by Wilson Barbers
Curtain beads rattling behind him, Dick stepped nervously into the darkened waiting room. The space was everything he expected. Candles, arcane sculptures, mysterious calligraphy - all the trappings of a neon fortune teller's digs. He knew the bogus front was a sham, though. Neldra Cambry was the genuine item.
Outside, the city traffic was calming down. Most of the nine-to-fivers were already home for dinner. He envied their normalcy, had tried for months to act as if his home life was as uneventful as theirs. But he couldn't anymore.
A light flashed into the room. A snippet of a primitive sounding rock song followed, then the sound of a door latch. Dick found himself facing a tall male dressed in dark turtleneck and black jeans.
"Richard Stevens?" the figure asked, advancing to shake Dick's hand. Lean and with a well-trimmed goatee, the man sized up Dick's well-fed frame, as he led him to a suitably roomy chair.
Dick pulled out his business card, handed it to the goateed gentleman, then took his seat. The lean figure slipped the card into his back pocket without even looking at it, leaned against a table with a zodiac cloth, and started in. "You've come because you've heard about Neldra," he said. "Because every other avenue has been fruitless. Tell me what you need."
He was prepared for this. According to his source, Neldra Cambry seldom saw her clients herself, leaving the interviews to her factotum Maxwell. "It's my wife," he explained. "She's - well, look at the pictures." He opened his wallet, flipped it to a pair of photos. The first showed a couple in wedding garb: Dick Stevens and a radiant blond in a size twenty-eight wedding gown. The second showed the selfsame blond in more casual clothes, at least a hundred pounds lighter than she'd been in the first shot.
"Lost a lot of weight, has she?" Maxwell said. "I take it this is a problem for you."
"It is when she hasn't been dieting," the businessman said. "Tempest gave that up long before we met. Yet months after our wedding two years ago, she started rapidly losing weight."
"And this is a problem," Maxwell repeated, indicating the second photo with a neatly manicured finger.
Dick took a deep breath. "Understand this," he said. "I married Tempest at her original size, was attracted to her as a fat woman. But I love her no matter what her size is. This isn't a problem." He then flipped to a second set of photos in his wallet. “This is!"
The second pair of snapshots were more recent and showed a far less robust Tempest Stevens. Wispy and frail, her face lined and hair lusterless, she had the look of someone from a textbook photo of anorexia. She smiled uncertainly at the camera.
"You've eliminated any medical reasons for this, I presume."
"And psychological ones," Dick filled in. "My wife eats a healthy regimen and has even been drinking nutritional supplements the last two months. Hired a nurse to monitor her, and she follows Tempest throughout the day. Yet every morning, my wife wakes up listless and ounces thinner than the day before."
"Anything like this happen in her family before?"
"Don't know," Dick told him. "Tempest was adopted at an early age. There are no known records on either of her parents."
Maxwell stood and considered this. "How'd you two meet?" he asked.
"Through personals," the businessman said. "About a year before we were married, we'd both written to one of those magazines devoted to - umm - larger women and their admirers."
"You're an FA," Maxwell said. "Don't apologize. In this case, your preference has probably saved your wife; it got you exhausting mainstream channels sooner and coming to Neldra in time.
"Still, from what you tell me, you two have only spent the last three years together. Not much of a shared past."
"That significant?"
"Never can tell," Maxwell answered. "Here," he said, pulling out a slip of paper from an end table. "Write down everything your wife's eaten in the last twenty-four hours."
"Now you sound like one of Tempest's doctors," Dick said, as he started to comply with the factotum's directions. When he looked up, he saw he was alone in the room. He sat in the darkness, waiting for Maxwell to return, growing more nervous by the minute.
Then Maxwell stood by his side. "Come with me," he said. "Neldra wants to meet you."
"Meet me?"
"You're right to assume that this is pretty unusual," Maxwell said, as he lead Dick into a dark velvet hall. "But Neldra hasn't met many fat admirers." He gave the FA a small smile and added, "Except for me, that is." Then he pointed to a thick curtain and stepped back. "Go on in."
Dick obeyed - and came face to face with Neldra Cambry.
He'd never forget his first sight of her. She was seated in the midst of a massive library, floor to ceiling bookshelves packed with everything from the Maleus Maleficarum to Mercedes Lackey. Sitting on a low mission oak platform festooned with pillows the size of a pony was the woman Dick had come to ask for help. She was leaning her head back, full black hair spreading down her back, listening to the music coming from a pair of cordless speakers: a nasal male singer tunelessly rhapsodized about meeting his lover on the astral plane.
Neldra was the hugest woman he had ever seen - or had ever dreamed of seeing. Seated behind a paunch and forefront that ballooned past her outstretched legs onto a pillow as wide as he was tall, she took several verses to open her eyes and look Dick's way. She was dressed in a sleeveless black lace robe that only covered her breasts and the top half of her great draping belly. When she nodded to look at him, her chins widened into a ring that protruded at least an inch past the rest of her huge wide face.
She said nothing, just sat and let him take in the whole Neldra. In this position, her upper arms were large enough to droop onto her spreading hips; said hips projected past her elbows, limiting her arm movement considerably, keeping her hands apart from each other. Her belly was so impossibly there that you could get lost just looking at it. Pressed beneath it, her bulging calves came close to concealing her feet.
She was so obese, so encompassed by flesh, that it was overwhelming. Intriguingly, her adiposity did not temper her femininity in any way; if anything, it enhanced it.
"Twelve hundred and fifty two kilos," Neldra finally said, once she was sure Dick had seen enough. "If you need to do the math, a kilogram's equal to two-point-two pounds."
"But how?"
"Deal with a demon," she explained. "I received the ability to travel anywhere I want on the astral dimensions, but in exchange, I lost the capacity to move around this one." Waving her right hand, she pointed to a portrait nestled between a shelf of coffee table sized books. There, Dick saw a mid-sized brunette in a bodysuit, regally posing for the artist. She was almost as lovely as Tempest had been - but something in her eyes was off-putting. A haughtiness mitigated against her beauty.
"Me before the deal," Neldra explained. "I was pretty full of myself in those days, but I didn't know how full of myself I could become."
"Was it worth it?" Dick shouldn't help asking.
"Ultimately, yes," Neldra answered. "When I was the size you see in the portrait, I was unfocussed. Now, I know where to direct my energies." She paused thoughtfully, then steered the conversation back to business. "You say you want your wife returned to her normal self. Are you ready to accept all that may be?"
"What do you mean?"
"If I'm right, whatever's been stealing from your wife has been doing it for years. It's not unusual for these attacks to escalate when the victim weds; we're talking about a jealous and malicious creature."
The look on Stevens' face was not unexpected. Though most of her clients came to Neldra expecting the occult, they always had difficulty hearing it openly discussed. Nevertheless, she continued.
"What I'm saying is: once we banish this thing, be prepared to have your wife grow even bigger than you've seen her. Who knows what her normal set point is? Tempest's body has been supernaturally violated for so long it's impossible to tell."
"You know what's doing this?"
"I think so," Neldra said. "Do you hear what I'm saying, Mr. Stevens?"
Dick nodded. "You said 'banish' like you knew it was possible. Do what you must," he said.
"Go home to your wife," Neldra directed. "Act like you usually do after a day of work. I'll have more to tell you tomorrow." With that, Maxwell stepped into the library and lead the businessman out of her house.
