It had only been six months since I’d last seen my cousin, but when I went to visit him that summer, my mouth dropped open in shock. He was no longer the skinny geek I had known all my life – far from it! Now he was built like a pro-bodybuilder – a muscle-bound teen with a cocky attitude.

“Dude! What happened to you?!” I asked in amazement.

He just grinned, and then flexed his bulging new biceps at me tauntingly, almost tearing his tight white t-shirt in the process. That same white t-shirt had been baggy on him the last time we had met, as had his jeans, which were now stretched skin-tight around his thick thighs.

He gave me some bullshit about having spent six months pumping at the gym, but I couldn’t believe anyone could get that ripped that quickly. I had been looking forward to spending time with him, nerding out like we always did over the summer – watching movies, TV and playing games in his room, but he didn’t seem interested in that stuff anymore. His bedroom had become a shrine to fitness, and all he wanted to talk about was working out, and getting laid. He didn’t even seem to be quite as intelligent as he had once been, or perhaps he just wasn’t interested in thinking about intellectual matters anymore, it was hard to tell.

I couldn’t help but feel jealous of the jock he had become, and when I lay awake at night in his parents’ spare bedroom, I found myself reaching into my pyjama pants and thinking about his body. Then I hated myself for it afterwards – he was my cousin! To make matters worse, he continued to make me feel small by taking every opportunity to proudly flex his giant new muscles in front of me, and then bully me for being such a skinny nerd in front of his new jock friends.

On the last day of my visit, I was packing my bag, feeling a little sad, when he walked up to me. For once he had a sympathetic look on his face.

“Sorry if I’m not the geeky buddy you remember dude,” he said, patting me on the shoulder, “but honestly, I’m much happier now.” Then he pulled a blank white box of pills from his pocket and placed them on top of my bag. “I managed to get some more for you, but it wasn’t easy,” he continued. “Take one a day, and we’ll soon be buddies again.”

“Are these steroids or something?” I asked him.

“No way!” he laughed. “These are much better than that, and totally safe! You’ll see.”

I returned back to my hometown, and started taking the strange blue pills from the white box, one per day, just as my cousin had instructed me. I didn’t notice anything at first, so I began to think it was another one of his cruel jokes. Then after a couple of weeks, a girl at school asked me if I’d been working out. I just laughed, and walked off, shaking my head. I thought she was joking.

Later that day, I was getting some groceries for my parents at the small store down the street, and the guy behind the counter asked, “Hey, have you been hitting the gym? Those skinny arms of yours are filling out!” I nervously shook my head, and then quickly left the store.

When I got home, I took off my clothes and stood naked in front of the bedroom mirror, which I usually hated doing. I flexed my arms in a double bicep pose and actually caught the shocked look on my own face in the reflection. I had muscles! I was nowhere near as huge as my cousin, not yet anyway, but I was looking pretty ripped – like some of the guys I admired in gym class.

“Wow,” I said to my reflection, as I started to stroke my swelling cock.

Six weeks later...

I strode around the house with my shirt off, like I often did now. I loved showing off my big new muscles whenever I could. Over the last six weeks, I had transformed from total nerd to total jock, and now I was the most muscular, and most popular boy in my school. My parents and teachers told me that I had become arrogant, but I didn’t care. After a lifetime of being insecure, I loved the way it felt to be so confident and sure of myself. They were just jealous anyway.

I didn’t want the ride to end, but the latest box of pills that my cuz had posted me were starting to run out, so I messaged him, asking him to send more.

“No can do bro,” he replied, “I’m all out.”

“No way!” I responded. “I need to keep growing! You’ve got to get more!”

He didn’t respond. My phone kept buzzing, and I kept checking, but it always just the usual messages from the guys on the football team, or some of the many girls who wouldn’t leave me alone these days. Eventually, I gave up and went to bed.

I was in the middle of a dream about weightlifting when my phone buzzed and woke me up. I checked my alarm clock, 4:23am! Bleary eyed, I picked up my phone and a saw that it was a message from my cuz.

“I’ve made a deal. Can you get to the parking lot behind the station at Holford for 8pm tomorrow? I’ll meet you there.”

Holford was in-between the two towns where we lived. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just post the pills again, but I was desperate for more. So, I caught the train the next evening and met him in the shadows of the parking lot behind Holford station.

