You pass up the muumuus and the 4XL shirts in the front of the store. You are fat, but not that fat. Embedded in the back, though, you find a section filled with ethnic clothing. Though you are of German descent and have never even been to Scotland, you feel oddly attracted to the wide selection of kilts and plaids here. One article seems to beckon to you—a pair of plaid shorts. They can not be more than a foot-and-a-half long, and, though primarily yellow, they have an interlocking pattern of black and yellow stripes.
“I wonder what pattern this is called,” you think to yourself as you reach onto the rack and remove the shorts.
All of the sudden, a salesclerk glides up behind you. You jump about a foot in the air as he taps you on the shoulder.
“Sorry to frighten you sir,” he says, “but can I be of any assistance?”
You give the clerk a quick visual inspection. He does not look like a fledgling model like the clerks at Abercrombie and Fitch. Instead, he looks like a normal guy, slightly over two hundred pounds, with a genuine look of concern on his wide face.
“Oh, sure,” you respond, holding up the pair of shorts. “Where are the changing rooms?”
“Interested in those shorts, huh?” the clerk asks. “Would you like to try on just the shorts or the entire matching outfit?”
“What matching outfit?”
“This one.” The clerk rummages through the shelves nearby, selecting a white polo shirt, some argyle socks, a yellow windbreaker, and a checkered tam. He places them unceremoniously in your arms and points somewhere behind your head. “I hope you find the outfit sufficient to your tastes. The changing room is in the middle of the store, between the cash registers and the leather jackets.”
Following the clerk’s directions, you eventually find the changing room; they all look deserted, so you just enter the largest one at the very end. You place the pile of clothes on a nearby bench and stand in front of the full-length mirror.
You have not always been pleased by your physique, but you are generally pleased by your body. At about two hundred forty pounds, you have thick arms and legs with a moderately-large torso. Your face has a double chin and a wide nose. Basically, you are an ordinary fat man. Snapping back to reality, you break away from the mirror and start undressing. You remove your size-twelve shoes and your white knee-high socks. After removing your jeans—thirty-eight inch waist—and your blue button-up XLT shirt, you are left in the changing room in your white briefs.
You dig in the pile of clothes until you find the pair of shorts that had so intrigued you minutes before. The material is richly textured and just begs to be worn. You lift one leg into the leg of the shorts, pulling them up awkwardly until they rest comfortably on your hips. They are not too big, yet not tight either. Looking in the mirror, you see that your knees are exposed, the shorts stopping about two or three inches above them.
You pick up the white polo shirt next. It is completely white except around the collar, a pattern of black squares alternating like a checkerboard around the neck. You bundle the shirt up, pulling it down over your head. You manage to slide both arms into their corresponding holes. Buttoning up two of the three buttons at the top of the shirt, you tuck the bottom of the shirt into your shorts, smoothing the fabric of the shirt against your flabby stomach. At this moment, you see a black leather belt on the bench. You slide it around the shorts, securing them to your body.
Sitting down, you pick up the argyle socks and slide them onto your feet. They are not as long as the white socks, reaching only the middle of your lower leg, and they are also hot, made of thick wool. You stick your feet into your own white tennis shoes, tying the laces loosely.
Standing back up, you pick up the yellow windbreaker and stick your arms into the sleeves. The windbreaker has black trim around the ends of the sleeves and on the two pockets in the front. An odd crest is embroidered onto the left side of the windbreaker. It is basically a yellow shield surrounded by ivy with a line crossing diagonally through it. Two letters, F and B, are stitched onto the shield. The windbreaker also has buttons, but you choose not to fasten them just yet.
Finally, you pick up the tam, or at least that is what you think it is. It is made of a black wool fabric, a checkered pattern of red and white stripes circling it. A traditional Scottish seal is attached to the side, and a small red ball is on the very top. You put it on your head, adjusting it slightly to cover the top of your forehead.
You gaze into the mirror at the finished outfit. The entire ensemble is not exactly fashionable, but you somewhat like it. Thankfully, it is not tight or uncomfortable. After about thirty seconds of analysis, you decide to take off the clothes and go check out. Returning to the bench, though, you feel an odd sensation in your stomach, a subtle itchiness that quickly becomes annoying.
“Great,” you think. “I’m probably allergic to the fabric.”
Instead of taking off the outfit, though, you feel impelled to go back to the mirror. Standing just a foot from your reflection, you notice something odd about your face. Your double chin seems more pronounced, dipping lower than you have ever seen it. Your cheeks appear rounder, cushioned by an extra layer of fat. You shrug it off though; it must be a trick of the light in the room.
Before you back away from the mirror, though, you catch a glimpse of your eyebrows. For your entire life, your eyebrows were pitiful brown lines of hair, drowned out by the large mop of brown hair parted on top of your head. In this light, though, your eyebrows are thicker, fuller, tinged with red hairs. It almost looks as if they are growing thicker, redder, as you stare at them.
“Impossible,” you whisper.
