Midnight sounded on the ancient grandfather clock next to the fireplace and with it, Carlos jumped a little on the couch. The three men were a multitude of beers deep into the evening, and the fun of exploring the woods surrounding this rented cabin had given way with the evening to a roaring fire and lots of friendly chatter.
It had been three years since they had graduated; grad school becoming more and more a distant memory. They celebrated their early graduation from law school every year with these retreats and this cabin in the woods was their most remote reunion yet. The warmth of the fire and the drowsiness of the beer were deepening as the clock tolled its final chime.
Carlos took another thoughtful sip of his beer and looked at the crackling hearth. To his right, Erik was rolling his eyes and trying to finish a conversation with his girlfriend, who had called every hour on the hour to check in. He smiled at Carlos and made the gabbing movement with his hand. Girlfriend soon to be fiancé, Erik had confided to them. It had been met with slaps on the back and congratulations by the other two men. Mitch had poked the little belly Erik now sported and commented that Erik’s settling down definitely explained the gut. Erik sheepishly laughed and Carlos had smiled good-naturedly at his friend. He was only a few pounds heavier than when Carlos had last seen him.
Carlos had seen several friends put on a few pounds over the last few years out of college; it seemed to be the way of things with men. Carlos himself hadn’t lost his six pack and either had Mitch. Both still got up to run together in the foggy Boston mornings. They had been increasing their runs the last four months and Carlos felt his body’s slim musculature’s soreness from that morning’s endeavor. Carlos intended to be in the marathon this year. Since they had started dating their senior year, Carlos had always cheered on Mitch in the marathon and finally felt fit enough to run alongside his boyfriend. He burped loudly and laughed when Erik laughed, then quickly had to explain to his girlfriend that he was laughing at the burp and not her.
“Whatcha got babe?” Carlos asked as Mitch rejoined the two men on the couches circling the worn wooden table in front of the fire. Mitch set a dusty looking wooden box on the table and picked up the beer with glistening perspiration sweating down its neck. He took a long swig with one hand and wiped the cover of the box with the other.
“Not sure, handsome. I found it in the closet while I was looking for more trash bags. It’s some sort of game”, Mitch said, wiping his dusty hand on his jeans. His blue eyes pored over the cover. Squinting, he took out his glasses and put them on.
“It says ‘The Growing Game’.” Mitch took another sip of his beer. “Babe, you’re the nerd. Ever heard of this? Some sort of Dungeons and Gathering type thing?”
Carlos playfully slugged his boyfriend in the arm, ignoring the purposeful misnomers. He leaned forward to peer at the game. The box itself seemed to be a glowing mahogany now that Mitch had run his hand over it, with inlay mother of pearl borders. In raised Art Deco letters, the words “The Growing Game” titled the middle of the lid.
“It’s pre-Depression era, that’s for sure. It’s the prettiest game I’ve seen,” Carlos said, turning the box on its side with one hand. The rest of the box was unmarked, save for the two gold hinges at the back adhering the lid. Setting his beer down, Carlos took hold of the lid and lifted.
Inside, neatly packed into divided compartments, were an onyx colored board, cream cards lined with gilt writing that said “Fate”, two dice, and four playing pieces. The playing pieces and dice looked like they might be carved from ivory, which gave Carlos a momentary pause of ethical disapproval. His boyfriend had already opened the board and spread it out the table. It matched the cards on its interior, cream with gilt lines delineating the game board into near one hundred squares. The squares traveled a path leading from the word “Start” to the word “Return”. Periodically, a space had the word “Fate” written inside of it which Carlos assumed meant to draw a card.
Beneath where the board had rested lay a set of instructions. Carlos began reading aloud as Erik finished his phone call and began looking at the board with interest.
“You have begun The Growing Game! This is a game of fate and claim, find return first or you won’t stay the same. Much like life, all things must rend, once you start, you play till the end”.
Mitch scooted closer to Carlos on the couch to peer at the instructions. He began reading with a quizzical look on his face.
“’The first to reach Return does exactly that, the losers must stay with their fate intact.’ This is pretty philosophical for a pretty simple board game. All I’m seeing here is that you roll dice, take a card, and move along the board. It’s Monopoly without money or deeds.” He sat back in the recesses of the couch and stretched. Carlos’ eyes flickered for a moment to the tan hint of skin that showed as Mitch’s t-shirt rose. The long muscles of Mitch’s arm elongated and Carlos smiled at his fit boyfriend. He loved him for his intellect and charm but the package that came in wasn’t half bad.
Erik had picked up one of the playing pieces and was turning it over in his hands. He had a confused look on his sensuous Italian face. “I think these are people” Erik said, setting down one playing piece and picking up another. “They’re misshapen somehow but I think they’re supposed to be people”.
Carlos picked one up and peered at its potential face. “Agreed Erik, this almost looks like a guy”. Carlos placed it between his index finger and thumb, gave it a squeeze, and then placed it on the board at “Start”. “Let’s play!”
Erik grinned and placed the piece he had been holding next to Carlos’ piece. Mitch, up from the couch to get another beer, placed his in front of both of their pieces near the edge of the “Start” circle. “See, I’m already winning.” Mitch said with false boast.
Carlos laughed and patted his thigh as Mitch sat down next to him again. Erik shuffled the cream cards and placed them in the gold rectangle on the board marked “Fate”.
“You start Erik,” Carlos said. “Ignore this braggart here and take the lead”. Erik picked up the two dice and shaking them like a serious gambler in Vegas, threw them onto the board. His grin spread ear to ear as he rolled a twelve.
“Already off to a killer start,” Erik winked at Carlos as he moved his ivory piece along the board. He skipped over the first Fate square which occupied the ninth place into the board. He placed his piece in the empty space of the twelfth square. “Your turn, boys.”
