The Curse

Chapter 1 - Carolyn’s 18th Birthday

The women in Carolyn’s family lived under a strange, cruel sort of fate. For as long as anyone remembered, daughters were born with a curse: their chests never stopped growing. By thirteen, most were already too large to leave the house, their breasts resting in padded cradles suspended from the ceiling. By twenty, walking was impossible. Beds and contraptions became their whole world.
Carolyn had grown up watching it happen to her cousins and aunts, waiting for the inevitable. Except… it never came. Her childhood had been untouched. While others ballooned before their voices even lost their girlish pitch, she stayed slender, almost ordinary. Relatives whispered that maybe it had skipped her. Maybe she would be the lucky one.
On the morning she turned eighteen, she realized she wasn’t.
It started with an ache in her chest, a deep, throbbing pressure that refused to go away. By afternoon, her blouse wouldn’t button. By evening, she was swollen enough that her reflection frightened her. Two heavy orbs straining against fabric that just yesterday had fit perfectly.
And it didn’t stop. Each day after, her breasts surged larger, fuller, heavier. The weight pulled her shoulders forward, making even standing a struggle. Fear coursed through her, but so did something else: a strange, trembling thrill.
That was when she met him.
Nathan wasn’t afraid, or horrified, or pitying. He was fascinated. The first time he saw her struggling to hold herself up, he rushed to help- not with embarrassment, but with reverence. His eyes lingered, not cruelly, but with awe.
“Let me,” he murmured, lifting the burden from her arms with a gentleness that sent warmth rushing through her. “I’ll help you through this. You don’t have to hide it.”
As the weeks passed, Carolyn’s body transformed faster than she could believe. Shirts split, bras snapped, harnesses had to be assembled just to keep her chest supported. She thought she would drown in shame. But Nathan was always there, adjusting straps, bringing her food when she was too weighed down to move easily, whispering how beautiful she was becoming.
For the first time, the curse didn’t feel like a sentence. With him, it began to feel like a destiny.