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Logarius sat alone in his dark study, staring at but not reading the book that lay spread open across the table in front of him. A disciple had died that night, caught deep by a talon from his ribcage all the way down across his hipbones, and then, a mercy, right across his throat. The church would send him a new disciple by morning.
Logarius was not a young man and he had taught many young pupils over the course of his life, and with time, his appraisals had taken on a coldness that bordered on cruelty. Each deficiency in detail should be made clear straight away – there was no use delaying things. No man without flaw was sent to his order. It was degrading, disgusting, necessary work, upon which the strange man, the feeble man, the sick man might hone himself, like on a whetstone, to achieve some semblance of graceful purpose.
Even so, he did not cherish this kind of death. He had saved no one and done nothing and had barely even remained alive long enough to comprehend the most basic tenets of an executioner. It had been a brutal waste of life.
The new recruit had been the child of drunks. A few of the Choir men had speculated that his resolve might be similarly poor, but this did not disturb Logarius because the blood was far sweeter and kinder to the senses. He had also been caught multiple times in secluded corners with other men – Logarius had practically become an expert in dealing with these cases of sexual deviation, they were sent to him so frequently. Ideally, the work of an executioner would promote the dying off of these appetites. The last boy who had been sent to him with a habit of peeking under ladies’ skirts had grown pale and pious and now seldom made an indication of any kind of desire at all.
The real problem was when a man had violent inclinations. The base, human pleasures would mix with godly ones; that was what made one truly vulnerable to the scourge. In those cases, he would need to dive in immediately, like a blade, and the urges would need to be brought out from the deepest, most wretched corners of the mind to die sputtering in the light.
But the new recruit’s case was nothing so alarming – if anything, it was a relief. Any straying indiscretions would not result in pregnancy; when the old blood got involved in such matters, it was always, always a tragedy.
But the new student Alfred was an oddly colored lamb, apparent from the moment he first stepped through the door. The executioners of their workshop tended to be sallow, quiet, and of poor natural constitution that had to be trained up with rigor. Alfred was tall and sturdy, with a sunny countenance and a natural, healthy sort of handsomeness, and the only mark of physical or psychological weakness that Logarius could find were his eyes, which from some angles looked very haunted. But they did not mar him. It was a farce to drag such a man in front of his other pupils, who ate simple grains, who did not drink, who prayed daily with their bony knees against the cold marble in front of their holy icons, contemplating the disquieting folds in the skulls of their imperious gods. Alfred was a distraction.
And worse yet, he was pure, with a simple heart full of unthinking, untrained kindness. When matters of sexuality were concerned, Logarius preferred those who were canny, if not outright jaded. He had already seen one of the students eyeing Alfred with tentative interest, like an animal tossed a strange piece of meat it could not be sure was not poisonous.
Beyond that, it would be miserable to run the boy ragged and raw and to ruin a heart like his – if he even had the stomach for the work in the first place.
During their first excursion together, Alfred kept the pace without flinching, and wielded his enormous hammer well enough. He’d been a hunter since youth, under various, less severe workshops, and the violence did not seem to phase him. But when Logarius brought out his wheel, Alfred’s gaze faltered – perhaps it was just exhaustion. Logarius would not deny his judgement was biased from the strange look of the fair-haired, wide-eyed man with blood on his white hands. But to succumb to revulsion was unacceptable. He would learn the trade, or he would be ousted. If he was too weak to fend off his despair, then Logarius would not watch the ensuing tragedy unfold.
The next night over dinner, Alfred had managed to procure several extra helpings of bread and soup from his fellows, who complied with confusion. Logarius allowed him to gorge himself like a prize hog, and then, once he was finished, led him aside to the church’s basement to demonstrate the wheel’s function in more detail. He brought with them a pig’s corpse, practically as large as a man, wide eyes gleaming uselessly, too new to smell of anything except iron and tepid flesh.
Disgust was something to be conquered, whether it be in the work of a butcher or a surgeon – their role was just as necessary and just as noble. Alfred should remain the master of his own five senses, able to witness this violence without expelling the contents of his overfull stomach. Logarius expected it to be a cruel awakening. A breaking in, so he could remold him. But instead, Alfred stared drunkenly, unmoving as if sedated, and once Logarius had finished maiming the poor, dead, broken-boned creature, Alfred stayed planted there, unmoving except for the subtle rhythm of his chest.
