The large metal tan door opened with a creak and a clang. Three new guests entered Cell Block D, lugging their blue vinyl mattresses with them as they made their way to their new residences. The deputy slammed the door shut behind them.

“New meat!” called someone from upstairs. Another yelled, “Heads up,” and a few whistled.

From his top bunk, Jo Jo stretched, rolled over, and hopped down to eyeball the newbies. He leaned against the doorway to his cell, crossing his arms and ankles.

“What do ya think?” asked Andy, nodding toward the three. He was grinning wide and sitting on the edge of his lower bunk.

Jo Jo chuckled. “That dark-haired one: he’s young. Fresh. Some bitch put him in here. Sexual assault.”

Andy snickered. “Naw man, look at them arms. That’s a fightin’ motherfucker right there. Domestic violence.”

Jo Jo shook his head. “It’s gonna cost you a bag of chips. You know that already, right?”

Andy nodded and grinned. “You’re too good at this.”

“What about Number Two?” Jo Jo asked.

Andy narrowed his eyes for a moment. “He’s old. Looks smart. He did somethin’ fancy, like with money or somethin’.”

Jo Jo scanned him for a bit. “Yeah, he don’t need to be here. And it was something stupid, too. Yeah, I’ll take fraud, something because of the Internet.”

“You gettin’ real close on that one, hause. Too easy to get wrong. I’ll take a bag of chips and a Snickers.”

“Not a chance,” Jo Jo chuckled. “Ok, the last one.”

Andy zeroed his eyes in on Number Three, even rubbed his hands together. He parted his lips to speak, but then closed them again. He stared harder. Number Three should have been easy for Andy, but for some reason he seemed to be having a hard time.

“Nothing?” Jo Jo asked.

“I don’t like his eyes,” Andy said. “Somethin’ wrong with that fucker.”

Jo Jo followed Andy’s stare. Yep, he had weird, buggy eyes, a bald head, and a grin on his mouth that seemed out of place. In fact, not just the way he looked, but the way he walked, the way he carried his bed. This guy wasn’t scared.

“He’s been here before.” Jo Jo finally said. “Not here-here, but this ain’t his first rodeo.” He rubbed the side of his head and pointed at him. “We better watch that one close.” He turned to return to his bunk but then stopped. “Oh yeah, fucker hit a cop. Homeless. Tonight is a cot and three hots for him.”

“That’s it?” Andy asked. “He’s just a street bum?”

“What else he gotta be?”

Andy shook his head and scooted himself back into his bunk. “You played this one real right, today, hause. That Snickers is gonna taste real good.”

The youngest of the three newbies armed his way through a couple of small crowds to a cell in the upper rooms. Number Two didn’t seem to want any trouble at all. Instead of looking for an open cell, he plopped his mattress on an empty spot beneath the stairs and curled up in the shadows. Number Three, without a pause or a hesitation, approached Jo Jo’s and Andy’s cell. Jo Jo stepped in front of him. “Not here, brother.”

Number Three stood and looked at Jo Jo square in the eyes. He relaxed his shoulders and spoke calmly. “I was told to look for an open space.” His voice was articulate, low, and feathery, close to a whisper. His tone meant he took his time with his words, that they held a quiet confidence.

“No beds,” said Jo Jo. Number Three didn’t look like much to him. Right around 5’10”, 150 pounds tops. Thin and malnourished. Probably ten years older than Jo Jo. His weird, buggy eyes looked faded and tired. Even Andy could take him if he wanted to. Half of a snake tattoo slithered out from beneath the hem of his orange jumpsuit sleeve with its open mouth fangs biting into the top of his right hand. He was dirty, tired, and he smelled. Too many nights on the concrete.

Three eyed the empty bunk behind him. “Looks available to me.”

Jo Jo squared up in front of him. Andy swung his legs over the side of his bunk and stood up. “I said no beds,” said Jo Jo.

Three scanned Jo Jo from his eyes to his feet, and then he looked at Andy. Finally, he shrugged a shoulder, stepped back, and grinned as though he’d only encountered a friendly disagreement, then walked to JP’s cell next door.

The next morning, the inmates of Block D stepped out of their cells for breakfast. Jo Jo stretched, yawned, and scratched his ass. He then jabbed Andy in the shoulder to wake him up. “Chow time,” he said. He stood outside the doorway of his cell. Two doors down his friend, Roland, appeared — a thin, skinny black man with wild wooly hair. He had dropped his shoes onto the floor and was slipping them on when he shifted his vision Jo Jo’s way and caught the most perplexed expression that tightened his brow and narrowed his mouth.

