Chocolate for the Road

Chapter 1

“Are you sure that's what you’re wearing?” came a voice from behind Carmen. “Like absolutely sure? Cause that costume is a little…tight.”

Carmen froze, her hand still gripping the Kitkat bar she’d been scouring the oversized candy bowl for. She dropped it guiltily then turned slowly to face her accuser, the seams of her overtaxed outfit creaking with the effort.

Carmen knew she’d been putting on weight lately, but with the cooling weather and the increased stress at her remote job, she’d been living in oversized sweatshirts for a month and a half. A lightning-quick data analyst, Carmen was assigned to an enormous Q4 project that had the chance to make or break the company, and the pressure was starting to build. The same could be said for her clothes, and as she stressed, researched, and calculated, she was never without a fattening treat to comfort her worries.

Things started off more or less reasonably, with nightly food deliveries when she was too tired to cook, sugary coffee concoctions (that were nutritionally more akin to milkshakes) to stay awake, and constant crunchy snacks to keep her focused. She found that the more she ate and the more her newly burgeoning gut began to protrude out into her lap, the hungrier she got. Within the first week, catching Carmen without a junky snack or greasy takeout container was a rarity.

I need to focus on the project entirely, she told herself, and that means I have to put my vanity to the side.

She decided to go on a strict diet the second the project was complete, but until then she wouldn't restrict herself.

I need food, she thought. Brain fuel.

Satisfied with her rationalizations, Carmen began to stuff her face like never before. A daily dinner delivery morphed into multiple deliveries a day and Carmen was constantly packed, her orders increasing in size and decreasing in nutritional value until she found herself taking down an entire pizza and still craving more. Sweets were her favorite, and since October had begun there was rarely a day in which she didn’t finish a family-sized bag of chocolate. She ate as she worked, as she read, as she relaxed, and even began to wake up in the middle of the night feeling absolutely ravenous, her body now unaccustomed to spending more than 7 hours without a feast.

She’d been mostly isolated since her hectic new work schedule had begun and, for the most part, the only people she ever saw in person were the delivery drivers who were enabling her fattening habits. Her uniform of leggings and sweats were getting harder and harder to tug up her tubby thighs, and whenever she walked to the kitchen for another soda or to the door to pick up her order, she felt her fatty belly beginning to jiggle freely with each step. She’d given up entirely on sucking in, and instead let the rounded, growing sphere poke out and make her sweatshirts protrude.

Carmen was ignoring her transformation as best as she could, telling herself it was all reversible, but her growing appetite made it difficult not to assess the damage done. After gorging herself for the final time of the night, an always excessive meal even for her, she couldn't look away from the bloated mass in front of her as she moaned and groaned from overfullness, panting when she attempted to bring herself into a sitting position. She was slower, clumsier, and took up more and more space, and as she plodded through her apartment feeling every part of her body wobble, she forced herself to think of something else, to focus on her work.

Focus she did, and as the project came nearer and nearer to completion, so did her wardrobe. She didn't have a single pair of pants that weren't cutting into her belly mercilessly, and when she tucked her waistband below her belly and let it bugle free, poking out from underneath her t-shirt, she felt so fat that she always blushed a bit despite her solitude.

The only time she was truly forced to confront her weight was in the shower, and the stress of seeing the heft of her soapy, plumping gut, her swelling breasts, and her cellulite-pocked, wobbling thighs only made her hungrier. She knew she was porking up, but her denial led her to grow even faster, the stress of bursting a pair of leggings with her ample ass only alleviated by stuffing her face until she couldn't think.

After weeks of blowing off everyone she knew and holing up in her apartment to work, Carmen agreed, after much persuasion, to attend her best friend's Halloween party. She worked up until the last possible moment, cramming her face with a generous haul worth of Halloween candy between three large meals as she typed, and finally powered down her computer with just an hour to spare. She filled a bowl with candy to leave outside for the trick-or-treaters, noting with displeasure that filling the large bowl barely made a dent in her stash, and wobbled to her bedroom to put on her newly purchased costume.

Carmen refused to buy new clothes for the most part (the act of doing so being a sobering acknowledgment of just how much she’d been indulging) but a larger Halloween costume was absolutely mandatory, the Tinkerbell outfit she’d worn the last year being an unforgiving medium that would show off every fleshy, fatty inch of her expanding body.

