The Promotion, Part 3
Added 2022-03-26 23:04:58 +0000 UTCSummary: Intern Claire has been manipulated into stuffing herself at the behest of CEO Dinah Grace, who has control of Claire’s future job prospects and university credits. Despite all the resentment at what has happened to her body and struggle to simply keep up with her life in the face of Dinah’s demands, Claire is determined to pass her final review, get the job and make this all worth it… but making Dinah fall from grace has its own temptations. Contains: Female: stuffing, weight gain, and more. Plot line created by Opik Oort.
Note: This is a companion piece to Opik Oort's ongoing comic of the same name.
-
It quickly became obvious that Dinah just liked to watch Claire eat. It was perverse and befuddling, and Claire didn’t even know how she was supposed to react to such a thing. Could she react? No, of course not. Claire’s final grade as well as her future job prospects all lay in Dinah’s hands.
And so, Claire ate.
Claire was working late that day, though this wasn’t unusual. She frequently had one-on-one meetings with Dinah in Dinah’s office that incorporated a large variety of cheap and fattening foods for Claire to munch on. Today there was a mountain of triple-cheeseburgers sweating grease, buns bulging with beef, bacon, fried eggs, and copious amounts of melted cheese. There had to be at least two dozen of them towered atop a bed of crispy fries.
Claire ate as she conferenced. As was expected of her. “—and I think the quarterly numbers—” Claire paused to inhale more food, taking a huge bite out of a burger, managing to get at least half of it into her mouth. She chewed quick and efficiently from practice, before gulping it down, and continuing fluidly, “— beat our expectations. The stock prices are up 17%, and I think it’s the perfect time to roll out the new product.” She finished off the burger with a second bite, gulping against the meat, oil, and gooey cheese. It slithered down her throat and hit her belly, which was tight from the three burgers she had already consumed. She could feel her gut bulging, but this was a familiar sensation by now. Several months of this internship had made this normal. Claire covered her mouth against a belch.
“That’s excellent news,” Dinah said, as she casually poured Claire another large glass of cola, which would undoubtedly make Claire even more uncomfortably bloated, but Claire dutifully chugged it down.
Claire’s food binges at work tended to correspond with all the positive performance reviews Dinah had been giving her lately. And on the few occasions Claire just couldn’t manage to stomach the mountainous concoctions of food Dinah presented her with, Claire’s ratings went down and her grades suffered. Her field was too competitive for her to graduate from college with a less than stellar GPA.
“How are the sandwiches, darling? We had the ground beef processed with 40% lard for some extra umph.”
Claire had noticed that the burgers were obscenely greasy. “Delicious,” she said, biting into another for emphasis. The waistband of her skirt was getting painfully tight. “Did you see my notes on the Geller account?” she said, her voice muffled from her full mouth.
Claire had transformed in recent weeks. Her formally A-cup breasts had swollen all the way up to Ds, and were only getting bigger, as they were presently bulging over the cups of the latest bras she had purchased.
Her stomach had softened and rounded out, protruding to the point that she looked as though she could have been six months pregnant. But it was soft and squishy, at least when it wasn’t packed, as it was getting at present. Claire had gotten all new clothes for the office just three weeks ago. Skirts and blouses; some dress pants too. But everything was getting too tight, buttons straining, inflexible fabric cutting into her flesh in a sight that couldn’t have been particularly professional, but money was getting tight. It wasn’t as though Claire got paid for this.
She felt larger in general, requiring more space wherever she went. Her hips were wider, thighs squishing together. She filled the chair she was in snugly. Claire remembered when she had first gotten this internship, and there had been healthy gaps of space in the chair on either side of her. It was odd not to be petite anymore. Sometimes she felt as though she, literally, didn’t fit, in certain places. It was an odd way to navigate the world; bus riders grimacing at her as she squeezed herself down between two people. Or having to squish her body past the turnstile as she went into the subway.
There was a light knock on the door. Two women shuffled inside, both of them quite plump, their faces round but troubled. Claire often saw them around the offices getting coffee orders, running errands, or occasionally doing secretarial work. The type of stuff that should have been delegated to an intern like Claire, had she not been brought under Dinah’s wing, and given more meaningful work. Oddly enough, during work lunches and dinners, the two women often served as Dinah’s personal maids, uniform, and all. Claire might have found it amusing were it not baffling. The two woman didn’t look much older than Claire’s age. They never met her eyes.
At present, they were both balancing large platters. This would be dessert. Claire gulped as the dishes were carefully lowered to the desk.
“Finish up those sandwiches. You’re in for a treat,” Dinah said in her usual bored drawl. One of the maids uncovered a platter, revealing what laid within.
Brownies. A lot of them. They looked thick, dense, and greasy. By then, Claire was sweating profusely.
Somehow she had made her way through most of the cheeseburgers. There were only three left. Inelegantly, she tore through one, as she managed, “we have a conference call at eight with Mr. Jenkins.”
“That’s not for another hour. Eat, eat. You look famished.”
Once Claire had gulped down the final burger, she was panting heavily, her body trembling slightly. This had proven a bit more difficult than her typical meals. The inclusion of lard seemed to have really pushed her over the edge. “J-just going to use the lavatory.”
Dinah looked displeased but nodded.
Claire heaved herself up and dragged herself towards the bathroom, trying not to stumble. She passed the shelf that hid the door to the secret kitchen adjoined to Dinah’s office. It slid shut after one of the maids shuffled inside. The other maid was still by Dinah’s desk, cleaning up dirty dishes there as Dinah gave the girl a look of distaste.
Claire entered the bathroom and quietly closed the door behind her. She practically staggered to the sink, gripping onto the ceramic basin as she gasped for breath, sweat soaking through her clothing. She felt so terribly tight by then, her chest heaving, her body hot and flushed. She had to keep it together. God, those burgers had hit her hard. She gripped her stomach, and was surprised by the sensation of it pushing back against her hand. She scrutinized herself in the mirror, through the discomfort and pressure, and saw her abdomen shifting outward, steadily heaving, as it grew. She struggled to breathe through it.
A button popped off, fat flesh bulging against the opening this created in her blouse. Claire hissed a curse, covering it with her hand. Her blouse was so tight, it was practically pasted to her. It was only a matter of time before the other buttons gave out as well. It wasn’t like she had a change of clothes. She cursed again, folding her arms over herself.
She hadn’t known it was possible to gain weight so rapidly that it was visible, but it was happening even at that moment, her body plumping as she stood there trying to contain grunts of discomfort. She didn’t know how she was going to get through those brownies. But what other choice did she have?
There was a light knock on the door. “Everything okay in there?” called a female voice.
The conference call was coming up soon. Dinah was waiting. Claire splashed her face with some cool water, drew a deep breath, then turned back to the door.
When she opened it, she saw that one of the maids had been sent to summon her. The woman was twiddling her thumbs nervously, her eyes downcast as they always seemed to be.
“Sorry—” Claire started.
“She really likes you,” the maid said.
“Oh,” said Claire.
“The two of us — we never got this far. In our internships with Dinah, that is. We just couldn’t keep up.”
It took Claire a moment process the statement. And even then, she could hardly make sense of it. Were the maids…former interns?
“Don’t keep her waiting,” the woman warned before walking away and leaving Claire with troubled thoughts.
-
