She eased herself onto the bench. It was getting more and more difficult to do her pacing, but on the plus side there was nothing else to do. How many days had it been since she’d gotten trapped in the weird chamber while exploring the abandoned mall? A week? Two? Her cell phone was dead, that was for sure. She wondered if her friends were still looking for her.

Not that they’d recognize me like this even if they found me, she thought. If she craned her neck just right, she could still glimpse white, fat knees over the curve of her ridiculously heavy breasts and her big, singularly round gut. Those were new. They’d grown out, like much of the rest of her, since the collapse of the exit that had trapped her in here and the weird light filled the ceiling. The swirling pattern of glowing mist like something out of a rave, or an old hippie band concert, or whatever. It was when the light had started glowing that the things had begun to appear. All those weeks ago.

She didn’t know what they were. They smelled like the mushrooms she’d always seen in the park after a spring rain shower, but they moved. Fungus doesn’t move, right? They moved like fat little starfish crawling over reefs in those nature documentaries she used to watch. Back before she got trapped. She remembered buying a really nice TV just so she and her grirlfriend could curl up and watch all those amazing nature documentaries.

Her girlfriend? His. She used to be very different before getting trapped. She used to cut a pretty impressive figure. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, kept a short beard all over the lower half of his face, short hair so he’d never have to worry about styling it.

She had to stop thinking about the way she used to look because it was making her horny. All those guy things, those manly features, the person in the mirror that used to look back out now seemed like someone else entirely, and that someone else struck her as a total hunk.

She shouldn’t think like that. She should worry about meeting her girlfriend again, and whether they could work things out. Maybe they’d still be lovers, right? Maybe at least they could be best friends. Maybe go out to clubs together, watching each other’s backs to keep the creepers away, finding nice guys to take back. Share? Maybe-

She shouldn’t think like that. She was going to be rescued at any minute, and breath fresh air and see a blue sky and eat some real food.

Food.

Food crawled all around her, like starfish across a reef. Her stomach complained about her attempt to hold out for these last several hours. She was trying to cut back. Her weight might already be an issue if a rescue party did show up. But food. Food.

She reached into one of the purses and closed her chubby fingers around a soft, squishy lump. It purred. She thought that was weird, but it always felt nice. It gave her a warm, cozy feeling. She pulled the weird, soft creature out of the handbag and regarded it for a second. A lump, colorful but nearly formless. They all had the same vague features, if you could call it that. A central, doughy lump with a variable number of smaller lumps ringing the bottom of it that served as some kind of feet. Its shiny skin, if you could call it that, ranged from blue through the purples to pink. It purred contentedly in her hand, lulling her troubled mind into relaxing quietude. She tickled its belly, or whatever was between the ring of stumpy legs, and it vibrated happily. She smiled.

Eating it wasn’t cruel. She never felt anything other than glad when she bit into them, like she was now. They didn’t stop moving, they didn’t bleed, they didn’t complain, they didn’t react with any alarm at all, and they kind of jiggled on the way down. Inside of them was a semi-transparent, undifferentiated mass of clearish, uniform matter. It looked like the inside of a gum drop if you bit through one. No brains, no guts, no blood vessels of any kind. She wondered with all her available non-eating brainpower if they were somehow related to jellyfish. She didn’t stop until the entire four-pound lump was gone, leaving no residue on her fingers.

She laid down on the bench and let the weird feeling take over. After every one of her meals, it happened. She’d feel a little dizzy, she’d feel warm, she’d feel her insides squirming in ways she’d never known they could before her current predicament. It would be hard to think clearly. The overwhelming sensation was one of erotic bliss. She’d go into some kind of trance in which her body would, all on its own and without any prompting on her part, start to go through multiple stages of arousal, excitement, electrifying ecstasy, and finally a shuddering climax before her mind shut down and she fell into a dreamless sleep. This time it was no different.

There were always more of two things when she woke up: her own bloated curves, and food. It was weird how eating the things made more of them, but somehow it did. And every episode in the cycle of hunger, eating, spontaneous orgasm, and sleep left her with bigger everything. Bigger hips, bigger belly, bigger tits, longer mane and tail, longer horn on her head, and a bigger appetite. It was getting more and more difficult to do her pacing, but on the plus side there was nothing else to do between meals.

She wondered again if they’d even be able to get her out if they found her. The thought made her hungry. She put it off. She needed some exercise. It would do her body good to try and get a little more walking in today. Or tonight. Whatever it was. The swirling lights at the ceiling never changed in a way that she could tell the difference.