Between them was JP’s cell, and out stepped Number Three from the night before. Jo Jo stepped back, as if he had to make room for the newcomer. He was taller, much taller. Well over six and a half feet. And big. Not hefty or chunky, but broad and round. In the shoulders, in the stomach. Like a bull.

Jo Jo rubbed his eyes and shook his head. You trippin’, he thought, but he couldn’t quit staring.

Same bald head. Same weird, buggy eyes that stared him down the night before. A snake tattoo ran down the length of his right arm. Had a new inmate been incarcerated in the dark, early morning hours in the same cell as JP? Jo Jo thought. If so, what happened to the shorter, skinnier one?

The big man looked at Roland, then turned his gaze towards Jo Jo.

“Hey yo Jo Jo,” called Roland. “Who dis butterball-ass muddafucka?”

Jo Jo only shook his head.

Andy emerged from his cell, scratching his belly and rubbing his eyes. “Man, I’m fuckin’ hangry—” He froze.

 “Andy?” asked Jo Jo. His cellmate’s wide eyes sent a chill up his spine.

“W-who the fuck is this?” asked Andy, but he’d recognized him instantly, at least he thought he did, from the brief encounter last night.

Jo Jo whipped his eyes back toward Three and stepped away from him. He shook his head. His cellmate, though, had braced himself against the doorway, his mouth gaping, and color drained from his face.

“Andy, bro, what’s wrong?” Jo Jo asked.

“No way. Can’t be…” was Andy’s response before he retreated back into his cell.

Finally, Jo Jo squared up toward the fat man. “Hey man, who the fuck are you?”

The big man spoke. His voice was a deep, low baritone with a slight rasp, and something else, something guttural. “Butterball. I like that name.”

Jo Jo threw his hands in the air. “Fuck this,” and he marched to the guard station.

With a hefty purpose, the barrelled man stepped into the pale morning light of the common area, found a bench he liked, and sat down on the end of it.

Andy cowered back onto his bunk, only shaking his head and training his eyes on Butterball. “Can’t be, just can’t…” he said more to himself than to anyone else.

Moments later, Jo Jo returned. No, no one else had been brought in since last night. The guard did not recognize the new inmate in JP’s cell, so she decided to investigate.

“Hey, yo JP,” called Roland.

Jo Jo turned his attention to his chocolate-brown friend, who was bouncing from his cell and approaching the one in the middle. Jo Jo followed and stopped in the doorway while Roland went inside to their friend’s upper bunk. “Yo yo JP, you sleeping in or what? Gonna miss breakfast, brotha.” He poked the bundle of blankets once, twice, but the bed was empty. He checked the lower bunk. Then he turned to Jo Jo. “Yo where JP?”

Jo Jo only raised empty palms into the air and shook his head. He turned and stared at Butterball’s back. His orange jumpsuit was stretched to its limit, the broad snake tattoo that was long and slender just yesterday was now a boa constrictor.

Jo Jo curled and uncurled his fists. Instead of approaching the tattooed man directly, he returned to his cell and approached his friend, who was still sitting in the shadow of his lower bunk, muttering to himself.

“Andy, brotha, what gives?”

He swallowed, shook his head. Then he pointed at the big man. “Don’t you see?”

“See what?”

“It’s him, Number Three, from last night.”

Jo Jo shook his head. He knelt down in front of his friend. “Listen man, I remember last night, and that’s two different people you’re talking about. Ain’t no way that skinny fella from last night is that big motha this morning. Damn guards must be confused about who’s in and who’s out in the middle of the night.”

Andy’s eyes darted back and forth between Jo Jo and Butterball. “Then where’s JP?”

“What?”

“Same eyes, same tat. Something happened to JP last night and I’m telling you the fat man did something. I don’t know what he did or how he did it, but he did something.”

Jo Jo ruffled his own hair. “Do you hear yourself? Do you hear what you’re saying? How does a short, skinny man become a fat, tall man overnight?”

Andy took a breath and straightened himself a touch. “Because he ain’t no man.”

In the common area, Roland marched up to Butterball. He jabbed his broad shoulder. “Hey yo where JP at, huh? Where da fuck JP, muddafucka?” He poked him again.

Butterball only rolled his buggy eyes toward Roland and grinned a nasty, saliva-laced grin.

“Da fuck you smilin’ at? Where JP?” asked Roland. The skinny man bowed his chest out and flexed his arms. “I fuck you up right now, bitch! I fuck you up right now!” He jabbed the Butterball twice more before Jo Jo squared his body up between Roland and the broad man.

“Something ain’t right with him,” Jo Jo said to his friend. “Back the fuck up.”

