye on you since before you ventured into our little corner of the internet."

I couldn't move. It was like I had an electric current going through me. Every muscle was locked up. The camera kept pulling back, and I realized that the guy was standing on a hand, a fucking hand, eight feet across, with claws, and behind it a big furry arm, and soon, bam, there was the tiger dude from the video with the Goth kid.

"You can call me Benson," Grandpa said. "It's as good a name as any. And I believe you already know my associate Girish, here."

I nodded, and all I could think to say was, "Yeah. Hi." And Girish kind of chuckled and nodded back. He fucking nodded back. He really wasn't some sort of pre-programmed CGI background. He was reacting to what I said.

Benson grinned. "You may want to put that pillow in your lap."

"What?" I said, and just then noticed that I was showing pretty prominently. Real fast I grabbed the pillow and shoved it down over my lap, but then I thought, wait... "How did you know?"

"How did I know that there was a pillow, or that you had sprung to attention?"

By now I was really rattled. "Both!"

"I told you. We've been watching you. We know all there is to know about you, in great detail. For example, we know that you write with your right hand but masturbate with your left. And now that I have your undivided attention, I wonder if you might consider an offer of employment."

I was already reaching for the tablet, ready to smack the thing off the table and bust it into pieces and bring this whole crazy shitfest to an end, but when he said that I just froze up. "Employment? You mean, like a job?"

"That is usually what employment means," he said, and behind him Girish let out a laugh that sounded like an earthquake was happening on the other end.

"Oh, I get it," I said, relaxing a little. "You want me to help you tighten up your network security."

"Actually, no," Benson replied. "That, we've already seen to. We do have an opening that, I believe, is much more in line with your interests." He paused and winked. "The left-handed ones, I mean."

I almost smacked the tablet off the table again, and then Benson said, "I wonder if you would be interested in traveling here to our facility to meet with me," and with a look over his shoulder he added, "and with Girish, if you would like."

My body turned to ice in an instant. "Meet...Girish?" I said. My teeth were chattering.

"That pillow was a smart move," Benson chuckled. "We will take that as a yes. I will send a car in the morning after you finish breakfast."

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I'm pretty sure it was more than the cheap-ass rideshare that pulled up to my dorm the next day. The driver was a Mexican-looking guy, fresh from across the border and probably illegal. After I got in, I said, "So how far is it?"

"Lo siento," he shrugged, "No Inglés."

That was just great. So, we started driving, and after about ten minutes, I got to thinking. Was this really the guy that was going to be taking me to see Benson? I tried asking him if he knew where he was going, but all I got again was "No Inglés." After a few more minutes I was getting ready to kick the door open and tuck and roll, but just then he pulled into a parking lot, where the first thing I saw was a big black limousine. I mean, this thing was huge. The door was open, with a guy in a classy chauffeur uniform next to it. Now, that was more like it! The chauffeur threw me a salute as I climbed out of the car, then said to the Mexican guy, "Thanks, Emmanuel."

"No problem," he said, without any kind of accent at all. Then he flashed me this big shit-eating grin and said, "Good luck with the interview, Kid."

Motherfucker.

The limo had blacked-out windows, and I don't mean they were tinted. I mean, they were totally opaque. I had no idea where we were going. There was beer in the back, though, so I had something to occupy myself for the next, I don't know, hour, hour-and-a-half, maybe. Once we stopped, the door opened, and right there was a private jet, also with blacked-out windows, waiting for me with its engines running. I felt like fucking James Bond.

So, long story short, after a full day's worth of cloak-and-dagger stuff, I finally got to meet Benson face-to-face. He shook my hand, ushered me into a little conference room, asked me if I wanted coffee, and then got straight to business. "Do you know exactly what it is we do here?"

"I'm pretty sure," I said. "You make movies."

"Yes, that's true. What kind of movies?"

"Well, Monster movies."

"Correct. Would it surprise you to learn that we not only make monster movies here, but we also make our own monsters?"

I wasn't sure what he meant. "So, you come up with the ideas yourself?"