"What do you think?" the factotum asked when he returned to Neldra's chamber.
"Think I'll need to fill up pretty strongly to make it through the night," Neldra told him. One other aspect of the demon's deal that she hadn't mentioned to her client: her appetite had grown to match her body. At times, it was so strong that it hampered her ability to concentrate. The only way to dampen it was for her to binge prodigiously.
When she'd sealed her original compact, Neldra weighed a straight thousand kilos. The rest had been put on since by her demon-spawned gormandizing.
"Thought so," Maxwell said, pulling a serving cart in from the hall. All three shelves on the cart were piled with full platters, banquet sized duplications of the meals from Stevens' list. He moved in close to Neldra, first plate in his hands, a knowing smile on his face.
It was edging into midnight when she'd eaten enough to feel sated. Stripped from her robe, her entire body glistened in the candlelight. "Max," she panted, lifting her arms to fan her flushed face from a distance. "You've really outdone yourself."
"So have you," he said admiringly, pouring a dollop of witch hazel on a bath cloth to cool his mistress down. He'd never seen her eat so much in one night; it both excited and worried him. "Makes me wonder what you think you'll be facing out there."
"Something old," she told him. She felt bloated, just this side of uncomfortable. But it was necessary to dull her hunger. Mentally focusing on her remote control, she restarted her Modern Lovers' tape. Shutting out all but the sounds of the music, the feel of her flesh all around her, Neldra concentrated on leaving her tremendous body.
And, then, she was out of herself.
Stopping just a moment to assess her weight-bound corporeal form - Max took real good care of her - she shot from her house and was over the city. The sight was like watching a television that was unable to lock on any one channel. At one point, she'd see the familiar urban landscape, then another plane filled with unimaginable architecture, creatures that made the Garden of Earthly Delights look like afternoon tea at Martha Stewart's.
Honing in on Tempest's vibrations - contact with her husband and the reconstruction of her day's dining had attuned Neldra to them - she aimed towards the sleeping woman. In an instant, she was in a suburban tri-level. There she found Stevens and his wife, both asleep in a king-size bed, air conditioning whirring. The room was quiet, but Neldra hoped it wouldn't remain that way too long.
Time crawled, and she grew familiar with the room in its dimensional aspects. In most of the planes, she appeared to be in a cul-de-sac - dark and gloomy with tiny skittering life forms. The astral version of an alley.
Finally, her appetite started to once more nibble at her. She told herself what she always did when she was on another plane: this was not physiologically real; her body was back home, so there was no way her astral form could feel hungry. But the demon's influence nagged her, made it increasingly difficult for her to focus.
And then she saw it, a tall form shuffling down the cul-de-sac towards the Stevens' bed. In that moment, both realms seemed to blend together, and Neldra got a good sense of the creature.
It was humanoid and birdlike, with a large fetal head and eyes wide and ancient. Its appearance was both pathetic and frightening. It moved its wizened legs slowly toward the sleeping Tempest; when it reached her, the creature extended a claw and tenderly stroked her shoulder. From outer appearances, the creature was sexless, but Neldra knew that was only an illusion.
It knelt beside the bed, beak-shaped mouth closing over Tempest's. Its throat undulated, slowly, as the creature started to feed off its victim. Like a newborn bird, it seemed to thrive on food processed by another. No wonder Tempest was wasting away.
As yet, the feeding creature hadn't noticed Neldra's astral form. The time for that was past. Moving across the bedroom/cul-de-sac, she concentrated on the opening words to a rite of exorcism. The beast rose, malevolently glaring at her. She'd never been able to see her own astral form - to do so would tie her back to her corporeal form - though she imagined it resembled her pre-transformation self.
Who dares? it thought towards her.
Neldra ignored the question. It was all she could to properly conjure up the words required to push this creature away. Her astral form wavered as her craving grew.
I know you, the creature thought as it moved away from the bed. I feel your hunger. Why do you interfere with me? A flicker, and it was suddenly beside her, like a lover about to whisper endearments into her ear.
Though she knew she couldn't, Neldra felt it beside her - felt its warm, fetid breath, its dessicated claws and attenuated flesh. It was all she could do to keep from rushing through the words of exorcism; to do so would render them ineffective. She continued to concentrate on the rite.
Fat sow, the creature seemed to hiss. Interfering with my work. You may save this one, but you can't save the other!
She refused to look in its direction, continued through the rite's arcane poetry. Damn you! the creature thought as it backed away, then mockingly blew a kiss toward the sleeping Tempest Stevens. We'll meet again, it thought at Neldra. And no mere incantation will work next time! Then it vanished, moments before Neldra could complete her words of exorcism.
She finished them just the same.
An incubus, she thought, weaving a wall of protection around the couple's bed. This called for further investigation.
She returned to her human shell. As expected, Max was waiting for her with a late-night snack. Ciba Matto was warbling over the speakers.
"Well?" he asked, once she'd finished off her sports shake.
"It's an incubus," she told him. "One that's been hectoring the family for some time from the looks of it. You get to play Archie Goodwin again."
Max grinned and ran a hand through his goatee. "Want me to track down the other members of Tempest's family?"
"We have to," Neldra answered, sipping at her first refill. "You know how these demons work: steal from one and give to another while they're both sleeping. Usually, the stolen matter is seminal fluid. But this creature is sticking with one family, and there must be a shortage of males in the current generation."
"So somewhere," Max considered, "is a woman who's been the repository of years of this creature's feeding."
"Tempest's sister, perhaps."
"What will happen to her now that you've walled off Tempest?"
"Don't know," Neldra said. "We need to find out everything we can about her family. We haven't seen the last of this demon."
Max poured his mistress another shake. "I didn't think you could exorcise an incubus," he said.
"Depends on who you read. The demonologist Sinistrari believed they were immune to Christian ritual. But Thomas Aquinas described a successful exorcism.
"This creature left before I even completed the rite. My guess is it's been unchallenged for so long that it was unprepared for me. Even so, I didn't use any Christian magic when I wove the spell of protection."
Max nodded. Across the city, Tempest Stevens would be waking soon, rested for the first time in months. He'd phone Richard Stevens with the results as soon as it was light. He didn't think the man would mind being awaken.
Six weeks later, Stevens returned to Neldra's with his wife. The businessman was a marked contrast from the anxious spouse who had first come for help. Casually dressed, he looked like he was enroute to a company picnic: a picture of suburban normalcy.
Neldra's wall of protection had obviously held. She'd checked it out several times, and nothing more had been taken from the young bride. Once the visitations ceased, Tempest started to grow back into her old shape. In a silken pants suit that showed off her plump, broad-beamed body, the rejuvenated woman stood before Neldra with a tray full of brownies, a smile on her face.
"Max said you'd like this," she said by way of offering. Her voice was sweet and girlish, innocent without sounding naive. She took in Neldra and her surroundings with a nonchalance that was appealing. It wasn't everybody that could be so matter-of-fact with Neldra - even when they were prepared for her. "It has pecans."
"One of my weaknesses," Neldra confessed.
She smiled across her forefront at the happy couple. Though the demon had originally meant to punish Neldra for presuming to even bargain with it, she'd grown accustomed to both her body and her appetite. If offered the chance to change back, she didn't think she would.
Maybe she was spoiled by Max's attentions; in addition to his other skills, the man sure could cook.
"Wanted to thank you," Tempest continued. "Dick says that you're the one who turned my life around."