Roland glared at his friend’s eyes and then at Butterball’s. He pointed at him. “I know you know where JP at. I got you, muddafucka. I got you!”

Like an infectious dread, inmates began to murmur. Small pockets of men began to form around Butterball.

An alarm sounded. The main door of the cell block opened, and four other guards stepped inside. “Lock down. Lock down.”

The ruckus from the inmates for JP only grew louder. Roland turned his attention to the guards. “Hey, yo! JP missing. That big muddafucka got JP.”

A guard shook his head. “Get back in your cell.”

Roland protested, but ended up on the floor after a guard pushed him backwards. Jo Jo helped him up.

“In your cell, now.”

At first the crowds around Butterball wouldn’t budge, but then the guards drew their batons.

Moments later after the deputies hustled everyone into their cells and locked the doors, Jo Jo pressed his face against the glass in the door. With the common area cleared, he watched four guards gather around JP’s cell. They stood there for several minutes, but wouldn’t go inside. Reluctantly, they entered the cell with the fat man, and something about that one action sent an alarming fright through Jo Jo’s chest. “Jesus, they went inside with him?”

“What the fuck is going on?” asked Andy.

Jo Jo took a deep breath. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know.” JP was a bad dude, Jo Jo knew that, everyone did. But he wasn’t bright, not bright enough to plan a jailbreak on his own and not get caught. Who for the love of Christ was Butterball? And what if Andy was right? Jo Jo’s mind reeled from the questions. “It just can’t be…” He kept telling himself. “Just can’t be…”

By the end of the day, the atmosphere of Cell Block D was still disturbed. Some of the inmates appeared to resume something of a regular day, but mostly they avoided Cell 38, refusing to go near it. Others brave enough to peek inside in a vain attempt to see what they could see, try to pick up what they could to solve the mystery of JP. Butterball never emerged once. He took no meals.

At one point around noon, a troop of guards had marched into the cell block, removed Butterball from the cell, and tossed the whole thing. They searched for contraband or clues or evidence of whatever to explain how JP had escaped. They even cuffed the large man, removed him from the block, and for a few hours it seemed that an uneasy relief had begun to settle among the prisoners. Butterball was gone, maybe for good, and at least that would be enough.

But they brought him back.

It was nearly time for lights-out. Butterball sat on a bench just outside his cell. He stripped off his shirt, and he let it fall from his hands to the floor.

“What the hell is that?” Andy asked, pointing at the fat man.

Jo Jo hopped off his bunk and peered into the common area.

What looked like a large scar striped the front of Butterball’s body. It started under his bottom lip, ran under his chin and down his throat, a long broad band that traveled over his chest, looped over the mound of his belly, and disappeared under the waistband of his orange pants.

The call for lights-out came. One of the guards — a female — stepped into the Block and clapped her hands. “Let’s go people, let’s go. Time to call it a night.”

A few of the inmates milled around; a few asked why they had brought back the big man. But they again steered clear of him, many hustling to the safety of their cells. Butterball remained on his bench.

The guard approached him. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s lights out. Now get moving.”

Butterball only turned his buggy eyes toward her and said nothing.

“Something’s going down.” Andy half-whispered to Jo Jo.

“I’m not going to tell you again,” said the guard. “You get moving or I’ll make you move.”

Butterball shook his head. “No. Not tonight.”

She stepped in his direction, reaching for his arm, and he grabbed her by the throat.

“A-aw shit!” said Andy.

He shoved her clean across the floor and pinned her against the wall right next to Andy. Andy crumbled backward to the floor.

“Hey, get off her,” Jo Jo yelled. He began punching Butterball’s ribs and arms, but it was like beating on a stack of tires.

The guard kicked and flailed and even clawed at his eyes, but he didn’t flinch. She couldn’t even squeal.

The ruckus drew Roland from his cell. “What the fuck?” He tried jumping on the big man’s back and wrapping his arms around his neck, but he couldn’t make the climb.

Butterball began to heave. Retch like a person getting ready to throw up. His shoulders began to rise and fall in a steadily increasing rhythm. His stomach began to pump in and outward. He opened his mouth and stuck his tongue out.

The scar beneath his lower lip parted. It began to separate, like a seam. The split extended down his chin, and the skin covering his throat opened like a toothless zipper. The more he heaved, the lower the split ran. Through the middle of his chest and stopping at his sternum. Then the dome of his stomach began to open vertically along the banded scar.

Butterball began to bow his chest outward, and the opening between the two halves of him grew wider. Layer upon layer of skin parted, like he was being cut in half.

Jo Jo ceased his attack as the reality of what was happening drove a deep fright inside him like a giant spike. He could only stumble backwards, land against the doorway, and slide down it.

