Chapter 1

It was a hot afternoon in late 2021 when Dave collapsed face-first into his triple cheeseburger at a roadside diner outside Tulsa. The last thing he remembered was the greasy beef sliding down his throat, then everything went black. He'd fought his weight his whole life, high school wrestling champ, college football lineman, later a personal trainer who preached discipline and protein shakes. But the older he got, the harder the hunger won. By thirty-nine he was carrying almost six hundred pounds, most of it packed around his middle like a water balloon ready to pop. Doctors had warned him. He'd ignored them. One last burger was all it took.

When he opened his eyes again he was standing in a cheap motel room that smelled like cigarette smoke and old carpet. A slim guy in a sharp suit sat on the edge of the bed scrolling on his phone, totally absorbed in whatever was on the screen. Dave cleared his throat. The man looked up, smirked, and set the phone aside.

"Took you long enough, Dave," he said. "You play these strategy games? This one's brutal. Global resource wars. Addictive as hell."

Dave just stared. He remembered choking.

He remembered the floor rushing up.

Nothing after that.

The suited man pulled a thick folder from nowhere and started flipping pages. "David Whitaker. Thirty-nine. Six-foot-ten. Five-eighty-seven on the scale the morning you died. Jesus, you really let yourself go at the end."

He reached out and gave Dave's enormous hanging gut a casual poke. Dave flinched, suddenly aware he was buck-naked. His belly sagged so low it covered everything below the navel. Shame burned through him.

"Where the hell am I?" Dave finally managed.

"You're dead, big guy. This is the processing room. And you're here because thirty minutes before your heart gave out you said, and I quote, "God, Buda, Zeus, Jupiter, Tupã, Loki, Satan, whoever's listening, I'd sell my soul for one more double bacon deluxe. They're always sold out.'"

The man held up a small blue card and read it like a receipt. "Turns out, I was listening! Well, congrats. You got your burger. Now it's time to pay up."

Dave laughed once, sharp and disbelieving, then lunged for the door. He yanked it open. White nothing stretched forever outside. He stepped through, and immediately stepped back into the same motel room. Tried again.

Same thing. Five times. Each time the door looped him right back.

The suited man sighed. "Sit down before you pop a seam. I'm not gonna hurt you. Much."

Dave dropped onto the mattress. The springs screamed.

"You're in hell," the man said. "Or limbo. Or whatever. Point is, you made a deal. Don't care how stupid your request was, I delivered. Now you work for me."

"You're the devil?"

The man rolled his eyes. "You are not very bright, are you?"

Then he stared straight into Dave's and everything inside Dave's head lit up like a movie screen. Dave felt himself swelling again fatter, softer, helpless. Dozens of thick cocks pushed into his mouth at once, pumping sweet, endless cream down his throat while his body ballooned. He moaned around them, greedy, lost. A huge soft ass planted itself on his face, smeared with frosting and chocolate. He licked and sucked like a starved animal until the vision snapped off and he was back to normal weight, panting on the bed.

"Proof enough?" the devil asked.

Dave nodded fast. "Yeah. Yeah."

"Good. Because I've got a job for you. One task. Do it right and I'll give you a second shot at life. Brand-new start. Sound good?"

Dave swallowed. "What's the job?"

The devil leaned forward. "There's a kid about to be conceived in the next room. His name will be Lucas Grant. If he lives the life he's supposed to live, by 2032 he'll launch an app called SharePlate. It's a platform that redirects surplus food, reroutes charitable funds in real time, and distributes low-cost meds to people who can't afford them. Within five years it wipes out extreme hunger and poverty in half the developing world. Global wealth gap shrinks. People stop being desperate. Wars over resources drop. Stability spreads."

Dave frowned. "That sounds... good."

The devil's smile was ice. "It's terrible for business. No desperation means no cheap labor. No cheap labor means wages go up. No desperate consumers means corporations can't sell garbage at huge markups. No markups means my favorite hedge-fund buddies lose trillions. I like chaos. I like hungry people fighting over scraps. I like billionaires scared of riots. Lucas Grant's little app ruins all of that. So he doesn't get to finish it."

Dave stared. "You want me to stop a guy from ending world hunger... because it hurts profit margins?"

"Exactly. Capitalism needs suffering to function. Take away suffering and the whole machine stalls. I'm not letting that happen."

Dave rubbed his face. "So what do I do? Kill him?"

