The Halloween Queen’s Mean Beans

The Halloween Queen’s Mean Beans

The world around Derek was silent and dark as he walked home from the gym, but he was playing air guitar. Still pumped up from his workout, Derek listened to rock music in his earbuds and sang along to it as he made his way back to his apartment. The sidewalks were empty, the sky was darkening, and only the streetlights and setting sun lit the way. Lights did not shine through the windows, which he would have found strange if he had been paying attention. 

As he neared the entrance to his apartment, streetlights began shutting off each time he walked under them. He raised an eyebrow took out one of his earbuds, and looked up at them. The rock concert atmosphere he had cultivated for himself in that moment immediately dissolved into something a lot eerier. Derek didn’t believe in the supernatural, but this was strange. 

A crash and a clattering in the alleyway beside him made him jump. He peered into the alleyway, attempting to make out any shapes in the darkness. 

“H-hello?” He asked. He knew it wasn’t wise to go inside the alleyway and investigate, and that it was better to just go home… but he knew if he didn’t know for sure that it was safe, then he would be frightened of what would possibly be down there, the fear of the unknown replacing the fear of what could happen to him. This fear was too powerful and his curiosity was too strong, so he took slow careful steps down the alleyway, and turned the corner. 

On the other side of this alley was the dim glow of a streetlight, which revealed the non-supernatural scene to him. There was a metal trashcan, its contents of rotten food and old chip bags spilled all over the floor. On top of the trashcan sat a cat, who stared up at Derek, swishing its tail as if nothing had happened at all. Derek heaved a sigh of relief, confirming his suspicions, the fear of the unknown subsiding because now he knew all, and knew there was nothing to fear. 

The cat was a very fluffy cat with dark fur. It must have belonged to someone because no stray could have been that fluffy. And its eyes… its eyes were large expanses of bright colors, containing so much feeling, so much innocence. One of the eyes was a deep blue richer than the blue of the sky. The other was an intense yellow, shinier than gold. Enamored with this beautiful being, he knelt down and spoke softly. 

“Hey, little guy,” He said. “Are you lost?” 

The cat responded with a slow blink. Derek let out a small chuckle and continued watching the cat. Those eyes were hard not to look at, as each of them grew lighter in color as one looked away from the pupils. There was a splash of color around each pupil also, the blue eye having a green splash, and the yellow eye having a faint red splash. They were so colorful, so beautiful… Looking at them  made the tight knot in his stomach loosen, and his shoulders hunch. His eyelids drooped, and he suddenly felt more tired. He went to stand up but it occurred to him that he didn’t want to stand up, that he wanted to keep watching this cat. And staring into its eyes. 

He realized he felt uncomfortable knelt down the way he was, so he settled down in a way that felt natural to him, with his palms pressed against the ground. And now that he was on all fours, now that he was closer to the cat, he felt the need to say something to it… it would have been awkward to just keep staring at it. It was only right to have a conversation, yes? So, he thought long and hard on a conversation topic, and finally spoke up. 

“Nyaa!” He said, lifting one of his hands, and waving it as if pawing the air. His voice was much higher pitched than it was before. After he said that, he tried to register what it meant and why he said it, but realized it didn’t matter. It made sense. It was a sensible thing to say. In fact, it was a very thought provoking comment for the cat. It was smart. 

Even after settling down, he still felt uncomfortable. There was a lot of tension in his lower back, his ears and feet felt squished, and his face felt itchy. He bent down, and raised up his bottom, attempting to stretch his back, he did that, he wiggled his toes. The freeing cool night air hit him as his paws burst through his sneakers, and his tail burst through his pants. He swished it back and forth to let blood flow through it again. His legs grew itchier and hairier, the hair thickening into a layer of fluffy brown fur. He wrinkled his nose, and the itchiness in his face stopped as whiskers broke his skin and grew outward away from his nose.  As for his ears, he wiggled them as well, letting them stretch into triangular points. Hairs grew on the backs of his ears, which grew into fur. They stretched out like flattening clay, and morphed into his head morphed in such a way that made his growing ears move to the top of his head. 

Once the changes were done, the cat in front of Derek opened its mouth to speak

“Mmm, so my servant can finally hear me,” It said. Its voice was disproportionately low, and it enunciated as it spoke. The voice reverberated in Derek’s skull, and sent chills down his spine. 

“Meow?” He asked. 

“That’s right,” The cat replied “you are a cat. Your human mind is under my lock and key, only to come out when I say. If you attempt to think as a  human would, the thought would just turn into a ‘meow’ or a ‘nyah.’”