The skin of Butterball’s throat, chest, and stomach began to peel back, curling like a blooming flower. It exposed his jawbone, ribcage, and organ sac.

Andy retreated to the safety of his lower bunk, pulling his knees to his chest and holding his head in his arms, yelling for it to stop.

Butterball hung his head back. With a loud snapping sound, his jawbone broke in two, right down the vertical chin line. The bones slowly moved apart, as if by separating they were making room for something else to come through.

Then, something like a giant invisible finger began plucking at the bones of his ribcage. One by one the ribs broke from the breastbone, pulling away from the center, and opening wider and wider like the doors of a meat cabinet.

His lungs inflated and deflated, and his heart pumped. But something lay behind the organs, and it was no longer content to hide. A deep, black seam began to split in the muscle tissue of his chest behind the heart and lungs. It parted slowly and deliberately, pushing aside the pumping organs. The blackness expanded to take over the entire space of his chest cavity. It pushed down the organs of his abdomen. It was like a great black hole, a fleshy death star, now occupied the center of Butterball’s anatomic universe.

Then Butterball retched. The open space of his mouth, teeth and gums and all, set free his tongue. The pink, fleshy muscle shot out of his mouth, not in inches but in yards. It shot past his arms like a third limb, thick and pulsing and drenched in saliva. The end of it punched the guard in her face, and then, like a fleshy hand, gripped her head.

Her hands flew to the meaty appendage, fighting to pry it loose and regain her air.

Butterball released the grip of his hand on her throat. He took one step back, and held the guard against the wall with only his thick, leggy tongue.

Roland, now cowering on the floor, could only blink and stammer.

The guard continued to kick at the wall, claw at his tongue, but within seconds the strength began to drain from her fight.

Butterball titled his head to one side, and he seemed to chuckle.

“You’re… You’re killing her,” Jo Jo said, gasping.

With one buggy eye, he winked at Jo Jo. Then, like a giant amphibian having caught its prey, he snatched her from the wall and drew her to his chest. The blackness inside him expanded, as if to cradle and embrace something new and precious and delicious. With his tongue he pulled her in head-first, and the cavity of his chest began to envelope her. The bones of his ribcage pointed outward and spread like spiny fingers as they reached out and over her, pressing her inward. In a sickening, perverse way, the sight reminded Jo Jo of a venus flytrap. Butterball flexed his chest in and out, again and again, slowly and deliberately, as he consumed the body.

As the blackness covered and overtook her, large round bulges, like humps from an animal, began to rise in Butterball’s back and shoulders. They pulsed and retracted, growing larger and more pronounced, as if the body was invading space in the back as well as the front of him. The organs of his chest cavity and abdomen eased back into their former places. The bones of his ribs reconnected with the sternum. His skin, layer by layer, rejoined in the center of his body, closing the way it had opened.

Butterball stood there for what felt like forever looking like a giant flesh barrel. The halves of his jawbone reunited into one, and only the tip of his giant tongue could be seen returning to its normal space in his mouth. He breathed a gurgly sigh and half-closed his eyes. There was movement in the humps and bumps of his back and stomach, like Butterball was gestating some horrible monstrous thing inside him, pregnant for it. It reminded Roland of a satisfied African snake after a fresh kill, its stomach bulging from the contents of the raw meat. His eyes darted from Butterball to Jo Jo and back again. “JP…” he managed to mutter. “JP…”

His nerves nearly freezing him in place, Roland fought them and scrambled to his feet, walking backwards like a crab at first before he turned to all fours and got up. He ran to the main door of the Cell Block and slapped the reinforced glass. “Hey! Hey, somebody,” He looked over his shoulder at Butterball, checking him, and then slapped the glass again. “Let me outta here.”

A moment later a troop of three guards appeared on the other side, fright wide in their eyes.

“He ate her,” cried Roland. “He ate her. Open the damn door.”

The guards looked one to another. They didn’t appear to speak, but they seemed to mutually agree to not open the door as they crept away from it.

“N-no. No,” Roland cried, pounding the glass. “Open the door. Open the fuckin’ door.”

A hand clamped down on his shoulder, and he screamed. Jo Jo spun him around and pointed at Butterball. “Something’s happening.”

In the emptiness of the common area, Butterball sat down on a bench again, and he stared at Jo Jo and Roland. The two froze. He trained his eyes on them like they were the only other people on the cell block. The bulging humps on his body continued to swell, recede, and swell again. He grinned.

“He… he gone eat us,” Roland said, mouth gaping.

Jo Jo ran his eyes over the cell block — first floor, second floor, his cell, the spaces under the stairs — any place he could use for cover, but he found nothing. He shook his head, steadied himself. “Not yet,” he said.

