You frown. The colognes didn't come with any instructions, so it's up to you to figure out what they're supposed to smell like.
You quickly sniff each bottle, moving along the rows. A few stand out to you - the Good Old Country Boy smells a little like hay mixed with beer, the Cop A Feel stinks of gunpowder and pepper spray, and the Au Naturel reeks strongly (and rather alarmingly) of weed. Since you don't really want to smell of any of those things, you immediately place them in a separate pile.
The rest are a little more difficult to choose from. You hesitate between Golden Boy, which has the distinctive smell of football leather and grass, Lumberjack, which smells like pine trees after rain, and Beached Whale, which, rather surprisingly, smells like quality chocolates and freshly baked apple pie.
As enticing as Golden Boy's smell is, you aren't sure if you want to smell like you've just finished playing a hard game of football. That leaves Lumberjack and the unfortunately titled Beached Whale.
You find it incredibly difficult to choose between the two. It seems as if the two smells counterbalance each other completely - Lumberjack's sharp, harsh fragrance is offset perfectly by the Beached Whale's homely, soothing aroma.
But wait. Why not just use both?
Mind made up, you gingerly shake the bottles before spraying them all over yourself. You're pretty sure that there's a bit more Lumberjack in the mix. That doesn't really matter though, since the colognes smell divine. Beached Whale in particular smells incredibly realistic, as if you've stepped out of a luxury chocolate shop and into a high-class bakery.
You find your stomach giving an almighty growl at the true-to-life smell. Come to think of it, you hadn't eaten for a while. The sharp hunger pangs that immediately follow are a little bit more of a surprise. You're usually a pretty light eater, but today you feel as though you could eat the entire contents of your fridge and still be hungry for more.
When you pat your stomach through your shirt, you find it feeling just a tad softer than you remember it being. You've been a bit lax with your diet recently - you prefer to order in takeaway rather than cook something healthier, so maybe it's started showing. But you're still pretty sure that the soft curve rounding out your middle wasn't there when you got dressed earlier in the morning.
Strange.
And stranger still, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you see a thick five o clock shadow that you could've sworn wasn't there before.
Your stomach gives another discontent rumble, making up your mind for you. You'll eat first, and then spend some more time inspecting yourself in the mirror.
You had breakfast fairly recently, so you make yourself a light lunch, a sandwich and a salad coupled with a glass of water. But you find yourself still hungry once you polish off the contents of your play. You heat up some of last night's Chinese and chomp your way through a couple of slices of salami while you're waiting for the timer to ding.
When the microwave finally beeps, you snatch up the food, unminding of the heat. You gobble it down as fast as you can and completely ignore the burning in your throat as it goes down. It's heated a little unevenly. The middle is still lukewarm while the outer edges are steaming hot. But you don't care. You just want to eat it.
Your stomach is still complaining when you finish. You find yourself opening your freezer and grabbing a half open carton of ice cream. When you open the cutlery drawer, you nearly pull it off of its rails. It feels like you're stronger than you should be, like your hands are hairier than you were before. You're too engrossed in filling the gaping emptiness in your stomach to pay much attention to anything else, though.
When you scrape off the last remnants of the frozen dessert from the carton, you feel a little disgusted with yourself. Sure, you were hungry as hell, but that was no excuse to stuff your face like that.
Without warning, you find yourself releasing a rumbling belch. You grimace. That, too, is something that you don't really like to do. You reach down to pat your stomach.
You freeze when your fingers touch a soft expanse of flesh where your stomach should be. It's a completely foreign sensation. You've been thin as a rail for your entire life.
When you look down, however, you find yourself confronted with a distinctly rounded form swelling out over your waistband. The hem of your shirt is riding up, exposing a thick treasure trail that definitely wasn't there earlier this morning.
"What the fuck?" you exclaim, cupping your rounded belly with both hands. It jiggles slightly under your palms.
You rush upstairs, feeling your small new gut wobble with every step. When you burst into the bathroom, you find yourself struck dumb.
"Holy shit," you breathe, moving closer to inspect the stranger looking back at you from the mirror. "Holy fucking shit."
Your formerly neat eyebrows are now thick and bushy, resting on a brow that looks more prominent than you remember. Your cheeks are slightly more rounded, and the thick five o clock shadow that covered them earlier has grown out into the beginnings of a chestnut brown beard. Your nose looks stronger, slightly crooked as if you'd broken it, and your jaw definitely looks wider.
You rub your fingers across your newly bearded face, the hair scratching at your hands - they too look thicker - before inspecting the rest of your body.
Your formerly flat torso has grown out into a fledgling gut, tiny love handles peeking out over your waist. But fat isn't the only bulk you've put on. Your chest looks distinctly squarer through the fabric of your shirt, with several dark strands of hair curling through the round collar. Your shoulders are broader, straining at the white cotton, and the arms that emerge from your sleeves are beefier than they've ever been. You find yourself flexing, marveling at the large biceps which suddenly appear under your skin.
You don't even look like yourself anymore. You look like a distantly related cousin, if that cousin was beefy and covered with hair.
Suddenly, your stomach gives an almighty rumble again.
When you look down, you find it drooping just that slightest bit more over your waist, the love handles at its sides looking the tiniest bit bigger. And worse - you can feel the hunger cramps from before starting again.
"Holy fucking shit," you say again, staring at yourself in the mirror. It seems that whatever's happening to you isn't planning on stopping anytime soon. You stay there, mute, as your body swells up just the tiniest bit more, becoming just a little bit hairier, while the craving for food in the pit of your stomach steadily gets stronger.