ILLUSION
"I know," a student finally answers, "that fast magic is an oxymoron - as magical ability is the product of years of study."
"What do you know about Fast Majicke?" the master repeats, and a second student raises his hand.
"I know," he offers, "that fast magic can occur in times of great tumult, in storms and uprisings, in moments when the concentration of dynamic energy is at its highest."
"What do you know about Fast Majicke?" the sorcerer repeats once more, and after a long period of silence, a third student timidly offers this answer:
"Nothing," the fat student says.
And this student becomes the mage's apprentice.
Loretta was cursing the dressing table lights when The Great Rudolfo entered her room.
"Rudy!" she pronounced, turning with a dangerous look toward the tall, cloaked figure. "This is the worse dump yet! How's a girl supposed to get ready when the lights keep flickering? I nearly poked my eye out, tryin' to apply eye liner!"
Rudolph Saber massaged his assistant's shapely shoulders, sighing in agreement. It was not the first time she'd made such complaints. "I know," he said consolingly. "I've been working on a way to spice up the act, and I think I've discovered it."
Loretta looked up questioningly. He could see where she'd slipped with her applicator but decided not to say anything. It wouldn't be noticed from the audience.
"This book's the answer," Rudy said, stepping back to dramatically pull a battered paperback from beneath his cloak. Loretta squinted through the sputtering light to get a better look at the title. She pursed her ample lips as she tried to make sense of the filigreed lettering, crinkled her nose at the scent of mildew.
"They misspelled 'magic,'" she saw.
"Weren't as concerned with proofreading as they are in this century," Rudy explained. "This book's a legend in stage magician circles: one of the earliest - maybe the earliest - illusionist manuals around! It appears to be a modernized version, though I didn't know such a work even existed!"
Loretta turned back to the mirror in disgust. "A book of moldy ol' magic tricks," she snarled. "As if the act weren't too familiar already!" Another frequent gripe: ever since a major network had broadcast the secrets behind many of Rudy's best tricks, the gigs had been growing worse.
"This book," Rudy answered, "will allow us to transcend the mundane and familiar!" He gestured to include the room in this description, then asked Loretta, "What's the most important attribute that a stage magician's assistant must have?"
Loretta knew the answer to that 'un: "A good body to distract the marks!"
"Not just a good body - a supple one," Rudy corrected. "The modern audience knows this, though, so we've got to fool 'em. We've got to make it look as if the assistant lacks the flexibility to pull off each illusion."
"What're you talkin' about?" Loretta squinted suspiciously at her boss. To think, she'd quit a perfectly lucrative gig as an exotic dancer. . .
"Any illusionist can make a shapely, thin assistant disappear. But what about a fat shapely one?"
"Is this a brush-off?" Loretta began. "Cause if it is, I can find modeling work."
"Nonono," Rudy quickly interjected. "Hear me out, Loretta." He pulled up a stool and straddled it. "Stage magic's about illusion, the con. Yet now the audience knows how most of our tricks are done - using compartments and a small assistant. We need to make it appear as if you, the assistant, aren't as small as you actually are. Create a new illusion."
"You want me to look fat," Loretta said, unsure if she was hearing him right.
"I want you to look obese," Rudy corrected. "So fat that you can barely squeeze into the cabinet! So big that the idea of you disappearing into a hidden compartment is inconceivable! We'll play it for comedy - tasteful, of course - make it look like you're so huge we can hardly shut the door!"
"And then?"
"Once the door's closed, you revert to size, and it's business as usual! The fillip is convincing the audience that they're seeing a woman too fat to pull it off!"
"And how do we do that?"
"Answer's in here," The Great Rudolfo told her, tapping the paperback, then quickly palming it from view. Loretta knew better than to ask for anything more. Ever the showman, Rudy wouldn't reveal the specifics until he was ready.
"We're on in fifteen," he said, backing out of the dressing room. "I'll let you finish up."
Loretta went back to applying her eye shadow.
Her: fat.
Wouldn't her family get a charge out of that 'un? Loretta was the only child to escape her parents' genetic curse.
Everyone else in her immediate family was super-sized. Where her sisters and brothers had all grown beyond the range of basic bathroom scales, the only extra avoirdupois on Loretta was centered on her breasts.
The rest of her frame was lithe and boyish, so much that one jealous rival in her exotic dancing days had accused her of getting a boob job. It was all natural, however. At times - when she felt her tits mashing against her chin in the sword basket, for instance - she'd even considered getting 'em surgically reduced. Rudy wouldn't appreciate it, though.
Thinking about it, she shouldn't have been surprised to hear him coming up with this fat woman gimmick. The one time Rudy had seen her family portrait, he'd lingered on her sisters. Loretta knew all about chubby chasers - her sisters had married two, after all - though she suspected her boss wasn't all that aware of his preference.
She'd reserve judgment on his so-called "fast majicke," though. The Great Rudolfo was a master of the unfinished project. Rising, she adjusted the cleavage of her sequined body suit and headed for the stage, putting the conversation out of her mind. It was several cities before Rudy re-introduced the subject.
They were eating dinner at Denny's after the show - now there was a night o' classy dining for you! - and Loretta was weighing the merits of a slice of pecan pie. Whenever the weather started to turn cold, her appetite perked up, but this winter, the urge to gorge was stronger than usual. Must be a heavy February ahead, she thought, folding the menu and putting it out of reach. Rudy noticed her action and arched an eyebrow quizzically.
"Spandex is very unforgiving," Loretta explained, "and my costumes have been tighter 'n usual lately!"
"Not to worry," he said with a smile, handing back the menu. "Got your fat suit finished. You won't be wearing spandex on-stage, anymore!"
For a moment, Loretta didn't recall what he was talking about. Then it hit her.
"When did you have time to do this?" she asked. But Rudy only grinned and shook his head.
"Time wasn't the issue; the right materials were," he explained. "Order something rich and sinful for dessert. This is a night to celebrate!"
"I'll order to go," Loretta decided. "I wanna see this new getup."
"Fair enough." He rose and lead her back to his dressing room. Opening a trunk covered with cabalistic symbols, Rudy pulled out a large pink wad of fabric. It was, she saw, the color of bubble gum. This was supposed to be a realistic body suit?
"How's it work?" Loretta asked.
"It's inflatable," Rudy explained, pulling out one of a trio of air canisters. "Designed to impersonate a fat lady's torso once it's filled." He indicated a brightly colored muumuu hanging behind the door. "Dress goes over it to complete the illusion, draping all the way to the floor. Once you're away from audience sight, the fat suit deflates quickly. This'll allow you to hide in the usual places."
"That's a lot of loose fabric," Loretta mused. "Wouldn't want to get it caught in any trap doors."