Butterball took a deep breath, lifted his chin, and rubbed his barrelled belly. “Soon,” he said. “You will understand.”

Roland nearly shrieked at just the sound of his voice.

Andy poked his head out of the door.

“Get back,” Jo Jo hissed, waving him back into the cell.

But Andy ran to the pair. “It’s going to happen again,” he half-whispered.

“What?” asked Jo Jo, confusion wrinkling his face.

Andy nodded toward the big man. “Skinny man when we first saw him, right? Then JP. Then a big man.”

“What are you saying,” Jo Jo asked.

“It happened again,” Andy said. “He ate the guard. He’s going to change.”

The three trained their gazes on Butterball. Butterball stared back at them, grinning. He stood up and turned to face them squarely. He held his hands at his sides, palms turned toward the trio. At first Jo Jo wasn’t sure what he was looking at, then he spotted it. The humps and bulges on Butterball’s body stopped moving. Instead, one-by-one, they began to recede, shrink, it seemed, as if Butterball had digested what he’d eaten. The thought alone sent a shudder through Jo Jo.

And as the protrusions diminished, Butterball lifted his face toward the ceiling and half-closed his eyes. His shoulders and chest began to broaden. The scar that ran down the center of his body remained intact. His round head that Roland could not wrap his arms around not only widened, but also rose. New height he gained. Not in inches, but in feet. His arms and his legs increased in their length and their girth. Not only was he growing taller, but also stronger. The growth pushed at every inch of his body, from the length of his plump fingers to his granite jawbone.

His weight ballooned with his height, the circumference of his belly and chest now rivaling the bulk of a delivery truck.

Roland, trembling, slid down the wall until he sat on the floor. He was nearly in tears.

“What the… What the fu…” Jo Jo kept repeating to himself.

Andy only looked on with horrid fascination.

The man — the thing — the monster they had nicknamed Butterball now towered above all with the size and weight of a large UHaul truck stood on its rear bumper. He began to laugh a very inhuman laugh. His belly rolled and his shoulders shook. The sound of it seemed to jolt the entire cell block from a terrified stupor, and it erupted.

Like an incoming storm surge, a wave of inmates flowed from their cells, from the top level and the bottom, swarming to a collective mass in the center of the common area and flooding toward the cell block’s main door. Jo Jo grabbed Andy by his collar and shoved him toward the bottom of a staircase just before the wave crashed in on them. Roland got pinned to the window. The mass pounded and clawed at the glass. Others tried to duck and hide inside cells. Ninety-five souls scrambling for any crevice of escape and finding none.

An alarm rang out from loud speakers and amber ceiling lights turned red. “Lock down. Lock down.”

Some even attacked Butterball, striking at his knees and ankles, even pulling out shanks and any other kind of improvised weapon. They were like tiny dogs nipping at his heels, and Butterball only looked down at them with glee in his bulging eyes and saliva slicking his broad, toothy grin. He chuckled.

The scar that striped his massive torso began to separate again. His mouth, chest, and stomach reopened. His fleshy pink tongue whipped out from his mouth like a Chinese parade dragon. He snatched one man, ate him, then snatched another. One by one he plucked them from their chaotic fright and drew them into the blackness inside his chest. A sixth, a seventh. And then satisfied, he seemed, for the moment, his torso closed and his scar resealed. He stood for a moment, like before, barreled and covered in lumpy protrusions, and then somehow, whether by accident or intent, his eyes sifted through the crowd and found Jo Jo’s.

Butterball smiled again, even chuckled, and he began to swell again. The mass of his entire body increased, his arms and legs lengthened, and this time his eyes were level with the second floor.

“What the fuck is happening?” Jo Jo cried.

Andy only shook his head.

The crowd continued to bang on the glass, begging for someone to open the door.

Butterball raised his hands to his sides, turning his palms upward, as if to embrace and relish the chaos. His tongue lashings continued, and he grew even more.

The voice on the speakers called for a lockdown again. “For your safety, return to your cells.”

Jo Jo pointed. “Go. It’s our only chance.” He grabbed Andy by his shirt and fought through the crowd, pushing and elbowing his way through it. Some huddled in corners, others cowered on the floor. Jo Jo reached a cell and tried to step inside it, but a crowd had already filled it up. A flurry of arms and hands pushed him away.

Butterball’s giant tongue latched onto a man curled up on the floor right next to Jo Jo and picked him off. “Shit!” Jo Jo recoiled.

