The Appearance of Camelle Varenne

Chapter 1 - Phase 1 Denial

Here is the revised version with expanded, detailed descriptors during each of the three machine sessions-the tightening of her clothes, her thighs spreading toward the edges of the seat, her belly flowing into her lap, and her hopeless downward gaze as her body expands.

---

The Expansion of Camille Varenne

Camille Varenne did not look like a woman who had been caught.

She sat in the royal hearing room with one leg crossed over the other, her chin lifted, her dark hair still glossy despite three weeks in the Maison de Correction Royale. The charge read aloud was almost theatrical: theft of the French crown jewels from the Louvre, assisted by a crew of forgers, climbers, and bribed museum staff. The jewels had been recovered in a storage unit outside Lyon. Most of her crew had vanished. Camille had not.

"The prisoner shows no remorse," the prosecutor said.

Camille smiled at him. "The prisoner shows no respect for museum security, either. That's not a crime. That's a critique."

The head of the French royal family, Queen Régente Amélie, did not smile. She was a small woman with silver hair and a face like folded paper. She looked at Camille the way one might look at a stain on a carpet.

"Mademoiselle Varenne," the queen said, "you have been found guilty. The ordinary penalty would be imprisonment. But you have made it clear that prison is a stage for you. So we will use the Progressive Correction Protocol."

Camille laughed. She actually laughed.

"What is that? A lecture? A curfew? Will I have to write lines?"

"You will be placed in a corrective device," the queen said. "The first stage will add thirty pounds of adipose tissue to your body. If you do not cooperate, the device will do its work anyway. The protocol ends when the Crown decides you are no longer capable of the crimes you committed."

Camille's smile thinned. "You're going to make me fat."

"Yes."

"Like a prize pig."

"Yes."

Camille stood up so fast her chair scraped. "I'm not getting fat for you. I'm not a child. I'm not an animal. And I don't care what kind of weird royal fetish this is-it won't work. I'll lose the weight in a week. I'll run it off. I'll diet it off. You can't keep me fat."

The guards moved in. Camille fought them. She was tall and strong and mean, and she got one elbow into a guard's ribs before they had her arms pinned. They dragged her down a corridor to a white treatment room that smelled of antiseptic and warm rubber. A heavy chair waited in the center, with straps at the wrists, ankles, waist, and chest. A thick tube hung from a machine beside it.

"This is insane," Camille spat. "You can't do this. People will hear about this. The press-"

"The press knows you stole the crown jewels," the queen said from the doorway. "They are not sympathetic."

They strapped her into the chair. Camille kicked and cursed and twisted. The straps held. The technician slid the tube into her mouth, past her tongue, down her throat. She gagged. Her eyes watered. The machine hummed.

"The substance is a nutrient slurry calibrated to convert directly into adipose tissue," the technician said. "The first stage will add thirty pounds. The distribution will be determined by the device."

The first mouthful was warm and thick and sickly sweet. Camille tried to spit it out, but the tube was too deep. She had to swallow. The slurry filled her stomach with a heavy, bloated warmth. Then the machine began to massage her-slow, deep pulses against her belly, her hips, her thighs. She felt a strange heat spreading under her skin, a prickling, stretching sensation.

Then she felt her body swell.

It started in her hips. The waistband of her prison trousers bit into her flesh, a sudden, sharp pressure. She looked down and saw the fabric digging a red line into her sides. The seat of the trousers grew tight, the seams pulling across her buttocks. She felt the flesh there softening, rounding, expanding against the fabric. Her thighs pressed together where they had never touched before-a new, warm contact that made her breath catch. The fabric of her trousers stretched across her thighs, the weave straining, going shiny at the stress points.

The machine kept pumping. The heat kept spreading. Her belly rounded outward, pressing against the waistband, and she watched it happen-watched the soft curve of her stomach push forward until it crested the waistband and spilled over it in a small, soft roll. She could see her own flesh now, pale and newly plump, resting against the tight fabric. Her shirt pulled up, exposing a strip of soft belly. The buttons strained across her middle.

She looked down at her lap. Her thighs were spreading wider on the seat, the flesh pushing toward the edges. Her belly flowed forward, a soft mound settling into the bowl of her lap. She could feel the warmth of her own new fat against her hands, which were strapped to the armrests. Her hips pushed outward against the chair, the sides of the seat digging into her new width. Her buttocks spread against the seat, filling it, pressing against the backrest.

The machine kept going. The waistband cut deeper. The seams of her trousers groaned. Her thighs touched from crotch to mid-thigh now, the skin rubbing, the friction warm. She looked down hopelessly and saw her belly flowing over the waistband in a visible roll, the fabric stretched so tight it was translucent at the stress points. Her shirt had ridden up entirely, exposing the soft, round curve of her stomach.

When the machine stopped, Camille was breathing hard. The straps released. She stood up slowly. Her body felt wrong-heavier, softer, thicker. Her trousers were tight. Her shirt pulled across her stomach. She looked down at herself. Her hips were wider. Her butt was fuller. Her thighs touched when she walked.

She was 150 pounds.

"You're monsters," she whispered.

"No," the queen said from the doorway. "We are the Crown."

---

For the first day, Camille insisted it was a fluke.

"It's water weight," she told her cellmate, a thin woman named Nadia who had been convicted of fraud and who now watched Camille with a kind of tired sympathy. "It's bloating. It'll come off. I'll run laps. I'll do crunches. I'll starve myself if I have to."

Nadia looked at the way Camille's prison jumpsuit pulled across her hips. "Okay."

"It will."

"Okay."

That night, Camille lay on her bunk and pressed her hands against her stomach. It was soft. It had never been soft before. She could feel the new weight settled around her middle, her hips, her thighs. She rolled onto her side and felt her buttocks shift, heavier than they had been. She touched the back of her thigh and found a dimple-a small, unfamiliar dent in the flesh. Cellulite. She had never had cellulite.

"No," she whispered. "No, no, no."

The next morning she tried to exercise. She did jumping jacks until her thighs rubbed together and the friction made her wince. She did squats until her butt burned. She drank only water. By lunch, she was starving, and the weight had not moved. She looked in the tiny mirror in the cell bathroom and saw a woman who was slightly chubby-not fat, not yet, but softer. Her waist had thickened. Her face was rounder. Her clothes were tight.

By the second morning, she understood.

She was standing in line for breakfast when Nadia looked at her and said, "You're getting fat."

Camille froze. "What?"

"Your jumpsuit. It's tight. Your butt is bigger. I can see it."

Camille looked down. The jumpsuit was tight across her hips. The fabric strained over her buttocks. She could feel the new weight there, a soft, heavy swell that had not been there before. She put her hands behind her and touched her own rear. It was fuller. Rounder. She could feel the cellulite under her fingers, a texture like cottage cheese beneath the skin.

"I know," Camille said. Her voice was small. "I know."

Nadia didn't laugh. That was almost worse.

"They said it would happen," Nadia said. "Thirty pounds each time. Three times. That's ninety pounds. You'll be huge."

Camille put her face in her hands.