Turn 6 of 23

Explore the arousal the changes bring instead of just letting it sit. After exploring it, two more weeks pass in a blur. She stops wiping after pissing and shitting and her weight increases to 190. Her body hair, greasiness and general slobbiness increase. She also develops acne.

Lena lies on the couch in the dark for a while, full and warm, and the arousal that has been sitting under her skin for days finally pushes to the surface. She runs her hands down her belly — slow, deliberate, feeling the soft give of flesh over muscle — and the weight of her own hands on the new fullness makes her breath catch. She cups a breast and lifts it, lets it drop, feels the heavy slap of it against her ribs. The sensation sends a jolt through her that has nothing to do with the wine. She presses her palms into the soft width of her hips and traces the curve outward, down, over the full round of her ass where it spreads against the couch cushion. Everything is bigger. Everything is softer. Everything is *more*, and the more she touches it, the more she wants to touch it.

She lets her hands explore the parts of herself she used to avoid — the soft underside of her belly where the skin is warm and faintly lined, the backs of her arms where flesh yields under her fingers, the thick press of her thighs together. A belch rises and she lets it out while her hand is between her legs, and the crude, animal combination of sensations — the gas leaving her body, her own fingers, the smell of garlic and sweat still clinging to her skin — pulls a sound out of her that she doesn't try to quiet. She doesn't perform it. She doesn't dress it up. She just lets her body be loud and greedy and alive, and when she finally comes it's with her belly pressed into the cushion and her face buried in the pillow and a long, groaning fart that shakes through her at the same moment. She lies there afterward, breathing hard, and the thought that floats through her mind is not shame. It's *again*.

The next two weeks pass in a warm, greasy blur. The pattern solidifies into something immutable — wake, vape, eat, work, eat, drink, sleep. She stops wiping after she uses the toilet. The first time it happens it's laziness — she's half-asleep, she finishes, she stands and pulls up nothing because there's nothing to pull up — and the damp warmth between her legs is just another sensation she doesn't resist. By the third day it's habit. The skin between her thighs stays sticky and warm, and the smell of her body thickens into something dense and animal that clings to the couch cushions and the bathroom air.

Her weight climbs. 175, 180, 185, 190 — the scale in the bathroom becomes a kind of altar she visits with increasing reverence. Her belly now rests fully in her lap when she sits, a wide, heavy apron of soft flesh that she props her laptop on sometimes. Her breasts have grown until they hang to her ribs, pendulous and full, and her ass has spread wide enough that she fills the couch cushion completely. Her arms are thick and soft. Her face is round and full, a double chin softening the line of her jaw. The blonde stubble on her legs and underarms has thickened into coarse, pale hair that she can see from across the room. Hair grows below her navel now, a soft blonde trail that thickens toward her groin. Her head of hair is a dark, greasy tangle she hasn't touched with anything but her fingers in a month.

Acne arrives in the second week of the new routine. Red, tender bumps surface across her shoulders and the upper part of her back, along her chest below her collarbones, and across her chin and jawline. She scratches at them absently while she works, and the pimples leave faint pink marks on her skin. She doesn't wash. She doesn't treat them. They spread slowly across her shoulders and down the fronts of her thighs, and she doesn't notice or doesn't care, because her body is still the only thing she's ever been proud of. She farts long and deep every twenty minutes, belches without closing her mouth, and works naked and unwashed on a couch she hasn't left for anything but the bathroom and the front door. The apartment smells like her — sour and warm and unmistakably human — and the delivery drivers stopped saying *have a good night* three orders ago. She is 190 pounds and climbing, and the wish is still working, and she still doesn't want it to stop.