For now, just to tolerate it was enough. In the future, there could be truer, godlier feelings.
Logarius brought a pale, metal-adorned hand to his shoulder and rested it there lightly. He asked what was wrong. And then, intending it to be a gentle, rhetorical chastisement, if he had not gotten enough to eat earlier. But Alfred accepted this at face value, and seemed so relieved by the offer, that Logarius, dumbfounded, had granted it to him. It was not unheard of for him to allow these minor indiscretions. There were certain things that could be learned only through wisdom. But Alfred ate like a man saved from death row, laughing low, and with shaking fingers while Logarius watched him in silence, hands folded under his sharp chin. This was not normal gluttony. This was something exceptional. The poor thing needed strict guidance or he’d eat himself like a pet carp straight to death.
It did at least make sense to feed him more than an ordinary apprentice given that he was near twice as heavy as some of them already. A full stomach kept him hardy as a draft horse and even seemed to make him more inclined towards learning the gruesome work, so as his lessons continued, Logarius kept him sated on rich, fatty cuts of meat that were appropriate for maintaining one’s constitution – he had already been caught sneaking pastries heavy with cream and other frivolities. Nothing out of the ordinary for a hunter of less strict conditioning, but it was not appropriate for one entrusted with his grave duties.
To lessen the impression of favoritism and to impart the purpose of the food and the purpose of his broad body, he was given extra mundane chores. He did laundry for all his brothers and tended to the delicate, complex statues in Logarius’s own ornate quarters. He helped Logarius into his heavy ceremonial robes and kissed his hand, smiling, obviously smitten in the careless, easy sort of way that made Logarius self-conscious about his own calcified and secluded heart.
He was a nice thing to have around the order, bright and pleasant as a jewel. Somewhat spoiled, and obviously so - with time, his chin softened, and his stomach, even beneath his robes, grew wide and obviously fat. There was more spare flesh on him alone than on all of the other apprentices put together, and Logarius tolerated this as one might tolerate the novelty of a wildflower growing amongst a carefully manicured garden.
Eventually, Logarius’s fears came to fruition. In a secluded corner of the church’s courtyard, shaded by trees and dense bushes, invisible to all except those who peered out of Logarius’s lone, dark and veiled window, Alfred was curled up with one of his fellows, a small man who weighed perhaps a third of him. They were both clothed, thankfully, though the basket of treats forbidden to their order beside the two men threatened to give Logarius a headache – Alfred had for some time been tasked to eat his extra meals wearing nothing except his trousers and his undershirt. Logarius had hoped this might impart some degree of shame. It appeared to have done the opposite. Alfred laid pliantly as the thin executioner pressed pastries through his lips and ran his hands along Alfred’s swollen stomach as if it represented everything beautiful in the world.
Logarius debated whether or not to intervene. The touches were all curious, innocent, and completely above clothing. At times, the thin executioner would press deeper and pinch the flesh into obscene distortions before nervously retracting his hand. There was sweat on his forehead, sweat on his wrists. He knew when he was sinning. But it did not seem to be progressing to anything more severe. It was gauche to speak aloud, but what Logarius was really concerned about were fluids - the liquids of the body accepted the scourge more readily.
He would allow it. It was a curious feeling watching them, as if a dark cloud had lifted from his chest. The two men’s kisses were so sweet and lovely that they were practically chaste, like little doves nuzzling. Logarius could no more blame them for these urges than he could a simple animal.
He would exercise Alfred to compensate for this indulgence. In the future, he could run his hand across Alfred’s stomach to check how frequently his peers were overfeeding him.