Mitch rolled a seven and moved his piece to an empty square, jokingly cursing Erik at his misfortune. Carlos picked up the dice and rolled a five and a four.
“Nine! I get a card!” Carlos began moving his piece to the ninth square with the golden “Fate” printed in its confines. He danced his piece on top of Mitch’s figurine’s head as he passed, to the eye-rolling of his boyfriend. Dancing it along the path, he finally set it down in its proper landing. Reaching over Mitch’s thigh, he grabbed the top “Fate” card and read it aloud.
“Up by ten, things may start slow, but give it time and your assets will grow”. Carlos turned the card over a few times in his hand, and then grabbed the instructions. “Is this point based? Should I write this down? I think I just got ten points.” The instructions contained no more information than they had already read and turning them over, Carlos found nothing else.
“Well, everyone remember I’m at ten. You are zero, mister”, Carlos said as he winked at Mitch. Erik grinned at the two guys as he picked up the dice and rolled again. He landed a two and one, which quickly translated into him moving his piece three squares further. Once again, he landed in a blank space. “Damn it,” he said. “No points for me”.
Mitch picked up the dice and as he rolled, Carlos readjusted his pants. This many beers in, his jeans were feeling tight from the bloat and he was suddenly very aware of that. Pretty soon, he planned on being out of them and naked in bed with Mitch. His progressively dirtier thoughts were interrupted by Mitch’s trumpeting of success. He had passed Erik on the board and landed on a “Fate” card.
“All players gain by twenty this time, faster and quicker than ending this rhyme” Mitch read aloud, then placed the card at the bottom of the deck. “So we all have twenty points now?”
“No, I have thir-” Carlos started to say then cried out loud with shock as the front of his jeans burst open. His t-shirt expanded out slowly like rising dough and he felt the zipper of his jeans being forced down by something happening with his crotch. Carlos’ hands flew to his midsection and experienced complete cognitive dissonance when he felt the pudgy mass there. “What the fuck?!” he yelled as skin filled in-between his grasping fingers. Carlos was feeling fat, a chubby belly that he knew he didn’t have. Yet here it was, pliable in his hands. He cursed again and looked up at the other two men in disbelief.
They were dumbfounded and open mouthed as they stared at Carlos. “Babe, what the hell?” Mitch said, gaping at the suddenly belly his formerly fit boyfriend was sporting. Mitch made a motion to stand up but apparently failed to do so, grunting as he moved his torso forward. He began struggling and then yelling that he couldn’t stand up. Erik began to do the same but couldn’t seem to quit his seat. The two men struggled as Carlos watched in growing horror. They kept fighting their seemingly attached seat until Carlos yelled out.
“Erik, your chest!” Carlos had watched with suspicion then confirmation that Erik’s chest was growing. What had started as flat pectorals had swollen against the fabric of shirt Erik was wearing and started to peak. He almost looked like he was growing breasts in the span of two minutes. Carlos was able to make out the large round nipples through the cotton. Erik stopped fighting his seat and grasped his chest. He quickly lifted up his shirt and began grabbing the two fleshy mounds now situated about his small belly. Carlos watched as Erik’s chest continued to grow, noticing that his belly button seemed to be deepening. Erik looked up with horror on his face and Carlos noticed that his cheeks seemed fuller as well. They both had somehow gotten much fatter in a matter of minutes.
Mitch continued to struggle against the unknown forces keeping them attached to the couch, so he seemed oblivious to the change that had already happened to him. Carlos saw the ripped seams of Mitch’s shorts and the large mass that expanded below him. While Carlos had changed primarily in the belly, Erik in the chest and middle, Mitch had seemingly gained it all in his lower body. His ass was almost double its original size, which Carlos could have referenced from memory.
“What the fuck is happening to us?!” Erik yelled. “We’re all fat all of a sudden!” He tried to get up again and couldn’t remove himself from the couch. Panic was gripping them all and in the haze of the confusion, the words from the instructions floated back to Carlos.
“We can’t stop until the end…” Carlos said. Both men stopped their flailing for a moment and looked at him.
“What?” Mitch asked distractedly, suddenly aware and probing his larger thighs and ass.
“What can’t we stop?”
“The game,” Carlos said, picking up the instructions. “It says right here, ‘once you start, you play till the end.’ And those numbers…they weren’t points. It’s the goddamn Growing Game. We’re growing. It’s weight. We’re gaining weight with each damn Fate card”.
“No way,” Erik sputtered, disbelief ebbing from his face. “That’s can’t…that can’t be possible.” His shirt was back down but his deep horizontal navel and swollen nipples showed through the strained fabric. Carlos placed a hand on his own newly acquired flab and shook it for emphasis.
“It just happened. Look at us. How the hell do you explain this?” The men sat for a moment in silence, the crackling of the fire and the steady ticking of the grandfather clock the only noise in the cabin.
“So what do we do?” Erik asked finally, breaking the silence. Carlos and Mitch looked at each other with apprehension. Carlos nodded to the question in Mitch’s eyes.
“I think we have to keep playing,” Mitch said solemnly, looking over the instructions.
“We have to get to the end.”
The men sat in stunned silence for a moment, the shock of what happened to them too unreal for this earthly reality. A slow wind outside of the cabin caused the fire to sputter from the chimney’s intake. The fire’s flames flicked over the polished surface of the game board and shadows fell from each of the men’s playing pieces. Carlos shifted in his seat as much as the invisible forces holding him down allowed. As he tilted to the right, he felt the zipper on his pants nudge lower from the pushing of his newly formed belly. Reaching down, he attempted to pull his pants closed. Carlos inhaled as much air as possible. He sucked in his newfound gut, feeling the lower portion quiver in the effort. He gained maybe an inch with the zipper but actually closing the button on his jeans was an impossibility. A solid mound of fat was protruding from his crotch and created a hill the zipper struggled to overcome. He sighed and exhaled. The belly relaxed out, spreading to fill its former occupancy. The zipper moved down the previously gained inch.
