You would also probably enjoy "The Monolith" by HikerAngel
The Monolith
By Hikerangel
https://www.*****hikerangel/art/The-Monolith-Part-1-869492726
CHAPTER 1: DISCOVERIES
Worthless.
That’s what her ex-boyfriend had always called her. He had repeated it often, searing it like a brand into her psyche. It had become so ingrained that when he left her for a prettier woman, she had apologized to him for being so inadequate.
April sighed, staring out the passenger window of the car as the city lights flowed past, casting a series of distorted shadows over her contemplative features.
Thank goodness Zach wasn’t like that. She had met him just days after being cast aside by her previous boyfriend. Zach was kind. He donated to PETA and Greenpeace. He took care of her.
April looked over to see his hazel green eyes focused on a distant point ahead as he pulled into the parking lot of their favorite bar. His hard-set jaw was clean shaven, his shirt immaculately pressed as always. April smiled as her eyes descended the long, vertical stripes. She took as much pride in his appearance as he did. It kept her going during the long hours of laundry and ironing that consumed her weekends while Zach alternated between watching football games and National Geographic specials.
As Zach brought the car to a stop, April waited for him to open her door. He was old-fashioned about things like that, and she knew he liked to do it for her.
When her door finally opened, she caught a glimpse of herself in the window as she rose. With her makeup on, she looked presentable enough, she thought. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought herself almost pretty.
Feeling the warm buzz of something akin to pride in her appearance, she followed Zach to the bar’s entrance where he once again held open the door for her in gentlemanly fashion. Flashing him a smile as she walked inside, April murmured another silent prayer for her good fortune in finding a guy like him.
She wove through the crowded establishment toward their usual corner table, taking off her coat and draping it carefully over the back of her chair before sitting down. Zach sat across from her, giving her a warm smile before picking up the curly-cornered menu.
He probably didn’t need the plastic-covered listing of all of the seven options the watering hole could deliver—they came here every week for trivia night—but April knew that Zach liked his traditions. Perusing his options carefully before making his selection was his wont. He was very particular in his preferences. Zach set down the laminated sheet just as their waitress arrived.
“Hi,” the woman said in an overly cheerful voice. “I’m Laura!”
Zach looked up, his eyes lighting with the radiant glow of attraction as soon as he saw her. The woman was tall, at least six feet. An attractive blonde, she was extremely well-endowed, with massive breasts that strained the cleavage-baring neckline of her tight tank. The woman gave Zach a dazzling smile, leaning forward to touch his shoulder—and, no doubt, to give him an eyeful of her magnificent, fleshy swells in the hope of “earning” a substantial tip at the end of the evening.
“Hi there, Laura! You must be new!” said Zach, a spellbound smile plastered over his lips.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I am!” said Laura with a tinkling laugh. “How did you know?”
Zach leaned toward her, his gaze squarely focused on her cleavage, voice hushed as if he were sharing a secret confession. “We come here all the time…”
“Well that’s great!” said Laura with a bit too much enthusiasm, tapping her fingers lightly on the back of Zach’s hand as her eyes danced flirtatiously. “I do love meeting the regulars. Especially ones as cute as you.”
April scowled but said nothing. She knew exactly what the waitress was doing, but she couldn’t compete with a girl that tall or that pretty. It was fine if Zach was attracted to someone like that, she told herself. Just as long as he didn’t break up with her.
After taking Zach’s order, she seemed to notice April for the first time. “Whatcha want, hun?” came her curt question.
“Just the salad,” April’s response equally curt.
“Watching your figure, huh?” commented the buxom waitress, looking down her nose at the shorter, less attractive girl before giving her a superior smirk.
April shot the waitress a faux smile, then demurely handed her the plastic-covered menu. Laura took it, spun on her heel, and sauntered away, effortlessly drawing Zach’s gaze to her rounded backside.
“So I was promoted to supervisor today,” April said loudly in an obvious attempt to draw Zach’s attention to her once more.
“That’s nice,” said Zach absently, as he watched Laura disappear into the kitchen. Only when she was completely out of sight did his eyes return to those of his girlfriend. Once the visual distraction was gone, his mind processed his girlfriend’s words. “So you’re under Carl now? Or Brad?”
“Susan, actually,” replied April, still frowning.
“Oh right. I always forget about her.” Zach worked at the same company as April, though he was several levels of management senior to her and part of a different call center division.
“Well, she’s actually really good. I think she’s smarter and harder working than either Carl or Brad.”
“That’s great,” said Zach disinterestedly, grabbing a handful of nuts from the bowl in the center of the table and tossing them into his mouth. He cast a glance at the door to the kitchen, clearly checking to see whether Laura had emerged from the back.
She hadn’t.
“So do you have any advice for me?” Laura prompted, taking his hands in hers, pleased when she saw that the ploy had worked and his attention had returned to her expectant face.
“Yeah. Make sure your team hits its numbers,” Zach said with a playful wink, glancing again to the side.
“Very helpful,” April replied, her nascent smile faltering.
“But seriously, my advice is: don’t let anyone off the hook. You always need to show them who’s in charge. Just remember: they work for you, not the other way around.”
April nodded thoughtfully.
“The number one mistake new supes make is not laying down the law with their people from day one.”
“Got it,” said April, making a mental note of his advice.
“So enough work talk,” said Zach, pleased that April seemed to be taking his words to heart. “Do you want to go to the movies tomorrow after our hike? That new Wonder Woman movie looks pretty good. I saw this special on the new actress that they picked for the role, and she’s been working out with like ten trainers for six months straight! She looks totally ripped, and that new costume really shows off her arms!”
April’s eyes flicked to her outstretched arm, noting its slender, pipe-like thinness with a resigned sigh. “Yeah. I know. Sounds great.”
Zach squeezed her hand affectionately just before Laura arrived at their table, letting Zach’s eyes feast on her voluptuous chest once again as she set his meal before him.
As Laura tossed April’s salad disdainfully before her, April slid back her chair. “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”
Zach nodded, then pointed with his fork at his entree. “Mind if I start?”
“Go for it,” April said, giving him her best attempt at a warm smile.