He shook his head and gave me that Grandpa-smile of his. "How do you imagine that our films get made?"

"Well, green screens, mostly. CGI, maybe some costume work, and miniatures, I guess."

"Yes, we use all of those. But no matter how expensive your computers are, a sharp-eyed viewer will always spot a computer-generated monster, or a man in a suit, or a model train. For years we had to rely on those sorts of things, and that was all well and good, but once our technology improved, we realized that there is simply no substitute for having an actual monster in your principal role. Girish, I must say, is one of our most talented performers." He sat back in his chair. "So, would you like to meet him?"

"Fuck, yeah!" I said. That's probably not the best thing to say in an interview, but I was pretty fired up.

Benson laughed and stood up. "Come along," he said, and opened a door at the back of the room. "And try to set aside everything that you have ever been taught about both biology and physics. We live in a far more enlightened era, as you are about to see."

I followed him through the door and onto a big balcony, and there I got my first look at Studio Four. If you haven't seen it yet, imagine standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, but someone has painted the whole thing -- walls, ceiling, even the sky -- in chroma-key green. And at the far end of it, there he was: Girish, in the flesh, or in the fur, I guess is more accurate. And here is where my mind broke completely. With all of Benson's "yeah, we make monsters" talk, I had figured that he was just being poetic, like the Hollywood guys who are always saying, "We make dreams," and bullshit like that. So when I went in, I was sure that I was going to be seeing a bunch of miniatures. And I was, kind of. All these little carts and little people and stuff were running around Girish's feet, all of them perfectly detailed, totally lifelike...and then it hit me that they were not miniature. They were full size. They were real people. And Girish, was a motherfucking giant! He's standing there, he's got to be two hundred fucking feet tall, and do you know what he was doing? Bet you can't guess. He was drinking a latte. Seriously! Here he was, fucking tiger the size of a skyscraper, and he was holding a cup the size of a water tank and just lapping at the foam on top. I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or just skip straight to the coming-in-my-shorts part.

A horn blared and made me jump, and somewhere a loudspeaker barked out something that I couldn't make out, but Girish put his latte down on the ground, and right away these tiny people dragged a big green sheet over it, making it disappear entirely. It was only when I leaned over the rail and looked closer that I saw that there was a whole army of tiny people -- well, normal-sized people -- all over the place, all covered in green spandex, even their faces, all almost totally camouflaged against the walls and floor.

"They're getting ready to shoot," Benson said over my shoulder. "Keep your eye on the middle of the room." I followed where he was pointing, and there was a single man who wasn't camouflaged. In fact, he stood out pretty well because he was totally naked. Greenies were scrambling all round him, some on golf carts, some climbing onto camouflaged camera rigs, others launching drones into the air until it looked like a swarm of little green bees was buzzing around. The horn went off again and the greenies scurried away, leaving the naked guy all by himself out in the open.

"Action!" came from the loudspeaker. The naked guy darted forward, racing along like a streaker trying to outrun the stadium cops at a ball game. Then, Girish started after him. The cat was just walking, totally not in any hurry, but closing the distance fast with every step. The man kept looking back over his shoulder. He was getting frantic. Girish was just smirking down at him as he got closer and closer, and finally he caught up. A camera cart that had been keeping pace with Girish swerved in close just as the naked guy threw himself down on the ground, and a split-second later Girish's foot came squarely down on top of him.

It was a good thing that Benson was there to crab my arm because I almost fell right over. I said, "Holy shit," or something like that, "He just fucking stepped on that guy!"

"Of course!" Benson replied. "That's the money shot."

Girish continued forward a few paces, stopping when the horn blew again. Greenies rushed to the spot where the man had fallen and where I was totally expecting to see a red stain, but the guy was surprisingly intact. Then I noticed that the floor beneath him was wobbling and bobbing like a trampoline. The guy stood up, totally fine, and bounced toward a greenie who was waiting with a bathrobe for him.