"You'll need to haul in the excess," Rudy agreed. "But you can do it with enough practice."
"I'll need a lot of practice," she corrected as she fingered the fat suit. The fake skin was in two layers, with something gelatinous in between to give it a little jiggle. "I've never been a fake fat lady before!"
"I have every confidence in you." As she unfolded the suit, her stomach rumbled hungrily. "Want a piece of pie?" Rudy asked.
"Might as well," she considered. "It's not like it's gonna ruin this figure!"
Shucking her dress, Loretta pulled on the body suit. It went over her effortlessly like an XXXL sweatshirt. Rudy's suit was sleeveless and legless, fully concentrated on her belly, hips, breasts and rear. She started giggling when he attached the canister to a nozzle where her belly button should have been. She felt like someone in an old cartoon.
The fat suit filled rapidly, and when Rudy gauged that she was sufficiently massive looking, he tossed the dress to Loretta. Uncovered, she looked like the Michelin Woman. Tentatively, she bent her arms - the openings limited her movement but not disastrously so. When she moved her arms forward, though, the act pushed her fake belly and mams into fatter prominence.
The muumuu slipped over easily - it was still plenty roomy - but she needed Rudy's help to pull it down the rest of the way. Once she was properly garbed, Loretta examined herself in the dressing room mirror. You had to give Rudy credit: it was amazing how convincing it all appeared.
She looked super-sized, taking up as much space as the largest of her family. Her dress loomed before her by at least two feet; her artificial hips spread more than a yard across. Across this massive edifice, her face looked even tinier. They'd have to do something about that. Fortunately, the busy design on her dress masked the size of her arms; her legs were lost beneath the floor-length dress.
"I know what you're thinking," Rudy said, pulling out his makeup case. "We can make your facial features more compatible with the rest of you. What you think?"
"How quickly does it deflate?" she asked. "I've only got about sixty seconds to work!"
"We'll add another thirty seconds with some comic business," Rudy offered, and he reached unerringly for the nozzle beneath her dress fabric. Loretta's torso swiftly reduced to its original size. Her muumuu hung around her like a bunched-up sail.
"Now, how about some of that pie?" she asked, slipping out from under her fat suit.
Rudy grinned and tossed her the styrofoam container. He'd ordered, she saw, two slices: they sat side by side in the container, a full fourth of pie. Shrugging, Loretta cut into the tip of both pieces.
The following day, The Great Rudolfo canceled their limited amount of engagements and worked on enhancing his new illusion. He developed a latex double chin, so Loretta's face now matched the rest of her. Over the weeks, she got faster and smoother at stripping down to size; once deflated, she could pull her sagging covering into place with rote efficiency.
Loretta borrowed some family home videos and started studying the way her super-sized siblings moved. She began to enjoy playing the role of a fat woman, simultaneously mocking a life she'd left behind, while enjoying the freedom that ultra-fatness gave her. The longer she pretended, the stronger her hunger seemed to grow. Though she knew from a lifetime of watching her family that most super-sized adults did not eat gluttonously, her appetite had other ideas.
If Rudy noticed her change in dining habits, he never commented on it. Ever the professional, he remained focused on the show. Between them, Rudy and Loretta developed a line of comic patter that padded the routine even further. To cement the illusion, Rudy decided to put an ad in the trades for a second, genuinely portly assistant.
"It'll add balance and make your fatness even more credible," he explained to Loretta over pastries and cappuccino.
The new assistant would be enlisted to aid in those illusions that didn't require Loretta's flexibility.
"Sure we have enough money?" she asked anxiously.
"If this takes off like I'm hoping," he replied, "you'll never go hungry again."
"Scarlet O'Hara," Loretta recognized. "I don't know, babe, the way I've been eatin' lately, that may not be true. Feels like I'm hungry all the time."
"As long as you can move around the compartments," Rudy grinned, "eat as much as you want."
"Don't tempt me," she said, biting into her second coffee cake muffin. Across the coffee shop table, Rudy was wearing one of those I-know-something-you-don't smiles that could be so infuriating. Part of working with a stage magician, she thought. "What?" she finally demanded.
"Nothing," he answered. "Just thinking how lovely you look."
He hired their second assistant that day: a bottom-heavy brunette with the stage name Petra. Petra had the tawny exotic looks of a Middle Eastern belly dancer; she was friendly but totally serious about her place in the act. Not the kind of girl to ruin things by making a play for the boss. Good thing, too, since Petra was one of the sexiest looking fat women Loretta had ever met. She moved with the sleek assurance of a fat feline and was almost as heavy as Loretta pretended to be.
Perhaps it was because she was the genuine article - a real fat woman to Loretta's ersatz super-sizer - that Petra seemed somewhat cool to her. She arrived on time every day for rehearsal, did her part with minimal mishap, and stood quietly on the sidelines when it wasn't her turn. And though Loretta tried to pump her for some juicy personal info, Petra offered her nothing. It was almost as if she had no life outside of the theater.
She always brought a nice selection of goodies to rehearsal, though - home-made pastries with a Middle-Eastern flavor. Loretta was spending so much time in the fat suit it was getting so she could barely remember what she looked like thin. She'd sit on a stool at rehearsal, waiting for her lines, absently nibbling on snacks from Petra's picnic basket. All her free time was spent noshing - and barely noticing it.
A month after Petra came on board, they flew to Denver to finally premiere the new act. Rudy had gotten them booked at Ballantine's, a supper club specializing in second string magic acts. One step away from dinner theater, but you had to start somewhere. The food, Loretta discovered, was pretty good, too.
The show called for Rudy to pull Loretta from the dining crowd, so she'd have the opportunity to sample their menu every night. First day of rehearsal, her table was filled with Petra's snacks. But for dress rehearsal, Rudy insisted that she got the full meal deal. The club's management obliged with a plate of spaghetti and garlic bread, the cheapest item on the menu.
"Don't worry," Rudy reassured her. "Once we do the show, I'll make sure you get something more substantial."
"Good," Loretta answered with her mouth full. In her fat suit, Loretta felt capable of eating her way through several dress rehearsals.
Opening night, the night's special was beef medallions in a mushroom and cream sauce. Loretta was well into her main course, when Rudy and Petra came on-stage. In her fat suit and muumuu, her table filled without enough food to give indigestion to a family of four, Loretta was the very picture of the stereotypical gourmand. She looked at least a hundred pounds heavier than Petra.
"Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen," The Great Rudolfo began. "My lovely assistant and I have an evening of illusion planned for your entertainment. May I introduce my big, beautiful assistant, the Divine Miss Petra!" He gestured to the plus-size beauty, bedecked in a form-fitting dress that displayed every curve on her Rubenesque body. Petra smiled mysteriously at the crowd. "Some of you may be surprised to see a woman of Miss Petra's - um - robust proportions on-stage. Well, I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen: big is beautiful, and fat magic is the most beautiful of all!"
