Thick Skin

Story by Gabriel Moon on SoFurry

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#140 of Commissions

a man earns the ire of a witch, who decides to turn his comment of 'thick skin' back on him to a bestial end...


A misunderstanding? Perhaps. Those encounters often were. It could be something so simple as a drink order prepared wrong, with one party not willing to admit their mistake and the other not willing to let it go. It happened sometimes. Nothing life-changing occurred from such an exchange, at least not usually.

To say it was already a bad day for both parties was an understatement. Deadlines, performance reviews, demanding managers on one end. Poorly behaved customers, shittier work conditions, and subpar tips and paychecks on the other. Needless to say, tempers were high, words were spoken, and, as a result, fates were sealed.

The fight was very public, neither party wanting things to come to that, but having little other recourse in the moment. The exact words muttered mattered little in the grand scheme of things. Both parties were unrelenting, unwilling to admit fault to save face. However, it was those last words that steered the encounter towards its inevitable conclusion. "Maybe you need to grow some thicker skin," Travis sneered, his patience for the woman's attitude long since passed.

"Thicker skin? Not a bad suggestion. But I won't be the one growing it," the woman quipped. "Enjoy the coffee, beast," she finished, walking off with a few muttered words under her breath that Travis didn't recognize.

He thought it prudent to ignore her at this juncture; the stares of the other patrons were getting to him and he would rather just enjoy his beverage in peace. And she had still done her job, all things considered. Why her artistic license chose to create the visage of an elephant's head in his drink, he had no idea. But it was a trivial thing soon lost in the sea of other trivial things that captivated his attention as he scrolled on his phone.

A few sips in and it started. Nothing in the flavor denoted the potent toxicity of his drink, though the after-effects of even a little consumption certainly seemed to make it known that his beverage had been somehow spiked. The tremors running through his body were more than could simply be explained away by some other ailment. And their steady increase in intensity carried with them a sense of urgency and fear that defied all immediate understanding.

'W-What's going on...? A-Am I poisoned?' he thought to himself as his vision blurred, and a shiver ran down his spine. The illness seemed to focus on his arms and prompted his gaze downward to a sight that was worse than anything he could have previously imagined. Travis watched in horror as his arms began to swell, visibly enlarging as though they were becoming the arms of someone else. Or, something else...

It was more than just an inexplicable growth, however, as Travis was about to learn. Much to his chagrin. his skin becoming wrinkled, gray, and...thick. Rubbing the flesh up and down his arms over the afflicted spaces denoted a texture that was closer to leather than human skin. Its thickness was far beyond any callouses that could claim the skin, making him panic and try to rub away the discoloration. But the grey shade simply spread over his frame, covering his arms and even his hands in its relentless wave.

Next, his fingers went numb as his hands bulged, a grey mass swelling between the skin and taking away their separation. His thumbs were being removed entirely, quivering and shaking, and pulled into the stumps that were becoming of his arms. Soon, the thick flesh had risen towards the nails of his fingers, which themselves had covered the skin at the base of his palms. Though the bones within were still present, his former fused fingers were effectively stumps, losing any dexterity they once had. Travis yelled out, banging them against the table and drawing the attention of the few patrons that were left in the shop.

It was more than just those alterations, however, that were plaguing the poor man. His entire body felt wrong. The thickening gray hide spread over his limbs, running up through his shirt as the thickening flesh started to pull at the sleeves. The swelling of thick gray skin and mass started down his chest, causing it to expand and pull the shirt tight around former pecs. Whatever was happening, it was clearly altering him towards something inhuman, something larger than the body he currently possessed.

Travis stared at the transformation in horror, his face losing color from the sight, and from changes in its own anatomy. His ears began to expand wildly, veins being pumped full of blood as their upper surface thickened and the skin around the bottoms unfurled and swelled to the size of sheets sticking out from the side of his head. He could feel them fanning down around his cheeks, touching the still-human skin and making him wince his features to try and avoid them.

To his sudden surprise, the fan-like ears were much better at taking in sounds than his former equivalents. But it was the sounds of shock and disgust from the other patrons that made his blood run cold. It was a sign that he wasn't having a stroke, or that he wasn't hallucinating and was actually changing in some sort of inhuman way.

