Side Effects May Include

II

It took far longer than it should have for Sasha to locate her tablet. She found it under a sheaf of papers, silently cursing the ditzy receptionist for introducing chaos to her workspace. Chaos wasn’t a strong enough word to describe what she found when she returned to the break room.

The space looked as if it’d been struck by a tornado or hurricane… or a very hungry, increasingly unhinged receptionist. The refrigerator door hung open, its interior bare aside from some water bottles and a few lonely condiments. The cabinets had been ransacked as well. Every flat surface was littered with takeout containers, plasticware, and crumpled brown bags. Brightly-colored boxes and wrappers from snack cakes and energy bars were strewn everywhere.

Jackie stood in the eye of the storm, shoving a sticky bun between her lips with one hand while the other rested on her stomach. She was so bloated that she resembled a pregnant woman. Impossibly, the airheaded receptionist had consumed every crumb of food in the room in the few minutes Sasha had been gone. Jackie spared her a glance, and she noted that they now stood eye level with each other. She was certain that hadn’t been the case that morning.

“What have you done to yourself?” Sasha asked. “You’re going to be sick!”

Jackie gave her a smug smile, reaching for the bundle of daisies lying in a puddle of water on the counter. She pressed the pollen-laden blooms under her nostrils.

“Ahh, aaAH, CHOO!!”

Grrrrgle

GrrrRRGLE

A baritone rumble filled the room. Sasha watched Jackie’s taught stomach ripple and vibrate. Jackie clutched her middle with both hands, and the bloated dome seemed to deflate, as if the blonde were pressing the mass of food deeper into her body. She dropped her arms, and Sasha heard a sound like a burbling stream as Jackie’s breasts trembled, pulsed, and grew.

Grrgle, bwoom, pop

The buttons above and below the wide gap in Jackie’s blouse ricocheted across the floor, exposing her cleavage all the way to her bra. A bra that was now wholly inadequate for its contents, and becoming more so by the moment. Like a size two belt around a size twelve waist, Jackie’s bra cut into her bloated mammaries. Flesh spilled over, below, and even to the sides of lavender fabric that seemed to be shrinking by the second.

Sasha did some quick mental calculations—the undergarment would reach its limit within seconds. Then Jackie threw her arms to her sides, arched her back, and stretched.

Crackle, pop, brrr

Jackie grew again. Not out, but up. Her entire body seemed to expand as she rose several inches taller than Sasha. A delighted grin spread across her face, and she moaned in a way that made Sasha’s analytical mind go foggy as heat blazed below her navel.

When the transformation finally stopped, Jackie yanked the sides of her blouse. Her last few buttons scattered in a spray as she dropped the ruined top on the floor. She stood only in her bra and panties. Technically still decent, but it would only take one sudden movement to erase that last shred of modesty, along with a few slips of shattered fabric.

Jackie patted her flat stomach and ran both hands languorously up the curves of her enormous breasts. She glanced around the break room with a slight frown of disappointment. With long strides of her towering legs, she stalked to the exit.

When Jackie stopped growing, Sasha opened her tablet to record her theories and observations for future testing. She looked up just in time to see the tall blonde vanish through the doorway. “Where are you going??”

A single word accompanied Jackie’s thumping footfalls as she retreated down the hall.

“More…”

***

Sasha burst out of the lab and into the afternoon sun, berating herself for finishing her notes instead of chasing after Jackie. The impromptu test subject could have gone anywhere, done anything. No doubt some Karens had reported her for public indecency already.

But Jackie had left a convenient trail for her to follow. Taco truck employees a block away were folding up their sign and packing their truck. The coffee shop on the corner was completely out of muffins and scones. A pair of vending machines near the bus stop held nothing but mints and a few packs of gum. A heavy ball of ice formed in Sasha’s gut. Beyond the devastated vending machines, she saw the nearest available food source—a buffet restaurant.

A steady flow of customers streamed out of the building as Sasha approached. Clutching purses and fumbling for keys, they rushed for their cars as if remembering they’d left the water running at home. She knew, of course, that the crowd was not running toward something but away from something. From someone.

She paused at the restaurant doors to let a fleeing couple pass. The husband was looking wide-eyed over his shoulder as his wife dragged him away while shaking her head. A series of horrific images flashed through Sasha’s mind, plucked straight from the monster movies her cousin had made her watch when she was a teenager. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. There was no monster in this restaurant, roaring in dischordant harmonics and crushing furniture with a spiked tail; only a woman. A cute blonde with tits as big as her head, likely stretched out on the floor in pain from overeating.

As is often the case, the evidence Sasha observed was somewhere in the middle, though her panicked, irrational prediction was the more accurate of the two extremes. Property damage was minimal, apart from a few chairs knocked over by fleeing customers. The biggest mess was a collection of empty steam trays scattered across the floor. The cause of this disarray was self-evident. Jackie sat at the far end of the buffet aisles, legs tucked under her bottom, bloated stomach overflowing her knees, bumping the dangling ceiling lights with her blonde head. Jackie’s belly supported a pair of breasts that likely weighed more than Sasha’s entire body. Full and fat, they were completely exposed, thick nipples aiming slightly upward as she ate. Because, of course, she was eating.

Jackie licked the last bits of food from a steam tray, tossed it to the floor, and then reached for another. The aisles had little glass awnings with signs indicating what the trays had once contained: fried chicken, mac and cheese, pasta salad. Apart from the row in front of Jackie, the aisles were now completely empty, bare trays or steaming gaps where trays had been. Sasha didn’t need to theorize where that food had gone as she eyed the enlarged gut propping up Jackie’s enormous mammary glands.

