"OH, NO! Not again!" Venetia hastily slumped her shoulders, glanced around the office, edged around her desk and headed for the door with a folder across her chest. "Back in five minutes," she said brightly to anyone who might be listening, although they all seemed fast asleep, or hard at work.
The ladies' room was empty, which was a blessing. She closed the cubicle door behind her, and took a deep breath. Yes, no doubt about it. There was an feeling of something unpleasantly loose inside her shirt. Once the buttons were undone, she had the confirmation.
"Shit, shit, shit!" She didn't find her choice of vocabulary at all ironic, given her present location. This was too serious a moment for whimsical thoughts. "My last serviceable bra!"
It was structural failure, big-time. The bra which had dumped her breasts in her lap on the train on Monday had been an old one, and it had given good service for three years of wash n' wear. Yesterday morning's bra, which had come adrift as she ran up the steps from the subway, had never been really comfortable, even when it had been new. Most women were wearing a bra of the wrong size, she remembered reading somewhere. 'Me too,' she had thought. She put it down to being an in-between size.
With such a slender frame for her above average height, Venetia had always had difficulty getting hold of the 32D-cup she really needed, and even when she did, it was a lottery whether it was comfortable or not. And this one was one of those rarities, a really comfortable bra. Correction: this one had been one of those rarities. It was no more. It had shuffled off its mortal coil and gone to meet its Maker. It was an ex-bra.
A safety pin might see her through the day � at least, the rest of the working day. The fastenings were at the front � Dennis, breast-obsessed pervert and love of her life, had begged her to get herself a front-loader this time � but she still had to take her shirt and the ruined bra right off to see the full extent of the damage. The hooks had pulled out of the material completely. How could that have happened? How could a bra have given up the ghost in such a dramatic manner? Had it shrunk?
There was a simple answer to that one. Her entire wardrobe of bras, shirts, blouses and sweaters hadn't somehow shrunk in three days. Venetia had grown. It should have been obvious anyway. Running her hands across her naked breasts, she could tell they were noticeably much fuller than usual. They felt hugely full, tight as a drum. Not the same shape as a drum, though. They were plump and round, and the nipples stuck out like something she couln't quite think of a simile for. "No way in the world," she said to herself, answering her own unspoken question: 'No way in the world could I get away with not wearing a bra for the rest of the afternoon.' She was firm enough: her breasts weren't going to flop down around her navel, but they certainly did bounce. And if she walked around for the rest of the day with her big titties bouncing up and down like very large puppies in a very small sack, someone other than the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Very Large Puppies would be sure to notice. Especially with her nipples sticking out like this.
She discarded the solutions as they came to her. No, she could not walk around stiff as a statue for two more hours. She could not stick Band-Aid over her nipples. She suspected they didn't make Band-Aid wide enough. It was Dennis's fault: he couldn't leave the damn things alone. Suck, suck, suck!
Hastily, guiltily, she lowered her breast from her lips, and rubbed a fingertip across the nipple. It was longer than the last joint of her index finger. There was no chance she could ever hope to disguise those...
"Damn!" Someone had come into the ladies' room.
"Venetia? You in here?"
No escape. The cubicle door was all too obviously shut. She couldn't just sit there and not say anything. Someone obviously had to be in the cubicle, having a shit, or playing with herself to while away the afternoon. Venetia blushed.
"Yeah. Won't be a minute."
"Oh, good! Butch wants to see you right away." The voice sounded relieved. It was Frances. Why couldn't she have seen Mr Butcher and found out what he wanted?
"Five minutes, okay?"
"Okay. Enjoy yourself!" The door closed with a faint squeak. Little bitch!
Venetia fumbled away with the bra, finally getting it to stay together with three safety pins from her purse. She had to climb back into the bra, as it was now permanently clasped, and it creaked dangerously as she pulled the straps over her shoulders then made herself as small as she could before trying to pull the thing down over her plump breasts. She could get the right one in there, or the left, but not both at the same time. It took three attempts before she plucked up the courage to just go right ahead and pull it down. It was almost bursting, but it held. She tucked in her breasts underneath where they were too big for the cups, and tried to do the same with the surplus flesh at the sides, where the bra was forcing her breasts up almost into her armpits. Even with the shoulder straps slackened off, it was a lousy fit. How ever had she got into it this morning? Surely she couldn't have grown as much as that? Shaking her head, she remembered that it had been a little tight, but her bras always did feel tight in the mornings. They always had done. Hadn't they?