“I don’t want to play anymore!” Erik finally stammered. “This is some witchcraft, demon shit. We’re not even halfway through that board and look at us. Look at me!” Erik cupped his chest with both hands. “I’m growing moobs!”
“I can’t get up from my seat, can you?” Mitch asked Erik more as a statement than a question. Carlos knew Mitch had quickly surmised the ridiculous absurdity of their situation but also realized the parameters. Mitch was able to assess a problem quickly and understand what he was capable of accomplishing. It had served him well in his job as a lawyer and now, hopefully it would serve them all to get out of this board game trap.
“No,” Erik admitted dejectedly, squirming in his seat against unseen forces. His chest shook lightly with each effort and Carlos’ eyes were drawn to Erik’s fat nipples. “No, I can’t. This is bullshit”.
“You’re right, man, it is bullshit but taking a stab in the dark, I don’t think we have an option. Can we..” Mitch started before he was interrupted by the ringing of Erik’s cellphone. They all stared at each other with growing excitement.
“Answer it!” Mitch yelled as Erik fumbled in the couch cushions to find his phone.
“Get help!” Carlos followed. Erik continued fumbling with the cushions to his right in a panic, unable to move from where he sat. He finally ripped the cushion off the couch. The action sent the hidden phone rising into the air and across the table where the game sat. It skittered along the surface and fell near the fireplace.
“Fuck!” Erik yelled, struggling intensely to get up. Mitch and Carlos involuntarily tried after the phone to find themselves solidly contained upon their sofa prison. They waited without speaking as the phone finished ringing and then chirped the signal for a voicemail.
“That’s probably Marie. She can’t go ten minutes without contacting me and I haven’t texted her since we started playing,” Erik said dejected. “We’re screwed. She’ll be pissed I haven’t responded and ignore me the rest of the weekend. That was our one hope of getting out of here”.
Mitch ignored Erik’s lamentations and was staring intently at the board. Carlos could see his eyes flickering back and forth while he counted on his fingers. The look of serious thought was upon his face and it gave Carlos hope.
“What are you counting, babe?” Carlos asked, putting a hand on his boyfriend’s larger thigh. His fingers slightly sank into the mass of Mitch’s extra weight. Mitch finished his thought and turned to Carlos with a face of trepidacious optimism.
“There are only forty three squares left from my position. Technically, with the best rolls possible, I could finish the game in four rolls. So can Erik. You’ll be done in five rolls honey.” Erik pointed at their playing pieces on the board as he explained. “It’s your turn Carlos. It’s up to you to roll the dice but there are only six more Fate landings in-between us and the end of the game. If we’re lucky and roll high numbers without landing on a space, we can end the game and maybe this all goes away.”
Carlos sat for a moment thinking. None of this made sense but he knew for a fact he hated being stuck on this couch. Never had he wanted to get up and walk around, maybe run, than when he was forced to be on a couch. He picked up the dice. Erik moaned a loud groan of disappointed annoyance and fear as the dice hit the table. The carved and gilted face of the dice offered a five and four. He mentally counted the spaces to where nine would land him. A huge sigh of relief escaped his mouth as he saw Erik’s piece in the empty titled square where he now belonged. Moving his piece quickly, he sat back and looked at Erik once their two pieces were sharing the space.
“It’s your turn,” Carlos said. Erik’s dark eyebrows furrowed in distress and he pursed his lips in frustration. “Fine,” he said almost in argument with himself then quickly rolled the dice.
The dice landed on ten and a flicker of excitement crossed Erik’s face. It was a big roll. All of the men’s eyes immediately raced to count out the squares. Following the cream colored board, the gold lettering of “Fate” glittered on the tenth square where Erik would land.
“Oh shit”, he exclaimed. Erik clenched his hands in anguish. The men stared at each other for a few minutes until Mitch reached forward with determination on his face.
“Let’s get this done with,” Mitch said, flipping the top Fate card over.
“West meets East in unknown lands, Buddha-like belly spreads your hands,” Mitch read quickly, discarding the card with a flick of his wrist. As the final words left his lips, dread hung in the air while they waited for something to happen. The ticking of the clock was the only sound permeating the space as Mitch and Carlos stared at Erik who had started sweating nervously.
“Nothing’s happening,” Erik whispered. “Maybe nothing happens with this card? Hurry and roll Mitch! Maybe we can beat it if we just move fast!” Mitch shrugged and leaned forward to pick up the dice when Carlos took a sharp intake of breath, pointing at Erik.
Fear filled Erik’s wide eyes as his shirt began filling as if inflated. Grabbing both sides of his middle with his hands, a small stretch of skin showed as his shirt rode up on rising olive skinned fat. His hairy lower belly was pushing out and growing in size slowly but surely. Lovehandles developed on his sides, starting off as small barely noticeable curves. They soon bloomed in conjunction with the rising mass of Erik’s belly. His navel deepened further, visible now as the shirt continued its climb up. The lovehandles swelled like dough as they creased the fabric of the shirt into deep ridges. Erik’s already developed chest and nipples grew as well but seemingly not as fast as his belly. Carlos’s eyes were wide at the rounding swell of Erik’s nipples as they grew to the size of quarter dollars pressed against the straining shirt, which with a jiggle of his chest’s expansion, ripped open. Erik’s fattened chest flopped and bounced on top of the now beach ball sized gut, which rippled in response. His hairy Italian belly, still swelling and spreading in a visibly softening race, expanded to the point that it was filling Erik’s lap. As it continued its pudgy expansion, Erik’s thighs were starting to involuntarily force open, the belly pushing down over his crotch and taking up the room in-between his legs. Erik was pushed back against the couch by the heft of his gut. Leaning back, his hands still holding his own Buddha belly, he let out a groan as his pants ripped all their seams and his belly shook with the release. His swelling seemed to slow, then finally stop.
