Big Gator: A BBW shape shifter paranormal romance Read online

  Up until now, Brandy had figured out she was the only shifter in the bunch at Animal Sphere. That would change tonight when the Cliburn brothers arrived.

  The Cliburn brothers were no good and plenty worse than Ray. Brandy had no doubt they were inbred, nasty as they were on all levels.Okay, fine,she would admit,all shifters intermarry among the seven families, but still, most of us try to keep it no closer than third cousins.

  Jesse, Bobby and Hugh Cliburn were crystal meth dealers. They had supplied Brandy's little brother Charlie, who was hell-bent on his own path of destruction and overdosed on crystal meth at the age of 19.

  She didn't recognize them at first, but they sure as hell recognized her.

  These were three shifters who were too crazy for payback to be afraid of her size. Hugh had learned the hard way what Brandy could do when she was pissed enough. After Charlie's funeral, Brandy ran into Hugh at a bar and spat in his face. Her friends held her off him, and he let the incident pass.

  But Brandy wasn't about to let this go. She forced Marianne to help her stalk him for weeks after that, figuring out his every move, and then she planned to get the bastard at his weakest moment. Marianne was scared of this plan, but she could not blame Brandy for her wrath over her brother's death. Plus, Brandy had a reputation for delivering 'swamp justice'. This wouldn't be the first time she'd be doing the state of Florida a favor by getting rid of some bad guys.

  So Marianne eventually also agreed to drive Brandy to one of Hugh's known delivery points, based on a tip that he was making a drop that night.

  On that night Hugh had shifted, then swallowed small bags of his stash. Brandy and Marianne had figured out by then that his covertmodus operandi was to make large deliveries by swimming to his connection in gator form, then expelling his narcotics stash out through his other end.

  Brandy's plan was to ambush Hugh Cliburn –mid-shit– on land while he was still in gator form with a belly full of drugs not yet fully expelled. She would kill him immediately, which meant that Hugh's body would shift back into human form. Brandy would leave him there, dead and naked in his own excrement filled with little baggies of crystal meth, for the cops to discover.

  But things didn't go quite so well as planned.

  Brandy did, indeed, ambush Hugh. She clamped her jaws shut on his left human arm and yanked him into a death roll, which is a technique that all alligators use in battle. Gators will lock on to someone or something with their massive jaws, then twist their whole body in a repetitive full body roll. The goal is to snap the opponent's bones, ligaments, or whatever else, using torque.

  Hugh was wily, though. Instead of fighting her, he rolled WITH her. As long as he could keep rolling with her, he might lose some real blood, but his arm probably would not break. She managed to dislocate his shoulder, but that was it. Brandy must have rolled about ten times when she finally let go, because this was going nowhere. Hugh immediately jumped up and bolted, running naked in a zig-zag pattern away from her. Alligators can run fast, but only in short bursts. And they cannot zig nor zag. The reality is, very few gators like to chase anyone on land anyway. He likely could have escaped Brandy even if he ran in a straight line.

  Brandy – pissed beyond pissed that she had failed – shifted back into human form, stood up and walked naked back to Marianne's SUV.

  Brandy was not remotely shy about walking around naked in the dark. She walked around naked as often as she could get away with even in the daylight. She had long since gotten used to nudity between shifts.

  Even though her figure was not going to be featured in gentlemen's magazines anytime soon, she accepted her girth as being as nature intended. Brandy's two best features were her long, straight glossy dark brown hair and mocha skin that never burned in the hot Florida sun, even though her skin would be dry as leather if she didn't take care of it the way she did. The other shifters thought she looked amazing. Only regular human men thought she looked like trailer trash.

  Her people – the Guyettes– were a mix of Scotch-Irish, Creole and Seminole, and her family was spread out across the Gulf Coast all the way from Florida to Louisiana. In every generation, more than one women somewhere was foolish enough or unlucky enough to get herself knocked up while in her shifter state, thus hatching between 20-50 baby shifters at a time. For this reason alone, Brandy had no less than 775 cousins.