The buttons of her shirt were a problem, too. Even now, held in by her poor broken bra, she guessed she must be a couple of inches bigger than she had been, and this shirt was intended to be a snug fit. Even snugger now, she thought, hopelessly trying to make it look somehow a little less indecent.
She tried various poses in front of the mirror, and finally settled on a slightly round shouldered slouch. It made her feel like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Or the Hunchfront. 'The bells, the bells...'
"Ah, there you are." Mr Butcher glanced pointedly at his watch. "I was beginning to think you'd wandered off and got lost." Bastard. "Look, it's nearly three. Would you take this folder over to McKellar, Fyfe, Kinross, Buchan and N'kwase, over in Dudley Square. You can have some petty cash for the bus fare. After that there won't be much point in coming back in, so you can take the rest of the afternoon off."
"Thank you, Mr Butcher." She took the folder, trying not to breathe. By the time she got over to Dudley Square, it would be nearly four, and by the time she'd made her way back to the Central station, she'd have missed her usual train home by ten minutes.
"Are you okay? You haven't hurt your back, have you?" He was obviously wondering if she was thinking of taking a day's sick leave.
"Just a little. I was lifting some files on to the top shelf and I felt something go." Which was true, in a kind of manner of speaking. "I'll take a hot bath when I eventually get home."
The barb was lost on Mr Butcher. "Yes, well," he snapped, opening another folder. "As long as you're not hoping for time off." Venetia felt his eyes on her as she turned for the door. She also felt one of her safety pins spring loose, and she clutched at her chest, between and beneath her breasts, in a torment in case the pin stuck into her tits. She moved with exaggerated care to the doorway, feeling another of the pins let go, then shuffled round, turning her whole body to wish the astonished Mr Butcher a good afternoon. She escaped, closing the door just as the last pin came loose and jabbed her in the soft underbelly of her left breast.
Venetia stuffed the bra in her bag and emerged from the toilets into the busy station concourse. She had decided to take the subway rather than the bus, as it gave her an opportunity to scurry for cover and get this useless bra off. The downside of the situation was that she now found herself travelling on a crowded train in an extremely snug-fitting shirt. She had the full and undivided attention of every other passenger, including a party of giggling schoolgirls, a number of startled businessmen and an embarrassed priest who happened to be sitting directly opposite her.
The dark reflection in the windows told her everything she didn't want to know about her appearance. Her nipples were just about punching their way through the shirt. Even more worrying, and she was sure it wasn't her imagination, her areolae were clearly visible as puffed-up dark haloes round each spiky nipple. Cheeks burning as brightly as those of the unfortunate man of God across the aisle, she pressed the folder against her chest, only to feel her nipples trying to burn two matching holes through the stiff manila. She tried to find somewhere to look where she wouldn't have to meet anyone's eyes. Finally, she unfocused her gaze and stared into space, realising too late that she was now staring intently at the groin of the Reverend Father. Sadly, all was not peaceful in the priest's pants. He had a hard-on halfway down to his knee.
"What a disgusting, pitiful, shameful display of wanton lust," Venetia thought, rising from her seat gratefully as the train rumbled into her station. The priest seemed about to get off at the same stop, but he changed his mind and sat down hurriedly. "And what a disgusting, pitiful, shameful waste of a cock as big as my arm! At least, he can go and get absolution for his vile thoughts. A few hundred Hail Maries and he'll be right as rain." Then she clamped the folder to her chest again as the escalator bore her to street level.
