Chapter 1 - The paucity

Shelley was a born hypnotist. Even as a young girl, reading the books of the best-known hypnotists of the day and throughout the past, she was never surprised or amazed, or really felt that she had learned anything. Her parents had fought often, when she was very young, and at first, she simply created induction techniques, of course without knowing the term, to help her sleep through it.
There was one night, though, that she decided that wasn't enough. She went into her parents bedroom, risking a beating from her father, and simply began to hypnotize both of them. She can't remember all the words she said, but she was soon headed back to sleep and her parents were kissing, and never fought again.
She got her degree in psychology, and then advanced degrees, always uncomfortable with the idea of actually talking with patients. She felt it was messy, and wanted to believe it was unnecessary. In fact, she was bad at it. Her patients frequently left before even the first session was completed, noting that she simply wanted to hypnotize them the moment they even mentioned a problem or issue. Her superiors tried to tell her that she needed the trust of a patient before she could do such work with them, but in the end, they had to terminate her.
Vindictiveness is not an uncommon human attribute, but it almost defined Shelley, in many ways. She had always been able to get revenge through hypnosis, and it had never come back to bite her. She decided she would get revenge on the clinic that had fired her, but she mused on how she would do this. Even with her skills, using hypnosis effectively on someone that disliked her, especially without them knowing, was not easy. To use it on people with the education and training of her superiors, who themselves were at least somewhat familiar with the general principles of hypnosis in such a way? She was stumped, though undaunted.
In her research she came upon a manuscript hand-written in German, dated to 1912. Her German wasn't the best, but she didn't feel she could trust it to anyone else to translate once she began examining the work. It claimed to have been written by a witch of an ancient Pagan lineage, who had also undertaken the study of the mind, and what was often at the time called animal-magnetism, now known as hypnosis. It described an approach to hypnosis that caused self-reinforcing feedback loops, and, if done correctly, required only a few words. She knew her translation was poor, and still incomplete, but she felt she had enough- enough for a revolutionary approach to hypnosis.
She began formulating her plan, made difficult by having to find each victim on their own, and not being able to use the grounds of the clinic for that purpose. She was distracted by a phone call- bill collectors. It wasn't that she hadn't seen her financial crisis coming, she was just too confident in her own ability to do something at the last minute to fix it. Now, she went on to a forum she often browsed, connected to an online shop where she was a vendor. On the forum, people would request a hypnosis track for a given purpose, and then it could be put on the shop for sale.
One post caught her eye, having almost 5,000 replies. It seemed someone wanted a track that would make someone get fat. Scanning through, she saw most of the replies were saying what a terrible thing that would be to do to someone. The rest said it was impossible. She cracked her knuckles, feeling as though this was her moment, and went to work typing her script. In just a few minutes, she was sure it would do the simple job requested, and put it on the shop for $20, thinking it would only be bought by the one person. She then posted a link to that on the forum. She looked at a few other posts, finding them largely boring, and took a nap.
She woke up with a pain in her stomach. With shock she realized it was hunger, the most intense she had ever felt. She rushed to her kitchen, feeling weak and light-headed, and began to eat what was there. She realized she would have to go to the grocery store, and probably a fast food place on the way there, with how little food was left compared to her undiminished hunger. Then she stopped, suddenly realizing how odd this was. She considered going to the hospital, but as she finished the last of her food, checked her online banking to be sure she could afford to do so. She almost fell out of her chair when she saw she had more than $30,000 in her account, up from almost nothing the day before. She called her bank and had them email her a copy of her transactions for the last day. Page after page of $20 payments from the hypnosis track site. Then, just as she was feeling good about her success, her stomach rumbled in a demanding manner and she realized she was out of food.
She returned from McDonalds and the grocery store feeling stuffed, yet still starving, her clothes uncomfortably tight. As she snacked more, she read the last of the German manuscript, where it described the methods contained within as "primitive" and "weak" black magic, easily countered or blocked. Several pages then listed known ways of countering or dispelling the effects of such magic, in all nearly 200. With a hard swallow of insufficiently-chewed potato chips, she realized her spell had just been cast on potentially hundreds of people with religious blessings or other sources of protection, and could have been reflected back on her many times over, herself lacking any of the protections.
The manuscript ended by suggesting the caster plug their ears when reciting their script, or else they may fall victim to it themselves. Shelley looked down at her distended stomach, stuffed painfully tight and overflowing her loosest pants, and wished she had started from the back of the book. Still, Shelley wasn't one to be easily defeated. "I'll just make another one to reverse this." she thought.
She went back to her original script, which was essentially a series of deepening sequences, a series of interacting triggers designed to make one constantly hungry and to crave fatty foods, and a reinforcer at the end. She just had to change the triggers to do the opposite. She finished the new script, and was about to record it, but wondered how to price it, being as it was so little work for her. She checked the shop site and the reviews of her track there and on the forum, and found she had a ton of messages. She read through about 100 before deciding she had the general consensus. Only three people seemed interested in a reversal. The vast majority said it worked, but they wanted just one thing more: they wanted the weight gain to be fun.
Sitting back, Shelley realized that a much longer, more substantial track would be needed for that. She was instinctually sure that, as a separate track, it would be less successful than if combined into the original. And that it would all need to be recorded again. Going back to the original script once more, she saw several opportunities. She made the triggers not only interlocking and reinforcing one another, but also made it so each one added its own element of pleasure. Eating itself made one feel sexy, the idea of getting fatter made one horny, and then decided to make the sword double-edged. Hunger was already set in the script to make one feel weak and distracted. Now it would make one feel ashamed. Whenever not eating, her listeners would have a constant nagging sense that they were forgetting something, and that this was drawing attention to them in a negative way. Then, slightly annoyed that so many had any criticism of her original track at all, she added a potent end-note: they would not notice the weight gain, always feeling themselves too skinny. They would rationalize outgrowing clothes by the clothes shrinking, and reject outright any comments from anyone suggesting they had gained weight. And one more: they wouldn't consciously remember ever having heard the track. She grinned at her wickedness, then recorded it. And again didn't wear earplugs. Why would she have? She was about to record a reversal.
After she finished recording it, she immediately went blank on what she had just recorded. She went back to the script, and decided it seemed to match the track length, but listened to it to be sure. And to be absolutely sure, she had to listen to all of it, as much of the innovation had been added at the end. She came out of her trance again not remembering what she had just heard, but too hungry to care. She just posted it again as an improved version of her first, and asked for $15 this time, offering a discount to repeat customers who had bought the other, and spent the rest of the day eating, watching her account balance grow online, and thinking she was having one of the best days of her life. The money rolled in, but no one seemed to be offering any reviews or commentary. Shelley didn't care, as long as she- god, she was out of food!