Everyone buys a new Halloween costume every year, she reasoned as she clicked purchase and secured her sexy pirate costume in an extra large, the biggest size she’d ever ordered. I want it to be baggy, she lied to herself.

Now, with her best friend standing behind her and the incriminating evidence of just how much she’d been gorging displayed all over her body, her construct of justification and denial came crashing down.

Looking into Mindy's face, it was clear just how far Carmen had let things go. She’d ignored the 20-minute struggle to stuff herself into the costume, but couldn't ignore the way her friend was reacting to Carmen's new bulk.

She gulped, racking her brain for a response as Mindy watched her with concerned, knitted brows.

“I’ve been working a lot,” she finally conceded.

“Working?” asked Mindy with a head tilt. “Because…can I be honest Car?”

Carmen nodded, face already aflame.

“I barely recognized you,” Mindy went on. “I mean, you look…” she gestured to Carmen's body, crammed as it was into the comically tight outfit. “You look huge,” she finished. “Like you're pregnant or something. I actually didn't believe it was you for a second.”

“Well,” Carmen floundered mortified at her friend's trademark bluntness.

“No, seriously Carmen,” Mindy interrupted, placing both hands on her friend's bulging gut that was testing the confines of her distressed pirate skirt and forcing the corset up until it sat just under her now impressive rack. “Seriously, you’re so big.”

She gave the porky woman's belly a gentle shake as if testing its heft, then bounced her gut up and down more aggressively, the shock on her face evident.

“I mean, what have you been eating?” she marveled. “I know you’ve been stressed at work but I never expected all this,” she said, poking a teasing finger into the swell. “It's like you ate the old Carmen.”

“I, well, I,” Carmen mumbled, her face so hot she was unable to make eye contact. “I’m gonna lose it. After my project is over.”

“Carmen, c’mon, be real,” Mindy retorted with a laugh, grabbing the thicker woman's hand and leading her to the full-length mirror in the hall. “How are you gonna lose all this,” she asked, tugging down the waistband of Carmen's skintight skirt with effort and positioning her in front of the mirror as her body wobbled and jiggled in protest.

Carmen covered her eyes, unwilling to actually take in the bloated stranger standing in the mirror.

“Carmen, look,” Mindy insisted. “I mean seriously, look at yourself. You know I'm all for body positivity and whatever, but it's so obvious you still think you’re skinny. I mean, look at this outfit you tried to cram into, you don't even know you’re way too big for your old size.”

Carmen bit her lip, refusing to volunteer the information that the costume was actually a full 2 sizes larger than her old size.

“I'm gonna start working out,” she offered quietly. “As soon as my project at work is…”

“Start working out?” interjected Mindy incredulously. “What kind of workout can you even do?” she asked, stepping behind Carmen in the mirror and placing both hands on her rounded ball of a gut.

She patted it firmly, leaving Carmen's body wobbling.

“I mean you basically waddled over here,” she continued, further prodding and massaging Carmen's plush fat as Carmen squirmed uncomfortably beneath her fingers. “I see why you’ve been blowing me off lately. You knew I would call you on all this. I mean, I know you've been stressed at work but god,” she said, punctuating the statement with a firm slap to Carmen’s gut. “You’ve just gotten out of control.”

“Mindy,” Carmen breathed in a shaky voice, still unable to make eye contact with her own fattened visage. “C’mon, I mean, it's not that bad. Don't be mean.”

“Car, you know I'm not being mean, you know I love you.”

She gripped Carmen's exposed lower belly.

“Even though there's a lot more of you to love,” she teased. “I just want what's best for you, and denial isn't it.”

“I'm not in denial,” Carmen protested wanly.

“Oh yea?” Mindy challenged. “So, say you got fat.”

“I didn’t…” Carmen protested, already conceding the point before it left her mouth. She sighed. “I’m gonna lose it.”

“Do you know how long it'll take you to lose all this?” Mindy asked, her hands traveling the expanse of Carmen's body. “Even your tits got huge, holy shit Carmen.”