"You're certainly looking healthier."
"Thanks," she giggled. "I'd gotten so used to the mega-meals they were feeding me to keep my strength up, I don't know if I can go back to my old way of dining. I've regained more than fifty pounds in the last six weeks.”
"You'll level out when you reach the weight that's right," Neldra said. "You just haven't had a chance to see what's you yet. Just relax and eat until you're full." She smiled ironically, sending creases through her chins. "I don't think your hubby will mind." From the way he was eyeing his wife, it didn't take a psychic to see he was head over heels with Tempest.
"I know that," she said, pulling out a piece of brownie for herself at Neldra's encouragement. "I feel very lucky."
"We both were lucky," Neldra said. "The creature had been undisturbed for so long that it wasn't expecting any resistance. It won't be as easy with the rest of your family."
"You think you can find them?"
"Can and will," Max said as he took the tray from Tempest.
"We talked about this," Stevens said, stepping up alongside his wife. "Tempest and I want to help you in your search."
Neldra nodded, and her chins widened as she did.
"You can," she said, lifting her first brownie to her lips. It took some effort to bend her cumbrous arms to her mouth, but Neldra was unconcerned. It didn't matter how much bigger she grew: in the astral plane, she still was an adept.
And that was where it counted.
"So how'd you come to be like this?" the plump blond asks, platter filled with shrimp and cream cheese spread slowly disappearing on her soft lap. She looks up at Neldra and the only response to those clear eyes is to tell the truth. So she does.
She'd been studying magick for more than a decade, and perhaps she considered herself more adept than she actually was. If she'd been more cautious, she never would have considered conjuring that demon. Once he realized she was on the verge of trying, Maxwell tried to talk her out of it.
"Sure you know what you're doing?" he asked, nervously picking at the start of his sparse goatee. Neldra had met him in the used book section of an occult bookstore a year before, and it had been lust at first sight. If she had any complaints about Max as a lover, it was with his passive refusal to be supportive with her diet.
"It's a risk," Neldra admitted, picking at a large slice of still warm coffee cake. Among his other skills, Maxwell really knew his way around a kitchen. She had to be careful about eating too much, though: some of her outfits had gotten a little too tight lately.
At 82 kilograms (she weighed herself in kilos because it sounded smaller), Neldra Cambry was only fat in a society that accentuated gauntness. In her studies of other cultures, she knew enough about the range of beauty ideals to know that she had nothing to feel bad about. Her zaftig body was a classic hourglass, the kind you saw in plus-size catalogs unwilling to use models too plus-size. Her lover clearly found it exciting.
But this didn't stop her from wishing she was a little less fond of snack foods. The road of excess may lead to the palace of wisdom - but Neldra believed that true magick took discipline. Which was why she planned to fast three days before her summoning.
"The benefits outweigh the risks," she continued. "Few mortals have free range of all the astral dimensions. What many consider astral traveling is really just a walk around the block. There are many powerful forces that few of us are allowed to see."
"There's a reason for that," Maxwell offered. "Some of them are butt ugly."
Neldra grinned. Maxwell had a pretty conservative side to him. It limited his own development as a mage, and that was fine with both of them. Somebody in the relationship had to be focused on the mundane details, after all.
"I'm prepared, Max," she said, picking up the slice of cake in a conciliatory gesture. (The last thing she'd be eating in days: it might as well be something she liked.) "This is not something you blindly rush into. But I'm not some college kid with a ouija board."
"I know that," Maxwell told her. "But I also know you don't get something for nothing. I worry about you."
"And don't think I'm not appreciative," Neldra replied, kissing two fingertips and placing them on her lover's forehead. "But I've been studying for this, and if I don't follow through, what good am I?" Maxwell shrugged and said nothing.
It was the last either of them would say about her decision - Maxwell had enough sense not to say, "I told you so!" when it all was over - because that afternoon Neldra locked herself in her chamber to begin her fast.
She sat in the middle of the room, legs uncrossed, and meditated. In the background, old rock tapes - psychedelic nuggets and surf instrumentals primarily - played to cover the sounds of the house. Occasionally, she was allowed glimpses into other dimensions, but they were all tantalizingly out of reach. At times, her stomach cried to be fed, but she shut that voice far away.
When she finally felt ready, Neldra pulled a much-read volume from its stand and lit on the appropriate incantation. The kind of creature she'd be calling wouldn't be hampered by anything as mild as a pentagram, but there were still rules it had to follow. As she read from the words of summoning, Neldra's anticipation grew.
The room suddenly grew brighter, as if the candlelight had been replaced with office style incandescence. Looking up from her book, Neldra saw an immense figure in coveralls. He looked vaguely familiar, but Neldra knew that this was only a shell the creature had chosen for its own amusement.
"You called?" it said, affecting a casual tone. As it leaned against a bookcase shelf, its forefront favored that side; anyone of normal human strength would have had difficulty maintaining their balance.
"Who are you?" Neldra asked.
In answer, the abdominous creature let out a string of guttural syllables so harsh it couldn't have come from a human larynx. "If you wish, you may call me, Bh'elgh," it continued with a tiny bow, belly dropping to the floor as it did. "Your hunger brought me." It held out a platter with a coffee cake five times bigger than Maxwell's. Lifting it, it took a large bite and continued with its mouth full. "What do you want?" it asked.
She realized what had happened. Instead of purifying her, Neldra's fast had attuned her to a demon aligned with gluttony. A minor figure perhaps, but it still was capable of giving her the knowledge she wanted.
"The key to the astral realms," Neldra said, rising to meet the demon in the eyes. "By my words, you are obligated to give me this knowledge without harm."
"Knowledge without harm? Is there such a thing?" the demon smirked. "I can take you to the astral realms, but it'll be to a plane of my choosing. Once there, you'll have free access to all the planes."
"Understood."
"You think you understand," Bh'elgh told her, grinning. "My, but I love the taste of arrogance!" It moved towards her, eyes locked with Neldra. "It's a toss-up which is stronger in you: your hunger for knowledge or the hunger you've been trying to repress. Think of that when you're on the other side." Reaching beyond its belly, the demon grabbed her shoulders.
Then it pulled her out of her body.
"Once you leave, it becomes easy to do it on your own," it explained, "but don't thank me yet."
She looked at her corporeal form, saw a too-plump woman in a loose robe bedecked in astrological imagery. Pale skin, dark hair, a look of peace on her full sensuous face. Then she turned back to the demon. Even in the astral realm, it maintained its human guise.
Grabbing her astral form, Bh'elgh lead her out of her chamber (Maxwell, she saw, was holding guard in the hallway) and to the city outside. As it did, the demon cast aside its human form, becoming more amorphous and ill-defined. Neldra scarcely noticed. Her first full view of the astral planes was so stunning that it was disorienting.
Soaring with the demon, she saw: city upon city, layered atop each other, some looking like a hallucinogenic sci-fi vision, others like a medievalist's nightmare. It was difficult to focus on any one plane, though that ability would come with time and practice.
"More than you imagined, isn't it?" Bh'elgh said, laughing. She looked toward the creature, and as she did, she found herself in total blackness.
A flash of panic rushed through her. She was unable to either move or see. How could this be? She felt like a fly pinned in aspic. Where had the creature brought her?
"Time to feed your other hunger!" an unseen voice whispered in her ears.