She walked into the bathroom a moment later, eyes glassy as she surveyed her appearance. She wasn’t bad looking. Sure, her face was a little plain, but with makeup, it looked decent enough. Her brown hair was a bit lifeless, but that’s why she wore it up tonight. Her C-cup breasts were nice, but obviously not the attention magnet’s of the waitress’ DD monsters. She pinched at her stomach. It wasn’t exactly firm, but it was reasonably slim. Her shapelier-than-average legs brought her height to a respectable 5’5”, only a couple of inches under Zach’s relatively modest stature. Yes, not bad looking at all.
So why did that waitress seem to attract his attention so effortlessly? She was attractive, but she was carrying a few extra pounds in her middle. It wasn’t as if she were some kind of supermodel or anything.
Was it her height? Those breasts?
April already knew the answer. It was both. Thank goodness the woman didn’t have muscles too. That would have given her the Zach-magnet-trifecta.
It wasn’t Zach’s fault. That’s just how he was wired. The fault was her own. It simply meant that she wasn’t adequate to hold his attention all the time. If he needed to look at other women to be satisfied, then that was simply a reflection on her.
Her lips trembling slightly, April wiped the glimmering tears from her eyes before they fell, sniffed, then smoothed out the front of her dress. She slipped on a serene, untroubled expression, then left the bathroom to take a seat once more across from Zach. This time, his eyes were not on the waitress but on the game playing across the television behind the bar.
She was pretty sure he knew she had returned, though she couldn’t be certain. Raising her fork, she stabbed her salad and crunched into a mouthful of lettuce.
***
As they returned home, April hung her coat before shivering and rubbing her arms. Zach liked to keep the temperature inside their house a little lower than she would have preferred. But she didn’t say anything. If that’s how he liked it, she simply had to adjust.
“We almost won the trivia contest this time,” said Zach, sounding pleased. “If my little English major could only have remembered her Walt Whitman, it would have been enough.”
April gave him a tentative smile, though her eyes dropped to the floor, and she turned away.
Zach approached her from behind, wrapping his arms around her in a tight embrace, warming her. April smiled. Thank goodness Zach was in her life.
She turned, pressing upward, onto her tiptoes, and kissed him softly on the lips. He grinned as he kissed her back. Walking her backward into the bedroom, he broke their kiss, whirling her around before leaning backward to fall prone on the bed. After two small bounces on the firm mattress, he crossed his arms behind his head.
April placed her hands on his slim chest, hovering above to give him one more passionate taste of her tongue before walking her hands, at either side of him, back to the foot of the bed. Her nimble fingers pulled down the zipper of his jeans.
“You know, we could undress for once and do the full deal,” Zach said, staring at the ceiling as April pulled out his swelling cock. “We’ve been dating for six months, and I’ve never even gotten you off!”
April said nothing in reply. She didn’t deserve the gift of pleasure from a man like Zach. She needed to be the one to give it herself. To keep him at her side.
Kneeling on the floor to pin Zach’s calves to the edge of the bed with her torso, she fingered his shaft into firmness. Once she had massaged him into throbbing rigidity, she leaned over to breathe on his tip.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with what you’re doing,” he murmured, his voice now tinged with arousal.
April smiled. This was one thing she was good at. She was technically still a virgin, but she had countless oral climaxes across multiple partners to her credit.
Moistening her lips, she placed them over his member, applying pressure from all sides as she began to descend. Zach relaxed into the down comforter atop their soft mattress, his lips parting to emit a soft, pleased “Mmmm”.
April smiled inwardly, continuing to attend to her boyfriend’s penis as he began to squirm with increasing urgency beneath her light touch. As his slim stomach finally began to tense, she knew he was about to climax. Pressing her tongue into the underside of his penis, she rose his length a final time, removing her satisfied lips just as he erupted. She curled her fingers around his quivering cock as he came, milking every bit of pleasure as he grunted in time with his bucking hips.
She couldn’t quite make out the word that formed the basis for the grunts as he climaxed, but it wasn’t the “Yes, April!” he usually said. This time, it was something like “Ooo, Lord!”
April grabbed some tissue from the box nearby and cleaned him off. When she was done, she pulled off his pants and shirt as he lay there, continuing to bask in the hazy sensation of post-orgasmic dopamine that had flooded his alcohol-dulled system. He kissed her as she tucked him under the covers. By the time she had brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas behind the closed door of the bathroom, he was asleep.
April lay in bed, staring at the ceiling when she suddenly realized what Zach had been saying as he climaxed.
“Laura.”
With the unexpected epiphany, April’s singular talent was violently stripped from her. It hadn’t been her skill at oral sex that Zach had been thinking of when he came; it had been the thought of their waitress.
April sobbed softly, emptiness enveloping her as she began another sleepless night. She curled into a trembling ball of crippling insecurity.
***
“You okay?” Zach questioned as April sluggishly ascended the trail to catch up with him. She had never been the strongest hiker, but today she seemed particularly lethargic.
“Fine,” she panted, placing her hands on her hips as she reached his position on the sloped trail.
“I’m always telling you to join me in the gym,” he said. “If you did, you probably wouldn’t have such a hard time keeping up…”
The little reminder was one of many he sprinkled into their conversations. Getting her to work out more would be good for her, he told himself. And, if he were being completely honest, he wouldn’t mind seeing her put on a little muscle for more selfish reasons as well. When they went to see the latest installment of Wonder Woman tonight, he would be sure to drop another hint.
They continued on until Zach came upon a small, half-overgrown side trail. Usually little side trails like this led to some sort of lookout point. With the way April was dragging today, maybe they could simply go to the end of this side trail, check out the view, and head back. It would ensure that they made it back in time for the movie, at least.
Looking back at April’s struggling form, he paused again to wait for her. “Why don’t we follow this side trail to the closest view, then head back. That way, we’ll have time to shower and change before the movie.”
April frowned, leaning on a nearby tree to catch her breath, but nodded her agreement. He probably could have left off that last part. She had inferred that he thought she was slow, and he hadn’t really intended to bring that to the forefront. But who knew? Maybe it would help her understand that she should hit the gym with him next time.
Turning, he placed his hands in front of him and pressed forward into the fairly dense foliage. By the time he’d gone 50 yards, he had reached a small clearing, surrounded by large granite boulders, with a small pond in the center. It was beautiful, a private little garden in the middle of the wilderness. Zach walked slowly around the area in fascination as April emerged from the underbrush.