Carlos and Mitch’s mouths were both agape. Erik was almost completely naked, his briefs straining to contain the fat pushing in and down from the spherical mass above it. His belly button was nearly half a foot in width and surrounded in so much fat that the depth was impossible to see. Seated there, swollen and huge with his hands grasping the massive expanse of his gut, Carlos’ brain flickered with the thought that Erik did indeed look like a fattened Buddha waiting for worship. Erik was trying to right himself up on the couch but failed each time, his belly shivering and shaking with the effort. Carlos mentally figured the man had gained 100 lbs of almost entire belly, save for the fattened up moobs now resting on his chest. Erik eventually gave up, his belly forcing him against the back of the couch. He let out a very large sigh and looked at Mitch over the expanse of his middle.
“It’s your roll”.
Mitch’s mouth, still agape, opened and shut a few times trying to form a legible thought as to how fat Erik had grown. His gaze turned to the board, counting the squares again until the game would end. The same forty three squares to the golden emblazoned “Return”. Erik grunted and a shiver of movement went through his voluptuous middle. With a side eye to the quivering fat of his friend, Mitch picked up the dice and bravely threw them on the board.
Two fours showed on the face of the dice. Quickly counting the spaces, Mitch yelled a triumphant cheer. He moved his piece two behind Erik’s on a blank square. He winked at Carlos, who couldn’t help but smile back. Carlos’ eyes drifted down to the large ass his boyfriend was now sporting but darted back before discovery. His brain was running a million miles a minute trying to offer some sort of explanation to this situation they currently found themselves but in the middle of all that problem solving, his boyfriend’s large ass kept appearing. Carlos imagined running his hands over it, pulling down the tight shorts over the overly ripe rounded and spongy…
“It’s your turn babe. You have to roll,” Mitch said again, derailing Carlos’ train of thought. Carlos apologized for his distractedness and picked up the dice to throw. He launched them at the table hurriedly, embarrassed at his day dream in middle of this emergency. They landed Carlos’ piece one space beyond Erik’s Fate, which had blown him up so roundly. Carlos breathed a sigh of relief as he moved his playing token to the empty space in front of Erik.
“Great, you guys are just sailing through,” Erik grumbled, leaning forward to grab the dice. Carlos didn’t feel like they were avoiding their Fate, Mitch now sporting a large ass and Carlos’ own midsection pudged up to a proper beer belly. However, in comparison, Erik looked like he had lived at a buffet for the last two years straight. Erik began grunting as he continued reaching for the dice, unable to maneuver himself enough to reach beyond the girth of his belly. Mitch scooped up the dice and placed them in Erik’s outstretched hand.
“This is miserable,” Erik complained as he threw the dice, “but it can’t get much worse than this”. Carlos thought to himself that yes, it could get much worse. They could all end up as fat as Erik. As Erik struggled to lean forward from under his weight to see what the dice showed, Carlos noticed Erik’s moobs shake from the effort and his face melding into the fat of his neck. Touching his own newly developed but modest belly, Carlos felt a shiver of something akin to fear.
“I’m safe!” Erik exclaimed. “No Fate! Move my piece, Mitch. I can’t reach that board”. Mitch leaned forward, the large spheres that now were his ass forcing down his underwear in the tatters of his shorts. Carlos drank in a long view and felt himself growing hard despite himself. Mitch moved Erik’s piece rapidly along the board.
“Let’s get this over with!” Mitch said with annoyance, rolling the dice and moving along the board to another safe spot. He handed the dice to Carlos who imitated his boyfriend in the rapid throw of dice. He started moving his piece along then halfway realized while looking ahead where his piece would land.
“Oh no,” Carlos’ voice trailed off. He set his playing piece on the golden letters of Fate and with the deep breath of pulling off a band-aid, picked up one of the crème and gold cards.
“Able to move towards freedom with feet, yet all you want to do is swell and eat,” read Carlos, rolling his eyes slightly at the singsong nature of the game’s cards. Both Mitch and Erik were staring at him, waiting. He held his breath, waiting for some sort of change but nothing came. In fact, he suddenly felt lighter. It was as if a huge weight were actually lifted off of him. He tentatively started to raise in his seat and feeling no resistance, burst up into a standing position.
“Oh my god I’m not stuck!” Carlos exclaimed, bouncing up and down. His felt the slosh of the belly he was sporting move with him but his spirits were high as he felt the freedom of full movement. Mitch and Erik both attempted to raise themselves as well but were still glued to the couches by some invisible force.
“The phone, babe!” Mitch yelled, looking across the game board. “Get Erik’s phone and call for help!”
“Oh god, yes!” Carlos said, his eyes going wide and freezing in his jubilation of freedom. He spotted Erik’s flung phone by the fireplace and started towards while Erik and Mitch were yelling cheers of excitement. As Carlos closed the gap, he felt a shudder in his body and large grumble audibly filled the room. He stopped in his steps.
“What was that?” Carlos asked, looking around nervously. The two boys on the couches stopped their cheers and the room was quiet. Then it came again. A huge grumble and a shudder, this time located in Carlos’ gut. He gripped the front of his belly as it came faster and more frequently, shuddering and groaning from the depths of his middle. He hadn’t realized it until now but he was suddenly ravenously hungry.
“Oh fuck, I’m hungry!” Carlos said, squinting his eyes in pain and taking a step backwards.
“God babe,” he said looking at Mitch, “I…I need some food”.
“No honey!” Mitch exclaimed, a slow fear creeping into his eyes as he began realizing what was happening. “No! Get the phone! Get Erik’s phone!”