Only a demon could come up with something so perverse. The substance she was trapped in had to be edible. Whatever stood for food in this plane, she was expected to eat her way through it to escape. Well, if that was the rule she had to follow, so be it.
Neldra slowly opened her mouth, tentatively tasted the substance pressing all around her. It was tasteless, but as soon as she touched it with her tongue, the matter began to flow into her mouth. As she swallowed, a host of flavors came to her - as if the myriad cities she'd seen were all being represented by a host of native banquets.
She let the stuff flow into her, and it was like she'd never be filled. How could she be? Her corporeal form was still back in her library. The feeding went on forever - or so it seemed - every flavor was so strong it took an eternity for her to assimilate. When a blur of light finally became visible, Neldra knew she was near the end. She swallowed with increased vigor then was free of her astral trap, lying on the edge of a cube that rose to infinity, feeling like a cartoon mouse who had just eaten a tunnel through a giant block of cheese.
"Very good," Bh'elgh said, standing at her side. The demon appeared to be the same texture as the stuff she was lying on. She was on her back, Neldra saw, though conventional views of up and down had been lost in this plane. "You devoured even more than I could've hoped for." It gestured into the bright, blank sky behind it. "The astral realms are yours to wander."
That it? she almost said aloud, but knew better.
"I really love a human with a healthy appetite," the demon said, before blinking out and leaving Neldra to find her way to her own plane.
It wasn't difficult, she discovered. Her aura - Maxwell's, too, for that matter - served as beacons across the astral cities. She found her corporeal form slumped on the floor of her chamber. Why had she thought herself too fat? she wondered. At the moment, her human solidity was both lovely and welcoming. Gently, Neldra lowered herself back into her physical form.
A wave of sensory stimuli washed over her; her entire body started tingling.
Then it started growing.
The process began slowly but inexorably, as if her benefactor wanted her to savor what was happening to her. Too overwhelmed to rise, Neldra felt herself grow fat on the floor.
First to receive this astral bounty was her midsection, all suggestion of concavity disappearing as her torso grew to match measure with her once pre-eminent breasts. A pressure built at the uppermost part of her plump inner thighs, as her belly became more of a pot. Ahead of her, Neldra could see her calves starting to flatten against the floor.
Frantically, she wracked her memory for an incantation that would put the brakes on her transformation. But her growth was simply the outward manifestation of a process she'd already completed on the demon's plane. By opening herself to its offerings, she'd managed to devour scores of meals. That act of gluttony was starting to manifest itself on her.
She tried to cry out for Maxwell but was unable to speak.
Instead, she belched, and as she did, her belly ballooned before her. Her once loose robe flew open as her zaftig figure burgeoned into super-size. Neldra's breasts went up the alphabet, draping atop her swelling paunch like some silicone fantasy. Her belly was now the biggest thing about her. Settling into the culvert between her thighs, it pushed ahead towards her dimpling knees, forcing her legs apart. At her sides, she could feel new folds and bulges developing. As the seams of her sleeves ripped free, her upper arms started to jiggle and chafe against her.
She'd grown huge - at lease two hundred and fifty kilos. Her shape had changed from hourglass to apple, from buxom to obese. How foolish she'd been to consider herself fat before!
And it wasn't stopping yet.
Neldra cast off her robe. She had to get to Maxwell before she grew too much bigger. Leaning to the left, she put her arm out for support, felt her paunch peel from her right thigh. As if in response to her attempt at movement, though, she started growing faster. Neldra fell on her side, torso flattening against the floor, sloping like a hill of flesh. In seconds, she was up to three hundred and seventy kilograms.
If she didn't move fast, she'd never be able to get up. The only way to do that was to roll and lift herself with her arms and knees, so she pushed with her left arm and eased into a face down position on the floor. Her forefront mounded against the hardwood, flattened breasts pushing into her chins. She reached down with both palms, but before she could take it any further, she started to expand even more rapidly.
She could hear Bh'elgh laughing, as she felt her back hoisting from the floor, her hands - then her fingertips - rising out of reach of the Oriental rug. As she widened with this strongest growth spurt, her arms were forced outwards. Her belly hang pushed further down her legs, propping her knees off the floor. It became progressively more difficult to maintain even a minimum amount of purchase with her toes. Neldra had passed the half ton mark.
All she could do was lie on her belly and wait it all out. She was stranded on her surging front, which continued to rise and radiate beneath her. Her mams pointed towards both hands, the tips of them extending past her swaddled elbows; her belly base was now inches away from her ankles.
With her back exposed to the air, Neldra now noticed how that part of her had changed. The backs of her legs developed new folds, bulging together at the knee joint. Her rear grew magnificently, cheeks dimpling and pushing new bulges up her back. As her shoulders swelled, they created a ridge that held the back of her head in place.
Her range of motion was growing more limited. About all she could do was bobble in her belly and move her feet and forearms. This was to be the demon's price, she now realized: free access to the astral realms at the cost of mobility in this one. The kind of bargain she should have expected from a demon.
How huge was she now? Neldra didn't know. But it was certain she was beyond any conventional measure of obesity. She could hear the floor boards creaking ominously beneath her, feel her great slab of a belly as it slowly undulated with each breath she took, still taste the memory of her astral gluttony. . .
It took a few moments for he to finally realize when she'd stopped growing. Her body was so overwhelming, so constantly in jiggling motion, that any extra growth was difficult to gauge. First sign she had that it really had stopped was when she found her voice again. She called to Maxwell.
She'd always remember the look on his face when he stepped into her sanctum: fear and wonder, followed by an unmistakable look of arousal. "Neldra?" he ventured, tentatively moving toward her.
"Max. . ." she started before a pang of hunger hit her so strongly that it overcame all rational thought. What was this? she thought, as she heard herself croak to her dumbstruck lover, "Feed me! Please!"
To Maxwell's credit, he didn't pause to say anything further. Swiveling, he dashed into the kitchen and quickly returned with a wheeled cart filled with all the instant items he could find: loaves of bread, cartons of milk, cold-cuts, cheese and ice cream. Expertly, he sliced off a chunk of brie and carried it to Neldra. Lying on her belly before him, she was almost eye-to-eye with him. Eagerly, she took his first offering.
"Don't bother with the fixings," she told him. "Just give it to me straight!"
Nodding, Maxwell pulled a bag of rye bread and started feeding slices to her. Neldra ate ravenously, barely pausing to come up for air. Every bit of food that was brought within reach was grabbed with her teeth and quickly devoured. Her hunger was so intense it was painful; the only way to ease it was to force as much into her mouth as possible.
Maxwell's tray wasn't going to be enough, she soon realized, so between bites, she directed her lover to the phone. He ordered enough delivery to feed a good-sized restaurant, and with that they spent the night working to get her hunger under control. They didn't finish until dawn.
Stomach hard beneath her layers of avoirdupois, Neldra rolled onto her side to relieve the pressure. Her entire body was drenched with sweat; her jaw ached from hours of non-stop chewing. Though she still felt like she could eat - just a little snack, say - at least she wasn't feeling all consumed by her hunger.
For the first time since her return, Neldra was fully able to take stock of herself. Her breasts and belly loomed so far ahead of her that there was barely room for the furniture; behind her, she could feel her buttocks pressing against the bookcase. By her guesstimate, that was at least three feet away.
In that moment, she knew her exact weight. "A ton," she said out loud. "I weigh a metric ton!"
