Chapter 5 - Just Lunch

“Please tell me there’s a good reason you chose this place?” Jessica asked the man sitting opposite side of her as she awkwardly shuffled herself into the restaurant booth. She had done just as he had asked, arriving exactly at 11 AM for lunch, a request that seemed particularly strange right up until she felt a round of intense hunger pangs emanating from her stomach shortly after he had paid her a visit.

“Pretty straightforward, actually. It was your… I mean, her favorite place to get lunch.”

Jessica detected almost a sense of loss lingering in the man’s tone. “You know the original April well, don’t you?”

“Better than most,” he said between sips of water. “I was the only one she told about the experiment, well, aside from her parents.”

Jessica relaxed slightly, sipping from her Dr. Pepper while doing everything in her power not to audibly moan from the sweet taste.

“So then, care to explain why she dumped you? That’s the only explanation I could think of for her telling some random guy she doesn’t even work with about the experiment. I retained at least some memories of her friends and coworkers, yet there’s nothing on you. So I figured yeah, he’s cute, maybe she’s been sleeping with him. Can’t imagine any other reason for you to show up to my desk the way you did.”

“You’re not far off, but she didn’t dump me, at least not exactly,” Dan said while adjusting his posture. “It was a bit more complicated.”

The plump female never lost eye contact as she stirred her drink. “Well then why don’t you fill me in?”

“How about you order first?” he said while gesturing towards the menus in front of them.

Jessica grew even more annoyed but couldn’t deny the hunger within. With her stomach audibly growling, the idea of having to wait for their waitress to return one more time felt like a fate worse than death.

“Ugh I would if I could decide. They have so many things I want but I really should start eating better. You saw my struggles this morning.”

The man chuckled at the thought. “Let me guess, you want the Mac and Cheese burger but you’re hesitating because you know it’s got a million calories.”

“What the fuck,” Jessica cursed as her menu slipped through her fingers and landed with a thud on the oak table between them.

Dan smiled teasingly. “That was always April’s favorite. Ate it twice a week, like, at a minimum.”

“But I’m not her,” Jessica whimpered as her eyes wandered back to the image on her menu, her mouth salivating at the prospect of sinking her teeth into the burger’s cheesy goodness.

“Funny thing that you say that, because you sure look exactly like her.”

Just as Jessica began to open her mouth, their waitress returned pen and pad in hand. “So you guys know what you’ll be having today?”

“I think the usual will be just fine,” Dan said with a wink.

Before Jessica could get a word in, the waitress quickly began jotting down their order. “House salad for the mister and a Mac and Cheese burger for the miss. Should be ready in fifteen or less!”

“Actually I think I’ll have the salad as well!” Jessica blurted more loudly than she had intended, and the girl suddenly felt a twinge of regret as she noticed a few folks around the establishment turn to investigate the abrupt noise.

“Oh you sure are funny April!” the waitress nearly shouted herself as the woman in her thirties broke into a fit of laughter before walking away.

“What the hell was that?” Jessica questioned nobody in particular as she watched the waitress head towards the kitchen.

“That woman has served you at least three dozen times. You’ve never even so much as glanced at the salad options, and lately you’ve been doubling down on the junk food. I don’t blame her for thinking you were joking.”

Jessica groaned in frustration, yet she couldn’t help but feel a tinge of excitement for the meal to come.

“So I take it you used to be some sort of health nut? You’ve seemed a little on edge all morning.”

The former fitness trainer adjusted her posture, pushing her chest out as she straightened out her spine. “I am a health nut, I’m just temporarily occupying the body of someone who… isn’t.”

“Uh huh,” Dan responded dismissively.

“No offense to you or April, because clearly you two had some sort of thing going on and for some reason you didn’t mind the whole fat girl thing, but I was a solid eight before going through with this experiment, maybe even a nine on a good day. I was a personal trainer. I had a toned body. I could never pinch an inch, let alone a handful.”

Dan shrugged, his annoyance growing. “So what number do you think you are now?”

Jessica adjusted herself uncomfortably in her seat. “Well, I’m sure as hell not an eight anymore,” the woman complained as she cupped her chubby belly in her hands. “Your girlfriend’s face is pretty but my god, does she ever eat a fruit or vegetable? Has she gone outside at all in the last six months? Her skin is ghostly pale and her body is riddled with stretch marks and cellulite. I also noticed that a lot of her clothes are much smaller than anything she could ever wear now. The researchers said they try to match people who are nearly identical in terms of physical shape and education, yet April was easily 70 pounds heavier than me on the day we switched bodies. She must have really been going through something awful to have gained so much weight in such a short period of time.”