Benson put his hand on my shoulder. "I'm quite proud of that trick. I designed it myself. Later, in post-production, we can add in the gore, a little or a lot, as much as we want." Then he put a finger to his ear. I guess he had a Bluetooth or something, but I couldn't see it. "Girish, old pal, our candidate is here for his visit. Do you have a moment to come and say hello?"

My stomach started trying to claw its way out through bellybutton. Girish was coming toward us, and the closer he got, the bigger he got. He was staring straight at me. I am pretty sure that everyone on the floor could see the red glow from me blushing up on the balcony. We were right about chest level to him, and the closer he came, the more I had to lean back to keep meeting his gaze.

"He doesn't speak," Benson whispered. "He's very self-conscious about his accent. I think it sounds charming but he doesn't believe me."

Girish was taking up my entire field of view by now. He stared at me for a few seconds, then raised both hands and traced out some gestures in the air. Benson laughed. "He says that you should have brought your pillow."

"What? Oh, god damn it!" I folded my hands in front of my crotch and tried to act casual.

Girish chuckled at that, and I swear, the sound made every bone in my body rattle. Imagine having lightning strike the ground ten feet in front of you; that's exactly how it felt. He made another couple of signs, and Benson translated, "It's fine, he says. He's used to it."

"I...yeah. I can imagine." I cleared my throat, put my hands to my mouth and shouted, "It's, um, a real pleasure to meet you!"

Another chuckle, another few signs, and Benson said, "I'm not deaf. It's just hard for me to talk with these teeth." That's when Girish showed off just what he meant, flashing his fangs close enough that I could have reached out and touched them, and believe me, I could have used about six pillows right then. Then he glanced down, and signed some more. "Ah," Benson said, "He needs to set up for the next scene, but Manny is down there and would like to say hello to you. He was the man that you saw being crushed."

"Lucky him." I looked around for some stairs or something, but Benson tapped a button on the rail, and the whole balcony gave a little jolt and started to descend. I got the full tour of Girish, starting with his chest, a wall of white fur, down his belly, past the moneymaker -- that's not CGI in the videos, by the way. He's really hung like that -- down past his legs, until we got to his paws. Big as transit buses, those things were, and right between them, smiling and smoking a cigarette in his bathrobe, was a stupidly familiar face. "Lo siento!" he called out. "No habla Inglés!"

I sputtered like an idiot. "You...you're the....oh, mother-fucker!"

He laughed hard. "Oh, you remember? Yeah, I couldn't resist. They needed someone to play a driver that wouldn't draw any attention, and I figured it would give me a chance to see what you looked like." He grabbed my hand and gave it a ferocious shake. "So, it's really great to meet you. I've been wanting to for years." I had no idea what he was talking about, and he laughed again and said, "You know me. From the chat room. I'm MegaYeenBeans."

For shit's sake! Here was one of the first people I had met online who shared my demented little hobby. We had spent hours upon hours talking together. A handshake wasn't going to do, no way. I threw my arms around him and gave him a big bear hug. "Whoa, easy!" he said. "I'm going to need these ribs to be intact when we start the next scene."

"Sorry! Still, I can't believe it. It's fantastic to meet you! Um, what next scene, though? Aren't you already dead?"

"We don't film them in order. What you just saw is what happens after I get away. Now we're going back to what happens before. See, the story is that Girish and Brutus have caught me and about a dozen others and they're using us as fuck-toys, and I'm the only one who survives and manages to escape, but like you saw, I don't get very far."

I didn't think that it was possible for my heart to pound any harder. I turned to Benson. "Hey, could I...?"

"Sorry," Benson said with a quirky little smile. "That one is a closed set. So now, we should let Manny and Girish relax a little until Brutus and the other extras are ready. Meanwhile, I think that it's time we discussed the position that we are prepared to offer you."

I think I must have said "Dude, no way!" about a thousand times after we got back to that little conference room. "Dude, no way! You're trying to tell me that you can turn me into a giant, like Girish?"

Benson was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. "Of course. You've seen it for yourself. Do you suppose we just found Girish wandering on an island somewhere? He was once a young man just like yourself. In fact," and here he winked, "he was one of the users on your channel. Another reason that he wanted to meet you."

