“...And in other news, there have been new reported cases of the mysterious new disease estimated to affect one in every hundred thousand,  symptoms include-”

The news broadcast was cut off mid-sentence as Ryan turned off his TV, tossing the remote onto his sofa and directing his attention towards fixing his tie, knowing he was already cutting it close. He hadn’t really been listening too closely anyway, although he did catch the last part. One in a hundred thousand? That was probably a lot, if you added them all up, but in his opinion, you’d have to be really unlucky to catch… whatever that was. Admittedly he did feel a little off today, but that was probably just the lack of sleep, and there was a cold going around this time of the year anyway. Probably just a placebo effect from hearing the news.

 He paused to inspect his appearance in the mirror, making sure he hadn’t missed a spot shaving or had some other embarrassing botch that his students would immediately notice and not let him forget about for weeks. His face was, as usual, clean-shaven and unremarkable, with short and neatly trimmed hair. Not too thin, but not particularly well built either. Even if he went out and gave himself a mohawk, he was probably going to be one of those guys who just never had anything particularly interesting about their appearance, which was good enough for somebody with a boring job like him.

He promptly forgot about the news broadcast on his way out the door, focusing instead on beating the traffic on the way to his job as a schoolteacher…

–

“Are you feeling alright, Ryan?”

Ryan turned to see the concerned face of Elizabeth, his co-worker and fellow teacher. He had been taking a break between classes, feeling like the day was dragging on more than usual.

“About the same as always.” He said, but she still seemed worried.

“Are you sure? You’re looking a bit under the weather. Kind of sweaty, to be honest.”



“Really?” He brushed his hand across his forehead, which felt slightly slick to the touch, but he didn’t seem to have much perspiration on his hand when he took it off. “I feel okay, I think. And it’s not that hot in here.”

“You sure? You really look like you’re melting to me.” She said. “Maybe you have a fever. Just try to take it easy, okay? The day’s almost over. Maybe go to bed early for once, take a day off if you really need it.”

“If you say so.” He said, trying to look cool contrary to his supposed appearance, but to be honest, he could really use a break even if he didn’t feel as bad as he looked. It was friday tomorrow, so maybe he could take the opportunity to take a day off and coast through the weekend…

–

“Finally made it.” Ryan exhaled  as he almost staggered out of the school, starting to feel like there had been some truth to what Elizabeth had said. His students had been giving him some funny looks towards the end of the day, and when he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he had found to his dismay that he almost looked like his features were drooping, giving him a rather unflattering appearance. To make matters worse his clothes were starting to feel strangely heavy on him, which was starting to seriously worry him. He had tried to keep his distance for the rest of the day, hoping that he hadn’t inadvertently infected anybody.

He let out a sigh of relief upon sinking into the seat of his car, almost literally as he had to force himself upright with a strange amount of difficulty, the car humming to life as he undid his tie, loosened his collar, and rolled up his sleeves, turning the AC up until the cabin was positively frosty. That would hopefully keep him going until he got home, he thought to himself as he pulled out onto the road.

Unfortunately, his car ride home was the first sign of his unusual affliction progressing to its true form. When he tried to take his spare hand off the wheel he found it almost sticking to the wheel. He frowned, pulling hard at it, but it just wouldn’t budge, even as he tried to relax his fingers. Finally he gave one mighty tug, causing a sight that nearly caused him to yell in shock. When he pulled his arm away, his wrist moved, but his hand stayed right where it was! His arm and wrist stretched like rubber away from the wheel until it was several feet long, Ryan swearing and in his panic, finally managing to release his hand. Instead of snapping back, his hand and long, flexible arm drooped and fell to the floor of the car, where Ryan was split between total confusion and trying not to have an accident.

He was speechless as he tried to lift his arm, which refused to clear the ground, his entire arm starting to bend and flop like it had no bones in it, a disturbing site that left him speechless. He used his other hand to try to pull it up, picking up his own hand and placing it on the wheel, leaving him with one solid arm and another that curled up like a rope in his lap. Now sweating for real, Ryan tried to keep his cool in the thankfully relaxed traffic. Whatever surreal thing was happening to his body, true panic would have to wait until he was out of the car and not about to cause an accident. Unfortunately in his distraction and focusing on his floppy arm, he didn’t notice another car running a red light until it was nearly upon him, Ryan shouting in panic as he slammed his wheel as far as it would turn to make the hardest turn of his life, just barely managing to avoid it. Ryan slammed into the car door with a wet slap, his seatbelt keeping his waist in place, but his entire torso seemed to bend and stretch, his face smooshed against the window. He felt almost flattened against it, pulling himself free with a slimy pop and finding out to his dismay that when he had turned the wheel,  he had performed a full rotation in one motion without taking his arms off the wheel, causing them to coil around each other like some sort of rubberhose cartoon, only partially unfurling as he corrected himself.

