Turnaround - Part 3 (Patreon Commission for MephistonOwl)

TAGS: Gators!, Weight Gain, Hyper Weight Gain, Building Destruction, Gorging/Feeding, Blob/Obese

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It had been a hot minute since the last time anyone thought about Antoine, which as far as everyone was concerned, was the right amount of time one should not think about Antoine. Last anyone heard, there were rumours the poor bastard had landed somewhere in the Yukon, so far removed from his natural habitat that one could only presume they thought they’d died and landed straight in an ironic hell of sorts. For the rest of bayou, however, this was nothing short of their personal paradise, provided (relatively) free of charge by a very thankful, very bashful, still perpetually stuck being an awkward mess Woz. Ever since the eating competition, the gator had spent a considerable amount of time getting used to their new heft, no easy feat given just how immense they turned out to be; despite his body’s best efforts to process all the food it had gorged itself upon, there was a limit to just how functional it could reshape itself to be… thus, after a certain point, the best solution was to invest in strength instead. Woz would never not be a massive stack of fat rolls and marshmallow-like curves; this much was out of the question, as the amount of fat he had on him could never, ever be repurposed into any different body shape. He could, however, use some of that ridiculous amount of caloric intake to turn into addition muscle strength, giving him the sort of stout resistance that one would mostly associate with fantasy dwarves rather than a gator big enough to crush a tanker truck without even noticing. As far as Woz was concerned, however, this was just fine and dandy, and precisely what he wanted for his life going forward: with the perfect combination of big and mobile, he could not only continue to eat, knowing his body would compensate, but he could actually move, which was a luxury he had, at many points, come to consider as being beyond his ability to make use of. Not that he needed to go anywhere in particular, given that a whole house had been built around his body, but it was always nice to have that option if he so wanted it. The swamp’s denizens were fully on-board with this new version of their now-favourite gator as well; after years of having to deal with Antoine’s belief that being the fattest slob around gave him the right to issue orders like he was some kind of army instructor, it was nice to have the largest alligator around be someone whose greed and avarice only extended as far as to politely ask if he could borrow some sugar for the cakes he was baking. All in all, everything had turned out surprisingly well, given how sudden the changes had come about; everyone adapted to this new style of life, no one paid heed to the possibility that Antoine might one day come back, and the bayou carried on with their daily lives, assuming that Woz would just do the same without much worry. And, while they may have been entirely right initially, the gator in question would eventually come to realize that his own personal belief that he was fine the way he was… wasn’t exactly the most accurate. He certainly tried to pretend that everything was fine, certainly tried his best to act as if he was completely and utterly satisfied with his way of life; and, for a while, he succeeded, being so good at it that he even managed to fool himself into thinking that he didn’t have anything else on his mind, that everything had fallen into place and all he needed to do was to just live, just like he’d always wanted. After all, he had accomplished every last one of his goals: he was fat, he was immense, he could get fatter and more immense, and the whole bayou looked up to him as someone to respect, to befriend, to swing around on Tuesday evenings for a night of poker that inevitably ended in accusations of cheating whenever anyone pulled out anything better than a flush. It was, in many respects, everything he’d ever desired, which just made it all that much weirder when Woz began to wake up feeling… weird. It was impossible to describe at first, other than it being a general sense of malaise that the gator couldn’t put his finger on, but as the days went on and the sensation grew more intense, he had to confront himself with the possibility that things might not be nearly as peachy as he initially assumed they were, or at least wanted them to be. The root cause of it, however, remained firmly outside his grasp even as he tried desperately to understand it; ‘twas not for a lack of self-introspective capacity, nothing of the sort, but rather the fact that the answer itself was so obvious, so utterly mundane and in his nose, that he refused to accept it. He’d moved on past it, he’d gone the extra mile and overcome that particular obsession, so much so that he ended up becoming about as big as a two-story house and only got bigger over each day thanks to how much he was eating. By all means, the truth of the matter should not be the truth, nor should it be even remotely close to it, as he’d closed every gap, dotted every i, shut every window, everything and anything.

So why was he still hungry?