He pushed forward anyway. Over his shoulder, a group of men had encircled the giant man, shanks at the ready. They ducked and dodged his tongue as best they could; others slashed and stabbed at his ankles and shins. Butterball swung his massive hand toward the floor, swatting some of them away. Despite their efforts, Jo Jo could see no visible cuts, no blood on the giant man.

He reached a second cell and tried to turn the corner when Andy lost his footing. He fell and Jo Jo’s grip released. Jo Jo turned to go back for him, but someone grabbed his collar and yanked him into the cell. “Get in here, man,” said a voice behind him.

“Andy.”

The automated lockdown mechanisms engaged on the cell’s door, and they slid shut. Andy’s face pressed against the glass from the other side. “Fuck! Fuck!” Jo Jo pounded on the door. “ANDY.”

The alarm quieted, and the red lights returned to amber. Andy backed away from the door, disbelief draining the courage from his eyes, and he stared at Jo Jo. His friend continued to shout for him from inside, but the screams of the crowd blotted out everything. Someone bumped him from behind. “We’re all gonna die. We’re all gonna die.”

Andy shook his head. His heart thundered in his chest, and he felt his knees turn to jelly. He braced himself against the wall.

An inmate with blood smeared across his mouth tumbled into the wall beside Andy, and that giant tongue snatched him away. He didn’t even have time to scream.

Andy froze. His throat locked up, and he wanted to cry out. He shut his eyes and bit down against it. There had to be a way out, he thought.

He scaled the row of cells to his left, and then to his right. All were closed. He looked up to the second level above him. He already knew those were locked, too.

He turned and looked at Butterball. By now his head was bumping against D Block’s 30-foot ceiling. The girth of his massive arms and the folds of his giant belly filled the floor space like a baby taking over a miniature playhouse. He was now waving his tongue through the crowd instead of whipping it, sticking multiple men at one time and sucking them into his gut. The action reminded Andy of an anteater at feeding time.

At the cell block’s main entrance, the heavy metal doors clanked open. The crowd that had been packed against it now broke through and plunged out of the common area.

“No… Nooo,” said Butterball. He reeled in his massive tongue and closed his torso. The metal doors clanged shut. A few men who didn’t make it out in time banged on the glass, stopped when they looked up to see Butterball looming over them, and ran to the back of the common area. Andy didn’t make a move.

The expression on Butterball’s face had changed from gleeful savagery to shocked distress. He waddled to the broad reinforced glass and began to first press on it, then bang on it. “No, no,” he shook his head. He stepped back a few, then turned and looked at the rows of doors, both second and first level. Wide-eyed faces pressed against glass from the other side stared back at him.

Butterball rubbed the sides of his head and balled his hands into fists. “Noooo,” He stomped his feet. He banged on the glass again, even threw his body against it. It didn’t budge. “More… I need more,” he bellowed. “Open them.” He clawed at cell doors on the second floor, trying to pry them from the wall. “Open the doors.” He hammered the walls again, kicking and moaning, growling and bellowing.

Something in Andy’s gut pinged him, like he spotted what he was looking for: a way out. Swallowing his terror, Andy stepped out from the shadows. He waved his arms in the air. “Hey, hey, yo. What’s your problem, big man?”

Butterball ceased his tantrum long enough to eye Andy and decide whether or not to devour him.

Andy held his hands in the air and took another step forward. “You look like you’re in a jam, that’s all.”

Butterball heaved an angry breath and began to separate the scar again.

“You can eat me,” Andy said. “But something tells me you’re in a bind. A bad one.”

Butterball paused, instead closing the opening in his chest.

“Whatever it is,” Andy continued. “I can help you.”

The giant smirked. “You are brave, but you cannot help me.”

“Why not? I’m sure we can figure it out, can’t we?”

He turned his eyes away from Andy. Outside the cell block, on the other side of the glass, a team of deputies had begun to assemble.

“This much I got figured out: the more you eat, the more you grow, that’s pretty obvious.” He took another step toward the giant. “More what… Meat? You need more bodies?”

Butterball sat on one of the steel tables, and it collapsed under his weight. He let out a long breath. “I must leave.”

“Leave? Leave why?”

Butterball looked through the skylight above him, and then at Andy. “If I stay, I die.”

Andy eyed the deputies on the other side. He circled around to face Butterball. “We ain’t got a lot of time, get me? So listen up. I’ll help you. I’ll help you get more.”

“How?”

Andy grinned. “Leave that to me. But I want out. Understand? You get me out, I get you out, got it?”

Behind him, the locking mechanisms on the door clicked and clanged into action. Andy darted for cover in a near corner. The door opened, a troop of deputies in riot gear marched inside, and they formed a firing line. One of them gave the command to aim and fire. A shower of bullets pelted Butterball.