Mr Butcher's plan of travelling by bus hadn't been based entirely on cost effectiveness and efficiency. The bus stop was right in the middle of Dudley Square, almost outside the corporate headquarters of McKellar, Fyfe, Kinross, Buchan and N'kwase, Makers of Finest Rainwear. The subway station was more like two hundred yards away. A big mistake, Venetia decided, as she came out of the station exit into a torrential downpour. In the thirty seconds before she decided that this was truly ridiculous and scampered back into the station again, she was drenched to the skin. Literally.
"I'm going to miss the next train at this rate," she fretted, and made a dash for it. After all, once you're wet through, you can't get any wetter. "Whoever said that was talking out of his fat ass," she muttered savagely, blundering through McKellar, Fyfe, Kinross, Buchan and N'kwase's revolving door under the shocked gaze of an elaborately painted receptionist. She was directed into the presence of Mr N'kwase, whose beaming shiny black face was curiously at odds with an almost impenetrable Glasgow accent.
"Och, ye're a' wet, lassie" were just about the only words Venetia understood. "Ye'll no' have a macintosh?"
Undecided whether this was a statement or an invitation, Venetia agreed and made her escape, only to realise as she came out on to the warm Georgian stonework of Dudley Square that she no longer had a folder to hide behind. She even toyed briefly with the idea of diving back into McKellar, Fyfe, Kinross, Buchan and N'kwase and begging the receptionist for an empty folder, but lacked the courage. Folders, after all, cost money. Instead, she hunched herself up and dodged down the street with steam rising in clouds from the shoulders and straining bodice of her now translucent shirt.
"Don't fucking ask, Dennis, okay?"
"But where's your bra?" He asked the question nevertheless as he wheeled the car out of the station yard and headed for home.
"In my fucking bag, where do you fucking think," she snarled. "It fucking exploded at fucking work. I mended it with fucking safety pins, which lasted three fucking minutes, I got giggled at by a load of oversexed fucking lesbian fucking schoolfuckinggirls, practically fucking fucked by a horny priest on the subway, then it pissed with rain. I delivered the soggy papers to fucking McKellar, Fyfe, Kinross, Buchan and Fucking N'kwase, who comes from fucking Glasgow, by the way, then there wasn't a bus and I had to walk back down the street with every bastard staring at my tits! And all you can think of is where's my fucking bra!"
Dennis nodded sympathetically. Something suggested Venetia had had a bad day at the office. "A horny priest?" he asked finally.
"Is that all you can say? I've been practically drowned and almost arrested for indecent exposure, and all you're interested in is a priest with a cock sticking halfway down his leg! It was as thick as my wrist and it had a head on it the size of an apple."
"You didn't have to look at it."
"Where else was I supposed to look?" Venetia realised she had an almost photographic recollection of the unfortunate cleric's endowment. It was imprinted on her retina.
"How did you know they were lesbians?"
"What?"
"The giggling schoolgirls?"
Venetia stared at him and slowly shook her head. Men!
"They're definitely bigger!" Dennis wet his suddenly parched lips. "You say you were a thirty-six last week?"
"When I bought that transparent shirt, yes. Do you think I could take it back and complain? How big am I now?"
"You could take it back, but they wouldn't believe you. You'd have to get them to throw a bucket of water over you to demonstrate. Thirty-nine," he added casually. "And a half. Probably near enough forty if you breathed in."
"Forty? That's ridiculous! I can't have put on four inches in a week. It's obscene!"
Dennis disagreed with most of these points, but decided it probably wasn't the best time to say so. "I'll measure you again if you like, but I'm sure I got it right. After all, I have measured your bust three times in the last five minutes."
"Did you measure me with my nipples squashed in?"
"Of course. You told me to. Actually, I think we ought to be measuring with them sticking out, if that's what they want to do. God, Vinny, you'd be even bigger...!"
"Anyone would think you wanted me to be bigger! How big do you want me to get, for Chrissakes?"
A dreamy smile spread over Dennis's face. As far as he was concerned, forty inches wasn't at all bad, but an invitation like that wasn't to be dismissed lightly. "Oh, you're quite a slim girl. Only forty-three or four," he suggested, not wanting to seem too greedy. The storm clouds gathered over Venetia's face and he realised the conversation wasn't to her liking. "Shouldn't we really be measuring you with a bra on?" he said, changing the subject.