The aisle nearest the giant receptionist was the dessert section. Tossing another tray to the floor, Jackie pried up the next, which held a variety of donuts. In her hands, the steam tray looked more like a large rectangular bowl. She supported it atop her breasts while she scooped donuts into her mouth with her other hand. Entire donuts, sometimes two at a time, vanished between Jackie’s teeth. Within moments, the penultimate tray clattered to the floor while she reached for her final dessert course, the cookies.

Around the restaurant, the staff cowered under corners and hid behind doorways. In stunned silence, with mouths agape, they watched. The massive blonde rested a corner of the steam tray against her chin as if she were shaking the last crumbs from a bag of Oreos. Tossing the last tray aside, Jackie ran her hands in sweeping strokes over her bare belly. Big as a car, it thrust forward to press against the buffet counter, pinning Jackie’s enormous form against the mirrored back wall.

“Mmm, that was all sooo good!”

Jackie’s voice boomed at a lower pitch than Sasha had heard an hour ago. She tapped a few more notes into her tablet until Jackie’s sharp inhalation jerked her attention back to her surroundings.

“Aah, aahhhh…”

As the warm-up started, the large potted plant in Jackie’s hand fell from her grip to drop petals in a lazy spiral across the floor. The staff winced and ducked for cover. Jackie’s head reared back to collide with a hanging lamp, sending it crashing to the floor. Sasha dove behind a corner with seconds to spare.

“CHOOO!!!”

Dishes crashed, and tables flipped. Several windows in the front of the building exploded outward in a spray of glass. Then, the rumbling started again.

GrrrrGGGLLLLE

Gurgling, churning vibrations rocked through Jackie’s body. The building shook. Sasha peeked around her corner to watch as Jackie’s head inched closer and closer to the ceiling. When foam tiles fluttered around her shoulders, Jackie let out a soft gasp of surprise, rolling over onto her hands and knees. The blonde’s overgrown bosom swayed, nipples inches from the linoleum despite her fully extended arms. Through the gap of Jackie’s cleavage, Sasha saw her packed stomach pressed against the floor. It was making less contact by the second.

BWOOOMMM BWOOOMMM

Jackie grew and grew, her stuffed gut retreating upward as her breasts swelled into the floor. They spread outward even as her back and shoulders rose ever higher. Slick fluid ran between Sasha’s legs as she imagined Jackie’s tits outgrowing the entire restaurant. She told the small voice in her head lecturing about the laws of physics to shut the hell up.

When the dust settled and the rumbling finally ceased, Jackie stretched. She arched her back and mashed her enormous breasts into the floor. By Sasha’s estimation, the receptionist was now over twelve feet tall. Her ponytail flailed as she looked around the restaurant. Beyond being evacuated, the space now appeared to have suffered an earthquake. Still on her hands and knees, Jackie peered at the rows of barren buffet tables, crushing chairs and cracking linoleum with each movement.

Behind the front counter, a young woman spoke in a quavering voice. “T-there’s no more f-f-food, miss…”

Jackie’s contented smile faded. “Aww, really? Whatever happened to ‘all you can eat?’”

Her booming voice sent tremors through the floor that Sasha felt below her navel. The researcher’s eyes rolled back as her body clenched in pleasure.

“S-sorry, miss. There’s n-n-nothing left. You a-ate it all…”

Jackie sighed, sending the few unbroken lights swaying in her breath.

“P-p-please, just g-go…” The hostess begged.

“Thanks again,” Jackie boomed with a saccharine smile.

The titanic blonde crawled to the double-doored entrance, which would have been a tight fit for only one of her overgrown breasts. Her head and shoulders popped through before she got stuck, then she backed up to send both arms out first.

“Damn, when did this doorway get so tiny?”

Once again, the building shook, plaster and masonry crumbling as Jackie pushed against the walls from outside. Her toes and knees left small craters as she dug them into the floor. Tingling, trembling heat roared through Sasha’s body as she watched tits the size of minivans bulge and plump around the creaking doorframe.

CRASH

The wall burst outward as Jackie bulldozed her breasts through the opening. Her enormous yet perky bottom wiggled eagerly as she crawled the rest of herself outside.

With the buffet staff distracted by this spectacle, Sasha ducked into the ladies’ room for a few minutes of privacy.

***

After bringing herself to completion three times, Sasha cleaned herself up as reality began to seep back in. She’d created a monster. Sure, she’d tried to stop the idiot secretary, but the flaws in the formula were the result of her miscalculations.

Through the bathroom door, she heard the restaurant staff arguing in stunned, disbelieving voices.

“…even possible?”

“Those tits, though…”

“Shut the fuck up, Carl!”

“Look at this wall. We’re going to have to close down until it’s repaired.”

“…insurance cover it?”

“What would we even file the claim under??”

“Natural disaster?”

Sasha couldn’t walk back through that restaurant. Not with a room full of employees, and she being the only “customer” crazy enough not to flee with the rest. Hell, she wasn’t even a customer; there’d be so many questions. Too many questions.

Sasha had no answers to those questions.

Luckily, all the shaking Jackie had done to the poor building had knocked the bathroom window out of its frame. Careful to avoid broken glass, Sasha climbed silently through the opening in the wall and fled.