"No. Too messy. I want you to ruin him the way you ruined yourself. Turn him into a helpless, immobile blob. Bury him under so much fat he can't code, can't walk, can't think about anything except the next bite. Make him useless before he ever gets near a launch date."

Dave felt sick. "And if I do it?"

"You get reborn. New life. Clean slate. You can be whoever you want. Just do this one thing first."

Dave looked at the closed bathroom door.

He could hear muffled laughter and bedsprings creaking on the other side. Lucas's parents were finishing the act that would start everything.

"How do I even do it?" Dave asked.

"You won't have a body. You'll be tethered to Lucas his whole life. Invisible. Intangible. You can't touch him, can't speak to him directly. But you can nudge his thoughts. The louder you obsess over food, over stuffing yourself, over growing huge and helpless, the more those same urges leak into his head. Especially when he's vulnerable. There's one perfect window his sophomore year of college, 2006. He gets drunk with a fat friend who turns him on. If you push hard right then, the gate opens. After that it gets easier. Flood him with thoughts of gluttony until he drowns in them."

Dave exhaled. "And if I refuse?"

The devil shrugged. "You stay here. Forever. Being tortured, skinned, every single bone broken and healed constantly, force fed dirt, shit and glass, all these fun little activities will be performed by my amazing little helpers."

Dave looked at the ancient box television in the corner. Static hissed. Visions of what the devil had described appearing.

"Fine," he said. "I'll do it."

The devil snapped his fingers.

Everything went white.

Dave found himself floating in the same motel room, but now it felt different-thinner, less solid. He could hear panting and soft moans coming from the exact center of the bed, even though he couldn't see the bodies making the sounds. He tried to sit on the mattress. Nothing happened. He was just... there.

He turned on the TV out of boredom. It worked. The parents never noticed. He spent the next eighteen years like that. alone, bodiless, flipping channels, later browsing early internet forums when Wi-Fi came along. He hunted down every gainer story, every feeder video, every photo of men swollen beyond recognition. He stared at them for hours. He imagined himself that big. Then he imagined Lucas that big. The fantasies grew sharper, darker, more obsessive. He didn't know if any of it was reaching Lucas, but he kept thinking anyway. It was all he had.

2006 arrived.

Lucas woke up in a shitty off-campus apartment, twenty years old, lean, handsome, already accepted into a top computer-science program. He'd always been disciplined, track team in high school, straight As, summer coding internships. But lately something felt off. He kept thinking about food in ways that made no sense. Double portions at the dining hall. Late-night pizza runs. The way his stomach stretched when he really let go. It felt good. Wrong, but good.

His roommate was a big guy named Matt soft, round, always in stretched-out hoodies. One Friday night they got drunk on cheap beer and weed. They ended up on the couch, shoulders touching.

Matt laughed and patted his own belly. "Man, I'm getting huge. Gonna need new jeans soon."

Lucas stared at the gentle curve under Matt's shirt. His mouth went dry. He felt himself harden.

That night, in the dark, Lucas jerked off thinking about Matt's gut. About how soft it looked. About how much bigger it could get.
Inside Lucas's head, Dave screamed with joy.

"More," Dave thought. "Eat more. Get bigger. Feel it stretch. Feel it hang."

Lucas ordered three large pizzas the next night. Ate them alone in his room, naked, sauce on his chest, moaning every time his stomach pushed out further.

The thoughts kept coming.

"Stuff yourself. Don't stop. Grow. Grow until nothing else matters."

By the end of sophomore year Lucas had put on eighty pounds. Sweatpants became his uniform. He skipped classes to nap after massive meals. He started hanging out with Matt every weekend-ordering enough takeout for six people, eating until their shirts rode up, until breathing hurt, until they were both hard and shameless.

Matt noticed. "Dude... you're really packing it on."

Lucas grinned, red-faced, rubbing his new double chin. "Feels kinda good."

Matt leaned in. "Wanna see how far we can take it?"

Lucas nodded before he could think.

It was a rainy Thursday night. Lucas had just bombed a mid-term he'd barely studied for because he'd spent the previous three nights ordering DoorDash and eating in the dark. Matt came back from the library with two large paper bags already leaking grease.

"Double cheeseburgers, large fries, twenty-piece nuggets, two large chocolate shakes, and I grabbed an apple pie from the drive-thru because why not." Matt dumped everything on the coffee table like it was treasure.

Lucas's mouth watered so hard he felt dizzy. He was already down to sweatpants and a stretched-out tank top; his belly pushed the hem up enough to show a soft, pale curve that hadn't been there in August. He'd gained almost forty pounds since the start of the semester.

