SUBURBAN LEGENDZ: “Beware the Jocks at Night.”

 

I sat hidden under the desk of my computer room, tablet in hand, staring at the video feed from my doorbell. On the other end, outside my front door, a jock’s curious puppy dog eyes looked through, searching for me. Hard to believe this is what it’d come to.

—

A few months ago, I had only just moved into town. I saw the house online and jumped at the price. A quiet place nestled in the heart of New England. The tour was lovely and the townsfolk were welcoming. My first real major purchase as an adult at 28. A home to start building my future. I even lucked out by having a married couple my age next door. The husband, Lenny, and I became buds, gaming together often or biking around town.

I used to think people would consider themselves lucky to be me: able to find a house—hell afford a house— and even make fast friends. I had a remote job I could do at anytime. Everything was looking up for me. Then the first night of June I heard knocking at my door. Pulling up my video feed, I see a shirtless teen at my door. I tell him to go away because I can see the other young men on the street behind him, walking to houses, fog rolling in. I placed him on mute. It was a small town. I could figure the seniors that recently graduated got bored and the college kids back for the summer went stir crazy. Everything closed early here. They wanted to pass time by fucking with the neighbors. It was exactly what I’d imagine doing if I were their age. Nowhere to go. No real entertainment. It just made sense.

Things carried on that way for about a week, the boys always coming and knocking, never too hard, but never soft. The thumps were ingrained in their presentation. The reason it went on for so long was that no one was truly put off or put out by it. It was just a nuisance at the end of the day. The jocks would knock, stand for around 15 minutes, knocking in between, then leave. No aggression. No response. No words.

“Beware the jocks at night.”

I was in the grocery store when I heard it. It seemed like such a ridiculous thing to say at the time. The older woman in front of me in line was chastising her young cashier, with those words of wisdom. I don’t know why but they stuck in my head. 

Week number 2, came and the police had enough, issuing a curfew for anyone 21 and under to be home. The jocks still came. Expected, in my opinion, youth disrespecting authority felt more obvious than anything else. What was odd were the whispers people shared in the mornings about the police being unable to identify the young men. Now that was unexpected because in a small town I was surprised if they hadn’t at least heard about some of the kids.

Into week 3, the local male youth was questioned about which of their friends were in on the prank and to convince them to stop. I had heard that not a single one admitted they knew who the boys were messing with people. Someone pitched that it could have been a neighboring town’s youth. A fair point, but surely cars driving into town would have been captured by someone.

Week 4, hell broke loose, the adults were fed up and annoyed with the jocks. If a group of boys were hanging out at a cafe during the day they got angry glares from everyone. But what tipped it over the edge was an officer stumbling into the town square. He yelled to everyone that while he was issuing a speeding ticket, the night prior, he watched the jocks wander out of the woods and walk into town. No one bought it…at first.

The weeks continued on and summer only got hotter with tensions rising in the day. I watched a police car stroll into my neighborhood one night as my jock finished knocking on my door. The cop’s door slammed as he walked up to the jock. I listened in, curious as all hell to find any information on the young man so I could entice him to go away. The cop started with meaningless small talk but my ears perked when he finally asked the jock what he was doing.

“I live here.” The young man answered. His deep voice wavered between sweetly naive and infuriatingly dumb. “I forgot my key and was hoping my dad could let me back in.” I was so flabbergasted at the time—I was Black for Christ’s sake— that I didn't even notice when the cop wished the young man a good night then and walked away. “Dad, can you let me in?” he knocked again, all alone. I cut the video feed straight away. But even still could hear him and the other jocks in the neighborhood. They were talking now.

The cops stop doing shit about the jocks. They lifted the curfew, stopped responding to nightly calls. Try to broach the subject and they’d zone out. It was like the jocks didn't even exist in their minds anymore. 

“Yeah, so I told Allison to take a break; go visit her parents. These young guys were getting to her. I know they probably just want to pass the time, but they can’t scare people like that. It’s creepy.” Lenny handed me a beer as we watched a movie in his living room. I ended up passing out first and when I woke up the house was dark with only the light of the TV.  

Lenny was actually huddled by a window and motioned for me to be silent and come closer. Through the blinds he showed me the jock who had been harassing him and Allison.  Lenny scoffed, “Why is he not wearing a shirt? Gonna get fucking cold like that.”

“Lenny, you okay?” I asked and I should have asked more, but honestly, I was too tired to think much about it.

Two days later, I knocked on Lenny’s door after not hearing from him. We had been talking at least once a day since I moved into town. A man with Lenny’s face opened the door, wearing an open robe and boxers. Lenny’s body was bigger, built, and shoulders spread further. His hair was cropped to a shorter length, and he had a full moustache going. “Hey there pal missed you.” He wrapped me up in a hug. 