Alfred grew heavier still, until his legs became clumsy around the awkward heft of his low-hanging stomach. He would stay seated whenever he could help it; even the act of standing was cumbersome enough to wind him. He suffered through chores without complaint, sweaty and stifling his ragged breaths, but Logarius granted him no mercy. He was too slow now to be of use on the streets, and so he worked tirelessly in their workshop cleaning blood from tables and heating tools over fire. When a prisoner was brought in alive, he would perform these less strenuous executions. And he did them well: always attentive with his work, he could grind a man’s arm down from fingertip to shoulder-socket without succumbing to the bouts of strange emotion that his frail-minded colleagues were prone to. Under his shining golden mask, his robes were a pristine blue, and they smelled clean, if slightly of chemicals. Beneath them, his grandiose and fat body strained visibly with each heavy-breathed step. He was nothing like the little wisps of men, scarcely flesh at all, who killed in the name of the church – the sinful human heat of him, obvious even by sight, was magnificent.
Outside of these dark responsibilities, he cut a far less intimidating figure. He was as soft, yielding, and weak as a pile of pastry dough, moaning quietly during daily prayers, barely able to lower up and down off his feet. At times, it would take him a full minute of struggling with his fat stomach and fat legs to rise, and tepid emotion would marr the stoic and godly faces of his fellows like a ripple through water as they watched him out of the corners of their eyes. There was, first of all, concern. There was also revulsion, though it was not pure revulsion. They were compelled by him, like a dog catching a rank scent on the wind and pressing its nose in deeper and deeper. He perturbed them; they spat his name when his fat hips brushed against theirs in the high, narrow halls of the church; they woke up in sweat-soaked sheets with his name on their lips.
During a particular galling incident, he’d spotted six men gathered around Alfred in the church basements, defiling him. Two mere executioners. The others were church doctors and members of the choir. They pleasured themselves using his armpits, his side rolls, his belly button. One enterprising man had gathered his breasts together and marred his innocent face with his spend. Another man spat disgusting words into his ear, loud enough to be heard by all; he spoke of gathering up enough seed into Alfred that he might be graced by a child from one of their great gods.
Alfred was not very mobile and struggled especially with rising from the floor. They could have gathered around him like vultures, and he would not have been capable of fighting them off. Logarius had been livid, tearing through the church with the ominous majesty of a stormcloud, informing several other divisions of the church in great detail what their underlings were accomplishing in their spare time. But Alfred eventually admitted that in his simple kindness, he had permitted this to happen: in allowing them to use his spare and useless flesh to pleasure themselves, they would be avoiding a more severe transgression of doctrine.
The day Alfred failed to rise completely, Logarius knew he had allowed this problem to rot and fester. Enough, then - he would put an end to it. He cut a path through the mingling executioners who gossiped in whispers with a mere raise of his delicate, robed arm. The murmurs gave way for silence as Logarius helped Alfred stumble to his feet and was rewarded with the hot, awkward press of their disparate stomachs. He pushed the man away from himself, perhaps too forcefully and took a handful of this wayward stomach flesh, digging his fingers in and lifting it, well within view of the other executioners. Buried under rich, stifling layers of fat, the man’s stomach was packed full nearly to bursting. Alfred’s face was as bright as a rose.
“This has gone on long enough,” Logarius said, gently. “We need to address your weight.”
Alfred was staring at the floor tiles.
“Yes - of course. It gets away from me. I try not to think about it,” he said.
“This is quite an astonishing amount of weight to avoid thinking about,” said Logarius. His hand was still embedded in Alfred’s stomach, and he could feel the nervous pace of his breath. “Come with me – we’ll talk about this in private.”
He led Alfred by the hand on his stomach as if he were tugging a disobedient dog by the collar. The other apprentices could no longer feign disinterest. Several wide-eyed faces swung around to watch them.
It was a relief for Logarius to be shut behind the heavy, carved wooden door of his office but Alfred only seemed to look more nervous.
“Undress,” Logarius said, gently even still. “Unless you would rather bare yourself in front of your fellow disciples.”
They should be doing this in front of his fellow disciples. It would do more to discourage Alfred if they could see in totality what gluttony had done to him, and it would do more to discourage them from taking advantage in turn. But as Alfred slid his robes from his body to reveal the swollen, low-hanging flesh, growing abundant as a garden, Logarius knew in his heart that it would be too shocking for them to withstand.
Alfred laughed self-consciously and rubbed the sore, pinched spot beside his belly button.
“It’s not a pleasant thing to show people.”