  At 27, Brandy had a high school diploma but never finished an intended degree at community college, even though she had straight A's and showed promise in math and the sciences. Money was too tight.

  Her dream ever since she was a kid was to be the first person in the Guyette family to become a herpetologist. In her mind, who better than a Guyette to become a scientist specializing in the study of amphibians and reptiles? But everyone in Brandy's family thought that wanting to be a “herpetologist” meant she wanted to study herpes, so she just stopped bothering to talk to anybody about it.

  No one in her immediate family was ever that ambitious, and she never really had any support. While the gator shifters as a whole respected her size, they simply had no use for a woman with brains. Possibly this was part of what pissed off Madame LaBelle back in 1884.

  Brandy never had the chance nor the money to finish her degree, never mind apply to a four-year college. So she was stuck doing the most boring job ever that – even though it paid higher than minimum wage – did not help get her out of credit card debt. Then after her brother died, she lost direction emotionally. She had hoped that exacting revenge would clear her head and satisfy her heart, and make her brother proud in spirit, wherever he was.

  Putting her clothes back on, Brandy got into the SUV, and Marianne took her home.

  Chapter 4

  Hugh Cliburn was pretty sure which gator had gone after him that ill-fated night. He had warned Brandy that he would give her a respectable and wide berth and chock her attack up to a combination of PMS and depression. He was lying. He really planned get her back good, if the opportunity arose.

  Tonight at Animal Sphere, it looked like he might get his chance with his brothers to back him up. On the run from the DEA, they had decided to shift and hide out in a lake in a swanky planned residential community. This did not go over well with the locals. The Cliburns were trapped and sent to Animal Sphere. Jesse had swallowed a collective total of a kilo of marijuana, and it was still in his belly right now.

  There was no mistaking Brandy – Hugh would know that woman anywhere. She was lounging just across the way with a new group of inmates. Hugh decided to lie in wait for a bit, and he whispered to his brothers that they had just stumbled on a fun time to be had settling a score.

  Meanwhile, Brandy had felt bad for a couple of the new gators (not shifters) and tried to explain to them where they were and why they were brought here. They were too dumb to understand. If gators could sigh, she would. Brandy didn't notice when the Cliburn brothers slithered into the water and swam in her direction. She had become distracted when she saw Jake McEvans on the bridge overlooking all of them.

  Her heart fluttered. McEvans saw her, too. What was he doing here off-hours at night?

  “Evenin', Shirley!” he called out, summoning Brandy by her stage name.

  Brandy ditched the dumb gators and swam over to the bridge. As she came closer, she saw a woman appear next to McEvans. The woman slipped her hand into his and gave it a squeeze. Suddenly, Brandy's heart began to sink. It looked like Jake McEvans had a girlfriend.

  Now she was directly in front of the couple.

  “Did she really just do that?” the girlfriend asked. “She really came when you called?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “But she's a reptile,” the girlfriend said. “I thought reptiles didn't have the capacity for connection or emotion, or anything like that. Or that they're just not that smart.”

  They'e not, honey, believe me, but shifters are, Brandy thought.

  “I know, Rachel,” McEvans said. “They're not supposed to be. But here she
is. She's an amazing gator.”

  Rachel was dark-haired and beautiful and svelte. If Brandy had the capacity for crocodile tears right now, her eyes would start welling up.

  Suddenly, behind her she heard a familiar voice, in surround-sound infrasound.

  “Well hello there, Brandy Guyette!”

  Brandy circled and faced the three Cliburn brothers, with Hugh leading the way.

  Crap!

  “What the hell are you fools doing here?” Brandy asked.

  “We could ask the same of you,” Hugh said.

  “Wait!” said Jesse Cliburn. “You must be that big ole' record-breaking she-gator Jake McEvans trapped in Miami!”

  “Yes, that was me,” Brandy admitted, a deadpan tone in her voice.

  Behind her on the bridge, McEvans and his girlfriend Rachel observed the interaction. From above, what they saw was one huge gator facing three smaller gators, who then floated in an arc so that now the three were surrounding Brandy a.k.a ‘Shirley’.