“Carlos what the fuck?!” Erik yelled as Carlos took another step away from the fireplace and began looking up in pain at the kitchen. “Dude get the damn phone!”
Carlos was almost writhing in hunger pains. He struggled internally to try walking back towards the abandoned cell phone but it seemed that the pain grew more intense the more he fought it. He started taking steps towards the kitchen as his boyfriend and friend howled in disbelief.
Each step lessened the pain but not the hunger and after a few haltingly jilted steps, Carlos broke into a run to the kitchen. He grabbed the first food item he saw, a large bag of potato chips, and tore it open with both hands. Reaching in and grabbing as much as he could, he began stuffing handful and handful into his mouth. The salty chips seemed to explode in taste in his mouth and he moaned in almost pleasure as he frantically ate. The bag was empty in mere moments, which left Carlos searching in a frenzied stupor for more. Laying into a second bag, he emptied it faster. Grunting as he shoved chips mechanically into his mouth until the bag was empty, Carlos’ looked around the kitchen desperately for anything to quench his burning hunger.
His eyes lit on the cake box Mitch and he had bought on the trip up from a small bakery in the nearby town. Flinging the top open, Carlos’ fingers pushed through the rich icing into the moist chocolate cake. He seized handfuls and began pushing them into his mouth, lowering his face closer and closer to shovel more and more in. His stomach was rapidly filling up but he felt the urgency of hunger as it were burning his soul. From the couch, Mitch yelled at him to stop eating but Mitch felt thousands of miles away. Carlos couldn’t stop eating.
Finishing the cake, chocolate smeared across his face and crumbs riddling the swollen mound of his t-shirt, he moved to the freezer and found a gallon tub of vanilla ice cream. Sitting on the tiled floor of the kitchen, he placed the ice cream in-between his spread legs and began shoveling it in with the same urgent need of the chips and ice cream. The sweet cold taste on his lips felt like the relief of a swimming pool on a hot day. Carlos felt himself slowing as he neared the end of the tub and as he took the last few bites, the hunger pains in his stomach and the burning need to eat left. He could feel his mind clear.
Carlos stood up and looked back near the fireplace where Erik and Mitch sat watching. Chip crumbs and torn apart bags littered the countertops. Feeling something wet on his face, he reached up and wiped off the trails of melting ice cream and cake crumbs. He looked sheepishly at the floor.
“I’m sorry guys,” he started. “I couldn’t help myself”. He felt embarrassed at the display he had just made, magically induced or not. His belly felt ridiculously tight and swollen. Giving it a light tap as he laid a hand on it, Carlos’ middle gave off the sound of a ripe watermelon. He began walking back towards the fireplace. “I’ll get the phone now”.
Nearing the game board and his boyfriend, Carlos felt another pain suddenly hit his body. With a cry of shock, he fell backwards onto the couch with Mitch. His legs felt as if they were both Charlie-horsed. Placing one hand on either side of his legs, he began massaging them while muttering to himself about the pain, which as quick as it came seemed to be subsiding.
Carlos’ hands, steadily kneading the muscle of his calves in a continuous motion, felt a slight pushback from his legs. Stopping the motion but keeping his hands on his legs, Carlos looked down. It was almost imperceptible at first but with dawning realization, Carlos realized his legs were growing. His ankles, which tapered from his athletic legs nicely, thickened and melded into his leg. Carlos pushed in wonder at them and felt the give of spongy fat.
“I’m changing again!” Carlos yelled in growing panic, leaning further to look at his legs. His feet, which had hints of the skeleton beneath the skin, began filling in and swelling with fat, growing wider in the process. Carlos’s thighs began testing the limits of his underwear as they grew in suit. He felt himself lifting slightly on the couch as his butt expanded in pounds and girth. Looking all around himself frantically, Carlos noticed lovehandles the size of cantaloupes forming on his sides and out in the air from his increasingly distressed t-shirt. The shirt now hugged the area in-between his rounding gut and the swollen mass of his chest. The fabric of his t-shirt rubbed against his nipples which now expressed a sensitivity to the sensation he had never known. Despite himself and his ripping clothes, his erection grew in the strained remains of his boxer briefs.
The boxer briefs themselves were being swallowed into the masses of his chubby thighs, fattening gut, and swelling fat of his crotch. Reaching forward to grab pull of his beleaguered pants before they completely cut off his circulation, Carlos noticed that his arms, previously muscled and trim enough for veins to show through the skin, were also growing in size, chubby mass taking the place of his hard-earned muscle. His fingers themselves seemed thicker as he grabbed the fabric of his jeans. As he ripped the pants off and leaned back from the exertion, his breath slightly strained from the effort, he felt his neck and cheeks thicken and add to his overall mass.
The growing finally stopped and Carlos sat in defeated silence. His underwear were all but invisible under the folds of his now prominent belly, so big it probably outweighed Erik’s. He shifted in his seat to try to get up again but found himself bound to the couch like before. His momentary freedom seemed only to exist to allow his binge eating which resulted in this adipose fueled growth. His left side was pushed against the side of the couch and by leaning over, Carlos noticed that part of his belly and lovehandle were spilling onto the armrest. His hands crept up his belly and over his chest, feeling the new mass and heft. His fingers lingered on his swollen nipples, recreating the thrill he had felt from the taut fabric of his t-shirt. His erection twinged and rubbed against the top of his underbelly. In that moment, Carlos forgot the sheer shock of all their growth and longed to be in bed with Mitch, his hands flicking the newly sensitive nipples.
“Carlos are you okay?” Mitch asked, concern lacing his voice. Carlos’ eyes were closed and he seemed far away.
“Yes,” he said, opening his eyes to look at Mitch. “But I think I’m hungry…”
The strike of one a.m. on the grandfather clock signaled an hour had passed since they had begun to play this cursed game. The room felt hot but not from the fire, rather with his increased body weight, Carlos was starting to sweat from the room’s temperature. Erik groaned in agreement, sweat perspiring from his forehead.
