Brandon Twice
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Four Game Penalty
🕑 Added 2019-06-14 00:43:43 +0000 UTCGronk stretched out his long legs, something he normally couldn’t do in taxis. He was surprised that his ride from the airport wasn’t the car service they usually used, but he was actually loving the ride. The car was swankier than what he was used to, almost limo-style with all leather-interiors, tons of room (important for a guy his size, who wasn’t accustomed to being comfortable in most public places) and a mini-fridge full of pricy-looking mineral water.
He sipped from one of the fancy blue bottles and made eye contact with the driver. Gronk wasn’t the kind of celebrity who needed the divider up; he was a man of the people, and he went out of his way to be good to his fans. Plus, something about the driver made him feel even more at ease. He had on mirrored shades and a nice tux, gripped the wheel with gloved hands; maybe that was it. He kind of had a nice smell too. That was a weird thought, Gronk reflected, but it was true. Whatever the guy had on for cologne, it made Gronk’s head feel good.
At a red light the driver made eye contact with him that lasted more than a second. Somebody behind them honked–he missed the green by a few seconds–and Gronk chuckled to himself. “You a fan?” Gronk said, leaning forward.
“Uh, why yes…” the driver said shyly, “very much. I am a great admirer.” He had a weird accent that Gronk couldn’t place.
“Great to meet you,” Gronk said, extending a hand across the partition.
“Vidrak,” the driver introduced himself with the handshake. “I have noticed you and your team have had an exciting year. One of triumph, but sadly one of controversy too.”
Gronk chuckled, rolled his eyes and leaned back in his seat, hands folded behind his head. “Yeah, well, you can see all that bullshit all over the news twenty-four seven–everybody dragging Tom’s name through the mud. I’m kinda done talking about all that stuff.” But after a beat, Gronk did talk about that stuff: “Thing is, whether or not Tom did anything–which they can’t prove–how can anybody tell me that punching your wife in an elevator is worth less of a penalty than deflating a goddamned football?”
“True,” Vidrak said. “It must be difficult to watch your leader go through such hardship.”
“Y'know, honestly, I wish I could take the punishment for him,” Gronk said. The air felt weird for a second, charged, like a shag carpet in the winter.
“Truly?” Vidrak said, staring at Gronk now, eyes off the road.
“Yeah, man, absolutely. That just goes to show what kind of guy Tom is, how his teammates all feel about him. It’s just a damned shame. I just wish the punishment fit the crime, you know?”
“Certainly,” Vidrak said as they pulled up to Gronk’s hotel room.
This time something was definitely up–Gronk’s skin felt tingly, his hair real sensitive. He felt a sharp sting, like a spark, in his right buttcheek, but it faded pretty quickly. “Yo, Vidrak, I think there’s something up with your A/C or something, pal. Might want to get it checked out.”
“Certainly, Mr. Gronkowski. I apologize if your ride wasn’t satisfactory.”
“Oh, the ride was great,” Gronk replied. “Thanks for everything.”
Vidrak bowed his head, his sunglasses sliding down his nose slightly, and Gronk got a look at his eyes for the first time. They were weird–kinda shiny, like a dragonfly’s wing, and they looked almost purple.
They shook hands again and Gronk headed into the hotel.
Up in the room, Gronk stripped down to his boxer-briefs, clicking on the TV: ESPNews. His first impulse was to change the channel to avoid more nauseating coverage of the Tom Brady scandal, but he was surprised that for once, they weren’t ripping it to pieces. He grabbed a beer from the hotel mini-fridge and relaxed his big frame on the couch. Twenty minutes passed and, for once since the Deflategate scandal had started, he could actually watch ESPN without his blood pressure firing up.
“Hunh,” Gronk said, finishing his beer. “Maybe they’ve finally gotten the fuck over it.”
In the shower, he lathered up his muscles and his big dick. The sting in his right buttcheek came back suddenly, and he reached down to rub it. He was shocked when his fingers found a little bump. He poked at it, wondering if it was a zit or something, but when he looked down he saw what looked like a little black stem sticking out of his ass.
“…the fuck?!” he mumbled, trying to grip whatever it was and pull it out. But it wouldn’t budge. He twisted around to get a good look at it and saw that it was a quarter-inch long and looked like it was made of plastic–and it seemed to be embedded in his skin! His fingers twisted it and it came off like it had been threaded on. It almost reminded him of a tire valve stem. And when it came off, he was shocked by a blast of pressurized air escaping from the tube underneath–the tube coming out of his own ass!