"How the fuck am I supposed to get a bra on?" she screeched. "I'm growing out of bras like a ... like ... like anything. Oh, fuck it! What's happening to me?"
Dennis recognised the signs. Three more minutes and she would be sobbing in his arms. Ten more minutes and everything would be tickety-boo. Better make sure the bedroom door's open. He'd miscalculated. Venetia flung herself at him and hung on tight. Fully twenty seconds passed, while her sobs died down, then a certain tension crept into her body.
"What's the matter, sweetie?"
"Matter? What's the matter? You ask what's the matter? All I want is a little gentle love and comfort. But what is Dennis dreaming of? Look at you! You ought to become a priest, ravishing schoolgirls behind the vestry! Leave me alone. Go and have a cold shower."
Dennis beat a sorry retreat. In the kitchen, he stared gloomily at the calendar. He ought to have remembered by now what time of the month it was. It probably even had something to do with Venetia's sudden dramatic fullness of bosom. Women!
"They didn't have one to fit me! Can you pick me up, Denny, please?"
"I'll be there in twenty minutes. What are you going to do if you can't get a bra to fit?"
"They'll order one for Monday, they said. I'm an H-cup, would you believe! A 32-H! In the meantime, I've bought another one that goes round me, just about. It's not very comfortable, but it will do for work tomorrow."
"Okay. See you soon."
"Byeeee!"
At least, she was feeling better this morning, after she had called the office and told them about her backache. She'd be seeing the doctor, she had told Mr Butcher. In fact, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to see the doctor anyway. Now she was downtown, it was only ten minutes away. She dialled Dennis's mobile number...
"Nothing physically wrong, as far as I can see, Miss Armstrong. You're disgustingly fit, in fact." Dr Wallace consulted his computer screen, tapping on the glass with a fingernail. "Hmmm. Perhaps a little bit under-weight? You're five foot eight, after all. You could carry a few extra pounds easily."
Venetia blinked. "Yes, but not all on my chest! I was wondering, if they were to carry on growing, how quickly could I get a reduction?"
The doctor looked horrified. His half-moon glasses fell off as his jaw dropped open. "A reduction? You mean, chop them off? Your beautif ... your breasts?"
"If they get too big, yes. It's inconvenient enough carrying them around as it is. If they get any bigger..."
"I shouldn't worry," the doctor said hurriedly. "I'm sure it will only be a temporary thing." She was dressing again, bending over to lower her breasts into a pair of bra cups that didn't really look anywhere big enough. Dr Wallace studied her and swallowed audibly. "Your periods are regular enough?"
Venetia stuffed most of herself away in the new bra, and shrugged into her blouse. "No problem there. I'm due very shortly. Ask Dennis! I bit his head off last night for no reason at all."
"His head?" Dr Wallace raised an eyebrow. He seemed to be having a little local difficulty beneath his desk. He sat back and attempted to cross his legs, then realised his mistake as Venetia's eyes became as big as saucers. He gave a doctorly cough and sat hunched forward. "I was going to suggest we change you to a different formula of pill, just for a try. Possibly your body is reacting to the present one for some reason. Changes, you know. Hormones are funny old things..."
"You think that's what it could be?" Venetia had heard of such things before. It seemed a likely enough explanation.
"Could be, could be." He stroked his chin, regarding her bulging blouse with frank disbelief. "How about sex?" he asked abruptly.
"I beg your ... oh, you mean ... yes. Pretty regularly. In fact, very regularly. And quite often. Very often, in fact..."
"Let's give it a try," the doctor said, as if making a sudden decision. "The new pill, I mean," he added hastily. "I'll let you have a month's supply just for a trial. If you don't get any ill effects, you can swap over permanently. And with any luck, you'll find your ... erm ... breasts feeling a little less full in a day or so." He began scribbling something indecipherable on a pad. "They're a brand new kind of pill, these. Oxymoron, they're called. You're fortunate, the salesman was only in here last night. You can start taking these immediately after your next period. There you go!" He tapped something triumphal on the keyboard and they both watched as the screen display dissolved into a picture of a staggeringly huge-breasted blonde. A little too late, he swivelled the monitor away from her and hit a number of keys with increasing agitation. "Bloody computers!" he laughed nervously.
