Nothing to see here folks

Archives lunches were Sasha’s idea.  So they could all get to know each other a bit better, she said.

“I think we all know each other more than well enough,” Jon said flatly, not looking up from the requisition form he was filling out.  The Institute was deeply paper-heavy, by Elias’s explicit order; probably part of the reason the archives were in the state they were.

“Well, you, me, and Tim do, but not Martin,” Sasha said reasonably.  “And we’re so isolated down here.  We even have our own break room.  We all need to get along, don’t we?”  She shifted the stack of folders she was carrying, completed follow-ups, ostensibly the reason she’d come into Jon’s office to begin with.  “And Tim and I know you as a colleague, besides.  Not a, you know, a supervisor.”

That, more than any of the other arguments, was what ultimately won Jon over; he was awfully worried about that himself.  He was desperately trying to combat the learned overfamiliarity of his relationship with Tim and Sasha (as well as, much more quietly and not fully admitted even to himself, his crippling insecurity and certainty that he was not actually qualified for the position he’d accepted) with precision and rigidly-enforced boundaries, but had his doubts about how well it was working.  Maybe a less-formal setting would help, paradoxically enough.

It didn’t.  Jon really ought to have known better.  He went to the staff lounge, took his supermarket salad in its plastic clamshell out of the aged refrigerator, and then spent the entire time he was eating it fending off offers and encouragement from his assistants.  Try a bite of Sasha’s gnocchi, a sip of Tim’s soda.  Did he want half of Martin’s crisps?  Eventually, Jon had to acquiesce just for his own sanity, and went back to his office at the end of the hour uncomfortably full and struggling not to belch.

He supposed that at least it had all been actually quite good.

Jon had not intended to partake the next day, having very much learned his lesson.  But Sasha pleaded, and Jon’s resolve - not as steely as he might have liked, especially when it came to her - crumbled.  He joined them all in the lounge, even though he knew nothing good could come from it, and indeed it didn’t.

In the short term: he was compelled to eat part of Martin’s sandwich (which was lovely, actually, thin apple slices, gouda, and turkey on focaccia) and split a pack of candy with Tim, and spent a not-insignificant portion of the afternoon trying not to fall asleep at his desk as his stomach gurgled and churned where it pressed almost painfully against his belt.

In the short term: Jon’s assistants all got a lot more comfortable with him, and it only got worse the more lunches they had together.

Sasha brought a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels with her when she came into Jon’s office to discuss a statement, and refused to talk unless he had some with her, despite his protests.  She even went so far as portioning them out for him - far more than he would have taken himself, but it wasn’t as if he could put them back once they were out.

Tim baked, apparently.  Jon added it to the long mental list he kept of his hobbies, next to kayaking and romancing government employees into violating GDPR.  Tim brought in a dozen muffins and talked Jon into trying at least one of every flavor, with much less effort than it would have taken him a few weeks ago…and then sent Jon home over the weekend with a dozen more, dense and moist and sweet.

Martin dropped by Jon’s office because the vending machine had given him an extra soda.  Did Jon want it?  Yes, he supposed…added silently was the thought that at least it wasn’t another cup of tea, too heavy on the milk and sugar but with him unable to say so because he’d already let it go too long.  Martin sat shyly down as Jon tapped and then opened the can, talking about his mother’s care home (a struggle Jon was quite familiar with and could and did offer some advice on, having gone through it with his grandmother just a few years previous), and did not leave until Jon, bloated, had finished drinking.

There were other changes, as Jon settled into his new role.  He began to leave his door open more often.  He took a bit longer for lunch, spent breaks with the assistants rather than outside alone.  