It was a remarkably pleasant sight, actually, and that was much of the problem. Logarius stared without speaking, a hand on his hard temple, and blood throbbed like a far-off drum beneath his fingers. The rest of his body was as still as a marble statue, and it only took a few dozen seconds of this contemplative silence for Alfred’s discomfort to become obvious.
It was strange to see him that way - with the same reflexive shame that harrowed all of Logarius’s apprentices, wearing bodies like ill-fitting carapaces. Alfred had the face of a man who would undress unabashedly in some back alley, smiling, pupils visible only in glittering fragments under the shadows of his eyelashes, flesh bare and white in the moonlight. But now, he curled in on himself, and his eyes were on the floor.
Logarius cupped his cheek. The movement was light and slow, as if he were in a trance. He put his other hand on Alfred’s midsection and then tugged and dug his nails in, as if the drooping, gorgeously soft flesh might dissolve into something more reasonable. No, he could not display such extreme gluttony to his fellows. It was pristine in its deformity; the sort of beauty that would come to one in the middle of the night to bring strange, heady dreams. It was pure, crystalized, embodied sin.
“Something evil’s gotten into you,” Logarius said, awestruck.
Sweat clung to Alfred’s forehead and he could not speak. He sucked ragged breaths through his throat and nodded, silent and obedient.
Logarius lifted a portion of his stomach and tried to imagine what it would be like to walk while attached to this encumbrance. It was some miracle Alfred remained as mobile as he was. Logarius’s hand softened unconsciously into a soothing massage; the flesh yielded so easily to his probing fingers that he felt cruel for tormenting it.
“We’re going to starve you down until you can pray properly. I will administer blood treatments when your movements become painful,” Logarius said, when he finally became capable of composing himself.
Alfred looked nervous at the mention of a diet, though he could not possibly have been expecting any other solution. But despite this and despite his previous and galling lack of discipline, he followed Logarius’s orders with diligence. Addled and slow with blood, he would pray for hours, drinking only water like a prisoner. He looked to Logarius’s jeweled hand with love and fervor, as if it were that of a god.
Logarius was the weak one. He could not bring himself to mold Alfred’s body into total and proper compliance - not completely. During these periods of want, he acquired the bedraggled and desperate qualities of a newly stray animal. The shadows under his eyes grew deep, and he did not tend to his face and hair. So Logarius kept these periods brief and merely functional, and Alfred remained sinfully handsome, double-chinned, and far too heavy. He would shrink to a size that was at least practical, and then, inevitably, with Logarius’s hand digging into his flesh with admonishment, he would fatten.
But with time, he began to look unwell, even when his weight was climbing. He needed a break – from violence, from repentance, from all of it.
The next excursion that Logarius had planned, Alfred was at least light enough to join them. He took a more stationary role back in an abandoned house repurposed to serve as a center of their action, though some clever beasts managed to claw their way in regardless. The most minor of injuries became a pretext. Alfred was sent to stay at a nearby inn meant for wealthy patrons until the hunt was over. And when the hunt was over, he was kept there for more recuperation while the rest of their order travelled to deal with an even nastier strain of the scourge.
It was a solemn place, and the people there were not friendly. Outside the church, the title of executioner held forboding sway. But they would provide him with whatever he needed, and they would not ask questions. He could sleep in beds larger and softer than anything available back at home, and he could stuff himself full of custards, cakes and meats covered in the heavy sauces full of wines and spices he was not usually permitted to have.
It was months later when Logarius was informed by letter that his student was potentially displaying symptoms of beasthood. Logarius had written a response threatening dire consequences if they harmed so much as a hair on his head. While he hurried back to investigate, they promised that they did not bother him. They kept him isolated in his room and provided him with enough food, delivered by cart without greeting him face to face, that he would have no cause to grow violent.
Logarius was the first man to see him in weeks and the sight took the air out of his lungs.
Alfred could barely even walk. His stomach hung low, tumbling completely out of his robes to be bared obscenely to the elements. His breasts hung low as well, pulling the thick linen fabric tightly around themselves. Alfred planted one fleshy arm upon a desk to try to support himself, but it was forced to such an awkward angle by his wide body that it barely seemed to help. One leg trembled slightly. His face was coated in sweat, and his hair looked as if he had slept on it.
