chapter 1

Opal, with her light brown skin and wild, untended bush of kinky black hair, spread out on her silicon pad, rolls of flesh extending beyond her reach. Dr. Wren was bathing her; she was so big the process took hours, working with a spray bottle and a stack of towels. Opal was never going to take a bath or a shower again. She was never going to stand again. Even if she was strong enough, her thighs were too vast for her to bring her feet together. Eight months ago, the first time Dr. Wren had weighed her, she was two hundred and seventy two pounds. Yesterday morning she had weighed two thousand three hundred and eighty nine pounds. This morning she had weighed two thousand four hundred and forty seven pounds. Every day she gained weight faster. According to Dr. Wren it wasn’t just fat. Hidden under Opal’s acres of flab were hundreds of pounds of steroid-nurtured muscle. If it hadn’t been for that, Opal wouldn’t have been able to move at all. But she still had the use of her hands. She could shift the great masses of fat that formed her body so Dr. Wren could wash her.


And she thought she could still roll over. She didn’t let Dr. Wren know about that, though. Because she knew Dr. Wren wasn’t going to stop fattening her up. She didn’t let Dr. Wren know about that either. Only five foot four to Opal’s five ten, skinny and bald, he liked having a big woman under his control, trapped in more than a ton of flesh borne of his experiment. He liked it so much he was going to kill her.


But now Opal closed her eyes as he began washing her breasts, her nipples stiffening as he rubbed the damp towel over them in circles. This was something else they didn’t talk about. She imagined herself walking into Dr. Wren’s office back in Oakland the day she’d applied for the study, thought about taking skinny little Dr. Wren and throwing him down on the examination table, getting on top of him and holding him in place, right where she wanted. Dr. Wren was washing under the soft watermelon of her left boob, and she imagined swinging it into his face as he squirmed under her, pinned by her weight. She squeezed her thighs together rhythmically. He must have been able to tell what she was doing, but she didn’t care. This was all she had now. In her mind, on top of the examination table, she felt herself grow, expand, her body engulfing Dr. Wren’s, his face vanishing into her cleavage, the feel of his screams against her breasts…


“Time for the undercarriage,” Dr. Wren said, pleased with the joke he made every day. He liked to give her these little jabs, talk as though she wasn’t a person. And she wasn’t a person anymore. She lived in a body someone else owned. He turned up her oxygen, and set up the cushions to support her head and neck when she was on her back. The pneumatic jacks under the silicon pad were the kind they used to right overturned trucks and busses, and was easily able to shift her bulk. Dr. Wren held a thick foam cushion under her head as she tipped back; as always, she grew fearful as the heavy cushions of her breasts rose, then spilled over her face, trapping her claustrophobically in her own flesh as she breathed through tubes and wondered if Dr. Wren was going to pull them out and let her smother during the moments it took for the hydraulics to shift her body back to an upright position. He’d done it before and laughed. He liked being able to make her panic. The thought made her weep with rage.