Kinktober Day 4: Kidnapped

I started writing something that would probably have suited this prompt better, but after a few false starts, I ended up with this. I've always loved a good carnivorous planet/island story.

***

They had memories of a shipwreck. That was all that connected them. The five of them had woken up on a beach none of them had ever seen before, surrounded by a group of people they had never met and did not remember. They had kept to the beach that day, sitting in a loose circle and trying to figure out where they were and why. A chubby man with curly brown hair and pale skin already beginning to burn in the sun said, “I remember… a boat? Were we all on a cruise ship?”

There had been noises of assent. Each of them did remember being on a boat, and a storm. Everything else was fuzzy. They could remember parts of their lives from before they woke up on the island with clarity: their jobs, pets, hobbies. No one could really remember their families or friends. And not one of them could remember booking a cruise, or being on a boat for any other reason. More than half of them had never even seen the ocean before.

Trying to figure out why they were there took a low priority. “We need to find water and either find or make shelter,” said Anna, the most authoritative person in the group. She was short and muscular, with skin the color of red clay, and remembered working in the warehouse of a big box store in New Mexico. She’d camped a lot with her family and even done some backpacking through the wilderness right after she graduated high school, so she had some survival skills she hoped would be useful.

“How do we do that? We don’t even know where we are!” sobbed a petite woman with dark skin and long braids.

“We just have to look around,” Anna said. “Anybody have any wilderness experience?” A couple other people did. The three of them walked into the thick jungle that started at the edge of the beach together, wary and hoping they could at least find something to drink.

They talked quietly as they walked, listening carefully for any signs of life. “I would die for a Coke right now,” Deepika said wistfully. She was the fattest person in the group of castaways. They had no idea how long they had been away from civilization, but Deepika was already feeling deprived. “Wouldn’t that be nice? An ice-cold soda, maybe some crispy fries…”

Yusuke, the third member of the scouting party, snapped, “Stop talking about food we can’t get and start looking for something we can eat now. Aren’t you a plant scientist? There’s gotta be something here we can eat.”

“I’m a botanist, yeah, and I’ll fantasize all I want,” Deepika said dismissively. “You’ll just have to deal if you don’t want to eat something poisonous by accident.”

They continued to trudge through the jungle, which felt both crowded with plant life and suspiciously empty. There were no bird calls, no sounds of bugs or other creatures. All three of them found it unsettling.

Suddenly, Deepika stopped. Yusuke, who had been right behind her, bounced off her cushioned backside. “Hey, why’d you—”

But she didn’t respond, instead seeming to sniff the air. “Do you guys smell that?”

The other two took a moment to breathe in deep, trying to catch the scent of whatever Deepika had noticed. And there it was: the unmistakable scent of french fries.

“Holy shit,” Anna said, mouth watering. “Maybe we’re super close to civilization? Oh my god, maybe we’re not stranded!” She tore through the foliage, trying to find the source of the scent, keeping her ears open for the sound of a road, or people, anything.

Instead, she found a plant that looked almost like a stunted banana tree. It was covered in bunches of what in any other situation she would have called french fries. She reached out and touched one experimentally. It was hot and greasy, and she could swear there were little flecks of salt on it. “What the fuck.”

Yusuke and Deepika came up behind her. “Is that…?” Yusuke asked.

Deepika didn’t touch the plant, but peered at it closely. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Or even heard about anything like this.” The smell of greasy, salty fries was overpowering. She wanted to be scientific about it, but hunger won out. “I’ll test one. To make sure it’s safe.” She plucked one of the fruits (or whatever it was—she had no idea how to classify something as weird as this) from the plant. If she hadn’t known better, she could’ve sworn for all the world that it was a normal potato fry. She nibbled on one end carefully and gasped as the familiar combination of fat, starch, and salt hit her taste buds. Without thinking, she quickly ate the rest of the test fry.

“How long should we wait to know if it’s safe?”

Deepika, knowing better but too hungry to wait, grabbed a handful of the fries. “I think it’s safe,” she said before shoveling the entire handful into her mouth. “They taste fine,” she said, the words almost unintelligible as her cheeks bulged with alien fruit.