And one morning, looking at himself in the mirror, the gentle swell of his belly, the spread of his ass, the two generous, doughy love handles that had swollen into place above his hips, he realized he’d begun to put on weight.  Actually quite a bit.  No wonder his trousers had been feeling tight lately, belt loosened by necessity after every meal and snack…

Jon supposed it wasn’t all that surprising.  Head Archivist was a much more sedentary position than “researcher,” which had involved a lot of haring around both the Institute and Greater London…as his assistants now also did, often because researchers of days past had not done their jobs before chucking things into the great moldering bin of the archives.  Additionally, he was closer to thirty than twenty, a fact that - while it felt odd - was nevertheless true.

It wasn’t that big a deal: Jon had never been particularly precious about his physique.  He would adjust to the new, plush bounce going up and down stairs, loosen his belt, and dig out the clothes he’d had to buy while stopping smoking; thank god he hadn’t followed up on the impulse to take them to a charity shop while moving out of Georgie’s.

He did find himself a bit baffled, though.  It seemed he spent less on groceries every week, and yet here he was.  Still getting fatter.

But there were much more pressing mysteries to hold his attention, so he put it out of his mind.  Like how in the hell they were going to get the archives set into anything approaching some kind of order.  In desperation, Jon put in for at least one night of overtime for the whole department every week, and Elias approved it without question, perhaps out of guilt over the basement having reached its current state at least partially under his tenure.  Jon stood in his office as he signed it, aware of Elias’s eyes - for some reason - dragging over his middle, where the belly that was rapidly becoming a gut pressed against his jumper, even from behind the button-up he wore beneath.

They got delivery their first night.  Jon wasn’t certain what it was, hadn’t been paying attention when the call was made, but it smelled heavenly, rich sauce and savory meat and vegetables.  He did not rise from his place among the boxes as the assistants packed it all off to the lounge, even when Tim called “You coming, boss?” and Martin encouraged, “You’ve got to eat while it’s hot.”

“I’ll warm it up,” Jon said curtly.  “I can’t step away from this, and I certainly can’t eat while I’m looking through these files.”

“Well, what if one of us fed you?”

Jon paused.  Not long enough, but even now, that was outrageous.  But it grew less so the more he thought about it.

“Fine.”  He waved a hand.  “Just be careful, all right?”

Of course, once his assistants got permission to hand-feed him, it seemed that was all they did.  Not just meals, either.  Jon did not feed himself a single bite of his birthday cake, or the ice cream they all occasionally went out for.  They even stayed in his office to feed him the snacks they brought in.  Tim was the most forceful, Martin too slow sometimes; Jon’s favorite was Sasha, but truth be told, he appreciated all of them.  It was quite nice, having his hands free to continue whatever he was doing.  He was getting an awful lot of work done, and practically the only time he wasn’t eating was while recording statements.  It got to the point that, the moment anyone stepped into his office, he raised his head and opened his mouth, ready and waiting.

It happened with Elias once, who stopped in bafflement.  “Jon, I - what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”  Jon snapped his jaw closed, and felt something beneath his chin wobble a bit.

At least it was almost always the assistants.  Sometimes, they fed Jon a bit too much, often without him noticing until he was packed and panting.  The perils of eating while distracted, Jon supposed.  He made the mistake of accepting one belly rub from Martin, and then they all thought they could do it without even asking.  Jon wasn’t complaining, though.  Not so long as they did it right.

One day, as Jon came down the stairs, he heard the assistants talking near their desks.  They quieted as he approached.  They likely wouldn’t have heard him coming months ago but, well…he was still wheezing from the stairs.  And his tread had gotten a fair bit heavier.

“I heard my name,” he commented as he entered, and the three of them turned to look at him, and smiled.

“Just - talking about how glad we are to all be working together,” Martin said.  “With you.”

Jon was not a blusher.  He felt his face growing hot anyway.

It was weeks after Tim had first started leaving the statements out that he finally realized exactly what they were doing to Jon.

It’d been a petty, pointless sort of revenge.  Tim knew the whole time it was childish, but what the hell else could he do, in the situation that he found himself in?  Couldn’t leave the Institute.  Couldn’t get anybody else out.  Couldn’t get Sasha back.  And of the two monsters that Tim had found himself at the mercy of, Jon was much more accessible than Elias, especially in terms of striking out at him.