A question for the ages, and not one that Woz was in any rush to find the answer to. It felt like if he did, then he’d have to actually pay attention to it, whilst if he kept on pretending that he had no idea what was going on, then it wouldn’t be a problem… right? If he just kept acting like he wasn’t waking up with a hungering, gnawing void in his stomach, one that grew deeper and wider with every morning, then it wouldn’t be real; he wouldn’t have to think about all the extra food he ne-no, wanted, not needed, and could focus on the important things, like eating more and finding something else to eat. After all, who was to say that he hadn’t earned another feast? Had he not gotten rid of Antoine? Had he not given the bayou exactly what they wanted by excising the tumour that had grown among them? Surely, if that was the case, then he’d earned the right to a little bit of self-indulgence, even if it might end up slightly inconven-no, no, what was he thinking?! Heavens above, was that what went through Antoine’s head every day of his life? This cold, awful equation where his enjoyment was on one side and everyone else’s on the other, where his section of the balance was clearly a lot heavier and thus worth more; this… horrifying notion that he was somehow worth more than those around him? No, he refused; he wasn’t going to turn into a replica of the very person that he helped get rid of, he wasn’t about to become a tinpot tyrant after he overthrew the last one; he’d be a poor gator indeed if he allowed his hunger to get the better of him, especially given the circumstances surrounding it. How could he have ever let it get to that point either?! Had he not gotten to where he was then by virtue of just being honest with himself and others? Had he not become the most beautifully oversized alligator in the bayou because he powered through his awkwardness and actually asked for help (even if he waited until the very last moment)? It’d be nothing short of a travesty for him to stop now… so, he wouldn’t, simple as that. Or, rather, it would be quite simple, if not for the fact that he had absolutely no idea how to go about accomplishing anything of the sort; he had to resort to outright voodoo magic in order to fix his problems definitively in the first place, so who knew what he’d have to do in order to get ahead of his newfound hunger? Presumably something dangerous, potentially hazardous, or just downright stupid, such as deciding to hop online and start making some very specifically-worded searches that led him down paths that, while the gator had never considered before, were certainly more entertaining than he first expected. Potential arousal aside, however, the answer to his problems would eventually come to him in a form that he had never once considered, mostly because his own momma had taught him not to trust travelling salesmen of any kind. It was a banner ad, and not one that Woz would’ve given a second thought to if not for what it was actually advertising: a brand new brand of “hyper-caloric food paste solution”, the last word presumably being there for the sake of scoring points with the Board of Directors for sounding very executive indeed. Going down that particular rabbit hole led Woz down a series of increasingly wild claims regarding “eternal fulfillment” and “unimaginable gains”, all of which awoke a great many things in him, but most of all just outright suspicion; the way the product was advertising itself, it made it seem as if they were looking for volunteers in order to get the word out to the market, the company choosing to rely on “tried and true” word-of-mouth techniques in order to get their product to as many people as possible. An idea, of course, occured to Woz, one that was equal parts ludicrous and downright tantalizing: he was already that massive to begin with, so why not go the extra mile and offer himself up as some sort of living advertisement for the company? If the food paste was even half as good as it was billing itself as, then surely it would have no issues dealing with his growing hunger, nor the future requirements that were sure to show up whenever he found himself even remotely comfortable with his existence. Thus, possessed of a mighty need to at least get the thought out of his head, Woz picked up his phone and called the number listed, going to great lengths not to throw it against the wall when he was forced to sit there and listen to a jingle for the better part of an hour. Thankfully, when he did get a person on the line, they were more receptive than he could’ve ever expected them to be: not once did they question why an alligator was calling them from the bayou, and not once did they think to ask why it was they wanted to offer themselves up as a guinea pig for their product. Given the sort of manic desperation that came down the line, one would be forgiven for thinking the company was, in fact, quite desperate for anyone to agree to their terms, which should’ve alerted Woz to the fact something was off. Alas, he was too enamored by the notion of being able to eat to his heart’s content once again, and thus nodded along and agreed to whatever it was the people on the other side of the line asked of him. Contract signed in perpetuity? Sure! An “exclusive premiere” under the auspices of their “team of highly trained professionals”? He had no clue what that was, but as long as it got him closer to eating, then he didn’t particularly care. One after another, the terms and conditions were agreed to, until finally, a few days later, the gator heard a knock at the door. Everything up until then had felt like a dream of sorts, mostly thanks to his hunger being such that Woz spent most of his time trying desperately to pretend that it wasn’t there, with highly variable results; thus, when he waddled over to the front door, wondering who in blazes it could be, he was quite surprised to see the very same company he had phoned a few days prior waiting for him on the outside. “GorgeCo. Solutions”, their emblazoned jackets read, one hell of a name for one hell of a product as far as the gator was concerned; somehow, thode madmen had managed to drag two entire trucks over to his new house via the use of several hovercraft and what Woz assumed was a large amount of elbow grease, with their teamsters already getting busy unloading large crates, all while a portly man in his mid-fifties walked up to him with his hand outstretched.