“I’m hungry too,” Erik said, a grumble from his gargantuan belly accompanying the complaint. Both Carlos and Erik were nearly naked, their clothes in tatters around them. It was hard to appraise which of the two were fatter; Carlos’ gut clearly the bigger of the two as it occupied most of the space between his thighs and rose spherically in the air. Erik’s fattened chest and arms offered counterpoint, his puffy round nipples mounted on the voluptuous chest atop his belly. Erik’s face was almost unrecognizable from the former athlete’s countenance; his jawline vanished into a newly developed third chin. Regardless of who topped who in girth, both men were now, despite their circumstance, rubbing their bellies and complaining of hunger.
Mitch, the only one of them not resembling an overly stuffed beach ball, shifted his weight, now mostly concentrated in his expanded ass. The supernatural restraints holding all three of them down were strong but he at least could change position. He felt incredulous at their situation, the surreal reality of looking at his boyfriend who now jiggled with each movement. Looking at the board, he knew they were at least two rolls of the dice minimum from being done with the requirements of the game board. He was the closest to making it to the “Return” space which Mitch assumed meant he would return to normal size. No promises on the other two guys, he thought. Where the hell did this game come from, he wondered, and why is it here in this cabin? Were they the first to ever play it or had other people wound up swollen with fat from throwing the dice?
Mitch scooped up the dice and handed them again to Erik, who still couldn’t reach the table on which the game rested. Erik’s fattened fingers closed around the dice as his stomach grumbled. Shaking the dice for a moment, he closed his eyes and threw them at the table. He heard Mitch sigh and Carlos exclaim, “oh no…” Opening his eyes, he saw Mitch setting Erik’s piece on a new “Fate” square.
“Well fuck,” Erik said, his stomach rumbling again. “You might as well read the card, Mitch. I can’t reach that either”. Erik leaned back, rolls forming between his chest and belly with the new position. Mitch picked up the card with an apologetic look at his friend and read out loud.
“Read this card and weigh a ton, before this game of growth is done,” Mitch read, adding the card to the discarded pile they now had accumulating. Mitch looked at Erik expectantly as panic crept across Erik’s face. Erik had the look of a person anticipating a punch, flinching for the impact. When it didn’t come, he opened his eyes and with his chubby hands, lifted his chest then his belly, giving both a shake that sent ripples through his flesh. He shrugged again and held his arms out to his side in an “I don’t know” gesture.
“Maybe it’s referential to how big this game can get you,” Carlos said. Mitch picked the card up and read it to himself again. Setting it down, he grabbed the dice and threw them on the board. His dice proved lucky and he landed in safety again. He was only seven spaces away from the end of the game and he urgently wanted to wrap this up. He picked up the dice and handed them to his husky boyfriend. As Carlos threw the dice and also landed on a safe space, Mitch felt pressure similar to gas building in his stomach. Patting his stomach and the little bit of fat accumulated there from his earlier gain, he opened his mouth and an enormous belch erupted.
As if timed with his burp, Mitch’s belly pushed out in all directions in a slow but steady manner. He felt himself rising on his seat as his ass grew in tandem, both belly and butt expanding as he burped. Mitch’s arms pushed out slightly on the sides as a roll developed from his chest to his back under his armpit. As his burp ended, Mitch felt his chin pushing down into newly accumulated fat around his neck. Finally, as Mitch closed his mouth in shock, his chest mushroomed into two small globes with puffy nipples. His shirt was barely containing the fat, destined to follow his already ripped pants.
Looking down at his legs, Mitch saw that his thighs had grown in concert with his ass, thickened thighs with the formation of dimpling from all the new fat.
“What the hell?!” Mitch exclaimed, “I didn’t get a card! There’s no fate so there should be no fat!” Mitch looked to Erik and then his boyfriend, who both looked confused. Carlos looked at Mitch with sympathy for his boyfriend’s frustration but couldn’t help drifting his eyes to the enormous ass Mitch now had. It actually raised Mitch higher on the couch, spreading out wide as it did round. Mitch was now a fattened visage along with the two other men, though he still remained the smallest. Carlos had the biggest belly and Erik was sporting the fattest overall look, every part of him looking engorged with chub. Why Erik hadn’t grown even further after his last card plagued Carlos’ thoughts and he picked up the card from the pile.
“Mitch, it says, ‘read this card and weigh a ton’, it’s because you read it for Erik that you got fat,” Carlos said, handing the card to Mitch. Mitch scanned the text and grunted in anger.
“God damn it, you’re right. Erik, this is your fault!” Mitch accused.
“What?!” Erik yelped, his eyebrows raised on his fattened face. “How the hell is any of this my fault?”
“If your fat ass could reach the board, you would have read it yourself and I wouldn’t look like this!” Mitch yelled, grabbing his belly with one hand and giving it a bounce for emphasis. “I was getting through this game way better than...” Mitch’s sentence was interrupted by a loud rumble of his stomach. He pulled his chin back slightly then let out another huge belch.
Just as before, as the burp was leaving his mouth, Mitch began expanding in all directions. His belly burgeoned out like an enormous cauldron, his shirt stretching to its limit and finally ripping apart over the bulbous mass. His arms raised even further to the side as his chest, once firm pecs, now resembled pudgy pyramids. They connected to his back with swelling flesh. They formed a roll that developed between his chest and lovehandles. Carlos watched mouth agape as Mitch’s navel sunk deeper and wider into the multiplying belly fat. Had he placed his fingers into that navel, they would have engulfed his entire finger. Mitch’s arm musculature disappeared as his arm rounded out and rolls developed near his elbows. His cheeks flushed with fat and rounded down into his solidly developed second chin. A roll developed at the back of Mitch’s head and his neck flushed out to meld with it all. His upper body now rivaled the fat on Erik’s ballooned form, but his lower body beat them all by half. Mitch’s butt had grown in those few short seconds to enormous proportions, actually touching Carlos now in its girth. His thighs were mammoth and widely spread apart, his crotch fat now visibly encompassing his genitals. Glancing down, Carlos observed that Mitch’s calves were now the size of Carlos’ own thighs, Mitch’s ankles a distant memory. As the burp ended, the growing stopped and Mitch sat in seat dazed in horror. He now was fatter than both Erik and Carlos in a matter of seconds.