It was a good thing that they had nice, thick cushions on the chairs, or I would have broken my ass when I fell back. "This is...I can't...how...?"

"Let's just leave it at 'We have access to genetic technology that is not yet available to other institutions.'"

"And you're using it to make monsters?" When Benson looked a little offended at that I quickly added, "I mean, giants?"

"Why not? It is a very lucrative market, as you have seen. And very well suited to the entertainment industry."

I was shaking...and already starting to get hard. Dammit. "I guess...but what about college?"

"Ah, yes." Benson leaned back in his chair. "Two more years of cramming so that you can get a piece of paper that will allow you to get a slightly better-paying job that you'll quickly start to hate. Why bother, when we are offering you employment here that does not require a college degree? You already have the qualities that we are looking for. In fact, we believe that you represent the ideal candidate."

He had a point. I had not given much thought to what I wanted to do after college, and considering the job market, I would probably have spent a lot of time behind a supermarket checkout. And what they were offering, as unbelievable as it was, was literally a dream come true. "I...I guess."

Benson leaned forward again. "Is that a yes, or a no?"

With a deep breath I said, "Yes," nice and firmly. "Where do I sign?"

"No need for that," he said, that Cheshire grin coming back. "We like to keep things informal here." He poked a button on his tablet, and three old guys in white coats came in, every one of them looking like a stereotypical scientist. Seriously, it was pretty comical. One of them even had an Einstein moustache and big white hair. Anyway, Benson introduced them all -- I can't remember any of the names now since, as you can imagine, my mind was a little bit elsewhere -- and then he said, "Now, the only thing left to do is to decide what image best suits you. For obvious reasons, we can't have you looking like yourself, which is why we have our Principals choose animal exteriors. So, give it some thought and..."

"Crow!" I shouted out.

He paused, frowned a little, and took a deep breath. "Avians are a little problematical," he said patiently. "They have the disadvantage of not being 'equipped,' shall we say, down there. That tends to be a pretty significant selling point for our product. We have always been concerned that to remove it would make the videos less appealing to our target audience."

"Guys, seriously?" I said. "You're telling me that you can turn me into a giant crow, but you can't turn me into a giant crow with a dick?"

One of the whitecoats said, "I'm afraid that the technology does have some limitations..."

But Einstein Junior jumped in, "Actually, I think we can! Remember the chimera experiment I did last year? The one that you both said didn't have a practical application? Well, here we have one."

The other two looked skeptical. For the next five or ten minutes they barked and snapped at each other like rabid little corgis, but as time rolled on they gradually started to sound more enthusiastic, until at last Einstein Junior announced, "We're going to give it a go!"

"A go?" Benson said worriedly. "I would rather not introduce any undue risk to our poor newest Principal."

"I'll risk it!" I cut in. "It's what I want."

Benson looked from me to the scientists, then back again, then back again-again, pondering and pursing his lips and humming, until finally he said, "All right. If you're sure about it."

"We're sure!" all the whitecoats and I said in unison.

I would love to be able to tell you how my transmogrification was done and what it felt like, but to be honest, I was kept pretty doped up throughout the whole thing. Think about it. My body was being changed from the molecular level on up. Muscles growing, skin stretching, feathers coming through, yowch! I think I'm happier not having much memory of it. There's only a few quick flashes, like snapshots, mostly from later on in the process. I can remember running my hand down my chest and feeling feathers and thinking "Holy shit." Reaching down between my legs and thinking "Oh, thank God, the experiment worked!" Standing up and looking down at bird feet that looked like they were a quarter mile away and being dizzy as hell.

And then there was one day when...wow. It started with me coming out of a thick fog, a literal fog, like I was stumbling out of a steam room. I found myself outside, and that felt great, since I don't think I saw the sky even once since the day I left college. There were mountains around me, all pretty as a postcard. I turned around, and bam! There at my feet was a tiny road, and when I followed it with my gaze I saw a town sort of nestled between two steep slopes. It looked like it was within arm's length but it took me about thirty steps or so before I got there. Bird eyes are pretty funky that way.

