Engorge

His hands were clammy as he searched for the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, his breathing ragged. He had to hurry, before it was too late. All these years he’d never followed the trends, never bought into commercialism and now here he was, about to die just like everyone else because he-like the rest of the countless masses-couldn’t leave well enough alone. It was a tendency for those who had too much: Nothing was ever good enough and they couldn’t get a sufficient amount of it.

The American Way called for bigger TV’s with a better picture, faster cars with onboard technology as sophisticated as a NASA spacecraft, homes for two that could house ten, cell phones that could find a signal underwater or in the farthest reaches of space, ipod’s that could hold enough music to last you well into the twilight of your life, if you can still hear, of course…

All this stuff, these gadgets we just can’t live without, sure, that was one thing, but the rise in pharmaceutical technology, well, that really took the cake.

Can’t sleep, take a pill. Can’t eat, take a pill. Eat too much, got a pill for that. Tired all the time? Down one of these. Bored? Manic? Depressed? Homicidal? Pills, pills, pills, pills, pills, pills, pills…

Sure, his wife took pills for depression and that stopped her mood swings around the holidays, but what have we come to when the pills are designed for body modification? What the hell has it all come down too?

When he found the bottle he prayed that it wasn’t too late. He could feel the pressure building as the swelling increased, could feel his skin stretching past the point that it was physically supposed to.

He fumbled the cap off and took a long swig. He choked and almost spit it out, but managed to get some of it down. His stomach took a nasty turn and the peroxide did the trick: at once he was vomiting the contents of his stomach into his bathroom sink, but had he done it on time? Were the pills still sitting there or had they been digested by now? He struggled to think of how much time passed since he’d taken them and when he’d found Gary’s corpse. His feverish brain wasn’t allowing him much right now, but maybe it had been about thirty minutes, maybe thirty-five.

He studied the vomit in the sink, looking for their telltale blue color and thought he saw-amongst the remnants of the burrito and the chili cheese fries-what appeared to be blue dye number five. Maybe he’d been able to get some of it out anyway.

How did he know that the pills were the reason for Gary’s death? Well, let’s put it this way: it didn’t take a fucking rocket scientist to put two and two together. All he had to do was look at how Gary died, at how every one of them died probably, and that was all the proof he needed. All afternoon long the screams of the dying had filled the air of his neighborhood like a symphony of the damned, a cacophony fit for the depths of Hell…

No wonder Karen had been so insistent that he take the pills, hell, ALL the wives had been so insistent. They knew; it had been a part of the master plan.

All through his life he thought that his seven inches had been enough, but thanks to the modern miracle of science he no longer had to worry that he wasn’t ‘man enough’ to please his woman. All he had to do was call the toll free number and soon enough he’d received his free sample of ‘Engorge’-the product would do all the work and he would be a new man. How was he to know-or anyone else for that matter-that it had all been a scam, a scheme dreamt up by women who were tired of the male oppressors? How could anybody have known until the bodies started piling up?

The pressure in his groin increased and he bent over double in exquisite pain, his breathing rapid and shallow. He could feel his penis growing larger by the second, could feel the skin stretching so taunt that he knew that at any moment something was going to give.

Fumbling with his belt, he yanked his pants down around his knees and stared at the monstrosity before him. John Holmes would have been proud, and a little scared…

Why the women would want to take over in such a fashion was obvious: hit the men in two ways that hurt the most. First, go after their ego by telling them that they aren’t big enough and getting them to purchase a product that will cost them an arm and a leg to make sure that they now possess a third leg. Second, nothing smarts more than a good kick in the balls. The proverbial on/off switch for members of the male persuasion. Sure, maybe we were ruining the world one war at a time, one nature destroying, rain forest killing eco-disaster at a time, but we were still your husbands, your fathers, your sons, your brothers…

Blood began to trickle down into his shoes, the pain hitting him in dizzying, nauseating waves. His vision blurred and his legs gave out from beneath him. The last thing he heard before consciousness left him was a sound similar to that of a hot dog bursting in a microwave…