Eying him curiously, April turned her attention to a flat black slab at the water’s edge. It was small, perhaps the size of a notepad. On end, it rose vertically about a foot from base to tip. Drawn to it, April knelt beside it, placing her small fingers onto its smooth, matte surface. As her skin contacted the mysterious object, she felt a dizzying rush of energy and swooned.
Zach caught her slumping form out of the corner of his eye and rushed to her side in alarm. “April!”
He pulled her to him, cradling her head in his lap as she blinked her eyes open. “What happened?” he asked, his voice tight with concern.
“I just touched that black thing by the water, and it zapped me or something.”
Zach’s gaze immediately zeroed in on the small monolith. Funny, he hadn’t noticed it before.
“Well, that’s enough of that. Maybe it’s some kind of solar panel or something?” The words sounded lame, but he couldn’t think of what else it might be. It was too far into the woods to be a transformer. Maybe a battery?
April took a couple of deep breaths, then rose to her feet without assistance. Zach stared up at her as she rolled her head in a circle and examined the fingers that had touched the strange object’s surface. “I actually feel pretty good.”
As if to illustrate her point, she bounced on the balls of her feet, looking far more energetic than she had as she had staggered into the clearing.
Rising to his feet, he took her by the shoulders momentarily, careful not to brush against the small monolith near his feet as he looked her in the eye. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I think I am.”
April’s tone was hopeful, more confident than she usually sounded. That confidence finally assuaged Zach’s concern. “Okay. If you’re up for it, let’s head back then.”
April nodded, then marched back toward the trail enthusiastically, Zach blinking in surprise before following her back down the trail.
When they reached the trailhead, Zach nodded to the ranger station. “We should let the ranger know about the monolith.”
A look of fear flashed across April’s face. “I-I’ll go in and tell them.”
Before Zach could reply, she hustled inside the ranger station. As she approached the desk, however, she smiled demurely. “Where is the restroom?”
A ranger bearing the name tag “Harvey” smiled back at her. “Just over there,” he pointed.
April thanked him, then used the facilities, wondering why she hadn’t told the man about the monolith. When she emerged from the bathroom, she thought about going over to tell him, but again a strange reluctance overcame her. She exited the building without saying another word.
CHAPTER 2: SLIDING SCALES
S
Zach slumped against the wall, watching April in her kickboxing class through the window of the group exercise room. They’d been at the gym for three hours now, and she looked as fresh as when she’d just started!
But her energy was the least of her changes.
He hadn’t entirely realized how far her physique had progressed until she picked up the small weights for her next series of punches. Ridges of muscle popped from her increasingly muscular arms as she launched combinations of jabs and uppercuts into imaginary opponents, along with the twenty other women in the class.
As Zach took note of the numbers on the ends of the dumbbells, his eyes widened in surprise. Each was 15 pounds! No one else in the room was using more than two pounds.
Feeling his mouth go dry, Zach remembered how he used to ogle the other fit, well-endowed women at the gym. Now, however, he only had eyes for his girlfriend. He found himself smiling involuntarily as she finished off the class, grabbing a towel to wipe the beads of sweat from her sculpted body.
She strode toward him, a bright smile painted over features that somehow seemed far more attractive than they had even yesterday. She gave him a peck on the cheek, the hint of a smile forming on her fuller lips. As she straightened to her full height, Zach gasped in shock.
Not only had she grown ridiculously fit over the past two weeks, she was now just as tall as he was! When had that happened!
Swallowing hard, Zach chided himself for not noticing that sooner. Getting fitter was one thing, but growing taller? At her age? That wasn’t natural, was it?
Unable to help a further investigation into the full extent of changes that he’d noticed but not fully comprehended until now, Zach’s eyes descended April’s ever-improving figure, letting them linger on sports bra-straining cleavage that had inexplicably grown in proportion with her muscles over the last two weeks.
Zach had taken her to buy this bra just three days ago, after she had complained of tightness in her old ones. He could scarcely believe that it was already looking insufficient to the task of containing her large, ultra-firm breasts. Still, it was doing better than the workout top that now barely met the top of her yoga pants, pulling up occasionally during the more energetic portions of her workouts to reveal the chiseled abs beneath. Made for a girl with a torso several inches shorter and a bust several sizes smaller, its seams were unraveling with every motion of her rapidly improving body.
As April turned to fill her water bottle, Zach glanced around the room, noticing several pairs of male eyes follow her to the drinking fountain. Suppressing unfamiliar feelings of insecurity where his girlfriend was concerned, Zach followed her, shielding her from the view of the rest of the gym until she finished bending over.
“Why don’t we get out of here, April? Three hours is plenty, don’t you think?”
Her face fell. “But I haven’t even gotten in a proper weight workout yet! Don’t you want to see how much I can lift today? You haven’t seen what I’m up to these days...”
It was true. He hadn’t. This was the first time the two of them had come to the gym together and while he had humored her tall tales of ultra-rapid gains at the gym, he hadn’t actually believed the extent to which she claimed to have progressed. Still, he hadn’t wanted to discourage her. She had been looking trimmer and more muscular with her long, frequent workouts recently, and Zach had been enjoying the new her.
“Please? I would so love it if you stayed to watch what I can do...”
April’s excitement, combined with her far more attractive visage, worked to sway Zach to her wishes. When he nodded his acquiescence, she clapped her hands together eagerly, then rushed to the dumbbell rack, pulling a pair of 50-pound dumbbells free with surprisingly little difficulty.
“There’s a free bench over here,” Zach pointed. “I’m assuming you want to work your chest, right?”
She smiled, making no movement toward the bench. “Actually, I was going to do biceps. I can’t do chest with just dumbbells anymore.”
Zach looked dumbfounded. “Biceps? But that’s like twice as much weight as I use for…”
His words trailed off as April flexed her well-defined arms into action. The weights rose and descended with machine-like efficiency, her muscled core and quads tensing into defined relief as her arms continued to churn out repetition after repetition. Finally, as she neared twenty curls with each arm, they began to quiver with effort. Still, she managed another ten with each arm before dropping the dumbbells to the ground.