Even if that “striking out” boiled down to something as pathetic as Tim doing his job so well it made more work for him.

Tim ran himself ragged on follow-ups - which sometimes had the added perk of keeping him out of the Institute most of the day, a blessed relief.  Phone calls, visits, field trips out to sites and witnesses, covert meetings in coffee shops and pubs and restaurants, charming and occasionally buying information off medical and legal staff…all of it a thousand times better than sitting at his desk in that suffocating basement, with all its spiderwebs and stains and its catalogue of horrors, and staring at the door that seemed to stay closed all the time now.  Head Archivist - Gertrude Robinson Jonathan Sims.

And perhaps he wasn’t doing quite as good of a job as he had before, perhaps he wouldn’t have objected at all if he’d been fired, but it still meant slapping completed files down into Jon’s in-tray.  Two a day, then three, four, five…all ready to be read out into a tape recorder and marked complete.  And, unless Jon wanted to fall behind (more than he already had), he had to stay late after work to do so.

Tim kept expecting someone to say something to him about it.  But Elias obviously didn’t care.  There was some gentle scolding from Martin that was about as easy to shake off as morning mist.  Sasha, of course, was gone.  And Jon himself…not a word.

But Tim had noticed him, on the few occasions he’d seen him, looking exhausted.  He’d always had a certain “under-slept academic” look about him, as long as Tim had known him, even back in Research, but now, it seemed to have metastasized.  Unsurprising; even doing one statement a day - one statement a week, pathetic - had been hard on him back in the day.

Tim didn’t see him often, just glimpses here and there, dodging sullenly out of the archives on the rare occasion that Jon made an attempt to speak with him.  He didn’t want his explanations, his apologies, his lies.  But he could have sworn he was putting on weight, too.  He seemed softer every time Tim caught sight of him, bigger around the middle, in addition to being more tired.  Stress-eating?  Too many snacks on those late nights?  Tim didn’t know, and didn’t care.  Maybe Elias was wining and dining him, grooming his new monster apprentice.  Tim had no desire whatsoever to look into it.

But tonight, he had gotten all the way back to Bromley before realizing he’d left his house keys in his desk.  So he hiked back to the Institute, coming up on midnight by the time he finally reached it.  He’d been sure that the system locked at a certain time, but no: his keycard still let him swipe in.  That was good; he’d been dreading having to call Rosie.  Maybe he ought to be doing more snooping, see if he could find anything useful in Elias’s office.

Not tonight, though.  Tonight, he just wanted to go home, and get in bed.  So he went down to the archives, torch function on his mobile activated, and dug his keys out of his desk, right where he’d left them.  He would’ve been on his way after that, if he hadn’t heard the slight, gasping whimper from Jon’s office.  A pained noise.  The door was closed…but now that he looked, there was soft green light coming out from the cutaway window in it, the banker’s lamp on his desk turned on.  He was still in there.  And it sounded as if he were hurt.

Tim found himself walking automatically forward, putting out a hand to open the door.  The hand the worms had dug into; the light glinted off the smooth white divots of the scars on his knuckles.  His jaw tightened, and he almost pulled back and left, but then Jon cried out, soft and pained.  And Tim opened the door and barged in.

Sitting behind his desk, Jon jumped, eyes wide and wild.  Sort of - he really didn’t move that much.  There was a tape recorder whirring (Oh, great, Tim thought to himself, he was being recorded again), and a file open in front of him, contents spread out.  Jon’s face was sick and guilty, stricken.  A messy strand of gray hair flopped over his forehead, hung in front of his glasses.

“T-Tim?” he stammered incredulously.  “What’re you - ?”  And then he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed a fist to his mouth to muffle a…was that a burp?

“Heard you crying,” Tim said brusquely.  “Sounded like you were hurt.”

