Chapter 4: Cla
The only constant was the whir of the pump and the slow, syrupy passage of time. Clara existed in a state of perpetual fullness, a sensation so profound it had become the new baseline of reality. The feeding tubes were permanent now, fused to the raw, chapped skin at the corners of her mouth. She was a vast, pale island on her platform, her consciousness a dim light flickering in the cavern of her body.
King Oberon entered, his footsteps echoing in the hushed room. He carried a silver platter himself, a rare gesture. On it sat a mountain of finely minced meat, glistening with fat, and a bowl of mashpot so saturated with butter it was more liquid than solid. A servant followed, holding two porcelain pitchers.
“A change of pace, my love,” Oberon announced, his voice booming with forced cheer. “Something to remind you of the art of eating. The texture.”
He set the platter on a raised stand before her. The smell of rich beef and salted butter cut through the room’s stale air. A primal spark, something older than the tubes and the machines, flickered in Clara’s deep-set eyes.
“The… tubes,” she rasped, her voice a dry rustle.
“We’ll pause them,” he said, nodding to an attendant who turned a valve. The whirring ceased. A sudden, terrifying emptiness, a phantom limb of hunger, twitched inside her. “You will eat this. The old way.”
Her hands, buried in the soft shelves of her sides, were useless. She stared at the food, a low groan building in her chest.
Oberon snapped his fingers. Two young male servants, their faces carefully blank, stepped forward. They knew their roles. One climbed onto the platform, his weight causing the entire structure to groan. He settled behind her, bracing himself against the immense, warm wall of her back, his hands sliding under her arms to support her head. The other dipped his hands into the mashpot, scooping up a great glob of the yellow slop.
“Open,” the king commanded softly.
Clara’s mouth opened. The servant shoved the mashpot inside. The flavor was a nuclear blast on her numbed palate—salt, fat, earth. She groaned, swallowing convulsively. The emptiness recoiled.
“Now the meat,” Oberon said, his eyes bright.
The second servant used both hands to scoop the minced meat, pressing it into her mouth. She chewed, the effort Herculean, her jaw aching with the unfamiliar motion. Fat dripped down her chins onto her chest.
“Good,” Oberon whispered, pacing slowly. “So good. You see? This is connection. This is real.”
The servants worked in a steady, brutal rhythm. Handfuls of meat, scoopfuls of mashpot. Clara’s swallows were audible, wet gulps that echoed in the quiet room. Her stomach, already a continent of flesh, began to distend further, pressing against her lungs. Her breaths became short, frantic pants.
“The butter,” Clara gasped between mouthfuls. “I need the butter.”
Oberon beamed. He took one of the pitchers from the attendant and brought it to her lips himself. It was pure, melted butter, warm and salty. She drank it in great, greedy pulls, the golden liquid spilling over her lips and cascading down the rolls of her neck.
The other pitcher was for the other servant. As the first continued to shovel food into her mouth, the second poured a stream of butter over Clara’s massive, exposed breast, the liquid pooling in the deep crevasses of her flesh. He then began to rub it into her skin, his hands sliding over the hot, tight surface.
“More,” she choked out, her body beginning to shake from the overwhelming sensory input. The food, the hands, the butter—it was all merging into a single, desperate need.
The servant behind her shifted, his bracing becoming something else. She felt him enter her from behind, a sharp, familiar pressure. The rhythm of his thrusts matched the rhythm of the hand feeding her. The other servant, his hands slick with butter and mashpot, found his way between her legs.
Clara was the center of a storm of consumption. She was being filled from every direction. Meat and potato in her mouth, butter down her throat, a man inside her. The boundaries of her body seemed to dissolve. She was a vessel, a void, a hungry mouth that was also a hungry sex.
Oberon watched, mesmerized, his own hand clenched at his side. “Yes,” he hissed. “This is it. The perfect system. Input and output. Need and fulfillment.”
Clara’s eyes rolled back in her head. The pleasure was a painful, suffocating wave, inseparable from the agony of her distending stomach. She convulsed, a massive, full-body spasm that made the platform shudder. The servant in her mouth cried out as her jaw clamped down in a reflexive, powerful bite, his fingers trapped for a terrifying second before he wrenched them back.
When it was over, the servants retreated, panting, their clothes stained with food and sweat. Clara lay gasping, her body glistening with butter, her stomach a taut, monstrous globe. The fifty pounds of food and fat was a solid, leaden weight inside her, a new foundation upon which her immense form now rested.
Oberon approached, his expression one of scientific awe. He placed a hand on her stomach, feeling the incredible density, the heat. “Magnificent,” he breathed. “You’ve integrated it. You’ve become it.”
He looked from her face, slick and blank with spent pleasure, to the empty platter and pitchers. A new, ambitious thought began to form in his mind, his eyes drifting from the human mess before him to the clean, efficient whir of the feeding pump.