They drilled his center mass and his head. Butterball raised an open hand to shield his face. Andy at first curled up in the corner, but then he spotted an opening. He slipped behind the firing line and through the open door. Not a single shot pierced Butterball’s rhino-like skin. The spent bullets plinked to the floor, covering it like copper gravel.

The shooting sputtered to a stop; they had to reload.

Butterball curled his hands into fists. “My turn.” He pounded the floor like an alpha-male silverback reclaiming his ground, and he lashed out with his tongue. One, then two, now three and four he swallowed. He reached down and grabbed a few by hand, dropping them into his open mouth like snacks.

Below, the deputies regrouped, locked their weapons into firing position, and opened fire again. Butterball hung his head back and laughed, a shoulder-shaking, belly-rocking laugh. The rounds pricked his skin like tiny, dull needles, but that was all. Then he whipped his tongue across the line, knocking it down and drawing more into his dark, mouthy pit.

A few of them got back to their feet and tried to reform the line, but others were retreating. His attention so focused on the deputies, Butterball didn’t notice for a second that the doors to the cells had reopened. Their only line of protection removed, the inmates cried out in terror. Below, the shooting had stopped, and the remaining deputies retreated.

“Yes,” said Butterball, and cell by cell, he went back to work on the inmates.

On the first floor, the fleeing prisoners pushed Jo Jo out into the open. He nearly fell in front of the rising stampede, but he regained his footing and flattened himself against a wall, letting it pass by him. Streams of inmates, from upstairs and out of dark corners and even through Butterball’s legs, rushed for the main door.

Jo Jo shook his head. “No, no. We should stay back.” In the chaos, he could barely hear himself. Then he spotted his friend beckoning him to follow. It was Roland.

“We gots to go,” said Roland. “C’mon, man. Let’s go.”

Jo Jo shook his head at first, then rethought it when Butterball’s tongue dove into one of the first floor cells. Staying close to the wall, he grabbed Roland by the shirt and let him lead the way.

The lockdown alarm blared again.

“Jesus!” shouted Jo Jo. “Move move move.” He lowered his head and pushed Roland from behind. The main door had begun to slide closed.

Against the crowd, Andy ran back into the cell block.

Jo Jo grabbed him by the arm. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here.”

Andy yanked loose and ran up to Butterball. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “We ain’t got a lot of time. Eat up, man. Eat up.”

Butterball nodded and whipped his tongue through the crowd.

Jo Jo grabbed Andy by the collar. “What the fuck are you doing? You’re feeding that thing?”

Andy looked at Jo Jo squarely in his eyes. “I’m gettin’ us out of here.”

The main cell block door shut, and the cell doors once again slid into their locked positions.

Butterball picked the floor clean, and he grew. Swelled to the point where he could no longer stand but only sit. His backside came to rest on the stairs, which bent and twisted under his weight. A second troop of deputies lined up on the other side of the glass, but they did not open the doors. Butterball looked down at Andy and grinned at him.

Andy shot him a pair of thumbs-up, then he playfully elbowed Jo Jo. “It’s happening.”

The giant man balled his right hand into a fist and then drove it into the wall like a battering ram. The jail shook. He pounded the wall again, and this time the concrete cracked. A large, round indentation, like the way a rock would smash a windshield, lied in the wake of his strike. From inside the locked cells, the muffled sounds of screams and cheers could be heard.

Butterball chuckled.

He struck the wall again and again until it looked like nothing more than brittle eggshell. He plucked out chunks of concrete and other debris, creating a pile of rubble at his feet, until the steel frame of the wall’s interior lay exposed. Butterball pressed on the rust-colored beams, softly at first, and then he shoved them. They bent under the pressure as if they were made of hard rubber. The exterior wall cracked.

The inmates who were left whooped and cheered.

Jo Jo shook his head and laughed.

“Let ’em out!” shouted Andy.

Butterball shrugged.

Andy chuckled, then smiled at the giant. “They can’t catch us all, can they?”

The big man smirked. He turned — stronger now — reached over to the cells on the second floor, and peeled off the doors one by one like they were infected, loose toenails. He did the same to the first floor.

The inmates at first recoiled and fought to stay inside.

Jo Jo sprinted from cell to cell. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go. We’re getting out of here.”

Slowly they emerged, guarded, apprehensive, like resurrected bodies from tombs, until the electricity of what was happening leapt from one to the other, exciting them, and urging them to dash for the new exit.

Butterball pressed and pulled on the beams again until they looked like dislodged rib bones. Then he went to work on the wall. The prisoners formed a half circle around him, pumping their fists in the air and chanting in rhythm with his strikes. The main cell block door opened. Deputies streamed inside, pouring firepower onto Butterball, but he made quick work of them.

