SPOILED, part 9

‘What a magnificent home you have here,’ Detective Dey told Lord Fenton.

‘Well, one does what one can, ho ho,’ Fenton replied, following Manni’s gaze through the enormous arched windows out into the grounds of his country estate. ‘Drink?’

‘Sure.’ Dey nodded. ‘I’ll take a G and T if you’ve got any, thanks.’

‘Oh, it’s my pleasure.’ Fenton rarely met Manni’s eyes, preferring to soak up the younger man’s growing bulk with undisguised lust. ‘I’ll have Mrs Cook send it up. One jiffy, my boy.’

And Dey waited while the MP waddled to a telephone that looked like it belonged in the 80s sitting on an antique table, and called his housekeeper requesting drinks, only to repeat himself several times over in successive volume. Mrs Cook’s hearing was not her strong point, evidently.

"Get a good look around the house, lad!" Detective Sweet rasped in Manni’s earpiece (Manni could actually hear crisps in Sweet’s mouth).

This was Detective Manni Dey’s chance. After so many hotel dates, letting the lecherous Fenton examine his increasing muscle mass, the wining and the dining, the endless texts and phone calls, Manni had finally secured the jackpot: Lord Fenton had invited him into his country home.

It was an overly lavish affair, with checkered flooring and mounted animal heads spaced tackily between oil paintings. Dey did his best to observe every detail, hunting for clues about Ben Townsend or Jamie Beck.

‘Why don’t, uh...,’ Manni said to Fenton, casually motioning his arm in such a way that he knew would flex the spherical bicep, ‘why don’t we take this somewhere more private...?’

Fenton practically drooled. His little piggy eyes bulged, fixated on Dey’s arms.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Oh yes.’ And he once again picked up the phone to instruct Mrs Cook to take the drinks to the master bedroom, repeating himself into a bellow.

Soon the rotund politician was leading Manni through his creaky manor, up grand flights of stairs and across flagstoned landings (Manni absorbed as much visual information as was possible, but found little in the way of clues), until the pair of them entered Edmund Fenton’s bedchamber.

‘Four-poster... Uh, nice,’ said Dey, hearing Sweet groan in his ear.

Fenton pushed the door to, and performed what he must have thought was some type of sexy saunter over to where Manni was leaning.

‘Now,’ he smacked his lips. ‘Let’s inspect those muscles, shall we?’ His fingers wiggled as though about to unwrap a gift.

Manni undid the top button of his shirt. ‘You too,’ he said quietly. And Fenton picked at his collar button with fat, sweaty digits.

‘Tell... Tell Daddy your measurements,’ Fenton said while fumbling.

In the earpiece, Manni heard Sweet make a mock-vomiting sound.

‘Chest is up to, I think 63 inches now,’ he said, continuing to unbutton. He noticed old filing drawers in this room, a Bakelite telephone and a notepad by the window: potential information. ‘Biceps 29 inches.’

‘Oh... Oh ho ho.’ Fenton’s eyes engorged. He gave up with his buttons and moved in on Manni instead, curling his podgy hands around Dey’s thick arms. ‘And getting a tummy too, I see, oh I like that. Oh yes... Tell me... Tell Daddy what you need. What can Daddy buy for you? Bigger shirts? More steroids? Tell me.’

"What about the whereabouts of those missing lads, you fuckin pervert knobhead", Sweet growled, heard only by Dey.

‘More roids,’ Manni replied casually, because he knew this got Fenton’s juices flowing, the idea always being to try and get the MP to blurt out something incriminating in the heat of passion. ‘More clothes, protein shakes. You know, whatever you’ve bought for the other growing lads. I want it too.’

‘Oh yes...,’ Fenton breathed, little beads of sweat working their way across his bald head. ‘Oh yes... Oh, I bet you could lift me up by now, you must be so strong.’

"Offer to put him in a choke hold instead", Sweet said. Manni couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. He probably was.

‘I could probably... overpower you...,’ Manni told Fenton, who let out a guttering sigh. Dey wondered if the man was hard under all that fat.

