I died on a Tuesday.
Nothing dramatic—just a drunk driver, a wet road, and the sudden, stupid realization that forty-three years had slipped through my fingers like smoke. Then came the dark. Then came the light. Then came the impossible: waking up in my eighteen-year-old body again, heart hammering against ribs that hadn't felt this tight in two decades.
The first week was vertigo. Same bedroom, same creaking house, same faint smell of coffee and lavender that always meant Mom was already awake downstairs. My new-old body was lean, strong, humming with a hunger I remembered but no longer knew how to feed properly. And then there was the cock.
God, the cock.
In my first life it had been average—respectable, but nothing that turned heads. This time something had rewound wrong, or maybe too right. It hung halfway to my knee even soft, thick as my wrist, heavy enough that I had to adjust it every time I sat down. When it got hard (and it got hard constantly now, like it was making up for lost time), it curved up against my stomach, angry and veined and ridiculous. I spent the first three days terrified someone would notice. I wore baggy sweatpants. I showered at odd hours. I jerked off twice a day just to keep it calm, coming so hard my vision blacked out, thick ropes splattering the tiles like cream.
I thought I could hide it.
I was wrong.
It happened on a Saturday morning in early September. Sunlight slanted through the bathroom window, gold and lazy. I'd stayed up late the night before—some mindless first-person shooter, the kind of thing eighteen-year-old me still loved—and slept like the dead. When I woke up, the house was quiet. Mom's car was gone; she'd mentioned grocery shopping. I stumbled to the bathroom naked, scratching my stomach, cock swinging heavy between my thighs, already half-charged from some dream I couldn't remember.
The shower felt like heaven. Hot water pounded the back of my neck. Steam curled around me. I soaped slowly, letting my hands travel everywhere, relearning this body. When my palm closed around my shaft it thickened instantly, rising like it had a mind of its own. I leaned one forearm against the tile and stroked once, twice, just enough to take the edge off. The head flushed dark, slick with water and precome. I was breathing through my mouth, eyes half-closed, when I heard the soft click of the bathroom door.
I froze.
The shower curtain was thin white plastic, the kind that clings when it's wet. Through the haze of steam I saw a silhouette—small feet, bare legs, the hem of a pale blue robe. Mom's robe. She'd come home early.
"Daniel?" Her voice was soft, apologetic. "I'm just grabbing towels. I thought you were still asleep."
I should have said something. Should have yanked the curtain closed, turned away, anything. Instead I stood there like a statue, cock throbbing in my loose grip, water drumming on my shoulders. The curtain shifted as she reached for the stack of towels on the shelf above the toilet. One step closer. Two.
The plastic parted just enough.
I saw her face first—wide green eyes, freckles across the bridge of her nose, the same face that had kissed my scraped knees when I was six. Her gaze dropped. Slowly. Inevitably.
Time did something strange then. It stretched, thinned, almost snapped.
Mom's lips parted. No sound came out. Her pupils blew wide, black swallowing green. I watched her throat move as she swallowed, watched a flush crawl up her chest and bloom across her cheeks. The robe was tied loosely; the V gaped, showing the soft inner curves of her breasts, the faint blue trace of a vein. She wasn't wearing anything underneath.
I couldn't move. My hand was still wrapped around the base of my cock, holding it like an offering. Water streamed off the head in a steady rivulet. It looked obscene. Monstrous. The kind of thing no son should ever show his mother.
Her gaze traced every inch. From the swollen crown down the ridged underside, over veins thick as her little finger, to where my fist couldn't quite close around the girth. I saw her knees press together under the robe. I saw her nipples stiffen against the thin fabric, dark pink shadows.
"Jesus," she whispered. The word trembled out of her like a prayer.
I finally found my voice. "Mom—"
She flinched as if I'd struck her. The towels slipped from her arms and scattered across the tile like white birds. Her hand flew to her mouth, but not before I heard the softest sound—a whimper, or maybe a moan. She backed up one step. Two. The robe shifted again; I caught a flash of trimmed auburn curls between her thighs before she clamped them shut.
"I'm sorry," she said, voice cracking. "I didn't—I thought—"
She turned and fled. The door slammed. Her bare feet pattered down the hallway, quick and panicked.
I stood under the cooling water for a long time after that, cock still achingly hard, heart trying to punch through my ribs. The steam started to clear. I looked down at myself—at the thing that had just shattered twenty years of normal in one heartbeat—and felt something dark and hungry uncurl in my gut.
Eventually I shut the water off. The silence in the house felt different now. Thicker. Like the air itself was holding its breath.
I toweled dry slowly, every stroke of the fabric over my cock a reminder. When I stepped into the hallway, the bathroom door hung open behind me like an accusation. Mom's bedroom door was closed. I could hear nothing from the other side. No crying. No movement. Just that waiting hush.
I went to my room and dressed in the baggiest jeans I owned. Even then, the outline was obscene if you knew where to look. I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my hands. They were shaking.
Downstairs, the front door opened and closed again—Mom coming back from wherever she'd run to. I heard grocery bags rustling, the fridge opening, the soft clink of jars. Normal sounds. Domestic sounds. Like nothing had happened.
But everything had.
I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the light to shift across my carpet. Long enough for my pulse to slow and that dark thing inside me to settle into something patient. Predatory, almost.
When I finally went downstairs, she was at the kitchen sink, sleeves rolled up, washing vegetables with mechanical precision. Her back was to me. The robe had been replaced by jeans and an old gray T-shirt, hair twisted up in a messy knot. She didn't turn when my footsteps crossed the tile.
I stopped in the doorway. The air smelled like lemons and wet earth from the carrots she was scrubbing. Her shoulders were rigid.
"Mom," I said quietly.
The scrubbing stopped. Water dripped into the sink.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I should've locked the door."
She didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice was low, almost steady. "It's my fault. I should've knocked."
Silence again. I could hear the clock ticking above the stove. I could hear her breathing—quick, shallow, like she'd been running.
"I made lasagna," she said suddenly, still not turning around. "It'll be ready in an hour."
"Okay."
I hesitated, then crossed the kitchen and opened the fridge for a bottle of water. She flinched when I moved behind her, the smallest jerk of her spine. I twisted the cap off slowly.
Close enough now to smell her shampoo. Close enough to see the fine hairs at the nape of her neck standing up.
I took a long drink. When I lowered the bottle, my knuckles brushed the small of her back by accident. She went very still.
Another beat. Two.
Then she spoke, so softly I almost missed it.
"It's… big."
The water bottle froze halfway to my mouth. My cock surged against my zipper, instant and painful.
She kept her eyes on the sink, knuckles white around a carrot. "I didn't mean to say that out loud."
I couldn't answer. My throat was dry despite the water.
She let out a shaky laugh that wasn't a laugh at all. "I think I need to lie down."
She turned off the tap, dried her hands on a towel, and walked past me without looking up. Her arm brushed mine. I felt the tremor in her the way you feel thunder in your bones.
I listened to her climb the stairs. Listened to her bedroom door close again, softer this time.
The lasagna burned that night. We ate it anyway, sitting across from each other in near silence, the only sound forks scraping plates and the low hum of the refrigerator. She kept her gaze on her food. I kept mine on the pulse beating too fast in her throat.
When she stood to clear the dishes, her hand brushed my shoulder—accidental, maybe. Maybe not.
Neither of us slept that night.
I know because I heard her pacing. Heard the creak of her bedsprings. Heard the soft, stifled sounds that might have been crying.
Or something else entirely.