To Zach’s amazement, after a brief rest, April did another two sets, adding a few additional repetitions each time before moving on to work each of her other muscle groups. Each weight she chose was at least twice what Zach himself could lift, at least for the number of reps she was doing.
Dazed and feeling slightly queasy, Zach leaned against the wall. Did this mean that his girlfriend was stronger than he was? Part of him relished the idea, but an equal part felt threatened by it. This was April! His cute, insecure little girlfriend. How was she developing such strength so quickly! Granted, she had suddenly been inspired to work out for hours each day. That was bound to produce some rapid improvements in her body. But to be stronger than the average man in two weeks? That seemed to be pushing it a bit. And it didn’t explain how her breasts were growing. Or how she was getting taller.
Something tugged at the edge of his consciousness. A thought. Something unusual had happened right around the start of all of these changes...
Before he could quite grasp at the elusive, ephemeral thought, however, he was distracted by the sight of April exiting the locker room. The fabric of her jeans flapped loosely against the front of powerful-looking legs. As he looked closer, he noticed that the seams running the entire length of her pant legs were torn apart.
Looking up to meet her eyes, Zach gave April a quizzical look. She shrugged. “They ripped a little when I tried to get them on today. My legs were pretty pumped after those squats.”
Ripped a little? They now looked more like some sort of long, denim belly-dancing skirt than pants. There was absolutely no way those slender skinny jeans could fit her legs now, rippling, as they were, with feminine sinew. As she passed him on the way to the entrance to the gym, Zach saw that half of her sinuously muscled ass was visible! He gaped as her shredded pants shifted to reveal tantalizing glimpses of her tanned, toned flesh as she strode forward with un-April-like confidence.
“April!” Zach whispered urgently. April cast him a questioning glance, then followed his gaze to her exposed backside. Her eyes widened in horror as she realized how exposed she was, and she quickly slapped both hands over their trim, iron swells. Thinking quickly, she slipped off her jacket and tied it hurriedly around her waist.
She blushed as she looked into Zach’s wondering eyes and shrugged.
***
“I can’t believe you’re not sore after that workout!” Zach told April from the bedroom as she slipped on a new top for their weekly trip to the bar. The red, low-cut blouse was more daring than anything she’d ever dared to wear before, but she was determined to show up that waitress this time. She was beginning to think that she might have the body to do it now.
That belief, however, did little to quell the butterflies fluttering her stomach. She was so unaccustomed to showing her body. She had always known that it was inadequate, weak, and just barely attractive enough for a good man like Zach to show the slightest interest in her.
And even that had always disappeared the moment a prettier girl had entered the room.
Now, however, she knew she was becoming better looking, possessing an athletic appeal of the sort that she knew Zach liked. Clenching her stomach and pulling up the hem of her blouse, she watched in delight as it exploded into cobbles that would make a crossfitter proud.
Slipping on a skirt that fit almost ridiculously tightly around her sleek, rounded hips and tight, firm tush, she marveled at how far she’d come in two short weeks of workouts. She’d lost 20% bodyfat, bringing her to single digits if the measures at the gym were to be believed. She had developed a body that even she had to admit compared favorably to those of fitness cover models. And in record time! Not only that, but she was three inches taller and had actually gained a couple of cup sizes despite shedding pounds of body fat.
It didn’t make any sense that so much about her body had changed, but the changes were undeniable. She had just had so much energy lately! Able to conquer grueling, intense workouts with increasing ease, she had become stronger. Bustier Taller.
The Zach trifecta in the flesh.
Grinning, she looked into the mirror, admiring eyelashes that seemed longer, lips that seemed fuller, and a nose that seemed more delicately shaped. Crossing her arms under her substantial bust, she watched with satisfaction as it bulged from the scoop neck of her top, an alien fierceness lighting her eyes. Let’s see that waitress Laura take Zach’s attention away from her now!
April emerged from the bathroom accompanied by a billow of steam, like an actress taking the stage in a lavish, high-budget, pyrotechnic production. She reveled in Zach’s stunned reaction.
Feeling an unfamiliar sense of pride welling within her, April launched into a quick, hesitant twirl. She stumbled, however, with the foreign movement, quickly chiding herself for getting carried away with the attempted Julie Andrews routine. Cheeks flushing, she hustled to the entrance to the house before selecting her sexiest 3-inch heels. Slipping them on, pleased that her feet hadn’t grown significantly larger as the rest of her had, she watched Zach approach, looking down on him from her stiletto-assisted 5’11” height.
As she turned to open the door, she couldn’t help putting a little sway into her hips as she walked to the car. It wasn’t really like her, but she was feeling pretty for once, and she couldn’t resist. This time, she didn’t even wait for Zach to open the door.
Zach sat down in the driver’s side seat but, rather than turning on the car, turned to April, now ready to broach the subject that had dominated his thoughts since this morning at the gym. “Don’t you think your recent growth spurt is a little unnatural?”
April frowned before replying defensively. “Unnatural? Not really. I think it’s amazing! Don’t you?”
Zach considered that for a moment. Amazing was definitely the word for it, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge that. At least not in a positive light. Not to her face.
“Actually, I was thinking that we should take you to the doctor.”
“The doctor?! Why? I’m healthier now than I’ve ever been!”
“Because it’s not normal, April! Getting fitter is one thing, and I’m glad for that! But you’re getting taller too! Your bones are growing! And your breasts!” His voice was rising as his words became more impassioned. “Maybe you have some sort of hormonal imbalance or something…”
“Hormonal imbalance?” April huffed. “If I do, then it’s the best medical condition ever! I’m actually feeling good about myself, Zach. More than I ever have before! Can’t you be happy for me?”
“I am happy for you,” Zach half-lied, scowling with displeasure as he met true resistance from April for the first time. He was used to her simply acceding to his wishes with timid acquiescence. “I’m just saying it’s not normal, that’s all.”
April crossed her arms over her impressive chest and turned to glare out the windshield of the car, no longer looking at him. “Fine. I’ll go to the doctor.”
“Great!” said Zach, sounding relieved but for the slightest hint of a tremor in his voice. “That’s all I ask.”
***
When April took a seat at their usual table, pulling off her coat to reveal the impressive swells of her breasts in her new scarlet top, she noticed eyes from every corner of the room zeroing in on her chest.