"I didn't think doctors were supposed to get erections. Not when they're examining female patients."
"I'd get more worried if they got erections while examining male ones," admitted Dennis. "It seems a normal enough reaction to me to get a hard-on through feeling a lovely girl's tits."
"It would, to you. It's a pity he's a doctor, actually. He's quite dishy. Distinguished. Grey hair is so sexy." She examined her reflection in the vanity mirror of the car, and shook her head, dissatisfied. "Anyway, he's given me this new kind of pill. He hinted that I might get some kind of adverse reaction..."
"Like bad temper, irrationality, swearing like a trooper, violent tantrums...?"
"No, more like nausea, sickness, and a feeling of utter revulsion at the thought of sex..."
Dennis accelerated briskly. "We'd better get home to bed, then, before it starts working."
Next morning, there was no relief from the fullness in her breasts. The new temporary bra was woefully small in the cups. It fitted around her reasonably well, but it only fitted where it touched. By the time the train was halfway to the city, she had already developed an unconscious habit of pulling the bra down over her breasts. Her new fine-knit sweater showed the creases at the front where she had been adjusting her bra every two or three minutes.
Of course, Mr Butcher wanted to see her straight away.
"Your back all better, Venetia?"
"My back?" It was her front she was more worried about. "Oh, yes, fine, thanks." She tugged her bra down and wriggled her shoulders. The bra cups would only fit on the top or bottom halves of her breasts. Either she was falling out of the bottoms or she was overflowing the tops. Or worse, one tit was falling out of the bottom while the other one was trying to bounce out of the top.
"Right. Now, you're away at the seaside for the next two weeks, aren't you? There's lots to do before you go. Here's a report that came in yesterday. A pity you weren't here to take care of it, but I'm sure you can get it finished off by ten this morning. Then there's a pile of stuff from McKellar, Fyfe, Kinross, Buchan and N'kwase, and a new ... are you sure your back is okay?"
She stopped wriggling and tugged her bra down again. Glancing down at herself, she noticed the unsightly creases in her sweater for the first time, and tried to smooth them out. Mr Butcher had stopped talking. She looked up. He was sitting there with his mouth open, and no words coming out.
"Mr Butcher?"
"Venetia? I don't remember seeing that woolly ... that jumper ... erm, sweater before. New, is it?"
"This? Yes, I had to ... I mean ... I got it yesterday." She tugged at her bra, concentrating hard, finger and thumb between her swollen breasts, pulling it down with a sound of elastic as she let go. Damn, he was staring at her again.
Unexpectedly, Mr Butcher stood up and strode to the window, staring down at the traffic. "When you've done all that stuff, you can probably slip away early this afternoon."
"Mr Butcher?" Was the man ill? He had never been known to let anyone leave early on a Friday in his life. He was still looking out of the window, while performing some curious leg-stretching exercises.
"It's going to be a warm weekend," he said, yanking out a spotted hankie and mopping his big face. "You'll be anxious to get packed and away on holiday. You could be home by three. Surprise your boyfriend. You've got a boyfriend, of course? But of course, you would have. A lovely girl like you, with such big..." He started back to his desk, and Venetia's mouth and eyes opened wide at the same time. Had she really seen what she thought she'd seen? "Ah," he said, spinning round and navigating his way back to the desk walking backwards while looking over his shoulder. "Well, I'm blessed! Look at that crack in the plaster up there on the ceiling! Builders these days. Cowboys, the lot of them!"
By the time Venetia looked back at her boss, he was sitting behind the rampart of his desk again, with one leg thrust out uncomfortably in front of him. Both hands were in his lap, making emergency adjustments. She picked up the stack of folders. "I'll be getting on with these, then," she said, then felt a sickening lurch as first one breast then the other flopped out of the bottom of her useless bra. They bounced madly for a few seconds, until she clamped them tight against her chest with an armful of paperwork. "Must go," she bleated, fleeing from the room. As she passed Mr Butcher's secretary, she heard his strangled voice through the intercom.