“Roger Delton, we spoke on the phone!” he enthusiastically declared, “I have to say, I wasn’t expecting someone of your glorious portent to have been that shy lil’ voice callin’ us to ask whether they could help us out! I can see now we’re gonna have a very healthy work relationship.”

With that, the man turned around, not even affording Woz the luxury of being able to reply in any fashion. The gator was thus left dazed and confused, wondering just what in blazes had happened, only to be faced with a group of very bored-looking twenty-somethings emerging from one of the trucks, carrying large amounts of recording equipment that looked awfully out of date. They, too, said nothing; it fell to one of the foremen to walk up to Woz and offer them an explanation: the company had decided to organize a mukbang stream (“those are popular, the boys market research said so”) where Woz would sit down, be introduced as the company’s newest mascot (“y’all signed it, not my fault”), and then proceed to stuff his face with as much of the food paste as possible. There were a few details that the gator wasn’t entirely sure of, but given that he had signed a contract, and he was going to be given free food, he figured it was best not to complain too much. After all, just like with the eating competition, all that was needed of him was to sit his vast rear down and just eat, consume food (or an appropriate approximation of it) to his heart’s content until he could consume no more. That is, assuming such an endstate was even possible; the most likely outcome to that scenario was Woz eventually eating through the whole supply and asking for seconds, but given that there were two full trucks there waiting for him, he assumed the company had prepared for such an eventuality. Hell, how did they know he was so large? Questions for another day; for now, he had to waddle back to the main hall of his home, where the recording equipment had been set up and a whole mini-stage had been constructed for him: a luxurious combination of a large white backdrop, an even larger table filled with stacks upon stacks of nondescript white boxes, and a set of microphones that looked like they’d been out of date for several years. Even worse, he wasn’t given any sort of instructions; for whatever reason, the company simply assumed that he, a literal alligator living in the bayou, would know how to start and maintain a stream, presumably because he used a phone to call them up? It was hilarious to think that any one commercial entity could be that ridiculously inept, but then again, they did bring out two trucks full of food paste to the middle of the swamp so he could eat them, so what did he know? Better to focus on doing what he did best: feasting. He didn’t bother to introduce himself, nor did he try to pretend like he was interested in whoever happened to be watching him; hell, he barely managed to keep himself from emptying all the boxes in front of him before the technical crew gave him a thumbs up and the lights on the camera in front of him turned on. After but a couple of awkward moments, Woz dug into the nearest box and produced the plastic tube, something so small that he immediately regretted every decision that led him there; how could something that tiny and pathetic possibly serve to satiate his hunger, even of the tiniest, most insignificant bit of it? It was paste, for heaven’s sake; he might as well squeeze some bark into a cup and then drink that if he was so desperate for anything to help fill him up. Nevertheless… he signed a contract and he couldn’t back away now; thus, with some hesitation, the gator held the plastic tube over his mouth and squeezed it, its contents spurting out like extra-thick toothpaste. He expected it to be joyless, flavourless, something one ate purely to consume the necessary calories required to function; it was, in his mind, going to be utilitarian to the point of being inedible on lack of taste of alone, turning what should’ve been a wonderful gorging experience into a long, painful slog. What he couldn’t have expected was for his taste buds to be so thoroughly overloaded on first contact alone that his entire body jolted upwards in response; it was a shock, and quite literally so, as the sudden surge of information travelling up to his brain backblasted down his spine to leave the rest of him feeling like he’d just been dunked in warm caramel and told to gulp it all down. Hell, it tasted like caramel: sweet, thick, pasty (as it should be, one guessed), and yet so deliciously filling that the first drop already left Woz feeling like he had bitten off more than he could chew. Of course, Woz being Woz, he wasn’t going to let something like that stand in the way; indeed, the simple fact that he had underestimated the paste’s potential only meant that he had even more of a reason to gorge himself on it, far harder than he had initially intended to. Seconds, that was all it took for the first tube to be squeezed dry, and a single gulp later, the table in front of the gator had been upturned. It happened quickly enough that Woz didn’t really have time to process it; one moment he was there, the next his belly had ballooned outwards to such an immense size that he successfully knocked every single piece of recording equipment to the ground without even realizing it, forcing the technical crew to