November Poll Story: A Sucker's Bet (Patreon)

George groaned, rubbing his head. He was resting on a soft, comfortable bed, but as he tossed and turned, he soon realized it was not his. Frowning, he sat up and peered into a mirror facing opposite the bed, looking at his own tawny fur and scarlet mane. But soon, the lion’s green eyes widened as he looked around, realizing he was in a completely foreign place. The walls were plain, and there were no windows; there was a giant TV mounted on the wall beside the bed, including a comfy looking beanbag chair, a rather generous amount of workout equipment, and a strange looking machine in one corner, that looked like someone smashed a refrigerator and an oven together, and two doors. Glancing around, George rushed for the first one, but scoffed when he wrenched the door open only to reveal a spacious bathroom. 

“Damn.”

He turned on his heel and rushed for the second door, a heavy, steel reinforced slab that wouldn’t budge. George was fairly fit, with broad shoulders and muscular limbs, but he couldn’t force it open.

“What the hell kind of place is this?” he shouted in frustration.

“I am so glad you asked that.”

The lion swerved around to face the television, a grotesque, red and white mask leering at him through the screen. “Let’s play a game.”

“What the fuck?!” George screamed, tripping over himself and plastering himself against the wall, shaking with fear.

There was an uproarious laughter as the figure on the television removed his mask, clutching his middle as he guffawed. “Oh, that was too good.” A kangaroo with a shock of red hair smirked at George. “Welcome to my little experiment.”

“Experiment? What the hell is all this? You can’t keep me here, I have my rights!” George shouted at the screen.

“Sure you do, big guy. I’m Archie, by the way, not that you asked. But we’re going to take a little wager. See that machine over there?” He gestured to the right, where the monstrosity of an oven and fridge combo sat. A small touch screen lit up as Archie pointed at it. “That machine is a little invention of mine; it can make absolutely any food for you that you could imagine. I’ve left you with every amenity you could wish. This tv set, a nice bed, workout equipment… all you have to do is keep from putting on weight, for two months.”

George arched his brow, folding his arms. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re a fitness freak, right? Proud of that taut, muscular bod? Let’s see how long you can keep it. If you manage to keep yourself in shape, at the end of three months, I’ll let you go. And, hell, since I’m generous, I’ll give you a million dollars to boot.”

“What if I don’t want to play?” George shot back.

Archie smirked. “You can try to escape, but that door is repurposed from an atomic bomb shelter. Tanks couldn’t break it down. Its locks are on an electrical grid, so don’t try cracking the lock. What’re you afraid of? All you have to do is keep in shape for three months… haven’t you been doing that all your life?”

George tapped his foot. “How do I know you’ll keep your word? Do you even have a million dollars?”

The kangaroo scoffed. “Look around you. This place may not be the Ritz Carlton, but it’s not cheap, either. Trust me, I have the money. One million dollars… that’s more money than most people make in a decade. And you only need to work at it for three months. What do you say?”

The lion glared at Archie’s image on the screen. “Fine. I’ll play.”

“Good. It’s not like you had a choice, anyways.” Archie’s face disappeared, and the screen went blank. 

George huffed, immediately turning to the workout equipment. If he was going to win a million dollars, he didn’t want to leave anything to chance. If he could have any food he wanted, he could stick to healthy options; salads, grilled chicken, fish, whole grains. He nodded, confident in his plan as he turned on the treadmill. What could go wrong?

For a week, everything went according to plan. He slept well, he worked up a good sweat, and he ate four small meals a day, with only water and iced tea to drink. Only, as time wore on, George found it was getting harder to keep track of time. In a windowless cell, and only video games, recorded shows, and movies available on the television, no live programming, it was next to impossible to tell time anymore. George admired his trim, well-sculpted physique in the mirror of the bathroom, and as he moved to the touch screen, he frowned. Was he supposed to have breakfast, or lunch? He had lingered a bit in bed before hitting the workout equipment… he decided for breakfast, and typed in an egg-white omelet, then paused. He’d been doing well so far. He could afford a cheat day, right? Something to break up the monotony. His stomach growled as he typed in a cheese and bacon omelet. With toast and jam, and a cinnamon roll. 

