The old man pulled a drape closed that divided the back area from the rest of the shop. The old man patted Guy’s massive arm as an idea came to him, “I know what the polite boy can wear!” He raised an arthritic finger to emphasis the point. “You stay here and I will be back.”
“As if I can go anywhere dressed only in a jock”, the bodybuilder thought. Guy watched the hunched back old man make his way to the front of the store as he hurried over his cane. Once alone the bodybuilder looked at his reflection in the mirror, unsettled at what he saw. He had indeed taken on the look of a human bull. His upper body had ballooned into a muscle bound mass with his huge shoulders almost weighed down by its bulk. Guy’s thick neck was surrounded by high traps that would soon brush up against his ears if the growing didn’t stop. His ridiculously wide and thick back had him slightly bent forward as his basketball sized shoulders almost curved in. Guy hadn’t been able to see over his massive slabs of pec meat since leaving the gym but the mirror showed him a tiny waist that looked too small to support the weight of his overblown upper body. Yet the too narrow waist was wrapped with thick bands of muscle that stretched his thin skin. Guy was happy that his black jock had held up to his crazy growth though the straps now dug deeply into his bubbled ass. The man’s legs had swollen in proportion to his hulked out upper body until they now had an almost comic size to them. Guy’s thighs were a series of over lapping tongues of muscle so wide now they touched nearly their entire length. The swell of muscle that ballooned along the outside of his thighs was so deep he could have easily set a glass atop the mass. Guy’s knees looked delicate between the engorged muscle above and below now. While the man’s calves had grown so large that it looked like he had pumpkins shoved under his skin and wrapped around his shins. They easily were bigger than any he had seen in the pages of his beloved muscle mags. The over grown muscle practically rested on his heals of the average sized man.
All the time, Guy’s mind was filled with the words of the old man. “The cream has a unique property… It gives the one who uses the cream the body they always wanted.” Not that Guy had ever dreamed of being the biggest bodybuilder alive. Sure the man would have been happy with the build of a pro bodybuilder but in his years of training he had never heard of anyone in a contest shape of 350 pounds and the way his body was changing he was getting closer to 400 pounds. Guy had not been lying when he had told Mr. Yuan that he didn’t want to be so big. It was what the man had said next that haunted Guy: "Maybe you didn't want to on a conscious level, but in your subconscious you might want to be larger than you though you did. Don't worry, son, when you reach the size you want, you'll be very happy with it.” The old man had paused and smiled at him as if he knew Guy’s secret thoughts.
The bodybuilder tried to clear his mind. He pulled the calming incense into his lungs. “Just relax”, he told himself. Guy’s attention was drawn back to his reflection though as he felt his body growing again. This time there was something different. He could hear a faint hiss as his muscle’s slowly but steadily grew. The bodybuilder watched as fat veins crisscrossed his bloated muscles and everywhere his mass seemed to slowly swell. Guy turned away from the mirror and waddled back and forth slowly. “Clear your mind”, he told himself. “Relax.” The man pictured his ideal, the muscled bodies of pro bodybuilders that easily weighed 100 pounds less than he now did. A few moments later the sense of muscle growth seemed to pass and he even felt as if he now moved more easily.
“Subconscious my ass”, the muscled man thought. Guy did his best to clear his mind of his private thoughts; chiefly his fascination with muscle inflation. The big man had enjoyed the fetish longer than he could remember but had never shared this fact with anyone.
The jingle of the bells on the front door caught his attention as he saw Mr. Yuan hurry in his shuffling aged way back into the shop. The man had a bundle on his arm. Once in the back the old man closed the drape with a slap of his cane before turning smiling toward Guy. “I have brought you clothes to wear!” The old man unfurled a one piece suit over the trunk in the center of the room. Guy looked down at a black skin suit with blue V-shaped panels under the arms and a matching strip over the shoulder. The suit looked huge as the bodybuilder picked it up, he noticed the inside the back collar the size: 6x-large.
Before Guy could speak, the old man proudly thrust a finger in the air, “I knew this would be the answer to your problem. Mr. Chin in the next block had this on the back wall of his dive shop for show. I gave him an ointment to fix those giant pock marks of his and he gladly gave it to me for free.” The old man seemed proud of his barter.