“Just another couple of streets and I’m home, just another couple…!” Ryan began to repeat feverishly, desperate to get home before things got any worse. After another stop he pushed down on the pedal to accelerate, only to feel a bizarre sensation inside his shoe that resulted in no force being applied at all, the pedal not pressing down at all. He swore again and used his other foot to accelerate as the drivers behind him started to honk their horns. He finally uncoiled his arms, but to his horror, the hand he thought was unscathed fell down to the floor and splattered, forming a flesh-coloured slime-like puddle with his noodly limb attached to it. Fishing his foot out of his shoe and leaving his sock behind in the process, with one hand and one foot reduced to lumps of what seemed like flesh but was far too mushy and elastic to be so, let alone whatever the hell had happened to his bones, Ryan realised that he wasn’t just bending and stretching: he was melting! He looked in the windscreen, seeing droplets of his own face drooping and falling, although less grotesquely than he thought. It was almost cartoonish, although no less terrifying.

Finally, he pulled over outside his apartment, hastily undoing his seatbelt before his squishy fingers could seep into the buckle. He fell out of the car, splattering in a heap of clothes and fleshy slime on the pavement, his torso stretching as he was unable to keep himself upright, one leg coiled against the ground while the other was still in the car, his leg stretching without his foot leaving the ground. His shoes and socks gone, Ryan desperately tried to pull himself up and force his body to stay together, his force of will managing to cause his elongated limbs and torso to snap back together into a roughly humanoid shape, but his melting didn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. He resorted to dragging himself across the ground with his hands, and for better or worse there didn’t seem to be anybody around to watch the surreal display. Although his body was melting and dripping, no part of it seemed to truly leave his body, more like he was a soft, almost liquid putty that could bend and melt but never separated, allowing himself to ultimately keep himself in one piece. His clothes provided enough friction to help him to the door, one of his hands just solid enough for him to fish out his key and get it through the door and close it behind him.

Although the desire to make it home had given him the apparent force to will to control his shape, once he was actually there, Ryan had no idea what to do next, and what little consistency his melting and stretching body had evaporated within seconds, Ryan’s neck giving out and causing his face to hit the ground, losing half of his vision as his head simply flattened against the ground, although it quickly returned once he lifted it, finding himself with a neck several feet long that would have disgusted him if he had a better look at it. He decided to at least make it to the bathroom to give himself a goal, again trying to drag himself, although by now his hands had fully melted, two fleshy blobs at the end of bendy arms making a wet slap against the ground with each awkward pull, just barely having the strength to propel him.

“Stay together, stay together!” He pleaded his body as it continued to melt, slithering out of his clothes, his body seeping through every available hole and gap until he was totally naked by the time he reached the bathroom. He looked back to see that his legs were gone, melted into a pile, while his arms had no straightness left., and his torso was half melted, half bent into an almost formless shape where it hardly mattered where his shoulders ended and his arms began His head seemed to be the most in-shape part of his body despite its melting and shifting, but it was clear that soon the rest of his body would join the puddles his limbs were becoming.

Was this it? Ryan wondered, going numb from an overload of panic. With no goal, no place to escape to, and unable to even lift himself enough to use his bathroom mirror, he continued to melt into the white tiles, starting to feel exhausted. So that was it for him? He would just melt out of nowhere for some unknown reason, and be nothing more than a pile of goop for somebody to eventually find on the floor? Down to not just his chest and head sticking out of the slimy pile, Ryan closed his eyes, feeling strangely calm. Perhaps, he thoughts as his head too began to melt, once he woke up, it would all be a bad dream…

–

Ryan woke with a start the next morning, face-down on his bathroom, and no soon had he regained consciousness did he find himself almost flailing around, finding that rather than a pile of putty, he seemed to be back to normal! Hands, legs, feet, they were all there, although he was still naked in his bathroom. He began to laugh as he climbed to his feet, wondering if it was all a literal fever dream, and that he had started hallucinating on the way home, having collapsed like a drunk into his apartment, taken off all of his clothes believing himself to be melting, and then passed out in his bathroom until the fever passed. It was embarrassing, but it did it explain everything.

He stared at himself in the mirror for a while, almost expecting drops to start falling from his face again, He smiled, pinching his cheek and pulling on it. Nope, he was all solid… or so he thought until, instead of painfully ending after an inch or too, his pinched cheek just kept going as far as his hand could pull it! He almost shouted as he let go, his cheek flopping cartoonishly. He grabbed more of his face, his fingers sinking into soft, putty-like flesh and pulling literally half of his face with him, stretching out his cheeks, his mouth, his nose, and his forehead like. He let go, desperately willing his face to return to normal, and it snapped back, reforming as if nothing had ever happened.