But when it came to big, round bellies, Dey’s thoughts ran closer to home these days.

A sudden, if quiet, knock at the door, accompanied by a polite cough.

‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said a frail-looking Mrs Cook, clearly not knowing where to look. ‘Uh, drinks...’

‘Hmm? Oh, oh yes,’ Fenton replied flatly. ‘Set them down over there. Very good. Thank you, Mrs Cook.’

Manni’s roid-swollen torso was entirely exposed, and it was with a mixture of patience and awkwardness that he silently waited for the housekeeper to make her exit at a snail’s pace.

‘Now, where were we?’ Fenton smiled and gazed behind his bottle-glasses.

Manni slipped past him and made to take a drink. Perhaps he could simply get the obese Lord drunk, get him to pass out...

‘Cheers,’ he said, returning the smile.

‘Uh, yes alright then,’ Fenton waddled over to his sherry. ‘Cheers.’

‘I like a man who enjoys his drink,’ Manni tried. It was either going to work or it wasn’t.

‘Really?’ Fenton asked. His brow knotted a tad.

‘Well, uh, usually ‘cos I like big beer bellies,’ Manni explained, and this seemed to unknot Fenton’s face. ‘But any drink will do, haha.’

‘Ho ho, indeed.’ Fenton seemed happy enough with this hastily-contrived excuse, and raised his glass and gulped. ‘Hmm, have a feel of Daddy’s big belly then, boy.’

And Dey ran his free hand across the stretched cotton shirt that barely contained Fenton’s enormous belly. It didn’t feel quite like Arthur’s did during their nightly bed-share. The older detective’s was firmer, for a start. Not that the pair of them even talked about it during their waking hours. It had become something of a stupid charade, both men pretending they weren’t aware of spooning the other each night at The Exquiso Hotel.

‘That’s it, boy,’ Fenton said softly. ‘Unbutton Daddy’s shirt...’

Manni sipped more G&T and began unclasping.

‘You must get all the lads wanting to do this,’ he tried again. ‘There must have been so many of them.’

But Fenton seemed to be in a trance of sorts, he just breathed heavily and bore his gaze into Manni’s huge biceps as they worked to unbutton him.

Suddenly a phone chimed loudly.

Manni started, and Fenton blinked once or twice before patting his pockets down.

‘Ugh, bugger,’ he muttered, producing his mobile.

Manni watched his porcine fingers slide to unlock the screen, and Fenton squinted while he read a text message.

‘Bugger!’ Fenton said again. ‘Bugger and blast!’

‘What is it?’

‘I have to go. Fuck a duck!’

‘Everything okay?’

Fenton animated into life. He pocketed his phone and did his shirt back up.

‘I have to go right now, I’m sorry, my boy.’

‘Oh.’

‘We’ll... we’ll... we’ll square things away later. Steroids and whatnot. Sorry, I really have to - I’ll tell Mrs Cook to come and see you out - I have to go, I’m sorry.’

And for such a large man, he was gone from the room in seconds. For a few moments Dey just stood there, dazed.

He was suddenly alone in Fenton’s room.

"What was that all about?" Sweet asked.

Dey shook his head before realising Arthur couldn’t see it. ‘Dunno,’ he replied quietly. ‘But this is it. This is the chance.’

He figured, from her top speed, Mrs Cook would arrive in perhaps 2 or 3 minutes. Quickly checking outside the bedroom door and seeing no-one, Manni sprang to life.

First port of call were the filing cabinets. Most of the drawers contained ministerial paperwork; summons to the House of Commons, letters from Fenton’s constituents and so forth. All as to be expected. One drawer just contained maybe a hundred takeaway leaflets.

‘Makes sense, I guess,’ Dey muttered to himself, periodically checking the door.

There was jewellery, presumably belonging to Mrs Fenton - Of course, this was her bedchamber too. Manni found documentation headed from Harding Oil, which might have proved interesting for a separate case; he photographed them hastily with his phone.

Nothing about Ben Townsend or Jamie Beck, though.