“I was not - ”

“What, is it your stomach?”  Jon was hunching over himself, in the way someone with a wicked stomachache might.  “Did you eat something that didn’t agree w - Christ.”

Tim had come around the side of Jon’s desk, and before Jon could spin his chair hastily away from him to hide it, he’d caught sight of his stomach, enormous beneath the jumper it was stretching taut.  He’d just seen him this morning.  Surely he hadn’t been this fat then?

“What the fuck?” Tim asked, almost wonderingly.

“It’s really none of your business,” Jon muttered, looking away, blushing fiercely.  But Tim was already walking forward, and leaning down.  Maybe it was morbid curiosity, maybe it was the memory of the worms and of everything else, wanting to make sure Jon didn’t have anything he could spread to the rest of the Institute.  “No, Tim, what are you - ?!”

But it was too late: Jon’s efforts to fend him off were futile, and Tim had already flipped the hem of his jumper up.  Allowing a soft, doughy belly, much larger than he’d thought it was even without how visibly bloated it was, to spill out into Jon’s lap.

Tim stared down at it.  Jon was warm; he could feel the heat of him against his hands.  He swallowed.

“What’ve you been eating?” he demanded incredulously.

“...d’you really wanna know?” Jon asked quietly.  Tim wasn’t sure that he did, but he nodded, and Jon heaved a sigh.  “Fear.  I think.”

“What?” Tim asked him blankly.

“I - I’ve been noticing it for a while now.  When I read a statement, I…get full.  And when I read a lot of statements…”

Jon trailed off.  Tim kept on staring down at his gut, and felt a wave of revulsion roll through him.  All of Jon’s insistence that he wasn’t a monster, and then he went and did this?  Fed off of the fear and trauma of everybody who’d ever given a statement to the Institute?  Got fat off it, even?

But on the heels of that, cutting through the confusion (how was that even possible?  And if it was, why wasn’t Elias the size of a house?), was guilt.

“So…this is my fault,” Tim said, but then a moment later, the guilt was replaced by anger.  “Why’d you keep eating so much?  You didn’t have to, not if it hurts you.  Why didn’t you stop?  Why’d you do this to yourself?”

“You’re not going to like it,” Jon said with a bleak chuckle.

“I don’t like any of your answers these days.”

“It’s because…”  Jon heaved a sigh, then stifled another burp.  This close to him, Tim could hear the steady churn of his overfull belly.  “D’you remember - before everything?  You’d order in lunch for everyone, but I was always working, so when I got up to go to the restroom or something, you’d…leave food on my desk for me to find?  So I’d eat.”  Jon looked up at him.  “I know that’s not what you were doing, not with this.  But I…it reminded me of better times, and…”  He sighed again.  “I know I don’t…deserve that.  But what I do deserve - even more than that.”  He squeezed his eyes shut.  “It’s good that it hurts.  It’s - it’s what I’ve had coming.  And it might be the only way you can hurt me.”

Jon looked so utterly miserable, sitting there.  Tim stood above him for a long moment, arms folded across his chest, then snorted.  “Oh, come off it.”

“I’m - sorry?”

“You can’t do penance.  Not for this.  Not this way.”  Tim lowered himself onto his knees.  “Hurting yourself like this…there’s no point to it.”

“What are you…”  Jon started, then swallowed hard when Tim touched him, his plush, shapeless belly, digging through to the taut fullness beneath.  “Y-you really don’t need to - ”

“Shut up,” Tim muttered.

He began to work at Jon’s gut, massaging and kneading, finding the tightest spots, the cramps and gas bubbles, and pressing them free.  Jon squirmed beneath his touch, huffing out embarrassed little belches here and there above him (apparently the worst day of some stranger’s life made you gassy - who knew), but slowly, he began to relax.  He softened, spread in his chair, slumped down lower.  He whimpered again, but this time, it was a noise of pleasure, of relief.  Tim’s jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything.

He’d gained more weight than Tim had realized.  Not just his belly; he had love handles, too.  And he could swear his ass was bigger.  Not that Tim cared.

