Chapter 2: The Pasta Paralysis Protocol
The kitchen light was a harsh, fluorescent interrogation. Gumball shuffled in, the memory of Penny’s text a persistent buzz in his skull that had kept him up half the night. His bare feet stuck to a patch of syrup on the linoleum. He’d pulled on an old, stretched-out tee and the same sweatpants, the waistband now permanently curled from strain.
Richard was facedown at the table, softly snoring into a placemat. Nicole stood at the stove, her back to the room, the sizzle of butter loud in the quiet morning. She turned, a practiced smile already in place. It faltered for a microsecond when she saw him, her eyes doing that quick, worried inventory they’d perfected lately.
“You’re up early,” she said, her voice too bright.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he grumbled, sinking into a chair that creaked in protest. He rubbed his eyes. “Thought maybe… I don’t know. Maybe I’d go for a walk. Clear my head.” He didn’t mention the jog. Even the word felt like a lie in his mouth.
Nicole’s entire posture changed. The stiffness in her shoulders melted. Her eyes lit up with a fervent, desperate hope. “A walk! That’s wonderful, honey! That’s such a good idea. You need fuel for that, though. Real fuel.” She turned back to the stove, clicking the burner on high. “Carbo-loading. It’s what athletes do.”
“Mom, it’s a walk around the block, not a marathon.”
“Nonsense! Every journey starts with a single step, and that step is best taken on a full stomach.” She was already pulling a pot from the cupboard, filling it with water from the sink with a frantic energy. “I’ll make pasta. Quick energy. Complex carbohydrates.”
“Nicole, it’s seven a.m.,” Richard mumbled, his voice muffled by the vinyl.
“It’s never too early for proper nutrition,” she shot back, her tone leaving no room for argument. The water began to boil as she ripped open a box of spaghetti with her claws. The dry sticks snapped as she shoved them into the pot.
Gumball watched, a familiar numbness settling over him. This was easier than arguing. It was easier than telling her about the text, about the eerie, fluttering feeling in his gut that had nothing to do with hunger. The scent of boiling starch filled the kitchen. She didn’t just make a serving. She made the whole box.
Twenty minutes later, a colossal mound of spaghetti, slick with butter and garlic, steamed on a plate in front of him. “Eat up,” Nicole urged, hovering. “You need your strength.”
He twirled a forkful. It was good. Of course it was good. He took a bite. Then another. The empty, anxious space inside him began to fill with a warm, dense mass. Nicole watched each mouthful like a scientist awaiting a result. Richard had roused himself enough to swipe a few strands, sucking them up with a slurp.
“See? He’s an eating machine. My boy,” Richard said, clapping a heavy paw on Gumball’s back.
Gumball ate. He ate past the point of comfort, past the point of fullness. The pasta was a tangible anchor, weighing down the strange lightness Penny’s message had evoked. His sweatpants, already strained, became a torture device. A deep, aching pressure built beneath the fabric. As he forced down the last forkful, he felt a sharp, distinct ping from the waistband. The thread holding the button had finally given up.
He leaned back, a soft groan escaping him. His stomach was a taut, rounded dome pressing relentlessly against the now-open fly of his pants. He was painfully, immovably full. The idea of a walk was ludicrous. He could barely breathe.
Nicole beamed, taking the empty plate. “There! Now you’re ready for anything.” She looked so satisfied, so pleased with the swollen, immobilized creature at her table.
“Yeah,” Gumball whispered, the word strained. “Ready.”
He didn’t leave the house that morning. He waddled to the living room and collapsed onto the couch, riding out the deep, digestive ache. He stared at his phone.
you’ve… changed. can i see you again?
He typed back, his fingers clumsy. when?
The reply was instant. tonight. after dark. my house. the side door is never locked.
The old Fitzgerald place looked less haunted and more simply abandoned under the cloak of night. A single, yellow porch light buzzed like an insect, fighting a losing battle against the deep shadows of the overgrown yard. Gumball’s heart was a frantic drum against his ribs. He’d spent the day in a haze of dread and anticipation, picking at the dinner Nicole had made “to keep his energy up.”
He felt huge. Conspicuous. The cool night air nipped at the strip of blue fur exposed by his unbuttoned pants. He’d had to dig out an old pair of jeans with a broken zipper and rely on a long shirt to cover the gap. Every step was a reminder of his bulk.