That was Loretta's cue. Mouth full of egg noodles, she loudly harrumphed, then proclaimed in a voice loud enough for her neighbors to hear: "She's not so big!"
"Pardon?" Rudy feigned surprise, then walked to the edge of the stage.
"I said, 'She's not so big,'" Loretta repeated, sitting back and crossing her arms in front of her ample seeming belly.
"Oh," Rudy answered. "Couldn't understand you the first time with your mouth full." The audience snickered delightedly, and Loretta rose, giving them all full view of her super-sized frame. Several women gasped in dismay.
"You claim you can do fat magic," Loretta challenged, putting her fist on her shelving hips. "Let's see you try it with a real woman!" She speared a mushroom off her plate and plunked it into her mouth, smirking.
"A challenge!" Rudy announced, conspiratorially addressing the rest of the room. "Never let it be said that The Great Rudolfo walked away from a challenge! Come up here, young lady!"
Taking one last look at her half-finished dinner (should've eaten faster, she told herself - a mistake she wouldn't make tomorrow), Loretta smiled and headed for the stage. Don't overdo the waddle, she told herself, as she hefted up the steps.
Rudy lead her by the hand to a cabinet center stage. Standing before it, Loretta could tell the audience was doing a quick comparison. She looked as large as the cabinet's four foot width.
"Think you can fit inside?" Rudy asked with mock concern.
Loretta made a show of looking unsure, then she nodded, nearly dislodging her prosthetic double chin. Careful, she thought, as she watched Petra unlock the cabinet. "I'll just hold my breath!" she told the audience. They applauded her good natured jibe at herself.
She edged her butt into the cabinet, until she came up against the false back. As Rudy mock struggled to get the door closed all the way - good for about fifteen seconds at least - Loretta let the air out of her suit. It emitted a barely discernible hiss.
Once deflated, Loretta had room to remove the cabinet's backing and slide behind it. Rudy and Petra slowly rotated the cabinet on its pedestal. "Should have oiled this thing beforehand!" he complained to the audience, as Loretta squeezed into her cramped hiding place and put the false back into place. Layers of dress and empty fat suit pressed against her. The cabinet stopped. In the small cubicle, she could hear her stomach grumbling hungrily.
Then she heard the cabinet door open, followed by the crowd's applause. "Never made a woman that big disappear before," Rudy told the crowd. "Hope I can bring all of her back!"
He shut the door, and Loretta gave herself some breathing room. Pulling a hose from the back of the cabinet, she hooked herself up and flipped the nozzle's switch. Fifteen seconds, and she'd be back to fat size. It didn't matter if she came out of this looking a bit disheveled - that was part of the comedy.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Loretta was inundated by a profound sense of hunger. It washed through her with the power of her most intense sexual experience. Her flesh tingled underneath her dress; her face and chins grew warm. For an instant, she forgot where she was, lost as she was in this overwhelming sensory wave.
When she recovered, her suit had reached its max - and then some. Hopefully, no one in the audience would notice that she was a couple inches bigger than she'd been when she stepped into the cabinet. She pulled her dress down over her dimply knees just as Rudy opened the cabinet.
"How you feeling?" he asked.
"Not all there," Loretta answered, as he helped her to the front of the stage. The audience tittered.
"Don't see any of you missing!" Rudy cracked, making a show of examining her protruding backside. "I'll tell you what. For being such a good sport, your meal is on us!"
"In that case," Loretta shot back with a grin. "I want a fresh plate of everything!" Cheers from the room.
By the time she got to her table, two waiters with trays were waiting for her. While Rudy and Petra ran through the next hour, she happily gorged herself. When it came time for her second illusion, Loretta was feeling totally stuffed.
Rudy appeared on the edge of the stage.
"Excuse me, young lady," he said, "but the management's getting a little worried. You ever gonna get full?"
"Maybe," she said flirtatiously. "Is there a reason you interrupted my dessert?" She indicated a half-eaten slice of German chocolate cake and looked to the room for sympathy.
"Well," Rudy sighed. "I don't remember dessert being part of the deal. How about you come up here and earn that chocolate cake?" The audience shouted its approval, as Rudy had known they would.
It was harder getting back on-stage. After two full tables' worth of supper club fare, Loretta felt almost as fat as she looked. As she took her first step up, it even seemed like her own belly was rubbing against the top of her thighs. But that, she knew, was ridiculous.
The trick this time was the old reliable basket of swords. Instead of stepping into the ultra-large wicker basket - a prohibitive act for a woman her purported size - Rudy and Petra lowered it over her. This time, she opened the suit as the basket started its descent. It was the only way she could kneel and give herself room in the four foot tall basket. She had to bundle the fat suit tightly close around her. It wouldn't do for her to get it pierced by any of the swords. Positioning herself in her usual basket stance, Loretta watched the swords pass all around her. She thought of the chocolate cake waiting at her table. Her sense of fullness had vanished with her illusory fatness.
"You okay?" Rudy asked at one point.
"I'm fine," she shouted, shaking the basket for emphasis. "But you owe me another piece of cake!"
Once he started pulling out the swords, Loretta hooked herself a second time. Rudy removed the closest blades first, so she was able to start before they all were out. As she flipped the nozzle switch for the final time that night, the tingling sensation again electrified her skin. Goose bumps, she thought.
She kicked the hose through a hole in the floor, her skirt masking this act as the basket raised around her. The audience gave them a standing ovation.
"Have another piece of chocolate cake," Rudy whispered to her. "You earned it." Though they shouldn't have, his words got her mouth watering.
She had two pieces through the last of Rudy's tricks. When the show ended and the crowd ambled out, Loretta felt ready to collapse. Eager to shed the fat suit, she said as much to Rudy back in her dressing room.
"Night's not done yet," he told her. "We've got to establish ourselves, and the best way to do that is to hit a few night spots. I'm taking you, the sexiest fat gal in all of Denver, out for a celebratory drink!"
"But if I go out with you," Loretta pointed out, "and someone from the audience sees us, won't they know that this sexy fat lady was a plant?"
"Sure they will," Rudy agreed. "They'll know the fat lady was a plant. That's part of the illusion: make 'em think they've caught you on an insignificant detail, and they'll miss the bigger deception! The audience doesn't really wanna know how a trick's done, but they like to think that they've got a part of it." He pulled a dress box from behind his back; the name emblazoned on it read, "Ample Stuffing."
"What's this?" she asked.
"Something for your to change into," he said. "It's a little more glamorous, and besides, that dress you've got on is pretty wrinkled."
Loretta fingered the material of the mega-plus-sized evening gown: silk and sensual, it begged to be slipped on.