The two fell silent with just the sound of lunch chatter and the clanging of glasses and utensils in the background.

“So I guess you really don’t have access to many of her memories, do you?”

Jessica shrugged. “Why do you say that?”

Leaning in, Dan glanced around as if to check for any potential interruptions. “April was, or is, a good person. But I have unfortunate news for you given your situation.”

Eying the man suspiciously, Jessica slowly leaned in until she could smell a hint of his cologne.

“The real April LOVED to eat,” Dan whispered with emphases. “Probably in a way you would never have never understood in your old body. She was maybe a little over 150 pounds when we first met, and the second we became a thing, she threw caution to the wind and began stuffing herself like there was no tomorrow. Yes, I did encourage her to eat more and indulge here and there. As you’ve already figured out, I’m not exactly into the whole fit girl thing, but that woman ate more in three months than I think she had in the three years prior. I gave her a slight nudge to get the ball rolling, but she took off running on her own free will.”

Jessica pondered the man’s story for a brief moment, her brain struggling to wrap itself around the unlikely tale. “Nobody just destroys their body like that without a reason. Maybe she was hiding something like a medical condition. Maybe she was under an incredible amount of pressure from work or her family.”

Dan chuckled lightly to himself. “Actually it’s very simple. April had always dreamt of becoming fat. The way she described it to me, she made it sound as if she had been born a fat girl that had been trapped in an average body. The only thing holding her back was fear.”

“Fear?” Jessica scoffed dismissively. “Fear of what?”

“Oh I don’t know, maybe she was afraid of what society had spent her entire existence impressing upon her. Maybe she was afraid of being 400 pounds by age thirty, destroying her health and dating prospects simultaneously. The list goes on, really.”

Jessica grew silent as she felt a brief pang of sadness. She understood the fear of gaining weight all too well, just like every other modern woman fighting the constant battle of the bulge. “So what changed? She was afraid and then she wasn’t. Why did she let loose once she met you?”

“Very simple,” Dan said with an almost prideful grin. “I love fat women. I love everything about them. I get turned on just by the idea of a skinny woman gaining weight. I can’t tell you why, it’s just how I am, how I have always been. To be honest, I really wasn’t that into April when we first met, at least physically. She was a little chubby then, and she had just enough of a bubble butt to catch my eye. The sex was ok but truthfully it was her alluring personality that kept me interested. That said, I could only ignore my body’s desires for so long. Eventually I found myself growing bored and craving someone with a bit more heft. When I knew it was best for me to move on, I had the crazy idea of asking her if she would gain weight for me.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “So you thought it would be a good idea to ask a woman in her mid twenties to get fat, all for your enjoyment?”

Dan bowed his head for a brief moment. “Sounds crazy I know, but in my mind, I didn’t have much to lose. I told her about my preference for bigger women and she actually broke down into tears.”

“Tears?” Jessica asked with a confused expression. “She became upset? That’s not shocking.”

“Actually, that’s when she told me the truth about the internal struggle that she had grappled with her entire life, how she would love nothing more than to gain weight. I told her right then and there that I would love her no matter how fat she became, and that’s really all it took for her to turn herself into an insatiable pig. For the next few months I watched in amazement as she devoured everything in sight, and her body rapidly ballooned from there.”

Jessica stared into the distance, her mind struggling to believe the man’s unlikely story. “I don’t know what to believe,” she said somberly. “I know what it’s like not to love your own body, but I’ve never heard of someone intentionally trying to become fat. It’s so counterintuitive to everything I know.”

“Not all of us are wired the same way,” Dan said as he eased slightly back into his seat. “And I will admit, I was not fully prepared for the transformation that followed once April broke free of the fears that shackled her.”

“How do you mean?” Jessica asked with a furrowed brow.

“Perhaps she was always like this or maybe spending your whole life as a fat girl forced to live in a thin girl’s body messes with a person’s mind, but April’s situation turned out to be a bit more complex than I had thought. When she no longer feared the repercussions of gaining weight, that woman became an eating machine unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was as if she had been hard wired to turn herself into a morbidly obese glutton. She didn’t just enjoy eating and getting fat, she got off on it. I can’t tell you how many times she simply ate a meal around me and then proceeded to beg me for sex.”

Jessica felt her face turning red as she recalled the video from her first day in April’s apartment. The clip had been the strangest thing she had ever seen in her life, and her body’s response to its viewing remained difficult to comprehend. When the video had ended, Jessica contemplated simply chucking the tablet in the trash. In the end, she rewatched the video almost two dozen times in the days that followed, replaying the experience again and again to the same end.