He panted too violently to greet Logarius, and yet the poor thing who seemed liable to pass out from the mere effort of standing managed to tend to him. He took his coat and hung it, and then poured him a glass of water. He was about to warm Logarius’s hands for him until Logarius, alarmed, ordered the breathy, barely waddling man to sit on the bed and rest himself.
It took minutes for his breathing to calm completely, and Logarius would not allow him to speak until it was normal.
Alfred must have been twice as heavy as when he had last seen him, something he had not considered to be physically possible. A third chin bloomed proud and prominent under his second, and his hips, digging deep into the bed, threatened to overwhelm its width. It had been meant for couples, and yet he alone was enough to fill it. He had more rolls now on his torso than could be properly counted, and the sprawling stomach arranged upon his lap lopsidedly brought something deeper and darker to Logarius’s gut than disgust. As a first order of business, Alfred would need new clothing. It was not right to put something on display that drove up such wild emotions.
“I can’t control myself,” said Alfred, finally. He was so quiet he was nearly whispering. “I’m afraid I don’t have much time left.”
“Show me your eyes,” said Logarius. He kept his face still as stone, and his tone even. Practiced as he was, he felt more like a shell of armor than a human being.
He put his thumb under Alfred’s bottom lid and his index finger above his top lid and pulled, very gently, but Alfred gasped regardless. Logarius’s eyesight was not as sharp as it used to be, so he held him like this while he brought his face closer.
Beneath Alfred’s furrowed brows, his pupils were wide, but entirely normal. Round, without bleeding or segmentation into the surrounding colors. The whites were still very white and there was an average amount of vasculature.
“You’re not showing symptoms here,” Logarius said. The tension seemed to melt out of Alfred, leaving his face empty and exhausted, but Logarius was too prudent to call things finished. “The legs will sometimes show signs first. Could you remove your pants?”
Alfred looked mortified.
“I can’t close them. I haven’t been able to wear them for weeks.”
Logarius must have been addled - Alfred’s enormous gut seemed to suck in all attention to itself with gravity. Of course he couldn’t fit pants up over those wretched hips. If he could, surely there would be some trace of them somewhere under all that belly fat.
He rested a hand upon its swollen surface and gave a silent prayer in trepidation. He would have to push it around if he wanted any visibility. None of his previous examinations had been performed like this.
“Be cautious,” Alfred added with even more shame. “I haven’t been able to bathe either.”
“That’s not acceptable,” Logarius said. With all the matters of sick blood and healthy blood, there were few things as important to their order as hygiene. “No wonder you’re ill. You’ll get a scouring bath tonight.”
“I don’t fit in the tub.” Alfred laughed with such weak breath that it became pitiful.
“Then you’ll stand above it,” Logarius said. Was it possible? Alfred seemed so desperately weak. Back at the church workshop, there were at least devices that could be used to keep him aloft.
He pushed aside Alfred’s stomach, and tried to think of it as something trivial - as course and unappealing as the vegetable scraps brushed aside after slicing in clean thin lines – but this was made difficult when Alfred moaned under his breath, obviously stuffed full to the gills like usual. His legs were so swollen with rolls that were not symmetrical, which could well be a mark of the scourge, but could also be part of the novelty of stuffing so much fat into a single person’s body. Logarius had never seen anyone so large before; it could well be normal considering the circumstances. The color and the texture of Alfred’s skin seemed unmarred, and when he groped handfuls of these shallow, numerous rolls, Alfred confirmed pink-cheeked that each one still had sensation.
His probing hands arrived at Alfred’s thigh region, still covered by his resting stomach. He sighed, gently, before nudging the protrusion with his fingertips.
“This is quite a problem for you, isn’t it. Hold as much of it as possible out of the way; I can’t deal with it and examine you all at once – yes, that’s right, just like that,” Logarius said as Alfred tried the best he could to scoop his stomach into his arms.
The smell was not filthy as he was expecting - in fact, there was the distinct scent of plague-ward wildflowers mingling with the natural smell of sweat and of harsher soaps. The skin was fresh and ruddy, as if it had already been scrubbed very well.
“Ah – you have been tending to yourself. Very good. It must be difficult to reach a cloth down here.”
“I try to make less of a mess of things,” Alfred murmured.