Experimenting, Neldra lifted her free hand. Though her upper arm was limited by the rolls of fat surrounding it, her lower arm could still bend enough to reach her mouth if she worked on it. If she kept her arms limber, she'd be able to feed herself.
It was a small thing, but she suspected she'd be appreciating such minutia in the days ahead.
"You okay?" Maxwell asked, handing her a face cloth to clean glazed sugar off her face. Over their night together, a bond had grown between them that was stronger than anything they'd previously known. They were a team now, more than lovers.
"I'm fine," she said, as he rubbed her voluminous form, setting off yet another hunger in her. This was going to be a whole new physical experience, she thought. But she knew Max was up to the challenge.
"Do you miss it?" the blond girl asks, once it's clear that Neldra has finished her story. She looks over at her husband and wonders if he could deal with the reality of a mega-sized wife. Okay to read this stuff in fantasies - but could he handle the real-life demands she'd make? He smiles back at her, and the question becomes moot. Why worry about something that will never happen?
"My old body?" Neldra answers. "Not anymore." She smiles across herself at the couple, and it's like some benevolent spirit bestowing her blessings on them. Tempest rises and carries a fresh tray of pecan-laced brownies to the weight bound astral traveler. Neldra smiles and takes a fist-sized square.
Preparation for the journeys ahead, she thinks.
"I wasn't here, of course," Ms. Quill was saying, fluffing her permed hair with the palms of her hands. "But our records go back to the turn of the century, so it shouldn't be too difficult to find your client." She paused, looked out the window at the group of state wards playing on grounds, then continued. "You realize that if we find your Ms. Stevens, we'll want to contact any living relatives first."
"Of course," Maxwell said agreeably. "Wouldn't expect you to do otherwise." He sat back, gave her a smile, then said, "My client doesn't want to cause any undue distress. But it's possible that her siblings may be wondering about her existence, too."
"You're right," Ms. Quill said. "We can get on this today, if you like. Do you have a number I can reach?"
Maxwell pulled a card from his jacket - the legend on it was deliberately nondescript - and handed it to the adoption worker. Rising, he straightened his jacket and told Ms. Quill he'd be in touch. Soon as he left the building, he suspected she'd be rummaging through the files.
It was dusk by the time he got back to the house. Neldra was probably famished by now - astral traveling tended to enhance her already prodigious appetite. Though he was eager to learn what she'd seen, watching Ms. Quill from the shadows of another dimensional realm, he knew his priorities. First order of business was to get his mistress something to eat.
He needn't have worried too much, though, because when he wheeled her first serving into Neldra's sanctum, he found she had company: Tempest Stevens and husband, with at least a dozen empty pastry cartons. Nothing fancy, but it probably took the edge off Neldra's hunger.
"We've been waiting for you," Tempest said. "Neldra didn't want to talk about what she got until you arrived."
That was a polite reframe, Maxwell thought. More likely, Neldra couldn't be bothered to talk until she'd staved her hunger. The demon spell that gave his mistress the power to traverse the astral realms came with an appetite that was impossible to ignore.
"Well," she asked Neldra. "You got to see the files as Ms. Quill went through 'em. What'd you find?"
"You have," Neldra announced. "A twin sister." She paused, took a sip from a gallon jug of chocolate milk, then continued. "But that's not the most intriguing piece here. According to the records, your mother was Daisy Bailey."
Both Maxwell and Richard Stevens nodded, recognizing the name immediately.
"Daisy Dumpling," Stevens explained to his wife. "One of the last great sideshow fat ladies. At her peak, she rivaled Baby Ruth Pontico in size, which probably put her in the upper seven-hundreds. She worked with every major circus in the fifties and sixties. Then she lost a lot of weight - some say from pressure by her husband - and retired in the late sixties. Her weight loss ruined her career in the circus."
"Daisy semi-retired in Drimmer, Florida," Neldra continued. "It's a circus community, and my hope is that there'll still be some folks down there who remember Daisy Dumpling. From all reports, she was pretty memorable."
"Looks like I'm flying down to Drimmer," Maxwell said, as he stacked empty platters on the bottom shelf of his cart.
"Me, too," Tempest added.
Neldra shook her head, sending a wave across her prominent forefront. "Don't think that's a good idea, Tempest. Until we understand the connection between you and your sister, it's best that you stay here."
"But can Dick go?"
"Glad to have him with me," Maxwell said, spooning out a Neldra serving of stroganoff onto a tremendous plate.
Maxwell and Stevens left from O'Hare the following night, then drove a rental car to Drimmer. It was after breakfast hour when they finally drove into town.
Like the circus that had sparked its birth, Drimmer, Fla., had seen better days. A tract house community miles away from anything else, the town had more Wintering circus folk than any of the more well-known carny towns. Perhaps it was its relative isolation that drew side show folk grateful for a place where they could stroll down the streets without getting gawked at.
He was going to have to make a concerted effort not to come off like a rube, Dick thought.
Ever since he caught a glimpse of an old newsreel clip showing Baby Ruth Pontico, he'd been fascinated by sideshow. Many of the other attractions left him cold - disturbed him, in fact - but he knew every famous circus fat lady by name and weight. It had been part of his adolescence as an FA.
According to Bodgen's book on the subject - which he'd reread on the flight down - Daisy Barris had been born to an immigrant mother. The seventh of a line of sisters, Daisy had been a difficult birth, in part because she'd been so huge as an infant. Her mother died six months later.
Daisy's father never got over the death of his wife, blaming his youngest daughter and her extraordinary size. When she continued to grow through childhood, outweighing her teacher the year she first attended school, it was a constant reminder to the distraught father. Soon as she reached her teens, he made a deal with a traveling ten-in-one to display his by-then four-hundred-plus-pound daughter.
Despite - or perhaps because of - this act of abandonment, Daisy found a good life for herself in the sideshow. She steadily grew fatter and, indeed, seemed to delight in showing off her appetite. In no time at all, Daisy Dumpling was a headliner. Her career flourished until the day she was married.
It was downhill from there.
"So where do we start?" Dick asked, slowing down for an elderly midget couple who were walking a dog that could have dragged them across the street if it decided to make a break for it.
"How about there?" Maxwell indicated, pointing out an eatery with the legend, "Daisy's Diner."
Left to her own devices, Tempest proved to be an agreeable temporary substitute for Maxwell: less exotic in her cooking repertoire perhaps, but capable of whipping up healthy helpings of comfort food. She quickly learned her way around the house and was a capable researcher. On Neldra's instructions, she'd gone to the library and returned with a book neither had expected to find: Daisy Bailey's autobiography, Losing Most of Me.
With only a cursory discussion of her life before the circus, Daisy's bio focused on her side show career and phenomenal weight reduction, which began within weeks of her marriage to Denver Bailey, a Cincinnati fireman who'd been smitten with her on first sight. Though he was attracted to her at her peak, Denver stuck with Daisy through hundreds of pounds of diminution. To Daisy, the only explanation for her amazing loss was the power of her husband's love. "I just didn't eat as much as I used to," she wrote. "I guess I had Denver's love to feed me."
She was down to mid-sized by the time she was pregnant with the twins, no longer a side show attraction but still traveling as a cook and ticker taker. She'd lived too long in the circus to give it up completely. "Where else could an eight-hundred pound woman be so easily accepted in 1955?" she noted near the end of her memoir.