"No more calls for twenty minutes, please, Charlotte."
Venetia woke up on Saturday morning with her breasts feeling so enormously full and bloated she was almost frightened to look at them in the bathroom mirror, even covered by her T-shirt nightie. And when she did, her worst fears were confirmed.
"Denny!" She turned in panic, and bumped into Dennis. "Oh, you're there! I'm afraid they've grown some more." She tried to cover the front of her T-shirt with suddenly-too-small hands, like a nymph surprised while bathing.
"More? More than last night?"
"I don't know if it shows, but they feel so tight and full, as if they're going to explode."
"Breasts don't explode, Vinny," he said with a tinge of regret. "Let's see them. And feel them." His hands ranged over the tautly-stretched T-shirt. "Wow! I see what you mean!"
"Where are you going...?"
His voice came from the bedroom. "Just calling the Bomb Disposal people!" He arrived back in the bathroom, clutching a tape measure. "Meanwhile, until they arrive..."
"Bastard!" But Venetia held her arms up, elbows out.
"No difference in the size since Thursday. Not the size in inches, anyway. Still around forty. This T-shirt is squashing them in, I suppose." He sounded crestfallen.
"I doubt if I can get it off without a pair of scissors," she groaned, trying to slip her hands up beneath the nearly bursting material. Her nipples were almost fully erect now, looking as if she had tucked a couple of strawberries inside her shirt.
But surprisingly, the stretchy jersey T-shirt came off without too much difficulty, and she stood there, staring at her naked self in the mirror. No doubt about it, she was substantially bigger. Although her breasts still thrust out with brand-new firmness, the weight of them was inevitably dragging them down. Those strawberry nipples now pointed slightly downwards, and a pencil placed beneath the swells of her globes would have remained firmly wedged in place.
"There," Dennis confirmed. "You've just passed the toothbrush test."
"They've always been big enough to held a pencil underneath, since I was thirteen, silly."
"Don't make me have lewd thoughts about you as an underage girl," Dennis scolded, removing the toothbrush and replacing it with a large bar of soap. It stayed where he put it. He tried a bottle of shampoo.
"Excuse me! When you've quite finished using my tits for animal experiments..."
"They're at least a couple of inches lower than yesterday, yet they still stick out just as far. And they're much fatter sideways, too. So they're bigger. And heavier."
"Tell me about it! You think I hadn't noticed that I'm starting to look like a couple of melons tied to a broomstick? What are we going to do?"
"Do? On a Saturday, probably nothing much. You can't really see the doc again, not after two days. You haven't even started that new batch of pills yet. He'll only tell you to go away and come back in a month's time. Anyway, we're not going anywhere this weekend. It's going to be a hot day. We'll sit in the garden and drink gallons of freshly squeezed orange juice.
Which was what they did. More or less all weekend. By Sunday, Venetia was beginning to get fretful about her size. "I know my new bra will be at the shop tomorrow morning, but then we're going away for two whole weeks. Even assuming it fits, how am I supposed to last two weeks with only one bra?"
"You should have thought of that and ordered half a dozen."
"You know what these things cost? Anyway, I wasn't sure it would fit. I'm even less sure now. Look at me! I'm obscene. Positively pornographic!"
Dennis looked at her. "There's nothing pornographic about having large breasts, dear. It's just Nature's way of saying, 'Look at me, I want your babies!'"
"Talking of which," said Venetia, "I'm a bit late."
"You'll be all right once we're on the beach. And this afternoon, as soon as we get there, we'll go out and buy you a couple of new bikinis!"
She hugged him. "No expense spared? Why a couple?"
Dennis dodged nimbly out of range. "One for the bottom and one for the top, of course!"
Men!
"I'm afraid Dr Wallace is extremely busy, Ms ... Armstrong." The woman turned a few pages. "His appointments book is full until next Wednesday. Would you like me to diarize you then...?"