scramble to try and get the fed back up. One tube, out of a box with about ten of them, and there it was: the drool. The endless salivation brought about by the ravenous, ceaseless hunger that the gator had been cursed with, finally given something that it could be satisfied by. A solution, perchance, to the perennial issue that was the bottomless pit in his stomach… that is, assuming someone could help him out. It almost felt comical that all it really took was a single one of presumably thousands of individual foodstuffs for him to have reached that point already, but if Woz knew one thing, it was that his body was built for excess like that. Had he not been forced to rely on the help of others during the eating competition? He distinctly remembered he fattened up so much that his head was swallowed up by his neck fat and he had to rely on his long snout to be able to breathe and eat, so really, him needing to ask people to climb onto his gut to feed him was par for the course as far as he was concerned. And though initial reactions were ones of trepidation, a quick look at Mr. Delton was enough to get even the most reluctant of workers to grab the nearest box to them and start climbing. Granted, as soon as they did, they’d soon find the same sort of odd, almost sensual gratification that caused the bayou’s inhabitants to have no qualms back when Woz and Antoine were squaring off; there was something so pleasant about climbing an almost literal mountain of fat, one in which one could sink their feet and legs all the way up to the knee in what felt like soft, warm, inviting marshmallow. Soon enough, there’d be people crawling towards his mouth, stopping along the way to savour the moment almost as much as the gator would savor the food paste being mindlessly poured down his gullet; one tube after the other, his body reacting to it so explosively that one would be forgiven for thinking that he was eating some sort of hyper-compressed food brick rather than what felt like just sweet paste with a slight twinge of caramel… and chocolate? Vanilla? Did it have different flavours, and was it actually a dessert? Questions for later; now, Woz had to feast, even if his main hall was starting to feel slightly cramped because of it. Really, could it have been any other way? Did he expect his hunger to take him in any direction other than having his surroundings crumble as he expanded to fill them all over again? If he did, then he’d be an idiot gator indeed, which was why, thankfully, Woz lacked the introspective ability required to really think about whatever he’d been thinking before. What with having his mouth stuffed with the delicious paste and his body bloating beyond his wildest dreams, wrapped together with a sensation of uttermost filling that made anything else before it feel like a light snack, there was little left inside his head that wasn’t simply the desire to eat more. And what was best, his body had apparently learned a few lessons from its last mindless gorging session, as rather than swelling outwards uncontrollably to the point where he turned into a blob of gator fat, it instead redistributed all the extra mass it was reprocessing such that Woz kept his overall shape, with the only slider that really went up being the one labelled “scale”, as it were. Sure, his belly seemed to be gaining more volume compared to the rest of him, but that was to be expected; he was, after all, eating, and while his body was exceptionally efficient at digesting everything he put into it, there was still something of a remnant that wasn’t immediately turned to hand-filling, body-obscuring pudge, and quite a bit of it given how much paste he was being fed with. Really, if nothing else, he couldn’t accuse the company of being anything other than deeply enthusiastic about things, even when it became clear the whole building was collapsing around them the more they fed the hungry, hungry gator. Woz could hear shouting coming from the outside, but rather than frantic panicking or the sudden revving of engines to get the trucks and hoverboats out of the danger zone, what he saw was a torrent of teamsters pouring into the increasingly-cramped monument to gluttony that was Woz’s home’s main hall. Not a lot of space to move there, but then again, it wasn’t as if the little ones were interesting in going anywhere but onto him; their goal was his mouth, to dump as much as of the food paste as possible, their methods naught but their own hands, their own legs, their whole bodies that they rubbed all over the gator’s in their slow trek upwards. And with every mouthful, the giant only grew larger, the house’s structure collapsing all around him as he continuously packed on more mass than he really should; it was just food paste, nothing special, but Woz presumed the voodoo magic was still working itself into every bite, every chewing motion, not just maximizing but outright multiplying his intake so as to give the gator exactly what he’d asked for… endlessly. Just as well, as far as Woz was concerned; if he kept growing bigger thanks to his endless desire for more, than just meant he had achieved his dream goals, and now that he had a source from which to feed, he’d accomplished the impossible: finding the means to pursue them endlessly. No more was he worrying himself over whether or not he would have enough food