"She died not long after finishing this book," Tempest said, as Neldra focused on an old postcard photo of Daisy Dumpling. It was autographed, part of Dick's collection, and if the signature was real, it was probably the closest she could get to Tempest's family line. "The book ends with her anticipating the birth of her daughters and a life of 'normalcy' as a wife and mother. It didn't work out that way, though."
A month before her pregnancy came to term, Denver Bailey dropped out of sight. Distraught, Daisy began to gain weight anew and took to the road with a traveling carnival. She gave birth in a tent outside Des Moines but didn't make it through the night.
"The weight loss didn't start until she married," Tempest noted. "Same with me. It's like this creature is punishing us for finding someone."
"The incubus is a jealous creature," Neldra told her. "But it's limited in what it can do. Both Daisy and you found husbands who were sexually attracted to you as fat women. In stealing that from you, it was trying to sever your connection to your husbands."
"It didn't work with Dick," Tempest said, a smile dimpling her round cheeks.
"Love starts with physical attraction. But to paraphrase Peggy Lee, that's not all there is."
Tempest nodded, then she headed for the kitchen, wondering how her husband and Maxwell were faring.
"What'll you have?" a skeletal waitress asked them, once they'd taken a booth.
"Breakfast special," Maxwell said, tapping the stand-up menu, and Steven's followed his lead.
"Sure you don't want the Geek's Surprise?" an old-timer asked from a nearby booth, loud enough to send chuckles throughout the restaurant.
"No thanks," Maxwell told the crowd. "I'll make due with what's here." With that, he picked up a table knife, arched his head back and slowly slid the knife into his mouth until nothing but the edge of the handle was visible. Then, throat undulating, he forced the knife out until the tip of the blade was clasped between his teeth. The act brought applause from the appreciative customers.
"Something to do at parties," Maxwell said, gesturing the old-timer over to their table. Nodding to his companions, he jumped chairs and deposited himself at their table. In so doing, he revealed what had been hidden by the booth: the man had no legs.
"Name's Ray," he said, pulling an ashtray over to the table even though it said, "No smoking." "So what brings you and Mr. Button-Down to our fair burg?"
"Woman this place is named after, actually," Maxwell said, mentally stirring the air currents to keep the smoke away from them.
"What you wanna know?" Ray asked, eyes narrowing.
"My friend here married one of Daisy's daughters," Maxwell offered.
"No kidding?" Ray said, and you could see the wall drop immediately. "She as big as ol' Daisy got?"
"From what I know," Stevens answered, "Daisy was in competition with the greatest circus fat ladies. Tempest is nowhere near that." He nodded in thanks to the waitress bringing coffee. "Did you know her?"
"She was somp'n," Ray said. "A real sweet lady. Lots of circus fat ladies - and men - exaggerate their weight. But Daisy never did. Even when she started losing weight and management was pressuring her to fill herself out with padding, she wouldn't do it."
"What happened to her husband?"
"No one knows," Ray said. "Lotta folks were pretty hard on him for leaving, but I watched my own wife go a couple years back. Plenty of times I found myself wishing that I had it in me to just say the hell with it!"
Dick nodded, said nothing. Across the booth, Maxwell was finishing up his breakfast plate. Biscuits and sausage gravy: Stevens wouldn't have thought he'd be satisfied with such plain-made fare.
"So why's this restaurant named after Daisy?" he finally asked. "Did she own a piece of it?"
"No," Ray said, slapping the table like one of them had just won a kewpie. "Her daughter Winter does!"
He turned and yelled toward the kitchen. The double doors swung open and a figure in chef's apron stepped out. He was wide enough so that his elbows scraped against both sides of the double-length door frame. Flesh rippling neath his white shirt, the mountainous cook wiped his hands in his apron and waddled over to their booth.
He looked to be over seven hundred pounds - the realm of fat men legends like Happy Jack Eckert and the McGuire Twins - with thinning blond hair and a boyish face.
"This is Benny Hammer!" Ray explained. "Stage name: Big Ben." The circus fat man extended a beefy paw, questioning look on his face, until Ray said, "Got someone you need to meet, big boy! Your brother-in-law!"
Suddenly, Dick's hand was lost in the grip of the circus fat man. "My God," the huge man said. "My wife will be glad to see you! Where's the missus?"
"She'll be coming down," Maxwell interrupted. "But for the moment, she's staying with a friend of mine. How's Winter doing?"
That answer to that one was apparent soon as Maxwell asked the question. "Not well," Ben finally said, and Ray reached up to pat the big man on the arm.
"Take us to her," Maxwell said, and to Steven's surprise, Ben agreed readily.
The couple lived in a size-friendly ranch house just a couple of blocks away from downtown. According to Ray, who appeared to be an unofficial spokesman for the community, it had always been owned by circus fat folk - beneath its wooden floors was a solid slab of concrete. They found the furnishings to be strong and at least twice the width as usual, filled with shelves of big-top memorabilia and books. Someone liked to read Ann Rice, so perhaps they wouldn't have a hard time dealing with what was happening here.
"Winter!" the big man shouted. "Gotta couple folks who wanna see you!" He turned to the duo and said, "We've had a slew of doctors in the house over the last six months, so forgive her if she isn't too hospitable." He indicated a pair of sliding doors, then waddled over to part them. Following Ray in his wheelchair, they entered the vast bedroom.
Lying in a well-worn king-sized bed was a mid-sized version of Tempest Stevens. Hair and face carefully made-up, universal remote by her right hand, she lay unmoving neath the sheets of her bed. Her forehead was pale and drenched with sweat, but beneath her stricken expression, Stevens could see her sister's beauty.
"She's been unable to move for at least six months," Ben explained. "When we met, she was so energetic and vibrant, so full of youthful energy, that I fell in love with her almost immediately. Couldn't believe that a girl so full of life could feel the same for someone as fat and slow as me. But she could. Now she's like this."
"Ben?" the figure from the bed tentatively asked. "Who is this?"
"This is your sister's husband," Maxwell said, stepping forward, "and he has a story to tell you. In the meantime, Ben, I need to know what your wife's eaten in the last twenty-four hours. . ."
"They've found your sister," Neldra told Tempest. She'd been quietly reposing on her platform, seemingly meditating, so her sudden pronouncement startled the young woman.
"In Drimmer?" Tempest said. "How do you know?"
"Max and I keep in touch," Neldra told her, half smile on her lips.
"Did you know she'd be down there?"
"It was in the files," Neldra admitted.
"Why keep it from me?"
"I walled the incubus off," Neldra explained, "but that won't stop it from eavesdropping on your thoughts while you sleep. The less you knew, the better."
"But this creature knows you're looking for it," Tempest said. "Won't it be ready for you, regardless?"
"I'm counting on it," Neldra answered, "but there's no sense in giving it advanced warning." She gestured with her right hand, and a knife suddenly shot across the room to her grasp. "This knife," she explained, "has a counterpart in the other realms. It's a useful tool."
They spent the rest of the evening preparing for the night, Tempest following Neldra's precise directions for meal preparation. Just hanging around Neldra, Tempest noticed, seemed to have sparked her appetite even further. Meals that she would have considered gargantuan seemed like appetizers when stacked against Neldra's intake. If she spent too much time with the sorceress, she'd be as big as her sideshow mother!
Not that Dick would mind, of course.
It was close to midnight when Neldra announced she was ready. Sending Tempest from her chamber, she once more steadied herself to leave her corporeal frame. Then she aimed straight for Winter Hammer's bedroom.