Faint footsteps outside: Mrs Cook was headed up the hallway. Manni continued to scrabble around with increasing fervour. There had to be something here, for Christ’s sake!

Empty drawers. Sock drawers. Fenton’s size XXXXXL underwear.

Mrs Cook was getting closer.

The notepad by the Bakelite phone - maybe that had something... Manni rushed to it and skim-read: something about the House of Lords scrawled in Fenton’s spidery handwriting. Manni flicked the pages back. So much useless waffle. A dental appointment. Glasses prescription.

Then something odd: Pages of notes with the name ‘Mr Falcon’ scribbled on them.

And the initials B.T...

Ben Townsend.

As the door opened, Manni stood in front of the notepad and shoved it down the back of his trousers while Mrs Cook shuffled into the room.

‘If you’ll follow me, please, young man,’ she instructed sweetly.

Manni smiled and nodded, and followed her out, all with the feeling that he’d finally - finally - secured the golden ticket.

* * * *

Ben felt sick to his stomach. His heart was in his mouth. He’d given up asking the driver where they were headed, and could only guess to his fate from here on.

Once Mr Wren had found he and Terry locked in a kiss in the stairwell, it had all happened so fast. Beefy, suited men soon flowed from the doors and pulled the lovers apart, manhandling Terry away to God-knows-where, and tugging Ben in the opposite direction, all under the icy, silent glare of Mr Wren.

Shortly thereafter Ben had been packed into the familiar SUV, its doors locked, and driven once again out of London.

He didn’t know where he was going. These darkened backstreets and country roads yielded no clues. Perhaps he would wind up back at that strange manor, before the court of mystery silhouettes again.

But this journey was taking longer, and no recognisable landmarks guided the way. Ben felt he might vomit from worry. He thought about appealing to the driver once more, before noticing the chain-link fence up ahead. In the distance beyond was... something industrial. A compound, perhaps?

The SUV pulled to a stop before a small cabin. The driver wound down the window and leaned over to a uniformed man in there, showing him a badge he’d produced from the glove compartment. The man nodded in apparent satisfaction and waved the driver through a gated opening in the chain-link fence.

Ben continued at fruitless attempts to open the car door beside him as surreptitiously as possible; he’d been trying since this journey began. No avail.

The SUV rumbled along a dirt track, closer to whatever the hell the place up ahead was. It could have been a factory, or several warehouses; its footprint was beyond vast. Eventually the driver brought the car to a still before some nondescript entranceway, looking just as industrial as all the rest.

The door was yanked open by a man in a grey suit who looked like he bench-pressed elephants for fun. He took Ben’s wrist and none-so-subtly tugged him from the SUV, keeping his grip painfully tight as he marched Ben through the entrance to this complex, or whatever it was, flinging open the heavy metal door with ease.

Ben looked back for a moment but the door was already swinging closed behind him.

The bulky man led him down echoing hallways of poured concrete and exposed pipework.

‘W-Where are we?’ Ben ventured.

‘Don’t speak,’ the man replied, deep and monotone.

This place was a labyrinth of identical corridors, all lit in stark fluorescent strip. It felt endless, but at some point they approached another thick metal door through which the large man pulled Ben.

He found himself being thrust into a room that at first put him in mind of some type of aquarium. There was soft grey carpet underfoot, two more hulking besuited men standing nearby, and two others in plain grey uniforms without logo. However, the primary feature of this room was that one wall was comprised entirely of a thick, curved sheet of glass, almost as though this room were stuck onto the side of a cylindrical chamber.

‘Do nothing,’ said one of the uniformed men, absent of emotion. ‘Say nothing.’

Ben’s beefy escort still had a strong grip on his wrist, the reason being apparent: Ben was not to go up to the glass. For behind it, within the cylindrical chamber, was Terry.

Ben gasped at the sight of him.

‘Ben!’ Terry cried out upon seeing him, his voice tubular and hollow through the thick pane.

Terry had been stripped naked and was bound to a kind of upright T-shaped gurney that spread his limbs out to the sides. Two apparent doctors were finishing up some process behind the gurney, and when they left their task and exited the room to Terry’s left, Ben could see what they had been doing.