There were things that were moving around that to me looked at first like big bugs -- grasshoppers, roaches, things like that -- but then all at once it clicked, and I realized that I was looking at people. Tiny little people, all over the place, all of them no bigger than...well, than you are. And they were terrified. Some were on their knees, praying, I guess; others were diving into houses and bonking heads with the ones that were diving out. Mostly, though, they were running. They were everywhere, all scurrying and banging into each other and making this thin whiny sound, like a cloud of mosquitoes. I was afraid to move a muscle in case I hurt someone.

But that's when things got weird. I did not want to move, but I was moving. Legs swinging, feet stomping down the road, none of them paying attention to what I was telling them. The more I tried to say, "Hey, body, chill out, stop," the more I realized that I had absolutely no control over myself. Think of it like being in the back seat of a car being driven by a crackhead. You're along for the ride, no matter what you want to do. I didn't want to do what I did, but there was no way that I could stop it, and once that sunk in, some part of me just sort of surrendered and sat back to watch.

A few seconds later I was tearing into buildings, which I have got to tell you is a total blast. Buildings come apart real easy when you're two hundred feet tall, believe me. Even concrete crumbles like a sandcastle. And wood? It's nothing. A house made of wood might as well be made out of crackers. I started cackling like a madman as I plowed a straight line through the town, punching through walls, kicking over little teeny shops and stuff. It was so much fun that I totally forgot that there were people there, right up until I swung my leg over an apartment building -- I think I was planning to sit on it to see if it would hold my weight -- and when my foot came down, it wasn't just pavement that I felt beneath it. I think that the closest I can describe it would be like stepping on a piece of bubble wrap mixed up in a mud puddle. I looked down at my foot and noticed people racing away from it in both directions, and then realization dawned, and this sick feeling ran through my gut. Really slowly I lifted my foot up. Gooey red strings trailed away from it, and in the impression that it left behind in the pavement...well, if it weren't for the clothing you would never have been able to tell that they had been human. There was one guy, though, that was still alive. He was flailing around on his back, mostly intact from the waist up, while everything from the waist down was mush.

Now, what I wanted to do right then was just run or hide or call an ambulance or something. That's what I was thinking, and that's what I wanted my body to do, but instead, I watched my foot swing back over the guy. He was squealing and raised his arms up, his hands all spread out wide. I was like, "What the hell, Leg, quit that!" but it was like, "Fuck you," kept on going. I saw the guy disappear beneath a toe, then I felt a pop, and then a squirt.

And right then this voice boomed out, "Oh, fuck, yeah!" It took me a second or two to realize that it was mine. When I looked down again I couldn't help noticing that I was as hard as a rock. My legs started walking then, all on their own, big old dick swinging and slapping at my thighs, feet crashing down closer and closer to the people who were running away. And you know what? While that sick feeling was still there, I was starting to feel less and less motivated to argue with my legs, and then pretty much stopped trying. It was like I was as high as fuck, just happy to lie back let my body do what it wanted to do.

I went after the people off to my left first, because there were more of them. I caught up to them in, like, a few seconds, and just started stepping on them. Fucking hell, was that intense! They were screaming, begging, and somehow that just made me want to crush even more of them. The way they crunched underfoot, the sensation of struggling limbs turning into jelly, it was driving me crazy. I couldn't get enough of it. I was stamping on them left and right, right and left, but the more I killed, the more I craved. At one point I bent down and grabbed up, I don't know, maybe a dozen of them in my hand. I held them right up to my eye and started to squeeze. I just wanted to watch them die. I made it last, too. Almost gently at first, and then once their little bones started to crackle I started squeezing them harder and harder, watching their faces twist up, watching their eyes bug out, watching their guts pop out of their mouths, watching their blood squirt between my fingers -- oh, fuck, I wanted to cum so bad right then!