The attention felt uncomfortable at first, but as she relaxed into her chair, watching Zach’s fluid gaze flow to her buxom frame as well, she couldn’t help but smile. So this was how it felt to be a pretty girl? Drawing looks from nearly every guy in the room?
She fought to suppress a blush, fanning her face surreptitiously as she crossed longer, stronger legs.
“The veggie burger, right?” said Laura to Zach with a wink as she strutted toward them, her large breasts rippling with each strike of her foot.
Surprised, Zach tore his eyes from April’s cleavage to blink at the comely waitress. He nodded.
“Salad again, toots?” she mumbled to April, scribbling in her notepad without so much as casting sidelong glance at April.
“Actually, how about a steak.” April’s unexpected order drew a surprised look from Zach. She’d never ordered meat before. Certainly not a steak!
April watched as Laura’s brows furrowed. The woman’s chin rose, eyes rolling upward to focus on a pair of breasts large enough to rival her own, affixed to a chest far stronger to give them the added benefit of natural support. Her eyes widened in disbelief.
Swallowing audibly, Laura nodded wordlessly, her eyes finally finishing their upward journey to meet April’s amused gaze. She stumbled backward a step before catching herself, then walked away, shaking her head.
Delighted, a surge of energy bolstering her growing confidence, April turned to face Zach. His eyes were on hers, slipping occasionally to her lipstick-covered lips. They were not, however, on the voluptuous waitress who was rushing to the kitchen.
Victory.
The trivia contest began shortly thereafter. April looked at the television screen as the first question flashed onto the display. “Who was the author of Benito Cereno?”
“Herman Melville,” she whispered across the table to Zach, the answer forming in her mind before she really even gave it much thought. “The same author as Moby Dick.”
“Are you sure?” asked Zach suspiciously, remembering April’s flub on the poetry question two weeks ago.
This time, however, April nodded vigorously, her eyes filled with certainty, unlike before.
Zach gave her an appraising look, then nodded, jotting down the answer on their sheet of notebook paper.
“What is the atomic number of Boron?” came the next question.
“5,” said April instantly in a hushed voice. How had she known that? She hadn’t even been very good at chemistry! But it was as if there were a perfect image of the periodic table in her mind. All she had to do was rove her mind’s eye over each box until she hit the right element.
Zach hesitated for a moment, giving her a confused look, then shrugged and wrote it down.
“What was the first battle between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee known as?”
This time April had to think about the answer. She had watched that documentary on the Civil War years ago…
...playing the relevant scene at accelerated speed through her mind, she quickly found what she was looking for.
“The Wilderness!” she hissed excitedly.
Zach raised an eyebrow before whispering. “Are you sure? History is usually my thing, remember?”
“Well, what do you think it is then?” April retorted quietly.
Zach racked his brain, but couldn’t really remember that answer. Unable to come up with a better answer, he wrote down April’s.
As the questions continued, April found that she could recall the answers to each in turn, regardless of subject. Able to access memories with unusual clarity, her thoughts abnormally lucid and agile, she knew instantly that she was correct every time she whispered an answer to her boyfriend.
When they were announced the winners with a perfect score at the conclusion of the evening, April gave Zach a dazzling smile, before bounding from her chair to retrieve the gift certificate that constituted the weekly prize.
Zach couldn’t help but return her infectious smile as she marched back to their table, prize in hand. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, her first ever public display of affection with him, modest as it was.
When they arrived at home that night, Zach taking his usual position back down on the bed, April surprised him.
Looking hesitant at first, April set her jaw then pulled off her top, letting her large, braless breasts bounce free. Zach gasped as his eyes devoured her super-fit form with a simmering desire she’d never before seen within them. Warring with her reserved nature momentarily for a second time, she finally threw caution to the wind and leaned down to kiss him passionately.
As she sucked greedily on his lips, she wriggled out of her skirt and slid her toned, muscular legs down either side of Zach’s narrow hips. Feeling exceptionally frisky as the two continued to swirl pleasure into each other’s mouths, she gave his body a hard, aroused squeeze of her powerful thighs. Zach broke their kiss momentarily, his face contorting into a grimace.
“Not so hard!” he exclaimed.
Chastened, April relaxed her legs until Zach resumed kissing her. April’s hand descended Zach’s stomach, pausing momentarily on his belt, then resuming its previous path until it arrived at his zipper.
As her hand roamed his body, Zach’s did likewise. Fingers reaching out, they pressed into her cobbled abdomen. It was so firm! Almost completely unyielding! How were her muscles this dense? As his fingertips found the grooves between each hard brick, he felt his heart flutter, his erection surging to become absolute iron.
April was built like a superhero from a comic book, with lean, defined muscles covering every part of her ultra-fit body. She was exactly the kind of woman he had always been most attracted to. Breathing in the heady scent of her perfumed hair as it fell around him, he ran his hands up her torso until they glided over the smooth, spherical surface of her amazing breasts. He felt April shiver as his fingers brushed her aroused nipples.
Pulling the small metal tag of his zipper down, she fished his rock hard member from his boxers.
Shifting her hips until they aligned with his throbbing cock, she pressed herself into him. For the first time, she felt Zach’s hot, rigid flesh part her moist folds.
It was heaven.
April and Zach moaned in unison as she slid herself onto him, clenching him tightly as she ground down his length. April gasped as she felt him fill her, the sensation breathtaking, better than anything she’d ever felt before.
Zach groaned as her hips met his, his mouth descending April’s neck as he felt her steamy breath heat his forehead.
“Oh God!” she breathed as she began to pull her hips away from him once more, preparing for another thrust.
“Mmmmm…” Zach’s reply came through clenched teeth as he nipped the sensitive flesh of April’s neck.
April rode Zach to a shaking, shuddering climax.
As she rolled off him to her side of the bed, the two of them panting heavily as they wiped at the beads of sweat on their brows, April made a breathy proposal. “Want to go for another hike tomorrow?”
“Sure!” Zach replied, staring at the ceiling, an awestruck expression on his satiated features.
***
“So this is why you wanted to go hiking? To come back here?” Zach said in an accusing tone, not entirely sure how he felt about this return trip to the strange clearing.