  “Jake, what are they doing?” Rachel asked.

  McEvans didn't have a good feeling about this.

  “I don't know,” he said. “Gators don't usually behave like that.”

  All three smaller gators obviously were starting to be aggressive. They looked like they were hunting in a pack, which made no sense at all. And they had come up on 'Shirley's' back, when she had not visibly provoked them in any way.

  “I'm getting my gun,” McEvans said.

  He disappeared momentarily from the bridge.

  Down in the pit, the tension continued to build.

  “You done roughed up our brother real good,” Bob said with a snarl. He had several teeth missing and a nasty scar running from his left eyeball to the hinge of his jaw. He was no better looking in human form.

  Brandy suddenly dove underwater. She shot beneath the Cliburn brothers and headed for the shallow end of the water. If she was going to have to fight them, she wanted to be in the water, but she didn't want to be in too deep to start.

  Hugh went after her. In a split second they were locked and twisted together. She had his body in her jaws, whilehis jaws tried to sink in on her neck. Hugh's tail whipped back and forth while Brandy tried to stay calm. One-on-one there would be no contest, but his brothers were not far behind.

  Jesse went for a cheap shot. He snapped her rear left leg, which hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. That was just to surprise her. Then he tried to head-butt her torso. Bob came around the other side and went for her neck as well, but couldn't open his jaws wide enough to get a good lock on it.

  Gators don't just have thick scales. Underneath they have something calledscutes, which are bony plates. When scales get rubbed or knocked off, as they often do – especially in situations such as this – the scutes also are shields, so it's like having two layers of armor. That means a big gator like Brandy can take a lot before really getting into real trouble.

  Thus, Brandy believed she could survive this whole fiasco, but now she was afraid that their real goal was to make her a cripple – to take off a leg. This they could probably succeed at. Losing a limb would affect her in human form as well, and she couldn't afford the doctor's bills never mind the fact that she had no disability insurance. She needed her legs!

  Suddenly, a rifle blast rang out.

  On the bridge, McEvans stood with a Marlin Model 60, a semi-automatic rifle whose bullets would have no trouble penetrating scales OR scutes. Rachel backed off to give him room, and she was scared shitless of the cold rage that she saw in her boyfriend's eyes at this exact moment.

  McEvans blasted away at the Cliburn brothers. He was aiming for a kill shot, even though he was likely to get fined by the state of Florida for hunting out of season. But they weren't going down easy. The Cliburns were smart enough to make sure he couldn’t get a lock on the small area on the back of their heads that effectively would allow a bullet to penetrate their brain and kill them dead instantly.

  With gunfire in the air, suddenly Brandy realized all four of them now had a whole new problem.

  “Stop fighting!”she yelled at them.“Cut the shit!”

  More gunfire erupted. McEvans was a good shot, but these were stubborn gators, and he was trying not to hit 'Shirley.'

  “Boys! BOYS!! STOP IT!!”

  Everyone backed off each other for a second.

  “You have to dive below,” Brandy warned them. “Because if you keep getting shot, and you get really hurt and maybe die, you'll shift back into human form, and then this will turn into a murder investigation. The police are going to wonder how three naked rednecks ended up in a gator pit at a family theme park. Is that how you want to die? Do we really want to expose our families like this?”

  Hugh begrudgingly agreed with her. So did his brothers.

  “I'm trusting you head to the deep end, dive below and stay there for awhile,” Brandy said. “I'll take care of things.”

  “This isn't over, Brandy-girl,” Hugh hissed.

  The Cliburn brothers disappeared underwater. Shirley waddled up on a patch of sand.

  “Shirley!” McEvans called out. “Are you okay?”

  “She's not going to answer you,” Rachel said. “Even if she likes you.”