With fists like battering rams he pounded the wall until he punched through the outer brick. Early dawn sunlight and fresh air poured in. Cheers erupted. He repositioned himself so that he could kick out the brick, too. He kicked and he punched until the main support structures for the wall gave way — about three-fourths of it — and it collapsed.

The inmates roared with glee.

Butterball edged himself off the floor and hopped onto the grass below. Cool morning dew tickled his feet, and crisp air blew away the stench of the jail. He looked up at the jail and saw that gaping holes in the wall had opened three floors up. From his own floor, prisoners streamed out of the building like stray dogs fleeing a shelter. Butterball took a deep breath, nodded, and flexed the muscles in his fat shoulders and arms.

Andy found his way to his giant ally and pressed on his leg.

Butterball looked down at him.

“We still have a deal, right?”

Butterball nodded, but his expression was less than enthusiastic.

A loud popping sound followed by a streaming hiss bounced off of Butterball’s arm. A tear gas container thudded to the ground near his foot. Andy and Butterball looked up to see a small squad of deputies positioned near the corner of the building. They popped off another, and a third one. Andy covered his face with his arms.

Then a unit screeched to a halt near the squad. Then another. Five more surrounded the giant. Two and then four squads took positions behind the vehicles. They opened fire on him.

Butterball didn’t even shield his face this time. Nor did he stand back and take it either. He let the blackness inside him burst through his open chest and his giant tongue lash out across them. He flicked them into his mouth and stomped on cars, crushing them.

Prisoners choked and gagged on the gas. Most lost sight of where they were going and ended up on the ground with knees in their backs.

Andy tried to keep up with the big man. “Butterball, w-wait.”

The tattoo on Butterball’s back began to change. The wings on either side of the skull began to spread, stretching out from his spine to across his shoulders. The ink began to trace its way down the length of his back, pushing past his hips. Butterball knelt on one knee and curled his upper body toward the ground, arching his back.

He flexed his shoulder blades, up and down, rise and fall, until the bones formed a type of triangular peak under the skin, pointing up at the sky. Then they began to push apart, opening, it seemed, like two halves of a shell, as if to reveal something new, something growing. The spiny bones stretched against the skin, reaching up and outward. Like pointy fingers, the bones spread, past his elbows, below the back of his knees, and past the top of his bald head. The skin grew thin and taut between the fingers, spreading wide and overarching, casting a dark shadow over the ground.

The squad pumped another two canisters of tear gas underneath him, but he didn’t budge. Instead, Butterball curled and uncurled the pair of spiny appendages on his back, and then he flapped them, two great and powerful beats that blew the white gas out from under him. He stood up, flexing his wings, and opened them large and wide, giving them room to grow even more massively, silhouetting his form against the morning sun and giving pause to the deputies caught in his shadow.

Hiding behind a crushed police car, Andy bit back the urge to cry out in terrified excitement. Maybe this was his escape: a quick dash around the other side of the building, under the cover of hazy gas, coughing and gagging and running blindly until he found clean air without running into a badge. Instead, he mustered up his nerves.

“Hey–hey, Butterball!”

The big man didn’t answer at first.

Andy made his way up a little closer to the giant who now had wings like something prehistoric and reptilian. “Hey Butterball! We had a deal.”

The hulk turned his face to look over his shoulder.

“Did you hear me? I said we had a deal.”

As if to acknowledge him, Butterball retracted his wings enough so that he could wave Andy to come closer.

Andy cowered for a second. “What’s gonna happen?”

“Come and see.”

He regained his footing and then stopped and looked over his shoulder at the jail. Jo Jo was crawling on the grass on all fours, choking back tear gas. “What about my friend?”

Butterball smirked and shook his head. “One deal, one man.”

Andy chopped the air with his hand. “No, it was supposed to be the two of us.”

Butterball shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned his back to Andy, hunched down onto one knee, and stretched his wings outward, ready to launch.

Andy looked over his shoulder toward the jail. In the chaos and the white gas, he could no longer find Jo Jo. In front of him and on his left flank, more deputies had assembled.

“Wait.”

Butterball paused, turning his head toward Andy.

Andy scurried beneath the giant’s wings and around his knees to face him. “Alright, I’ll go.”

The corner of Butterball’s mouth curled into a leering grin, and he scooped up Andy into his hand. He stood and turned to face Northwest, putting the sun on his back. He spread his wings, jumped into the gassy air, and thrashed hard and strong.

Before fright could burst out of Andy in protest, they were past the rooftops, away from the streaming bullets, and climbing into a bank of clouds.