Carmen blushed, the feeling of her friend's hands barely covering half the shelf of her ample cleavage making her realize just how weighty her breasts had become.

“You won't even look at yourself,” Mindy accused. “C’mon, just look.”

Carmen took a deep breath to steel herself and finally looked in the mirror against her every instinct, cringing at the realization that Mindy was right. It was so much worse than Carmen had realized.

Her globular, swelling gut protruded even further than her lust-inspiring breasts and its wobbling lower half was beginning to drop every so slightly over her bursting waistband. She was absolutely crammed into the cheap pirate costume, and the corset dug deeply into her bra line, emphasizing the swell of her gut even further. She wouldn’t be able to pull it down to cover herself if she tried, but the already splitting seams on the edges of the shirt told her that any attempt would leave the overtaxed garment in rags.

The skirt clung to every ripple of fat on her thick thighs, constricting her movement enough to leave Mindy's statement true; she had been forced to waddle to the mirror. Her flabby arms connected to chubby hands with newly pudgy fingers that Carmen absently pressed into her freshly gained gut, shocked into silence at how far she had to reach to encircle her own belly with her arms.

“See,” said Mindy, watching the horror on Carmen's face as she took herself in properly for the first time in months. I told you it was bad.

Carmen's hands fell to the bulging love handles she was somehow entirely unaware of until that moment, in unpleasant awe of how easy they were to grip and how they jiggled violently at the slightest touch. Even her face had grown fat, and her chubby-cheeked, double-chinned, dumbfounded expression stared back at her with reproach.

“Too much Halloween candy?” Mindy asked, then laughed when she saw Carmen's stricken expression. “It's ok!” she consoled with a giggle. “Carmen, it's ok.”

“I don't even wanna go,” Carmen murmured, her eyes still exploring the ripples and swell of her new, roll-covered body.

“No!” cried Mindy, grabbing Carmen's shoulders and spinning her so that the two women stood face to face, Carmen's bloated gut pressed firmly into Mindy’s flat stomach in the small confines of the hallway.

“No, Car you have to go. I haven't seen you in ages and we need a night out, please?” the thinner girl begged, pressing her body into Carmen’s in a way that put undue pressure on Carmen's recently stuffed gut and forced a burp from between her plump lips.

Carmen was horrified, but Mindy laughed and placed a hand on her friend's rounded belly, pushing into the swell and laughing harder as Carmen stifled another burp.

“C’mon,” Mindy tempted in singsong. “There’s lots of food there. You clearly can't resist.”

Carmen bit her lip, considering.

“I got pizza, and donuts, and cupcakes, and all these different fried appetizers.” She grinned. “And there's alllll the Halloween candy you could eat. You couldn't even stop cramming down chocolate when I got here, I know being at a party wouldn't stop you.

Carmen shook her head slowly.

“Car, you promised,” Mindy whined.

Carmen shook her head again.

An expression as mirthful as it was mischievous crossed Mindy's face, and Carmen winced at the trump card she knew was coming.

“I’ll give you all my leftover candy,” she offered in sing-song, smiling broadly now. “I bought it all in bulk. I have enough for two Halloweens, so it should be almost enough to fill you up,” she teased, poking the tubby girl's belly again.

“Fine,” Carmen relented. “Fine. And then as soon as my project is over, I'm going on a diet.”

Mindy laughed.

“Sure you are. Now come on, and can you try not to eat any more chocolate on the way? You’re about one candy bar away from bursting that costume open before we even get there.”

“Mindy!” Carmen reprimanded, embarrassment recoloring her cheeks.

“What?” laughed Mindy, holding up her hands in a display of innocence as she headed back towards the front door. “I’m kidding, I'm kidding. Although, a couple of drinks, and everyone is gonna want to see those fat tits explode out of that tiny top.”

“Mindy!” Carmen yelped again, mortified at her raunchy friend’s debauchery.

“You’re thick now. It's hot, you gotta flaunt it,” Mindy called over her shoulder. “Now waddle this way piggy, I can't be late for my own party.”

Carmen sighed, took one last look in the mirror, sucked in as best she could to yank her skirt back over her jiggling rolls, and turned to head towards the kitchen. Despite what Mindy had instructed, she was gonna need some chocolate for the road.