“Serves you right,” Erik said finally, ending the silence of the three fattened men. The three of them had sat quietly for a few minutes, each a tubby caricature of their former selves. The fire which had started as crackling in the fireplace at the beginning of the evening was now dwindling as none of them had the means to stoke it.
“Serves me right?!” Mitch said, his voice rising an octave. “How does this serve me right? I’m more than obese now! Look at me! I’m huge!”
“You said it was my fault and that was karma coming back to you,” Erik said petulantly.
“Whatever buddy,” Mitch said angrily, folding his arms on top of his fattened gut. His arms sunk several inches into the pudgy ball as they rested. Carlos looked back and forth between the two, both angry at their situation. In concert, all three of their bellies grumbled loudly and they looked at each other in fear.
“I’m starving,” Carlos admitted, grabbing his belly. Hunger was seeping into every part of him and his brain was becoming convoluted with it. As much as he was trying to focus on the game, he was flooded with thoughts of eating. The other men nodded their head in agreement.
“All I can think of,” Erik said, fingers pressing into his fat sides, “is stuffing doughnut after doughnut into my mouth”.
“We have to hurry,” Mitch said with a tone of fear in his voice. “The longer we play this game, the fatter we get and it’s getting into our brains.”
“You’re thinking of food too?” Carlos asked his rotund boyfriend. Mitch nodded with a self effacing smile.
“Pizzas. Not one, multiple pizzas. My brain is crying for it. It’s your roll, Erik. Hurry up,” Mitch said, leaning forward to get the dice to Erik. He didn’t realize that with his current girth, he too could no longer reach the table. Mitch’s belly wouldn’t give in to the forward leaning. His gut pushed him back to his seat with ease.
“Fuck, now neither of us can actually reach the damn dice,” Mitch said in frustration. “Babe, you’re the only left who can reach them and if you get much bigger, we won’t be able to finish!” Carlos looked at his boyfriend with dawning trepidation, the dice themselves seeming dangerous as he reached forward to grab them off the table. He was out of breath as his fingers closed around them. If his next move landed him on a “Fate” card, they could all end up too fat to end the game. What would happen then? They’d just be stuck here until someone discovered them? It was a scary proposition. Leaning back and releasing the pressure from his own gut, Carlos handed the dice to Mitch, he passed them over to Erik.
“Roll smartly, fat ass,” Mitch said with irony as Erik shook the dice in his hand. Shooting Mitch a dirty look, Erik threw the dice on table. They all leaned forward to see what he rolled, Carlos able to look the closest. Each die face read a three. Carlos moved Erik’s piece forward six places until it landed in another “Fate” box.
“How does this keep happening?!” Erik bemoaned as Carlos picked up a card for him.
“No, babe!” Mitch yelled as Carlos turned the card to read. “It’s his card, make him read it! Look at what happened to me! No one reads anyone else’s cards. Give it to me and I’ll hand it to him.”
“Whatever,” Erik said, rolling his eyes at Mitch’s insistence. Carlos handed the card to Mitch, breathing a quick sigh of relief. That could have been a horrible mistake on his part, particularly since he was the only one with any breadth of reach. Mitch gingerly handled the card as if it were venomous. He leaned over his seat to hand it to Erik. As Erik begrudgingly took it, Mitch involuntarily burped again.
Mitch’s eyes went wide as the belch continued, his belly jiggling as it started expanding. His chest grew alongside the gut, riding along with the expanding globe and sagging to the sides. His nipples swelled to the size of sand dollars and puffed out half an inch from his chest. Mitch’s chin disappeared completely as his jawline gained weight, fusing with his neck. His ass grew larger as Mitch seemed to get taller on the couch, rising up as the padding below him increased. It pushed into Carlos’ fattened lovehandles and began filling the space and crevices between them. Mitch’s thighs grew so large as they fattened that his feet no longer touched the ground. His legs pushed out in front of him as they moved wider apart from his fat gut and crotch massively expanding. Mitch’s feet and hands became increasingly padded, his fingers swelling into sausage-like appendages. As this third belch ended, Carlos heard the couch they both occupied start to creak as Mitch looked like he was nearing five to six hundred pounds.
“Whoa,” Erik said incredulously, looking at Mitch’s overstuffed form. Erik looked scared and confused. “Why are you still growing so much?”
“The card he read for you said ‘a ton’, that he’d weigh ‘a ton’,” Carlos said, looking with concern at them both. “That’s two thousand pounds. If we don’t finish this game quickly, I think he’s going to end up that big.” Carlos, who was probably verging on three hundred and fifty pounds himself, felt almost small next to corpulent boyfriend. “Hurry and read your card, Erik. We’re all only one roll away from finishing! Two thousand pounds of weight will kill him!”
Erik look flustered and began patting his body in growing panic.
“I lost the card!” Erik said, panic creeping into his voice. Carlos looked at Mitch in frustration, who was rolling his own eyes but Carlos could sense the fear from him. Mitch’s lips were pressed tight together and Carlos knew he was trying to fight any future impulse to belch. Looking over at Erik, Carlos found the card.