"Would I like you to what...?"
"Put you in his diary."
"Why didn't you say so? Look, tell him I saw him two weeks ago, before my holiday, and I've got a problem with the pills he gave me, okay?"
"Is it an emergency?"
"Not yet. But if you give it another twenty minutes or so it might be. Now, are you going to speak to him?"
The receptionist looked several daggers at Venetia, made a huffy comment and disappeared. Just around the corner, the waiting room seemed full. There was a hum of voices and several noisy brats were tearing around or just sitting quietly howling. Venetia huddled in her baggy sweater and told herself it was an emergency. It couldn't wait another five days, that was for sure.
The unhappy receptionist returned to her window, and started slamming around in an angry way. She made several alterations in the appointments book then looked up at Venetia with a surly expression. "Dr Wallace will see you in five minutes," she snarled with pure hatred. "Please take a seat until you are called."
The waiting room was indeed full. Thirty pairs of eyes looked up at her as she wandered in, searching in vain for an empty chair. The only remotely vacant seats, two of them, were occupied by a squalling child that needed its nose wiping.
"Is this seat...?"
"We've been here for an hour," observed the infant's mother. She needed her nose wiping, too. She sniffed wetly. "Some of us are ill." But she tipped the child off one of the chairs. "Let the lady sit down, Damian," she snuffled, dragging it to her matronly bosom with a motherly gesture of love.
The patients on the seats opposite stared at Venetia. Venetia stared back. They were mostly women, young women. Sitting together at the end of the row were two giggling young teenage girls, one of them spectacularly eleven months pregnant with octuplets, the other one doing her level best to follow her friend's example: her microscopic shorts doing a disappearing act between a pair of man-eating labia; her abbreviated tank top revealing an appalling acreage of swelling, walnut-nippled breast and a cleavage several miles deep.
Venetia tore her eyes away, only to find equally well-endowed women wherever she looked. A scared-looking couple sat with their hands clasped tightly together; a cross-eyed rabbit-faced man in a scruffy baseball cap and a tiny thin-lipped freckled woman, so petite that her feet didn't reach the floor as she perched on the edge of her chair. Petite or not, her faded blue shirt was so overwhelmingly stuffed with such a phenomenally gigantic pair of breasts that Venetia thought she must be hallucinating. She wasn't: the poor girl's udders were resting on her thighs, and even enclosed in the shirt, they reached out beyond her knees. How, Venetia wondered, could she even stand up.
It was the same everywhere she looked. The waiting room seemed to be full of overdeveloped women, although mercifully none were quite on the scale of the tiny woman with freckles. It ought to have made Venetia feel more comfortable with her own predicament, but somehow it only made her feel uneasy. She was wearing one of her bikini bras under the sweater. Not one of the two she had chosen on that first day at the beach, almost two whole weeks ago, this was one of the more stretchy ones she had been forced to buy earlier this week.
"Miss Armstrong, please," intoned a tinny voice, and all the patients looked at each other. When the newly arrived Venetia stood up, an angry murmur swept round the room. She hurried down the antiseptic corridor and rapped on the door of the doctor's consulting room.
Dr Wallace was examining her notes when she walked in. A small frown appeared on his face and he turned to his computer monitor. Venetia wondered if she had caught him looking at smutty pictures again.
"Miss Armstrong! Sit down. The nurse said it was an emergency. What seems to be the trouble?"
"The same thing as last time, doctor. Or rather, the same things."
"Your breasts were a little full last time, I seem to remember..." He licked his lips like Red Riding Hood's Grandmother and adjusted his half-moon glasses. "Not the same thing, surely? I gave you some more pills..."
"You did. They haven't made any difference."
The doctor's eyebrows climbed a few notches and he stared at Venetia's opaque sweater. "They haven't? That's most unusual..." He removed his glasses and polished the lenses, preparing himself for the show. "Just slip your top off, and we'll have a look at you." He had somehow become plural. He replaced his glasses, stood up and rubbed his hands together.