They sat cross-legged on the floor facing each other. No plates. No napkins. Just hands and hunger.

Lucas tore into the first burger so fast the wrapper stayed stuck to the bottom bun. Ketchup smeared across his chin immediately. Matt watched, eyes dark, then mirrored him-stuffing half a burger in one bite, chewing with his mouth open so Lucas could hear every wet smack.

They didn't talk much. Just grunts and heavy breathing. Lucas finished his first burger in under ninety seconds, reached for the second without pausing. His stomach was already ballooning outward; he could feel the skin pulling tight. He pressed a palm against it mid-bite and moaned at how hard and round it felt.

Matt slid the chocolate shake over. "Drink half. Then eat the nuggets."

Lucas obeyed. The cold, thick sweetness hit his throat and he groaned louder than he meant to. Half the shake disappeared in four long pulls. He set the cup down, belly visibly bigger already, and attacked the nuggets, dipping them in ranch, then in the leftover shake when the ranch ran out.
By the time the bags were empty, Lucas's tank top was riding up over most of his gut. It looked pregnant, smooth, shiny, veined from the stretch. He leaned back against the couch, panting, hands cradling the swollen dome.

Matt crawled over, straddling Lucas's thick thighs. "Look at you," he whispered, pressing both palms into the bloated flesh. Lucas whimpered when Matt pushed down; the pressure made everything inside shift and gurgle.

"More?" Matt asked.

Lucas nodded, eyes glassy. "Always more."

Matt grabbed the apple pie, tore the box open, scooped a huge handful of warm filling and crust, and pushed it straight into Lucas's open mouth. Lucas chewed, swallowed, opened again. They repeated until the pie was gone and Lucas's face was smeared with cinnamon and sugar. His belly had grown another visible inch outward; the skin looked ready to split.

They jerked each other off right there on the carpet, Matt's hand buried under Lucas's overhang, Lucas's fingers clumsy around Matt's cock until they both came hard, shaking, sticky, and still hungry.

Finals were supposed to be study time. Instead Lucas and Matt turned their apartment into a twenty-four-hour feeding den.

They'd bought three folding tables off Craigslist and lined them end-to-end down the middle of the living room. Every surface was covered: five large pizzas (extra cheese, extra pepperoni), two trays of lasagna, a family-sized tray of mac & cheese, buckets of fried chicken, a sheet cake from the grocery store bakery, two dozen donuts, a case of soda, and a gallon jug of chocolate milk.

Lucas weighed himself that morning: 238 pounds. He'd started the year at 175.
They ate in shifts, graze, nap on the couch with distended stomachs resting on their thighs, wake up ravenous, eat again.
Around 3 a.m. on the third night Lucas hit a wall. He'd already packed away most of a large pizza and half the sheet cake. His belly was so full it hurt to breathe. He tried to stand; his knees buckled.

Matt caught him, guided him back to the floor. "You're not done."

Lucas shook his head weakly. "Can't."

Matt straddled his hips, pinning him. He scooped a fistful of cold mac & cheese and held it over Lucas's mouth. "Open."

Lucas hesitated, then opened. Matt pushed the cheesy mass in. Lucas chewed slowly, tears in his eyes from the pressure. Matt fed him bite after bite until the tray was empty. Then he moved to the donuts, ripping them in half, dipping them in chocolate milk, cramming them in until Lucas's cheeks bulged and frosting smeared his double chin.

By sunrise Lucas was 245 pounds. His belly looked obscene-round, red-streaked from stretch marks, hanging so low it rested on his thighs when he sat. He couldn't button any of his old jeans anymore. He didn't care. He just kept eating.

Matt rubbed circles over the taut skin.

"You're gonna hit three hundred before spring break. I can feel it."

Lucas burped wetly, then laughed.

"Promise?"

Months later, they drove forty minutes to a Golden Corral that had recently added a "dessert island." Lucas wore an XXL hoodie that was already snug across the chest and belly.

They paid, grabbed trays, and didn't stop.
Lucas started with four plates: mashed potatoes drowned in gravy, fried chicken, mac & cheese, green-bean casserole (for optics), then went back for more chicken, ribs, rolls slathered in butter, cornbread, then dessert, pie, cake, soft-serve piled so high it collapsed onto the tray.

He ate standing at first because sitting made his gut press too hard against the table edge. After the third trip he waddled to a booth. His hoodie rode up; the lower curve of his belly rested on the table like a pale pillow.