Eventually, when Jon’s breathing had slowed and his belly no longer felt like a fistful of marbles, Tim sat back on his heels, shaking out hands that were threatening to cramp, and looked up at Jon.

“Better?”

“Uh h-huh.”

There was a warm silence.  The goddamn tape player spun and clicked.

“I really…didn’t mean to hurt you,” Tim told him earnestly, grudgingly.  “Not like this.”

“I know you didn’t,” Jon said quietly.  And then: “I’m so sorry, Tim.”

Tim put his hands on the arms of Jon’s chair, and pushed himself up.  Most of the way, at least.  He was hovering over him, still close to him.  Jon’s eyes were warm, brown, had flecks of green in them.  He looked so tired, but the edges of him had softened.

He smelled like old paper, old books.  Vanilla and oiled leather and finger-thick dust, with an acid edge nearly like vinegar, a pinch on the back of the tongue.  Was that what fear smelled like?  What it tasted like?

Tim did not realize how close their mouths had gotten, breathing each other’s breath, until his eyes fell closed.  Then he whipped upright and spun around before Jon could see the heat rising to his cheeks.  He needed to get out of here.

“I’ll stop leaving so many statements for you,” Tim muttered, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.  Hard and aggressive, to get blood flowing somewhere else.

“No, it’s - it’s fine.  Maybe…it would be better if you did.  We’ve got so many to get through, and the more we can learn…”  Jon trailed off, maybe sensing Tim’s prickling at the use of “we.”  Not so harshly as he might have a few hours ago, though.  “But I.  When you do.  Could you.”  He swallowed.  “Stay late?  With me?  I-I’d approve overtime, of course, and y-you don’t have to if you don’t - you know what, forget I asked, I - ”

Jon knew that Nikola was back before she (if that was even the right pronoun to use; he got the feeling that the thing that called itself Nikola Orsinov didn’t really care) had even said a word.  She approached him from behind in the semidarkness full of its odd, twisted shapes and the smell of wax that was just a bit too much like the oils of human skin, one foot producing the unmistakable tap of plastic on the wooden floor, the other making a somewhat…softer sound.

Then, of course, there was the click and whir of the omnipresent tape recorder.  Something was about to happen.

He tensed.  He’d been touched entirely too much for his liking in the past few hours, the warm, malleable hands of things he tried not to look too closely at rubbing every inch of him with a dozen different brands of lotion.  He felt simultaneously swaddled in a slick layer of it and raw, stripped nearly naked.  Thankfully, when Nikola reached for him with a hum, it was only to yank his gag down around his neck.

As Jon gasped and spat, trying to work some saliva into his bone-dry mouth to rinse away the taste of the none-too-clean cloth they’d used, Nikola rather petulantly announced, “It seems we have a problem, Archivist!  Or you do; another one.  How rude.”

“Oh, do we?” Jon rasped out before he could stop himself.

“Yes!  We do.”  Had she seriously just stamped her foot, like an indignant child?  “You remember I said I wanted to wear you?”  How could he forget?  “Well, my friends measured you when they were taking care of your poor skin and, well…”  She moved around in front of him, and he glared up at her, reluctant to give her the satisfaction of his fear.  “Look at me, and look at you!  You’re so little!  Downright puny!  Forget a frock, there’s barely enough of you for a bodice!”

“Are you going to let me go, then?” Jon asked, and Nikola laughed, a tinkling noise.  As if there were bells ringing somewhere inside her, which for all he knew, there very well might be.

“Oh, you are funny sometimes!  No, no, of course not, silly.  We make do.  We’re going to make you…”  Nikola spread her hands, making a wide, rounded shape in the air with them.  “Bigger!”

That could not possibly mean anything good.  Jon had visions of stretching racks, of the monstrosity that Jared Hopworth had apparently become, according to Gregory Pryor.  Being filled with parts and pieces he had not been born with.  He was decently sure that Nikola and Jared served different powers, but not that different.  Perhaps the two of them were even acquainted.