  Rachel was getting exasperated with her boyfriend lately. She had come to accept what it meant to be with him, a man obsessed with the Animal Kingdom. But for two weeks all he could do was talk about this alligator. It was 'Shirley this' and 'Shirley that' and he was bringing her presents (snacks) and, quite frankly, he was paying more attention to 'Shirley' than he was to her. Rachel started feeling like McEvans was having an affair.

  Brandy was wiped out, and she was in some real pain. Thankfully, her leg wasn't severed, but she was pretty sure her ankle was seriously messed up.

  McEvans bolted off the bridge and headed down to the pit. At the gate, he called out Brandy’s stage name again.

  Brandy headed over to him, dragging her mangled leg behind her.

  “That's it,” McEvans said. “I'm taking you home.”

  Rachel had followed him.

  “What do you mean we'rebringing her home?” she asked.

  “We can't leave her here right now. She's too vulnerable. We'll keep her in the yard. I'll get the vet to come over and patch her up.”

  Yes, please, get me the hell out of here,Brandy thought. She was no longer safe, and she realized that Animal Sphere wasn't really all that it was cracked up to be.

  After another week at McEvans house, and after she was feeling better, Brandy made her escape. She owed McEvans her life and would be forever grateful to this man. Her connection to him was enough for her to want to remain in a shifted state forever, but even that wouldn't really work. It had been fun, but she didn't want to be his pet anymore. Every time she saw him now, she wanted to stand upright like a woman and wrap her arms – not her jaws – around him.

  Brandy/Shirley also was getting bad vibes from Rachel, and she didn't like being a third wheel. The woman was clearly jealous of her.

  Plus, it was so much easier to break away from a suburban ranch than from a theme park. McEvans would eventually take her back, and then she'd have to rely on Ray for real to break her out. So Brandy shifted back into human form, snatched a housedress off a neighbor's clothing line, and hitchhiked her way to the nearest diner, where she called Marianne to come and pick her up. It wasn't easy limping along the backroads with a bad ankle, but she had made it.

  When Jake McEvans realized that 'Shirley' was missing – that she had run away from him – he was depressed for days.

  Chapter 5

  Brandy, Marianne, and Marianne's 15-year-old little sister Annabelle hung out on the back porch of Brandy's small house, dry-brushing their skin. Brandy and her brother had inherited the home after their mother died, but now Charlie was gone, too. Brandy's father had passed away years ago.

  The porch was bordered by two saw palmettos at either end. At the far end of the backyard were three banana trees, which occa
sionally would sprout one or two giant, bulbous pink flowers.

  Brandy and Marianne stood in their bathing suits, exfoliating themselves from top to bottom. This was one of the downsides of the Alligator Curse – perpetually dry skin. Shifters had to exfoliate twice per day, or risk looking leathery-skinned even in their human form. They also had to moisturize, moisturize, moisturize!

  The backyard was private, hedged in on all sides, so there was no threat of being spied upon. Brandy held a round, thick-bristled body brush. She brushed Marianne's back, and then they switched off.

  Annabelle had long skinny arms and was double-jointed. She could reach her own back, and she was all done with her own beauty regimen. She lounged in a wicker chair, sandals kicked off, reading a newspaper. She sipped on a cool glass of homemade lemonade. Brandy refused to ever use the powdered stuff. There was nothing so easy to make as homemade lemonade, and nothing so worthwhile.

  “Hey, Brandy,” Annabelle said. “There's a reward out for you!”

  “What?” Brandy said.

  Marianne was still working on her back.

  Annabelle read aloud for everyone’s benefit:

  “It says here that Jake McEvans is offering $25,000 for anybody who recovers 'Shirley' – his prized alligator, the largest female ever measured in the Southeastern United States.”

  “Let me see that,” Marianne said. She put the body brush down and grabbed the paper. Upon reading the article, she shook her head.

  “You've got a little bit of trouble here, my friend,” she said.

  “The man can't be serious,” Brandy said. She picked up a jar of coconut oil and scooped out a melting handful. She rubbed it between her hands, then slicked it down her heavy thighs. Nothing felt or smelled so good as coconut oil on one's skin.

  “Is there something you're not telling us?” Marianne asked.