Matt kept the plates coming. Lucas ate until he had to unbutton the hoodie completely. His bare gut pushed forward, shiny, veined, quivering with every breath. People stared. Lucas didn't notice. He just kept chewing.
They stayed three and a half hours. Lucas lost count after plate twelve. When they finally left he could barely fit through the door sideways. Matt had to help him into the passenger seat; the seatbelt wouldn't reach across the mound.

On the drive home Lucas leaned the seat all the way back, hands resting on top of his gut like it was a second lap. He burped every few minutes, long, wet, satisfied sounds.

Matt reached over and jiggled the overhang.

"Two-sixty-eight this morning. Bet you're pushing two-eighty now."

Lucas groaned happily. "Feels like it."

Sometime during May, Lucas was supposed to start a summer coding internship at a startup downtown the following Monday. He'd already received the welcome email, the laptop, the dress-code guidelines.
Instead he called in sick on Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday. By Monday morning he still hadn't packed.

He and Matt spent the weekend in the apartment. Lucas was naked on the couch, legs spread, belly resting between them like a giant soft beach ball. He'd hit 282 pounds the night before.

Matt wheeled in a hotel luggage cart loaded with takeout: Chinese (three trays of General Tso's, fried rice, lo mein, egg rolls), Mexican (family-sized nachos, burritos, quesadillas), and a full sheet cake from Costco.

They ate for sixteen straight hours.
Lucas started on his knees because sitting was too uncomfortable. He tore into the nachos first, chips loaded with cheese, beans, sour cream, guac-shoveling handfuls into his mouth until cheese dripped down his chest and pooled in the deep crease under his pecs.

Matt fed him bites of cake between greasy mouthfuls. Lucas's jaw worked nonstop. His belly swelled visibly with every swallow-skin stretching, stretch marks darkening from pink to angry red.

Around hour ten Lucas tried to stand. His knees shook; his back spasmed. He collapsed back onto the couch, gut sloshing audibly. Matt laughed, then straddled him again, pushing more cake into his mouth with one hand while the other kneaded the swollen dome.

"You're quitting tomorrow," Matt whispered.

Lucas nodded, mouth full. "Yeah."

"You're staying here. With me. Eating. Growing."

Another nod. Lucas swallowed hard. "Keep feeding me."

Matt did. They finished everything on the cart. Lucas passed out around 4 a.m., face smeared with frosting and sauce, belly so distended it rose and fell like a separate creature.

When he woke up Monday morning he emailed the startup: "Unfortunately I will no longer be able to accept the position. Personal reasons."

He hit send, rolled onto his side (with great effort), and opened his mouth for the leftover lo mein Matt was already holding.

The internship was over before it began.

The real growing was just getting started.

That summer Lucas dropped his dream internship. Moved in with Matt into an apartment off campus. They turned the living room into a permanent buffet cases of soda, buckets of fried chicken, trays of lasagna, tubs of ice cream. Lucas stopped shaving. Stopped cutting his hair. Stopped caring about grades. All he cared about was the next bite.

Dave never stopped pushing.

"Fatter. Helpless. Buried under it. No escape. Just eat. Just grow."

By senior year Lucas was three-eighty.

Walking hurt. Matt bought a reinforced bed. They started funneling heavy cream at night while they watched feeder porn. Lucas's cock got harder to find under the apron of fat. He didn't care. He loved how full he felt. Loved how helpless he was becoming.

He dropped out three credits shy of graduation.

Moved into Matt's basement. Matt's parents had passed in a convenient car accident, leaving him with all the family's assets, including a gigantic house and more money than he could ever spend.

Matt quit his job to "take care of" Lucas full-time.

The feeding got serious, industrial blenders, medical grade tubes, harnesses bolted to the ceiling. Lucas agreed to everything. Begged for it. Dave's voice was so loud now it drowned out everything else.

"Destroy yourself. Become nothing but lard. Let it win."

They locked him in the harness in 2010. Constant drip of thick sludge. Weed vapor pumped through a mask to keep him hungry. Lucas ballooned, five hundred, seven hundred, nine hundred, twelve hundred. His skin stretched thin and shiny. Rolls cascaded over rolls. He couldn't lift his arms. Couldn't turn his head. Couldn't speak around the tube most days.
Matt jerked off on him every morning like clockwork.

Lucas's thoughts were simple now.

Full. More. Full. More.

In 2015 he crossed nine hundred pounds. Organs strained. Joints screamed even though he couldn't move them. Heart pounded like a trapped animal.