After the shock, Gronk was overcome by a wave of dizziness. He leaned against the side of the shower, trying to clear his head, listening to the loud hiss of the air escaping behind him. He felt sick inside and he ached from top to bottom, down to his bones, but he was Rob Gronkowski. No matter how bad he felt he could ignore it, ignore the prickly feeling crawling across his skin, and take charge of the situation.
Whatever it was, the escaping air had to be stopped, so Gronk jammed the little black cap back on and twisted it until the sound ended. It took him a few minutes after the sound had stopped to feel like himself again. He shut off the water and stepped out of the tub as his head started to clear.
He was shocked at what he saw.
First of all, everything in the bathroom looked HUGE. His head only barely cleared the sink, and the shower behind him looked twice as huge as when he’d first gotten into it. The angle of the showerhead pointed way above the top of his head now! He could only see his face in the mirror, and while it looked vaguely like him, it looked so much smaller, without his solid jaw and chiseled features, like an underfed cousin. His knees got weak as he looked down at himself and saw that his body had practically shriveled up. All of his muscles were gone! His body was thin–scrawny, even–and he’d lost all of his mass. He had to sit down. Gronk stumbled to the toilet and sat on it, overwhelmed by the fact that his feet didn’t touch the ground anymore.
He had to be about five feet tall now, if that, and he looked like his weight was cut in half. He wasn’t even this small when he was a kid; maybe when he was a really little kid, but he’d been the biggest since middle school! And still, that little valve stem stuck out of his behind like it was now a part of him.
It took a few minutes to work it all out: all that air was escaping from inside him, and now he was small… Like he’d been deflated.
Deflategate wasn’t in the news. He wondered if it was even a thing at all anymore.
His mind flashed back to the shiny purple eyes of Vidrak, and the things he’d willing said to the strange man: he’d wished he could take the penalty, wished the punishment fit the crime.
“I’m gonna be deflated for four games?” he asked out loud, his gut clenching as he realized that this seemed to be exactly what had happened. He wasn’t used to feeling panicked, feeling unsure of himself, but he was wallowing in those feelings now.
But that was bullshit. He may have been smaller, but he was still Gronk. He could figure this out. He just had to take control, be proactive. He may have been a fraction of his former self but he could still man up enough to get out of this!
He hopped off the toilet and grabbed his boxer-briefs. It was like a punch in the gut when he pulled them up and realized how absurdly huge they were compared to his tiny body now. None of his clothes would fit him anymore. They were all sized for somebody twice his current size!
Hanging from the door was a hotel-issue bathrobe. It was sized for an average person, and while it would’ve barely covered his old body, it would fit him now. (Actually, it was a little long. He kept tripping over it.)
Out in the hotel room he picked up his phone. Who could he call? His mom? Tom? Belicheck? And tell them what? Some fucked up genie granted his wish and now he was a skinny midget for the first four games of the season?
A knock at the door shocked him. (Why was he so damned jumpy now? “Get it together, Gronk!” he thought to himself.) “Mr. Gronkowski? I’m Roger, I’m the hotel manager. I’ve got some complimentary gifts to help you enjoy your stay.”
Gronk heard the click of the door-lock engaging and saw the door swinging open. He sprinted to it and slammed it shut. It was way more of a struggle to push against a casually entering average guy than he would ever be okay with.
“I’m good!” Gronk said, shocked at how high-pitched his voice now was. He cleared his throat and tried to speak deeper, but his vocal cords must have deflated too. “I’m all set! Just not feeling great. Come back later!”
Then it occurred to him: if he could be deflated… couldn’t he be inflated too? He had an idea. He tied the belt on his robe as tightly as he could, grabbed his wallet, and cautiously peered out his door, careful to escape the hotel without running into anybody.
On the street, he got a couple looks–after all, he was wearing a white bathrobe–but most people just walked by, their lines-of-sight several inches above the top of little Gronk’s head. Catching a cab was nearly impossible. He wasn’t used to being ignored like this!
At the hardware store, he grabbed an air compressor and stood in line. It felt terrible to be invisible in public like this, barely acknowledged by people he was used to admiring and adoring him, but another part of him was actually thankful nobody recognized him. He’d be the laughing stock of the NFL if the public found out that big Rob Gronkowski had shrunk to a five-foot-nothing pipsqueak. Luckily the cashier ignored the name on his credit card. Behind him, he was noticed a young guy wearing a Patriots jersey, number 87. Gronk’s eyes were at the young guy’s waist.