The bizarre alterations were not to stop there, his nose swelling and lengthening as he gasped and looked around for help. Everyone was staring at him as the spongy tissue and muscle and cartilage started to force its way out of his face, twitching this way and that like a limb possessed. It was soon almost as thick as his mouth, though that, too, was expanding with the rest of his body. Travis could feel the new appendage moving of its own power, and tried to yell, to beg anyone that could hear to make this stop!

Alas, his cry for help was interrupted by his trunk erupting further forth, reducing any vocal protests to nothing more than a labored trumpet. In vain, Travis tried to yell out once more, to cry his panic and beg for assistance. But only a bestial bellow escaped his mouth, some combination of his new nose and altered vocal cords the likely culprit for his inability to perform human speech. Another cry left his lips, but there was no help to be granted as he tried with a struggle to beg the other guests for some kind of assistance.

In a desperate bid to seek help, the man forcibly stood from his seat as his mouth started burning, as though something like bone was being forced out between his gums. Travis wanted to reach up and feel the growths, but his two stumpy hands possessed no tactile abilities any longer. He was therefore left to perceive the sensation of something pushing at the rest of his teeth, swelling in his mouth, and sticking out like a pair of...

Travis could only stare in horror as two tusks forced their way out of his growing mouth, extending longer and longer with each haggard breath he took. They were heavy on his features, weighting down his still-human-sized head as they swelled with bone and curved upward from either side of his still-swelling nose. Their presence would be alien had the familiar form in his coffee foam not been fresh in his mind, that outline of an elephant from just moments ago...

Yet, Travis hardly had the ability to focus as his body rapidly distended, losing any visible humanity with each passing moment. His chest was barreling outward, shoulders hunching and cracking forward before they sank into the flanks of his torso. Thick skin grew baggy around his elbows, attaching his front limbs to his former chest, making it impossible to move his legs side to side as he had been once used to. An already chubby belly was growing expansive, far larger than any meal the former human could possibly consume. Breaths came in easier as his lungs expanded, while his abdomen distended further with lengthened intestines and a larger stomach.

Worse was a strange sensation in his backside, above an anus that seemed higher on his anatomy than even spreading ass cheeks could allow. Pants pulled downward by his newly added bulk, Travis was suddenly aware of a thick tail flopping out behind him, starting to move of its own accord. He could feel the growth thickening at the base as the tip itched from a sprouting tassel of hair. The wagging appendage ran over an expansive backside still contained within spreading underwear and pulled-down pants. It was several inches now and still growing, the most bizarre part of the change thus far even as his nose and tusks continued to stick out before him.

Naturally, his clothes were worse for wear as his expanding bulk tore at their seams, having not been designed for a being of his stature. Shirt sleeves were removed by his forward forced shoulder blades, his distending belly causing his shirt to ride up until the edges began to fray from the pressure. His bulging neck and thickening torso tore the collar of the shirt as the rips reached to meet each other. Eventually, the tattered ruins sat over a broadening back, no longer covering the thick gray skin that was slowly encroaching over his form.

Useless forearms pawed at anything to stop the changes, though they could do not but wave in the air helplessly as Travis trumped his panic. No one was left in the establishment to help him at this point, as though they were afraid of what was happening, or perhaps what would happen to them if the changes were contagious. Travis was thus left to suffer as his spine stretched and his pants were pulled down, elephantine tail swishing over a bare, thick-skinned backside.

The force of his hips expanding rapidly, pelvis shifting, and flattening hips and thighs made short work of the remnants of his pants. His belt was tugged to the breaking point as it burst apart, relieving the brief strain between his legs. Pants tore down the back, forcing him to step out of them awkwardly with shoes that were far too tight for altering feet. All that remained of humanity on his frame were his underwear, though even that elastic soon burst off and lay with the scattered remains of his clothes.

At this point, Travis was entirely naked, exposed to the only person left in the room. His terrified eyes stared at the barista who watched him with some queer sense of satisfaction. It all but confirmed that she was the one who had afflicted this upon him!