And then it hit me. What was stopping me? All those soft little bodies, all wriggling around, and my cock needing so badly to get off. It just seemed to make sense, you know? I wiped away what was left of that first bunch and reached for more, except these I didn't kill, or at least not right away. I wanted them alive, and man, if I thought it was hot seeing the looks on their faces as I crushed them in my fist, it was ten times hotter the looks they had with that giant cock hovering over them. I'm telling you, when I first felt them struggling against it, it was like lightning was shooting through my whole body, starting right at that spot. I was totally in Heaven, just dragging them all over it, sliding them down and kneading them into my balls, then back up and squeezing them around the head, but then: Squitch! Damn it, I'd forgotten how frail they were. But it didn't matter. There were more than enough of them, and I was getting so close there was no way I could have stopped even if I wanted to. I started grabbing up handful after handful, jerking them against my shaft and loving the feeling of their struggles until they started to come apart, and then I just reached for more. It wasn't only the physical sensation, either, that had me going. There was also the intense rush of knowing that I was using them for my pleasure whether they wanted it or not. They were like slaves, or actually more like toys. Just playthings for me. I controlled them -- I them, and nobody could stop me from doing what I wanted with them. That, I tell you, was hotter than anything I'd ever felt in my life.

I decided that I wanted to cum on them just to drive home how powerless they were against me, so when I felt my balls tighten up I leaned forward and tried to point it at the ones who were still alive. My aim wasn't so good, but it turned out not to matter. I came like a cannon, these big ropes of spunk just blasting right through the crowd, tearing them apart where it hit them squarely and just smothering the rest. I couldn't help but laugh when I saw them trying to breathe beneath it. They looked just like fucking goldfish.

So, I had finally gotten to cum, but there were still so many of them left, and I was like, "It's sort of a shame to let them all go to waste." I figured that I'd maybe grab a few to take home, and maybe even use them in a scene, going for that extra realism. Pretty sure Benson wouldn't have minded. I turned around and started crawling back down the street, now and then smashing my fist into the front of a building and feeling around inside to see if I could catch some that were hiding. That didn't work so well. If I held them too tightly they just popped, and if I didn't hold them tightly enough they'd squirm free. Pretty frustrating, you know?

Then I remembered: Duh! You're a bird! Birds can hear worms crawling around under the ground -- you can see where I'm going with this, right? I started listening, and sure enough, I could hear them rustling around. Little human worms. It didn't take long for me to track down a ton of them that were hiding in a long, low building, which turned out to be a church. Kind of ironic, isn't it? They hadn't figure out that there was only one god that was listening, and they were leading him right to them. All it took was a few cars piled up against each exit, then a good hard yank to take off the roof, and bingo! There they were, all dressed up and nowhere to go. There were hundreds of them, I'd guess, all trapped, all scrambling, all screaming, all mine. It was perfect.

But now, what to do with them? I had gone soft by then, so I thought, maybe if I tried stuffing them into my sheath. Did you notice that I've got one of them around my dick? Sure, you did. I've seen you sneaking peeks. So, anyway, I picked four or five of them up and shoved them down inside, one at a time. It felt pretty good with their squirming started to wake the giant monster up again, and it was pretty comical when it started to push them back out into the open, but once there they just fell and splattered on the pavement. That wasn't going to get me off. I tried reaching in and just randomly snuffing some, squashing them under my thumb, pulling their heads off -- you know, stuff like that. That was fun, but it didn't quite reach that itch that I was getting more and more desperate to scratch.

That's when I noticed one little guy standing in the middle of the floor. He stood out because all the others were trying to press themselves into the walls, and he was all by himself. It was pretty clear that he was trying to get my attention. That got my curiosity up. I picked him up as carefully as I could and brought him right up close to my face. He was talking, or I suppose that's what he was doing. His mouth was moving but all I heard was "eek eek eek," like a mouse. You see, I didn't have an earpiece then to help me make out your little voices, but while I couldn't make out the words, I was pretty sure he was pleading, or trying to reason with me, something like that.

I felt a teeny, tiny nip of guilt, and my own voice started to speak up again inside my head. I was like, "What are you doing? You can't just kill him. This is a person, a person just like you." That's what the old human-me was trying to say, but then there was a much, much louder voice that was cawing right in my ear, "That's not a person, and it's nothing like you, not anymore! That little thing is just meat!"