“It’s under your moob, Erik, the right one,” Carlos said, spying the card wedged between Erik’s gut and chest. With his left hand, Erik lifted his chest and with his right, removed the card. He blushed and read the card quickly.
“Name a person to punish that friend; he’ll grow round while you reach the end. You’ll win the game, now lay the blame,” Erik read. He lowered the card, his eyes flickering between Carlos and Mitch. “I think if I name one of you two, this is over.”
“That’s not fair,” Mitch uttered, opening his mouth despite his fear of further growth. “So you win at the expense of one of us again? Why don’t you name yourself Erik? Do the right thing since I took the punishment for you with that other card.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Erik said slowly, looking at the card again. “It says friend so it has to be you or Carlos.” As his name left Erik’s lips, Carlos felt a growling rumble grow in his belly.
Carlos saw a flickering of movement on the game board and watched as Erik’s playing piece moved on its own accord to the final “Return” space. A hazy glow began spreading out from Erik’s piece and the board shimmered as it seemed to disappear from sight.
“Erik!” Carlos yelled. “You said my name!”
“Son of a bitch, Erik!” Mitch exclaimed. “You said his damn name!”
As the words left Mitch’s lips, Carlos felt his sides and front start expanding. His already large belly began inflating with fat, so quickly that he immediately lost sight of the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Erik appeared to be shrinking in size, his belly diminishing and his chest flattening out. Carlos’ attention was snapped back to his own body as he felt his belly overlap his thighs completely. His legs were forced to the sides as they themselves fattened and pressed deeply in resistance to the still expanding ball of a gut Carlos was developing. His feet lifted in the air similar to Mitch’s and Carlos could faintly see that any definition in his legs was quickly swallowed in fat. He lost sight of his legs in addition to the floor as his belly continued on. His felt his face growing chubbier and as he tried to hold his own belly in from growing any more, he realized that his chubby arms and hands could no longer reach each other. His hands came about a foot short of reaching the other when trying to circumference his belly. Looking down, he noticed his fat chest pushed together and beginning to sag as his own belly finally gave in to gravity and sank around every open crevice of his legs and side. The couch on which he and Mitch were sitting gave one final creak then collapsed on the floor, the two men landing with a loud thump and a shiver of fat rippling through the two.
As he felt his body slow its growth and eventually stop, Carlos saw Erik standing before them next to the table, no longer confined to his chair. He had returned back to his original size, the slightly overweight athlete with a mild pot belly. He was completely naked, as were Mitch and Carlos; all of their clothes having been summarily destroyed. Erik moved with disbelief around the table in front of the two men, rubbing his body as if discovering it for the first time.
“Oh fuck guys, I’m sorry…I’m sorry..” Erik said, his voice disingenuous enough that Carlos was first annoyed but he could hardly blame Erik. “We can move again!”
Erik had won The Growing Game and so he had returned to his original size. Carlos felt as if some sort of spell had been lifted and no longer felt a pull holding him down. Looking at the table, the game had disappeared completely. It was as if it had never existed, the only evidence of them having played represented by the behemoths that Carlos and Mitch now were. Carlos waited breathlessly just in case he and Mitch might lose the weight but nothing happened.
“Help me up,” Mitch said with defeated annoyance, holding his hand up to Erik. Erik offered his hand then quickly added his second hand to help lift Mitch to his feet. As Mitch was raised, Carlos saw just how large Mitch’s lower body had become; easily wider than more doorways. His thighs fused into his calves in the thickest of tree trunk quality. Carlos had never seen a man with such an inflated pear shaped body. As Mitch moved over to help Carlos up, Carlos noticed that Mitch moved with a pronounced waddle, his belly and chest jiggling with each step.
With the help of Erik and Mitch, they were able to move Carlos out of the rubble of the destroyed couch but as soon as he was standing, Carlos found himself falling back to the floor under the weight of his enormous gut. Erik had given up and had quickly found his cell phone, calling his girlfriend first, telling her in a hurried voice to get up there as soon as possible. He debated with the guys who to call next. The police had been suggested but how would they explain what had happened? In fact, what could the police actually do? Put out an APB for a sinister board game on the run? Searching the house, Erik had found no sign of anything supernatural or otherwise indicative of foul play.
Carlos, sighing with relief at the end of the game but bemoaning the physical state of his boyfriend and himself, felt his thoughts interrupted. Food. All he could think about was food. He begged his boyfriend to get him some food as his stomach’s growling ratcheted up. Mitch was actually already started for the kitchen, his large rear moving like fat pistons as he walked. Mitch came back from the kitchen with two bags of cookies, a cookie already stuffed into his mouth. Carlos tore into the other bag and began shoving cookies in his mouth with abandon, his brain flooded completely with the need for more. His boyfriend joined him on the floor, both their legs splayed out to accommodate the heavy guts they now carried.
“You guys, who should I call?” Erik asked with concern, returning to the room after a long trip to the bathroom. Between shoveling the cookies in his mouth and growing erect at the sight of his fat boyfriend doing the same, Carlos mumbled something Erik couldn’t quite hear.
“I’m sorry, what?” Erik asked.
“Pizza. Call for some pizzas.” Carlos said louder, crumbs falling from his mouth.
“And Chinese!” Mitch added, his own speech garbled with cookie. His fat hands were pushing cookie after cookie into his mouth. They both now were the fattest couple they knew; a future of sweat pants and buffet lines spread before them. It might have horrified Carlos to have known this when he woke up that morning but right now, the sight of his huge boyfriend naked in front of him was nothing short of sexy. As with their apparent lust for food building to insatiable as it possessed their mind, Carlos knew it wouldn’t be long before they were fatter than the game could have pushed them.
Carlos shoved another handful of cookies into his mouth as his boyfriend told Erik to hurry.
“Pizza, Chinese, and both huge orders. And hurry, Erik, we’re both starving!”