Grabbing my clothes and throwing them on, I walked outside, strolling the streets of SoHo. Passing by a dark gay club, I decided to enter.

Throngs of shirtless gay men were dancing, thick muscles and the musk of mansweat seemingly everywhere. I felt calmer amongst gay men, as though this was familiar territory that couldn't be invaded. Moving back to a corner, I sat and watched the throng for a while, my dick uncomfortable in the too-tight underwear I was still wearing even as my clothes hung off my loser frame with all my body fat gone now.

An attractive, shirtless man walked up to me, saying “hello” and flashing a winning smile. Blonde and muscular, he was one of the “muscle marys” I'd long despised for judging me for my imperfect body, but his eyes kept wandering down to my crotch. Why not, I figured? A quick dance might take my mind off the situation, or even clear it and I could figure out a course of action.

The music pounded in my ears and I started to dance with him, the rhythm soon taking me in as we danced, him raising his arms and shaking his heavily-muscled torso around. Soon, his fingers began unbuttoning my shirt, and before I knew it, my now-skinny, hairless chest was exposed to the air, his thick fingers tracing down my chest, almost hypnotic.

The dancing seemed to have taken me over completely. As we danced, he leaned over and whispered in my ear “How would you like to work here?” I struggled to say “what?” but couldn't, the rhythm of the beat and some other strange force keeping me dancing, hypnotically. He smiled, and my eyes widened in fear.

His mouth was no longer filled with pretty white teeth, but the jagged white sharp teeth of the creature! Helplessly under the creature's spell again, we continued to dance, with the crowd about seemingly oblivious to his maniacal grin.

His hands settled on my shoulders and I stopped dancing, frozen. With his leer just inches from my face, he pressed down, hard. A cracking noise began to issue from my shoulders, spine, and legs.

It felt like I was being compressed! My spine was in agony, being squished shorter and shorter. I felt like screaming in pain but could only stare blindly into his eyes as he continued to push.

Legbones, spine and shoulders shortened as my body continued shrinking. Then, with a large bass BOOM from the music system, he was gone, and I was standing in the centre of the dance floor, shirtless and still with the crowd dancing around.

I scrambled to the bathroom, almost tripping over the cuffs of my pants which were now much too long. I groaned in despair as I reached the mirror. I had to have lost six inches of height due to this damn imp! My one 6 foot, two inch frame had been reduced to about 5 feet, eight inches. That wasn't the only change the creature had wrought, either.

My bone structure of my body was different. My neck was thinner, my shoulders more elegant, my ribs more sculpted, my feet and hands smaller and fingers narrower and shorter. My feet slid around in the size 11 shoes, which were now at least two sizes too big.

If anyone who knew me saw me, they would only have been able to recognise me from my face! I felt a wave of stress and nausea wash through me and I rushed to a stall to vomit. •