George rubbed his hands as he grabbed the food from the strange machine, and immediately tore into it, savoring the rich flavor. 

“I’ve got this in the bag,” he muttered to himself, flopping into the beanbag chair and turning on a movie. He dozed off halfway through, and when he snorted awake, he moved for lunch… maybe some fried chicken. Then it dawned on him that he could have literally anything; why not experiment, if this was going to be a cheat day? Fried chicken and waffles, with a strawberry milkshake. And a nice slice of blueberry pie.

He had no idea that his single cheat day was actually stretched out to three; after gorging on more and more decadent food, George had rendered himself into a near permanent food coma. When he finally came to, after eating more food in a few days than he felt he had in his entire life, he looked listlessly at the workout equipment. He needed to sleep this off; besides, he was in great shape. It would take a lot to undo all that hard work.

The workout equipment went untouched for more than a month. George had fallen into a too-familiar trap, going from his food machine, to the television, to the bed, just killing time. Eating, it turned out, seemed to make time go faster than working out, so the lion treated his growing case of cabin fever by gorging on more and more extravagant meals. His appetite grew, and soon, his formerly fit and trim physique was buried under reams of fat and lard. 

His belly was quickly filling more and more of his lap, an impressive feat, as that unending time spent on his ass meant the lion was developing a particularly pear-shaped build, with plush, bulbous buttocks spilling out of the spandex shorts provided for him, with wide, jiggling thighs that were smacking against each other whenever he walked, which meant he found more and more excuses to stay seated; he had developed a massive case of denial. Besides; all he had to do was stay mobile. When he had a million dollars, he could just hire a trainer to get back in shape. 

A few more weeks passed by, and George’s descent into gluttony only seemed to pick up from there. He was in a middle of a meal he had called dunch; a meal that extended from lunch to dinner, a half-eaten rotisserie chicken resting on the crest of his belly. It was one of five, with a carton of ice cream for dessert and a bucket of fries; two liters of soda to wash it all down. George was easily four times the lion that he once was, any hint of well-toned muscle buried under an avalanche of fat in every regard. The feline had ballooned to some truly impressive proportions; his belly alone was already bigger than he had been when he was first trapped here. It was a huge, tawny boulder of furry lard, cascading over the waistband of his long-suffering shorts and starting to hang down past his knees, constantly sloshing against thighs thicker than tree trunks, rolling off one another whenever he waddled, his chest sagged like two bags of flour over the curving surface of his stomach, and on top of that was an impressive collection of thick, ring-like chins only just covered by his mane, framing his face with dimpled chipmunk cheeks.

The workout equipment had begun to gather dust, which George didn’t like to think about, burying any lingering thoughts in another snack and another round on one of the video games installed on the television set. He was lost in a haze, gunning for another high score; it was as close to physical exertion as he had gotten in weeks. Just as he was about to hit that coveted score, however, the television cut out, the screen going blank. 

“Hey!” George gasped, making a half-hearted attempt to stand up in rage, his whole belly wobbling from him shifting his weight. He was shrouded in darkness, and then emergency lights flickered on. He heard a click, and then a thought came to George. Archie told him the door to his room was on an electrical grid. He had to rock back and forth to build up the inertia to heave his mass up, his fatty legs already feeling strained as the bulk of his jiggling, tank-sized belly settled, drooping against his knees. He took a few cumbersome, waddling steps to the door, and pushed on it; and then it opened. 

“Heh.” He stared into the gaping darkness of a long hallway. His feline instincts gave him some sight in the dark, but this was the first time he could get back home in a long time… and million dollars or not, if he could show people what had happened to him, he could sue Archie for a lot more than a mere million dollars.

