Squirm

By Hugo Bernard

"Fast-paced, pulpy and equal parts funny and horrifying..." -SC Jensen, author of Bubbles in Space.✶✶✶✶✶

 

They call it FrogJuice.

You pack on a ton of muscle if you're brave enough to drink it.

No side effects, they said.

Except women can't process the stuff.

FrogJuice somehow got into the body of Steve's girlfriend.

Now she wants to kill him. But Steve is determined to find a cure for her first.

The bodies are piling up as Steve is swept from one bloody horror to the next.

Can Steve survive the chaos of the night long enough to save his girl?

Fans of supernatural thrillers are sure to get a satisfying dopamine rush out of this quick and grossly entertaining read!


WARNING : Contains profanity, debauchery and violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hugo Bernard
• Release date: Nov 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798224076239

Book preview

TALES OF GYMBRO HORROR

BOOK#1

SQUIRM

By Hugo Bernard

LINKTREE

linktr.ee/GymBro_horror

CHAPTER 1

A week ago, I got a message from Tommy saying he was coming back into town. He was a high school buddy of mine who left Jersey for the West Coast after graduation. Hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

When I browsed his Instagram to catch up on what he’d been up to, I had to double-check to make sure I had the right profile. In a little more than five years, he’d become a monster.

In school, he’d always been tall and lanky limbed. Six-foot-five or more (after a certain point, people don’t care, and you’re just tall as fuck). The type of guy who gets worried when passing through doors, ducking down and looking silly when he had enough clearance, or risking getting another bruise on the forehead when he didn’t.

We needed a tall guy like him on the high school basketball team. But the poor kid was hopeless with dribbling the ball, no matter how many hours of practice and drills we made him do. He was no better at volleyball. So many inches gone to waste, was what we would always say to him, jokingly. Not sure if we would joke about it now that his biceps were as big as balls; to say they were basketballs would be exaggerating but not by much.

Sports weren’t his thing. In the last year at school, he was getting chubby with lanky spaghetti arms. He was more into binge-watching movies and reading and writing than playing sports. That was why he’d gone out to the west coast, to try to get one of his screenplays picked up by Hollywood.

His Instagram showed no trace of success in regard to that project. It was doubtful he’d be coming back to Jersey if his script was becoming the next blockbuster.

We were meeting for burgers at Beefy Moe’s for an early afternoon lunch. He was already sitting in the booth with two glasses of milk when I arrived. He was bigger in person, completely filling one side of the booth. To his previous fear of bumping his head, he now had to also worry if the door frames were wide enough to not scuff up his shoulders as he passed through them, for real.

The odd thing was he looked impressively good. His skin didn’t have any of that rubbery gleam like the bodybuilders at the gym, and he had a full set of hair. Things you wouldn’t find with guys on enhancing cycles—which there was no way he wasn’t on. I mean, his arms were so massive I feared the table would collapse when he rested his elbows on it. Damn impressive if you ask me.

The first thing he mentioned after we were done with the common bro chitchat was if I was still with Evelyne. I wasn’t. She’d broken up with me. The bitch.

It wasn’t until he asked about her that I recalled he was the one who’d first introduce me to her. Truth is, he wanted to have her for himself, but she refused to date him. Their families were so close she considered him a brother, at least that was the excuse she gave Tommy when he asked her out. To keep her nearby, he set her up with one of his friends, me for that matter. It was a bit creepy when you think about it. We had some good years until she left me for an older guy with more money, which wasn’t very hard to beat as I was always struggling to get by.

Beefy Moe’s was the type of place with sexy waitresses and mediocre burgers. Stacey, the waitress working our table, was a stunner. I knew her from the gym. Knew her might be pushing it a bit far—I recognized her, saw around, you know. I doubted she knew my name, but that didn’t matter; at least she recognized me when I came in to eat and acknowledged our crossed path by asking me if I had a good workout.

She came over to our table and gave me the friendly, Hey, how’s it going? then proceeded to take our order. When she left, Tommy leaned over to tell me something without being overheard.