“Missed me? I’ve been calling you.” I looked him up and down. He was an extra 30 lbs. Heavier easily. His pecs were being tugged by gravity, that's how big he was.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, you know how it is when my son’s back from college. I got swamped.”  He moved to the slide and pointed at a young man, laying horizontal and texting on a phone. The same kid I’d seen standing on his doorstep nights prior. I involuntarily chuckled. It was a nervous and awkward laugh. “You don’t seriously believe that boy’s, your son, do you, Lenny?”

“Are you feeling okay,” Lenny crossed his arms, “You know I prefer Lenoard. And how can you joke about your godson like that?”  The young man on the couch waved to me and I noped the fuck out of there.

It wasn't just Leonard either. Jocks were finally making their way into people’s homes. I don’t know if everyone decided to collectively give up or were just that tired. But it was weird when I started seeing them hanging around town. There was just an air about them that let one know they weren’t regular small town young men. Secondly, all the actual young men and teens in town seemed to avoid the invading jocks, like the plague. 

Allison came home. I had called to warn her since apparently ‘Leonard’ had gone silent. She didn’t believe me. Even after I gathered the courage to visit and do a silent video call in her house, she could see how a random boy had inserted himself into her husband’s life. I told her the same thing was happening across town.

“The jocks are just here now. A part of life. One was in the grocery store the other day buying food for his ‘Dad’, Mr. Hammond. The old guy fell off a ladder and now the jock is taking care of him. And most people just accept it and move on.” I said, frustrated, back in the comfort of my own home.

That set her off and led to her coming back. I watched her pull up, even ran to her car to ask her to stop. She wasn't worried, after all nothing happened to me.

“I get that but listen you haven’t been in town for a bit. A few of us think that we're fine because it’s not our house but that is your place.”

She turned to me, “I’m not leaving without my fiancé.”

I hushed up and watched her walk into the house, key opening the door. Two hours I waited until I went and knocked for myself. Allison opened the door, except it wasn't Allsion. The woman on the other side was a bit taller, face narrower, body voluptuous. Allison had been a cute, perfectly normal young woman. The person standing in front me, however, was a lady, bouncing breasts and an hourglass figure. 

“It’s so good to see you.” She pulled me into a hug.

We talked. Well, she talked because I already knew it was futile. She belonged to that boy in their home now. I returned home.

Night came as it always did, and the jocks with it. Video feed on, I listened to the young man ask for his ‘dad’ to open the door, his knocks coming. He had a nice voice to listen to while working. Though it made me wonder if he ever got cold, even if it was the summer, he should have had a jacket on so late at night. My eyes wandered back to my video screen, the jock’s pecs bounced involuntarily. His nipples were hard; he was cold. My cock throbbed in my pants. I shut the video feed off immediately.

Things in town changed rapidly. I never would have previously considered where I lived, a family town, perhaps a town with families in it. But that became quickly untrue with the jocks and their parents all mucking about.

I learned that I had to hunker down at night. The young man’s voice had gotten into my head. If I heard those lips beg for his dad I’d break someday. His face though, I could stand that. Watch those adorable eyes plead with my iron resolve. The video feed was more for his benefit than mine. I didn’t want anyone to come up and try to hurt him. A handful of people who were visited by jocks believed we should get together and beat them up. I dissuaded them NOT because I felt for my jock, but because beating up young people who hadn’t technically done anything wrong except being annoying was a bad look.

There came a point where I stopped working and only watched the jock. His frown, his pouts. Part of me screamed to make it all better for him. That was nonsense, and logically I knew that, but my heart was crumbling. Hiding under my desk was an extra mental barrier because having to get from under it would hopefully give me enough time to snap back to normal.

—

Then came tonight, my boy coming to the door. He did his ritual of looking at me through the camera. I knew now that he was aware I was watching. He knocked, asking for his ‘dad’ to let him in. Silence was my response. When was he going to get a damn shirt?!

“Dad, I'm going to have to go away if you don’t let me in.” My ears perked up at that. I could hear the sadness and fear in his voice. I knew he wasn’t lying. He knocked some more, Never off beat, never too loud, but voice growing more desperate. When his 15 minutes were up, he looked into the doorbell and said, “Bye, dad.”  Fog had been rolling in the street behind him. Something in me snapped. I bottled from under my desk, snatched a blanket from my room and ran outside. 