“Come on, man, just keep walking…” George huffed. The first turn in the hallway, and he was already winded. His legs were shaking, but he had to keep going, even if he was starting to regret not grabbing the other half of the chicken for the road. Still, he saw a small ray of light around the corner, and it looked natural. A wide grin dimpling his billowy cheeks, he trotted, thunder thighs smacking against his doughy middle. He could even feel his round, globular posterior spilling out of his shorts as they wobbled. 

The bloated lion turned the corner, and entered a cavernous area the size of a hangar, and there, at the end, he saw the rays of moonlight streaming in from a gaping opening; there was his way out. He summoned up what strength he had, trudging his way towards the light. He almost instantly lost his breath carrying all his adipose. He wheezed, and leaned against the wall, almost losing his balance as the wall began to give.

“What the…?” he looked the wall over, only to realize it was soft to the touch, and furry. There was an electric hum, and the lights suddenly came back on, one by one illuminating six different parts of the hangar. All in a row, George saw panels of the same, furry wall, but then as he craned his neck, his jaw dropped. They weren’t walls, or some sort of goods stored away, as was his second thought; six huge, mountainous bellies were all lined up like a stable, and George realized he was staring at six lions that all looked like him. Their all-consuming guts had taken up areas the size of houses, bellies all like doughy avalanches, buried their legs in a landslide of lard. Their arms, so swollen with lard they were now wider than they were long by several feet, could barely move, with love handles the size of cars pressing them up from below, and sheer waves of fat coming off marshmallow-soft chests pinning them down from above. All their cheeks and multiple, tire-sized chins now made up the majority of their identical faces, and the rolling layers of fat that dribbled down their backs piled atop monumental pairs of asscheeks.

Looking at them all, George shook his head in disbelief when he realized staring up at them, all mindlessly gulping down food from tubes that descended from the ceiling, it was like looking in a funhouse mirror.

“Ahh, look who’s up and about.”

George turned around, facing Archie. He gasped, as the kangaroo was pushing in a gurney, upon which laid himself, as he had been before he had been captured by Archie, still a fit, strong lion.

“W-what the hell kind of place is this?!” George stammered, staring wide-eyed at the lion on the gurney.

“Ah, I see you’ve met your brothers,” Archie chuckled. He approached George, giving his belly an appreciative squeeze. “You put up a good amount of resistance; Adam there, he was first, and didn’t last a day before he fell into hedonistic gluttony.” He pointed to the biggest lion, his eyes glazed over as he gulped down more food. “Let’s see… after Adam put up so little resistance, I had to try it again, so I cloned him, over and over. We’ve also got Brian, Carl, David, Eddy, Frank, and now, you, George. You’ll fit in here just nicely, I think.” He turned to the lion on the gurney. “Oh, and meet your new younger brother, Hank. Sorry about the power outage there; cloning requires an ungodly amount of power. I can’t wait to see how much he’ll resist.”

“This is a dream, you gotta be kidding me!” George stammered, making a break for the exit. “You’re insane!”

Archie held out his foot, tripping George; the hefty lion landed with a whump, his bulbous fat cushioning his fall. His legs kicked helplessly in the air as the kangaroo rolled him down to an empty stall. “You’ve been a bad boy, George. We had a deal! And, heck- you could still walk. Who knows? You may have just made it. But, now you’ve broken the rules, so, I guess it’s only fair you sit here and spend some quality time with your brothers.”

“W-what? You can’t!” George blurted out as he was sat upright. He tried to resist, but Archie shoved a tube into his maw, and the lion was almost knocked back by the force of the gelatinous foodstuff being shoved into his mouth. It was sweet; undeniably sweet. And to keep from choking, he was forced to gulp it down. Slowly, the sugary taste began to soothe him. His escape attempt had left him tired, so slowly, his eyelids became heavier and heavier.

“That’s right,” Archie whispered, kneading his thick, voluptuous love handles. “Just sit back and relax, George. You made it. You’re home now.”