Seconds later, he sat down suddenly. Venetia had removed her sweater, and was standing there in a fluorescent lime yellow bikini bra in some shiny, stretchy man-made material. As the doctor peered at his notes, he glanced up at her � at them � out of the corner of his eye. Fascinatingly, they hadn't yet stopped wobbling. "I see. You're right. They are much bigger. Much, much bigger!"
While Venetia was grateful for this confirmatory opinion, she had reached the same conclusion a week or ten days earlier. "I'm normally a thirty-six bust, doctor," she said, noticing that a slightly haunted expression was spreading over the doctor's face. "Until two weeks ago, when I shot up to nearly forty inches in three days." Dr Wallace bit his lip. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. "Then I went away for a couple of weeks. During that time, my bust has increased steadily." The doctor opened his desk drawer, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
Venetia stopped her recital and found herself staring. The doctor realised what his patient was looking at. Hastily, but too late, he recognised the pair of silk panties he had just used to wipe his face, and stuffed them out of sight in his top pocket, among his array of pens. A tasteful pink triangle of lace protruded like a pocket handkerchief.
"H-how big are they now?" he stammered.
"You can see how big they are now," Venetia pointed to her breasts, which had started wobbling indignantly again. "They're this big!"
"Oh!"
"Aren't you going to look at them?"
"I'm already look ... erm, yes. Yes, please!" He pulled out the silk panties again, stared at them, raised them distractedly to his nose, then thrust them back in the desk drawer. "I will have a quick feel ... examination. If you'd just take off your brassière."
Angrily, Venetia reached behind her and unhooked the back of the bikini bra. Leaning forward, she let the shoulder straps slide down as she allowed her breasts to hang massively in the cups � really unusually large cups for a bikini. If they had wobbled before when they were supported in the stretchy top, they wobbled without it. Venetia was gigantic! No more the toothbrush test, nor even the large family-sized bottle of shampoo test. Her liberated breasts now descended even beyond the waist of her jeans, swaying softly together. The strawberry-sized nipples, which Dr Wallace had dreamed wetly about for the past fifteen nights, now pointed noticeably downwards. If they had suddenly started spouting strawberry milk, the doctor thought, the two separate sprays would probably hit the carpet a couple of yards ahead of Venetia's toes, and a yard or so to each side. An explicitly graphic image formed in his mind and he needed to rearrange his underwear before he ripped it to shreds with his rampant wedding-tackle.
He looked helplessly at Venetia as she arched her aching back and took a deep breath. The outer slopes of her breasts were far wider than her body. In fact, as she stood before him, now she had dropped the bikini bra on the floor and let her arms hang by her sides, her bust was fully as wide as her arms. Each glorious globe was as wide as her waist. And to think, two weeks before, he had mentioned that she was perhaps a few pounds under-weight!
The desk drawer was still open. He found himself reaching into it, then noticed Venetia's horrified expression and realised he had taken out a tape measure. He slammed the drawer shut, tears springing into his eyes as he caught his finger in it.
"I don't know what my bust measurement is now," Venetia quavered. "I daren't measure myself and I won't let my boyfriend do it, although he was kind enough to volunteer. But I am going to have to get some new bras very soon. All I need from you is assurance that I'm not going to get even bigger than this."
"What about those new pills I gave you? Oxymoron." Dr Wallace asked, his voice a hoarse croak.
"What about them?"
"They haven't resulted in any decrease in your feelings of ... fullness and engorgement?"
Venetia was exasperated. "Doctor! Does it honestly look like it?"
"We'd better try another formula. Although the ones I gave you don't usually fail ... that is ... they seem to be working with most of my patients. Excellent results..." His voice tailed off and he revolved on his chair. Stiffly.
"Do you want the other pills back, then? I've got them here." She produced the box from her jeans pocket. The movement caused more upheaval than a minor earthquake. She handed the box to the doctor.
"But they're all still here," he frowned worriedly at her.
"Of course they are. I haven't taken any. I thought I had to wait until after my period..."
"But that was two weeks..."
Venetia shook her head, and several other major parts as well. "I haven't had my period yet. I seem to be a bit late this month."