"This is lovely," she said.
"As lovely as you," Rudy answered. "Try it on."
She didn't realize how damp her old dress had gotten until she started to take it off in her dressing room. Those hot lights really made you sweat, she thought. Just as she raised her dress over her head, the room went dark.
"Damn dressing room lights!" Rudy griped. He handed Loretta her dress in the dimness, then helped her pull it down over her fulsome shoulders. "Let's go out in the hall where there's light!"
Giggling and as she stepped out into the bright hall, Loretta examined herself in the mirror. She looked pretty hot for a four-hundred-and-eighty-plus pound woman, though she had no clue where that specific figure came from. Poking her prosthetic chin with a pudgy finger to make sure it still held, her upper arm swinging slightly, she joined Rudy out in the hall.
"Where's Petra?" Loretta suddenly realized.
"Went on ahead," Rudy said vaguely, and he lead her to their waiting cab. Just the act of waddling out of the building winded her. She never noticed how much the back of the cab sagged once she settled into it.
They shot down the street to a bar frequented by the city's prime celebrity chasers. Though the place was packed, they were immediately lead to their own table. Word of the show had already preceded them.
"Ice cream drink?" Rudy offered as he held out Loretta's chair. She daintily lowered herself, her wide bottom spreading dramatically. You wouldn't have thought you could feel the chair so easily through her fat suit, but she did.
"Heavy on the ice cream," Loretta told him, as a slightly tawdry woman with a notepad approached their table. Let the shmoozing begin, Loretta thought happily, casting off her earlier exhaustion. Nuthin' like a dose of fame to energize you!
Rudy took her drink order seriously. He continued to ply her with kahlua and ice cream, topped with whipped cream, and she could barely taste the kahlua. By the end of her fourth serving, though, Loretta knew she'd been imbibing. Sweating inside her tight silk gown, she daubed her voluminous cleavage with a wet napkin and asked if they could finally leave. Rudy nodded.
"Never did see Petra," she told him as she wobbled out of the club. Her full cheeks and chins had grown flush in a way no makeup could imitate.
"Maybe she decided to go home instead," Rudy guessed. As they rode their cab back to Comfort Inn, Loretta began to tire. Collapsing on the king-size bed, she was too washed out to even lift her fat arms.
"Got to get out of this dress," she yawned.
"Let me help," Rudy offered, and he slowly rolled up the front of her gown. When he got to the nozzle at her belly apex, he pushed it open with his thumb. A quick hiss, and the suit deflated by about a half inch.
Then it stopped.
"Done already?" Loretta asked, and Rudy nodded. Slowly, she hefted herself into a seated position. Pulling off both dress and fat suit, she took a look in the motel mirror at the women she'd become. She blinked in puzzlement through her kahlua haze.
Who was this in the mirror? She recognized the hairstyle and the makeup, but it was like looking into a funhouse mirror. The reflection was super-sized and apple-shaped, genuinely obese. Spread beneath her ultra-wide hips was the deflated fat suit: it had added maybe thirty pounds to what looked to be a 450-pound frame.
"Rudy?" she asked in a little girl's voice. "What's going on here?" She looked at her lover, saw him taking her whole form in with a expression of simultaneous awe and lust, and a fresh set of emotions coursed inside her. Her white, naked body quavered all around her. He was responsible for this, somehow. The sheer arrogance of his act sobered her.
"Did you do this to me?" she demanded, grabbing her ballooning belly by the sides with both hands and lifting it off the bed. It slipped from her grasp, flowing once more into the space between her outstretched legs.
"It was the book!" he protested, not quite answering her question. He held up the battered paperback, and for a second it seemed to morph in his hands, the "s" in its title momentarily winking out to give a different message entirely. "Didn't fully believe it, but it looks like this is the real thing!"
"Didn't believe what?" she persisted.
"There were rumors about this text," he said. "But it's hard to separate myth from fact."
"Tell me some of these myths, Rudy," Loretta said, rising angrily. For the first time, she was aware of herself as a fat woman - as if her removal of the fat suit had secured her super-sized corporality. She was breathing heavier than she'd been a few minutes earlier, but that could also be attributed to her heightened emotion. As she took one heavy step toward Rudy, she felt her naked flesh jiggle about her. The stage magician stepped back in response.
"Stories," he elaborated, "of women - and men - transformed through their discovery of Fast Majicke."
"'Transformed,'" Loretta repeated.
"The forces behind it appear to be attuned to size," he said. "Like goes to like."
"You were hoping for this, weren't you?" Loretta realized. "Hoping all the myths were true!"
"Maybe," Rudy admitted, "in the back of my mind. Though who knew it could really work?" He grasped both of her well-rounded shoulders. "I'm truly sorry, Loretta."
"For what?" she demanded, shrugging off his comfort to collapse once more on their protesting bed. She had to quickly put both hands down for support; at this shape, her body's natural inclination was to fall all the way on her back. "The fact that I'm pissed off or the fact that found you out? Couldn't you see past your own stupid fantasies? All our work and rehearsal. . . The act is ruined!"
"Not exactly," Rudy responded. "Think about what we have here: real magic! I know we can channel it in the opposite direction!" He retrieved the flattened body suit from the bed. "This suit is the key."
His words were enough to calm her down. "The suit made me huge," Loretta considered. "You're saying it could make me thin again?"
"It's possible," Rudy responded, "though all the stories around 'Fast Majicke' concern sudden growth. Lemme see what else is in the book!" He grabbed the room's sole comfy chair, sat down and opened the battered volume. "If you're hungry," he said before plunging into it, "Petra left some goodies for you." By the side of the bed was a trio of full grocery sacks.
If she had taken a moment to consider it, Loretta would have realized that there was still more to this situation than Rudy was telling. But as soon as she opened the first sack and got a whiff of fresh-baked sweet bread rings, she was gone. Her appetite welled up with so much force that analytical thought - never her strong suit, anyway - was out of the question. Eagerly, Loretta grabbed the first loaf plus a tub of whipped butter. Amazingly, the bread was still warm. Ripping off a hunk, she slathered it with Land O' Lakes.
She spent the rest of the night watching cable teevee and devouring Petra's offerings. The second bag contained four tupperware containers full of baklava, gaimat, and basbousa - a trio of Middle-Eastern pastries - plus a cold two-gallon container of a banana flavored custard called tatly. From time to time, Rudy would look up from his book to watch her. By daybreak, he finally announced that he'd discovered something.
"It's only a stopgap," he began, "but it should help until I can find somp'n more permanent."
"I'm listening," she said, wiping her prominent lips with the back of a dimpled hand.
"It's all in the suit," Rudy explained. "It turned you into the size you are; it can temporarily go the other way."