The progression gradually speeds up. Now you can see small wisps of red in the hair poking out from underneath the tam. The itchy feeling in your stomach spreads upwards, as a similar feeling grows near your ears. Soon, all of the hair on your head is a dusty red color, a stark contrast from the light brown hair you have been used to your entire life. Your hand reaches up to touch your eyebrows and your hair, but the hand freezes entirely as you look at the sides of your face. Small red hairs have surfaced from nowhere along your jowls, spreading down from the top of your head along the curve of the jaw. Instant sideburns have just appeared on your face in under a minute, tapering off at the base of your face. The sideburns are long and thick, just like your eyebrows have become. The hair at the top of your head has not only thickened near your new sideburns, but your forehead has become more and more visible, the hair shrinking into the tam.
“Male pattern baldness!” you wonder. “But I’m only twenty-five!”
As quickly as it had begun, the itchiness stops all over your body. Your hair is thick and greasy. It is also significantly shorter than you remember it, and it curls slightly around the base of the tam. Now that the change seems to have stopped on your head, your gaze travels downward to your stomach. You had a hairy chest before you came into the store, but the amount of hair is now absurd. You can see curly red hairs poking out of the top of the white polo shirt. Unbuckling the shorts, you awkwardly lift the untucked shirt over your chest. A pronounced trail of red hair leads from your navel, down your curvy stomach, disappearing into the shorts. Thick patches of hair are concentrated in you armpits, the thick hair leading from your pits onto your chest. Your entire torso seems covered with a light pelt of curly red hair. Thoroughly confused, you tuck your shirt back into the shorts and buckle the belt.
You decide it would be best to ask the clerk what the hell is happening. You waddle over to the bench to gather your other clothes, carelessly discarded on the floor. Bending down to reach them, you realize that it is significantly harder to bend down than before.
You gaze back at the mirror, shocked by what you see. While the clothes were comfortably draped over your previous body, they are now taut and stretched. However, you feel no discomfort whatsoever. Despair and curiosity cloud your sense of judgment, and you simply slide the hook of the belt over to the last hole, stand in front of the mirror, and wait for your fate to take over.
Before your eyes, you see your body expanding, gaining mass, inflating like a balloon. You shoes swell to accommodate your ever-expanding feet, ankles bulging against the argyle socks. Your legs lose any muscular definition they may have had before, becoming completely covered in at least an inch of thick, jiggly fat. The socks and shorts look as if they are cutting off the circulation to your lower extremities. Your exposed knees disappear under at least four folds of flab, creating a wrinkled mass almost not recognizable as a human knee.
The socks and shorts seem to broaden, growing as your body grows, tight but sufficient to contain your immense mass. As your hips and posterior become covered in more and more layers of fat, the fabric of the shorts pushes out, revealing an ass that must weigh over a hundred pounds. As the transformation to your lower body winds down, you realize that your weight must have doubled—no, tripled—in the region.
As you waddle around the changing room, trying to manage the large folds of fat chafing between your legs, you feel your hands go numb. Raising them to your face, you see the fingers spread out, becoming pudgy, losing mobility. Your wrists are no longer distinguishable; there is simply a line of fat from the elbow to the hand, no indentation where the wrist should be. Your arms fill out the sleeves of the windbreaker and more. The cuffs at the ends of the sleeves slowly move up the arm, the elastic straining against the fat. Your elbows become as wrinkled as your knees; you can feel the many layers of fat pushing against the fabric of the polo shirt. Your shoulders broaden with fat. You reach up with one hand to try to feel your collar bone, but it has already disappeared under a layer of fat.
The change spreads down your torso. You already had a large stomach and chest beforehand, but they now grow to immense proportions. The white polo shirt is soon completely stretched over your girth, the curvature of your stomach and man-boobs clearly visible through the thin fabric. Numerous stretch marks appear on your stomach as the change progresses downward, finally meeting the other changes at your waist.
Only one area has remained relatively unaffected by the layers of fat—your head. You wince as your neck becomes virtually invisible, hidden behind at least three flaps of fat; you not only have a double chin, but a quadruple chin. You feel a weird sensation as your neck fat touches the skin on your upper torso. Your cheeks and jowls become enormous, pushing folds of skin against your facial features. Your eyes almost become buried in folds of skin. Your brow becomes much more pronounced, and your nose thickens, poking out from the wrinkled mass of fat your face has become. The circumference of your head has increased, the tam perched above the mop of curly, thick red hair.
The last change happens quickly, as a scratchy sensation in your throat flares for a second before disappearing. Suddenly, your body is at peace, no unexplainable sensations present; the transformation is over.
The reflection in the mirror is no longer recognizable as you, yet it is very familiar.
“No,” you blurt out in a heavy Scottish accent. “I’ve turned into Fat Bastard!”
Suddenly, you feel a pain in your stomach, a familiar growling sound emanating from it. “Oh, I’m so hungry I could eat a baby!” you exclaim to no one in particular. Leaving your old clothes and your old life behind in the changing room, you waddle out of the store and head over to the food court, the floor trembling with every step you take.