Maybe Jon would have been better off not knowing.  But he’d find out sooner or later anyway, and he’d always been too curious for his own good.  So he asked (with a quaver to his voice, much to his shame), “Just how’re you - how’re you going to do that?”

“How do you think?”  Nikola jabbed him in the stomach, a concave hollow beneath the undershirt he was wearing.  Jon had always been thin; “puny” was a good descriptor, he could grudgingly admit, and proper nutrition had fallen somewhat by the wayside in recent months, along with other luxuries like sleep and trust.  “We’re going to feed you!  You could do with some fattening up, little Archivist, and we’re going to do a lot more than ‘some!’”  She straightened.  “And we’re going to start right now!”

Sure enough, a new scent had made its way into the waxworks: grease, fat, grilled beef.  Jon pitied whatever poor fast food worker had just had to wait on one of the Circus’s creatures.  As something in a glittery leotard brought in an armload of oil-spotted paper bags, Jon asked Nikola, “And what if I refuse to eat?”

“Oh, I hope you do!” Nikola replied, clapping her hands together with a loud clacking noise before reaching into one of the bags to pull out a hamburger, wrapped in parchment paper.  “Then the fun can really begin!”

That should’ve put Jon off any kind of resistance, along with the fact he was starving, not having had anything to eat since he was snatched.  But he tried anyway, mouth kept firmly closed when Nikola held the burger up to it (since of course there was no way they were going to untie him so he could feed himself).  It was a short-lived rebellion: after he chipped a tooth on one of Nikola’s fingertips and almost choked when she none-too-gently crammed the burger down his throat, Jon submitted…not that that reduced her roughness all that much.  He sullenly chewed and swallowed the chips she fed him by the handful, the soda, the milkshakes, and of course more burgers.  But he really didn’t have much of a capacity to speak of.  It wasn’t long before he was full, then overly full, shaking his head as Nikola reached for more.

“You are so awfully ungrateful!” she scolded him.  “Do you know how much I’d like to actually be able to eat?  Not even a bite for me, or it just gets stuck inside.  I’ve tried borrowing all the long tubes and such, but I suppose they’re just so much more fiddly than a larynx, and I certainly don’t have enough to do with Viscera to - ”

“Please,” Jon panted, letting out a quiet belch because he couldn’t stifle it.  “I-I can’t.  No more.  I’m full, I-I’ll get sick - ”

“Oh, you’d better not.”  Nikola wagged a finger at him.  “Otherwise we’ll have to start all over again, and I don’t think you’d like that very much at all, Mr. Bossy Archivist.”

Jon managed not to vomit, although by the time that Nikola was through with him that first time, he was thinking it might be worth the consequences after all.  His stomach was visibly bloated when he looked down at it, and he could barely breathe.  He hadn’t been in so much abdominal pain since he’d had his appendix removed as a teenager, and as he dozed upright in the uncomfortable chair, unable to stop his own whimpering, part of him was convinced something had gone wrong deep inside, and that he was going to die.  But he didn’t, and Nikola came back with more far too soon.

Part of Jon assumed that Elias or, far preferably, the police would arrive to retrieve him before Nikola’s plan began to work.  But of course that was nonsense.  The weight was all but poured onto him.

He just wasn’t moving anywhere near enough to burn the calories being pumped into him, tied to the chair.  Any attempt to try was swiftly punished.  Oh, they took care not to damage his skin, which in addition to keeping him clean, dry, and lotioned meant moving him frequently so sores wouldn’t develop.  But they only ever did it when he was too sodden with food to even think about running or fighting back, and it just meant being stood up out of the chair with his hands tied to a hook over his head for a while, as if he were a piece of meat.

Nikola quite liked that position.  Said it made his belly pop.  And what a belly it was becoming.