Yet, before he could trumpet his protest, the tingles of change started to play over his groin, making Travis powerfully embarrassed. His cock quickly swelled to full erection, flushed with heat and arousal that defied all understanding. A pleasurable pulse raced through him and he bellowed in surprise as a modest coating of sperm was ejected from his member. He couldn't imagine getting hard from something so bizarre as changing into an elephant, but there was no denying the modicum of pleasure the process seemed to provide him.

To his chagrin, his member seemed not to deflate, rather growing impossibly large as though reaching towards the floor. He couldn't see it, not with his thickening neck and restricted range of motion. Still, the flesh tingled as had the rest of him, firming up with gray and pink mottled patches. Its girth weighted heavily on his crotch, thickening slowly to the size of a soda can as it reached all the way to the floor, tip touching it and making the massive beast shiver. His penis jumped from the contact, curving upward with an inhuman flexibility that almost rivaled the abilities of his tail. Yet, soon, with the fear he felt over the situation, Travis was thankful as his member retracted all the way up to his altered groin. His testicles, too, followed suit, pulled inside of them, and sat heavily within his former groin, making Travis almost feel ill.

Shoes were mostly forfeit by this point, heels stretched and thickened into pillars while the same mass that had overcome his fingers swelled between his toes and left little more than stubbly nails under the treetrunk-sized limbs he now possessed. The tips swelled to match the circumference of the rest of the foot, ankles looking like a second set of knees as Travis teetered on the edge of being down on all fours. Still, there was no reprieve from the pressure and Travis was still too new to this body to prevent the inevitable.

The café shook as the pachyderm fell to his new forelegs. There was no chance of him getting back up on two legs, as unused to them as he was. Travis was desirous to dash forward, still-growing trunk swinging in defiance of the changes overtaking him. But be it his fear or some invisible force he was to remain there, at the whims of the change as the last of his humanity was robbed from him.

The tingling intensified over his head as his hair fell out, collecting under him atop his clothes. His scalp was laid bare, as was the rest of his body, the skin left with only a light fuzz of hair in some places. A brief bit of pain coursed through his skull as it started to enlarge to match the consistency of the rest of his ballooning body. He could feel his brain, his skull, and his face start to swell out to match the contours of what he assumed was an elephant's form. Though it looked comically out of place on his thickening neck, the changes were soon granting Travis's visage the more familiar appearance as an elephant. Lips felt rubbery as his upper jaw merged with his trunk and forced his lower jaw to stretch into a v shape, thick tongue twitching inside of it.

By now, his trunk was fully-formed, thick in front of his face as it started to curl about, more flexible than even his human arm had been. The nostrils on the front felt flexible, too, and Travis, even in his panic, couldn't help but twitch them, confused about their mobility. Yet, stranger still was the level of smell that his new body seemed to possess, drinking in the room like he had been painted a picture of it. The most prominent scent was the sweat and fear wafting off his own frame, however, the emotion emanating from his body in droves!

His ears, too, stuck out at the sides of his ever-expanding head, flapping this way and that, still able to hear the screams and sounds even from outside. They almost weighed on the sides of his head, able to stretch back over his neck and even touch the skin of his torso. Moving them in tandem with his truck made him shiver, a true sign that he was no longer human, sporting bestial appendages that no man had ever experienced owning before.

Panicked human eyes looked down to the grinning barista. His irises shifted, the whites pushed out by a dark brown that made the contours of the room blur. His pupils were black, full of fear but clearly those of an animal now. Travis lamented his diminished vision but was stunned with how potent his sense of smell and hearing were, as though enhanced to compensate. His massive trunk seemed overly sensitive, too, as it accidentally bushed against chairs and tables, detecting nuances in the material that would have escaped human notice.

By now, the last of his human skin was being overtaken by the thick, gray hide, a sign that the changes were over. Though relieved that the tingling of growth had ceased, now the finality of his situation began to sink in. Travis was an animal, a beast, one with thick skin as the barista had cursed him to be. And there was nothing he knew could do to return to his human form!