“Anyways, as soon as she dropped those fears, the beast within was free to do as it pleased. Soon enough, April was eating all the time which meant she was horny all the time. Her behavior and her weight were spiraling and to be honest, I fucking loved it.”

Jessica felt as if she had been broken out of a trance as she heard the tone of Dan’s voice suddenly shifting. “Wait, a moment ago you were acting like this was some sort of horrifying transformation someone forced your friend into. Now you’re telling me you actually enjoyed it?

“Oh, I was in heaven! She was getting so much bigger and softer by the day. I had no idea that it was possible for a person to put on that much weight in such a short period of time, but she was a runaway train on track to becoming a perfect 10/10 in my book.”

Jessica slumped in her seat, her eyes rolling as she glanced at the nearest exit. “Let’s say I believe this ridiculous story, what the hell happened to you two? Why did she switch out of a body that it sounds like both of you were perfectly content with?”

Dan’s demeanor shifted quickly again as a frown formed across his face.

“She signed up for the experiment right before we met, and as much of a good time as she was having with me, the money was too much to pass up. She said she would try to find a way to reach out once she was in her new body, but considering she hasn’t already done so, my guess is those scientists locked that sort of information away so she couldn’t inadvertently ‘ruin’ the experiment.”

“That makes sense,” Jessica said before finishing off the rest of her Dr. Pepper. “I have no memory of my old home or job. It’s like I can remember high level details about my old life but nothing specific. I know I was a personal trainer, but I can’t remember where I worked or the names of my clients. I guess that information was handed to April. Same thing goes for many of her memories. Not to mention that all participants risk forfeiting their earnings if they interact with people from their original life.”

“Well… that’s too bad,” Dan sighed, his focus drifting away from the conversation.

Jessica watched the gloom overtake Dan’s face and felt an odd glimmer of sympathy for the man who had helped sabotage the body she now occupied. While Dan wasn’t exactly the type she would have gone for in her old life, she had to admit that she found him to be quite handsome. Letting her guard down just slightly, she shifted her posture into a more relaxed position.

“So you umm, didn’t bring me here to get in my extremely tight pants?”

Dan cracked a weak smile as he held his head back up. “Honestly, I’m not sure what I’m doing. It’s not like there’s much help out there for guys whose girlfriends decided to swap bodies with someone else for a year. I’d love to be with April again, but it really wouldn’t be the same if she is truly in a slim and athletic body. I guess… at least I was able to give you a fair warning about what you are up against.”

“And what exactly are you warning me about, exactly?” Jessica asked playfully. “To stay away from you?”

Dan gazed at the curvaceous outline of his girlfriend’s old body while trying his best to push down the desires swelling within. “Look, you seem like a kind and good person, whoever you are.”

“Jessica,” the woman interjected. “But you can call me Jess for short.”

Dan nodded. “Alright then, Jess. You seem like a good person, but you’ve been in that body long enough to know what it’s become. April and I spent the last three months engineering that body to become a lazy and gluttonous temple of hedonism, and then, right as her body began to really kick things into high gear, you got dropped into it. I don’t know how much of the old her was derived from her genetic code and brain chemistry, but my guess is there’s a good chance you’re going to get swept down the same path she was heading down.”

Jessica’s face grew slightly red as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The scale in her bathroom indicated exactly where her body was heading even under its new management, but truth be told, the woman almost felt excited thinking about it.

“And what path is that?”

Dan stared into the woman’s gorgeous eyes, his thoughts clearly mulling over his next move. “Your food should be out any minute. You’ll have a massive, fat-inducing calorie bomb to shove down your throat. You’ll want to act like you’re not dying to devour every last crumb, but it will be obvious to everyone around that you can’t control yourself. You’ll grab that food with your chubby fingers and sink your teeth right in, chewing with your mouth open as you gasp for air between bites. The burger alone will probably add a pound or two to your already soft body but you won’t mind at all. It’s all part of your body’s plan, regardless of who its master is.”

Jessica bit her lip as she felt herself melting into a puddle. She could feel Dan’s gaze undressing her with his eyes, and she couldn’t help but envision him doing so with his hands as well. “And what plan is that?”

“To transform a timid, slightly overweight 26-year-old woman into a prized hog so obese and lazy that you lose yourself entirely.”

Jessica whimpered softly like a bitch in heat as the man across from her rose from his seat and handed her a folded note.

“Your meal will be here soon. When you’re ready, you can reach me at this number. Assuming that you will truly want to go down that road.”