Chapter 6: Diner Expansion
The first platter vanished in minutes. Gwen ate with a focused, mechanical intensity, fork scraping against the thick ceramic plate. Eggs, bacon, sausage links, hash browns—it was fuel, not food. She barely tasted it. The second platter followed, the stack of pancakes dripping with syrup and butter disappearing between methodical, swift bites. Donna, the waitress, refilled her milk glass twice without being asked, her expression hovering between concern and professional detachment.
The other patrons had mostly stopped staring. They’d filed her away as just another weird New York night, a problem that wasn’t theirs. The janitor had left. The taxi driver was nodding off over his coffee. The quiet couple was just a murmur in the booth behind her.
It was when she was polishing off the last syrupy bite of pancake, a momentary lull as she reached for the milk again, that the familiar, deep clench returned.
It wasn’t hunger.
It was a tightening so sudden and severe it locked the air in her throat. Her hand froze, glass halfway to her lips. A low, pained sound escaped her as she slowly set the glass down, the clink abnormally loud. Her free hand went to her stomach, pressing against the hard, distended curve beneath the webbed fabric.
“No,” she breathed, a private plea. “Not here. Just… give me five minutes to get outside.”
Her body had never been good at following schedules.
The pressure built, a hot, insistent ballooning from the inside out. The webbing across her hips, stretched and stressed from the rooftop, gave a high-pitched ping as one strand snapped. Then another. The crisscross pattern she’d made began to distort, individual filaments straining and popping like over-tightened guitar strings.
She could feel her bones shifting again. Not the jarring cracks from the roof, but a slower, relentless grating, a feeling of pelvic plates being incrementally jacked apart by the life within her. The vinyl booth creaked, a long, protesting whine. She pressed her thighs together, trying to contain the expansion, but it was useless. Her hips pushed outward against the booth’s confines, the vinyl squeaking in protest.
“Uh, miss?” Donna’s voice came from somewhere near the counter, cautious.
Gwen couldn’t answer. A fresh, sharp ache blossomed in her engorged breasts, a direct pipeline to the cramping in her womb. She looked down just as the dark, damp circles on the ruined yoga shirt spread with alarming speed. There was no graceful trickle this time. With a soft, wet spurt, twin jets of milk shot through the fabric, arcing across the Formica table. They splattered against the empty syrup pitcher and soaked into the paper placemat, blooming into opaque, star-shaped stains.
A strangled gasp came from the quiet couple’s booth. The taxi driver was fully awake now, staring.
The growth intensified. A powerful, rolling swell from within pushed her stomach forward another impossible inch. The table edge dug into her. The remaining webbing across her midsage tore with a sound like ripping canvas. The black spandex beneath, already split at the seams, gaped open, exposing a wide strip of pale, stretched skin, shiny and tight as a drum. Her belly button, once an innie, was now a flat, taut knot against the fabric.
Her hips finally overcame the resistance of the booth. With a sound like a spine being adjusted—a series of dense, synovial pops—they flared wider, pinning her firmly against the vinyl. She was stuck. The booth that had been a tight fit was now a vise.
“Call an ambulance,” the man from the quiet couple said, his voice thin with alarm.
“I’m fine,” Gwen ground out, the words tight. Her face was flushed with heat and a crushing humiliation. “I don’t need an ambulance.” What she needed was a construction crew and a tarp.
She had to move. Now. Before someone actually did call 911, and she had to explain this to EMS while lactating on their uniforms.
Bracing her hands on the table, she pushed with all her remaining strength. The table legs screeched on the linoleum. Her body didn’t budge. She was wedged. Panic, cold and clean, sliced through the pain. She couldn’t be trapped here.
She changed tactics. Instead of pushing straight back, she twisted, leveraging her spider-strength into a lateral shove. The entire booth shifted with a deafening scrape. The connection to the floor bolts held, but the force was enough to create a millimeter of space. She twisted again, gritting her teeth, feeling the vinyl tear under her assault. With a final, brutal wrench that made her spine protest, she pulled one thigh free, then the other, and half-fell, half-slid out of the booth’s grip.
She stood, swaying, in the aisle. The diner was silent except for the sizzle from the grill. Everyone was watching. She was a spectacle. Exposed, dripping, swollen beyond reason, standing in a puddle of her own spilled milk and broken webbing.
Donna was behind the counter, phone in hand, but she hadn’t dialed. Her eyes were wide. “Honey, you are not fine.”
“I will be,” Gwen said, forcing her voice to level. She fumbled in the small pouch still attached to her suit, pulled out a crumpled wad of cash—all she had left from the bank—and dropped it on the wet table. It was probably triple the bill. “For the food. And the… cleaning.”
She turned toward the door, the main entrance this time. The double glass doors with the cheerful “Golden Griddle” decal.
Walking was a new geometry. Her center of gravity was so far forward she was almost leaning backwards to compensate. Each step was a wide, waddling stagger. Her hips, newly widened, felt loose and alien, joints grinding with a sensation that was less pain and more profound structural complaint.
She reached the doors. Pushed.
The frame clicked, but the doors only opened a few inches. They were standard width. She was not.
A hysterical laugh bubbled in her chest. She shoved a shoulder against one side. It gave another inch. She tried turning sideways, but her belly protruded too far forward, bumping against the other door. She was effectively barricaded by her own body.
The taxi driver stood up. “Lady, you wanna use the side door? The one you came in?”
She didn’t want his help. She wanted to burn the building down and web-swing away. But the side door was past the counter, past all their staring faces. Swallowing the last shred of her pride, she nodded, a tight, jerky motion.
She lumbered back through the gauntlet of the diner, her breath loud in the quiet. The side entrance was a single door, marginally wider. She turned, sucking in her breath—a futile gesture—and shuffled through, her sides brushing both the frame and the door. She felt like a ship being reluctantly squeezed through a canal.
The cold night air hit her, a relief and a shock. She was out.
The alley was dark. She leaned against the brick wall, breathing hard, listening to the distant sounds of the city. Home. She had to get home. It was miles across the borough. Swinging was out of the question. The thought of hauling this mass, with these unstable joints, on a web-line made her nauseous. A taxi? The image of trying to fold herself into a yellow cab was pure comedy. A nightmare comedy.
She began to walk. It was the only option left. A slow, monumental procession through the backstreets and side avenues of Queens. She stuck to shadows where she could, avoiding the well-lit main thoroughfares. Her progress was a study in awkward momentum: a lurching waddle, a hand often braced against a wall or a lamp post for balance.
People saw her. A group of teenagers leaving a bodega fell silent, their laughter dying as she passed. A woman walking a small dog pulled the animal closer, hurrying across the street. Their stares were a physical pressure, another weight to carry.
She didn’t look at the news alerts buzzing in her pocket. She just put one foot in front of the other, a prisoner in a body that was both her power and her cage, moving through the sleeping city towards a sanctuary that felt farther away with every cracking, milk-damp step. The night was long, and she was only at the beginning of it.