The side door, as promised, swung inward silently. The interior was dark, cool, and smelled of dust and dried flowers. Moonlight filtered through dirty windows, painting silver streaks on the hardwood floor.
“Up here.”
Her voice drifted down a grand, curving staircase. It was clearer now, less of a whisper. He climbed, each step a creaking proclamation of his arrival. The upstairs hallway was a tunnel of closed doors. One at the end stood slightly ajar, a pulsing, soft violet light spilling from it.
He pushed it open.
Penny’s room was not what he expected. It wasn’t a dusty shrine to the paranormal. It was oddly normal, if spare. A bed, a desk, a bookshelf. But the light came from her. She sat on the edge of the bed, and she was glowing, a gentle, bioluminescent aura that made her translucent skin shimmer. She was more solid than on the street, yet still not entirely of this world. She wore a simple, thin nightdress that seemed to float around her form.
“You came,” she said. Her honey eyes were wide, taking him in—the heaving chest, the way his shirt strained across his middle, the nervous sweat on his brow.
“Yeah,” he managed, his throat dry. “You… texted.”
“I did.” She patted the space beside her. The mattress sighed as he sat down, the distance between them charged and strange. He was intensely aware of his body, its sheer mass, its smells of soap and cotton and nervous cat. She seemed made of mist and intention.
“You said I changed,” he blurted out.
“You have.” Her gaze was unflinching. It dropped to his stomach, where the denim failed to meet. “You used to be all sharp corners and frantic energy. Now you’re… more. There’s more of you to be.” A pale, almost-see-through hand rose. She didn’t touch him. She hovered her fingers an inch from the curve of his belly, where the blue fur peeked out. “I can feel the heat coming off you. It’s strong.”
He shuddered. It wasn’t revulsion. It was a jolt of something electric and shameful. “It’s just fat, Penny. It’s just from sitting around and eating garbage.”
“It’s you,” she whispered, and this time her fingers made contact.
They were cool, almost cool enough to make him flinch, but the touch itself sent a wave of heat straight to his core. Her fingertips traced the hard curve beneath his fur, a feather-light exploration. His breath hitched. He was painfully, instantly hard, the erection trapped and straining against the tight confines of his jeans.
“Is this okay?” she asked, her voice now a direct vibration in his ear, though her lips hadn’t moved.
He couldn’t speak. He nodded, a jerky, desperate motion.
Her other hand came up, sliding under the hem of his shirt. Her cool palms spread across the soft warmth of his belly. She leaned in, her ethereal body pressing against his solid one. The contrast was dizzying. He could feel the whisper of her, the subtle resistance of her form, like pressing against still water.
“I want to feel all of it,” she breathed, and her mouth found his. Her kiss was cool and tasted like rainwater and ozone. It was hungry. A shock ran through him, melting the last of his hesitation. His hands came up, clumsy and huge, and sank into the spectral silk of her hair. It offered no real resistance, his fingers passing partway through, but she moaned into his mouth, the sound echoing strangely in the room.
He broke the kiss, gasping. “Penny… I…”
“Shhh.” She pushed him back onto the bed. He went willingly, his body a heavy weight on the old springs. She straddled his hips, her nightdress riding up. He could see the shadowed junction of her thighs, and below that, the shocking, solid reality of her—pale and slick and ready. Her ghostliness seemed concentrated in her upper body; from the waist down, she was fiercely, vibrantly corporeal.
With swift, sure movements, she tugged his shirt up over his head, exposing the full, rounded expanse of his torso. Her luminous eyes devoured the sight. She lowered her head and dragged the flat of her cool tongue from the base of his sternum down to his navel. He cried out, his back arching.
“Fuck,” he gasped.
“Yes,” she hissed. Her hands went to his jeans, fighting with the broken zipper. She yanked them down over his hips, his erection springing free, thick and flushed against the blue fur of his belly. She wrapped her cool, almost-intangible fingers around him, and the sensation was impossible—a firm grip made of phantom pressure and icy heat. He thrust up into her fist with a ragged groan.
“I need you inside me,” she said, and it was a command. She rose up on her knees, positioned him at her entrance, and sank down in one slow, devastating motion.
She was tight. Incredibly, wetly tight, and so cold inside it burned. He shouted, his hands flying to her hips, finding purchase on the solid flesh there. She began to move, riding him with a slow, rolling rhythm that was entirely her own. Her inner muscles clenched around him, a spiraling, icy vise.
