By Wilson Barbers
(Illustrations by Will N. Dorf)
Like most of the homes in the neighborhood, it stood far from the street: a generously roomed mansion with an impeccable lawn, presently being tended by two tubby teens in coveralls. Somewhere in the unseen backyard, a tape player was blasting something by Louis Prima - a Paul Bunyonesque description of an imaginary banana split. Listening to this litany, Jill Danner found herself wishing she'd grabbed a little more to eat at lunch. Whenever she grew bored on a stakeout, she got hungry.
Back in town, her partner was at City Hall, checking out ownership of this property. Too bad he wasn't around to distract her. Absentmindedly, Jill reached into her trench coat and pulled out a pack of gum: something to assuage her hunger. She couldn't afford to give in to her appetite every time she felt bored; she'd be big as a house - heck, as big as that mansion there - if she did. F.B.I. work was filled with hours of watching and waiting. Couldn't fill them all with eating.
Adjusting her mirror, Jill took quick stock of herself. Her face was rounder than she liked, looked like it belonged on a woman at least fifty pounds heavier. Though she tended to hide her shape in long coats and pantsuits, Jill really didn't have anything to be ashamed about: a lithe frame that she worked hard to keep trim, nice legs. There were times she even caught her partner, Davis, eyeing her appreciatively, though the few girlfriends of his that she'd met were typically more zaftig. Davis was pretty retro in his tastes.
Some movement by the house put that thought on hold. Which was just as well. Standing in the entranceway was a voluminous blonde in a sundress. She was so big she had to angle her body sideways to pass through it. Lifting a fleshy arm, the fat woman called to the boys working in the yard. Unbelievable. The woman had to be over three hundred pounds.
"Lookin' for some fashion tips?" a voice asked from outside her car. Davis. Hadn't even heard him drive up behind her. Pretty sloppy.
"I ever let myself go like that, I want you to shoot me," Jill said, as her partner plopped onto the passenger seat.
"That's a bit extreme, isn't it?" His face showed his usual sardonic expression.
"Only you would think so," Jill said. "I've seen the kind of skin mags you buy! Did you know that when a recent group of women were surveyed and asked to choose between losing a limb and being fat, the majority picked losing their limb?"
"Bet that 'un wouldn't have been in your majority," Davis answered, tilting his head in the direction of the woman in the sundress. "From what I can see, her limbs look fine to me."
Typical.
"What'd you get from City Records?" she asked, back to the job at hand.
"Home's registered to a Lester and Jenna Mannix," Davis told her. "A recent paper transfer, though they've been living there for years. Apparently, this Mannix married into the family."
Jill pulled her clipboard from between the seats and quickly found Les Mannix.
"Mannix was in Sharon Prowller's address book," she discovered.
"Guy was a private investigator until three years ago," Davis said. He held up a photocopy of a driver's license. Perhaps it was the black-and-white, but the pic looked pretty seedy. "Figures with a name like Mannix, eh? Not a particularly notable specimen, from all accounts. But his name also crops up in connection with the Garners."
"He the P.I. originally hired to find the couple?"
"Got it in one," Davis said, reaching into his coat for a Hershey's bar and idly biting into it. It irked Jill the way her partner could be so casual about eating. Davis ate like a teenager, had a dismissive attitude towards exercise, yet it never showed on him. He maintained his lanky physique, had the leanly quirky look of a modern Gary Cooper.
Jill, on the other hand, had to work up a sweat daily to keep her weight down; women in her family tended towards matronly. There were days she found herself wondering if her partner'd notice her more if she let her genetic predisposition take hold, though. But that was a place she didn't want to go: not only did it threaten the delicate balance of their working relationship, it also undermined the ascetic lifestyle she'd set for herself. Better to focus on the job: Sharon Prowller and the Garners.
Robin and Ira Garner were one of a series of couples who'd disappeared from the area. According to her partner (who had a thing for finding patterns like this), the line went back at least thirty years. Ira and Robin hadn't been seen for at least five, but it wasn't their vanishing act that had brought Jill and her partner on the case.
That honor was reserved for Sharon Prowller, who'd dropped out of sight about the time Les Mannix resigned from the P.I. biz. Prowller was a mildly famous celebrity: syndicated fitness guru and hyper-caffeinated talk show guest. Ms. P. had said goodbye to all that one day by phoning her studio and resigning. While her decision barely made a blip on the mass consciousness (exergurus were a dime-a-dozen these days), her agent - one Carter Gordon - was fit to be tied. If Gordon was to be believed, his client had been on the verge of signing a big contract.
The agent made a pest of himself, pressuring law enforcement officials and politicians equally, until, finally, their supervisor sent them on the case. Jill wasn't sure they had any business being there. Could be, Miz P. had just gotten sick of peddling diets. Jill'd seen the woman's show one afternoon: loudly assertive, she did not seem like the kind of woman who let things happened to her. Tall and muscularly no-nonsense, with short-cropped hair, Sharon Prowller had the look of a comic book Amazon.
Hard to say what her partner thought about it all. He collected unsolved patterns - though sometimes Jill thought he saw connections where none existed - took even the most ridiculous assignments seriously. Far as Jill was concerned, this was the kind of politically motivated crapwork that had her increasingly questioning the wisdom of her career choice.
Still, you had to do your job. "So maybe we should go talk to this Lester Mannix," Jill decided.
"Maybe we should," Davis said, as she started up the car and headed for the entrance.
Tweedledum and Dee had disappeared from the yard; even the music had stopped. Jill dusted off her coat as she got out of her car then followed her partner up the steps. Her Trident had lost its flavor and hadn't done a thing for her hunger. She was about to pull out a new stick, when the fat blonde answered the door.
"Yes?" she said, eyeing them slowly. Up close, the woman was even huger than expected. She blocked the extra-wide passageway with her mountainous form. Three hundred pounds? Looked like Jill was off by at least one-hundred-and-fifty.
Davis held his i.d. at arm's length, gave the woman time to peer at it then flashed her one of his patented sorry-to-trouble-you smiles. "Jenna Mannix? We're looking for a missing person, and we'd like a chance to talk to your husband," he explained.
"Come in," the woman said, backing away from the door. She a deep, breathy voice, like you often heard in the hyper-obese. "My husband's out. But maybe I can help you." Somehow, the fat woman managed to make this simple statement sound like a come-on. She turned and led them to an open area filled with comfortable chairs and a high ceiling. Looked like the lobby of a very expensive hotel.
Gesturing them onto a nearby couch, Jenna Mannix slowly lowered herself onto a matching love seat, just fitting between the armrests. The bottom of her sundress scarcely covered the lower hang of her paunch, Jill noticed. "You wish to speak to Lester," she cooed, holding all her focus on Jill's partner. The lady obviously knew when she had an attentive audience. Perhaps her husband liked 'em big-boned, too.
"We know he's retired from the business," Jill interjected, "But it looks like one of his old clients has disappeared. Perhaps if we could talk to him."
"And his client was?" Jenna asked, reaching for a nearby fruit bowl to inspect its contents.
"Not sure we should divulge that to anyone but Mr. Man - "
"Sharon Prowller," Davis interrupted, leaning forward. "Perhaps you've heard of her. Did an exercise program on television a couple years ago."
"Do I look like I pay attention to exercise programs?" Jenna asked with a smile.
"You could," Davis answered, without a break in stride. "It's a mistake to assume a person's size reveals their activity levels."
"Nice, Mr. Davis. I like a man who's open-minded." She returned the bowl to its place on the end table then patted her forefront demonstratively, sending ripples through her tremendous paunch. "We're a healthy bunch, though I can't say we're much for exercise. Too many other ways to occupy our time, I'm afraid." She grabbed a banana from the bowl and offered some fruit to her guests.
"You said your husband was out?" Jill asked, shaking her head.
"Had an errand," Miz Mannix explained vaguely. "But you were asking about this Susan Prowller. . ."
"Sharon," Jill corrected. "She had your husband's name in her address book."
"Should I be jealous?" Jenna asked, a smile indicating that was the furthest thing from her mind.
"Doubtful," Davis answered, "but do you remember Les saying anything about this woman?"
"We never talked about business," she said, as she finished peeling her banana. "These days, my husband's busy managing the house."
"Must be an awfully big job," Jill said, looking the vast room over.
"You have no idea," Jenna said. "We're a large family, and most of us live here. We all have large appetites. Takes a lot just to keep the kitchen going." She tossed the empty peel into a nearby waste can then reached for a second banana.
"I bet," Davis said. "I'd love to be given a tour of this place."
"Would like to do that," Jenna told them. "But perhaps you should wait until my husband is home." She slowly rose, discarding her second empty peel as she did, then she indicated the doorway. "Been a pleasure to meet you two, though." She indicated the doorway, but did not bother to follow them back out. Why should she when there still were some uneaten bananas in the bowl?
Before she left, Jill pulled out a business card and handed it to Jenna. "Have your husband call us," she said.
"He'll be in touch," the fat woman said. "Count on it."
"So what d'you think?" Davis asked, once they were back in the car.
"What's to think?" Jill responded. "Looks like an overfed - make that, extremely overfed - rich wife. Probably hasn't done a productive thing in her entire life. Just looking at her makes me want to reinitiate my last diet."
"Dieting," Davis scoffed. "As if you needed to. . ."
"I'm supposed to take your word after watching you drool over Dolly Dimples and her banana act back there."
Davis shrugged then got out of Jill's car. As he did, a large moving van drove past them.
One look in the rear view confirmed her suspicion: the vehicle headed right up into the Mannix driveway. "See that?" she asked her partner.
"Someone planning to pull up stakes?" Davis asked. "Feel hurt that Jenna didn't mention it!"
"Must be losing your touch." Jill said, turning off the ignition.
They spent the rest of the afternoon watching from a safe distance. No one left, but three more vans entered and drove around to the back of the house, unmindful of the well-kept lawn. Quite a fleet.
"If I was moving, I could fit all my furniture in a small U-Haul," Davis said ruefully. "Must not be living right."
"I've said that for years." She slid out of the car, pulled her trench coat tight and strode down the block towards the Mannix estate. "Let's get a closer look, shall we?" Davis followed, chuckling slightly. As they approached the house, they could hear truck motors through the twilight.
"Don't seem to be any alarm systems," Davis observed. "Confident people." They followed the tire tracks along the side of the house then headed for a small grove of evergreens within view of the backyard.
Standing by the rear of the nearest van was an obese man in jeans and sweatshirt, a massive figure who made the super-sized Jenna look petite. Couldn't be Lester Mannix, Jill thought; the pic from his i.d. showed a much smaller man. Reaching into a cooler perched on the edge of the truck bed, the corpulent trucker waited as the yard-work teens backed into view from alongside the truck. They were pulling on two ropes, but whatever they were bringing was still blocked from sight.
"Must be a pretty weighty item," Jill whispered, as the object in question appeared along the edge of the truck.
Draped in silk, quivering on its wheeled platform, a huge mound was being hauled into view. The covering obscured its features, but as more of it grew visible, its general outline could be detected. What they initially took to be a shapeless mound had feminine features.
"Some kind of a sculpture," Jill said. "A Mother Earth figure, perhaps."
"What's it made of? Jello?" Davis wondered. "Whole thing seems to be jiggling."
"Good question," Jill said. "Time for a closer look." Skulking through the thicket of trees, she moved in closer then gasped. What they'd both taken to be an inanimate object was a massive breathing being.
The figure was dressed in a silken robe and appeared to be calmly sitting on the platform. It was wider than it was tall, covering a base that had to be eight-by-eight feet. Though the robe covered quite a lot, it looked as if the figure's torso took up most of their body, sagging over her legs and feet, propping up her arms. Its forefront - paunch and a pair of breasts that must have individually outweighed Jill - ballooned at least five feet ahead of her.
Roosted on top of this unbelievable mountain of flesh was a head so wide and jowl-ridden that it would have blended into the heap of human flesh bulging all around it if the figure hadn't been wearing clothing. Forced by a pile of chins into facing skywards, it smiled with a placid look on its exquisitely fat womanface. Despite herself, Jill was impressed. If an Earth Mother did exist, she thought, surely it looked as calm and lovely in its immensity as this figure.
"Incredible," Davis muttered. "It's a woman! She must weigh over a ton!"
"Two tons," Jenna corrected from behind them.
The duo turned to find the grove surrounded by large figures: men and women, all of them super-sized, all picayune in comparison to the figure being loaded onto the moving van.
"What is this?" Jill sputtered.
"Thought that was obvious," Jenna told her. "We're moving. When the F.B.I. starts knockin' at your door, it's time to get a new door."
"That woman. . ." Davis began, gesturing towards the truck.
"Thought you'd be impressed by Robin," Jenna said. "Hate to disappoint you, but she's already married."
"To Ira Garner," Jill said.
"In the trailer," Jenna said with a nod. "We've generally been able to squeeze both husband and wife into a single moving van, though it doesn't leave room for much furniture."
The group moved in closer, forcing Jill and Davis towards the house.
"How'd they. . . ?"
"Get so big?" Jenna finished for Jill. "Call them the lucky recipients of five years' worth of family gorging. It's something we've been able to do for generations: add weight and lose it all very quickly. All that body weight has to go somewhere. . .
"But you weren't looking for Robin and Ira," she continued, in a confiding tone. "Wanna see Sharon Prowller?"
Looked like they didn't have much choice. Jenna lead the two F.B.I. agents past the moving van and through the servants' entrance, the crowd of fat men and women following. They found themselves in a restaurant-sized kitchen, where two obese blondes were in the process of rolling kegs out of the walk-in refrigerator. As he passed, the first winked flirtatiously at Davis.
"She's right across the hall," Jenna was saying. "Of all our guests, Sharon has proven to be the least patient, so we make it easy on ourselves." She led them into the hall then indicated an open doorway.
"She came looking for the Garners," Jenna explained, as they got their first full look at the former exercise guru. "Thought she could exploit them, put Robin and Ira on some sort of diet and reap publicity from their loss. She didn't know that neither one had any interest in losing weight."
Jill peered into the bedroom and gasped. Sitting on a platform was a vastly transformed Sharon Prowller. She was nowhere near as large as Robin Garner had appeared - if the first had been over two tons, then Sharon was maybe two-thirds that weight - but her body had grown in a totally different way. Where the first woman had added weight all over, the former exercise queen seemed to have gained all but a few hundred pounds in her belly. It loomed ahead of her, overshadowing all else, the top of it cresting above her head. She was wearing a tank top that only managed to cover her breasts, giving up at the swell of her overwhelming paunch.
She looked like a woman about give birth to a small satellite. Her legs spread to both sides of her flattening belly apron uselessly; her arms stretched ineffectively against her ballooning forefront. Though her limbs were all fat enough to support a woman five to six hundred pounds, on Sharon, they looked like afterthoughts.
She peered over a blubbery shoulder towards the two F.B.I. agents. "Who are you?" she puffed, laboring to get each burst of words out. "You brought dinner? . . I'm so hungry. . . I could eat a horse!"
"Looks like she's already eaten the whole herd!" Davis whispered.
Jill was unable to take her eyes off the figure before her. Physiologically, Sharon Prowller was impossible; she was like a living metaphor for the insatiable belly. This woman who had started a career by symbolizing lithe fitness had somehow been transformed into its complete antithesis.
What was going on here?
"It's a little early yet, Sharon," Jenna said from behind them. "Not yet time for dinner."
"You see. . . what they're doin'?" the woman behind the belly whined. "Starving me! . . I never. . . get enough to eat around here!"
"Just finished lunch twenty minutes ago," Jenna explained to them both. She gestured back towards the kitchen and the winking blonde wheeled a keg into the room; Jenna quickly attached a tube to it and passed the other end to Sharon.
"Thanks," the mega-sized woman said, and without further word, she started drinking. A white, creamy liquid could be seen sliding up the translucent tube.
"Sharon wouldn't return to her old way of living even if she could," Jenna said. "Think her agent wants her like this?"
"She's monstrous!" Jill gasped.
"Now that's a bit extreme, isn't it?" Jenna laughed. "Believe it or not, Sharon's happier like this than she ever was as a thin woman. We don't do this to people unable to handle the weight. Wouldn't work if we tried."
Jill mutely looked over at her partner; he stepped forward. "Sharon," Davis asked, moving closer to the massive figure. "You being held here against your will?"
The figure that was Sharon Prowller stopped on her between-meals snack and looked thoughtful. Jill recalled an image from the woman's old exercise video: mannishly pumping her legs up and down, bellowing her show's slogan ("No More Self Hatred!") into the camera. To the old Sharon Prowller, fatness had been tantamount to self-negation. What'd she think of herself now?
"My weight. . . keeps me pinned," she finally told them, all trace of the petulant childlike voice they'd earlier heard gone. "But even. . . if it didn't, . . I wouldn't want. . . to leave the family. . . Takes. . . a lot of work. . . to keep a woman like me fed. . . But they're. . . willin' to do it." With that, she returned to her feeding tube.
Davis turned back to his partner, raised his palms in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture. "We've got nothing," he said decisively. "This is an adult woman with the right to live where she wants."
Jill nodded, though a part of her felt furious by what she'd seen. Through some form of magic that she could barely comprehend, these people had changed ordinary men and women into mounds of uncontrolled gluttony.
"You think we're the monsters now," Jenna said, reading her thoughts. "Hopefully, we'll be able at to convince you otherwise one day." She moved up to Jill, placed a fat finger on the F.B.I. agent's lips; as they touched, a warm sensation rushed through Jill's body. "But you and your partner have to get back to your office now. There's paperwork to be done. And files to be closed."
For an instant, Jill caught a whiff of something from the woman's hand - a scent of banana perhaps - then the whole world phased out.
Next thing she knew, she was in her office, sitting at her keyboard. The screen of her Packard-Bell was crawling with text, a standard report from the looks of it. Scrawling to the bottom, she noticed her name on the signature line.
Davis was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. "It'll look better with your name on it," he said. "Men upstairs have been ultra-picky about my reports lately. They won't look twice at yours."
"You wrote this?" Jill rose from behind her desk then followed her thought further. "You knew about these creatures all along, didn't you?"
Davis nodded, and in that moment, Jill had a further revelation. She'd always known her partner was attracted to bigger women, but she hadn't realized how extreme his tastes went. "Had an idea," he said. "But I had to see for myself."
"So what are they?" she asked.
"Some form of evolutionary mutation," he answered. "Don't know how it works, but you've seen the results."
Jill nodded, then she returned to her seat and read "her report." The lettering swam in front of her eyes, but she pushed ahead. Davis had done a good job of capturing her writing style. According to his report, Sharon Prowller had left the country to escape her contractual obligations.
"Better this way," Davis said once she finished. "Can you imagine what the media would do with her if word of Sharon Prowller's real situation got out?"
"Tabloids would have a field day," Jill agreed. She looked at her desk clock, saw it was after nine o'clock. Took only two hours to get to the office from the Mannix place: where'd all the time gone? She felt too tired to work it out now, so with a resigned look at her partner, Jill stood and headed for the door.
Returning to her apartment, she collapsed on her couch and fell asleep in her work clothes. She dreamed she was back at Mannix Mansion, seated in a huge banquet room, the entire family before her. Off in the shadows, just barely visible, were the mountainous forms of Sharon Prowller and the Garners.
On the banquet table was a serving platter laden with lobsters, a bowl of melted butter and a gallon of coleslaw on the side. The sight made her mouth water. Tentatively, Jill grabbed a lobster claw and a nutcracker.
And then Jenna was by her side, hand in hand with the fat man who'd been standing by the moving van. The couple raised a pair of wine glasses towards Jill and toasted her. "To Jill," Jenna said, "and the rest of our recipients!"
"Recipients?" She dropped the lobster in horror, felt droplets of hot water hit her face. Panic coursing through her body, she woke.
First thing Jill did on rising from the couch was rush into the bathroom and examine herself in the mirror. Two red spots were visible on her face, like highly focused drops of sunburn. But as she watched, they faded with her waking panic.
The rest of her looked as she always did. Full face, slender body. What'd she expect to find? Jill wasn't sure. Sighing, she stripped out of her clothes and went to bed for real. The remainder of her night was untroubled.
When she got into her office on Friday, she found Davis had called in sick, so she devoted the day to paperwork. Her partner had done her a favor by pounding out that report by himself; by day's end, Jill had caught up on writing projects that had been hanging over her head for weeks. Sitting at her desk, she worked through lunch and would have continued into dinner if the janitress hadn't disturbed her.
Though she hadn't eaten a thing all day, Jill still felt full, like she'd recently finished a two-day Thanksgiving and was living off the excess caloric consumption. As she left the office, she considered hitting a restaurant, but it seemed too much of a bother. Instead, she went home, changed into a pair of sweatclothes, and unwrapped a Lean Cuisine. Micromeal on a teevee tray, Margaret Atwood novel for company: another wonderful Friday night.
Jill fell asleep in the middle of her Margaret Atwood, easy listening jazz on the stereo. Almost immediately, she was back with the Mannixes. Same banquet room, different offerings on the table. It was Greek food this time: chickens slathered in bechamel sauce, saganaki, youvarlakia meatballs, cucumber and yoghurt salad. This time, Jill dug into it happily, dream eating the night away.
She could understand Sharon Prowller now, the impulses that kept her so huge. Each flavor, each nuance was so clear and distinct it was like she was a child tasting real food for the first time. Every bite made her want to take five more; every moment without anything in her mouth was a moment without this exquisite sensation.
She woke with the taste of cucumber in her mouth, feeling bloated and dry like you sometimes did when you woke from a night of overeating. The clock on her VCR told her it was after five-thirty; the FM fuzzed uselessly. Jill sat up muzzily, little noting the way she opened her knees to make room for her well-stuffed tummy.
She was still trying to fully rouse herself when the doorbell rang. After awkwardly lifting herself from the couch, she squinted through the peephole on her apartment door.
It was Davis, but she almost didn't recognize him. He was dressed more casually than she usually saw him, but more significantly, he had to be at least eighty pounds heavier. Davis looked a like a businessman who spent most of his workday eating business lunches. At his side was a shopping bag.
"Davis?" she asked, through the still-chained door. "It's six in the morning!"
"Jill," he said, leaning towards the opening, his prominent paunch hanging down over his belt as he did. "Thought you might want to have breakfast with me." He stood back, waiting for her reply.
Jill backed away from the door then dashed into the bathroom for the second time in as many days. This time, her reflection told a different story. It showed a woman whose body matched her double-chinned face. At close to two-hundred-and-twenty pounds, she was as zaftig as one of Davis' old girlfriends. Her hourglass figure was totally undisguised in her sweatsuit; her soft belly peaked out slightly between her top and her sweatpants.
She'd almost gained as much weight as Davis.
How could this be? She hadn't eaten anything! Frantic, she raced back to her partner and pulled him into her apartment.
"Breakfast?" she shouted. "Are you nuts? Look at how fat we've gotten!"
"Fasting won't stop it," he said. "Remember your dreams?"
Dreams? How'd he know about them? Staring into her partner's face, she suddenly realized: he'd been dream eating at the Mannix house, too.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that we're both on a course of weight gain. We're being given the weight of a very large family whether we eat anything or not."
"Impossible!" Jill sputtered.
"Is it?" Davis said. "Let's try something. I'll stay with you here all morning, and neither of us will eat a morsel. Let's see what happens."
"That it?"
"You got a scale in your bathroom? We probably should get a baseline."
They clocked their respective weights (Davis: 234; Jill: 221 - the figure made her heart sink) then returned to the living room. The hours crept by slowly; all Jill could think about was how hungry she was. Ten minutes in, she turned on the television, but every commercial she came upon seemed designed to pique her appetite.
She was in the midst of her umpteenth mental meal, when Davis cleared his throat. "Okay," he announced then he ceremoniously rose from his chair. "Let's go weigh ourselves."
"That even necessary?" Jill realized. One look at her partner, and it was obvious he'd been telling the truth: he was at least sixty pounds fatter, no longer just out-of-shape, but out-and-out portly. His belly was a major entity now; his hips had widened to match the burden. Davis' formerly gaunt face had lost its ascetic appearance, but his eyes and mouth maintained their sardonic tinge.
"Maybe not," he said, "but I'm sure curious." Jill shrugged and followed. When the tallying was done (Davis: 295; Jill: 293!), she had to admit he'd been right. It really didn't matter whether they ate anything or not.
"We've got to get the Mannixes to stop this!" she said, staring at herself in the mirror. The woman who stared back was unequivocally fat: additionally chinned with cheeks that pushed out, shoulders that puffed without the aid of any pads, upper arms that had filled out and flattened against her side. Her breasts had also grown, and while she might have appreciated that in other circumstances, the fact that her belly now inched beyond them overrode everything else.
Her sweats were so tight, they showed off every bulge, but they still somehow had managed to keep from bursting at the seams.
"Okay," Davis said. "Why don't you put these on first?" He tossed her the shopping bag. Inside, Jill found a print caftan. The label said "M," but as soon as she held it up, Jill saw it was like no other "medium" she'd ever seen.
"From Plus Woman," Davis said. "Their 'M' goes up to a 78-inch waist."
"Well, let's hope I don't," Jill said, as she shrugged into the dress then peeled off both her close-to-bursting sweats and underwear. She swam in the dress, but at least she was comfortable. Why the hell couldn't Davis have thought of some panties, while he was at it, though.
"We'll take my car," Davis said, heading for the door. Jill squeezed into a pair of sandals, pulled her trench coat on over her dress to make herself presentable, than followed.
She must have phased out again, because it was dusk when they got to the Mannix house. What had taken them so long? In an instant, the image of them both seated in Davis' car with bags of fast food on their diminishing laps, came to her. Was it real or another dream meal? Whichever: the effects seemed the same.
She was over four hundred pounds in weight: as big as Jenna Mannix, with most of her weight settled into her belly and hips. The former was beyond the capacity of an ordinary sixty-inch tape measure; the latter spread into the ninety-inch range, her belly dividing into vertical bulges that hung midpoint to her knees. Struggling out of the car, Jill slowly lifted her super-sized frame into an upright position, arching her back to accommodate her new size. It was a strange sensation - with her first step, her body started jiggling.
Sometime on the way over, she'd discarded her trenchcoat for good. Her caftan rode all the way up her hips, though the front and back of it draped enough to afford her modesty. As she climbed the steps to the front door, Jill's belly drooped beneath the lower hem of her dress.
"No response," Davis puffed, after several knocks. His fat face was red from the exertion of carrying so much unfamiliar poundage, but he seemed unfazed by it. "Maybe they finished packing."
"Perhaps," Jill said. "Let's check the back, though."
Davis took a deep breath then followed his partner around the side of the house. They had to stop twice to catch their breaths then doggedly trudged to the back drive. Still one moving van there, they saw.
"Looks like they've got moving left to do," Davis said.
"Perhaps," Jill considered, "the Garners and Sharon Prowller weren't the only ones in the house?"
"They weren't," Jenna Mannix said, as she walked into view. She was thin but shapely, a visual copy of Jill's old figure. "But we moved the other recipients already. This here's for our newest couple!"
"Been waiting for you," a thin man Jill recognized as Lester Mannix from his I.D. said, coming up alongside his wife. Behind Les, a crowd of super-sized fat men and women was forming.
"This is getting to be a habit," Jill said to Davis, as the group moved in. There was still room to run, if either of them were capable of doing so, but what was the point? Jenna and the others had already been able to work their magic on them from miles away.
"Glad to have you back with us," Lester Mannix said, coming up to Davis and patting him lovingly on the stomach. Davis had unbuttoned his shirt all the way; it hung to both sides of his voluminous paunch like an open sweater. God knew how he was able to keep his pants fastened.
"You were the fat man by the truck," Davis said, looking the ex-P.I. up and down.
"I was," Mannix smiled, then he gestured to the figures behind him. Two fat forms separated from the group and took their places in front of Jill and Davis.
"This is my sister, Velda," Jenna said, by way of introduction. Jill nodded at the woman standing in front of her. She was younger than Jenna, dark-haired and dressed in a skort and sleeveless top that emphasized both her breasts and blubbery upper arms. She was almost as heavy as Jill.
"A pleasure to meet you," Velda said, with a voice incongruously girlish for a woman her size. Then she reached over and clasped Jill's hands.
A feeling of warmth and well-being coursed through Jill's body. Before her eyes, the four-hundred-plus pound Velda Mannix started to visibly diminish. As she did, Jill's body received every pound.
She tried to speak, but her mouth felt full. She could see herself growing, but the sight wasn't as distressing as you'd think it'd be. It all felt so natural, so comfortable. Jill's belly loomed further and further out, forcing her breasts to separate; her breasts rose like bread atop her paunch, fattening even further. As her widening torso pushed her upper arms out, her hands grew more apart from each other,
When Velda released her grip, she was a lithe buxom figure, a younger version of Jenna. Leaning against Jill's massive forefront, the thin girl looked at the nine-hundred-plus pound agent and asked, "You hungry, Jill?"
The question brought a rush of associations to Jill. In an instant, she was once more lost in visions of banquets and multiple servings. She didn't even notice when another female family member - the winking blonde from the kitchen - came up to hold her hands.
"Sign this," she said, breaking into Jill's thoughts and holding up a clipboard. It was, Jill saw, a letter to her supervisor. Without even pausing to read the opening sentence, she scrawled her signature at the bottom of the page then eagerly grasped the blonde's hands. As she started to grow anew, her "M" size dress split into its component parts.
Before too long, it took more than one family member to grasp Jill's two hands: she'd become too wide and round for one person to manage it. But if two of them held her in a chain, it still worked. Once she passed her first ton, it became necessary for more than two family members to stand in the chain, but there were enough women and girls to accomplish this.
Though she could hardly stand, Jill continued to happily receive everything she was given. At two thousand plus, her belly hung all the way down her legs, while her rear drooped past the lowest sag of her thighs. The front of her paunch shaded the ground at least three feet ahead of her. Its lowermost bulges came within an inch of flattening against the ground; if Jill didn't keep arching back, it would have readily settled onto the driveway.
She could barely turn her head - her shoulders and jowls rubbed against each other so insistently - so she was unable to see how Davis was faring. To be honest, she hardly thought of him. Those few moments of clarity that she had between family members were spent anticipating her next contacts.
It was as if she were suddenly granted a whole new range of senses: every conceivable luscious taste passed through her mouth; every mouth-watering scent wafted in her nostrils. As she grew, her capacity to experience also grew. A maddeningly exquisite sensation. She even loved the feel of the evening breeze on her yards of exposed flesh. When had she kicked out of her sandals? She didn't know, but it hardly mattered. Everything she'd done in her life, everything she'd been, was minuscule compared to the pleasure she was now experiencing.
By the time the last of the family had their way with them, Jill was up to four in the chain. Her arms could only slightly bend at the elbows: the rolls of avoirdupois hanging from her upper arms were so thick they impeded flexibility. She was wider at the hips than she was tall; at their broadest, her hips exceeded her fingertips by at least a foot. Jill's calves almost matched her thighs in prodigiousness, narrowing only slightly near the ankles to give a hint of womanliness. Her head looked it was perched on her body without the benefit of a neck.
Jill was in the realm of the Garners, more than two tons heavier than she'd been when she'd started their investigation. Larger than Sharon Prowller (though her belly was still no match for the former exercise guru's), she still remained recognizably woman. She was unsure whether she was standing or sitting. Swaddled by so much surrounding torso fat, all she could say was that she'd settled onto the patch of earth she covered.
Her hunger was extinguished, though she suspected that it'd re-ignite soon enough. A circle of reed-thin women stood around her; between them, she could see her partner as he, too, started to come down from his receiving. Davis was not, she saw, as large as her - a fact that pleased her, for some reason. (Perhaps it was the thought that he'd always been attracted to women bigger than he.) Looking over at her, eyes nearly blocked by his shoulder, he winked at Jill conspiratorially.
The line of women broke to make way for a dolly with a slickly covered platform about seven-by-eight feet in size, two inches off the ground. When the edge of it bumped against the front of her settled paunch, they all moved in to help lift Jill's forefront onto the dolly. She felt it slide beneath the underhang of her belly, pushed by the women with the aid of a small tractor, until it came to rest against the front of her legs.
"Wait there," Jenna told Jill with a laugh - as if she was capable of going anywhere. The row of women disappeared from her limited sight, but it was obvious where they'd gone. Moments later, Jill felt a second platform starting to edge its way underneath her rear. When it, too, was pressing against her legs, Jenna returned into her field of vision. "I know this is gonna be difficult - maybe even seem impossible," she said, "but if we're gonna get you out of here, you need to lift your feet."
Could she do it? It seemed unthinkable. But then, a living breathing woman her size was equally incomprehensible. Gritting her teeth, Jill sent a signal down to her right leg, felt the muscles deep with her inches of fat tighten as she tried to raise it. Only way she could move was out and sideways, so she slowly worked to shift her center of balance to the left. For one instant, the image of her losing balance and rolling over to her side came to her, but this never happened. After ten minutes of unceasing effort, sweat pouring off her body, Jill got a toehold on the edge of the platform. It took another ten minutes for her to inch her foot solidly onto the front platform.
Now came the more difficult task, lifting her other leg while even more of her tonnage was supported by it. It had to be done in one big push, she realized. Jill looked up at the night sky, and a great sense of certainty flowed through her. Shouting wordlessly, she suddenly shifted her balance in the other direction, pushing against the wall of settling flesh that was her glorious outer self, and she raised her left foot onto the rear platform. From both sides, women and machinery worked to quickly push the two platforms together.