“If you say so…” Anna said. She picked a single piece off a bunch and tasted it tentatively, her suspiciousness melting into surprise and then pleasure as the taste of an honest-to-god french fry hit her tongue.

As they ate, Anna noticed a noise—liquid, dripping somewhere close. She turned and looked for the source and noticed a bush with large, cup-shaped flowers. She felt relief flood through her. A water source! Even if it was just a little, the water inside the flowers would be relatively safe to drink, and more water than they’d had before. But when she looked inside the cups, she didn’t find water. Instead, she saw brown liquid. Her heart sank—until she realized that the liquid was… fizzing?

Against her better judgement yet again, she dipped her finger into one of the cups and brought a drop of the liquid to her tongue, only to taste the unmistakable taste of ice-cold Coca-Cola.

“Okay, what the fuck?”

“What?” Deepika asked, her mouth still full of fries.

“This place is weird, man. I just… here, come here.”

Deepika and Yusuke reluctantly left the fry-plant. They looked down into the flowers. “Ew,” Yusuke said, his nose wrinkling. “I don’t think any amount of boiling would make whatever that is safe to drink.”

“I dunno, taste it. It’s… sweet.” She didn’t want to say that she was 100% sure that it tasted exactly like brand-name cola. Maybe she was more dehydrated than she realized and losing her mind.

Yusuke and Deepika both did the same thing Anna had, dipping their fingertips into the liquid and tasting it. They looked at each other, and at Anna.

“Well. It’s not water, but it looks like we found something to drink.”

***

They returned to camp and told everyone what they’d found. At first, Leif and Yasmin, the only two members of the group who had stayed on the beach, were skeptical. But then, right there on the beach, they all started to smell fries. The dozen castaways headed into the jungle and found the strange plants everywhere, every french fry tree paired with what they’d already started calling soda flowers. Everyone ate their fill and then sat on the beach, trying to figure out what it was they’d found.

“If we ever get out of here, we’ll make so much money selling these plants. All-natural, probably low-calorie versions of french fries and Coke that people could just grow in their backyard? That’s a multi-million dollar industry right there,” Leif said.

Yasmin played with one of her braids. She’d eaten, but not much, and was obviously still weirded out by it all. “Isn’t it super weird, though? What’s next, milkshake waterfalls and plants with pizza leaves?”

“I’d kill for some ice cream. A whole bowl, or even just a sugar cone would be so nice in this heat,” Anna murmured as she absently drew in the sand with their fingers.

They spent a while talking about their favorite foods, passing the time until they all finally fell asleep in the sand.

***

The next morning, they all went into the jungle again, looking for fry plants for breakfast. But everything looked different than it had the day before. What had previously been just dense greenery was now a profusion of colorful plants, together giving off the scent of a massive mall food court. There were french fry trees and soda flowers, but other plants had appeared: ferns with leaves that looked like oval-shaped pizzas, a small willow-like tree with little clusters of popcorn growing from its branches, clusters of fat, sticky buds that looked just like plump pieces of orange chicken. There was even a rock formation that hadn’t been there previously with thick liquid running down it that a quick taste would have revealed was milkshake.

At first, they were all too shocked to do much more than walk and stare. Even Deepika ignored her rumbling stomach, concern etched on her round face. Everything they saw was something someone had mentioned wanting the night before. Everyone was unsettled.

But they all soon lost the battle to intoxicating smells and their own empty bellies and began carefully taste-testing the different plants. Tasting became eating, and eating became shoveling as they scarfed down all the exact foods they had most wanted in their time of need.

It was nearly an hour before they all called it quits and headed back to the beach, stomachs bulging. Deepika sat in the sand and whined about how much she wanted to sit somewhere soft. Yasmin chimed in and mentioned how much she missed her bed.

They were too full to talk much about their situation. Everyone knew it was bizarre, and no one had a reasonable explanation for what was happening. All of them knew they should try to get off the island (and was it even an island? It wasn’t like they’d walked around the whole thing to check). But stuffed bellies made it hard to stay awake, and the warm sun made them all extra sleepy. So they all yawned, hunkering down into the sand as they drifted off.