Just meat.

Meat...

Yeah, that did it. That one word had broken though and reached the itch. That twinge of guilt? Gone. I just dipped my head down while he was still talking and kind of snapped him up in my beak, like tweezers. Seeing his little arms and legs flapping around on either side of my beak was enough to make me rock-hard almost instantly. Then, with a little toss, I bolted him to the back of my throat, and ... gulp! Believe me, there is not any kind of rush more intense than eating someone alive. I could feel him wiggling and kicking all the way down, and he didn't stop when he got to the bottom, either, just kept on flopping around. And he was screaming. I could hear it. Screaming his lungs out. He was being digested, and he knew it, and we both knew that it was going to last a long time. I barely touched my dick right then and whoosh, I came again, so hard that it shot up and over the church and came down on the other side.

I took my time finishing off the rest of them. I ate them one by one, and not just because it was such a turn-on to see the expressions on their faces, knowing what was coming but not knowing when it would be their turn. See, this big beak of mine isn't really designed for shoveling in big handfuls of food. I must have looked like a giant sparrow, peck, peck, peck, but that was OK. Nobody was going to be left to tell about it. My whole insides felt like they were moving, and I could hear all of their voices mingled together, and I could feel all of them trying to find some way out. I was like, "You're mine now, you little fucks. You belong to me, and soon you're going to be me..."

That's the last thing I remember before I woke up. And man, was I pissed at whatever did it. One second I'm relaxing back and digesting my meal, and the next I'm sitting up in bed so fast I got dizzy and fell back down again. I wanted to hang onto that dream so bad, but it was gone, and like it or not, I was back in my room. I don't know if I mentioned it, but these guys actually went so far as to re-create my dorm room from back in college. They got it down to the last detail, and I would have thought that Benson, the studio, the whole damn thing had been part of the dream if I hadn't looked down my body and seen these shiny black feathers and big black claws. And morning wood. Of course, with the dream still fresh in my mind, I took care of that right away.

For a long time I just sat there on my bed, slowly coming to the realization that I was actually having lucid thoughts. Everything before that, like I mentioned, was just one long drawn-out drug trip. I found that if I really concentrated I could grab a few flashes of memory, things like getting injections, practicing talking through a beak, muscle-building exercises, and stuff like that. They had never told me that I might have some fucked up dreams, at least not that I could remember, but I wasn't going to complain. I started to feel a little twist in my gut, a bit of guilt, kind of like I felt the first time I jerked off to pictures of Den Long squishing people, but I brushed it off. I can't be faulted for enjoying an innocent dream, right? Nobody getting hurt. Just harmless fap-fodder for me.

That twist, though, wasn't going away, and in fact it was starting to get worse. It was physical, a tight kind of feeling deep inside, and both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, if that makes sense. I knew that I had felt it before but I couldn't quite place my finger on it. All of a sudden my stomach clenched up tight and I started gagging. Gonna puke, I thought, but before I could make a run for the bathroom I felt a huge lump pushing up past my throat, and then this big soggy clump of crap splatted into my hand. Oh, right, I thought. I'm a crow, and just like a lot of birds, crows bundle up whatever they can't digest and cough it up as a pellet. I had probably hacked up hundreds of them while I was undergoing my transition.

Usually they're made up of fur, seeds, bits of plastic, that kind of thing. The one in my hand, though, was mostly cloth. And not just any old cloth. All sorts of tiny, torn up shirts and pants, all twisted together. And Hair, too. Lots of it. And there were watches...jewelry...belts....phones....shoes...

And bones. Lots and lots of bones. At first they looked like mouse bones, but as I looked closer I was able to pick out pelvises, rib cages, and in particular, skulls. Dozens of those, maybe hundreds. A lot of them had their mouths open wide like they were screaming, and if you looked real close you could see fillings in their teeth.