"'Temporarily.'"
"I told you: 'Fast Majicke' is attuned to abundance. It's connected to expansion, the natural tendency of all progressive entities. A healthy mind expands. So do healthy people. It's no accident that homo sapiens have been growing larger over the centuries; it's how the universe remains vital."
"You give me a headache when you talk like that," Loretta sighed. "What'll we be doing?"
"You'll continue to wear the suit in the act," Rudy said. "With a little tweaking, I can get it to reduce you long enough to do your job. In the meantime, I'll look for a spell that will keep you slim."
It was a start, Loretta decided, rummaging through the remains of Petra's offerings. When it came down to it, her choices were exceedingly limited: trust Rudy or leave him and spend the rest of her life swapping clothes with her sisters. "Make it one," she considered, licking honey off the bottom of a tupperware container with a single fat finger, "that allows me to eat as much as I want without gaining any weight."
Rudy raised an inquiring eyebrow.
"You and Petra have gotten me hooked on overeating," she explained. "I expect you to do something about it."
"Point taken."
They slept the rest of the day away, Loretta taking up most of their king-size bed, dreaming that she was still at her table in the supper club. She woke to find Petra sitting quietly nearby, two picnic baskets on the table, an enigmatic smile on her round face. The teevee murmured quietly in the background.
"Where's Rudy?" Her muumuu was waiting for her at the foot of the bed. Quickly, she pulled it over her massive, jiggling arms.
"At Ballantine's, getting things ready," Petra told her. "He asked if I could throw together a little something to break your night's fast." It was the largest string of words she'd heard from Petra.
"You're not shocked at the sight of me?" Loretta realized, rolling over to fully face the bottom-heavy brunette. Perhaps it was because she was seated, but Petra seemed much bigger than she had the day before - almost as if she were trying to keep pace with Loretta.
Petra shook her head. "My family's been into Fat Magic for generations,"she explained, a trace of a Southern accent clashing with her exotic looks. "Most of the women in my family make you look like a waif." Opening the first basket, she pulled out a zip-loc full of ka'kat and tossed it to Loretta. It was irresistible.
"They're bigger? You make it sound like they wanna be!"
Petra lifted a second baggie of sweet bread rings from her basket. "Honey," she said between bites. "I need to explain a few things to you. Rudy isn't being fully honest with you.
"He's dangling the promise of thinness out in front of you, but he's not telling you the entire story. Only way for you to get slim again is to get a whole lot fatter."
"How's that again?"
"It's the reason my family's grown so willfully large. Fast Majicke is attuned to fatness."
"Rudy said that," Loretta noted.
"Typical illusionist," Petra snorted. "He's given you enough truth to obscure the lie."
"So what's he hiding?
"Stay the size you are, and you'll never be able to stay thin. Grow fat enough, and you'll have power within you to be any size you want!"
"'Grow fat enough'?"
In answer, Petra pulled a small pocket photo album from her basket. The first women she showed was as wide as a vintage Volkswagen. She stood by a picnic table, brightly colored sun-dress overwhelming the camera. This turned out to be one of the smaller photos.
"My God," Loretta gasped. "How do they get around?"
"At that size," Petra said nonchalantly, "not very well. But since they've got the ability to be any size they wish when they're awake, it doesn't hamper them!"
"Any size I want," Loretta reflected around her umpteenth cinnamon roll. She was thinking of her breasts - how nice it would be to be able to size them appropriately for each occasion. Petra reached for her second basket. She could see Loretta processing all she'd said and waited for her to reach the inevitable question.
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" she finally asked.
In answer, Petra rose, pushed her chair back and began to unbutton her dress. She was wearing, Loretta noted, nothing underneath. Soon as she doffed her garment, the tawny illusionist's assistant began to expand.
When she finished, there wasn't an inch of un-shaded floor on her side of the room. The table and chairs had been forced against the wall; the lamp was crushed into a corner. Petra's hips were a good yard wider than she was tall. Her thighs were the circumference of a redwood; her end shelved out farther than her extraordinary paunch, spreading against the curtained window. If she grew any larger, she'd shatter the panes.
"Phew," Petra said, waving a fat hand that looked incapable of getting anywhere near her face. "What a relief! Like peeling out of a too-tight pair of jeans!"
"My God!" Loretta gasped, struggling upright to place her palms against a pillar of hip flesh. "This can't be real!"
"You've been hanging around stage magicians too long," Petra chortled. "You won't believe what you see and feel. This is all me, Loretta! And - you wanna know the truth? - it's not all of me!" She shifted and floor creaked beneath her. Thankfully, Loretta realized, they were on the first floor. "No basement beneath," Petra said, reading her thoughts. "We're safe!" She fell silent, letting Loretta consider her bottom-heavy magnitude. Moving across the mattress, Loretta felt along Petra's forefront in amazement.
"You let yourself get this huge?"
"Of course," Petra replied, rapidly returning to her more familiar form. "The end result makes it worth it!"
"Guess I can see your point," Loretta considered.
"The question is: are you willing to take the leap of faith necessary to be in control of your own destiny?"
Loretta thought about it.
When The Great Rudolfo showed up to escort the two women, she'd already made up her mind.
"Ready for rehearsal?" Rudy asked. Loretta and Petra exchanged knowing looks, then rose together to follow him to the club.
"Don't need to practice the set-up," he told the pair once they'd gotten on-stage, "but you do need to experience your reduction once before we do it for an audience." He stepped over to the magic cabinet and pushed the air hose down with his foot. "Won't need to be using this," he said, with a satisfied look on his face as he replaced the cabinet's false back. "Ready to be transformed, dear?"
"Sure," Loretta nodded, and she waddled over to the open box. Her hips rubbed against the edge of the door frame - she could feel them as they came into contact with the polished wood. As Rudy shut the cabinet doors behind her, her rear flattened. Her arms were pinched between the walls and her broad torso. All of a sudden, the space had grown a whole lot more claustrophobic.
Quickly, Loretta tried to unlatch the false backing. Her real fat forefront was much less yielding than the suit, though, and she was unable to get to it. Looked like she was pinned until Rudy got her back down to size. Nothing to do but wait, she thought.
On-stage, The Great Rudolfo started chanting his incantation. A cold feeling swept over Loretta. Her uncovered arms began to move away from the walls, and she was finally able to reach the latch. As she further shrank within her dress, Loretta slid behind the false back and shut it firmly into place.
A beam of light along the edge of the backing told her that Rudy had opened the cabinet doors. He tapped on the backing. "Okay in there?" he asked, and she shouted back that she felt fine.
"Great," he said, and she heard the cabinet doors shut.