Finally back at the hotel, Gronk set up the compressor in the bathroom. It cranked on with a load roar and he carefully twisted off the cap to his creepy new valve stem and plugged the compressor into it.
After a moment, he felt something. His skin tingled all over again but it didn’t hurt like before. It actually felt good. He watched in the mirror as his head slowly started to rise. He ran his hands over his body as his muscles filled back out again, thankful to watch his arms blow back up and his abs knot across his stomach. After about ten minutes, he was back at his normal size, happy to recognize himself in the mirror again. “Yeah Gronk!” he said, relieved to hear his voice was back to its familiar octave.
He went to unhook the compressor, but then paused for a moment. His muscles were still filling, his limbs still getting longer. With a sly grin he realized that maybe he could take this freaky situation and make it work for him. He kept blowing up, growing past his old height of 6'6" by just an inch, then a few inches. His muscles kept filling out too–soon he was a massive seven foot tall beast! He flexed his new cannons, felt up his gigantic body. He looked like a pale Hulk now, but still with his sexy Gronk face on a much blockier head. He had to weigh about 350 now–no, maybe even 400! He was going to dominate the NFL, one-handing guys out of his way with ease.
As his head approached the ceiling, he estimated his new height about 7'2" tall, and figured that much more would be overkill. He reached for the cap to his valve stem with his new thick, over-muscled hands, but he couldn’t pinch it between his fingers. They were too big.
He tried to pick it up with the pinkies from each hand, but he just sort of rolled it around the sink. “Damn,” he said, surprised by the deep bovine roar of his voice at this size. “Guess I gotta let a little air out first.” He yanked the hose out of his ass, but he was surprised when the escaping air, ten times more intense than the first time, blew him forward, into the sink. He watched with horror as the little black cap circled around and around the sink and then went down the drain with a gentle plunk.
Panicking, he pawed at the hole, unable to get even his pinky down the little hole. “Maybe if I get a little smaller,” he thought anxiously, but something was different this time. The air was blasting furiously out of him now, but instead of shrinking, like he had before, his hands start to flatten out. In the mirror he watched, helplessly, as his face started to slowly collapse in on itself like a soda can. His legs felt like warm noodles and he found himself sinking to the floor. He flailed, but it was like he no longer had bones. His arms smooshed against the sides of the sink as he tried to grab hold of something. No matter how he struggled, he still ended up collapsing against the floor, pooling into a flattened out pile, like he was skin-colored rubber in the shape of Rob Gronkowski. He tried to yell for help but his voice was just a high-pitched squeak. Then the sound of the escaping air stopped and he found himself staring blankly up at the ceiling, unable to move an inch or make a sound. The compressor continued to roar as the hose swung back in forth, just a couple feet away from Gronk’s valve stem, and there was nothing he could do to bridge that distance.
“Housekeeping!” asked the maid as she stepped cautiously into the room. There was something loud, a buzzing machine in the bathroom, but after a few calls it didn’t seem that anyone was home. She tiptoed quietly in, then went to the bathroom to investigate the strange noise.
Someone had left one of those machines you use to fill bike tires running, hissing as it sprayed air at nothing. Why would anyone bring something like that to a hotel bathroom? Even more shocking was a pile of tan rubber gathered in a wrinkled pile on the floor. When she examined it further she saw it had a surprisingly realistic face–two eyes staring blankly out, a mouth frozen in an O of surprise–painted on it. She knew a celebrity was renting the room, some famous athlete, and she’d always heard that rich people did strange things with their money. Who was she to judge this guy for having a blow-up doll?
On the floor Gronk screamed silently, thankful that someone had finally come in after what had seemed like an eternity trapped motionless on the floor. “Just inflate me again!” he thought, wishing there was some way to move or make a sound to let her know that he was a person… he was Gronk! He wasn’t a thing!
But Gronk’s hopes sank as the housekeeper shut off the compressor and unplugged it, coiling up the hose. Then she reached down and picked him up, holding him in front of her face. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror–a life-sized, completely deflated rubber Gronk doll. Then she began took him by the top of his head and started rolling him up.
The sensation was maddening. Even though he was completely deflated and hollow, every inch of him was incredibly sensitive, and the feeling of being coiled into a tube of himself threatened to overload his mind. “No!” he thought. “I’m a man! I’m Gronk! I’m Gronk!” But as she rolled his eyes and ears up, he couldn’t see or hear so well anymore. He felt himself being carried, then set on some flat surface. No matter how hard his mind screamed, he was completely helpless.
It was going to be a very long four games.
