TRADE-IN
by Joe Doe
"I swear", Kris said, in semi-mock exasperation, "that that's the sixth set of summer clothes you've 'outgrown' since we've been married! This has got to stop!". Ed looked away from her guiltily; he HAD gone from 190 pounds on his 6' frame when they were married 8 years ago to 255 as of this morning's weigh-in (at Kris' insistence). Kris, on the other hand, had held steady at 130 on her 5'4" body. He opened his mouth to reply, but she went on: "Look at this ad! If you don't stop gaining, I'm going to trade you in!". She thrust a 'Fall Clearance' sale flyer from the local hardware store at him. The ad in question trumpeted, in 36-point type: "Ladies! Trade in your husbands! 35 cents a pound toward a new Lawn Boy!". Ed stared at her in disbelief. "For a Lawn Mower?", he croaked. "Well", she replied, "maybe the 'lawn boy' they're advertising is 25 years old, good-looking, and well-built. THAT would be worth considering." "You wouldn't get much for me", Ed responded as tartly as he could manage, "less than $90, which doesn't buy much in the way of gigolos." "No problem", Kris said. "I'd just put down a layaway payment to hold him over the winter. And over that winter..." she smiled sardonically "you'd think you died and went to heaven. All the cake, pie, fudge, and ice cream you could eat, served to you by your loving wife--you wouldn't even have to get up from your recliner to get it. We could start with, oh..., say five meals a day, and work our way up, until it was basically ONE meal--from the time you woke up until the time you went to sleep. You're such a pig about food, you wouldn't even notice until I wedged you out the door and waddled you down to the hardware. And while you were being weighed in, I could be trying out the lawn boys in their fitting room." Ed gaped at her, and she finally laughed. "Just joking, honey--but you DO need to do something about your weight." Later that week, Ed and Kris were attending the last barbecue of the year at the house of their friends Rick and Vicki. Although Ed liked the other couple, he was always a bit uncomfortable around them. Rick, who was 6'3" and a well-buffed 180, seemed to needle the 5'4", 160-pound Vicki about her weight as mercilessly as Kris nagged him about his, only in public. Sometimes, Ed had seen Vicki fight back tears at one of Rick's gibes, and cursed himself as a coward for not saying anything--he himself thought that Vicki was not only pretty but posessed of an extremely hot body. Then too, Kris always seemed to pay just a little more attention to Rick than Ed liked. Still, the two couples got along well. Ed overheard Kris telling Vicki about her 'trade-in' plan for him, noting that "you'd never be able to trade in Rick for much. You're lucky he's stayed so fit." Kris laughed at her little joke, but Vicki only smiled, and looked over at Ed with what he thought was an appraising glance. The next week, Rick was out of state on business, and Kris was attending a day-long seminar on Real Estate (having recently attained her license), so Ed wasn't particularly shocked when Vicki called to invite him to lunch. He was a bit surprised when, rather than a restaurant, she suggested that he come to her house, but saw nothing improper about it--Kris had pretty well convinced him that, at his current weight, no woman would find him attractive. When he arrived at Vicki's, she came to the door wearing jeans and a tank top that showed off her lush figure, and carrying a pitcher of iced tea. "Come on in", she said gaily, waving toward the sofa, "sit down and have some tea before we eat.". He closed the door, and started for the sofa, but instead collided with Vicki, who had somehow wandered into his path. The iced tea pitcher emptied on him, soaking him from head to foot. "Omigod! I'm so sorry!" babbled Vicki, who had likewise received a full-length iced tea bath, "Go on into the bathroom and strip off your clothes. I'll find you somthing to wear, and I'll wash your clothes while we eat." Ed did as she said, cleaned off a bit, and opened the door a crack to exchange his doused clothes for what was, to his mortification, obviously a set of women's clothes. Vicki spoke apologetically from outside the door: "Nothing of Rick's would fit you, so I gave you the shorts and top that I wore while I was pregnant. The shorts are really stretchy (they were; a light white knit), so they should work, but (she sounded embarassed) they get kind of, umm, transparent when they're stretched, so I gave you some underwear too. And, uh, Rick's is all way too small, so those are mine--kind of my emergency fat pants (a pair of Just My size white cotton panties, size 11). I hope you don't mind; I'll try to make up for it with lunch." Hunger won out over pride; Ed donned the clothes, and followed Vicki (who was now, he noted, wearing a swimsuit top and bike shorts, into the dining room. There, he stopped short, and gaped at the mountain of food loaded onto the table. "Good God!" he said "How many people are you expecting for lunch, anyway?" "Only you", she said as he seated himself. "I'm helping Kris get you fattened up for trade-in--you know how us girls stick together!". Somehow, her smile and tone made the 'joke' friendly, unlike Kris' cutting edge. "Besides", she continued, "You look like someone who likes food.". At this, she patted his tummy. Disarmed (and a bit aroused by her outfit), he allowed "I LOVE food!" "Well, that's good", she said, pressing a button on her side of the table, "because I'm going to give you PLENTY of it!". Steel cuffs sprang from the chair arms and legs, pinning his wrists and ankles; a headpiece wrapped around, seizing his jaw and securing his head. Vicki was smiling. "This is a very special chair, as you'll see." She pressed the button again, and the chair extruded mechanical arms and began to feed him, working his jaw with the headpiece. His last sight of her for awhile was as she headed to the kitchen, saying "Excuse me, but I have to get my desserts out of the oven. Hope you get enough to eat!", and then there was only an endless stream of food heading for his mouth. Some indefinite time later, the mechanical arms slowed their feeding activity, then stopped, and Ed could see that the table was empty. The chair moved back from the table, the headpiece and clamps released, and the chair turned 90 degrees to the left, lifted and tilted to help him to his feet. And he needed the help; the wall he was facing was, with the exception of the doorway to the kitchen, mirror from floor to ceiling, allowing him to see that he was now enormously fat, at least twice his previous weight. The maternity top had long since burst its buttons, and the shorts were stretched to the bursting point; the panties were cutting into his massive belly. From the doorway, Vicki spoke with a smile: "Had enough, young man?" "Yes ma'am", he replied, thogh, incredibly, he didn't really feel full. She crossed to him with a pair of scissors and cut the waistband of the panties; immediately, the pressure on his belly eased. "Oh, you're not HALF full!", she said, laughing, "and if you can get to the kitchen, there's dessert!". She laughed again as he ponderously waddled toward the kitchen, laughed harder as he nearly got stuck in the doorway. He reached for the desserts--a counter full of cakes, pies, cookies, and fudge--only to find that his arms wouldn't reach far enough with his belly shoved against the counter. "Oh, go back into the dining room and sit down, and I'll bring your dessert in", she said between laughs. "Interesting, isn't it, how you don't get full? Makes it easy to keep you nice and fat forever. Now, according to the scale in the chair, you weigh 600 pounds; after dessert, you'll probably be close to 610. At 35 cents a pound, that's--she worked on a calculator--$213.50. I'll pay Kris that amount, and she can take Rick in trade. They're what each other wants, and I'll have a husband who won't tease me about my weight; in fact, next to you, I'll always feel skinny!" Ed dug in to dessert--he couldn't seem to help himself--and Vicki left the room, returning moments later with clothes folded over her arm. "By the way", she said straightfaced, "your clothes are dry, But it looks", she said, dissolving into laughter, "like they shrunk in the wash." And Ed knew that he would never see his feet again.