Derek purred as the thoughts that ran by his mind, images and sounds relating to his human life, slowly dissolved into a chorus of meows, all worries subsiding under mindless feline desires. His eyes rolled backward slightly, as a wave of confusion washed over him. He couldn't think at all, so he couldn’t explain these new feelings and sensations, but the lack of thought and the constant presence of ‘meow’ satisfied him. He lifted his hands again, and pawed at the air, and stuck out his tongue in his daze. 

“Now I need you to listen closely,” The cat said. “I am the queen of Halloween. I am the shadow in autumn. And you are one of my faithful servants, my knight of the shadow… You will help me find more like you, more to convert. If necessary you will speak. If not you will not think… meow of you understand.”

Derek set his gaze on his queen, set his jaw, and looked at her with an evil grin. He settled back on all fours, gripping at the layer of dirt below his palms. 

“Meow.” 

****

Djerald was happy his roommate had come home late, as he had more time to read. Every evening, Derek would come home and be loud and obnoxious, telling him about what he did at the gym or what happened when he played football with his buddies, or telling Djerald that he was too boring and he needed to get out more, and Djerald’s favorite question for when Derek had nothing else to say ‘why does your name have an extra D?’ Djerald liked Derek a lot of the time and thought he was a friendly guy to hang out with, but Derek just didn’t know when to be quiet so much of the time, so he was happy that Derek came home late, but he had let his guard down and flinched when Derek kicked open the door. 

“Boom baby!” Derek shouted. Djerald winced and buried his head deeper into his book. “Yo, crazy night!” Derek continued. “I was coming home from the gym listening to rock meowsic, and then I heard this nyoise in the alleyway, which turned out to be nyothing, but I went to the store and got this really cool cake!” 

Djerald rolled his eyes. He didn’t know why his roommate was speaking that way; it must have been his fake Australian accent he always tried to put on… it had gotten worse.

“Nothing is crazy about the story you just said,” Djerald muttered. There was a thud and then a clatter as Derek pulled a plate out of the cupboard.

“Anyway,” Derek said, “mew gotta try it, it’s so good! It’s called like… ogre cake or something? It’s got fudge, red velvet, green food coloring, it’s perfect for the holiday season!” Derek placed a plate on the coffee table next to Djerald, who finally looked up from his book at the sugary mass in front of him. It was a glob of green frosting, dark fudge and red cake. It was as if Derek took a fistful of cake, plopped it on the plate, and then smashed it with his fist, which he wouldn’t put past him for doing. It didn’t appear to be very appetizing, but Djerald’s stomach growled, and he realized he didn’t have anything to eat that evening. So he picked up the plate, and cut off a bit of the blob with his fork and ate it. 

He chewed slowly savoring the rich chocolate flavor and the sugary frosting. The fudge stuck to the roof of his mouth, but the cake itself was very soft and spongy. It was not a high quality cake by any means, but as soon as he tasted it, he craved more. He scarfed it down by the forkful, chewing a little bit, but not waiting to swallow before he chewed the next part. Green frosting got on his face and his hands, and unbeknownst to him, splotches of skin around the frosting started fading to a dark green. 

“Wow,” he muttered, “That cake was, really tasty, I-“ 

Djerald stopped, finally looking up at his roommate and seeing how he had changed. He took off his glasses and then put them back on, verifying he was seeing what he thought he saw. Derek had large feline ears at the top of his head, one of them twitching with mischief. There was a smirk on his face, not his usual overly confident smirk, but a sly expression. He had long thin whiskers, and his blue eyes were replaced with two slit feline eyes, one yellow and one blue. There was a hole in his shorts where a long tail emerged and swished back and forth, and his legs were now covered in brown fur. His feet were bare but now they were bigger, but stubbier, each of his toes big and round, his feet as a whole now becoming large paws. 

“Derek,” Djerald gasped. “What happened to you?”

“Nyah,” Derek replied, sticking out his tongue. The former jock got down on all fours and padded away from Djerald. He jumped onto the counter, accidentally knocking plastic cups and mugs onto the floor but then pushing one, a vase on the floor. It shattered, sending shards across the floor of the apartment and leaving a puddle of water. Djerald jumped up and shouted. 

“Hey! Stop that! Tell me wha-“ 

Djerald was interrupted by a spasm in his jaw, where it twitched forward and locked into place. His eyes widened as he saw his jaw was now also broadening, and pulling forward more and more, and as his jaw was growing, his bottom two chocolate covered canines were growing as well, pushing his other teeth outward, doubling in size, tripling in size, until his bottom jaw stretched far past his top jaw, and two big tusks poked from his bottom jaw, over his upper lip. He put his hand over his mouth, out of disbelief, verifying that the tusks were truly there. 