Winter was lying on her back, unmoving. Off to the side, her husband Benny was still awake and seated by the bed. He couldn't, Neldra knew, see her - just as he was unable to see the astral stuff that was keeping his wife pinned.
Pressing on top of her, squeezing her from both sides, was a shapeless mass of ectoplasmic life: hundreds of pounds of lost weight, looking like some sort of suffocating drive-in horror movie monster. It rose to the ceiling, draped off the bed to the floor, in mountainous imitation of the female shape.
Quickly, Neldra did the math. How many pounds did Tempest lose? Somewhere in the nature of two hundred pounds. Her mother? More than five-fifty. This was many times that number. How many sisters did Daisy Dumpling have again?
Gliding over to the bed, Neldra started to examine the sleeping woman more closely. She was like a small kid incapacitated by layers of Winter clothing: the incubus had kept her weight gain on an unseen plane to hide what was happening to her. For Benny, weight wasn't the issue, after all, but the loss of his vibrant wife's mobility.
Passing through this spectral accumulation, Neldra felt around for connecting points to the sleeping Winter. When she found one, she pulled out her blade and severed it. Within seconds, the astral weight started to diminish, like a bag of sand that's sprung a leak.
So you found her! she suddenly heard.
Neldra swiveled around to see the incubus standing within reach of her, vulture eyes glowing with hatred. As it spoke, globules of ectoplasm floated from its beak, looking like spilled liquid in a space capsule. More stolen weight.
"You've ruined this family's life enough," she said.
They're mine! The creature exclaimed, and it grabbed for Neldra's astral form. With contact, a shower of light glowed between the two. The creature recoiled.
"Thought so," Neldra said, grimly advancing. "Your master is no match for the demon that bound me to my appetites." She moved in like a street fighter, knife contemptuously dancing between both hands, then she thrust forward with it. The incubus screamed and dashed out of reach.
Clever, clever, it mocked. The creature grinned, and it was like a ghastly cartoon. You saved this one from the weight I brought her, but, remember, nothing is lost! With that, it winked out of the room once more.
"These skirmishes weary me," Neldra sighed, certain the creature still was listening. "Won't you stay and fight for real?"
She turned back to Winter - the girl was stirring in her sleep, arms moving under the sheets for the first time in weeks. All her ectoplasmic weight was gone, more quickly than she expected. Had the incubus snatched it? If so, where had it cached it?
And then she knew: quickly, Neldra re-gathered herself and shot back to her lair. Once there, she flew into the kitchen. There, sitting at the table with her head resting on her arms, was a sleeping Tempest. Standing by her side was the creature.
Your wall kept me from taking anything, the incubus sneered, but you should've worked the spell the other way, too! It gestured toward Tempest. Hovering above her was a floating mass of stolen astral stuff. A tube, visible only on this plane, led from the mass to her mouth.
Nothing hidden this time, the creature promised. Her gain will be visible to all. With that, it made a mock gesture - Dr. Frankenstein pulling the lever that would blow the castle to kingdom come - and the astral tube quickly filled. Tempest's cheeks puffed out and her eyes opened in surprise.
Stunned, she sat up and futilely tried to speak. Reaching up with her arms, Tempest felt for the tube that had her mouth pried open.
As the astral weight slid down the tube, she began to fatten. Her belly swelled like a stop-motion film of bread dough, pushing against the table. Her breasts began to spread apart as their new weight sent them to her sides. Her arms, desperately reaching up for something out of her own plane of existence, filled out, upper arms flattening against her growing torso. She was adding weight at a phenomenal speed.
Within no time, all the weight that had been initially stolen from Tempest was back on her body. Her hips broadened into the sixty inch range, while her belly draped into a developing apron. Her negligee was on the verge of popping; the table had been pushed aside.
So pretty, the incubus observed, and yet still too skinny, don't you think?
The taunt pushed Neldra into action. Moving past the smirking creature, she slipped to Tempest's side. The flow of fattening matter continued unabated; looking at the mass above them, it barely looked as if it had diminished. Though she knew Tempest couldn't hear her, Neldra began to murmur reassurances as she floated within reach of the tube and attacked it with her blade. The look of panic on Tempest's face vanished.
Now to prove herself worthy of that burst of confidence. Slicing expertly, Neldra severed the ectoplasmic tube and gathered the still spraying end, turning it back onto the hovering mass. The piece of tubing still attached to Tempest's mouth collapsed in on itself and disappeared down her throat.
Gasping, Tempest Stevens took stock of herself. She was, Neldra saw, the weight of her sideshow mother: seven hundred and fifty pounds of pear-shaped beauty, at least five years younger than Dolly had been when she'd reached her peak size. Her negligee hung in shreds on her body, like streamers on a float.
With her outfit neglible, it was clear how much weight had accumulated on her hips, calves and rear. Her outspread lower legs drooped towards her pivotal center, folding once in the middle and draping over her ankles. Her dimpled hips spread a foot past her elbows, providing a base that was going to be difficult to lift from her chair. Her rear had added enough poundage to raise Tempest eight inches from her seat.
Between her outstretched legs, her belly hung pendulously, dangling in one single bulge below her lower thighs. From her deep navel, a horizontal belly fold stretched to both sides of her; at the base of her breasts, a lesser fold stretched about two inches beneath them, creating a bulge that looked like a supporting platform.
Poised atop this pyramidal frame, Tempest's head turned to take herself in. Her chins lagged behind the rest of her, settling as they did against the bulge of her breasts. It was here that the resemblance to her mother most came across: that famous round face had smiled from dozens of circus banners and had even appeared in the background of a popular rock group album cover.
"My God," she said to what she thought was an empty room. "What's happened to me?"
Nothing much, the creature sneered, compared to this! It gestured once more, and, like a strand of tentacles, a trio of tubes sprouted from the mass still above. They attached themselves to strategic parts of her body. Immediately, Tempest began to grow anew.
"What?" she gasped, but as she did a fourth tube snaked into her mouth. In an instant, over a hundred more pounds had been pumped into her body. Neldra sliced at the tubes, but with each cut, another appeared at its side. It was like fighting a hydra, she thought in frustration.
Suddenly, the chair collapsed beneath Tempest. As her thousand-plus pound body fell to the floor, the mass lowered with her. This was where she needed to be attacking the problem, Neldra realized, so she slashed the mass with her knife. It was like popping the skin of a bubble - immediately, she was washed in a deluge of stolen weight.
Beneath her, Tempest was again free to move, though it was going to take considerable effort in the future to do even that. She was, Neldra saw, double the weight she'd been before her second assault: fifteen hundred pounds and change.
Quite a woman, the creature said, appearing by Neldra's side. I think her husband's really going to be impressed, don't you? The birdlike being grinned and suddenly started to change before Neldra. In its place stood Bh'elgh, the demon responsible for Neldra's transformation.
"Ta-da!" the creature sang, like an amateur magician showing off his latest trick.
"Should have known this was your doing once I saw Tempest was awake," Neldra said. "An incubus wouldn't have had power over her at that point."
"You know I've got a weakness for big women," the demon said. "Wouldn't have taken anything from Tempest in the first place if I didn't intend to give it back with interest!"
"Then Daisy Dumpling - "
"Lost her weight by herself," Bh'elgh said. "It ruined her marriage and her health, but she did it to herself. I just saved the weight she and her sisters had been fighting all those years."
"So Tempest and Winter weren't really the ones you were after," Neldra realized.