The whole day passed like that. They would all wake up hungry, planning on just having enough of the weird plant-food to satisfy themselves, and would wind up mindlessly gorging until they could barely walk back to the beach.

But on the third day, when they all woke up on soft, mattress-like mushrooms, a couple people finally broke. They spent the morning bickering: should they all stop eating? Well, of course not, they couldn’t just starve. They had to survive until they figured out how to leave. Should they eat less? Probably, everyone agreed, knowing it was unlikely they could stick to it. Even after a full day of eating until they’d nearly burst, the sight and smell of all their favorite foods left them salivating.

With hunger forcing them into a quick decision, Yusuke and Leif volunteered to walk around the island and see if they could figure something out. “We might be able to find help, or another way out of here.”

As soon as the choice was made, the three women all but ran to get their breakfasts. Deepika was used to being ruled by her appetite, but it felt foreign to Anna and Yasmin. Both thinner women were surprised at themselves and how hungry they were. It felt somehow wrong, but neither was ready to question it.

Leif and Yusuke began their walk, eating what they could find on the edge of the jungle as they went.

After breakfast, the three women laid back on one of the mushroom-beds (which conveniently had headboard-like pieces that grew above the bed and into a canopy to shield them from the sun) and forced themselves to stay awake enough to talk. By now, everyone had figured out that the island somehow manipulated itself based on what they asked for. So they asked for a whole lot: showers, bathtubs, and toilets and everything they might need to stay clean, a pool to swim in (“I’d love one filled with vanilla pudding,” Anna said with a laugh), whatever popped into their minds.

All their thinking ratcheted up their appetites again and they enjoyed a long, heavy lunch together. By the time they were finishing up, each of them gingerly rubbing their swollen stomachs as they walked back to bed, both men returned. They were in a similarly rotund state and sweaty from the walk.

“Did you find anything?” Anna asked.

They shook their heads. Nothing. The island was so small it had only taken them a couple hours to walk around its circumference, even with their frequent stops to eat. There were no high points that they could see, no signs of other people or animals.

They were alone.

***

None of them could come up with a way to get off the island. They all agreed that trying to make a raft was a bad idea. They had no idea how close they were to another landmass, and there was no guarantee there would be people, food, or water there. They had no other way to communicate.

So they ate. Each day, the island granted their requests. Here, a plant bristling with spider rolls; there, bowl-shaped leaves that tasted like soft naan and held steaming chicken rogan josh. The island had grown them a semi-enclosed space to live in on the beach. It had made them showers and tubs with running water, and water misters they liked to sit beneath after one of their long, overindulgent meals. They even got their pools: one with clear water, and one filled with pudding.

Weeks passed. It became clear that the island’s produce was not as low-calorie as Leif had assumed at first. They were all getting softer. Not that it mattered much to most of them. Who would see them? They were lucky the island saw fit to fashion them clothes when they asked, because nothing they’d arrived in fit.

Deepika was beginning to have some trouble getting around. The walk back and forth from the jungle to the base camp on the beach left her puffing and sweaty. She’d always been fat all over, and had begun to look increasingly spherical, every part of her jiggling with inch upon inch of soft, yielding flesh. She asked the island for her own place to stay in the jungle proper, and for some assistance so she wouldn’t have to walk so much, though she wasn’t sure what to expect.

As before, the island provided. A wide, soft mushroom bed and canopy grew up in the forest, and food plants clustered close around it, dangling above the bed. Deepika only had to reach one jiggly arm up and pluck whatever she wanted from above her. The others worried she would be lonely, but she was perfectly content. By her reckoning, they had all lucked out beyond imagining. “Where else could I lay about and stuff myself in bed all day without consequences?”

Leif took to spending his days (and most of his nights) at Deepika’s side. Like everyone else, he had also grown larger, and though he was nowhere near Deepika’s size, he found the accommodations she’d requested helpful. He also enjoyed the botanist’s company, and she enjoyed his in return. It wasn’t long before everyone knew to make extra noise before they visited the couple to announce their presence, everyone else having walked in on them in a variety of compromising positions.