He had perhaps groomed himself with a tinge of obsession – though his thighs were a lovely shade, they did look very tender and sensitive. It was not proper to make the skin near the privates look so compellingly red. It was like a supple fruit found amongst dense foliage; very tempting to lips and fingers.
But he was clean – his skin looked healthy. That was the most important thing. Logarius stroked Alfred’s stomach in commendation, and he made a choked, sinful sound.
“Things will be easier once we get you home where we can take care of you,” Logarius said.
He ran his hands along Alfred’s stomach simply because it was the most accessible part of him, but he really did seem to enjoy being touched there more than was normal or proper.
“Raise your arms. I need to get a look at the rest of you,” Logarius said.
Alfred had difficulty with these rich, decadent appendages. They wobbled slightly as his breath grew rough and heavy from the mere effort of lifting them.
“You poor thing,” Logarius said under his breath. He rubbed again along Alfred’s distended stomach in an attempt to encourage him, but the flesh was cool and soft as cream around the edge of a milk bottle. His stomach alone probably weighed as much as two or three thin men stuffed into a sack. He lost himself in contemplation, stroking again and again the same spot, until he realized Alfred’s cheeks had become red and his heavy arms were swaying.
It was clear that dressing and undressing had become exhausting tasks for him. Logarius pulled his thick robes from his head at once, and then, there was more supple, pliant, naked flesh arranged in front of him than he had ever seen before in his entire life.
Alfred turned his plump cheek and refused to make eye contact. He crossed his arms ineffectually over his broad, fleshy chest, as if they could ever possibly hope to conceal the extent of his sin. Multiple rolls of stomach tumbled downwards out of reach, where his belly button had been stretched to an impressive length and deepness. At its lowest reaches, it hung sagging and dimpled, less proud and spectacular, stretched far beyond sensible limits. His hips were a twisting, alluring shape, bulging outwards insistently to dominate the surrounding space; none of the normal subtleties of hinted bone and muscle. Alfred could not quite keep his nipples hidden under his arms and the small glimpses of them were as lovely and pink as flower petals.
“How bad is it?” Alfred asked. “I haven’t been able to look at myself, I’ve been so terrified of what I’d find.”
Logarius worked his graceful hand between two of Alfred’s plump stomach rolls, pinching the flesh there, and Alfred bit down a yelp.
“These will need to be investigated thoroughly by hand, but for the time being, I will say that you appear to be merely an astonishingly fat human being.”
“Oh,” Alfred said, cringing. Sweat and guilt shone on his forehead. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I haven’t been able to control myself.”
“The fault is mine,” said Logarius. “I haven’t kept proper watch over you.”
He stroked along that soft, luxurious stomach like a noble might a silk-furred cat. He did not like the idea of starving what had grown into such a weak and decadent creature – to wring the life out of him slowly as if he were a mere street pigeon. He could perhaps put him to work instead; getting those weak, overstuffed legs waddling and forcing air into those overly-cushioned lungs.
“Rise – if you stand in the tub, I’ll bathe you. You need to get strong enough for that.”
It was lucky Logarius had arrived when he did, as this was no longer a very simple matter. A month longer and Alfred could have been confined to that bed completely. He made several clumsy attempts to shift his weight around, muttering exhausted sounds and frantic apologies between each one, tugging and repositioning his stomach fat to better distribute his weight. Logarius watched with his arms crossed and his mouth clamped shut, resisting the reflexive impulse to lend the struggling man a hand.
When he did finally manage to pull himself off the bed, he moaned, as if the position was painful for him. He doubled over panting, gut still half-poured over the bed, and he looked to his master as if he might be granted mercy, but he saw only a stern, stoic expression.
“You need to be able to walk,” Logarius said, not quite able to muffle his concern.
Alfred, always obedient, pushed himself up from the support of the creaking bed and began to move. His chins wobbled, his arms wobbled, and the creampuff flesh on his hips wobbled. His low gut, tantalizing inches from the floor, swung in a slower, slapping rhythm against his thighs. His breasts swung too, beautiful and obscene, and his rear was something spectacular, having been forced by the entire weight of him upon it into a relatively flat shelf that was simultaneously too wide to clear the door to the room. He’d have to be pushed through it, a hand on his supple cheeks, pounds of flesh gathering up painfully at his sides.