Within her fat suit, Loretta felt her re-formed body. Her flesh was smooth and taut, the skin of a woman who'd always been thin and lithe. Back in her old form: for some strange reason, the realization wasn't the relief she expected it to be. "It's only because you're stuck in this cabinet," she told herself, "unable to take advantage of it." But these words didn't quite sound right. In her diminished state, she felt empty and irritable, vaguely displaced and yet sharply hungry. "It's temporary," Loretta decided. "That's why it doesn't feel real!"
When she stepped back into the larger compartment and started growing back into her dress, it was almost with a sense of relief. Soon as she squeezed out of the cabinet, she stretched her four-hundred-and eighty-plus pound body and looked around the room. Rudy had added about thirty more pounds to her body this time. She and Petra had both known he'd be unable to leave well enough alone.
"Is it possible to get something to eat before the show?" she asked Rudy, and he gestured to Petra. Smiling a smile that said two different things, she leapt off the stage and returned with another of her wonderful picnic baskets. As before, it was packed with preternaturally fresh pastry.
"You know," Rudy told her as she sat down to work on her first dinner, "I was only half sure this'd work. If you want, I can cast you down to your old size after the show."
She took a few moments to savor the taste of Petra's baking, but she knew she had to ask the question he was expecting of her. "For how long?" she asked, all innocent eagerness.
"Don't know," he answered. "But I'm sure we can make the most of your time."
"Sounds like a plan," Loretta smiled between bites.
Later that evening, as she sat in front of dressing mirror getting psyched for the show, Rudy popped in with another piece of news. "Jules Castle is in town," he announced to the two women. "He's a booker for several major Nevada casinos. Word is he might be at the show tonight."
"We'll have to give him something truly memorable," Loretta said. "I think we're up to it."
Petra nodded in agreement.
"Let's do the evening gown tonight," Rudy told his assistant. "Since we've less to hide, you should be able to wear something a bit more - um - revealing."
"Sure," she agreed. The dress was still loose enough to mask her suit, which was all she needed.
She arrived at her table early, doubling her order on appetizers, thoughtfully devouring every item put before her. Had she always possessed so large an appetite, tamping it down by her diet regimen, or had it grown to match her super-sized body? Loretta suspected the answer crossed both lines of possibility: when you dealt with real magic, nothing was very clear-cut. She suspected, though, that her gluttony was an inseparable part of the transformation process. Why else would Rudy have pushed all those ice cream drinks on her that first night?
". . .fat magic is the most beautiful of all."
Her cue. Where had the time gone? Looking up, Loretta put on a scornful expression, scanned the packed club then dove once more into the role of fat lady heckler. A few couples from the night before whispered between themselves, smiling because they were in on the conspiracy. Loretta rose from her table, barely noticing the landscape of empty plates on it.
"Think you can fit inside?" Rudy was smarmily asking as she slowly approached the cabinet. Her reply got another laugh, and she eased herself into the confined space. Those extra thirty pounds, she learned, had largely gone to her hips and upper arms. Hopefully, she'd still fit without causing too much of a strain on the structure: early that evening, Petra had loosened most of the joins.
Fortunately, the cabinet held long enough for her to reduce to her old size.
The hose was waiting for her in the compartment. As she hid from audience view, Loretta attached it to the nozzle of her fat suit. Impatiently tapping her feet, she waited for her moment. When Rudy began chanting the words she knew were part of the actual growth spell, she slipped out of her compartment, flipped open the nozzle and started to fill her suit anew.
A warm feeling came over her torso, then her legs and arms, and she once more began to grow super-sized. Through the door, she could hear Rudy getting ready to open the cabinet. But before he could, Petra stepped in front of him.
"Sure you did that right?" she was asking, loud enough for both the audience and Loretta to hear. "You might've cast a more powerful spell!"
Loretta could see the expression on Rudy's face. He loathed improvisation. She giggled, then took note of her progress. She was close to 480 now, but her growth was just beginning. As she expected, her dress grew with her: Rudy had obviously been planning to build her past 500 all along, a number (Petra had explained) with its own allure to those enamored of super-sized beauty. Once she swelled past this poundage milestone, her belly began to press insistently against the cabinet door. She had many more canisters in the basement, however.
Her forefront grew and flattened, pushing her breasts up to her eye level, drooping down the front of her legs like some fleshy comforter. For the first time Loretta was able to feel beyond her magically induced hunger and appreciate the process: the sensation of warm air turning into solid woman, adding layer upon layer of jiggling avoirdupois. Within, her entire physiology was shifting to accommodate her, much as it had to a lesser degree evolved to support her 480-pound body.
She thought of all the gormandizing she'd done over the past months. Warm-up exercises, she thought with a smile. With every pound she gained, her appetite grew stronger.
When Rudy finally started to open the cabinet, she was 150 pounds heavier than her old peak weight. The door flung open out of his hands, and her belly surged forward, forcing him to step back. "What the hell?" he started, as the cabinet's side walls started to yield under the force of her widening hips. It had taken fifteen to twenty seconds for her to reach her present size, a gain of more than twenty-five pounds per second.
"Hi, Rudy," she said in a voice only he could hear. "Like what you see?"
"Can you get out of there?" he muttered, and she laughed throughout her 700-plus pound body.
"Give me about ten more seconds," she told him. "But back off so the audience can get a better look!"
Rudy did, and a murmur rose within the theater. Loretta grew to fill the cabinet, and when she reached the 900 pound mark, it finally split apart. Walls falling away from her in three directions, the mountainous illusionist's assistant stretched and showed herself off for the first time. Arms hanging by her sides, she stood with her legs outstretched and back arched to support her ballooning body. As her belly and breasts grew outwards, it looked to the audience as if her head was moving away from them. Her fingertips sank into her progressively more pillowy hips.
The bottom hem of her dress rose from the floor. But as Loretta continued to grow, both her dangling belly apron and thickening calves shielded the air hose. She smiled at Rudy, who was watching her astounding transformation with the gap-mouthed stare of a sideshow rube. Petra, she noticed, had already taken advantage of the distraction to duck off-stage.
Taking a tentative step away from the debris, she felt her inner legs rub, felt the underhang of her arms as they jostled atop her billowing sides. Her belly restricted her stride significantly; pressing down the front of her legs, its drop grew by inches as the seconds passed. Atop that swelling edifice, her breasts rode imperiously. Loretta peered above them: if they grew any larger the only way she'd be able to see ahead of her would be to squint through the valley inbetween them. Her chins had grown so abundant she was finding it difficult to lower her head.
Though her dress continued to keep up with her, it clung to her body like a wet sleeveless tee-shirt. With her belly apron progressively more exposed as it sagged towards the floor, the dress was closer to an extra-long top than a full-body garment. It stretched over every new fold and bulge, its straps digging into Loretta's blubbery shoulders.