Zach kicked the odd monolith, earning a glare from April who lowered herself to a squat next to the strange object. She reached out, tracing her fingers along its edges. As her soft skin made contact with it, Zach saw her tense and shiver. Her nipples drilled into the thin technical fabric of her top, and she shivered in spite of the day’s heat.
“Why do you like that thing so much?” asked Zach, watching her reaction with an interested but disapproving scowl.
“I just…” April stammered, seeming dazed by the contact with the monolith. “...feel this connection…”
“Connection?” Zach raised an eyebrow. He dropped to his knees and poked a finger against its surface experimentally.
He felt nothing.
“Do you see that?” came April’s awestruck voice.
“See what?” Zach asked, confused.
“The colors!” she replied. “Before it was black, but now it’s practically overflowing with vibrant colors!”
Zach examined the surface of the monolith. It was a smooth, perfectly uniform black. No colors.
“Um, it’s still black, April.”
She gave him a suspicious glance, opening her mouth to say something, then thought better of it, biting back her words out of long habit.
“I can’t believe it’s still here!” said Zach, rising to his feet once again. “After you told the ranger about it and everything.”
“Yeah,” April said absently, grabbing the monolith on each side and lifting. Even with her new strength, however, it was too heavy to budge. Doubling down on her efforts, she actually managed to wobble it slightly. But still, she couldn’t lift it from the ground.
Giving up on her attempts to move the monolith, April rose to her feet, her mind returning to their conversation. She hadn’t told the ranger about the monolith, though she’d led Zach to think she had. Something had told her to keep its existence to herself. “Maybe they couldn’t take it out of here. It’s pretty heavy.”
“Pfft,” said Zach, kneeling down to grip the strange, dark tablet with both hands. April had managed to wobble it slightly, but Zach couldn’t seem to budget the thing in the slightest. It was as if it weighed 1,000 pounds! How could something so small be so heavy?
As gave up trying to move the monolith, he looked up to see April’s smoldering eyes looking down on him. She looked incredibly turned on. Was she actually becoming aroused by this thing?
He felt April’s fingers ball into a fist, bunching the fabric of his shirt in the center of his upper back. She pulled him to his feet, then planted a long, sensual kiss on his lips.
By the time she broke the kiss, Zach was left panting for air, wiping his saliva-moistened mouth with the back of his hand. “Wow, April! What has gotten into you lately!”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she gave him a flirtatious wink before bounding off into the bushes for home.
Zach stood there, stunned, for a moment before following her. What had come over his timid little girlfriend?! It was like she was becoming a completely different person!
When they reached the trailhead, the two of them walked into the ranger station, where April raced off to use the bathroom. As she disappeared, Zach walked over to the desk, where the ranger named Harvey, whom April had spoken with the previous week, looked at him expectantly.
“Hi,” Zach began. “I was just wondering what you found out about that strange black monolith up in the woods.”
“Beg your pardon?” asked Harvey, cocking his head as his smile faltered slightly.
“The small black tablet thing that my girlfriend reported a couple of weeks ago…?” Zach prompted.
Harvey’s brow furrowed. “As far as I know, we haven’t had any reports about anything like that.”
Zach frowned. “Maybe she spoke with another ranger?”
“Was it on a weekend?”
“Yes.”
“I’m the only one here on weekends, sir.”
Zach felt a strange emptiness form in the pit of his stomach.
April had lied to him.
“Nevermind then. Sorry. I must be confused.” Zach backtracked, his mind attempting to process this new bit of information. As far as he knew, April had never lied to him before.
Harvey’s quizzical gaze followed him as he walked back to the area near the bathrooms. When April emerged from the door, a radiant glow seeming to light her skin, Zach considered challenging her about her falsehood.
But he decided against it.
Could the monolith be the cause of her changes? She had touched it the first time, but he had not, and she had changed, while he had not. She had seemed to see colors inside it the second time around, whereas he had not. The changes in her body were so unusual, so fantastic, that maybe this monolith thing really had been the cause. Something out of the ordinary was certainly going on.
But this time, he had touched it too. And if it had done that for her, what would it do for him?
CHAPTER 3: DIVERGENCE
“Rrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhh!”
April’s smile was as breathtaking as the feat she’d just accomplished. She held a barbell over her head, the solid iron cylinder bending slightly under the weight of the 500 lbs. it held. But that was nothing compared to what she did next.
The tendons of her neck straining, she used both hands to twirl the bar like a baton over her head, before bringing it down. She began to curl the bar, her huge arms trembling with the effort.
Zach, along with nearly everyone else in the gym, gasped in astonishment, staring up into her concentrating face as she brought 500 pounds to her chest again and again, grunting softly with each effort. Her arms and legs were huge and chiseled into beautiful domes and ridges of deliciously developed feminine muscle. The well-developed sinew of her back and core rippled with incredible power. April’s body had developed to the point where he’d never seen such a perfectly sculpted physique on anyone.
He felt himself growing aroused as her massive muscles swelled with the effort, exploding into steely tension, then relaxing into a state of tightly coiled relief that still looked every bit as hard and staggeringly defined as those of any bodybuilder that he’d ever seen—while flexing.
When she finished, she dropped the staggeringly heavy weight to the floor with a loud *BOOM*. The floor and walls of the gym quaked with the colossal force of its impact.
She walked over to Zach, her now-massive breasts even with his eyeline, bulging against the custom-made lycra sports bra with each breath. He swallowed hard, licking his lips as his eyes caressed the succulent swells, each of which was the size of his head. Her still-pumped muscles radiated unbelievable strength, clearly surpassing that of anyone—man or woman—he had ever seen. As she reached him, he managed to tear his eyes away from her prodigious mammaries, craning his neck to stare into her azure eyes, bright with satisfied delight.
“Another record lift!” April beamed, clearly pleased by her achievement.
She wrapped her huge, breathtakingly hard arms around him, pulling his feet off the ground effortlessly. She mashed his face into her magnificent cleavage as her mighty grip crushed the air from his lungs. By the time she set him down, he was left gasping for breath.
“Just think: a few weeks ago you were actually stronger than me. Seems hard to believe now. Maybe if you spent a little more time at the gym, you wouldn’t have such a hard time keeping up…”
Zach’s lips twitched at her pointed words, echoing his own during their first hike to the monolith, but he said nothing as April looked around the gym, basking in the admiring gazes of dozens of people. Just a few weeks ago she had used to be shy as well. She’d had difficulty meeting the gazes of others.