left in the world to satisfy him, no more did he spend time fretting over a hunger that could never be sated; he had that delicious, if highly-processed treat there, in stupendously large quantities, just for him. Granted, it was unlikely the company would keep feeding him after he was done, but that just meant he simply had to keep going. If the contract he signed specified that he was to help with the stream, then Woz merely had to declare that the stream was ongoing for him never to run out of food to gorge himself on. This made little sense, sure, but to him it was all the sense that was needed; even when he filled every available inch of empty room, even when his house exploded into a shower of splinters and sawdust, Woz saw himself as being in control. There was no electricity to run the equipment for the stream anymore, so whoever had tuned in was most likely looking at a “We’ll be right back!” screen or the sorts, but he didn’t care; the company had made their bed offering him food, and now they were going to lie on it, for better or worse. Thankfully, they seemed happy to keep going, even long past the point where they really should have stopped; anyone with half a brain could tell that Woz wasn’t going to just restrain himself, not when his belly alone was rapidly approaching a size that could rival his second home all by itself, while the rest of him desperately tried to keep up. Perhaps, however, it wasn’t nearly as big of a loss for the creators of the food paste as the gator assumed it was; maybe the product was dirt cheap to produce, hence why they could afford to throw it down the proverbial drain on a publicity stunt that had, somewhere along the line, turned into yet another self-indulgent feeding frenzy. One mouthful after another, inch after inch packed onto his bloating form, Woz’s body overtook the bayou. Not just his immediate surroundings either; having given up even trying to pretend that he had any semblance of self-restraint left, the gator slavishly devoured whatever they put in his mouth, even at times chowing down the boxes the tubes came in, hell, occasionally the tubes themselves! It was the simplest way of getting the delicious paste in him, given that he didn’t exactly mind having to digest plastic and cardboard (and neither did his body either, for that measure); thus, it was entirely unsurprising that the alligator’s belly would not just occupy the clearing his previous abode had been in, but kept going until it flattened a substantial amount of terrain beyond it, then even more until it broke the three digit foot mark in sheer length, and even more towards the first mile. Alas, there would come an end to it; much as Woz would’ve liked to live in this fantasy land where he could simply demand food and get it without the universe needing to go through multiple intermediary steps, there was only so much of the delicious treat that two trucks could carry. It was plenty, he couldn’t fault the company for that; the boxes were relatively small, and each vehicle probably carried hundreds of them. It just so happened that his ravenous appetite far outstripped anything an industrial production line could hope to manufacture, and within a short thirty or so minutes from the stream having started, the last of the tubes were being thrown down Woz’s gullet, with the teamsters who brought them along having to exert a great deal of willpower not to just throw themselves in as well. Once everything was done and dusted, when the very last of the boxes was devoured and the gator’s gut settled, it was hard to describe Woz without resorting to geographic terms; he wasn’t just big so much as he’d become significant enough to be marked on the map, since he certainly wasn’t going to get up and move any time soon. His belly alone was big enough that it could hold the trucks, the hovercrafts they were brought in, and the entire team with plenty of space to spare, and he was still, still, just so… well, not hungry, but he could go for seconds. It was odd, but satisfying; there was room to fill (as there always would be), but for the time being, Woz was… good. Not perfect, like he had been in the eating contest’s aftermath, but good, just like he wanted to be. It gave Mr. Delton enough room to walk (or climb, to be more precise) over to the gator’s head, a wide smile spreading from ear to ear as he tried to shake his mascot’s hand only to remember he was mostly surrounded by pudge in every direction.

“Marvelous, absolutely marvelous! Wonderful, splendid!” the man declared, far more theatrically than necessary, “The numbers were through the roof! Well, before the camera went out, of course. You’ve done a fantastic job, Mr. Woz, and I’d like to extend m-wait, what’s that rumbling?”

The poor man. He didn’t know. He didn’t know what happened every time Woz actually had his fill, didn’t know what the gator’s body needed to do in order to get rid of excess pressure. He hadn’t been there the last two times, nor was he aware of how far away Antoine had been projected (assuming the rumours were true). So when the belching was about to begin, all that Delton, and indeed the rest of his staff thought to do, was stare up at Woz and demand an explanation.

And, to his credit, Woz did open his mouth. And indeed, he would keep his mouth for a good three or so hours afterwards.

Just not to speak.