“Look at you,” she panted, her form flickering above him. “Look at how much of you there is.” One of her hands left his shoulder to palm the swell of his gut, pushing down on it as she bounced. “You fill everything up. You fill me up.”
Her words unlocked something animal in him. The insecurity, the shame, the confusion—it all fused into a raw, driving need. He grunted, sitting up, wrapping his arms around her slight frame and flipping them over with a strength he didn’t know he still had. The bed screamed in protest. Now he was on top, her legs hooked over his broad back, her cool heels digging into his fur.
He drove into her. Hard. The slapping sound of their bodies was obscene in the quiet room. Each thrust jiggled the soft weight of his stomach against her. She wrapped her legs tighter, pulling him deeper, her phantom arms winding around his neck.
“Yes, yes, fuck, Gumball, just like that,” she chanted, her voice breaking into static. “You’re so real. So heavy. Don’t stop.”
He was close. The coiling pressure was unbearable. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent of damp earth and electricity. “Penny… I’m gonna…”
“Do it,” she commanded, her own body tightening around him like a fist. “Come inside me. Fill me up.”
With a final, shuddering roar, he obeyed. His release was a volcanic rush, spilling into her cool depths, and as he did, her body seemed to solidify completely beneath him, absorbing the heat, milking him with frantic, rhythmic pulses until he was spent and shaking.
He collapsed onto her, a crushing weight, but she only sighed in contentment, her legs still locked around him. They lay there in the violet glow, slick with sweat and other things, his heavy breathing slowly returning to normal. Her fingers traced lazy circles in the fur of his back.
After a long silence, he found his voice, hoarse and wrecked. “What… what was that?”
She turned her head, her lips brushing his ear. Her voice was a satisfied hum. “That was me seeing you again.”
The words hung in the cool, dusty air of her room, a cryptic conclusion to the animal noise they’d just made. Gumball rolled off her, the bedsprings groaning in relief. His body felt both foreign and brutally present, a numb, sweaty weight. The cold spot where her phantom limbs had been was already warming to the room’s temperature.
Penny sat up, the violet glow around her softening to a mere shimmer. She ran a hand over her abdomen, a thoughtful expression on her translucent face. “You feel different,” she said, her voice back to its normal, clear pitch. “Denser.”
“I am different,” Gumball mumbled, staring at the water-stained ceiling. He felt emptied out, in more ways than one. The frantic energy of the act was gone, replaced by a hollow, confusing shame. “I’m just a fat, lazy fuck now.”
“Stop it.” Her voice carried a sharp edge. She swung her legs off the bed, her feet touching the floorboards with a solid tap. She walked, fully solid now, to a small dresser and pulled out an oversized hoodie, tossing it to him. It was his, from years ago. “Put this on. We’re going out.”
“Out? It’s past midnight. I look like…”
“You look like you,” she interrupted, pulling on her own clothes. “And I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”
He wasn’t. He was still painfully full from his mother’s pasta mountain. But the look in her eye wasn’t an invitation. It was a directive. He pulled the old hoodie on. It strained across his shoulders and would no longer close over his stomach. The fabric smelled faintly of her ghostly ozone scent mixed with his own teenage sweat.
They drove in her quiet car to a 24-hour diner on the edge of Elmore. The vinyl booth creaked under his weight. Penny slid in opposite him and didn’t open a menu. “Two double bacon cheeseburgers with everything,” she told the tired waitress. “Extra-large fries. A chocolate malt for him. A diet soda for me.”
“Penny, I can’t…”
“You can,” she said, her honey eyes locking onto his across the Formica table. “I watched you. You can. I want to see it.”
The food arrived, a grotesque, beautiful monument to grease and salt. He picked up a burger, the juices running down his wrist. Under her unblinking gaze, he took a bite. Then another. It was a mechanical process, a performance. He ate the first burger, then the second, the fries, drank the thick malt. She sipped her soda, her expression one of quiet, intense fascination.
“You’re magnificent,” she whispered, as he finished the last fry.
He just felt sick.
The pattern cemented itself over the following weeks. A text would come after dark. He would haul himself to the Fitzgerald house. Their couplings were wordless, urgent, and physical. Penny’s fascination with his body was clinical and ravenous. She would trace the new stretch marks on his flanks, press her hands into the softness of his belly as he moved above her, whisper “more” into his ear with a fervor that felt religious.