Yet, Travis found it hard to focus on either fear or anger as his thoughts began to fog, drifting from the cafe, to somewhere far away...Human things seemed distant to the beast, who longed for the companionship of other elephants, wide-open savannas, and lush green forests...things that only a beast could crave...

The elephant trumpeted. The human it once was, gone. No traces of even his clothes remained on his frame as he stood there in the empty room, far too large to be present there and unsure of his surroundings. There was a modicum of the human Travis remaining in the beast's head, though his psyche was overwhelmed by the fear and panic of being such a large creature in such a small place.

Yet he would not be trapped there long, to the relief of both he and his attendant. A quick call was soon followed by sirens, though Travis's hybrid sensibilities barely had the wherewithal to conceive of what was happening. It wasn't until the barista ushered the confused animal to the front of the store where Animal Control was just arriving that Travis realized he was to be an animal in captivity, deprived of any of the human autonomy he once possessed. Yet, given the state of his body, he had no choice other than to follow the men onto the truck to be taken to wherever wayward animals ended up when found in such bizarre circumstances

Though it was barely felt over his thick hide, Travis was still aware as she gave the elephant a pat on its side as it was led outside. "Enjoy the thicker skin!" She muttered as Travis felt his heart sink. Enough human thoughts remained in the moment that he slowly began to accept the reality of his situation. He had become a beast as the woman had scorned him for being, one of thick skin and massive size denoting his stubbornness. He was therefore left to bemoan his fate as he was taken to god knew where, be it a circus or a zoo, where those of his species were stored.

Every second of that ride was left lamenting his fate, the choice of words that could have simply been altered to avoid this long ride, and its inevitable conclusion. Though he had no idea of how such a transfiguration occurred, he could only tell that the barista seemed too calm about it to be a coincidence as to her words. Still, there was little to do about it now that he was removed from her sight, even if he had the ability to beg for her mercy.

Worse was his inability to hold onto his humanity, elephantine thoughts plaguing his mind. Thoughts of wanting simply to eat, bathe, and find others of his kind to share his space were creeping into his psyche, threatening to overwhelm any human awareness remaining. It was a precarious task to tow the line and not fall fully into bestial endeavors as the truck continued to take him to an unknown destination.

Fading intellect frantically tried to formulate a way to convey to his captors his civility. Elephant trucks were certainly dexterous to a fault, but no implements were present in the confines of this space to utilize for writing. It seemed as though even one of his still-human intelligence was not able to escape the prison that he currently found himself in.

Eventually, after some hours, his truck was backed up into surroundings that were unfamiliar yet somehow expected. The sounds of animals and the pungent stink of their bodies and waste seemed to denote that he had been taken to a local zoo. Travis tried to bellow his distress at being an animal in captivity, but ceased his efforts after threats of tranquilizer darts were used, making him nervous all over. He didn't want to be an animal, but nor did he want his human freedoms removed by being treated as one!

The smells in the pen with him, some more pungent than others, spoke of the presence of another elephant in there with him, a female one if his sensibilities could determine such things. His weaker eyes scanned the area, soon spying the sleeping beast rousing at the oncomer. He had no way to know how to communicate with a female, even less than with the humans that had brought him here.

Ignoring the other animal, Travis surveyed the habitat, looking for something that he could use to alert the zoo staff that he was not truly an animal. Even though most of the patrons at the coffee shop had seen him change, no one was apparently willing to admit what their eyes had viewed, passing it off as an animal that had somehow broken into the establishment. Therefore, he was left to find something that he could use to write with and a place on which to write. He barely had any idea how to use his trunk, though he was certain with practice that the flexible appendage could be used to communicate his need for help in a way that would be lost to most animals.

Yet, the pungent stench of the other beast's body started to burn into his nose and caused a stirring in his loins that made him powerfully confused. It was like the one that had come over him during the change, a flush of arousal that caused his cock to slither out to full erectness underneath him. The sheer amount of blood needed to fuel such a thing left him dizzy. He wasn't sure why he was being turned on, but it was impossible to deny the sexual desire that was soon becoming the center of his world.