It had been a few weeks since I had last seen him, and I couldn’t help but notice how much bigger he was, even from the last time. He looked older now too, almost an adult. He seemed equally as impressed with my progress.

“You are looking BUFF bro!” he said as we fist-bumped.

“Yeah, check out my guns!” I said, flexing my biceps for him. “I’m the biggest jock in school now.”

“Just as you were always meant to be,” he smiled. “Ready to grow some more?”

“Hell yeah!” I replied, salivating at the thought.

He pulled a box of pills from his pocket and handed them to me.

“These were the hardest yet to get,” he said. “I got two boxes, one for you and one for me, and that’s it dude. I don’t think I can get any more. That’s why I didn’t want to risk posting them.”

I opened the box, and looked at the pills inside.

“These ones are red,” I said, “the old ones were blue.”

“They might be a little different,” said my cuz, “I just couldn’t get the blue ones, but my supplier said they will work just as well.”

“Maybe they’ll work even better!” I laughed with optimism.

Two weeks later, I stood and admired myself in the bedroom mirror. I loved the hot muscle boy I saw in the reflection – I was literally in love with myself. The only trouble was that I was still the same hot muscle boy I had been two weeks earlier.

I messaged my cuz. “Hey dude,” I wrote. “The pills aren’t working.”

“Neither are mine,” he replied. “But my supplier said there might be a delayed reaction. Be patient.”

I sighed. He must have been sold duds.

Then, about another week later, something strange started to happen. I was in the middle of a science class, which I hated now, and one of my fellow jock team mates turned to me and laughed. “Hey bruv, I think you need to lay off the spray tan. You look like you’ve been baked!”

“Huh?” I said.

I looked down at my hands and noticed that my skin appeared a lot darker. “What the...”

I ran out of the class and into the men’s bathroom. I stared at my own reflection and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My skin had become a lot darker, but it wasn’t just that, my face was changing too. I looked a bit older, but also...

At the same time, I felt like my clothes were getting tighter and tighter as my already large muscles seemed to be rapidly swelling out into even greater proportions.

I flexed my growing biceps for the mirror, and felt a weird mix of fear and euphoria. I wasn’t sure what was happening to me, but I knew I wanted it.

I reached into my pocket to message my cuz, but my phone was already ringing as he called me.

“Dude,” I said as I answered the phone, “are you?...Yeah! Yeah, me too! I’ve got to get out of here, no-one’s going to recognise me soon. Meet you in Holford?”

I ran to the station and caught the train to Holford, but my body was still rapidly transforming and growing during the journey. Eventually my pants became so tight that they split before I even got to Holford station. On arrival, I ran to the nearest clothing store, grabbed some baggy clothes, and hid myself in the enclosed fitting room.

I decided to stay there until the transformation at least slowed down a bit. Half an hour later, I was staring at my new reflection in the fitting room mirror with a new masculine and serious expression etched on to my transformed face. There was no denying it now, I had become a black dude – a fully adult, muscle-bound, black dude.

I felt compelled to take a selfie, showcasing my new demeanour.

Then, with silent confidence, I slowly rubbed my hands over the bulbous curves of my new and incredible muscular physique. Finally, I pulled on the clothes I had taken in with me, and emerged from the fitting room, no longer an arrogant schoolboy, but a proud and confident man.

After confusing the cashier by paying for the clothes I was wearing, I headed for the parking lot. There, I spotted another muscular black man, standing in the place where my cousin and I had met those few weeks earlier. Somehow, I knew it was him.

I walked up to him, and we just stood silently and admired each other’s new bodies for a moment.

“So bro, the pills turned us into black dudes,” I said eventually.

“You’re fucking right they did,” said my cousin, and then he flexed his huge black bicep and kissed it proudly.

“Fuck yeah,” I said, and then did the same.

There was no way we could go back to our old lives, so we had to start new ones in Holford. It turned out that the guy who had been supplying my cuz knew someone who ran a fitness shop in town, and gave us jobs.

Sometimes we would see our old faces on TV, or on the back of milk cartons. Our disappearance was an unsolved mystery. However, there was no going back now, who would believe us? Then, as we forged our new lives as confident black men, we became fitness gurus, and social media icons, and our old lives as nerdy white teens slowly faded away until we could barely remember who we used to be at all.