Afterwards, they would go out. A drive-thru, an all-night pizzeria, a pancake house at dawn. She always ordered for him, massive piles of food he felt obligated to finish under her watchful eye. He began to associate the ache of fullness with the ghostly coolness of her touch.
At home, a new ritual began. Each morning, as he stumbled into the kitchen, Nicole would be waiting at the blender.
“It’s a protein shake, honey,” she’d say, her voice falsely bright. The machine would scream, pulverizing ice cream, whole milk, peanut butter, and raw eggs into a thick, beige slurry. She’d pour it into a giant thermos and press it into his hands. “For muscle recovery. Very important for an active young man.”
He was not active. He knew it. She knew it. Richard would nod sagely from the table, mouth full of cereal. “Gotta feed the beast, son!”
The shake was cloying and dense, a chore to finish. But he drank it. Every morning. It was easier than arguing, easier than seeing the desperate hope in his mother’s eyes dim. The shake, followed by Penny’s nightly feasts, began to layer onto him. His clothes shrunk. Moving became a louder process of grunts and labored breath.
One Thursday afternoon, he was alone in the house, wedged into the corner of the couch. A reality show droned on the screen. His phone buzzed. Penny.
come over. now. daylight.
A jolt of something—fear, excitement—went through him. They never met during the day. He hauled himself up, his t-shirt riding up to expose a pale strip of belly above his waistband. He didn’t bother changing.
The Fitzgerald house looked different in the stark sunlight, just old and peeling. He let himself in, the familiar cool darkness swallowing him. He found her not in her bedroom, but in a sun-drenched parlor downstairs, the dust motes dancing in the light.
She was wearing one of his old shirts, the one from the first night. It fit her like a dress.
It fit her like a dress, the faded fabric swallowing her slender frame, the collar gaping to reveal the sharp line of her collarbone. She was staring at her reflection in a dust-covered gilded mirror, her back to him, her fingers touching the worn cotton. “It’s small,” she said, not turning around.
“No, you’re just… you’re tiny,” he said, the words feeling stupid in his mouth. He stood in the doorway, a monument of blue fur and soft mass, blocking the light. The tightness of his own jeans was a constant, low-grade scream.
“It’s yours,” she said, finally turning. Her eyes were hungry, but not for food. “From before. I can’t even wrap it around one of my thighs now.” She walked toward him, the shirt hem brushing her knees. She placed her cool, almost-solid hands on his sides, her thumbs finding the new, dense rolls of fat that spilled over his waistband. “Look at the difference.”
He flinched. “Don’t.”
“Why?” Her hands slid around to the front, dipping beneath the fabric of his own shirt to paw at the heavy, hanging curve of his belly. “It’s real. I can feel it. I want to feel all of it.” Her touch wasn’t gentle. It was possessive, probing. She squeezed a handful of his softness, her nails digging in just enough to make him gasp.
“Penny—”
“Shut up.” She dropped to her knees in front of him, the movement fluid and sudden. Her face was level with his fly, which was strained and tented. The sight of her there, his old shirt pooling around her, sent a brutal surge of blood downwards. Her cool fingers made quick work of the button and zipper, and his cock sprung out, thick and eager against the pale blue fur of his lower belly.
She didn’t hesitate. She took him into her mouth, deep, swallowing him to the root in one smooth, cold glide. He cried out, his hands flying to the doorframe for support. Her mouth was an icy, wet paradox, a phantom suction that drew the heat from his very core. She gagged slightly, pulling back, a string of saliva connecting her lips to his tip. “You’re so much bigger everywhere,” she rasped, before diving back down.
She worked him with a furious, obscene rhythm, one hand wrapped around the base of his shaft, the other gripping the soft swell of his gut, kneading the flesh as she bobbed her head. The sounds were wet, sloppy, and desperate. He looked down, watching his own dick disappear into her translucent face, a surreal and filthy spectacle that pushed him toward the edge too fast.
“I’m gonna… fuck, Penny, I’m gonna come,” he grunted, his hips stuttering.
She pulled off with a lewd pop. “Not yet.” She stood up, shoved him back until his shoulders hit the wall. She yanked his jeans and boxers down to his knees, trapping his legs. Then she turned around, bent over, and pulled the hem of the stolen shirt up to her waist. She was bare underneath, the pale globes of her ass offered to him, her entrance glistening. “Do it. Now. From behind.”