She swelled with the speed of a water balloon being filled at full force. Her sides grew further away from her center, pushing her arms up into flapping position. Her belly hung to the stage and started to encroach on the floor ahead of it. Behind her, she could feel both her rear and the back of her legs start to follow its lead. Loretta's breasts were up to eye level, but their future growth was primarily outwards, not upwards.
Finally, her backside grew so immense that it forced her to sit down: a drop of maybe six inches or so to hit the floor. She was almost as wide as the stretch of her fingers; her belly surged ahead of her by more than a yard. The hose detached underneath her dress, sliding across her quivering torso to be retrieved in the basement.
Loretta's transformation was complete.
Her weight, she estimated, was in the two-ton range. More than twice the size of Petra in the motel.
Rudy moved in as close to earshot as her body would let him.
"Invite somebody on-stage," she whispered. "They're already wondering if what they see is real."
Though he hated ad libbing, Rudy was more than capable of the quick recovery. Turning to the audience, he gestured broadly and announced, "Looks like Petra was right - I did overdo the spell! Anybody in the audience willing to come up here and help me?"
A pair of young cowboys left their dates at their table to bound on-stage. They stood within inches of Loretta until finally one of them got the nerve to touch an arm. "My God, it's real!" he told the audience at large. The crowd burst into applause.
"Of course I'm real!" Loretta mock blustered. "Can I go back to my table now? I still haven't had my dessert!"
"At this size, I don't think the restaurant has enough in its entire stock to feed you," Rudy exclaimed. As he spoke, the two cowboys circled Loretta to see if they could find anything suspicious. They passed over the small hole in the floor.
"Well, then, do something!" Loretta demanded.
Rudy told the two cowboys to grab a side of cabinet, then instructed them to hold the two walls in front of Loretta. Pieced together, the three-foot sides were insufficient to shield her entire body - her sides were visible along both edges - so Rudy grabbed the front door and added it to the makeshift wall. "Don't look!" he told the cowboys. "Don't know if the dress'll shrink back with her! You wouldn't wannna embarrass the young lady!"
Though she was blocked by the screen, Loretta was able to see both the young men and her stage magician lover. Her senses had grown significantly, she realized - one sign of the power now hers. The young cowboy was blushing, and she turned her attention to their dates at the table. One of the girls was plump and approaching chubby. Rudy wasn't the only man in the theater attracted to fatter women, though her young cowboy would have to ride far and wide to find another woman as mammoth as her.
Behind the shield, Loretta concentrated on the image of her mere five-hundred-pound frame. As she did, she felt herself start to fold in to herself, millions of fat cells working to share space with their cousins. Her expanded physiology realigned itself once more, bones becoming thinner, veins and arteries telescoping. It was not an unpleasant sensation, but it wasn't a particularly edifying one either.
This, Loretta now realized, was the ultimate con. At her current weight, she had the ability to become any size she wanted. But she would only feel comfortable at her largest. She looked at Petra, re-emerging from stage right, and she felt a flash of awe at all the illusionist's assistant had accomplished. Spending so much time at a size she knew was wrong for her: it must have taken tremendous willpower.
Petra, attuned to her thoughts, nodded and then returned to the front of the stage.
Taking her reappearance as his cue, Rudy told the two volunteers to drop their walls. Three loud slaps of wood hitting floor, and Loretta was revealed to the theater. Five-hundred-and-twenty pounds packed in her dress, she sneered dramatically at Rudy.
"Now, can I eat my dessert?" she demanded.
"Of course," Rudy demurred, and as the crowd rose to give its approval, she waddled back to her table. A crew of stage-hands rushed forward to pick up the debris. Waiting for her was a full chocolate cheesecake. With her newly expanded appetite, it looked like little more than a petite-four.
Rudy skipped the rest of the act. Anything else would have been anti-climactic. When the show was over and the dinner audience streamed out, a figure in a leisure suit and string tie stayed behind. Jules Castle, the casino scout. He joined the three at Loretta's table as she finished off her cheesecake. She was eager to get out of the club and stretch out, but dessert was a good way to keep her mind off her impatience.
"Amazing illusion," Castle declared. "Never seen anything quite like it!"
"So what you think?" Rudy asked, so nonchalantly that Loretta knew that he was nervous as hell. "Will the Reno crowd go for it?"
"Wouldn't be surprised," Castle answered, then he rose from the table and pulled a card from a small leather case. "Call me tomorrow," he said, tucking the card onto Rudy's jacket pocket.
"We're in!" Rudy exulted, once they were by themselves. "A steady casino gig! It's what we've dreamed of!"
Loretta shifted in her chair. Without even knowing it, she'd relaxed and let herself grow to 740 pounds. Her chair crackled ominously under the extra weight. "Great!" she said happily, chins waggling as she nodded. She idly patted herself on the belly; the fat suit neath her dress seemed to have disappeared.
It was no longer required.
"You two enjoy yourselves," Petra said, pulling her chair back. "I'm done. All I wanna do is go home and let myself go. . ."
Rudy glanced from Loretta to Petra and back to Loretta again.
"What'll I do for an on-stage assistant?" he finally asked.
"You'll find someone," Petra assured them. She rose and grabbed Loretta's great fat hands, leaning across her forefront to kiss her on the cheek. "We'll stay in touch." With that, she turned to leave, waving a fat hand as she headed for the front door. Petra was already starting to return to her real size, Loretta saw: as she turned toward the right to disappear from view, her rear stayed in sight longer than it otherwise should have.
"Let's go back to the hotel," she told Rudy, slipping the note that Petra had passed her into her dress. "I wanna get comfortable."
"That mean what I think it means?"
"You know it does, Rudy."
She dropped back a couple hundred pounds just to fit in the cab, then rose to slowly follow him outside. When they got back to Comfort Inn, first thing she did was have their room changed to a suite. Then she told Rudy to move the furniture out of the way.
"But order some pizzas first," she decided. "It'll take time for them to arrive."
"Pizzas?"
"Your girlfriend's turned into an expensive date. Good thing we've got some money coming in!"
While he followed her order, Loretta shucked her dress. She observed her reflection, the image of a five-hundred pound plus beauty. With her stage-light sensitive makeup and ballooning belly, she looked like a woman from a gag gift calendar. Lifting a drooping arm, Loretta patted her hair coquettishly, then let herself return to her default weight. As she started to enlarge, Loretta felt a rush of self-assurance stronger than anything she'd ever known. All her senses reached out with the boundaries of her body; her capacity for knowledge expanded. She was becoming much more than the mega-fat woman that Rudy had expected. How much more they'd both have to discover.