Guy stretched the smooth fabric between his fingers. Normally spandex would be the bodybuilder’s last choice in clothing but there was nothing normal about the situation he now found himself in. The old man gave him little chance to think the option over as he got down on his knees and pulled the suit from his hands. The man guided first one foot and then the other into the footed legs of the suit. He then helped the muscle bound man pull the suit up his swollen legs until Guy could catch the material and pull it over his waist. The old man rose and guided his enormous arms into the sleeves before stretching the suit over his back. The muscle bound man could only pull the zipper up about half way up his torso before the muscles of his arms locked out. The old man happily closed the zipper over his broad chest and stepped back to study the effect. The over sized suit easily fit loosely over Guy’s enormous body and yet was far from baggy. Guy thought he looked like some crazy superhero in suit and yet he understood the man’s logic of the choice.
Mr. Yuan smiled, “One problem solved.” He gave the young man a pat on the arm and picked up his cane.
Guy did feel less restricted as he tried to keep his focus on his ideal size. The bodybuilder stepped up on the scale to check. 342! It was working he was smaller. All he had to do was focus on his ideal and his body would shrink back down. The old man slid back the drape and started toward the shop again. “You relax, now and let the ointment do its work.”
There was a commotion outside on the sidewalk. “What’s going on out there, Mr. Yuan?” Guy asked.
“Oh who knows? These Yankee Chinese have parade everyday of the week.” The old man laughed as he waved his hand in the air.
Guy chuckled as he watched the crowd gather out front of the store as people looked down the street. There were vendors walking through the crowd selling trinkets and snacks. The muscle man turned his attentions back to the mirror as he focused on his muscled ideal of 270 pound muscled perfection. The enormous suit would fit like a tent once he reached that size but he would deal with that when the time came.
Guy felt his mobility return as his body shrank, but suddenly he was startled by the sound of hissing air. The man’s hand flew to his chest but it felt normal. The bodybuilder turned to see a vendor with a cart in front of the shop selling helium balloons. There was a pair of tanks attached to the end of the cart which the man used to fill the balloons though he had an inflated collection floated on strings tied to the cart. Occasionally someone would request a different color or shape and the man would attach the balloon top the tank and inflate it before tying it off.
The bodybuilder was horrified as he saw the man take up his place directly in front of the store. Guy closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. “Just relax”, he mumbled; then came the hiss as the vendor filled another balloon. Guy could feel his muscles swell in time to the hiss of helium. There was no way the man could clear his mind of his spandex covered muscles swelling like balloons now. He tried to stick his fingers in his ears to block the sound but his shoulders were far too swollen to allow this. The growth stopped when the man finished with the balloon.
The crowds grew louder and louder and more people came out to watch the parade. Firecrackers popped and bands played. Acrobats trooped down the street jumping and spinning in the air. All Guy was aware of was the sporadic hiss of the balloon man’s tank and the swell of his muscled body. He glanced up at the mirror to see his muscles had ballooned back up and beyond what he had been earlier.
There was no way Guy could clear his mind of the images that now flooded in. In response his body steadily ballooned bigger and bigger. His arms rose stiffly at his sides and legs spread wide as he ballooned. The man’s inflating pecs pushed his head up as his dimpled chin sunk into the muscles. His mobility was rapidly diminishing as he inflated and yet his growth was accompanied with a growing feeling of being weighed down. The man could only guess at what he must weigh now as the huge elastic suit he wore was packed with swelling mounds of muscle.
“Mr. Yuan help me! Mr. Yuan.”
Guy could hear the old man thumping along from his spot near the front window where he had been watching the parade go by out of sight of the ballooning bodybuilder. Guy looked up just in time to see a mammoth parade balloon of a dragon come in front of the shop as handlers pulled the ropes to make the balloon dance and sway over the street. “OH NO”, Guy mumbled as he felt a swirl in his gut.
“MR. Yuan help me!”
“I’m coming …I’m coming.” The old man thumped into the back room only to find it empty. “Guy?”
“I’m up here.” The man looked up into the high ceilinged space to see the massively swollen bodybuilder floating face down against the ceiling. Guy’s enormous muscles had blown him up into a living bodybuilder balloon.