Logarius took his eyes to the ceiling and the sky beyond it. He gave a brief, silent prayer. There were things even in his long life that he had yet to witness.
Alfred meanwhile positioned himself above the tub, flesh hanging precariously past its boundaries. The rim cut into his soft stomach, and he leaned heavily against the wall, run-ragged and soaked in sweat.
“Good, Alfred,” Logarius said, tasting the sweet blood that coursed through his veins in the dry breaths that escaped from him. He swallowed uselessly. “I’ll make this quick for you.”
“I’m sorry that you have to do this,” Alfred murmured hoarsely.
“That is unnecessary. Out of every grim duty required by my office, this is perhaps the most pleasant.”
He cradled Alfred’s plump cheek, as he drew heady, gorgeous breaths.
“Master,” Alfred gasped, so quiet that it was barely perceptible.
His flesh was still wobbling. Even the tiniest breath seemed to be magnified into heretical decadence. His fat breasts bobbed above his beleaguered ribcage, glistening with sweat as if they had already been wetted with water, as obscene as a hanging udder on a cow. It was some absurd humor of the universe to place such a chest on a man otherwise so obedient and lovely.
He touched them. His hand moved before his mind, and Alfred squeezed his eyes shut so that he would not have to look at him.
“These will need to be strapped down so that they don’t attract too much attention from the other apprentices.”
He was popular amongst his order, cursed with gifts unknown to them; through no fault of his own, he was capable of inspiring depraved urges. It would not do to have him waddling around their enclave with breasts as large as cream cakes wobbling untethered. They were difficult enough as it was for Logarius to deal with; for someone younger and less honed, they could be disastrous.
Alfred nodded gratefully. His legs were already practically shaking with exertion, and he muffled down mild moans of pain.
Logarius drew a bath and soaked a rag long and slow. He worked it delicately between Alfred’s folds, mindful of the potential to scrape against a beast-bite or other mark of the scourge. Alfred bit his lips, embarrassed by that tender treatment when his body was so clearly in need of rebuke.
“In the future, the other students can help with this,” Logarius said as he moved down towards the more impressive lower reaches of Alfred’s belly. “It may temper their lusts to see how this body encumbers you – or, if nothing else, put them towards more productive use.”
“The others?” Alfred said, suddenly very nervous. “No… no, I couldn’t.”
“Why? Is that not acceptable?” Logarius asked. “You do not seem capable of doing this in its entirety on your own.”
As he pushed Alfred’s belly aside, he found a strange mound of flesh beneath it, hanging low and pendulous, but not so haggard as the surrounding flesh. It was as smooth as a cabochen jewel; gorgeous, strange, and disquieting.
Alfred had begun the process of composing himself enough to provide an explanation, made even more time-consuming by his breathlessness. But Logarius, practically deaf by wonder, reached out and pressed his hands into Alfred’s hidden pouch of flesh.
Thick moans crawled out of Alfred’s mouth like lava. He turned to rest both hands against the cold wooden wall, panting and whining.
“Alfred? Are you alright? Does that hurt you?”
“No… Please, no. You must not touch that. It’s filthy.”
“Then it must be cleaned,” Logarius said firmly. ”It must have been torture, struggling here alone. You’ll feel better afterwards.”
His hand did not move away from the small cavern hidden in Alfred’s fat. It was too sticky here to be sweat, and warm – with Alfred’s wayward pleas and sudden and intense embarrassment, it was not a hard equation to propose a solution to. His privates were buried deep in that little cleft of flesh, smothered to uselessness.
“Like a sheath for a sword,” Logarius muttered.
It was quite a useful part of Alfred’s anatomy: a belt of chastity to mitigate his newfound loveliness. It was only a shame that this was part of Alfred and not one of the more rebellious students. Logarius had never caught him trying to penetrate anyone, though further mitigation could not be complained about.
“Don’t be ashamed of this. It’s quite lovely,” Logarius instructed his still squirming student.
“I need a cage for myself,” Alfred finally managed to spit out. “If you want to have me cleaned without shaming myself, I need a cage.”