"Of course not, dear," the demon said with a grin, and in that moment, a pang hit Neldra that was sharper than any she'd ever felt before in her astral form.
She flew back to her chamber and saw the results of her ectoplasmic shower.
Her body was more than twice its size, a gargantuan mass of overwhelming avoirdupois. Clothes blasted apart by her sudden expansion, her corporeal form had toppled all the furniture in its way.
Neldra's torso enveloped her outstretched arms, leaving all but her fully splayed hands encased; her legs were next to impossible to distinguish from all the other bulges created by her settling flesh. Seated on top of this, Neldra's head struggled to keep above her waves of quivering flesh.
Her head had sunk so far into her mounds of back and shoulder flesh that only her upraised face could be seen; she looked like a living bas-relief. The weight of her chins forced her mouth open, making her appear perpetually ready to fill it; her eyes were half closed by her bulging cheeks. Soon as she re-entered that two-and-a-half ton frame, Neldra knew her appetite would hit her like it never had before.
But what else could she do? Already, she could feel her body pulling her back, sucking the astral form into its overwhelming appetite.
"Neldra!"
Standing in the doorway, shaky on her feet but still amazingly able to slowly move within reach of Neldra, was the fully roused Tempest Stevens. Her hips were unable to pass through the frame straight on; as she sidled into the room, her rear jounced up with even more vigor than her breasts. She was wearing one of Neldra's robes, and it wrapped her with feet of fabric to spare. A lovely woman, Neldra thought, as her spirit swirled back into her two-ton body. The desire waiting there hit her like an avalanche.
"There's a number. . ." Neldra panted, barely able to string the words together in her mind-dizzying hunger, "on the phone. . . It's an all night deli. . . owner owes me a favor."
Tempest searched around the room for the phone, found it on the floor near Neldra's barely visible left leg. Fortunately for them both, the wire was uncovered by her elephantine forefront. It took some work for Tempest to lower herself to the floor, but once there, she found the number on a slide-out file.
"Triple my usual order," Neldra said, as her client punched in the number. So far, Tempest hadn't said a word about either of their new bodies. That said a lot for her openness - perhaps Neldra could teach her a few charms that would make her present size a little easier to manage. "Order something for yourself, too, if you'd like," she concluded.
Across the room, she suddenly sensed a tray of cookies left over from her previous binge. Neldra mentally brought it to her and tilted it towards her mouth. Her first bite was practically orgasmic.
"I will," Tempest said, as the line started ringing.
"I don't know what you two did," Ben said. "But we're both grateful."
"All we did was locate your wife," Maxwell told him. "The one you really want to thank is my boss."
"Definitely," Ben agreed. "If there's any way I can repay you."
"We got some vacant size-friendly homes in Drimmer," Ray suddenly said from across the bed. "If she ever needs a bigger place."
Maxwell arched his eyebrows quizzically at the old timer.
"Did some checking on your boss," Ray said. "There've been rumors about her in the gypsy and fat show community for several years now."
Before Maxwell reply, their attention was directed towards a new presence. Standing by the bedroom door, dressed in a jump suit, was a figure who rivaled the circus fat man's stature. He looked like a figure Stevens vaguely recalled from an old sideshow photo: in the picture, the fat man had been posing with Ruth Pontico.
There was something not quite there about the figure, a sense that its solidity was tenuous at best. Behind it, a lizard crawled along the wall; when it crossed in back of the figure, you still got a sense of the animal's form. The visitor smiled once it had everyone's attention, raised a massive arm and pointed at Stevens.
"Your wife," it said simply, "is now bigger than her mother."
Then it blinked out.
"What the hell was that?" Stevens gasped.
But Maxwell didn't answer right away. Instead, he rushed over to the bedroom phone. "Mind if I use this?" he asked. "I need to call the airport."
"Go right ahead," Ben told him. "What's going on here?"
"We've got to get back immediately," Maxwell said.
They left the state that night, and while Stevens sped towards the airport, Maxwell tried to contact his mistress. She was not, however, receptive to him. It wasn't until they landed, that he was able to touch her mentally. Her hyped-up appetite had made even the most elemental telepathy impossible.
By the time the two men got back to their mega-sized loves, Neldra had been able to re-exert her mental energies, removing all the toppled furniture. Even with the room less crowded, it was difficult to perceptually capture all of her. She was just too huge for the eye to take in at once.
Tempest had taken two of Neldra's old robes apart, and with some quick sewing come up with something new to cover the two-ton woman. She'd also let in a third robe for herself. When Dick first saw her, he was dumbstruck.
"My Lord," he gasped, stumbling up to his demonically fattened wife. She was seated on a thick wooden bench designed to host three but barely wide enough for her steatopygic frame. Her uncovered calves drooped in folds and bulges; her knees had at least a half dozen indentations. Between her maximally outstretched legs, her belly hung to the floor. She was idly chewing on a slice of pizza when he entered the room, and it wasn't until she finished the piece that she spoke.
"You look surprised," she said. "But what're you thinking?"
"I don't know," Dick said, grabbing one of his wife's palms. "How are you feeling?"
"Maybe I'm still in denial," Tempest told him. Every sentence she spoke was capped with a deep intake of breath. "Or maybe Neldra gives me a different perspective. But I'm okay." She took another deep breath, grabbed a new slice of pizza, then continued. "We're going to need a bigger house, of course."
"Know a town that has several homes built to special needs," her husband said. "If you're willing to accept a change in scenery, I'm sure we can find something there."
Tempest beamed at her husband. Moving to Drimmer would be a major change, but she was looking forward to getting to know her sister - and to learning more about her mother.
"How are you doing?" Maxwell whispered into Neldra's ear, sinking into her fleshy side as he did.
"I think," Neldra told him, "you're going to have your work cut out for you, keeping me fed. But I know you can do it."
"And the rest of it?"
"It's going to take some time before I can get myself under control enough to do more traveling," she told him. "But I'll do it.
"Bh'elgh's gone beyond the terms of our agreement, luring me into a situation where'd I'd wind up double in size. It's going to take some preparation, but I have to make sure this creature doesn't do any further interference!"
"Once you've invited a demon," Maxwell noted, "it's difficult to get it out of your life."
"Point taken," Neldra said, "but I can't let this go unanswered. To do so would only invite further obstructions."
Maxwell sighed, then leaned into Neldra to kiss her on the cheek. "Looks like we'll be moving south, too," he said. "I doubt this house will be able to continue to support you in the long run."
Neldra's face receded slightly, then reasserted itself: a nod in the context of her overwhelming frame. She felt her weight all around her. It was like being pinned in Bh'elgh's plane all over again, only this time her own body fat made her immutable. Before she could continue, she felt her appetite start to renew.
On the edge of the room, she saw Tempest and her husband as they discussed their future. Tempest was idly chewing on another slice of pizza. Neldra almost envied the casual way that she did it. Eating would never be an idle act for Neldra; thanks to Bh'elgh it would continue to encompass most of her life.
Before the Stevens had come into her life, she'd grown comfortable with her size and hunger. Now, she was going to have to learn anew. She flexed her arms in their fat-swaddled cushions, remembering when she still could bend them.
Perhaps this was meant to be, she thought. Both life and magick required a challenged intellect.
All she knew for sure was: right now, she couldn't wait for Maxwell's next meal.
Copyright (C) 1997 - Oakhaus Designs