Suddenly the monitor next to the bed started beeping and I almost jumped out of my feathers. A window had popped up saying that I had an incoming message, and when I jabbed the button, there was my old pal Benson, staring at me with that familiar smile on his face, the oh-what-a-scamp-you-are one. He said, "So how did it feel?" I just stared stupidly at him, and after a moment he said, "Your first outing. How was it?"

"Outing?"

"You had quite a wild time yesterday, and from the look of it, you enjoyed it quite thoroughly." He started to laugh, but then stopped when he saw the confusion in my eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry. You thought it was a dream, didn't you?"

I stared down at the pellet in my hand. "No," I said. "I mean...yeah, at first, but...it wasn't, was it?"

"Ah, that's quite a common reaction. Most of our principals come away from their first outing rather dazed. But are you feeling all right? You do strike me as being a bit troubled."

"Well, I am, I guess. I mean, I don't know how to explain it, but I didn't...I mean, I never wanted to really hurt anyone. I just wanted to scare them a bit, make them run around. But as soon as I got started, it's like my body just went on autopilot. Something else took over and just started killing people left and right, and I was just going along for the ride. It wasn't me, though!"

He nodded. "That's to be expected. That was simply the crow taking over."

"What does that mean? I am the crow, aren't I?"

He started to answer, then paused and leaned back in his chair. "Actually, no. I am very certain that we discussed this when you first began your transition. It was quite apparent that you were excited, however, and I had the feeling that you weren't paying much attention to what I was saying. I should have pressed the point. If you think hard, though, you should remember being told about the Outings, and why they are necessary."

I closed my hand around the pellet and concentrated, digging down deep into the fog, fumbling around in the dark. Outing. Outing? There was something. I fumbled harder, grasping, and then a light bulb went off. I started to remember how Benson rattled on like some old professor while I fidgeted, just wanting to get the bullshit out of the way so we could get started. "It's important that you understand," he had said, "that when we combine a human genome with that of an animal, there's a inevitably going to be lot of extra baggage that is carried along: Instincts, species memories, things that we still don't understand. Those instincts can be overwhelming, and once in a while, just to keep you from going insane, it is necessary for us to let them out. That's why we periodically arrange what we call an 'Outing.' We really have no choice. We must allow the animal in you to run free, because if you bottle it up, it will burst out at what I guarantee will be the most awkward time." He leaned forward again. "For example, in the middle of a shoot. I think you would agree that such a thing would not do. The people we hire as extras have rare talents and are very difficult to replace."

I closed my eyes and opened my hand, as if the pellet would magically not be there. But there it was, bones and hair and skulls and all. "I remember. And I get it. I shouldn't be surprised. But there's something else."

"Go on."

Well, see, while I was...you know, doing what I was doing...I was into it. I mean, totally into it. Even when I thought that it was too much and I had to stop, but I couldn't. I couldn't stop it."

"Couldn't?" Benson said quietly. "Or was it that you really did not want to?"

It was as if he had just shot me through the heart.

"Well, are you really surprised?" he continued. "Crows are cruel bastards. They take great delight in tormenting other creatures, more so even than cats. I would go so far as to label them as sadists." And here he leaned very close to the camera and said quietly, "But you knew that already, of course, didn't you?"

I nodded.

"And it is precisely why you were so eager to become one, wasn't it?"

I had nothing to say. Slowly I reached up and shut off the monitor. For the first time I was able understand --or rather, to admit to myself -- why they had hired me. To create a monster, the only thing they needed to change was my body.

I kept that pellet, you know. It's right in my room. Every now and then before going to sleep, I take it out and just stare at it. I look at all the little bones, all those little empty eye sockets staring back at me, and I'm reminded that there's no sense in feeling any shame for doing what I do. I am not a human, after all, and maybe never really was. Why would I even want to be? When you get right down to it, human beings are just food. Nothing more, nothing less. Just food.

Present company excluded, of course! Like Benson once said, extras like you are hard to replace. And you don't need to worry. The crow isn't going to come out during our shoot. I'm, like, totally ninety-nine percent sure of that.

Ah, there's the bell! We're due on set.

Break a leg!

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