‘Oh God...,’ he said.

‘Do NOT speak!’ the uniformed man reminded him, with an accompanying stone stare.

Trailing from behind Terry’s gurney was a long cord of flex-metal; it snaked all the way across the chamber into a series of canisters lined up against the wall. Above the canisters was a small window through which the doctors had settled themselves.

Although he couldn’t see it directly, Ben knew: That flex-metal cord had been inserted into Terry’s arse.

Ben wanted to cry out. He tugged against the iron grip of the beefy man, but it was no use. He turned imploringly to the others in this room, but the big man spread one huge hand over Ben’s head and swiveled it forcefully back toward the chamber.

The message was clear: Whatever they were going to do to Terry, Ben was intended to watch.

Then Ben noticed another detail: In a ring of walled glass that ran around the upper circumference of the chamber, silhouetted figures were looking down; most likely the same people who had attended Ben’s Assessment, come to view this sick new proceeding, safe in their cowardly anonymity.

Terry looked petrified. His beautiful thick body was exposed for all to see, and every time he resisted his bonds a bicep flexed, or a meaty pec or thigh. His ballbelly rose and fell with his quickened breath.

‘Ben,’ the handyman cried out again, his eyes filled with fear. ‘It ain’t your fault, mate, okay? Whatever ‘appens, it’s not your fault.’

Ben could feel a tear emerging beneath one eye. He mouthed the words ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Terry Vaughn,’ a voice spoke loudly from a speaker system somewhere, making Ben jump. ‘We are gathered here today to bear witness to the consequences of your transgressions: Namely, fraternisation with a subject -‘

(A subject?) Ben thought. (Is that what I am to these people?)

‘- A repeat offence, it has been noted. Furthermore, aiding the subject in attempted emancipation,’ the voice continued, and this particular tidbit elicited visible concern within the silhouetted ranks. ‘Terry, you are to be punished.’

Ben watched as Terry tried to overcome panic in order to get the words out. ‘I-I’m sorry,’ he said, looking up to the crowd circled above him. ‘I know I fucked up. I know I did. An’ I’m sorry. Just... just don’t ‘urt Ben, alright? It weren’t his fault. Please... Don’t ‘urt ‘im.’

Ben let the tear drip freely down his fattened cheek.

‘This is going to feel quite uncomfortable,’ one of the doctors spoke over a tannoy system. ‘Try to remain calm.’

‘No...,’ Terry breathed in reply. ‘Please...’

Then came a hissing sound.

It had begun.

Immediately the handyman’s head jerked back as he felt the compressed air flowing from the canisters into his body. In little under a minute it became visible: Terry’s already pronounced ballbelly began to display signs of expansion.

‘Hnnnrgh,’ Terry moaned. ‘Oh... Oh Christ...’

Ben wanted so badly to run to him, to release him.

Terry’s muscled pectorals heaved ever the greater with increasing breaths, the belly beneath them tightening and stretching.

‘Fuckin’ ‘ell...,’ he uttered through gritted teeth. ‘Fuck, stop... Stop!’

The handyman’s ballgut continued to swell, the skin clearly taut now. Ben could see Terry’s swathe of bodyhair separating thinner across the ball’s surface; it was passing beach ball proportions.

‘Please...’ He struggled against his restraints. ‘Please, it ‘urts. Oh fuck...’

But the hissing of compressed air only continued.

It was all Ben could do not to call out to his lover, not to rail against the madness of all this.

Why did they have to do this to Terry? Why?

‘Oh God, Oh God,’ Terry cried. ‘Fuck’s sake, stop! Make it stop!’

Angry, thin little lines were forming across the handyman’s inflated stomach, now swelling into the abnormal, the disproportionate. His belly was beginning to resemble a balloon stuck to his front. And still more pressurised air came flowing into him. Terry rattled his wrists, but the bonds held tight.

‘Fuckin’ come on!’ he shouted to his silent audience. ‘Pack it in! This fuckin’ ‘urts!’