Stuffed deep in all this fat? Logarius gave it a pinch.
“That seems superfluous.”
“There’s so much friction,” Alfred said. “Whenever I move or shift position – I swear, I don’t try to do it. I can barely even reach myself. But they’d be finding –” He gave a deep breath.
“ – my spend..”
Logarius looked upwards to see Alfred’s face. He sighed silently to himself.
“Calm yourself. How frequently does this happen? Every day?”
Alfred did not seem any calmer, and he did not answer immediately.
“Multiple times per day?” Logarius prodded further.
“I don’t count it,” Alfred said, half-sheepish and half-affronted.
Logarius stroked Alfred’s stomach again in an attempt at kindness. Alfred closed his eyes and pretended not to adore the touch.
“I understand. They don’t need to be cleaning your seed from you.”
Alfred sighed. His body relaxed so readily, that Logarius worried he might not be able to hold himself up.
“Thank you – Thank you ,” he said.
“I’ll take care of it in private, every morning. We don’t need to tell anyone.”
Alfred’s smile was nervous.
“It does happen multiple times per day. Sometimes – only sometimes!” he admitted. His cheeks were still deliriously pink.
Curse the man’s youth! He seemed built for nothing except sin and tempting others towards it.
“It’s alright – it’s alright, Alfred, look at me.”
His messy hair was damp, and sweat and water clung to him in equal measure. He had never seen the poor man look so sick in the head.
“I’ll work you so hard and so many times that you won’t even be able to think about it without feeling ill for the rest of the day.”
“Oh… Master,” Alfred said. He was not used to this sort of blunt sentiment and seemed nearly woozy. He gave a smile that was outright improper before banishing it from his visage.
“You are quite a lot of work,” Logarius said to himself as he rose to his feet.
The bath was finished, and Alfred needed to be dried, which was just as prolonged and meticulous a task as washing him. Alfred looked so unsteady on his feet that Logarius allowed him to rest himself back on the bed while he took a towel between his various rolls and crevices.
“Stand, once more. I need to reach the other side of you,” Logarius said, after spending a good deal of time on Alfred’s stomach.
“I-I don’t think I can,” Alfred managed between his still exaggerated breaths. “God, I know I’m a mess. I haven’t spent so much time on my feet in weeks.”
“Hands and knees then,” Logarius said. “I’ll train you back to proper shape eventually.”
Alfred struggled over his hefty, wobbling stomach. His arms were forced wide, his legs were forced wide, and his stomach and breasts hung all the way down to the cushioned mattress, spreading outwards when they could not hang any longer. His enormous pale ass was spread bare to Logarius, flushed pink from both heat and embarrassment.
“Sorry,” Alfred mumbled. “It must look bizarre.”
He said that as if it wasn’t such a spectacularly, exaggeratedly erotic body part that it could strike a man dumb from across a crowded room. Logarius could imagine, as he toweled its cleft, that his robes would get caught in it, making its shape and bulk more obvious.
“You do not need to be worried about what it looks like when you should not be receptive towards that kind of attention in the first place,” Logarius said. He was doing his best to ignore the implicative elements of this posture, and Alfred was doing him no favors.
He remembered the incident with an entire crowd of men abusing Alfred’s poor flesh. He was even fatter now, barely mobile, and altogether defenseless; each bounce of flesh a beckoning call for those of disgusting inclinations.
No, it was dangerous to keep him like this in front of the other students. He had grown too frail. If someone of ill character were to try to tempt him with honeyed words or some fattening pastries or an obscene hand planted dead in the center of his hanging stomach – Logarius ran his own bare hand across the encumbering flesh of Alfred’s rear as Alfred huffed and moaned in humiliation. There was so much of it, it would be difficult to defile him this way – but not impossible. It was not as protected as the front of him.
With Alfred in this state, struck mad by his base urges, trembling in fear and joy against his own hungers and lusts, sating himself and sating himself, over and over and over – It would perhaps be better for there to be a greater barrier of flesh to protect him. If he were too large to be penetrated, just for a time. A few more stray pounds on his already massive frame, like a few flakes of snow into an avalanche. It could not exacerbate the problem any further. He’d keep him fed too well to even think to distract him from his sin and suffering.