It took viewing the female turning around, raising her long tail, and pissing a thick stream on the ground behind her for Travis to understand that the source of his lust was her wide open sex. It was moist, glistening, and the scents, both from it and the urine were full of hormones that made his head spin. It was obvious that this female he had never met was eager to take him as a mate, perhaps had been lonely for some time.

Travis wasn't sure what disgusted him more; the fact that this elephant wanted him to fuck her, or the fact that his body was responding to something so revolting. But there was nothing he could do as the foreign bestial instincts crept into his mind, forcing him forward before Travis even had any compunction to stop himself.

Travis reached around with his truck to grasp at the female's, holding her in a sort of embrace before raising himself onto his back legs to reach up with his stumps for front limbs. He wasn't sure how to initiate, though the instincts pervading his mind were perfectly suited for elephantine actions. The sexual needs overcoming both of them were bestial, and Travis was literally along for the ride as his penis began spearing for her moist, glistening sex.

Travis had some difficulty with the mating act at first, his penis far too long to make it up over the hump of the female's underside. It bounced off her udders a few times as Travis thrust. Yet, all the dry humping was getting to be a little annoying, and Travis trumped in the way that a dominant bull elephant in mind, as well as body, would elicit. Travis was barely aware as his penis started to flex in a way that no penis should be able to move, as though it was prehensile. Still, he had little wherewithal to reflect on the sensations. Human thoughts and desires were melting from his head like wax as his cocktip finally hit home and he pushed it in with mammoth hips, desperate to feel his penis enveloped by eager folds.

The mating act was short and tame, surprising for such powerful, fearless beasts. Yet, their spectacle attracted zookeepers and guests alike, though Travis was too enraptured in the mating act to actually care about their presence. Nothing around could harm him, after all, with his size and strength. He was a dominant beast in his domain, the largest land animal, and a massive specimen for his species besides!

It was as though his already dwindling humanity was being dissolved into the seed to fuel his long cock, filling his testicles with a potent load. Some part of him, a dwindling aspect, was aware this was how the process was designed, to make a beast from a man by fulfilling carnal desires. Travis was simply a willing participant, his entire world being thurst into the female's vulva and preparing to blow his virile load.

It was the moment of orgasm that the last flickers of Travis's humanity were extinguished, expelling from his testicles to fuel new life inside his mate. There was no regret, no fear at the prospect, only bestial excitement for the physical pleasure and an encompassing certainly that this was his world now, had always been, and always would be. Nothing of his human experience could have survived in the moment of beastly passion, even if he had inclined it to.

Travis slowly dismounted, cock swaying underneath him as it started to retract up his body. His eyes were that of a beast with no humanity reaming in them. All of his thoughts, hopes, and goals, even the anger he had felt towards the woman that had cursed him were long since passed in a fit of bestial lust. All that remained was the elephant, a large dominant bull with access to a willing female and everything else he could ever need!

******

A hand swirled away the clouded image of the former man rutting away every last trace of his humanity. One aspect of her spells was to coax those last human thoughts from the victim's mind by ensuring that the mind of the female was in a state to prompt the male to take her. Not the first time she had influenced such beasts to copulate and lose themselves. Several of the animals at the zoo were ones donated there through her ire.

Not that there was any chance of anyone discovering her magical prowess. The human mind was so easily fooled she hardly needed her influence to persuade them that it hadn't simply been an elephant that had been brought into the store, some sort of prank gone awry. Still, it was best for the few curious minds to be swayed away from such a pretense as to the possibility of witnessing magic firsthand.

Still, part of her wished that his comment about 'thick skin' had swayed her towards some other sort of animal, perhaps one of smaller stature. That fool had spurred on elephantine influences far too quickly to have time to really contemplate her choice in punishment. Oh well. Her creation hadn't done too much damage and the cost of repairs would be well worth the look on his face as his eyes faded into the elephantine beast. It was priceless, she almost wish she had been at the zoo in person to watch him fuck the rest of it away for good!

"Thick skin indeed," she muttered, smiling to herself, thinking it to be a more suitable existence for him, after all.