He opened his mouth to scream, to yell and demand to know what was going on, but when he breathed in, he let out a heavy belch, and he tasted the cake he had just eaten. The flavor was wonderful, and he wished it hadn’t ended, he wished he was still eating. His mind became cloudy and he forgot about his rapidly changing body, and found he could only focus on the cake.

“More…” he grumbled. “Me. Want. More!” He stomped from the couch over to the counter. His bare feet became a pale grey and then a dark green, each of them swelling and becoming twice their original size, fattening, stretching, and growing thicker skin. His skin was so thick that when he stomped through the shards of glass, they merely stuck to his feet and did not pierce deep into his skin or draw blood. 

There were sharp growing pains in his legs as they grew a full foot within an instant. The pain was so sharp that he would have shouted or hollered, but it was gone as quickly as it came, making him forget that it happened in pursuit of the cake. At the same time, his calves and thighs ballooned in size, growing mostly fat, but also a lot of muscle. The legs of his jeans were immediately reduced to a bunch of threads as his fat green legs expanded to reveal themselves, making his jeans now look like ripped denim shorts.

When he reached the cake, he took two fistfuls of it and stuffed one of them into his mouth, frosting and fudge getting all over his face and on his shirt. It was even sweeter than he remembered, the fudge tasting richer and having a nice bittersweet flavor. He swallowed and shoved another fistful into his mouth, eager to eat more. The more he ate, the more he focused on the cake and the less he could focus on anything else. 

As he ate his stomach ballooned outward, at first being only slightly bloated, then being a chubby round green mass peeking from he bottom of his shirt, and then stretching and shredding his shirt to threads, emerging as a large pot-belly which made his figure round. As his stomach grew, his spine elongated in a similar way to his legs, making him another foot taller, but at the same time, it curled downward, forcing his posture to worsen. His shoulders widened, going from scrawny and skinny to bulky and broad. His arms swelled, new flab sagging downward. His hands doubled in size, and became calloused and blistered, his skin growing as thick as it was on his feet. Despite this growth in his hands, his fingers became shorter and stubbier. 

The changes finally reached his head. His face went from thin and bony to round and chubby. The cartilage in his ears thickened but softened, the rounded tip of his ear growing a bump and then a point, before his ears folded inward, becoming concave to better pick up sound. His ears were now short, thick, pointy, but also muscular, able to move around however he wanted. His nose flattened against his face but then broadened, and rounded, becoming more bulbous. His sandy blond hair grew longer, more ruffled, and spiked upward. 

His skull shrank to accompany his shrinking brain. As his brain shrank, his desires and ambitions became simpler. He no longer wanted a safe job or a family, he wanted to eat more and to sleep well. Abstract concepts left his mind. Now he only understood food, and danger, or whatever was physically in front of him at the moment.  In a brief moment of lucidity, he found his senses were leaving him. While it alarmed him, the sensation was like a massage to his brain, like a soothing static taking over his thoughts. His jaw dropped and his tongue, now a dark grey, hung out of his mouth. He stood there and savored the satisfying feeling of the last of his thoughts leaving him. His memories of college and what he learned there were dissolving. His ability to read became reduced to an appreciation of squiggly lines. He found it hard to form a complete sentence in his head, but more importantly, he noticed he had a loose grasp on his name. 

Djerald, he insisted to himself.

Me Djerald. 

Me… ‘erald 

Me ‘ral

Me… Ruh… Me Ruh. 

The last of the complicated thoughts left Ruh the ogre’s brain as he took another chomp at the cake. He shut his mouth and then he grinned, looking down at himself, and taking in his new form, admiring his belly, and feeling a sense of pride when looking at his big hands and big feet. His ears perked up as a giddy feeling took hold. He puffed out his stomach and balled his hands into fists, drumming his belly. 

“Ug! Ug! Ug! Ug!” 

Each time he struck his belly, he let out a simian grunt, and each strike made him feel more powerful. It fanned a fire within him. 

“Ruh big! Ruh happy!” 

Derek meowed at Ruh, giving another uncharacteristically sly smile to the ogre. Ruh put on a lopsided grin and chuckled.

“Funny kitty,” He said patting Derek the head. Derek’s ears lowered and he let out a brief purr. Derek then hopped down from the counter and opened the drawer, revealing a bunch of cooking tools and a rolling pin. 

“Club!” The ogre shouted, snatching the rolling pin. “Ruh have club.” He lifted the rolling pin and rested it on his shoulder, carrying it as if it were a club. He didn’t know what he would need it for, but he knew that it would make him feel safe. Having his feline friend around also made him feel better. He didn’t know where to go or what to do now, but it didn’t matter, because Derek could decide for him. Derek meowed at the ogre again and padded toward the door, and then reached up to open the door for his big green friend, beckoning him out into the night.