Panting slightly, Ryan felt up his body, finding that it was soft and malleable, his hands sinking into any part of it with enough pressure, then bouncing back when he pictured his original form. The fact that he seemed to have some kind of control over it kept his panic in check, even if he knew he was most certainly no longer human, or at least not a normal one. He held his arm out, deciding to to experiment a little. He pictured it bending into a smooth curve like a rubber hose, his arm flopping downwards at the elbow and turning his arm from his shoulder to his hand into a perfect semi-circle. He pointed a finger at the mirror and extended his wrist, the arm lengthening and stretching out, allowing him to place his palm against the mirror. He even started to extend his neck like a giraffe, unable to stop himself from laughing uncontrollably as his head nearly bumped into the ceiling. He spun around, contorting his torso until that rotated three times into a spiral at the mid-section, then spun back the other way to reset it. He felt like Mr Fantastic, blessed or cursed with amazing stretching powers, which no longer felt as terrible now that his body had seemingly adapted to it, and didn’t look like it was going to start melting again.

Experimenting more, Ryan focused mostly on his arms, stretching it out until it coiled around his entire body, growing longer and longer until it wrapped around his waist, his thighs, and then his knees until he could touch his toes without bending over in the slightly, then sucked it back in. Enchanted with his new ability, Ryan began to wonder just what the limits were. Putty was the best way to describe it, and incredibly strong putty that could stretch itself thin, or add more material from other parts of the body to elongate a given part. But if it stretched thin, turning almost flat by the time he reached his limit, then what else could it do with it?

Deciding to experiment, Ryan pressed his hand against his the gap between his door and the doorframe, seeing if he could squeeze his finger through. His soft finger flattened and began to fit through, reaching the other end with each. Smirking, he began to push his whole hand through, that turning flat to adapt to the limited space, then he followed through with his arm, his shoulder, then his foot, his leg… half of his body was inside the bathroom and the other half was out, Ryan finally taking a leap of faith and pressing his face against he gap, feeling his skull and nose turn almost flat as paper and pass through. He and the rest of his body emerged perfectly flat, Ryan waddling forward until he caught sight of his paper-thin reflection in his TV screen, laughing at his ridiculous appearance and slowly re-inflating himself until he looked normal again. Assuming that he could figure out how to keep himself solid enough to survive human contact, it might not be so bad living like this after all.

He went back into the bathroom the normal way this time, breathing a sigh of relief that his hand maintained its solid form and didn’t stick to the handle in the process, then decided to address the elephant in the room, namely his elephant. His cock had reformed along with the rest of him,  although the idea of playing with the same as the rest of him was a little awkward, even without any witnesses. He wasn’t really in a hurry to see it all stretched out and noodly like a particularly horny cartoon, and there were a number of logistical questions he had to address now that his body functioned under brand new rules. No matter how scientifically he tried to frame it, he had a simple question: could he still get hard, being so soft? Some might have wondered what was even the point of this flexible body if he couldn’t use it on a girlfriend. With the help of his new powers and trusty left hand, there was only one way to find out!

He kept his body as solid as possible and began to pump up and down his shaft, breathing a sigh of relief when it quickly hardened. He kept going, the pleasure getting more intense as his fingers moulded around it, coiling, forming a cocksleeve like he was his own obscene sex toy.

“A-Ah!” He grunted, the sensation must more intense than he was expecting as he was able to both perfectly seal it and unconsciously morph his cock to the ideal shape and size within it. He was just getting into it and starting to get really sweaty when he saw his feet, which for some reason, seemed to be melting into a puddle again, his spare hand’s fingers starting to melt together, droplets streaming down his body when he saw himself in the mirror. Ryan immediately panicked, pulling his hand away, the fear drying up his arousal and, surprisingly, his body. Once his libido faded his melting parts reformed, the droplets of flesh fading back into his body until he looked totally solid again. He washed his hands in shame, deciding that right now, a girlfriend might be more trouble than it was worth…

–

After playing with himself a bit more, Ryan finally went to his computer to look up his affliction, quickly finding that the new disease he had seen on the TV yesterday was what he had caught, and there were cases of men and woman melting then reforming as rubber-like people across the country, with medical experts baffled as to how this was achieved. It didn’t seem to spread easily, although it was best to stay home. Ryan wondered if he should keep it a secret for a while, ringing the school to say that he was home sick, which would give him three days to figure out what to do and if he could pass himself off as normal. Whatever happened, life was about to get a lot more interesting…