The fat gathered there first.  Jon watched with no small amount of dread and disgust as his stomach slowly swelled and softened.  It was a bit hard to tell at first, since he was quite literally always stuffed to the gills, but it was hard to deny the presence of a potbelly as it strained against his shirt and boxers, then spilled out of them, then spread into his lap in two distinct rolls.  It settled on his hips in the form of love handles even as they widened.  Jon’s thighs and calves thickened visibly, and so did his arms - they had to redo the bindings on him.  His chest grew heavy, tits hanging on either side of his belly.  He felt his ass spread, felt the edges of the chair dig into it as he began to overhang it.

Fat had begun to build up around his neck, around his face.  He could feel it when he looked down, which he did often, taking stock of himself as he became heavy enough for the chair to start to creak beneath him.  If he didn’t have a double chin, he would soon.

Jon’s body had always been something he had taken for granted, barely thought about.  Changes in it had gone largely unnoticed, or briefly acknowledged and then unconsciously absorbed into his image of himself; that had been the case even after the attack by Jane Prentiss, which had led to perhaps the largest physical changes since puberty, what with the damage to his leg and all of the superficial scarring.  There was always something else to focus on.  But right now, there was nothing at all, and so as Jon’s body changed, he had no choice but excruciating awareness of everything.  In fact, the damage to his body was the one thing he could track, since he had lost all sense of time, of day and night.  It wasn’t as if he could count the meals.

For all intents and purposes, there were none.  Just one long, hazy feeding session.  He slept, he woke, he ate, he grew, a hog quite literally fattened for the slaughter.  It was a diet dominated by junk food, cheap, greasy, overprocessed empty calories.  They cared too much about his skin to risk real malnutrition, but that was where any concern for his health ended.

When Nikola was displeased with his progress, which seemed to be often, there was a tube and a funnel she brought out.  She threaded the tube into his mouth, sometimes even down his throat, and poured in heavy cream, milkshakes, melted butter, whatever she could think of.  The knowledge of the calories and what they’d do to him bowed out his mind even as the fluid bowed out his groaning, gurgling belly, and he squeezed his eyes shut tight and tried vainly to think about anything else.

Perhaps he would not have been so obsessive if Nikola had not drawn his attention to the new flesh whenever she was around…which was quite often.  He seemed to be her pet project.

It had even gotten to the point where, to a cascade of his horror, shame, and disgust, his stomach growled the moment he saw her, no matter how stuffed he was.  His appetite had swollen to a monstrous size to match his body, obscene.  He’d been trained like a dog.  Or like another sort of animal.

“Look at how nicely our little piggy is coming along!” Nikola exclaimed, grabbing the soft underhang of his belly with a hand sheathed in warm new skin and giving it a rough shake.  “Oink, oink, oink!”  Jon couldn’t hold back a belch, which seemed to delight her…although not for long.  Somewhat reproachfully, she told him, “I know you don’t appreciate it, but you are doing I Don’t Know You a world of good even before we skin you, you know.  All these lovely changes…”  She sighed happily.  “And this is just the beginning.  I think perhaps I’d like a cloak to go with that frock!  Perhaps some matching shoes and gloves, too!  Why, by the time I’m done with you, you won’t even look human anymore!  Aren’t you excited?”

“No,” Jon spat, and Nikola scoffed, giving his overfilled gut a smack.

“Of course not.”

As time wore on, Jon’s surety that he would be rescued waned even as the rest of him swelled and fattened.  He had no doubt that Nikola could tell.

“Oh, you’re doing so well, Archivist!  I do wonder how much you weigh now?  More than twice as much as you did, I’m sure!  Maybe even three times!”  Jointed plastic fingers took hold of Jon’s original chin, tipped him up to look into Nikola’s painted-on face as he gasped and wheezed, fresh off of a particularly brutal feed.  “What fun!  I do wonder if we ought to bring in a mirror before we shuck you…”

Jon squeezed his eyes shut, but there was nothing he could do about his ears as Nikola laughed with sincere, childlike delight.