Tell me she’s on OnlyFans, he said softly.

You’re kidding me, I said, surprised he hadn’t noticed her gawking at his forearms or at the traps bulging through his shirt. You didn’t hear her sloshing in the puddle she left because of you.

You’re funny, Steve.

I thought about it afterward: the reason Tommy didn’t notice her eyes crawling over him was because he’d developed a self-preserving habit of not paying attention to women’s stares. You see, most women feared guys like Tommy. You hear them all the time, not liking too much muscle and thinking the network of veins covering their body was disgusting. They feared guys like him, and Tommy trained himself to not give a shit about their judgment.

What Tommy didn’t yet know was that Stacey was among the type of girl who thought there couldn’t be too much man on a man. At my gym, Stacey, Sarah, and Caramel (Yes, that is her real name; she is Vietnamese, not that I know if that makes it more common) were women who obeyed the laws of gravity, the bigger the mass (of muscle, of course) the stronger the attraction. The cool thing with this, for the big guys at least, was that all three of these girls spent plenty of time at the gym and were drop-dead gorgeous themselves.

You’ve been working out? he asked me, as if the answer wasn’t obvious. That hurt, badly. I’ve been busting my ass in the gym for over a year, ever since Evelyn ditched me. At first, I just went to hang out with the boys. As my body firmed up and I became stronger, it became more of a passion. My mom said it was an addiction. Whatever, it felt good to get the pump. But my gains had stalled lately.

Yeah, I’ve been going. Not too seriously.

You want to get bigger? he asked, finishing his milk with a loud gulp.

Who doesn’t? I said.

He laughed. You know what I’m saying, right, Steve? Do you feel like getting huge?

I was in a bit of a rough spot. I saw where he was going with this and saw no other option but to deal with the situation bluntly. Tommy, I’m not sure how to say this, but if you’re trying to get me on the anabolic sauce, I’ve already decided it isn’t for me. I don’t want to risk it.

You’re smart, Steve. I remember that about you. That’s why I wanted to talk to you first, man. I like you, and together we could do something big.

I’m not following, Tommy.

I’ve got something special. Directly from a lab in India. No side effects.

That’s not possible, I said, doubtful.

I’ve been taking the stuff for a little over a year, and my bloodwork showed nothing abnormal. I didn’t have any mood swings or anything like that. I’m telling you, this stuff is the next big thing, and we’ll be the first in Jersey to have it straight from the source.

Damn, a little over a year, and he’d blown up, even on a heavy anabolic cycle it would have taken him more than that to gain so much mass. I had my doubts he was playing with me.

What about...you know...the balls and the sex... I asked.

No change whatsoever, man. Everything works the same, even better, like a fucking rocket. I’m telling you...

I shook my head in disbelief, trying to avoid the temptation of imagining myself as the most jacked guy in the gym. Trying to not imagine myself throwing around a ridiculous amount of weights with the sexy Caramel in her little tight top to spot me, placing her little hands on my oversized shoulder saying how impressively strong I was.

Think about it, Tommy said. Come over tomorrow if you want. I’ll show what it is and explain to you how it works.

I watched Tommy quietly as he ate his four burgers while I admired his full head of hair and his healthy skin, starting to believe he wasn’t bullshitting me.

Was the holy grail of muscle gain in his possession?

Could I become the next "holy shit, you’re jacked" type of guy?

I was thinking these things when a vein in his neck did something to totally freak me out. The vein was the size of my fattest finger, and I swore I saw something pass through it. Like if a solid chunk of a burger made the vein bulge as it passed, or perhaps this wasn’t a vein but a second esophagus to efficiently carry down all that food he was wolfing down.

I shook my head, wanting to unsee it. My mind was surely playing tricks on me for having repeated to myself once too many times that Tommy had become a monster.

***

Tommy was staying in a room out back of his uncle’s business. His parents didn’t approve of what he’d become and told him to go back to school or to not come home. His uncle, who was in a dispute with Tommy’s father, offered him a place to sleep.

Back in the day, his uncle ran a business of renting out movies: