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The Calling


Batman76

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This is a 9 chapter + epilogue story that is entirely @flyer33 fault for suggesting it.

Starring characters that are in no way resembling real people.

The Calling

 

Chapter 1: The Shadow Over Hero Girl

 

Productions can be cursed.

 

Not just in the “Don’t Say the Word MacBeth” way anyone who’s watched a cartoon could tell you, either. Some films are such complete and total disasters behind the scenes that cast and crew ignore primadonna directors and temperamental stars and wonky effects to point directly at the supernatural. Most of these are, of course, false.

 

When Heaven’s Gate spiralled out of control to the point its box office bombing sank the studio and the western genre, set members claimed the auteur director had made a deal with the devil that was coming due. Really, it had more to do with said director insisting the entire crew wait three hours to film a scene for clouds to move the right way and how he was scamming the studio by buying up the remote land he filmed on.

 

When The Conqueror bombed at the box office and then every member of the cast and crew got cancer and died over the next twenty years, the superstitious claimed it was either the result of Producer Howard Hughes scamming a Native tribe for their land or an actual curse laid down by Genghis Khan. Of course, casting John Wayne as a Mongolian had every thing to do with the box office gross. And filming down wind of a nuclear test sight probably had more to do with the cancer than any curse.

 

But very rarely, the superstitious naysayers are entirely right.

 

Hero Girl was one of those rare occasions. It was and is and never will be, an action film based on a comic book character invented to keep merchandising rights in the 50s, retooled to try and exploit the feminism surge of the early 70s and retooled again into brainless cheese cake in the 80s and 90s. It has never been made and never will be made and it will always be being made, taking starlet after starlet down with it.

 

Like radioactive desert soil, Hero Girl had lurked unseen and poisonous under the surface of Hollywood for over decades.

 

In the 60s, Hero Girl was chosen to be the banner film for a blonde bomshell starlet, Lillian Lincoln. A famous beauty who’d romanced hall of fame ball players and presidents, Lincoln was on top of the world when the film was announced. How the super human action would have been shown via 60s effects was a mystery that was never answered. A broken condom for Lillian led to pregnancy related weight gain as she abandoned years of dieting, the actress famous curves went from an hour glass 36-20-36, to a soft and saggy 36-28-42, an unacceptable amount during Hollywood’s strict golden age. Having lost her looks and with them her patron’s attention, the bottom heavy Lillian slipped into immediate obscurity, believed to have died during a car crash on the way to a fat farm.

 

Hero Girl went dormant, seemingly, for years. Over the next twenty years, a few starlet of the months from various Bond films or horror movies expressed interest. Not even the omni present cocaine of the 70s was enough for them to keep their figures but no one linked the sudden poundage to the forgotten film.

 

After the success of the Superman and Batman films in the 80s, Hero Girl woke up and started fattening. The role was offered to the sole actress in Star Wars during ROTJ filming, the day before the metal bikini scenes. The steel bra had to be duct taped on and the rest of her costumes for the film had to be increasingly loosened to deal with the expanding actress, who never took another major role.

 

 When the part was offered to a house hold name supermodel Lindsay Lawford, she refused due to having a solid calendar of photo shoots already booked. Just being approached was enough, when she did a Pepsi shoot, it proved Lindsay had a genetic addiction to the sweetened corn syrup.  Six months of six liters a day ruined her cover girl smile and made her centerfold body a cellulite coated, diabetic blob.

 

Just before Batman and Robin seemingly doomed the superhero genre, Hero Girl struck again. The actress playing Batgirl, a gorgeous and athletic California blonde who’s acting talent was concentrated in her looks, was asked to read for Hero Girl ‘s latest test script a month before Batman’s shooting began. She arrived on set with a gut six inches too big around for her expensive costume, needing two refittings during production despite a personal trainer and a ban from craft services, to the tabloid’s delight. Between the Batman film being godawful and her good looks having turned into tabloid fodder, her promising career sank into obscurity and Hero Girl slipped away as studios abandoned superhero films.

 

...Or so it seemed.

 

In the early 2000s, after X-Men had revived the genre, production on Hero Girl began again. To the misery of a handful of the character’s fans, the actress cast wasn’t a blue eyed blonde like the entirely fictional space alien protagonist, but an absolutely gorgeous African American actress Helena Fruit with a new Oscar and a smoking hot career to go with her stunning good looks. Unfortunately, a knee injury during training put Helena on the couch and she massively over indulged during six months recovery. By the end of the delay, Hero Girl would have needed another six months for its lead to lose the door jamming caboose she’d grown and she was replaced with a ginger Disney starlet, Tracey Truman, looking to move away from her goody too shoes image and embrace the smoking hot looks nature had given her.

 

Unfortunately for Truman, the film’s curse made the weight from her partying pile up across her previously flat midriff. On the day for costume fitting, she stumbled in three hours late, still ** and fifty pounds over weight, most of it concentrated in a record winning beer belly that audibly sloshed. Her drunken tirade at the costumer didn’t ease the director’s nerves, nor did vomiting on him and passing out.

 

Truman was replaced with the new flavor of the month, a brunette named Morgan Wolf who’d wowed in short shorts in a terrible sci fi action movie based on a toyline. Against all odds, Wolf made it through pre-production and even costume fitting...until a writer’s strike put filming on hold for six months. By the end of it, Wolf was so immensely pregnant with triplets that no amount of CGI could hide it and she was paid off a handsome severance sum, which helped as she was never going to fit into those shorts again without help.

 

By this point it was 2010 and the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe had executives hungry. Hero Girl’s curse feasted well, even as the movie went nowhere and every actress approached saw their career’s nosedive and their weight’s sky rocket. Everyone established in the film world had heard to stay away from the film, but there were plenty of undiscovered starlets with big eyes and tiny waists for it to pork up. By late 2018 it had devastated a whole crop of Sports Illustrated rookie of the Years trying to get into acting and the studio execs seemed desperate to find someone, anyone to play the part to get the movie started.

 

They supposedly offered $30 million dollars to Evelyn Stone, a famously skinny british actress who’d rose to fame in schlocky pirate movies and then proved her acting chops in period dramas, the role. Some would have thought Stone was picked because she was known for being near anorexically thin. Others because she signed the contract while giving birth and was thus unlikely to get hit with surprise pregnancy weight like so many predecessors. With the contract came a stint in an elite, private weight loss clinic to help Stone lose the minimal amount of baby weight she’d gained, surely in record time.

 

In early 2019, the studio signed another Brit, Tessa Holmes for Hero Girl.

 

….

 

Tessa rubbed the back of her head as the car pulled through LA’s horrible traffic.

 

It was a nervous habit and a bad one, even though her hair hid the surgery scar she’d didn’t want to aggravate it or the titanium plate beneath it. She made herself stop scratching, examining manicured nails instead and taking another sip of her Starbucks’ espresso. Tessa hated Starbucks, especially drinks like this, but the doctor said she needed the extra calories to keep her weight up, even after the last round of chemo and the cancer free diagnosis.

 

“All right back there?” her driver asked, a suited man clean and slick as a new whistle.

 

“Completely fine, just a bit jet lagged,” she replied, “really it would be easier if they didn’t film everything in LA.”

 

She tried to make herself read the script, which was...ridiculous schlock parading as something worthwhile. Hero Girl was little more than masturbation fodder being made into a popcorn flick pretending to have a point about empowerment by a morally bankrupt studio run by monsters who’d have made Nazi propaganda if there was a profit to it, but Tessa was being offered $35 million for her time and contracts for sequels and spin offs worth three times that. It wasn’t like she really needed the money, she could have done nothing her whole adult life and lived comfortably, but she’d been out of the game for over a year thanks to the diagnosis she’d kept thankfully hidden. Starlets tended to wane around thirty if you didn’t get a big franchise, a horrifically sexist tendency but one the 29 year old Tessa was facing despite knowing how sexist it was. That was a lot of money, enough to fund a lot of the charity’s and causes she actually cared about.

 

“Ha, ain’t that the truth,” the driver said over her inner monologue, putting on a turn signal, “say, this is...an odd question but…”

 

Tessa inhaled, wondering what it would be. She’d been asked for autographs since she was a teenager and for creepy autographs not long after that. Being daintily attractive, with a washboard waistline, delicately shapely legs and a provocatively taut butt had kept her rich and successful, but also drawn an insufferable amount of fetishistic energy. She could only pray the driver wasn’t going to ask her to sign feet pics…

 

“My daughter is obsessed with those magic movies you were in and is a big fan of that UN speech you gave, you wouldn’t mind signing an autograph would you? I’ve got a note pad in the glove box if its not too much trouble,” the driver asked kindly.

 

The actress felt herself smile, “Of course, always happy too.”

 

They arrived just after she signed the note and took a selfie, feeling self conscious about her hair length. She’d had short hair for years, but the little pixie cut she’d managed to grow out was positively boyish. Her hair was coming back quickly at least and she didn’t need a wig going out anymore, but it still made her feel bad.

 

Granted, not as bad as being told she had cancer had made her feel, so things were looking up.

 

Stepping out into the studio backlot, Tessa was instantly anonymous. Clad in yoga pants and a hoody, too warm for LA, she could have been any slightly built woman between 15 and 30. It was the nice thing about being short for an actress and being known as a fashionista. If she didn’t wear an ethically sourced gown or pants suit, then she looked like anyone.

 

Honestly Tessa preferred it that way.

 

Stepping up to the costuming department, she was pointed at the right office without being recognized. Tessa to the door and knocked politely, noticing she was rubbing the back of her head again. Her head was having some phantom pains again, memories of the surgery that weren’t real, and it had made her sleep like shit the night before, with weird dreams in the little sleep she’d had.

 

“Yes?” a woman asked as the door opened, smiling to recognize her, “ah, Tessa, so good to see you again.”

 

“Ah, Beth?” Tessa asked, walking in with a smile to a large room packed with sewing machines, measuring tapes and costume wracks stretching back a hundred feet, “right, Beth? Its good to work with you again, you made the Moses set bearable.”

 

Beth was a late middle aged woman, going grey and looking like a well kept librarian. Pencil thin and huge eyed, she reminded Tessa of a very friendly preying mantis. She’d met her on the set of what was probably the last profitable Biblical epic, where she played the wife of the Hebrew Prophet in a highly inaccurate belly baring harem girl outfit. Tessa, barely 20 then, had been a little nervous to be so exposed, and Beth had been instrumental in making her feel comfortable.

 

“Ah yes, well its my business to make the star’s comfortable. Hopefully one day I’ll get to dress you in something that isn’t ridiculous,” Beth smiled as Tessa walked past to set her purse on a small sofa, “this costume is almost as bad as that dancing girl get up and for some reason the writers insisted that your civilian alter ego be dressed frumpy and dumpy. At least I talked them out of the fat suit your character has to wear before getting powers from a glowing rock, ugh. You could tell this was written by a man from a mile off. Can I get you a coffee before we get started?”

 

Tessa laughed, “No thanks, I’m pretty wired as it is. I couldn’t sleep at all on the plane and need to pass out in the hotel as soon as we get this done.”

 

She turned, noticing that Beth was eyeing her analytically with a slight frown.

 

“...Problem?” the actress asked.

 

“Um, no, no. Just...have you been feeling well?” the costumer asked her with motherly concern.

 

The actress bit her lip, “Ah, I’d thought that might come up. To be honest...I’m a lot better than I was. For the last year and a half I was...well I was extremely sick.”

 

Beth’s eyes seemed to bulge, “Oh my word, I had no idea…”

 

“I wanted it that way, rather not have poparazzi taking pics as I leave the hospital,” Tessa sighed, “and well, I lost quite a lot of weight from the treatments. Weight that I didn’t really have to lose to start with.”

 

The costumer’s face winced with sympathy, “but you look...positively healthy now…”

 

“Well, thank you. My prognosis is excellent and I’ve been following a diet and exercise program to get into shape. It hasn’t been easy, I’ve been wearing nothing but sweat pants and hoodies for nearly a year and had to rebuild some muscle,” Tessa went on, not bringing up how doctor’s had had to pull a bullet sized tumor out of the back of her head.

 

“Ah, well...I’m sure it worked well, um...,” Beth told her, pausing as Tessa pulled off her hoodie. 

 

Her shirt had rode up a bit with it, and the actress automatically pulled it back down. She didn’t notice that it immediately rode back up, well past her belly button. Beth blushed, tearing her eyes away from the younger woman to look her in the eye.

 

“I’d made some preliminaries with the measurements from Moses, I didn’t think they’d changed…,” Beth paused, “...so much…”

 

“Oh, well I think I’m about back to where I was,” Tessa said, “would you like to measure me first or try the preliminary costumes?”

 

Beth seemed nervous, biting her lip, “Well...let’s do some measurements first...I have a feeling that ...well, let’s just measure you.”

 

Tessa didn’t quite understand the strange hesitancy of the costumer. She had to presume that talk of her illness had upset her, even not going into full details Tessa wasn’t surprised. Looking at her now, she probably just looked a little thin, not like someone who’d come within a whisper of dying. She stood up straight as Beth measured her, the tape wrapping around stomach, hips, chest, thigh, calf and bicep. It was familiar to her, almost comforting, for Tessa had never had a weight problem.

 

“Um, Tessa, you used to be a 20 inch waist, right?” Beth asked her softly.

 

“Yes, I think so, I know I've always been skinny. Have I not gotten back to that yet?” Tessa returned, “Do we need to take the costumes in?”

 

“Well, not quite...I’m well, going to need to call the producer about this, unfortunately…,” Beth said with a brittle smile, “I’m sure it isn’t your fault but well, they hate it when an actress isn’t the right weight…”

 

The actress felt her cheeks color as the older woman went towards a desk phone, “Wait, they’re going to be angry I’m a little thin? I know they said that the character had “a dancer’s build” whatever that means, but there’s a month to filming for me to put on some muscle.”

 

The costumer sighed, looking at her up and down again with a sad smile, quite similar to a doctor’s with bad news.

 

“Tessa, that’s...really the opposite of the problem. Let me break this gently, how much did you used to weigh?” she asked the actress gently.

 

“Well...I mean I didn’t weigh myself every day…,” Tessa began.

 

She’d been born rather lucky. Not just white and smart in a first world country to middle class parents, but pretty as well. Tessa had preferred walks and yoga over more intense exercise, but she’d had a humming bird metabolism and as a vegetarian had never struggled with her weight.

But she remembered the doctor’s appointment after the head aches had started…

 

“I weighed about fifty kilograms, that’d be...one hundred and ten, one hundred and fifteen pounds?” she offered.

 

“Oh, so...about thirty pounds then, maybe thirty five,” Beth winced in sympathy.

 

“I’m...there’s no way I weigh less than ninety pounds!” Tessa exclaimed, eyes bulging.

 

For a moment there was silence, Beth looking at her sadly.

 

“Listen Tessa, you’re still a gorgeous young woman. And if this industry wasn’t so...shit, I’d never say this. But...you’re not the right body shape for this role at the moment…,” Beth told her, “because well...well there’s a mirror and a scale in that changing room…”

 

Stunned, Tessa walked towards the changing room as Beth began a call. She hadn’t thought herself so scrawny, she didn’t think she’d gotten much under a hundred pounds. God, no wonder she was feeling so tired…

 

Inside the dressing room was Hero Girl’s costume, a blue mini skirt with a golden belt and a blue top. It was a midriff bearing disaster and probably not the final product, which was supposed to be more like a one piece, but Tessa’s attention was more focused on the mirror and who was in it.

 

“What...what...WHAT?” Tessa gasped.

 

Her face was basically as expected: pale and somewhat freckled, with a short brown pixie cut. It wasn’t drawn as she’d expected from a year of being sick, instead her cheeks were full and rosy...very full as a matter of fact. To the point that her cheekbones were more of a suggestion.

 

And that her firm jawline was looking...soft. Soft enough to have a slight double chin that merged with a gently broader neck, instead of the swanlike neck.

 

Tessa gulped, making herself look downwards. Her pale blue t-shirt was tight, so tight that she began feeling how snug it was as she took it in. Never busty, she hadn’t worn a bra and plump, heavy looking breasts were poking at the thin fabric. Not believing her eyes, she cupped the slightly sagging bust with her hands, boob flesh over flowing her fingers. Her shirt sleeves were tightly pinching her bicep, she followed suit, pinching excess fat on her bicep and tricep.

 

“What...how…,” the actress asked herself, certain that when she’d put the clothes on they’d fit normally.

 

Always, Tessa had had a flat stomach, washboard flat. But now...now she had a real belly, a lot of her weight going to a considerable paunch. It was big enough to get a hand under, her too small shirt riding up over her belly button, which itself looked deeper. There were squeezable love handles over her hips, all merging together into this embarrassing muffin top. Sucking in her stomach brought some temporary relief, enough for her shirt to go down, but holding it in wasn’t a permanent option.

 

“There’s no way...I was...I was under my normal weight, I’m sure of it…,” Tessa said to herself, both amazed and horrified.

 

She was an educated woman. Yes, she’d been on fashion mags and photo shoots and knew how much her looks played into her success, but she was also a feminist. She knew she was worth more than her looks, that thirty pounds was nothing compared to something major, especially after going through something major. Maybe if she’d seen it creep up that would be true but...not all at once…

 

Girlish hips had turned womanly over night, stretching her yoga pants until she had a camel toe and leaving a red ring under her muffin top. She turned, wincing to see how her butt, taut and round from yoga, had ...well, fallen. It was soft and jiggly on the other side of near transparent spandex, her panties and a new patch of cellulite on each cheek. She patted it and it bounced for an uncomfortably long time, the ripple spreading to thighs that now touched. Chunky looking calves emerged from the bottom of the capris, embarrassingly thick for someone who’d always had shapely legs.

 

“Is this some sort of night mare?” she asked, blinking, pinching a softened cheek to try and wake herself up, “Fuck, am I being punked?”

 

Knowing that even a CGI mirror couldn’t make her feel the fat beneath her fingers, Tessa gingerly stepped onto the scale. Her stomach, on its own accord, sucked in as the scale blinked, as if that would help. Feeling like a death row inmate awaiting a possible pardon, the actress felt her chin buckle as she looked down to see blinking numbers.

 

For a moment, it was a laughable six hundred sixty six, surely some sort of automatic response as it calculated. Then the red numbers turned blue plummeting to a much smaller but still far too large one hundred and forty nine pounds. Thirty five pounds higher than she’d ever weighed…

 

“I...how, I’d have felt it surely,” Tessa said, remembering that she’d only been wearing sweat pants and not going out save for doctors appointments for over a year, “but I’ve been sick…”

 

Not for several months and her appetite had come back quite well, with her ordering take out several times a week.

 

“And I’ve been exercising…,” she said, knowing that a couple miles on a tread mill and stretching wasn’t going to equal the extra calories her doctors had said she should eat, “...maybe not enough…”

 

It was a cold slap of reality, far better than another one she’d had but still shocking. She’d grown up with her mother complaining about her weight, and now it was happening to her…

 

“Tessa, are you alright?” Beth asked her from the other side of the door.

 

“I...well...I’m a little chubby but otherwise alright,” the actress sighed, hand going to her stomach, “at least its not public...but shit the movie...how can this be a superhero movie if…”

 

“I talked to the producer,” the costumer told her, “and they’re very understanding…”

 

Tessa had a mind for figures, she remembered her contract and its weight clause, “...and my lawyer would be very unhappy if they bring this up in public.”

 

“Which is why they’re offering access to an exclusive and very, very secretive clinic, paid for by the studio…,” the costumer replied softly.

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Oh I'm looking forward to this!

I've no idea where you acquired all this movie knowledge! I can see striking and entirely coincidental likenesses in 7 of the actresses, but I've not a clue about the 2000 Disney starlet and the short shorts girl...

Tessa seems nice. Clearly in denial about her Starbucks intake though! And, as a petite girl, she ought to be more careful - no Starfire-sized physique to sponge away the calories!

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Love the blatant - sorry *coincidental* - similarities between real life counterparts. And I love the whole vibe of this story. The sinister underpinning of a story that otherwise seems so believable and true. You could have given this story the Fargo-esque intro of it being based on real events and I'd have bought it. Looking forward to this!

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10 hours ago, >_< 0_0 said:

My mind automatically slapped Emma Watson’s face onto Tessa’s character 😬 I hope I haven’t spread the bad luck where it shouldn’t go. Also, very curious to see if Tessa can solve the curse in time

Who? I've no idea who that is, this character is based on no actual person and any resemblance is purely accidental...

 

10 hours ago, swahilimonkfish said:

Love the blatant - sorry *coincidental* - similarities between real life counterparts. And I love the whole vibe of this story. The sinister underpinning of a story that otherwise seems so believable and true. You could have given this story the Fargo-esque intro of it being based on real events and I'd have bought it. Looking forward to this!

What counter parts? surely they don't resemble real people....and thanks, I want it to be escalatingly creepy and sinister.

 

Chapter 2: At the Mountains of Fitness

 

Gaining thirty five pounds out of the blue wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

 

It wasn’t even in the top ten worst things Tessa had experienced. 

 

Number one was the shocking and terrifying diagnosis sixteen months earlier, where the doctor had listened to her headache and blurry vision symptoms and said she was getting a catscan that day. Number two was that she’d need brain surgery and chemo to remove the evil little lump on the back of her brain and make sure it didn’t spread. Those had been nightmares that had left her sobbing in her mother’s lap, afraid not just of dying but of dying an insensate, drained vegetable.

 

Finding out that she’d gotten fat rated under a public break up.

 

Not, Tessa thought as rural California shot by, that she was really fat.

 

A finger tap to the paunch she had confirmed she certainly wasn’t A-list skinny anymore for certain, but she wasn’t fat. Consulting a BMI calculator on her phone proved to Tessa that she was still at a healthy body mass...by .2 percentage points, granted. But compared to how painfully thin she’d been at the end of her treatments, a gaunt ninety nine pounds, she honestly preferred the chub. Then she’d been cold and exhausted all the time, the fifty pounds since hadn’t been noticeable even.

 

“We’re going to need to stop and get gas at the next town,” her driver said, “what do you want for lunch?”

 

This wasn’t the pleasant middle aged man who’d driven her from the air port. No, as soon as Hero Girl’s producers had heard that their famously skinny star wasn’t so skinny anymore, Tessa had been whisked into another luxury car driven by a higher ranking staffer and rocketed towards northern California at top speed, as if her fat would fall off if they went fast enough. This staffer was a blonde woman in her mid twenties named Isabeau: California tan, model tall and pilates sculpted thin, her clavicle visible at the top of her professional blouse. That made her both younger than Tessa and noticeably thinner.

 

“I suppose I should eat something,” Tessa admitted, “I haven’t had a meal since I took off from London yesterday night…”

 

It did not escape the actress how Isabeau had stated the question. Not “Do you want something for lunch?” but “What do you want for lunch?” with an unstated “fatty” at the end. Tessa was used to being judged, she was a celebrity after all, but now for the first time in her adult life she was being treated as something less than the beautiful elite. Not the worst thing in the world, chubby or not Tessa knew she remained one of the most privileged people in the world, but still striking.

 

“How about one of those gigantic American burgers, a large order of fries, a cherry shake and a soda?” Tessa told her with a light tone, “maybe with a pizza for desert?”

 

Her driver’s sunglass obscured eyes stared at her in the rear view mirror.

 

“I”m joking, really. How about a small salad that won’t give me the runs?” the actress sighed instead.

 

Tessa leaned back in her seat as the car pulled off the interstate, her hand going naturally to her stomach. The car hit a bump in one of America’s marvelously maintained roads, letting the British woman feel a jiggle run through her body. Her hand felt like it was on jello and beneath her jacket she felt her shirt ride up at the vibration, seat belt cutting into her stomach. Braless breasts wobbled at the shoulder strap dividing them, while her thighs smacked into each other. Her underwear rode up her ass, which had gone from surprisingly large for her size tight booty to fun house bouncy. Even her more cherubic cheeks jiggled.

 

Perhaps the weight wasn’t so hard to notice after all.

 

Come to think of it, Tessa could feel every ounce. Her upper arms were sore from where her shirt pinched into them and she could feel her breasts touching her chest where they’d begun to sag. She was warm too, California was always warm but the hoodie felt like a parka thanks to the new insulation. She pulled off the concealing garment, having to tug her shirt down again as it refused to cooperate and slid right back up. The actress wasn’t a drinker, but looking down (feeling her chin double) she had a beer belly anyway. A pale bulge with two red rings on the top and bottom of her muffin top, one left by her too tight shirt and the other by her soft grey sweat pants. 

 

She’d practically been living in them since her diagnosis, they kept her warm and comfortable, but now they’d betrayed her. Becoming too warm and too tight, showing off the thickened state of her legs. She undid the draw string, feeling some relief and wondering how she hadn’t felt the pinch earlier. It was a good thing she hadn’t worn Yoga pants or else her ass would have been...

 

Hadn’t she worn yoga pants…

 

“Here you go,” Isabeau said, handing her a surprisingly heavy paper bag.

 

The car was pulling out of a drive through and back to the interstate. Had she been considering her fat through getting gas and ordering food?

 

“Um, thanks have you already taken yours out?” Tessa asked, realizing she must be more tired than she thought.

 

“No, I never eat from there. That place is a carb factory and I’m on a diet,” her driver said, “I”m surprised you insisted on going there given our destination.”

 

It had been a full day since the actress had slept, but she didn’t remember asking for anything beyond a salad. Opening the bag proved she had one, albeit one with enough blue cheese to qualify as a dairy product. With it was a container of broccoli cheddar soup, a bread bowl the size of her face and as a side, more bread. 

 

Very much not the meal a woman with thirty five million dollars riding on her getting back in shape would order.

 

“I didn’t…,” she started saying, as she remembered ordering it off the menu over the grumble of her stomach as Isabeau’s eyebrow rose in disgust, “...thanks.”

 

Tessa knew wasting food in a world where so many went hungry was wrong. But she resolved to only eat the salad and just the green parts of it too, leaving the dressing on the side. Feeling another wave of exhaustion hit her, Tessa began eating lettuce…

 

                    ….

“We’re almost there,” her driver’s voice came, “you should probably wake up.”

 

The actress’ eyes fluttered and she pulled herself out of sleep, finding her forehead rested against the window. Any attempt to fall back asleep was ruined as the car pulled from a paved rural road onto a long, cobbled drive. More uncomfortable jiggles shot through the plumped starlets body as the car passed along the long driveway, meticulously tended forests of thin trunked trees with strange, orange fruits hanging from them.

 

 Post rest fogginess surrounded her, she’d never been able to sleep on a plane or in a car and was surprised she’d managed during the drive. Wiping sleep from her eyes, she tried to dispel the mental fugue, difficult given how warm and tired she felt. She stretched, back popping and her belly plopping over the waistband of her sweat pants. Feeling a little shock of embarrassment, Tessa picked her jacket off the seat next to her.

 

A paper bag from a place calling itself “Panera Bread” rested on top of it, falling off and showing it held only an empty soup container, salad bowl and used napkins.

 

“I didn’t...Isabeau, how long was I out?” the actress asked, “I’d planned on doing some reading…”

 

“You fell asleep right after you ate,” her peroxide blonde driver answered, smug condescension dripping off of her words.

 

Tessa wanted to say that she’d only eaten the salad and not even the dressing. But the bag was empty of food and she felt...full. Pleasantly full, like a hole in her being had been filled in. And a cautious lick at the corner of her lips returned the taste of blue cheese and soup…

 

“Well, I was tired from the flight,” she said, to herself as much as to her smugly thin driver.

 

They drove for at least thirty minutes through the well tended forest, only once seeing a small group of workmen who ignored the car. Tessa noted they were going steadily upwards and marveled at the sheer size of this place. The studio had said the resort was very exclusive and private, but the property taxes on this place alone must be gigantic…

 

At last they pulled out of the forest, pulling into an immense circle drive and their destination. A huge garden stretched to the left, exotic plants and green houses soaring upwards, a massive hedgemaze brooded on the left. In the far distance, massive snow capped peaks brooded, dark clouds over them. As the car came to a halt, Tessa glimpsed a large stone horse barn on the other side of the large garden and on a rise about two miles away, was of all things, a castle tower. She’d been in enough fake ones during her early career to recognize it as a reproduction of a late medieval drum keep, unfinished and abandoned walls hanging from it.

 

However, the actual spa took up most of her attention.

 

When told that there was an exclusive weight loss center available, Tessa had expected something ultra modern and high tech in Beverly Hills. When told it was in the northern part of the state, she’d expected something rustic and rural themed. Instead, she’d been brought to a red stone mansion worthy of a Roman Emperor’s pleasure villa. Columns and balconies soared for four stories to a roof of gold colored ceramic tiles and it sprawled over several acres, the size of a small cathedral. Over a set of green double doors was a circular stained glass window, depicting a topless blonde woman half wearing a Toga and surrounded by a sunburst. A primped, smartly dressed woman waited beneath it, next to a toned girl in spandex.

 

“I’ll get your bags,” Isabeau said, stepping smartly out of the car.

 

Tessa picked up her jacket and backpack, stepping out to an early spring chill. She slid her jacket, one of her favorite black pleather ones, over her shoulders and went to zip it up. The jacket was made to be figure hugging for a girl who weighed one hundred and fourteen pounds on a fat day. For one hundred forty nine pound tessa, her paunch, a little swollen from over eating, had to be sucked in to zip it up. When released, her belly bulged against it.

 

“I knew I should have worn a hoodie,” Tessa thought, embarrassment coloring her cheeks, “Its lucky no one recognized me in this…”

 

She realized that she had worn a hoodie at the studio but must have left it behind in shock at finding out she was chubby. Her doctor’s had tested her thoroughly for memory loss, motor control issues and any other neurologic issues after her surgery and found nothing, but had warned her that fogginess might last a while after the chemo. That and jet lag was surely the reason she felt so strange…

 

“Miss Holmes, I presume?” the smartly dressed woman said in a breathy voice, stepping down the stairs to the click of heels with an extended hand, “Welcome to the lodge, I’m Dr. Mortenson.”

 

Tessa was used to beautiful women, she worked in Hollywood after all, a place where perfect faces and figures could be bought and was considered one of the most attractive celebrities in the world. But Mortenson was breathtakingly gorgeous: dark brown hair was pulled tight into a severe bun that only made her heart shaped face stand out more, just as her black glasses made her blue eyes shine. Her lips were too plump to be anything but fake and too soft to be anything but natural. She was dressed in a black skirt, white blouse and black blazer, all very professional but also very figure hugging. And her figure was...ridiculous, her waist was thin as Tessa’ had ever been, flat as a board and narrow as a wasp’s. Her hips on the other hand were va-voom round, a tantalizing bulge that would fit into a rap video, while what had to be DD cup breasts bulged marvelously beneath her narrow shoulders. A gold necklace with fat black opals rested on the tops of her breast, contrasting with her gently tan skin.

 

“Yes, its good to meet you. This place is a bit more than I imagined,” Tessa responded, trying not to stare, “when they said it was a lodge I was thinking of a big house, not…”

 

“Oh yes, the original builder had it designated as a fraternal lodge to avoid taxes. We have to keep it in the name according to the law, I believe the name “Black Mountain Lodge” adds distinction,” Mortenson smiled, “and clients prefer it. After all, would you rather go to a fat camp or to a lodge?”

 

The actress had to smile, “Well, as I told my mother I’d be at a lodge for a while...certainly the lodge.”

 

Dr. Mortensen laughed softly. Tessa guessed she was in her early thirties, although it was hard to tell. She was young looking and gorgeous, Tessa knew how that could make you look younger.

 

“Exactly, well, this is Sarah,” the doctor said, gesturing at the very fit woman next to her, a tan brunette who’s abs could be used as cheese graters, “she’s going to be your personal trainer for our exercise sessions. She’ll take your bag.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other,” the fit trainer smiled, coldly, judging Tessa like a piece of meat, “I’ll take your bags up to your room.”

 

“Oh, I can carry them, better get started on the exercise...” Tessa began to say, only to hear the car start up.

 

Isabeau was already driving away, without a word to her. Sarah picked up her bags despite Tessa’s claim.

 

“Oh, don’t worry. You and I need to get started on orientation anyway,” Mortenson told her, showing another dazzling smile, “follow me please, bring your personal bag.”

 

Tessa followed the doctor up the stairs and into the mansion, the personal trainer holding the door for them. Inside was a vast central room with marble pillars rising up towards the dark roof, a smouldering fire place provided warmth while a vast candelabra made out of elk antlers provided light. Old oil paintings of women exercising were on the walls, as befitted 18th century norms most were scenes from mythology where rather fleshy nymphs and goddesses were pursued by rapacious satyrs. Tessa had loved art history but didn’t have time to stare, Mortenson set a very fast pace despite her high heels. The Doctor’s round hips twitched like church bells at the crowning of a King, straining her skirt’s seams even before she started going up a broad set of stairs. Despite the press of her butt, Mortenson seemed immensely fit, going fast despite very high heels. Tessa had to hurry to keep up with her, for the first time feeling her weight.

 

“Currently we only have two other guests that are currently in the exercise room. Unfortunately our orientation will take up the entire afternoon session,” the doctor told her, “I know that you are in a hurry to lose weight but we will catch you up after dinner.”

 

“Glad to hear, I’m still feeling groggy from the flight and then the drive,” Tessa said, not mentioning the unexpectedly heavy meal she’d gorged on, “I’ve never been one to exercise a lot but doing it when I’m so tired wouldn’t endear me to it…”

 

The breadbowl was weighing in her belly, just like her thighs were burning from hurrying up the stairs. She might not be officially overweight, but Tessa was feeling out of shape for the first time.

 

“Yes, I’m sure,” Mortenson said, a verbal sneer, “but this is a holistic weight loss facility. By the time we’re done, you’ll have a very altered view of exercise. Follow me please.”

 

The doctor’s office was, in contrast to the archaic lodge, ultra modern. Ergonomic chairs were on each side of a sleek desk, with a brand new Mac on the clean surface. Two pads of papers and fountain pens were the only other things on the desk, while book shelves groaning with heavy tomes surrounded them. Mortenson sat behind the desk, Tessa for the first time realizing that the Doctor was actually very short, only her stilettos letting her reach Tessa’s not exactly towering height.

 

“Please, have a seat. There’s a good deal of paper work before we get measuring you,” Mortenson said, sliding one clip board towards Tessa, “and I need to conduct a psychological audit.”

 

“Of course, I’m glad that this seems very thorough,” the actress said, taking the paper as the Doctor’s red painted nails began clicking on the computer.

 

For a moment there was silence, letting Tessa read and check boxes. The Lodge’s contract wasn’t much different from a film one, although the language was less legalese. However, there were some odd things she had to agree too…

 

“I understand the pledge to secrecy, I’d certainly never heard of this place but how do you get clients if no one knows?” Tessa asked.

 

“Oh, we have agreements with studios, recording labels and modeling agencies,” the voluptuous doctor explained, “when one of their talents has...a weight issue, we are contacted. Its a well kept secret, we take clients only be recommendation. Very similar to the fraternal lodge we were founded as.”

 

“What about repeat clients?” the actress pressed, “say someone has a relapse…”

 

“Let me let you in on a secret, none of our patients relapse,” Mortenson smiled, “Not in my time as Head of Operations. Nor for my predecessors.”

 

“None? What about...I don’t know, women who have a baby after wards…,” Tessa asked, seeing the Doctor chuckle.

 

“I told you, this is a holistic facility. After your time here, you’ll never struggle losing weight again,” Mortenson told her.

 

Somewhat satisfied, if not fully believing the claim, Tessa went back to her paperwork. Everything was fairly standard, excusing them for any unavoidable accidents and promising not to speak of the program but…

 

“You need to search my bags and give up my electronics?” the actress asked, looking up from the second to last page.

 

“That always raises eyebrows. But we believe in absolute privacy here. Our clients have reputations as some of the most beautiful women in the world,” Mortenson told her, “and while they are here, well they are very much not. Think of what would happen to a model’s career if a photo of her weighing 250lbs and struggling to use an exercise bike was leaked? Which is why we must insist you hand over any phones and computers, they’ll be bagged and kept in a locked safe. If you need to print something from them, you can do so under supervision during your free hour. Otherwise, this is the only computer onsite, we believe that moderns screens are behind many health issues.”

 

“Well...I suppose I wouldn’t want tabloids to have photos of me like this,” Tessa admitted, adjusting the pinch of her sweat pants, a thick sliver of pale fat leaking out under her jacket, “but the bag search…is that necessary?”

 

Mortenson sighed, smiling sadly.

 

“Our guests, are to be blunt...fat. And the fat, left to their own devices, will only get fatter. They’re here because they’ve developed bad habits, or more likely, always had bad habits that waning youth has allowed the consequences of which to come due. And despite the money paid on their behalf and the careers riding on their recovery, far too many try to self sabotage and smuggle in snacks,” the doctor informed her, “Being held to discipline is difficult for them. I’ve had top models try and smuggle in twenty pounds of candy underneath clothes, actresses with superhero roles on the line hide nutella jars in their pockets and once, a member of a royal family, I won’t say which nation, hide sixty chocolate bars in a false bottom of a bag.”

 

“I can promise you that I don’t have any candy in my bag,” Tessa told her, trying to put some humor in it, “all I want is for this...gut to go back to normal.”

 

“Most of our clients say that...and over 90% have cheat day snacks in their bags. In that case, we have to impound their bags and issue wardrobes from stocks. You’ve a reputation as being more than a pretty face and I trust you Tessa, but that tummy, that tummy I do not trust. All it wants is to get bigger and it’ll lie through your mouth just to keep growing,” the doctor said, taking the freshly signed paper work from the actress and leafing through it.

 

Mortenson’s precisely plucked eyebrow arched at the last page.

 

“A cancer survivor?” the doctor said, “I had no idea, you poor thing…”

 

Tessa swallowed, “Its gone, gone for four months. I was lucky to have caught it early. I don’t have another check in for several months at least.”

 

“Well, that speaks well to your toughness then. And your luck. I know its odd to think of a diagnosis as lucky, but it is, in my experience, inevitable that we will have health problems. If we catch them early, then we are lucky,” the doctor explained, “take your weight. You are at the moment at a near average weight if I could guess. Not Hollywood thin but not too much higher than the average weight of a modern woman. We’ve caught you early, before your body can get too used to being fat.”

 

A blush crept up Tessa’s cheeks, “Well, it does feel startlingly new to me. Its like it just appeared on me…”

 

“Its often like that for our clients. I call it an “Awakening Moment”, when the weight makes itself known,” Mortenson told her, standing up with grace and smoothing her skirts, “now, our next step will be to get you weighed and to determine your necessary diet. Follow me please…”

Tessa got up less gracefully, her weight and tiredness weighing on her. She followed the doctor down another hallway, to a room with an angled chair and a built in writing desk, like a luxurious auditorium chair. It had a roll of paper that Mortenson rolled down across it, like a table in an exam room. It was all lit bubblegum pink and felt warm and inviting, hidden speakers in the walls laying silent.

 

“Now, your next step is to write out everything you’ve eaten in the last month,” the doctor informed her, setting a sheaf of paper and another expensive pen onto the desk, “while this chair weighs and measures you.”

 

“I was weighed and measured this morning,” Tessa tried to say.

 

“This device is more accurate,” the doctor insisted, “And before you say that remembering everything is impossible, don’t worry. As soon as I leave, I’m going to play an ASMR recording through the speakers that will put you in a state of mind that will let you recall everything with ease.”

 

Only able to blink, Tessa nodded. This was a lot, but well...she did want to lose weight…

 

“Oh, one more thing. You’ll need to strip down to underwear for this to work properly,” Mortenson informed her, “after I leave of course.”

 

The doctor left, hips swinging and heels clicking. Flummoxed, Tessa let out a breath, realizing she’d been sucking in her stomach the entire time. She peeled the skin tight shirt and athleisure sweats off of her body, feeling cold and ...exposed in just socks and underwear. Sitting onto the chair, she felt mechanisms under the padding click and shift, like one of those novelty toys made of pins on a grid that let you put impressions into it. Taking up the pen, she tried to recall her recent diet. For a moment there was nothing, until faint, strange whispers came over the speakers. It was Mortenson’s soft, breathily seductive voice but she couldn’t make out the words....

 

“Let’s see, a bread bowl with broccoli cheddar soup, large salad with extra blue cheese crumbles and dressing, three bags of pretzels and two sodas on the plane, a vegetarian wrap, a bagel and smoothie at the airport…,” Tessa listed off, surprised at how much she’d eaten, recalling more and more food as the whispers came, “three bananas at home…”

 

She woke up with a start to a knock on the door, having again fallen asleep. The whispers were gone and she was on the bed, wearing only her underwear and...chubby. Plump breasted and big bellied, a chunky girl who’s youthful litheness had softened up. She poked her stomach, which no longer felt swollen but instead soft as half melted ice cream. The knock came again, with the doctor’s voice.

 

“Miss Holmes? Are you ready to return to my office?” the doctor asked.

 

“One moment, sorry I drifted off..,” Tessa told her.

 

Getting dressed was harder than taking her clothes off. Her thighs pressed at the fabric of the sweats, and her shirt was a torture device. She was glad that she’d left her pleather jacket at the studio and brought her hoodie with her, it…

 

“Please hurry, we’re on a schedule,” Mortenson told her.

 

“Yes, of course,” Tessa said, tying her shoes, belly folding over as she did, and opening the door.

 

Mortenson’s face bore a faint tinge of disappointment on it when the door opened. She held a clip board against one shapely hip and took the sheaf of paper from the desk, which was full of writing.

 

“Follow me please, we’ve a few things to discuss,” the doctor said.

 

Another walk following those swinging hips brought them down a hallway and into a room. It was something out of a five star hotel: a large bed, its own bath tub and closet, a divan and wardrobe and chest. More paintings of plump goddesses being forced into unfamiliar exercise were on the wall. There a plump Athena leapt into battle, her plump arms ill suited to the spear and shield they held and her tummy fat peeking out under a bronze muscle breastplate, soft legs poised to deliver a spear blow on a massively muscled giantess. The war goddess' grey eyes had a look of determination...as well as some embarrassment, while the giantess' gaze held nothing but fear. Across from her on the other wall, a flabby Aphrodite nervously drank wine standing before a mirror while maids prepared to dress her. One unhelpful maid pointing out a thick cankle on the love goddess’ lazy leg while another hid a laugh as she brought a dress for a much smaller Olympian. The strawberry blonde sex goddess had a worried look on her face as she guzzled wine, her free hand gripping a rather matron roll of fat across her belly.

 

 

“This is where you’ll be staying with us, there is no key to give you as there is no lock,” the doctor said, “There is a jacket in the wardrobe, we’ve stocked the dresser with seven sets of size ten leggings, with matching shirts. We took the liberty of placing your socks and underwear as well.”

 

That made Tessa turn from examining the chubby Olympians, “Why did you stock my dresser? I had my own clothes…”

 

Disappointment crossed Mortenson’s heart shaped face, her plump lips pursing into a frown.

 

“Miss Holmes, we talked about this. If there is contraband in your bag, it is impounded,” the curvaceous doctor insisted, “and you had nine pounds of jelly beans and five bags of potato chips in your suitcase. It was a wonder you could close it.”

 

“I...I didn’t…,” Tessa said, confusion giving way to anger, “I...I didn’t even know I was coming here when I packed that  bag! Why would I load up with junk when I was going to play a superhero? Give me back my bag now and I won’t consider suing you!”

 

Mortenson contrived to look down at her, while being her height only due to heels. Her manicured fingers tapped the shining black gem on her chest, its light flicking across Tessa’s eyes as the full chested physician inhaled.

 

“Miss Holmes, my staff wear go pros when opening bags to avert this sort of thing. I understand you are angry at being caught out but know I am not angry or disappointed, you are far from the first actress who’s bad habits were caught out,” the doctor explained evenly, “You probably only remember putting a light snack for emergencies in there and not the junk food buffet you packed, as I said your fat can’t be trusted. Fat makes giant portions seem reasonable, a sedentary life seem healthy and tightening clothes a result of the wash. Admitting you are fat is one of the first steps to recovery.”

 

Throughout the explanation, anger had faded from Tessa’s mind. Replaced with the shameful feeling of her hand caught in the cookie jar. Surely she didn’t pack a bunch of sugary junk...had she? Yes her appetite had increased after she’d stopped chemo and before that she’d had a bit of a sweet tooth...

 

Mortenson handed over a print out of numbers and measurements that made Tessa’s eyes bulge. If it was to be believed, she’d added nine inches to her waist and six to her hips, as well as three cup sizes. And her weight…

 

“One hundred and fifty three pounds…,” Tessa exclaimed, a pit forming in her stomach, “but...I was only one hundred and forty nine?”

 

“Our scale is the most accurate in the world,” the beautiful physician explained, reading the list of food Tessa had written,  “if it says you weigh one hundred and fifty three pounds, you weigh it. And you are sadly, already in the overweight category. Your muscle tone is quite poor as well, I understand the sapping effects of chemo but it’ll make our work harder.”

 

Stunned out of anger and into confusion, disbelief and terror, Tessa rubbed her eyes, “I...alright, sure. But I didn’t put anything in my bag, maybe...I don’t know maybe my driver…”

 

“Played a prank? Or were you holding it for her? Either way, its quite in line with your diet,’ the blue eyed doctor said, “this list you wrote is nothing but take out and junk. If you weren’t a vegetarian your blood pressure would already be elevated. This is just my professional opinion, a diagnosis can come later, but you appear to be a lifelong over eater whose humming bird metabolism covered it up. Chemotherapy can lower the metabolism for life, combined with nearing thirty it appears that your bad habits have caught up with you.”

 

She made a tut tut sound and tapped the protruding bulge of Tessa’s tummy, finger sinking into the soft skin.

 

“Well, we will fix that, starting tonight. I will give you a moment to freshen up and shower. In thirty minutes, your trainer will come to escort you to dinner. There is a swimsuit in one of your drawers, this evening is a water exercise,” the doctor told her.

 

Mortenson left the room with a sashay of hips, leaving Tessa alone with herself. Shivering, the actress put the paper on the bed and entered the luxurious bathroom. A hot shower relieved some stress...and added some, for her body was soft to the touch. Tessa found fat on her hips and belly, fat under her chin and on her back, fat on her knees and on her triceps. It felt strange and alien, an invader from somewhere else. Looking down broke the uncanny valley, seeing a body that was almost hers but not.

 

Getting out and toweling off, she opened the drawer the doctor had indicated, finding a black bikini. It was small and skimpy, it was going to show off the weight she’d gained like nothing else. Not that she had much choice.

 

“One month, one month and I’ll be back to normal,” Tessa said to herself, plopping onto the bed to get dressed.

 

The impact of her weight made the paper with her humiliating vitals slide under the headboard and fall behind the bed. Sighing, the actress got her snug bikini panties on, softened and lowered cheeks hanging out the sides and plush love handles hanging over the band, and slid the heavy bed away from the wall, not wanting to get caught under the bed or worse, break her bikini or even worse, bang her head. The wobble of her new breasts was new and unfamiliar, Tessa was used to being a near b cup but the DDs she had were less pleasant than she’d expected. Mostly they were just heavy.

 

The bed slid back with difficulty on the soft carpet, testament to its sturdy construction and Tessa’s weakened muscles. She’d followed instructions to take it easy with exercise but apparently had taken that far too far. But eventually she was able to pick the damning paper up, rolls forming as she did.

 

“I guess I am overweight,” the actress sighed to herself, pinching her stomach with a free hand and carefully standing, only to freeze in mid motion, “what...who would…”

 

Carved into the back of the headboard with slow, careful motions, were four words:

 

“RUN WHILE YOU CAN”

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5 hours ago, flyer33 said:

Oh, what a cliff-hanger! And, also

Lol, I experienced one of those when I went to Long Island. 

Yeah, our road system is improved at the same rate the characters in this will lose weight...which is to say the opposite will happen.

 

3 hours ago, swahilimonkfish said:

Brilliant, with sharp wit and that King-ian sense of off-ness that you managed so well in that Ice Cream story

Ha, thanks! That's saying something coming from you.

 

And I need to finish that.

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Okay, this is cryptic enough for me to actively wonder about how it will develop when I should be sleeping. Is it really a weight loss clinic? What’s behind the curse of the Hero Girl? Is doc’s butt gonna get any bigger? Will Tessa be able to escape? Is her head trauma the reason why she can’t remember sneaking snacks, or is it a side effect of what made her gain three pounds since she arrived? I’m hooked.

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Chapter 3: The Curious Case of Cat Downton

 

Mythology was an entirely useless degree to anyone looking to make a living with it.

 

Tessa Holmes hadn’t needed to make a living since she’d turned eighteen, she had enough money in savings and trust funds to do nothing but read for the rest of her life. So when she’d gone to University, a minor in mythology wasn’t any more waste of time than her actual degree had been. 

 

“Is that Freya?” the actress asked her escort as they entered the vast dining room, referring to an immense mural that covered an entire twenty foot by thirty foot wall, seeming huge despite a being on the other side of a long table that could have sat a hundred people.

 

“I’m not sure, the paintings were installed by the original owner,” Sarah, the muscled trainer shrugged.

 

The shrug was pointless. Tessa knew it was the Norse goddess of love, war and magic by her long red gold hair, golden necklace and the great cats at her side. Unlike the rest of the mythological figures seen in the Lodge’s art, who were discovering themselves soft and flabby, Freya was gloriously fit, muscled from shapely calf to firm tricep and fully in command of a situation, attended by valkyries near as powerful as she. The goddess stood at the head of a table of warrior women, the table laden with food and the women, surely valiant dead carried to Freya’s hall of Folkvangr. The diners were decidedly rubenesque, hose ripping across fattened thighs, bulging bellies spilling out of mail shirts and arm fat rolling over golden armbands. They gorged on red meat and guzzled mead with gluttonous abandon, undoing sword belts to make for more room.

 

Freya and her Valkyries stood over the plump diners, a cruel, knowing look to their eyes.

 

“Do you know who painted them? They look very old, they must be worth a fortune on their own,” Tessa asked, finding that her hand had gone to her belly, resting on the soft robe she wore over her plumped figure.

 

“You can ask the professor, it doesn’t really interest me,” the trainer said dismissively, “now that you’re here I need to prepare your training for later.”

 

She left, leaving Tessa alone.

 

The actress padded over to the mural, looking for some sort of plaque or signature and finding nothing. She wasn’t an artist, although she’d dated one, and the technique was marvelous, the art style reminiscent of Renaissance masters. Although the subject matter was disturbing, she was jealous of the skill.

 

And Tessa knew, as she looked at a plush Viking warrior woman struggle against her own gut to reach a mead horn, that she was distracting herself.

 

“Run while you can”

 

Why would someone write that on a headboard? Why would they write that? What was the point?

 

Tessa hadn’t brought it up to the trainer who’d escorted her, because...well, either the writing was meaningless and she was worried over nothing or...Or she was alone, half an hour away from a road, without a phone or a computer and she barely remembered what the name of the nearest town was and threatened. She was an actress, she wasn’t even really an action actress and her stomach was doing flip flops trying not to have a panic attack…

 

“Kinda creepy aren’t they?” a melodious voice asked her, familiar but not quite ringing a bell.


 

Turning, the belt on her robe coming undone, Tessa saw the speaker. She felt embarrassment at her tummy being displayed, even though this was a weight loss clinic and even though she kept telling herself the weight wasn’t much, really, she had a gut hanging out. Because the fact of the matter was, Tessa had let herself get heavy and she was ashamed of being seen in such a state and judged. 

 

Until she saw the woman speaking to her.

 

She was much taller than the British actress and a redhead, curls pulled back in a pony tail. And much fatter, she had to weigh almost two Tessa’sl. A short robe showed off heavy, gracelessly fat legs: puffy, swollen ankles above soft slippers, a roll of thigh fat over a thick knee, long stretches of cellulite punctuated by spider veins on the outer thighs and red chafe marks on the inner. The robe was open, it probably wouldn’t be able to close as it was stretched across sloppy, child bearing hips that had to be at least fifty inches around, to show a lazy looking gut and breasts that fit comfortably in a C cup bra, both dwarfed by her thighs and hips.

 

“uh...I, yes they’re quite creepy,” Tessa said, eyes going off the girthy, clumsy hips, over an only fat, bulging belly and just plump breasts to the speaker’s face.

 

“Probably like in one of the movies you were in, eh Tess?” the woman said, smiling, “Oh come on, I’m not so fat that you can’t recognize me, am I?”

 

The new comer’s face was round, a preview of what would have happened to Tessa if she hadn’t caught herself. Cheeks were round and heavy, enough to make her green eyes a little smaller while a small jaw had been swallowed up by two and a half extra chins. They made the woman look heavy and a bit dull, a lipophobic thought that Tessa would have been ashamed of if she wasn’t medically overweight. But looking at the soft, bottom heavy woman for a little bit longer, her mind putting the voice in place.

 

“...Rachel?” the actress slowly realized, “but you’re...you’re not fat!”


 

“Thanks for the ego boost, but well, I am fat,” the American woman said with a sad chuckle, patting her heavy hips, “like...really fat. Not as fat as I was, thank God I’m under the big three zero zero now, but I still have a hundred and sixty pounds to drop before I can squeeze into my old fat day touring clothes. So, how did you wind up here, Miss Skinny mini witch girl? Drink the wrong potion or did you buy a bag of every flavor beans that was all butter?”

 

Being teased brought a bit of redness to the embarrassed woman’s cheeks, but she was made of stern stuff.

 

“I was hired to play you in your biopic, “Rachel Fast: From America’s sweetheart to America’s fat ass. After the first fifty pounds I balked when they wanted me to get ass implants sized elephant,” Tessa said with a grin, hoping it wouldn’t be taken badly.

 

For a moment, the tall, obese pear was silent. Then burst into belly and thigh jiggling laughter.

 

“Okay, fuck that is good...but I’m hippo at worst,” the singer laughed.

 

With a grunt, Rachel pulled out one of the chairs at the long, long dining table. Despite being in her twenties, the singer sat herself down with a groan worthy of the elderly, absentmindedly rubbing her knee. Tessa had been thoughtlessly sucking in her stomach out of embarrassment, but now that they were both...out in the open so to speak she let it bulge out.

 

“Ugh, sitting feels too good,” the heavy set singer groaned, “but as for me...well, I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

 

Tessa walked towards her, not quite believing this was real. If she had to draw up a list of people she would assume would never gain a pound, Rachel Fast was on the top of that list. A grammy winning singer song writer and pop starlet, the green eyed redhead had been called a living Barbie with some accuracy. Not fully accurate, because she did have a brain in her pretty head and a very flat chest, but true if considering only her long, tooth pick thin legs, modelesque waist, girlish hips and sculpted, refined face. To see her looking so...huge defied belief.

 

“Well, to be honest I’m still trying to get a handle on it myself,” Tessa admitted, pulling a chair out, “I’m...honestly I had no idea until I took a role for a ridiculous film and the walked into the costumer forty pounds fatter than I’d ever been before. But I guess, well, I was sick for a long time and ...when I got better I took it too easy.”

 

Rachel nodded, chins rolling.

 

“Yeah, I had thought that it was odd you hadn’t been in any movies last year. Really I should have reached out to you,” the redhead said a little guiltily.

 

It wasn’t like Rachel was Tessa’s best friend or anything. When you’re extremely rich its hard to have real friends. But the singer and Tessa had moved in similar circles, both young, feminist and famous, donating to the same charities, going to the same events and etc. They’d seen each other, exchanged numbers, gone to some of the same parties and the like.

 

“I...I wanted to keep it private, no need to be seen going into hospital,” the brunette actress admitted, leaving out the brain surgery, “or well, like this. But well, what about you? I didn’t follow the news too much, my personal life was bad enough but I didn’t remember you being…”

 

“A human manatee?” Rachel snorted, slapping her gut, “or maybe a walrus.”

 

“Ouch, no I wouldn’t say that!” the shorter woman stammered, shocked that she’d given offense.

 

“No you didn’t, I did. And I am, really it's my own fault. Mostly,” the fat girl shrugged, “sixty percent...maybe fifty five. Anyway, this lard and the fifty pounds I’ve burned off in this...wonderful facility are a mix of medication and relationship weight. I strained my voice and hurt my leg pretty bad on tour, the doctors put me on steroids to soothe the inflammation. I was already a little thick from tour food, I’m past the age I can eat what I want and stay pencil thin. I need to diet anymore but I was hurting and figured...why not relax. Especially as my boyfriend liked me with the cute little butt I’d grown and while I was laid up he pampered me. Steroids already make you blow up, but given how much I liked him pampering me...well, I got chubby fast and obese faster...and he liked that even more and pampered me even bigger...”

 

That gave a choice to answer and Tessa opted for the nicest one, “So, you’re seeing someone?”

 

Rachel snorted, folding her arms over her gut, “Well, I was, until I had a little wake up call. You really shouldn’t feel bad taking a minute to recognize me, I knocked on my mom’s door Christmas eve and she didn’t know it was me. And when I looked at her...well, my mom’s been a big woman since I could remember. My fat genes came from her and I was a lot bigger than she was. My older sister got fat having a kid and my younger sister got chubby in college, but I was bigger than both of them put together. My niece thought I was Santa and kept feeding me oreos...which I ate all of. I popped a jean button at dinner...and kept eating while opening presents, mostly pants I was 200lbs too big for.”


 

“I...literally I can’t believe that. How, how did you get so big just from, didn’t your boyfriend say anything?” the actress asked at the ridiculous story, shaking her head and feeling her little double chin shake.

 

Her acquaintance snorted again, adopting a falsetto her deep voice couldn’t quite hit, “Oh yeah things like “Want some more pie with that whip cream?” “Who’s that piggy piggy?”. If it wasn’t for him I’d still weigh as much as you...and how good doing doggy style while eating pumpkin pie face first feels…”

 

That brought a blush to Tessa’s cheeks, “Oh, so he was…”

 

“A pervert with a rockin bod and an excellent cock, can suck a golf ball through a garden hose too,” Rachel said wistfully, “but good as being fed and fucked felt, I was waaayyy too fat. I had a check up and my blood pressure was not at a good place and I was nearly diabetic. Then my recording agency started pushing for more albums after the last one went triple platinum and flipped shit when I told them how big I was. Image is as much a thing in my work as yours and I can’t exactly draw the same fan base at triple my old size. That and as you can hear, all these chins have fucked over my voice, I’ve dropped a full octave and my stamina was so shit that I couldn’t last for more than two minutes.”

 

How do you answer something like that? Tessa had no idea, it was so...perverted and fucked up and kinky…

 

“Well, at least the sex was good,” the brunette Brit shrugged, “I just had cancer.”

 

Now it was Rachel’s turn to blink, “Fuck, really?”

 

“Yeah, really...It's gone now but...well, I had gotten down to a hundred pounds before my appetite came back and I had been told to take it easy, so I made a pig of myself until I showed up for a comic book movie with this gut,” Tessa said, revealing her pudge in it soft glory, “at least I caught it early…”

 

She had to assume that’s what happened...she didn’t remember eating all those items on the list she’d written, but...Tessa had to, didn’t she? This didn’t come from nowhere, surely, she must have been gaining for months during her recovery...sitting on the couch and gorging on take out and her mother’s cookies, sweat pants hiding the thickening of her figure. She remembered thinking they’d shrunk in the wash and ordering a size up in case it happened again...right?

 

“Before you blew up like me?” Rachel laughed, “Oh don’t look like you offended me, I’m a fat fatty and etc etc. But fuck, cancer? You said you were sick but I though it would be...I don’t know, lupus or some tick disease you got doing that rainforest charity stuff...shit. I really should have sent...something...flown out to see you and paid for the extra ticket for my ass...fuck, I was too self absorbed to reach out…”

 

“I wanted it private, same as this. I hate being...pitied,” the actress said.

 

“No, fuck, you’re the one who was sick, don’t reassure me for being a little bitch. Ugh, I should have quit gaining when my thighs started clapping, that way I’d at least be selfish and skinny,” Rachel groaned, “Seriously though, when we’re both hot again I’m making it up to you. That might be a while though, at my current rate I’ll be here until Summer, you on the other hand will probably be back to your skinny self before I’m below 200lbs. You’ve probably only got to shed twenty.”

 

“I wish, if I’m to get into the costume for this idiot movie I need to be 115, nearly forty pounds,” Tessa sighed.

 

“Well...you wear it well?” Rachel told her, “seriously, you’re all cute and cuddly and soft. After taking a waddle on the wide side, there are guys who’d eat you up chubby.”

 

Now it was Tessa’s turn to snort. She’d had plenty of boyfriends but preferred her own company most of the time...especially if said company was going to feed her up.

 

“Let’s hold that in reserve,” Tessa replied sarcastically, “in case this doesn’t work out. How is this place? It seems...strict.”

 

Rachel leaned back, idly scratching her pillar thick thigh, replicating the pose of one heavy set viking woman in the picture, “Tell me. They took my bag just because I had a few...dozen pounds of beef jerky and pork rinds snacks in it. Every day its up at 6 am for a two poached egg and apple slice breakfast and then three hours of exercise, then a psycho therapy torture session to cure me of my feeding fetish, then another exercise session, then some broccoli and a peach at lunch, then more exercise...then dinner which is the same as lunch but with exercise after, at least we get a half hour break before dinner and an hour one before bed...mostly I just lay on my bed and try not to cry my muscles are so sore. But it works at least, I’ve lost fifty pounds in six weeks.”

 

Tessa wasn’t an expert in weight loss. She did yoga, she watched what she ate...or she had done Yoga and had watched what she ate...but that was a lot of weight in a very short time.

 

“Is that...healthy?” Tessa asked her with some concern, “I didn’t lose weight that fast on chemo.”

 

“The doctor says its healthy and well, she seems to know what she’s doing,” Rachel shrugged her soft shoulders again, “even though the psych sessions are a bit…”

 

Another fit, interchangeable trainer opened the door, allowing a very not fit woman to enter. She was very tall and very blonde and as she wasn’t bothering to wear a robe over her bikini it was easy to tell she was very...big. Heavier than the thunder thighed Rachel by at least thirty pounds, if not more and distributed far differently than the still flat chested singer. Tessa had wanted bigger breasts for a long time, only to find that DDs weren’t so fun when they came with a chubby body. This woman on the other hand…

 

Her breasts were like volley balls, milk pale and huge. Partly deflated volley balls that her bikini top was doing a poor job of containing and lined with pale blue veins and angry red stretch marks. The saggy, sloppy boobs jiggled, the left one several cup sizes past the smaller right one and by the nipples pointing through the fabric and Australian cleavage hanging beneath it, quite a bit lower too. Every step made the breasts bounce madly, in a way that Tessa had never seen outside of porn.

 

A heavy set gut was doubled over in a fold, appearing both immense and incredibly soft and somewhat swollen all at once. Love handles hung over her taut bikini straps, while the front fold of her stomach hid most of the black panties. She had very long legs, the thighs only barely chaffed and her ankles and calves were distinguishable from each other, but cellulite had grown with abandon on them, creeping up to her drooping gut’s lower folds. 

 

Tessa had a reputation as being empathetic, but any idiot could see she was miserable and angry. Her shoulders were slumped, a combination of the weight of her breasts and bad posture, while her chubby arms were folded under her outrageous bosoms. Her round face was creased with a frown, which only highlighted how her chin had been swallowed by a jowl. She plunked herself down onto a chair, which groaned beneath her, fury blazing in her piggish blue eyes.

 

“I fucking hate this place,” she growled in a hoarse voice.

 

“Cat here can tell you how the psych therapy sessions go,” Rachel said.

 

“Psych sessions?” Tessa asked, waiting to be introduced.

 

“The fucking bitch said that...said that I was a fat girl on the inside who was dying to get out. And that until I accepted it, I’d always be a single cheat day away from getting fat again, that my depression was fueled by being unable to accept myself as thin and feeling like a fraud if I was viewed as hot...so I have to wear a bikini whenever I’m in doors now until I can accept myself,” the blonde huffed miserably, “what does she know? If I hadn’t gotten pregnant I wouldn’t have gotten so fat! Yeah I’ve had to go on a crash diet before a few shoots and once or twice they had to edit me extra but ….fuck!”

 

The blonde leaned back in her chair, hands going to her face, “Fuck I’m so fucking hungry…I just want a pizza and a six pack of coors...”

 

Rachel looked at the astonished Tessa, “Cat, meet my friend Tessa Holmes, the sole child star who didn’t get fucked up. Tessa, meet Cat Downton, super model and new mom of three.”

 

“And I keep fucking leaking, its ...fuck why won’t my boobs go back to normal? God damn it they’re never gonna put me on a cover again...” Cat groaned, at last looking at Tessa with piggish blue eyes, “Why are you here, you’re skinny?”

 

“Well, no, I’m technically overweight…,” Tessa tried to say, only to be cut off.

 

“Fuck, you could hide that little chub in a hoodie. I gained that much in a trimester...ughhhh...I’d fucking kill someone to have that body fat percentage again,” the blonde moaned, “ugh, where’s the food? I’d fucking kill someone for sugar…’

 

Tessa knew who Cat Downton was, because she’d been alive in the past ten years.

 

That didn’t mean she knew the super model though. Despite being young and pretty, Tessa wasn’t a party maniac like the fashion crowd tended to be. Although Downton was more…

The Downton that Tessa was quasi-familiar with from magazine covers and an occasional...exploration session when feeling less than straight was a tall, leggy, corn fed all American blonde. Distinguished from a million others by what was claimed by many with some accuracy as the best rack in the modelling world, a big set of pert round bosoms that seemed to perfect, too big and too...fantastic to be real. She’d made a fair bit of waves in modeling because most bikini models were a B or a C cup, Cat had debut at 18 with a D just as skinny and then gained a tiny amount of weight to get to an E. Victoria’s Secret had refused to walk her again due to her having a body fat percentage that let her menstrate, but Sports Illustrated had featured her on the cover three years back to back and in every issue since. She’d faced a bit of weight criticism from the nightmarishly awful fashion world, but raw sex appeal had let her rack up fortunes in sponsorships and ad campaigns before marrying an all star athlete.

 

“It’s ...nice to meet you,” Tessa tried to offer.

 

“No it isn’t because I’m fucking fat and ugly and this place is the worst...ugh…,” Cat groaned, leaning back and making the chair groan and Tessa swore, her bikini top groan, “I just wanna go home and hug my kids and get fucked and eat a fucking burger…”

 

Again the door opened, this time admitting Dr. Mortenson.

 

The curvaceous blonde click clacked across the marble tiles, her strong legs carrying her with a grace none of the fat women could have matched. A faint smile was on her face and several girls dressed in professional maids uniforms that didn’t hide strong muscles under them, were these other trainers Tessa wondered, followed her, pushing five silver meal carts. The Doctor walked to the seat at the head of the table by the three patients, sliding off her blazer to reveal that her white top was sleeveless, her arms toned and defined, her waist even tinier and her bust and hips even bigger than Tessa had thought. Putting the blazer on her chair, she slid it out and primly sat down, slim legs folded.

 

“Ladies, apologies for the delay. I had to make an important call,” Mortenson smiled, teeth gleaming, “I hope you were able to introduce yourselves. Normally we have a group therapy session with new comers, but as Miss Holmes’ arrival was unusually swift, we will have to do so at dinner.”

 

Cat groaned, while Rachel gave Tessa a pained grin. The maids/trainers placed the covered meal trays before them, taking them off to reveal four plates of steamed vegetables, salads with vinegar dressing and no cheese, skim milk in crystal glasses, small slices of whole grain rye bread and small helpings of baked black beans. A totally healthy, vegetarian meal...and very small, about four or five hundred calories tops. With the food was a small, square of a waxy, dark brown, near black substance.

 

Dr. Mortenson’s meal was identical to the patients, while a much larger, heavier tray was placed between them. A waitress lifted it off, revealing of all things, an immense chocolate cheese cake a foot thick with syrupy icing and strawberries on the top. Tessa found herself staring at the caloric bomb as a waiter cut it into equal slices and then added a heaping spoonful of artfully placed whipped cream atop each quarter.

 

Her bikini felt tighter looking at it.

 

Rachel and Cat started eating, the model stabbing at her vegetables and shooting venemous glances at the Doctor or staring at the cake as if it was a magnet and her eyes iron files. Tessa was the only one not eating, she wasn’t that hungry after her accidental...binge this afternoon, although she hadn’t been full in a while and could eat…

 

“Since no one is explaining it to me, what’s the deal with the cheese cake?” Tessa asked looking around, “is it...zero fat cheese cake? Some sort of prop…”

 

“Oh no, its quite real. Freshly made by our staff and entirely delicious, with natural cane sugar, whipped cream taken from cows on a nearby family owned farm, strawberries from the garden and chocolate from our groves,” Mortenson smiled, plump lips shining as she listed off the ingredients, “and in its current division...perhaps twenty four to twenty six hundred calories per portion.  Also packed with saturated fat and cholesterol and sugar.”

 

“So...we’re here to lose weight…,” the actress tried to ask, utterly confused, “but this is...almost the least healthy thing in the world…”

 

“Ten points to Dragon House,” Rachel said, elbowing the actress in her soft side and earning a faint glare from Tessa.

 

Cat snorted, milk coming out her nose. Her laughing made the water melon and cantaloupe cleavage vibrate, dark stains forming over her nipples.

 

“Apologies, is this some sort of...I do not get the reference,” Mortenson said, one perfect eyebrow raised.

 

“Its from a movie series I was in, they were books before that,” Tessa sighed, “it made college totally insufferable.”

 

The doctor blinked and shrugged her slim shoulders, “Oh, pop culture. I haven’t watched a film made after the 60s in years, modern cinema is like sugar, it leaves you bloated and rotten.”

 

There was some real venom in the Doctor’s words, her fingers tightening on her fork as she spoke.

 

“The cake is to torture us,” Rachel said, “and remind us we’re fat fatties who can’t control ourselves...and honestly it works because it looks so damn good…these vegetables are good but...their veggies and their tiny and that cake….if it was a person I’d marry it…”

 

Mortenson sighed, “No the cake is not a torture, no matter how much you might think. It is there to test you, to teach discipline. As I said, this is a holistic facility. If you want to be made thin, Miss Holmes, Los Angeles is full of plastic surgeons who could vacuum you down to your old size in a few appointments. Even Miss Fast and Miss Downton are not beyond the reconstructive arts, although they are unlikely to look natural. But when you’re done with your latest role or tour or photoshoot and its been a long day and you’re tired and you’ve been so good lately...you’re rich, you can buy any food in the world and you will be fat again. But at the Black Mountain Lodge, we will make it so you never struggle with your weight again. That you will never be tempted and will maintain discipline for the rest of your life. Complete the program and you will never return to how you were when you entered.”

 

The doctor’s breathy voice was rising, her lips curling into a pleasant smile and her eyes shown. She looked, very much like the powerful goddess on the wall behind her to Tessa’s eyes...which made the role of herself and her other patients quite clear as well.

 

“Evelyn Stone got fat again,” Cat said, almost spitting, “its not that perfect.”

 

Mortenson’s eyes settled on the obese model, a cold smile creeping across her perfect face.

 

“Evelyn Stone’s presence or absence at this lodge is not up for debate,” Mortenson told her.

 

“I know she was here, I saw her as I pulled in. Barely recognizable but it was her. I was pretty big when I came in,” Cat went on, swelling with pride to disagree, “but she was monstrously fat and yelling at her trainer she wanted to go home…”

 

Mortenson’s plate was clean, as was everyone’s but Tessa’s who was picking through the vegetables. They were quite good, she loved avocados and air grilled onions and peppers, while the pulpy strawberry juice alongside the water was delicious. Despite her meal that afternoon she’d kill for a slice of bread, just a small one though. However, she was almost done and feeling like a kid caught between two divorcing parents, wanting to shrink in her seat.

 

“She was fucking huge, a five hundred pound whale who’s mobility scooter was scraping on the ground,” the model insisted, as if she was losing a pant size per word, “so explain why it didn’t work for her?”

 

The Doctor put her knife and fork down, blue eyes locking with Cat’s.

 

“Because, Miss Downton, this is not a prison, no matter what my often spoiled clients say to each other,” Mortenson said, tone exactly even and nails tapping the shining opals on the necklace she wore, “you, all of you are free to go whenever you wish. Merely say the words, “I am fat and always will be, Dr. Mortenson”, then I will return the bags you smuggled junk food in and the fattening treats in them, return the addictive phones and even have a trainer drive you to the nearest air port and order you a ticket to wherever you wish, even if I must buy two seats for your girth.”

 

Cat, nearly six feet tall and the size of a bull was shrinking in her seat, while Mortenson, petite and barely 5’ was rising taller.

 

“This is a hospital and I am a doctor, a dietitian and a psychologist. The State of California does not allow me to keep you on a self harm hold, even if you will obviously eat yourself into an early grave left alone,” the Doctor went on, voice full of pride, “some of my patients are sadly so addicted to their obesity, so enthralled to their gluttonous urges that even when faced with the full impact of their bad decisions, even as they need oxygen pumped to their lungs and machines to move for them, they will demand to leave this house of healing and return to the poisonous slop that is killing them. If you saw someone else here, arguing when you left, then that person was not psychologically able to complete the program. Now, Cat, as you have volunteered, let us begin group therapy with you.”

 

In a meaningless side article on Cat that Tessa had read, the model had mentioned loving weight lifting and martial arts, that she was a brown belt and loved feeling like a bad ass. Right now, she seemed a quivering lump.

 

“P-please, not again we just...we just had a session,” the model pleaded, round face red and eyes watery.

 

Tessa was frozen, ashamed to be seeing an adult woman reduced to tears, her mouth hanging open and a spoonful of peas balancing on it. Peas that smelled, almost like pork…

 

“Yes, but you are neither physically nor psychologically well. But this is just three questions,” the doctor said, voice warm as honey and loving, “firstly Cat, why did you, a woman so famed for her beauty, let herself get so big? I must say, you do not look like a supermodel, you look like an obese soccer mother, barely able to haul herself out of her mini van…”

 

“I...I just had kids, okay? Triplets, I was eating for four…,” the blonde said, near sobbing.

 

“Oh, please, be honest Cat. It started before that, well before it didn’t it?” Mortenson pressed.

 

“I...I was a fat kid. The fat girl in school,” Cat said, each word pulled from her mouth with pliers, “my mom was a beauty queen who was ashamed of me, my grandma spoiled me...I was the fattest in my grade until my parents put me in fat camp for four years in a row and then…”

 

“Then you were thin, yes?” The doctor filled in for her.

 

“I was gorgeous, I was tall and thin and my breasts hadn’t shrank and were perfect and suddenly I was Miss Teen Michigan and got a SI contract and I was rich and famous,” Cat said, near hyper ventilating.

 

“Take a breath and drink your milk, you are becoming excited,” the Doctor ordered softly, Cat following, reaching over a plate she’d emptied of an egg white omelet and shredded carrots, “now go on. You were thin and rich and beautiful, which means it is time for your second question. Did you stay skinny easily?”

 

The model put her head in her hands, pulling on it, eyes staring at the cheese cake over her plate of boiled broccoli.

 

“I...for a while but then I turned twenty. And I started gaining a little weight, just a few pounds and I lost them, but I’d showed up for a shoot a little heavy and they had to retouch so I doubled down on exercising until I got my first cover,” the unevenly breasted woman admitted, “and it worked until we got done shooting but I was so hungry…”

 

“So you rewarded yourself and regained,” Mortenson filled in.

 

Cat slumped in her chair, exhausted, “And I gained it back...but I lost it again before the next shoot and then…”

 

“A cycle of gaining and losing fifteen pounds, one that slowly rose up as you got a little heavier and lost a little less each time,” the doctor tuted, “common. It renders a million slim eighteen year olds into heavy thirty year olds over time. But your latest growth is not common, especially for a woman only twenty seven years old…”

 

For a moment Cat was quiet, looking down at her bulk. At the mishappen, ruined breasts leaking milk down her skin. At the lumpy, rolly polly stomach with its stretchmarks and cellulite.

 

“I...wanted to get pregnant but I couldn’t, not easily, so I went on a fertility treatment for three months...and gained forty five pounds. It worked but I was...it was humiliating. I was the fattest woman in my family again, people were asking me if I was due before i was pregnant,” Cat groaned, “and I…knew I was a fraud. That I’d always been fat, that I was an imposter…”

 

Mortenson’s head cocked, “Go on, you told me how you dealt with this...

 

“I knew I was a fraud...so I did what always made me feel good. And I ate, and ate and ate. I gained a hundred pounds during my pregnancy, I got gestational diabetes and after ...I was so fat and so ugly just a saggy lumpy mess and I couldn’t think of anything about how this was me so I ate even more…,” the once famously beautiful woman admitted, like her teeth was being pulled, “and I said I’d go on a diet the next day...but I always needed one more meal…for an entire year...”

 

Mortenson seemed satisfied, her breasts rising up. She smiled and leaned forwards, shining teeth appearing as she asked the third question.

 

“And what event led you to realize you needed to make a change?” Mortenson said evenly, like this wasn’t bizarre and humiliating and insane.

 

“I...please don’t make me say it…,” Cat begged.

 

“If you don’t wish to complete the treatment you may leave. But I warn you,” Mortenson told her, “Once you leave the facility, you may never come back. We do not accept someone who can’t handle my treatments.”

 

The obese model’s plump hands went to her breasts, perfect mounds that had made her a fortune and were now ruined, before groping the sagging gut that had been her flat stomach.

 

“No, no I won’t,” Cat said, eyes shining, “I’m the top model of the last decade, I can do what I want and fuck you.”

 

The model’s arms were still long, her hand snaked out and grabbed a quarter of cheese cake. She tore into the calorie loaded desert with gusto, like a starving wolf devouring a lost child on the Russian steppe. Pretzel crust and chocolate icing disappeared, strawberry cream running across Cat’s body. She finished with a great heaving gasp, near orgasmic in nature and screamed at the top of her lungs, a horrible siren call that made Tessa drop her fork and the green onion slices on it to cover her ears.

 

What the fuck is this place? Tessa thought, looking up sure she’d see Cat being dragged off by orderlies…

 

Instead Cat held her head in her hands, mouth clean and chest free of crumbs, only tears on her face.

 

“I can’t, its...God to admit it,” Cat sobbed, defeated, “it’ll mean that I’m nothing but this lard…”

 

All four quarters of the cake were present, untouched and pristine.

 

“Oh my are you alright, Miss Holmes?” Mortenson asked with some concern, “My apologies for not warning you, these sessions can be intense to witness.”

 

“I...I’m not...I was just surprised,” Tessa gasped, trying to put together the two contradictory things she had seen.

 

Dr. Mortenson smiled again, raising a deep fried turkey drumstick to her mouth and spending a long moment gorging on the fried bird meat, eating half a pound of greasy meat before dropping the bone to her plate, atop the crumbs of fried potatoes and fried mushrooms and fried chicken and fried pork and belching.

 

“Now, Cat. I know this is hard for you, but you must accept the full damage you did to yourself. If you do not, you will relapse,” Mortenson, pushing away a plate that had a few stray peas on it, “now please, please for your sake, for your family’s sake, tell us what happened. I know its so hard, but if you can admit it in front of us, it will be a huge step for your recovery…”

 

The sobbing Cat looked up, frosting at the corner’s of her mouth, crumbs in her breasts.

 

“Okay, okay,” the model gasped, wiping away the tears and only the tears that streaked her eyes, “I can do this...I can admit...I was playing with my daughters, they were just learning to walk and I...I went to pick one up after chasing them around and...my chest started hurting, hurting really badly. And I was the only adult in the house and my husband was in another city and I was afraid I was gonna die…”

 

“What had happened? If I may stretch to a fourth question,” Mortenson asked softly.

 

“I was twenty seven years old, in what should have been the prime of my career, because...I’d eaten myself to nearly four hundred pounds and I almost had a heart attack,” Downton sobbed, massive chest heaving, “and I knew if I didn’t do something I’d never live to see my kids go to school, much less grow up…”

 

Mortenson stood and walked over, producing a silk handkerchief and letting the model sob into it.

 

“There, there it is hard to admit. You almost killed yourself, didn’t you? But you were lucky, you reached out and found help and we will fix you,” the Doctor smiled, maternally patting the much taller woman’s spongy shoulder, “already you’ve lost...how much weight in eight weeks?”

 

“Eighty pounds, I’ve lost eighty pounds,” Downton admitted, with slight pride, mouth clean.

 

“Yes and by fall, you will be back to your old self. You’ll be able to love yourself for who you are,” Mortenson smiled, “there, that wasn’t so hard to admit in the end, was it?”

 

Cat shook her head, abashed but happy, icing at the corners of her mouth.

 

Tessa’s head was spinning. She was seeing what shouldn’t be there, contradictory things…

 

“I…,” Tessa stammered, heart hammering and a cold sweat covering her, “do you mind, I know its my first day but I need...I need to lay down…”

 

“Oh, no you can’t lay down yet. We have your speech and your exercise to get through,” the doctor said, licking meat grease off of her mouth, “now that you’re done with your vegetables, try the chocolate, that will help settle your nerves.”

 

Looking down at her plate, licked clean but was that barbecue sauce on it?, Tessa picked up the tiny chocolate square on its little individual plate. It was cold, hard and small…

 

“Chocolate doesn’t seem very healthy,” she said.

 

“Oh, most chocolate isn’t chocolate. Its perverted with milk and sugar, made disgusting and fattening. Real chocolate, real chocolate is a health food. Its full of antioxidants, it stimulates serotonin production, makes the skin smooth and soft and fights depression,” Mortenson explained, voice breathy and almost orgasmic, “this comes from the groves here and is the purest form, cultivated from strains taken from Mesoamerica by this Lodge’s founder. We grow it by the ton and sell it not to perverted candy companies, but to pharmaceuticals. This chocolate is a major ingredient in most antipsychotic drugs and grows only in the microclimate of this mountain. We make enough money from it that it lets us operate with such large margins of staff per patient.”

 

Tessa looked at the little square, which gleamed jet black.

 

“Trust me, its delicious and the only sweet you’ll get,” Rachel told her, popping her own tab into her mouth, “but if you don’t want yours…”

 

Tessa sighed, and ate the chocolate tablet. 

 

It was bitter tasting, not at all sweet. But chalky and thick. By the time she swallowed, Tessa felt better, her stomach settled and pulse normalizing. She slumped in her seat, feeling dreamy…

 

“Good, good girls…,” the doctor smiled, blurring and unblurring, “Now for our exercise session…”

 

Rachel was also slumped back in her chair, as was Cat who’s face was smeared with crumbs. Tessa’s belly rumbled with hunger, painfully needing food...despite being upset from all that greasy meat…

 

“Begin by eating your cake portion,” Mortenson smiled, teeth gleaming.

 

Rachel reached out and picked up her wedge, raising it to her mouth with her chubby arms and eating it like corn on the cob. Tessa paused and reached out, fingers getting sticky and started eating. She wasn’t a big sweet eater...no, she lived off of sweets...but never a big sweet eater who lived off of sweets, she found the sinfully rich cheese cake divine.

 

“You will be swimming today,” Mortenson told them at the pool, her lean, muscular body shown off perfectly in a tiny black bikini that complimented round hip and high breast, her abs and ribs on display, “an hour of laps and an hour of water aerobics and an hour of laps again!”

 

Tessa adjusted her snug bikini, glad that she’d caught this early. Cat was huge in her suit and Rachel not much smaller, both looking at the exercise like life long fat girls. Swallowing, she bent her legs to dive.

 

The cheese cake was gone. Save for the small sliver that Mortenson was precisely serving herself. Her belt was off and her skirt undone, a bulging food baby distorting taut abs. Trainers were coming in, still in maid’s uniforms but pushing carts that held bubbling tanks of warm, heavy cream connected to hoses and masks….

 

The pool stood before her. Immense and byazntine, murals of a chubby Artemis trying to outswim a shark on the bottom of the pool while above her the rest of her overweight sisters pointed and ate. Cat had already dove in, swimming surprisingly well, as was Rachel. Mortenson helped put goggles on Tessa’s head and gave her a push. She swam awkwardly, feeling like she was drowning…

 

“Not so fast on her, she’s new and tiny, barely able to eat five courses let alone take this too,” Mortenson said to a trainer as Tessa struggled to suck down the rich, creamy liquid, so sugary she wanted to puke, so fatty she felt grease spreading on her skin, “They botched the last job badly and had to rush a replacement after that disaster. Slow her in take or she’ll burst…”

 

Tessa swam as hard as she could, not able to keep up with Rachel or Cat who despite their obesity were cutting through the water. Her side had a stabbing pain and her stomach...God her abs felt like they would tear…

 

“That’s enough for her. Give the other two gallons to me, Old Gods and New Gods know I need it. And increase Miss Downton’s psychotropic dosage, her sopping tits are letting too much leak away, we don’t want her memory coming back along with her smart mouth,” Mortenson ordered.

 

Exhausted, sopping wet and sore to the bone, Tessa flopped onto her bed. She’d never been more tired and despite being told she had an hour of free time before bed, knew she needed more rest before the next day and its fresh exercises….the Doctor had promised them a hard session after breakfast...

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This story is a new level of unnerving 😦 the sheer amount of gaslighting in the last chapter alone triggered my own memories of experiencing it (and my temper). Tessa needs to burn the place down; that’s my gut instinct.

Maybe her surgery has given her partial immunity to the mindtrips I’m 💯 % sure are happening. That’s my guess

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2 hours ago, >_< 0_0 said:

This story is a new level of unnerving 😦 the sheer amount of gaslighting in the last chapter alone triggered my own memories of experiencing it (and my temper). Tessa needs to burn the place down; that’s my gut instinct.

Maybe her surgery has given her partial immunity to the mindtrips I’m 💯 % sure are happening. That’s my guess

Oh yes, this lodge.... Is not a good place...

 

And thanks for noticing, I was trying to have as many small alterations as possible

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Chapter 4: Dreams in the Fat House

 

Above her glinted a sea of stars, a million glinting dots in the endless firmament.

 

On each side of her was a column of shadowy savages, painted red and black. Howling, screaming, pounding drums of skins and skulls, raising spears to the night sky, slitting their own palms with sword blades.

About her were the dead eyed women, the sacrifice choosers, their naked muscles gleaming in the moonlight, their empty eyes showing their inhuman un-mercy.

 

Before her pranced the High Priestess, naked before the stars. Proud of her stolen youth and unearned muscles, fertile hips twitching and nubile breasts bouncing above a muscular belly marked with paint formed from the sacred plant. Her necklace twinkled and her eyes showed her triumph at yet another cycle of sacrifice.

 

Tessa wanted to scream, but she couldn’t draw breath deep enough. A heavy weight pressed on her chest, making her breathing nothing but pants. She could twitch her legs and just barely swing her arms, but the same weight pinned her to a platform a dozen of the valkyries dragged along. Despite feeling naked, her body was covered in sweat and hard to feel, seeming far from her...

 

An animal growled, angry and continuously, so close it seemed inside her…

 

Torches were staked around the cave entrance, lightning the mad revelers, the bare priestess and her naked valkyries...and Tessa…

 

She tried to scream, only a faint gurgle leaving her lips, as she saw how the fat spilled across her body. A ludicrous scale of obesity, fatness to a degree reserved for freak shows. A dozen oozing roles of belly fat, crevices feet deep. Constellations of stretchmarks and seas of cellulite. Garbage bag breasts stranded as beach whales on the ocean of gut lard. Legs buried beneath the blanket of flab. Pathetically swollen arms barely able to bend. So many sagging chins she could see them, cheeks so blown up her vision was reduced to slits. And all of her daubed in red brown runes: pointed stars and pentagrams, angled circles and squared triangles, all glowing in the night...

 

“No no no no no,” she whisper gasped, vision covered in black dots and her heart pounding in a feeble attempt just to exist…

 

Uncaring, the Valkyries hauled her towards the cave entrance. Deep in the darkness, something moved...

 

“Miss Holmes, it is time to wake up,” her trainer said after a harsh knock on her door.

 

Tessa’s brown eyes snapped open, finding her room a little less than full dark due to a sunrise coming through the window. She was covered in sweat and wrapped in blankets, heart still pounding and breath gasping. Pulling herself from the tangle of sheets, the actress put a hand to her stomach, gasping in relief to find it flat…

 

Well, relatively flat.

 

Tessa’s stomach was soft enough her fingers squished into it and plump enough to grab. It hung over her panties in a chubby muffin top and her belly button was deeper than she expected...but compared to the mattress of lard in her dream, she was in perfect condition...if very sore. In fact, her stomach ached like she’d been beaten. 

 

Which had to be a result of her punishing work out. Tessa remembered the stretches that had left her exhausted and the long, hard laps she’d struggled to keep up with...but...but...there’d been so much food and the pumping hoses…

 

“What…,” the actress wondered to herself, the memories impossibly at odds...

 

“Miss Holmes, its time to wake up. You have less than twenty nine minutes until breakfast is served,” the trainer said again, “If you are late you won’t get to eat.”

 

“I’m, I’m awake. Sorry just...a bit startled,” the tired woman gasped, pulling herself from the bed on sleep numbed limbs, “Let me shower and I’ll be out in a moment…”

 

As she walked towards the shower, Tessa felt her thighs rasp across each other for the first time. An action repeated with every step into the bathroom. When she lathered up with a gentle, chocolate scented body wash in the monsoon shower, Tessa’s hands found breasts slightly too big to fit her hands and a butt that was lower than she recalled. 

 

When she brushed her teeth, new fat jiggled on the backs of her arms, joined by a double chin. The yoga pants provided for her, pink sized tens which would have been tent like on her, were transparently snug, her belly cut in half by the elastic waistband to form a muffin top. Sports bra straps cut into her softened shoulders, fat mushrooming around it. When she looked down to tie her shoes, the bulge of her belly had begun to cover some of her feet.

 

“Thank God I’m at a weight loss clinic already, I must have been blowing up like a balloon to not notice…,” she started to say, remembering looking down at herself when she’d been weighed yesterday and seeing considerably less of herself.

 

Trying to snap out of this odd fugue, the actress walked towards the door...stoping to see Athena’s painting. The war goddess still dueled a giantess, but had somehow...changed. She’d been driven on to the back foot and a tear had formed on her armor strap, soft love handle visible as her cuirass failed under her own body. Tessa liked art, Tessa remembered art and Tessa knew that this art was different than the art she’d seen yesterday…

 

“Miss Holmes, you will miss part of breakfast!” the trainer at her door insisted and the words brought a stab of pain to Tessa’s stomach.

 

Her belly gurgled animalistically, agonizing hunger shooting through the actress’ abdomen. Abandoning her study of the art, she hurried to the door, thighs rasping as her yoga pant legs were rubbed across each other. Sarah, her trainer, waited outside, staring down at her dispassionately.

 

“Good, I thought I was going to have to drag you out,” the tall, muscular woman sneered, “Come now, the others are already being weighed.”

 

Black Mountain Lodge seemed to have grown bigger over night, the journey from Tessa’s room just a little longer. In the dark, the statues and paintings had a more ominous tone and she had to hurry to catch up to the trainer’s long steps, her breathing coming a little quick. Tess had to admit she was seemingly in worse shape than she thought, her body exhausted after yesterday’s punishing exercises...decadent feast...no...wait, she hadn’t…

 

“How much different is breakfast than dinner?” she asked the trainer in concern.

 

“Its usually exactly the same number of calories,” Sarah said dispassionately, opening the door to the dining hall for her.

 

Rachel and Cat were already waiting for her, the two obese, American celebrities parked in the sturdy wooden chairs. 

 

“There’s sleeping beauty,” Rachel grinned at her, her jowls really showing and a deep fold of fat creasing on her side as she turned to face Tessa, “did Prince Charming finally kiss you awake?”

 

“There’s a few things wrong with that sentence,” the Brit told her with an easy smile, “but it was more like a nightmare really. I had a dream I was fat…”

 

Rachel snorted, the motion causing her small breasts to bounce, “Yeah I have that one all the time...oh wait. I guess maybe it’ll kick in for me when I get below Obese again.”

 

“Ugh, stop bullshitting and sit down. The Doctor doesn’t come in until we’re all seated and  I’m sooooo hungry,” Cat moaned, the immense model rubbing her stomach folds, “I had a handful of boiled peas last night and I’m gonna die…”

 

“Okay, I don’t want to agree too much with Cat’s whining but do hurry over,” Rachel agreed, “hurry that relatively skinny butt over so we can eat our rabbit food before the exercise sessions.”

 

Tessa’s growling stomach put paid to any objection, her mind full of the delicious taste of spicy pork and savory beef and fried mushrooms and fried chicken all fried fried fried in crispy rich oil and...no, what was she thinking? There were a hundred reasons not to eat like that, most certainly because she was here to get in shape for a lucrative film contract! She sat herself down like usual, only to have her paunch slap into the top of the table.

 

“Ouch,” Tessa groaned, rubbing the smarting tummy.

“Ha, ex-skinny girl moment, trying to fit where you can’t anymore,” Rachel sighed, “I remembered when I tried getting into the drivers seat of a car the last time...no way was that door closing…”

 

“Ugh, I remember taking my girls to the park and getting stuck in the equipment,” Cat agreed, the lopsided breasted woman’s stomach audibly growling.

 

Something was wrong with both of the Americans. They looked...bloated, after yesterday. Rachel’s face was rounder, her hips wider, while Cat’s breasts were pouring out of her bra and her stomach pressing her further back. Had they gained weight since yesterday?

 

The squeak of the door proved Tessa’s question would soon be answered. Dr. Mortenson sashayed in, stunningly fashionable especially compared to her fat clientelle in their work out clothes. She wore a pair of skin tight white slacks, the kind only an immensely fit woman can pull off, with an even tighter sweater hugging her tiny waist and high, large breasts. A long red coat around her shoulders highlighted her fit curves, looking like the cape of a conquering Roman general.

 

Tessa couldn't help but note that it looked oh so faintly too tight. The buttons on her breast were spreading open, her pants had some whiskers on the hips and her belt looked to be pinching, just a hair as she threw her hips side to side.

 

 

Behind her, two trainers pushed an archaic bronze scale on wheels, its dial spinning slightly at the motion.

 

“Good morning ladies, lets begin with our weigh in today,” Mortenson smiled, “in order of arrival. If you would Miss Downton…”

 

With a grunt, Cat got up and waddled over. The sheer size of the once enviable model shook Tessa, this wasn’t a woman with some vanity pounds or even too much baby weight or even a weight problem. Cat was huge: her steps were short and clearly her knees were twinging under her weight, while her back was stooped under the pull of her lopsided breasts. Clearly her health and mobility were being impacted by just how fat she was and Tessa marveled that a famous model could get so huge...without anyone knowing.

 

This was Cat Downton, one of the most famous women on the planet and how had no one noticed she’d gained four hundred pounds? Tessa hadn’t exactly been spending chemo exploring her sapphic side but she’d googled the tall blonde at least once in the last year and there hadn’t been coverage of her getting fat. And while her own cancer diagnosis was somewhat hideable, surely there’d been a news story about her not losing her baby weight and getting fatter. In fact, hadn’t she endorsed some sort of work out for new mothers and looked quite thin?

 

Yes, Tessa was, thinking harder, sure of it. Cat hadn’t been bikini ready but she hadn’t been so fat that she’d needed a health resort. How had she ballooned so quickly?

 

Cat stepped onto the scale with wince when she had to put all of her weight on one leg. Mortenson noticed the wince and smiled.

 

“Look at your progress, Miss Downton. Remember when you first came here and needed to use a walker?” she asked with a smile, “look how far you’ve come!”

 

“Yeah, I can get up on my own now,” the immense model grinned.

 

“There’s still no reason to suck your gut in while you’re being weighed,” Mortenson told her, “It won’t affect the measurement...but further congratulations are in order. As of this morning you are officially under four hundred pounds, three hundred ninety seven pounds to be precise.”

 

Tessa had no idea what Cat’s goal weight in her modelling hey day was. Last night, she vaguely remembered the model confessing to yo yo dieting and knew that given her height and well...bustiness she was probably quite heavier than her own goal weight. But the actress would never have thought to see a three time SI model weep with joy to be told she weighed nearly four hundred pounds. Then again, she had said that she’d weighed nearly four hundred and fifty at her biggest...

 

“Oh God, oh thank God, fuck...this is...I didn’t think I’d be this skinny again,” the blonde wept, trying to keep what composure a morbidly obese woman in a bikini could.

 

The model stepped off the scale, the bronze contraption popping back up with an audible thunk before Rachel got on, having left her robe behind. She was clearly smaller than the model, although not in the ass. This was the first time Tessa could remember seeing her acquantainces butt since finding out she’d improbably become huge, an odd thought considering they’d been swimming together. Shouldn’t she have seen her butt when...but no they’d...wait, this wasn’t...but damn Rachel had a lot of cellulite. Tessa could see the vast bulge of her friend’s ass and its well marbled skin, the singer’s pink yoga pants stretched transparent and fat bulging out of its top. It drew the eye quite magnetically, to the point that Tessa felt her cheeks redden on seeing it the couch cushion buns.

 

“Come on, come on, come on,” the singer muttered as the numbers spun, settling finally upon three, “Momma needs a new triple platinum record tour and can’t do that if they need to crane me onto the stage…”

 

The dial stopped at three hundred and forty six pounds. Tessa wasn’t certain how much Rachel had weighed either, but despite her height the redhead had been pencil thin, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. And she’d said that at her biggest, at christmas a couple of months ago she’d been two hundred pounds bigger than expected. But now the grammy winner was smiling ear to ear and whooping to be well over two hundred pounds fatter than she’d been?

 

“Oh fuck yes, I’ll be back in a size zero in...months flat!” Rachel grinned, turning towards Tessa, “Come on skinny mini, lets get that bony butt onto the scale.”

 

“Might want to let it reset a moment first,” Tessa returned, still disturbed by the odd half memories of yesterday and the strangeness of the two women, avowed sex symbols celebrating being so huge.

 

“Ladies, please. Miss Fast, Miss Holmes has her own severe weight issues even if currently she’s thinner than you,” Doctor Mortenson insisted, “Miss Holmes if you would.”

 

For the third time in two days, Tessa got onto the scale. She knew that keeping her health information up to date was important, but it wasn’t like she could have lost much since last night. Still, the place had promised to have her back to one fifteen in a month so maybe she was down to one hundred and fifty? It certainly felt like she’d burned pounds of energy swimming, given how sore her abdominals were…

 

The bronze dial spun and Dr. Mortenson clicked her pen, “Oh congratulations, Miss Holmes. A new record for one day in put. I can see our facility deeply suits you. With progress like this, you will be ready in no time! Down six pounds in one day!”

 

Tessa’ read too much and hadn’t thought to grab her glasses from her bag before it had been confiscated. But she didn’t need reading glasses to see perfectly well that the dial read “One hundred seventy six pounds”.

 

Twenty five pounds more than the facility’s scale had said yesterday. Thirty pounds more than the costumer’s scale back in LA had said a few hours before. Sixty six pounds more than she’d have sworn she weighed when going to the airport two days earlier.

 

“I...uh…, how is that…,” Tessa stared in confusion, “that’s not possible…”

 

“The universe probably thinks your skinny butt being fat instead of flat upset the cosmic order,” Rachel teased.

 

“Because of the intensity of the exercise, combined with your low calorie diet and the stimulating effects of the unique chocolate,” Doctor Mortenson smiled, “now, it is time to eat.”

 

“Oh thank God, I feel like I haven’t eaten in days,” Cat groaned, waddling with slow, exaggerated exhaustion towards her chair and collapsing on it, the wood groaning beneath the model’s bulk.

 

“I...feel rather full…,” Tessa began to say, before her belly let loose a ferocious growl.

 

“Hey, you’re not a skinny girl again yet, right? We’re all hungry here,” Rachel teased, elbowing her again with a flabby arm thick as Tessa’s normal waistline.

 

“Oh yes, it is time for breakfast. After morning work out, Tessa you will have your first session with me. Then a late morning exercise, laps this time, and then lunch,” Dr. Mortenson smiled as the trainer’s pushed their silver carts over, “then more exercise, then dinner and then more exercise. Soon, you’ll notice the rapid changes as your body adapts.”

 

The plate put in front of Tessa wasn’t what she expected. There were no vegetables steaming without butter or salt, no egg whites, no skim milk, no black coffee. Instead she was served a platter of bacon strips so greasy that liquid fat was running onto the table cloth, flanked by a mountain of double fried potatoes drowned in ketchup six waffles drowned in butter and a bowl of at least twenty fried eggs. The trainer put a thirty ounce ceramic mug next to her, filled it two thirds of the way full with hot chocolate and then filled the rest with whipped cream. Next to it, was a ten ounce mug full of melted butter.

 

“Bean sprouts and egg whites...yummy,” Cat groaned, looking down at a similar plate.

 

“Hey, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. If it gets me back on stage, I’ll eat the rabbit food,” Rachel said, sucking down the molten butter, “and you know, cucumber water kind of grows on you after a bit.”

 

Tessa could only stare as not only the starlets, but the Doctor chowed down on their obscene, heart attack inducing meal. What...last night, last night the hallucinations, the hallucinations had been real.

 

“Miss Holmes, eat up,” Mortenson belched, whipped cream running down her chin, “you’ve got a big day in front of you.”

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This is really great so far. Mortensen is aces... I guess in terms of how she's described ( crazy hourglass figure, nice fitting clothes, glasses) more than her shady, underhanded behavior. Does she have dark hair or blonde? Or was that intentional with all of the other mind trippy stuff? I'm kind of picturing her like this maybe in a more final form, but you know probably way fatter, since I'd assume that's partly where this is headed. Or not? The mind trip, gaslighting stuff is fun in this, especially in that fourth wall breaking kind of way, kind of reminds me of Eternal Darkness back on the Gamecube, but in literary form!

Obvious cultish, Lovecraftian vibes going on- reminding me a bit of Bobo the Hobo's Chu'ubroth shorts in his Buttercombe stuff on writing.com, which are similarly great.

Its all awesome so far- Mortensen is super hot and shady and in a way seems like she'd fit in as a sorceress in one of your Witcher stories or something.  Keep up the great work!

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7 hours ago, dog186 said:

This is really great so far. Mortensen is aces... I guess in terms of how she's described ( crazy hourglass figure, nice fitting clothes, glasses) more than her shady, underhanded behavior. Does she have dark hair or blonde? Or was that intentional with all of the other mind trippy stuff? I'm kind of picturing her like this maybe in a more final form, but you know probably way fatter, since I'd assume that's partly where this is headed. Or not? The mind trip, gaslighting stuff is fun in this, especially in that fourth wall breaking kind of way, kind of reminds me of Eternal Darkness back on the Gamecube, but in literary form!

Obvious cultish, Lovecraftian vibes going on- reminding me a bit of Bobo the Hobo's Chu'ubroth shorts in his Buttercombe stuff on writing.com, which are similarly great.

Its all awesome so far- Mortensen is super hot and shady and in a way seems like she'd fit in as a sorceress in one of your Witcher stories or something.  Keep up the great work!

Thank you and nice cultist pic! Appreciate the eternal darkness comparison! That's high praise!

As for mortenson, she's a brunette, looks something like this: image.thumb.png.ad23d5fd0ee874afeeaaa77ca9cfdabe.png

 

35 minutes ago, xandercroft said:

I’m wondering if the main character has immunity from weird magic shit because of her brain cancer or that the universes instability and changes are all in her mind, caused by trauma and missing neurons. Or maybe a bit of both?  

Perhaps, perhaps...

 

I should have the next chapter up tonight, should answer a few questions...

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Here we go, this is the second half of the previous chapter...and Mortenson gets more evil...

Tessa hadn’t walked into this room with a plan to lie.

 

She wasn’t a tactical genius or a spy or a detective. She wasn’t even a witch like her screen version. The British woman was a passionate activist and more than occasional model and professional actress, not someone suited to deal with whatever this insanity was.

 

But Tessa had being an actress in her favor.

 

“Humble apologies, I’m starving but all that swimming and water aerobics yesterday absolutely, what’s the word, shredded my abs,” Tessa lied with a smile, putting a forkful of bacon to her mouth and shoveling it in, “I feel like I could rip right open.”

 

Dr. Mortenson’s shining smile grinned at her, “Of course, I imagine you got pretty soft and lazy lounging around before you got here. Exercising for the first time in so long must be one rude awakening for how out of shape you are.”

 

“Oh yes,” Tessa replied through a full mouth, making herself think of the scene and not the pork in her mouth, “So glad I’m here to work all of this fat off and get fit!”

Even as a kid, before she’d known about ecological impact and factory farms and porcine intelligence Tessa hadn’t liked bacon. Her stomach was sensitive for so fatty a meat and too much grease made her nauseous and sick. But given the lunacy she’d witnessed yesterday, she ate the bacon with gusto. A few mouthfuls in, she abandoned her fork and started shoveling it in with one hand while using a big serving spoon to follow it up with potatoes. 

 

To the fattened actress’ surprise, she wasn’t getting full. Her stomach seemed a bottomless pit but eventually, after all of the bacon was gone and she was most of the way through the potatoes she began to feel a pinch of fulness. But there was still the eggs and the hot chocolate and the disgusting mug of surely now luke warm butter to drown. Swallowing, she reached for the butter, knowing it was best to down it warm.

 

The actress had had bad moments. Shoots that went wrong, bad scripts or insane directors or finding out the studio had autotuned her voice to a ridiculous amount at the premier. And of course, the fucking cancer. But knowingly chugging down the mug of melted butter in this inmate ran asylum was her worst acting moment by far. It tasted like rancid fat and she had to make herself not gag or snort it out of her nose or even pause as she chugged it all down. Tessa placed it down, licked her lips dry hoping she didn’t get a gigantic zit out break from this and reached for a waffle, her stomach already getting bloated and angry.

 

“Miss Holmes, I have to commend you,” Doctor Mortenson said, undoing her pant’s button and patting her stomach.

 

Mortenson had gained some weight as well. Yesterday’s abs were a pooch that before Tessa’s eyes was swelling into a starter tummy, a dome of bulging soft gold fat pushing the Doctor’s skintight slacks outwards, driving down the zipper.  Her jawline softened and her breasts surged out of their cups, pressing at the sweater.

 

“Most actresses we get are just beautiful faces and gorgeous bodies, well, formerly gorgeous bodies by the time they arrive here,” the fatter by the moment Mortenson smiled at her, “but you’re more than just a pretty face. You are quite dedicated to your craft.”

 

Tessa was quite struck by this nutritionist or psychologist or whatever the hell she was blowing up twenty pounds in two sentences to answer straight, “I, erm, thank you I did grow up doing it and-”

 

“Of course, the issue is that you’re beautiful. Were beautiful, I should say. A bit of fat made you cute, but you do not wear the twenty five pounds that came after well at all. The lesbian hair cut doesn’t help, if you had longer hair it might work a bit better but honey, that double chin is just distracting,” the plumpening Mortenson smiled, dimples popping into view.

 

Now, the actress could only stare, “I, I have no idea what you mean.”

 

“You have talent dear, a good deal. If you’d been a little plainer or a little chubbier to start out, well I think you’d have an oscar by now. But instead you were too unbelievably pretty and not knowing it, you coasted on it,” Mortenson smiled, a rip sounding as her rapidly thickening thighs tore her pants leg and her sweater tightened around a chunky upper body, “now though, look at you. Nearly thirty and just another pretty face whose thighs are getting big and whose face is getting laugh lines. In two years you’ll only be getting mom roles, in five just indies and in ten...nothing. But you know, maybe in twenty years after you’ve hagged up you can get nominated playing Margaret Thatcher or Hillary Clinton. Then when someone internet searches you they’ll gasp at how hot you used to be.”

 

“Why are you insulting me?” Tessa demanded, cheeks coloring with anger while fear bubbled in her full stomach.

 

“Because, you drank the glass of butter down like it was a disgusting glass of melted fat. Not refreshing cucumber water to be sipped as you ate egg whites and, oh what did it appear to be to the others?” the doctor frowned, jowls forming on her face as she stood with a grunt, “bean sprouts, right?”

 

Mortenson waddled towards the horrified actress, a pear who’d doubled in size in moments. Her lower half was ridiculous, rips running from knee to hip in her pants to show wobbling cushions of lard. She grew fatter and fatter with every single step, her chins sagging and her stomach beginning to surge past her knees.

 

“You’re..how, no, stay away from me!” Tessa cried, standing up, backing away from the inflating doctor, “Rachel, Cat we need to run!”

 

A glance at the two Americans showed they were still eating their fattening breakfast, chatting with each other about the butt of some basketball player and totally ignoring the nightmare. Worse, Rachel turned and said something to her, laughing at a response that didn’t happen.

 

“Please, exercise is actually quite ineffective form of weight loss,” Mortenson laughed, taking a moment to breath deeply as her pants tore away, “believe me, I’m an expert.”

 

Mortenson was naked from the waist down, already wider across the hips than she was tall. Every step was a bizarre shuffle, leaning on one thickening foot to swing her other legs a few inches forwards, fat rippling with the motion. Her arms were near as thick as Tessa’s chubby waist, while her stomach hit her mid thigh and her breasts hadn’t grown an inch. 

 

Tessa turned from the waddling terror to run, slamming right into Sarah and another trainer. Both muscular women easily grabbed her arms, holding her prone as their boss heaved herself forwards, fatter with every halting step. The actress tried to break free once and got nowhere, she was a recent cancer survivor wearing sixty extra pounds of fat, she had no strength to break a double arm lock.

 

“Please, please,” Tessa cried, “I’ll give you whatever you want. Money, a house, anything!”

 

“Come now, cowardice does not befit an actress! We are called upon to be Queens and Empresses, heroines and monsters!” the doctor laughed, voice deepening with her accumulating chins and body wobbling with laughter, “how can you stand before the camera’s judging eye with such a chicken’s heart? Cat over there put one of my trainers to the ground with one punch! And she’s just a fucking model whose tits co starred in a few B comedies! We actresses must be better!”

 

“Please…,” was all Tessa could beg, mind aflame with extraneous, useless details.

 

The hard grip of the trainer’s on her soft arms, the pain in her shoulders. Mortenson’s hot, sweaty bulk wrapping around her. The pain in her stomach begging for more food. Her fellow inmates banal conversation. Mortenson’s taunting claims that she was an actress.

 

“Did you really think you could fool me, Miss Holmes?” the doctor tut tutted, enveloping Tessa in her layers of lard, standing on tip toe and threatening to bowl over the chunky actress with sheer bulk, raising one ham hock of a hand to touch her face, “After I’ve been doing this for so long? What was your plan I wonder? Tell me and perhaps I’ll be merciful…”

 

Tessa’s heart beat a mile a minute, surely not good for a girl of size. The overwhelming softness of Mortenson overwhelmed her, frightening in sheer bulk. Was this monster going to eat her?

 

“I-I I didn’t have one, I don’t know, eat until lights out, steal a robe and try to hitch hike to a phone?” the brunette actress gasped.

 

“That plan is terrible, after today’s sessions you’d be over two hundred pounds and the drive alone is nearly fifteen miles,” Mortenson smiled, “You wouldn’t make half that before you had to take a little fat girl nap. And besides, do you want to know a secret?”

 

“P-please, I won’t tell anyone about this. I’ll tell the studio I cancel, anything, I’ll,” Tessa tried to tell her, turning away as the immense blob of a woman leaned in, her curtain of a gut slamming into Tessa’s feet.

 

“The secret is, Tessa that even if you were a better actress I’d have known you were faking. Your predecessor, who really did have the skills despite being a beauty didn’t fool me. Even if you were Meryl fucking Streep, you wouldn’t have fooled me. And it wasn’t just this little tummy of mine that pops back in place when its been too long without a sacrifice,” Mortenson leered, tongue licking the actress’ ear, “no, the reason is, Tessa, the reason is…”

 

She leaned in close, lips to Tessa’s ear, close enough to tickle the hairs on the Brit’s ear canal.

 

“The reason is the first hypnosis session only has a twelve hour affect,” Mortenson whispered and suddenly a hard, strong hand was squeezing Tessa’s gut.

 

She screamed, opening her eyes to see Mortenson looking solid as a rock, her hard, muscular legs standing tip to and naked, only a stretched out sweater hanging to her hips. A strong hand gripped the actress’ gut like an eagle clutches a salmon.

 

“I could always schedule on early in the morning, but I hate getting up early and I absolutely love it when you sacks of pathetic, spoiled lard realize that the half visions of the day before are completely accurate. That the pictures in the room change, that you really did get chubbier in the night,” Mortenson cackled with glee, hand leaving red marks on Tessa’s skin, “and that yes, I really am serving you a glass of melted fucking butter for breakfast.”

 

Tessa cried and the Doctor slapped her stomach, hard. 

 

“Now comes the fun part, Tessa. Because you’re not on my schedule for more hypnosis until three. So you get to see what a whole day feels like without your brain dulled. I gave birth twice, Tessa. And this...this is going to be a lot worse,” Mortenson laughed, “now open wide, its time for some chocolate. We need to make up for lost time with you.”

 

A trainer approached, an entire brick bar of chocolate in her hand.

 

“I’ll...you can’t do this to me,” Tessa spat, “I’ll ...I’m a famous actress, people will notice I’m gone! The Police will come looking for me and I’ll tell…”

 

That brought a horrible laugh from Mortenson, the rock solid woman laughing so hard her glasses fell from her nose, "At last spirit! Although its always the British who threaten the police. Americans just threaten to sue or hit you."

Muscles flexing, Mortenson danced to her side, fingers tracing the sprawl of Tessa's gut and tugging her double chin, "You know, I think I was wrong. If your hair was longer, I think you'd be mildly fuckable at this size."

"Fuck you, the studio will know I'm gone and they'll send police and the FBI," the actress tried to say.

“Tessa, Tessa, Tessa. You silly girl. Do you know how many trios I’ve had come through here?” her tormentor laughed, now fondling her fat, with every word her sharp fingers squeezing, squeezing, “Do you know how many careers I’ve ended, how many bodies I’ve ruined? Girl, you’re spare fucking change compared to some of them!  You were already half way washed up before you were selected, you did such a good job hiding from paparazzi the tabloids have half forgotten you existed! And the funniest part is, you have no idea where you are, do you? After you gorged on that drugged food, you were out for hours. You could have been driven to Canada or Mexico, you could have been loaded onto a plane and flown to Russia! I could sell you off to a chubby chasing oligarch or have your fat ass working three shifts minimum wage in Yorkshire without remembering your own name if I wanted...but I won’t. Now open up, you’re a special case…”

 

Mortenson pulled Tessa’s mouth open and the trainer shoved the entire bar of chocolate inside.

 

And then, Tessa Holmes understood what hunger really was.

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