She grew deliberately, fully experiencing each stage in her transformation. Her sides forced her arms inexorably upwards; her belly covered the front of her legs and pushed into all available space between them; her back sloped to her ever burgeoning rear; her breasts ballooned before her eyes. She felt each alteration, and she loved the feel of every one. Even the smaller details - the sag on the join at the back of her legs, the ring of jowls that circled past her ear lobes, the puff of flesh that padded her palms and kept her from clenching her fists, the taut bulges that had filled in the arches of her feet - were all worth savoring.
Because she was ready for her maxi-growth this time, she wasn't forced off balance when her front and back approached the floor. Her forefront touched first, edging ahead on the motel carpet, a wall of bellyflesh sloping up from its base. Slowly, Loretta let herself sit back on her massive cheeks, her obtruding thighs flattening as they hit the floor before them. Once seated, she knew she'd grown past the point of walking, but considering her abilities, that realization wasn't as terrifying as it could have been.
Just as Loretta was reaching her peak, the phone rang to announce her pizza delivery. She saw the look in Rudy's eyes - he was clearly conflicted between retrieving her meal and watching her hit her growth climax - so she smiled above her chins and said, "I'm just about done, Rudy. You can wait to get the food." A final sigh, and she settled into her new self, licking her protuberant lips in anticipation.
When Rudy returned to the room, carrying a box of a half-dozen family size pizzas, he was struck once more by her enormity. Setting the boxes on the bed, he slowly approached her. "Each time I see you this way, it's like I've never seen you before," he said, inches from her chest-level paunch. "You're magnificent."
"Continue with the sweet talk," Loretta told him, "but open one of those pizzas." She waggled her fully splayed fingers. Nestled behind her overwhelming breasts - which had widened enough to radiate past her inner elbow - her outstretched arms were clearly incapable of bending more than an inch or so. "You're gonna have to feed me," she elaborated. Rudy nodded, face reddening like an adolescent's. Swirling toward the bed, he eagerly grabbed the top box.
Then he took a serious look at Loretta's front and sides. Her abdomen extended a good five feet from her center: the closest way to approach her mouth was from the side. Taking two slices and piling them together, he pressed against her swelling hips and torso folds and dangled his offering before her mouth. "Tease," she said, as he slowly slid the tips within reach. Chins mashing together, she suddenly moved her mouth upwards and grabbed a healthy bite. The motion was so sudden and surprising that Rudy dropped both pieces. They slipped down her cleavage, settling into a fold between mam and paunch.
He had to stand on a chair to stretch down and retrieve them. Left hand sinking into her paunch, Rudy pulled the pieces out and quickly wiped her clean. Her skin was smooth, lightly striated with barely discernible stretch marks, hints of blue veins pulsing beneath multiplied layers of epidermis. It was all he could see - like looking at the world made flesh.
"Sightseeing, are we?" Loretta chuckled, and her laugh sent vibrations against his palm. "Don't forget, you've got a hungry woman here!"
"Right!" he shouted, and he returned to her waiting mouth.
She ate each helping swiftly but with maximum appreciation. In less than two hours, she finished all five pizzas, plus a six-pack of Seven-Ups. When she came to her final slice, Loretta belched happily and asked, "What time is it?" After eleven, he told her, and she frowned slightly.
"I was thinking some Baskin-Robbins'd be nice," she explained, "but it's too late tonight." The bulges of her shoulders jiggled in what had to be a shrug. "There's always tomorrow," she decided.
Rudy grinned with relief. Feeding Loretta straight for two hours, keeping his balance as he tilted against her blubbery body, had worn him out. Clearly, life with her was going to require both commitment and stamina.
But looking at her massive beauty, he couldn't see living any other way. From her contact with Fast Majicke, Lo had gone from a traditionally pretty, slightly ordinary young woman to an exemplar of fatness and womanly power. There was nothing he could keep from her, and, amazingly, there was nothing anymore that he wanted to keep from her.
He fell back on the bed, feeling her belly where it spilled against the mattress. Her face lost from sight, Loretta started humming a tune from her days as an exotic dancer: it'd been playing over the sound system the first time he'd seen her performing on-stage. "I remember that," he said sleepily.
Loretta chuckled. Rudy was totally out of her limited field of vision, but she could still feel his presence in the room. She considered reducing herself to join him in bed, but decided against it. Reduced, she'd be too agitated to get any rest. Instead, she just sat back, peacefully watching her surrounding flesh slowly rise and fall, loving the woman that Rudy had helped her become.
He would always be around for her, and though she had the power to make that unnecessary, she probably wouldn't be using it. As the original wielder of Fat Magic, Rudy was tied to his subject in ways he could never have foreseen. To use real magic was to become intertwined with it.
Stage magic was all about control, the male illusionist manipulating his female victim/collaborator in the name of family entertainment. Fast Majicke was about regaining that control by becoming an exemplar of all that appeared uncontrolled. The world was filled with such seeming contradictions. Before her change, Loretta had refused to consider such ambiguities. Now, they amused her.
Yawning, she considered the days ahead. They were going to need a new second assistant in Reno, someone to take her place when Loretta grew bored with her role in the act. Hadn't Petra said something about recruiting others to the ways of Fat Magic?
With that she remembered the note Petra had slipped her. She checked her lover one more time. Rudy was sleeping, snoring lightly - her meal had worn him out. The note was still in the folds of her discarded dress. Using her heightened concentration, she read Petra's last message:
"By now you should have some small idea of the extent of your powers. Amazing, isn't it? I hope you keep this information to yourself for a while. I think you'd agree that Rudy needs to work a bit to make up for his manipulations. I'll be in touch."
Loretta did agree. She'd play helpless in her full size for as long as she could get away with it. The way that Rudy seemed to be getting off on serving her, she suspected that he wouldn't be looking that hard at her capabilities, anyway. Rudy had said it himself: the audience doesn't really want to know all the secrets, just a part of the illusion.
Mentally, she sifted through her dress and lifted Petra's note from it. Best way to remove it: swallow the paper - which, of course, she did. Scanning the empty pop cans on the teevee stand, Loretta found one with about an inch of soda still inside; it was no sweat to raise it to her mouth and wash down the missive. Quietly, she returned the can to its companions.
She aimed her thoughts to the space between her body and the floor, and tentatively tried to lift herself. No go. Her abilities didn't extend that far. Her weight was was just too overwhelming.
Not a real problem, Loretta thought, considering her other powers.
Settling back, she patted her sides and readied herself for sleep. Somewhere in the night sky, a Petra close to double her stage weight was flying home to a community of fat magicians. Some day, Loretta knew, she'd be a part of that community. But for now, she had a lot of learning and growing still to do. No longer an illusionist's assistant, but a magician-to-be.
Her apprenticeship in the world of Fast Majicke was just beginning.
Copyright (c) 2005 - OakHaus Designs