Still his belly swelled, expanding in size, skin pulling tighter, bigger.

Horror took hold of Ben. He could only watch on as Terry’s once beautiful ballgut was stretched to the size of a yoga ball, freakishly big, painfully tight; it had even taken on a faint sheen under the strip lighting. Tears of hurt were forming in Terry’s eyes, mirroring those now flowing from Ben.

‘Fuck... Fuck... No...,’ Terry whimpered. ‘Please no more...’

He writhed and raged against his bondage, but nothing could stop his expansion.

Ben felt himself turning white while he witnessed the rest of the handyman’s body begin to fill out. Blossoming from the belly outwards, Terry’s hips, his chest, his groin and upper thighs all started to warp and balloon slowly. He howled in pain, shaking his head furiously.

Instinctively Ben made to run up to the glass, but was jerked back so violently his arm nearly dislocated.

Terry’s body was deforming wildly into some amorphous swollen thing, no part safe now. The swelling was spreading down his legs, through his arms, even his neck was beginning to bloom outwards.

‘Fuckin’ Christ, make it stop!’ he shouted. ‘Please! Please!!’

Ben looked on through blurred tears as Terry’s limbs were slowly absorbed into his greater shape; a gigantic ball so tight the skin was now ravaged in stretchmarks and coated in sweat. He shone under the clinical lights like a cheap party balloon, his neck fast disappearing, and it was with a rising panic that Terry realised he could no longer turn his head.

‘No... No...,’ he begged, and started issuing laboured sounds steadily rising in pitch, reminiscent of a trapped animal.

The handyman no longer looked human. His body was a near perfect sphere, pinned to the gurney by hands and feet of equal swelling, the flesh bulging tight around his bonds. As his head began to deform from the intense pressure, inflating and melding into the gossamer-thin surface that was once his neck, his shrieks were no longer legible. His eyes widened in terror, and he was just able to blub out, ‘No... no... no...’ over and over.

His body was enormous, a freak of nature, skin stretched to a mirror shine, nipples warped to the size of dinner plates. Even his hands resembled inflated rubber gloves. His ballooning cheeks rose up to push his terrified eyes into a squint, and he managed to mutter, ‘St..o...p... Pl-‘

For the rest of his life, Ben knew deep in the pit of his stomach - no - deep in the very core of his being, that he would never be able to cleanse his mind of the image of Terry exploding before his eyes.

Nor the sound of the enormous BANG!

When it was done, Ben thought he might pass out right there and then. He screwed his eyes shut but still saw it. Terry popping like a balloon, mid-sentence. Bursting with such force. Ben let the tears plummet freefall down his chubby face, shoulders limp in resignation.

Terry...

Oh God…

Great sobs convulsed Ben’s torso.

Then he felt his wrist yanked once more, and did nothing to resist. He allowed the suited brute to drag him from the room, back out into the concrete hallway.

But something was happening. It might have been a commotion. Ben didn’t care. All he could see was Terry’s final moment, played over again behind his eyelids.

‘- do you think you’re taking him?’ someone was saying.

‘Orders,’ rumbled the brute.

‘What’s the problem out here?’ another voice was inquiring.

‘You’re not taking him away from me! That was never the arrangement. He’s MY subject!’

‘Not anymore. And your tone will be noted. He’s being requisitioned.’

‘To where?!’

‘That’s none of your concern, Wren. I suggest you step aside. Or would you like this to be taken as an act of insubordination?’

‘You can’t do this!’

Ben felt himself pulled further down the corridor, the matter apparently settled.

Terry...

No…

‘You’d dare threaten me?’ Mr Wren could be heard challenging the uniformed man Ben and his escort were leaving behind. ‘First my staff, and now this? You really want to talk about insubordination? Tell me where...’

His voice was soon lost down the echoing corridors, and Ben was marched back through the thick door that led outside, cold night air hitting his tear-blotched face.

He said nothing as he was bundled into the back of an unfamiliar sedan, its engines already revving, and the door once again slammed and locked on him.

The car soon pulled away, into the night.

Into greater uncertainty.