Not anymore.
Zach couldn’t help but marvel at her astonishing physique himself. Aside from her lush breasts, her 300-pound body didn’t look like it held so much as an ounce of body fat, each fiber of her insanely developed muscles clearly visible under flawless skin. Mesmerized, he reached out to touch her powerful arm, to taste its strength, so far beyond his own, with his fingertips. But with a twinkle in her eye, April spun on her heel and marched off to the locker room to shower, leaving her boyfriend with his hand outstretched, blinking as he regained his senses.
Zach watched her go, dropping his hand to his side with a yearning sigh of unrequited desire. Sullenly, he trod to the wall across from the entrance to the women’s locker room and awaited April’s return.
When she came out, she paused at the wall where the gym had height measurements marks up to seven feet. “Time for my daily measurement, Zach.”
April’s eyes twinkled with delight as Zach pulled a chair next to her then stepped up on it. He frowned in concentration as he measured a six-inch length on the marked portion of the wall with his hands, then carefully moved them upward, adding the distance above where the wall markings ended. The extra six inches brought him level with the top of her head.
“7’8” now,” he said, feeling a strange flutter in his stomach with the pronouncement. His girlfriend was now taller than even the largest NBA players.
***
As April pulled into their driveway, she could tell Zach was stewing, quiet since they had left the gym. Maybe he was upset that she had insisted on driving today? Or maybe that she hadn’t let him touch her for the last few days, even as she’d been sure to give him ever more enticing displays of her rapidly improving body? She supposed that was a little cruel.
In truth, she had wanted to have sex. Her libido had been growing every bit as quickly as her burgeoning physique. She’d wanted Zach to feel her quickly growing muscles, too hear him gasp with awe at her power. But she couldn’t have him thinking he was entitled to her body. Not anymore. When he had been the more gifted, he had called the shots in their relationship. Now that she had improved beyond him, it was her turn to call the shots. Turnabout was fair play, was it not?
Maybe she simply needed to show him just how superior she was—in every possible way.
“So did you like my little show at the gym?” April asked him, accidentally knocking Zach to the ground as they both reached for the front door simultaneously. She reached down and hauled him to his feet with a shoulder-wrenching tug, launching him inside the door where he stumbled to a stop against the sofa several yards within.
“I-I…” Zach stammered, turning to face her. She ducked to come inside, then rose to her full height, well above the door frame as she closed the door behind her.
Not waiting for Zach to gather his wits after her latest subtle display of physical superiority, April continued. “Want to see if my mind has changed as much as my body?”
She had a strong inkling, after her performance in the last couple of trivia nights, that her mind had improved every bit as much as her breathtaking body. But she wanted to make sure Zach knew it too.
“Maybe a game of chess?” She winked at him.
The two hadn’t played chess in months, both of them having lost interest in the same outcome every single time—a Zach victory. Something told April, however, that this time would be different.
As they began to play, the potential options for each piece seemed to flash in her mind as she turned her gaze from one piece to the next. She could visualize the possibilities, but her mind instantly seemed to select the best of them, intuiting the optimal move effortlessly.
As she watched him growing ever more sullen with her bold, unexpected moves, April attempted to suppress a smile. As he lifted his arm, she noticed a slight discoloration on his sleeve. Her vision seemed to zoom into the fabric, magnifying it to the point where she could see the unwelcome cluster of dirt clinging to its cotton fibers.
“You really should put some stain remover on that shirt, Zach.”
Zach looked down, running his fingers over the material, seeing nothing.
“It’s on your sleeve!” April clarified.
Baffled, Zach searched his sleeves for the stain, but again came up empty. He looked at April helplessly and shrugged.
April sighed, rolling her eyes. “Right there! At the edge of your right wrist.”
He held up his hand before his eyes, studying the material for several seconds before realization dawned upon his features.
“Geez, April, I could barely see that tiny little discoloration staring straight at it. How on earth did you see that from across the table?”
“I think my eyesight’s improving,” said April nonchalantly. “Plus, I was just thinking about when you spilled that drop of wine on that shirt four months ago about thirty-seven seconds before the love scene in the first Wonder Woman movie that we were watching for like the hundredth time.”
Zach gave her a dumbfounded look, his brows furrowing as he attempted to remember the event April described. Despite not having the faintest recollection of that event, however, he didn’t challenge her assertion. She simply sounded too confident.
Letting that line of conversation die, Zach returned his attention to the game board with a slight tensing of his jaw. A few moves later, she watched with amusement as Zach pulled at his hair, studying the board carefully for several minutes before selecting his next move. The instant he did it, she made the countermove made obvious by her foresight. Two more moves in, she knew she had won the game. The thought about telling Zach, but decided it would be more fun to simply let it play out.
Three moves later, it had. “Checkmate,” April smiled, watching Zach’s eyes dart around the board for a way out. But she had known there was no such thing several minutes earlier, leading up to the triumphant moment.
“So it looks like I might be smarter than you now too, Zachie.”
Zach’s stunned features quickly twisted in anger at that remark. He swiped his hand across the board, sending the pieces flying across the room.
“You know, April, I’ve had just about enough of you acting all superior to me lately. Yeah, you’re having a huge growth spurt and have gotten really strong. It’s probably because you’ve got some kind of fucking disease! But you won’t go to the doctor to fucking find out!”
“Do you really think a disease would make me smarter too? And improve my vision? And memory?” April responded calmly, a hint of amusement tugging at the corner of her lips. “My disease as you so eloquently put it has been a lifetime of fear. A lifetime of inadequacy. This is the cure to my disease! Do you know how long I’ve lived my life like I should be ashamed? How long I’ve let myself be suppressed by everyone around me? By you?”
She let those words sink in, seeing the shock register on Zach’s reddening face. “I don’t want to feel like that anymore, Zach. And I don’t have to feel like that. Ever. Again.”
She glared at him defiantly. “So, no, I’m not going to go to the fucking doctor. I love who I’ve become.”