There were other jocks, who had been denied access to homes, walking in the streets swaying away. Their eyes were all hazed over and their movements were haggard. But I wanted my jock. I knew him well enough to spot his frame walking away. I’d watched it walk up and away from my door countless times. Sprinting into the fog, there was a low whisper that called to the young men, leading them forward. A laugh in the distance.

I found him, spinning him around, into a hug. ‘Let’s go home, Chase.” It was a name I had jokingly given him in my head, thinking no one would ever hear it. But when I said it out loud it felt like he was mine, you know. His gaze was still gone but I threw the blanket over his shoulders and held him close as we walked against the jocks leaving town. They made no motions to stop us, but it was like we were wading through a zombie horde. There was an outpouring of jocks, way more than the ones that were knocking about the town. I had a feeling that if I let Chase go the horde would have swallowed him up and continued on. Only my grip was what kept them at bay. We made it back to my front door, I turned to watch the great exodus of jocks from the town, like a wave flowing back into the ocean.

I got the sense someone was watching. Not my neighbors, peeking out their windows and shades. Someone else. But I was not the subject under observation; the jocks in the street were. A snide laugh was in the wind, and something sinister was in the air. As an invisible and silent pied piper called all the boys away.

Beware the jocks at night indeed. But a new question was on my mind: who or what led them here? What would become of the young men who weren’t let inside? Beware not the jocks, but that which puppeted them, pulling their strings like marionettes. To a tune that seemed purely for its own amusement.

I held Chase close and felt his arms wrap around me; My bulge pressing right above his. Kissing his forehead I said, “Don’t ever do something, so stupid again.” 

“Sorry dad,” He muttered as color came back into his face but stared not fully returned. My heart was about to burst. I couldn't contain myself. Leaning forward, I kissed him, mouths mashing, my lips guiding, tongue encouraging. Took him a moment, but he kissed me back with the same force and eagerness. 

Our lips parted. 

“You're kinda bad at this dad,” he joked.

My eyes flew back to the jocks leaving, they were a faint whisper in reality, transparent.

“Do you know where they're going?” asked.

Chase shook his head placing it on my chest, “No.” Call me stupid or dumb, but I believed him. His voice sounded just as astounded to see the truth of him, or what he had been. He wasn’t that anymore. He had me.

I opened my front door. Knowing something waited for me once I allowed Chase in. I made him walk through first, so he had no doubts about his home. Then I stepped in, closing the door with my foot so I didn’t lose sight of Chase. A part of me, afraid he’d slip into the wind. When my door shut, my body erupted. 

My chest exploded out and tore my shirt off with its ferocity. Bulk forced itself into my body embedding size into my DNA at a molecular level. The feeling of one’s cells getting ignited is euphoric. My legs and thighs pushed up, growing taller, as my torso competed against them. The same proportions were just scaled up and compacted with muscle. My cock and ass tag teamed the destruction of my underwear and left me naked. My balls dropped heavy, pumping with seed. The kind that could make a young man like Chase: fit, athletic, rambunctious. How did I know all that? My balls actively churning up more of his unborn siblings was the answer. I simply just knew. An adjustment to my shoulders and they were broader, bigger. Arms that had seen more days in a gym in weeks than I had previously in years flanked my sides. Slowly my own anatomy was carved into my back, from my traps to the shoulder blades down my spine, into the dimples above my ass. The ass I had was like its own globe with a gravitational orbit.

A beard grew over my face hiding my smooth skin under a dark bush. Chest hair came in full flowing from my pecs, along my abs, past my navel into my pubic hair. My face cracked as I leaned back, small fixes and changes that deleted fat and former injuries. There was no stopping the blood rushing into my cock, keeping it hard. I couldn’t fight back the roar I unleashed, or the cum I fired out that hit Chase in the face and chest. Me unintentionally marking him as mine.

The realization of what I’d done only set in after I came down from the high. After which I immediately cleaned him up, apologizing, while he only had jokes for me.

Life went back to normal in town. Though my boy didn’t go off to college when fall started. Strangely a lot of young men hadn't. Well, there was always next year. Some people, childless losers, had an aversion to Chase. Though these days, they couldn’t even remember why. It didn't matter to me; I kept my boy close and the other young men who stuck around in town got along with him. Good enough for me. 

There was a faint feeling in the back of my mind. I used to understand why there was an aversion to chase but honestly, I forgot it. Despite the muscles and the awesome son, I had, there was one thing I’d never forget. 

The image of watching those young men being called off and dragged away. It was like a piece of knowledge I was blessed and cursed with. No one should have been willing to rescue the jock after time was up. But I did and that memory couldn't be erased regardless of all the other memories I had trouble grasping.

Beware not the jocks at night, but that which brings them.