Yusuke, Yasmin, and Anna were all a little disgusted by their friends’ rapid growth and seeming lack of desire to do anything more than sit in bed and gorge all day. But given that there wasn’t much else to do and they were all catching up faster than they would’ve thought possible, they all began to change their tune.

Yasmin was gaining weight particularly fast. She was the shortest of themm all and had once been petite enough that she sometimes shopped in the children’s section. Now, she had a double belly and large breasts that rested on the smaller top roll. Her bottom had also ballooned, though her legs, face, and arms were comparatively slim. Still, back in the real world, she would’ve been the fattest person in almost any room she entered, even if she wasn’t the heaviest. Her diminutive height worked against her, and though her appetite often matched that of her fellow castaways, she had far less space to store it all.

Anna had become a dramatic pear shape. While her chest had remained mostly the same size, her upper arms had come to resemble hams, and her hips, thighs, and ass grew wider by the day. Rolls developed around her elbows and knees, submerging her joints in marshmallowy fat.

Yusuke didn’t look much different than Anna. They were almost mirror images of each other, his own hips and thighs having grown almost untenably wide. His chest and face had grown softer, too.

Both Anna and Yasmin found themselves attracted to Yusuke as he grew larger. Neither of them had had a preference for fat men before they’d arrived on the island, but something about his soft, inviting curves drew them in. They all began sharing a bed, and both women took to pampering their new lover to show their affection, taking turns hand-feeding him while the other pleasured him.

The days blurred together. No one could remember how long they’d been on the island. No one really wanted to leave. What was out there in the world that they would even want? No. The island provided, and they had no reason to think of escaping.

Their situation entered a final stage when Deepika, tired of having to lift her own heavy arms in order to feed herself, requested that the island offer her some way to eat without moving. Leif, having grown to Deepika’s prodigious pre-island size, was curious. The island obliged, and Deepika woke to find a long, tubular vine growing above her. It was translucent, and she could see that there was clear, viscous liquid inside it. She pulled it down and put it in her mouth. The vine immediately began pouring the liquid into her. She moaned greedily. If she could have created her own perfect flavor in a lab, something that satisfied her desire for every flavor all at once, it would’ve tasted like this. She drank and drank, every bit of her seeming to grow from one minute to the next.

Leif awoke to her delighted moans and watched her, fascinated. She was in such a state of bliss she didn’t even notice when he tried to talk to her. He requested the same vine, expecting it to take until the next day to arrive. It only took a few minutes for a second vine to appear, growing toward him. Leif put it to his mouth for a taste, and immediately lost himself in the flavor. It was as if it was formulated just for him, overwhelming all his senses. He lay back against the mushroom bed and let the liquid pour down his throat, unaware of anything around him.

That would be the last conscious choice they ever made. The vines poured the delicious nutrient slurry down their throats endlessly, their bodies expanding into immobility. Their feeding would not stop until the island was satisfied.

It took the threesome on the beach longer to reach the same point. They had all but forgotten about the other two members of their party. They might as well have lived on a different continent rather than just a few dozen steps away. Their growth was more gradual, though Yusuke rapidly rounded out as his lovers began to take pleasure in seeing how full they could make him before he begged off. When it became clear that he was on the verge of immobility and both women had grown too plump to be much help to him, they, too, called on the island for a solution.

Like Deepika and Leif, as soon as Yusuke tasted the liquid from the vines, he lost all sense of the world around him. Having become so inured to the strangeness of their situation, Yasmin and Anna looked upon him with envy. They, too, had grown tired of feeding their constantly hungry tummies.

Yusuke grew from moment to moment, becoming entirely unrecognizable day by day. Both women, urged on by forces they could not understand, began to feed each other until the day came when they, too, required the assistance of the vines.

The island saved the sweetest of its gifts for last, and Yasmin and Anna grew even more rapidly than the others. It took only a few days before they reached Deepika’s immense proportions, though there was no one to observe this.

All five castaways would’ve continued to grow indefinitely, but the island could not give endlessly. It, too, was hungry.

So it ate.