All around her, Jill's flesh rippled and waved as the completed platform was jacked towards the truck opening. Her body seemed to have a life of its own; even though she could barely move her limbs or even her head, the slightest jostle sent motion throughout her gargantuan frame. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the evening light. How thick had it grown to keep her so encased? She didn't know, but it had still managed to keep its smooth softness.
And then she was in the truck.
"This is for you," Jenna said, holding a tube up to Jill's mouth. Above her, on shelves along both sides of the van, were kegs with tubes attached to them; all the tubes on the left hung within reach of her mouth, tied together like flowers in a bouquet. Jill's mouth watered, as she wrapped her swollen lips around her first tube. Took a little work to get the first few dollops, but once the fluid hit her mouth, it flowed freely. The offering was pureed, a combination of cheese and eggs, and once she started swallowing it, Jill couldn't stop until she finished it all.
This, she thought, was even better than her dream meals.
When Davis joined her in the truck, she was blissfully into her third keg (a sweet, mocha-flavored cream.) Not a word was spoken between the two of them until they finished every keg.
"Did you. . . expect this?" Jill asked her partner. Flesh rubbing against each other, jostled by the truck's movement, they eyed other across the expanse of their respective forefronts. Whatever sense of modesty either of them might have possessed seemed irrelevant. In the lantern-lit gloom, all that mattered was the fact that they were together. Deep within her was a radiating core of fullness, a contentedness that was unlike anything she'd ever experienced in her life.
"Not exactly," he admitted. "They have a unique way. . . of keepin' things. . . in the family."
Jill nodded, and her chins pushed ahead of her as she did. "So what's next?" she asked. Already, she was growing used to their deliberate way of speaking. At this size, you did everything you could at a different pace.
"Wherever we're going," Davis explained, "it'll have to be far enough for the family to start afresh. Takes four or five years for 'em to grow big enough to start scouting out new recipients. My guess is the next four years will be devoted to helping us settle in."
She sat and considered what he said. Davis' scenario didn't sound bad at all. A lifetime of eating and growing together: the more she thought about it, the better it sounded. The serious-minded F.B.I. agent that she'd been would've been horrified by the prospect, but that woman had been buried under her accumulated weight gain. Shifting her center, Jill pressed more of herself against him. A flush of happiness washed over her two-ton body. "As long as I'm with you," Jill said, watching her breasts waver ahead of her.
"You kidding?" Davis grinned, returning the gesture, forefront flowing against her. "You're my partner!"
They both smiled and waited for the truck to reach their destination.
When they finally saw the outside, it was morning once again. The duo was so hungry that when they finally settled into their room, they emptied twice as many kegs. It took work to reach that state of divine repleteness, Jill discovered. But like most things in life, the effort made it even more satisfying.
Their room, they discovered, was next to the Garners', separated by walls that were regularly removed. As weeks passed, they got to know the couple well. The Garners remembered nothing of their old lives and would only look puzzled when Jill or Davis tried to bring the topic up. Perhaps the same would eventually happen to them; with each meal, her old life seemed more like a dream that Jill could barely recall on waking.
She almost panicked the afternoon she could no longer remember her old supervisor's name. But then she'd looked up at her lover's reflection in the ceiling mirrors, at his comforting vastness, and she mentally shrugged. That had been, Jill thought, part of an earlier incarnation.
She'd grown to love the life she had with Davis, and, though she'd once worked to keep it hidden, she'd always been more than a little in love with him. Now that they were together all the time, the need for pretense had lifted. When they'd eaten a particularly heavy meal, she'd feel his mountainous presence next to her and it was like afterglow. The day they'd both become recipients was the day she'd been liberated from social restraints.
She said as much to Jenna. It was the Mannix matriarch's day to feed them, and she'd pulled out all stops: keg after keg of blended food, serving trays overflowing with their favorite items. Six months of family feeding had added more than a hundred extra pounds to both them, while Jenna appeared to be re-growing into the fat shape they'd first seen. Packed into those form-fitting sundresses, she looked like one of Davis' old girlfriends. Now, of course, her partner only had eyes for Jill. Anything less looked waifish to him.
"Y'know," she said between long deep swallows. "I never apologized for the way I first thought of you."
"No need," Jenna answered, stroking Jill's forefront absently, sending shivers through her yards of avoirdupois. She watched Jill happily glut herself, and she felt satisfied.
Between the Garners, Sharon Prowller and these two, the family had a sufficient pool of human vessels to last them through the next decade without having to hit their new hometown. Perhaps the F.B.I. agents would get to be the first recipients of a second wave of family weight. From experience, she knew that the two could more than double their tonnage before their features started to sink from sight.
But that was several years down the road. For now, they all had plenty of eating to do.