He fumbled, his own girth making the angle awkward. He grabbed her hips, his fingers sinking into the cool firmness of her, and pushed himself inside her in one brutal thrust. She screamed, a sound that echoed in the empty house, part pain, part triumph. He fucked her like that, pinned against the wall, his belly slapping against her back with each drive. The shirt rubbed against his fur, the fabric of his own past a rough taunt against his present.
“Harder,” she demanded, pushing back against him. “Use all of it. I can take it.”
He lost himself in the rhythm, the animal simplicity of it. The world narrowed to the slap of skin, her choked cries, the burning protest of his knees under his weight. He came with a harsh groan, emptying himself into her with pulses that left him dizzy. He stayed there, buried inside her, panting, his forehead against the back of her neck where the shirt collar gaped.
When he pulled out, the air felt cold on his wet skin. She straightened up, letting the shirt fall back down, and turned. Her face was flushed with a strange, solid color. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You’re hungry,” she stated.
He was. A deep, gnawing hollow had opened beneath the fatigue. It always did now, after. As if she drew the satiation out of him along with his orgasm. She led him to the kitchen, a place of dusty cabinets and a humming, ancient fridge. She opened the freezer, pulled out two frozen family-sized lasagnas still in their cardboard boxes. “Eat.”
“I can’t eat both of those.”
“You can,” she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. She preheated the oven. While they cooked, filling the old house with the smell of tomatoes and plastic, she made him a gallon of chocolate milk, mixing the powder directly into the jug until it was sludge. He sat at the cracked linoleum table and drank it under her watch.
He ate the first lasagna straight from the aluminum tray, the cheese burning the roof of his mouth. She sat across from him, sipping a glass of water. As he started on the second, the dense layers of pasta and meat and sauce sitting like a lead blanket in his gut, she spoke softly. “They’re feeding you, too. Your parents.”
He paused, a forkful hovering. “How do you know?”
“I can taste it,” she said, simply. “The protein shakes in the morning. The love in them. It’s sweet. It’s… constant.” She reached across the table, traced the line of his jaw where a new softness had begun to blur it. “You’re being filled from all sides.”
When he returned home that evening, waddling up the driveway with a profound, aching fullness, the house was a bastion of yellow light and noise. The television blared. Richard was sprawled on the couch, a bag of cheese puffs balanced on his chest. Nicole was in the kitchen, her back to him, wrestling with something on the counter.
“There you are,” Richard boomed, not taking his eyes from the screen. “Out getting exercise? That’s my boy.”
Gumball didn’t answer. He moved toward the stairs, a journey that now required planning.
“Hold on, honey,” Nicole called out, her voice tight with a strange excitement. She turned, holding a massive, sheet cake covered in thick, glistening chocolate frosting. “We were waiting for you! It’s a celebration!”
He stopped, one foot on the bottom stair. “What are we celebrating?”
Nicole’s smile was brilliant, fragile. “Your… trajectory!” Richard supplied, sitting up and sending cheese puffs cascading to the floor.
“Your father’s right,” Nicole said, setting the cake on the table. It was a monstrous thing, easily feeding twenty. “We just feel like you’re… thriving. You’re home. You’re happy. We wanted to mark the occasion.”
He stared at the cake. The frosting looked like a tar pit. His stomach, stretched to near-breaking from Penny’s lasagna, gave a painful gurgle. The thought of another bite made him want to vomit.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, the words barely audible.
Nicole’s smile didn’t falter; it just froze. “Don’t be silly. It’s your favorite. Look.” She plunged a knife into it, cutting a huge, wet slab. She slid it onto a plate. “Just a piece. For the ritual.”
The ritual. He walked to the table, the floorboards complaining under his weight. He sat. He picked up the fork. Under the combined, expectant gaze of both parents, he took a bite. The sugar was atomic, a shock to his system. He took another. And another. He ate the entire slice, the rich chocolate coating his tongue, his throat, settling like cement in his already-packed guts.
Nicole watched him, her eyes gleaming with tears. Richard nodded with approval. “That’s it. That’s the spirit.”
She cut him another slice. “Here. To growing.”
He ate that one, too. The acceleration was no longer a secret, whispered in dark rooms with a ghost. It was here, in the bright kitchen, sanctioned and celebrated with cheap frosting and desperate love. He ate until black spots danced in his vision, until the waistband of his jeans cut into him like a blunt saw. He ate until he was nothing but a vessel, being filled from all sides.