Not long ago, a tantrum like this from her boyfriend would have frightened her into fearful submission. But no longer. She knew that Zach couldn’t do anything to her. She felt little more than the tiniest twinge of uncertainty in the back of her mind. These days, however, it was becoming ever easier to silence the nagging self-doubt that, even now, lingered in the back of her mind. She knew she was right. And she wouldn’t cave before Zach’s nonsensical arguments just to assuage his wounded ego. Not anymore.
Zach grew even more incensed by her words, but far more by her subtle expression of amusement. “You think this is fucking normal?” he said, grabbing her huge, steely bicep and attempting to squeeze it to the point where it hurt.
April’s half-smile disappeared, and she rose to her full 7’8” foot height, dwarfing her diminutive boyfriend. Her hand shot out in a flash, grabbing a handful of wadded shirt, and lifting Zach’s feet off the ground. She raised him until his face was level with hers, then leaned in until they were nose to nose.
“Of course it’s not normal. I’m way better than just fucking normal,” she seethed, her voice quiet and trembling. “I’m way better than you.”
“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you!” yelled Zach, heedless, in his anger, of the fact that his girlfriend held him off the ground without difficulty and could likely crush him like an insect.
Zach continued, however, his face red, spittle flying from his lips. “But if you really believed that, then why did you lie to me about reporting that monolith? Could it be because that’s all that this is? Some fucking magic rock? And you’re afraid of the moment when this whole little fantasy world of yours comes crashing down? Because I’ve got news for you. It will!”
April looked stricken, her eyes becoming glassy as Zach’s words hit her in her most vulnerable place. Losing all that she had gained was now her greatest fear.
“Because I reported it. And I don’t lie!” he lied. “Just wait until they destroy that thing, and you go back to being the nothing that you always fucking were.”
A single tear rolled down April’s exquisite face, as she searched Zach’s eyes, finding no empathy within them, only anger. And something else.
“You’re lying,” she said simply, wiping away the tear with the hand that wasn’t holding Zach.
Doubt flashed across Zach’s face, as if he were afraid she could read his mind. His reaction, however, only served to confirm April’s suspicions. Her gaze grew icy. Her lips drew into a satisfied smirk.
She slammed him to the table on his back, nearly cracking the wood with his body. The violence of the motion sent the last remaining chess pieces to the floor. As Zach blinked away the stars, she straddled him, her meaty thighs clenching his relatively slender hips. Sweeping her hands down his shirt, April sent its buttons spraying across the room to ricochet off the wall with a plasticy clatter. She hooked a finger under his belt, popping it loose, then placed each hand on the top of his jeans, gripping the fabric with her mighty fingers. Her biceps and triceps exploded with inhuman definition as she pulled outward, straining against the denim fabric until she forced it apart, the cloth tearing around the top button like a rock in a flowing stream. Once the button tore through the last of the tough material, she gave another sharp tug, shredding his pants down the center to his crotch.
***
As Zach regained his senses, he raised his head off the table to see what she was doing next. He followed her eyes to his own erection. Being manhandled by his girlfriend fluttered his heart in excitement. He felt adrenaline pump into his system as he watched her.
April, sitting atop Zach’s legs, swooped forward, holding most of her weight above Zach’s body with her powerful arms. Hands reaching to grip each side of the table like a steel vises, she slid the firm slopes of her magnificent breasts along his torso. Zach felt the smooth firmness of the softest parts of her body gliding deliciously along the bare flesh of his stomach and chest, leaving a trail of tingles in their wake. But at the same time, he gasped at the sensation of her uncoiling stomach as each iron brick of her exquisite abs ground into his rising member as she stretched herself over him. Zach moaned in pleasure at the feel of her snakelike body grating against him, his arousal doubling by the second to a level he had never reached before. April hadn’t touched him for several days, though her tantalizing displays of her increasingly powerful body had continued to stoke his smoldering desire. Now, feeling her against him like this, his libido had been stimulated into a raging inferno.
April plunged her tongue into his mouth, the force of her kiss knocking his head into the table with a soft clunk. He didn’t even notice, too lost in moaning pleasure to be concerned about something as trivial as pain.
The hard, heavily muscled flesh just inside her hips felt searingly hot to the touch as his quivering member pressed into her flesh. The girl’s body felt almost like a marble sculpture. Except that her unyielding form was so warm and her skin so soft as it clung to the impossibly dense musculature within.
Zach shuddered, wrapping his arms around her expanding iron-hard lats. He clutched at the smooth, hard swells of her sinewed back with desperate fingertips, but could find no purchase. Her muscles were almost completely unyielding. His anger was completely gone, utterly replaced by his rapidly flaring desire for the masterpiece that was April’s new body.
April undulated her hips, rolling them upward until they, along with the clenched swells of her tight, luscious ass hovered above his throbbing member like a cobra poised to strike.
“Let’s go back,” she whispered breathily into his panting mouth.
“Back?” he replied reflexively in an uncomprehending, panting half-moan.
“To the monolith.” Her voice was husky now. Her hips descended until they were tantalizingly close to Zach’s straining member, crackling his sensitive skin with their electric heat. Zach’s body trembled, pinned helplessly beneath April’s immense shoulders and powerful thighs. “Just imagine how strong I could be.”
Zach released a sharp breath against April’s chin, beyond excited by the prospect, even as he dreaded it. April smiled wickedly, then licked his trembling lips, basking in the heady rush of power as her boyfriend fell ever more deeply under her sway.
“Don’t you want to see me get even better?” she whispered seductively. “Even more powerful?”
Zach whimpered, as aroused as he’d ever been in his life by the lushly muscled body above him. “Yesssssss…” he groaned in an eager, almost pained whisper, sounding like a serpent.
April’s smile widened in victory, her dark eyes and moist lips predatory. Zach clenched his glutes, raising his butt from the table in an attempt to thrust into her. Not only had she proven her superiority over him mentally and physically today, she had conquered him sexually as well. But he didn’t care. Right now, all that mattered was being a part of her massive body, her strength, her superiority. Zach didn’t care if she was manipulating him, right now a slave to the seductive promise of the powerful, slithering body that continued to grind against his.
April angled her hips over his tips and plunged downward, punctuating her domination with a climactic exclamation point as he cried out in clenching, shuddering ecstasy.
***
April’s greedy eyes gleamed darkly as the couple reached the clearing a third time. Her hungry gaze never strayed from the dark, matte surface of the monolith as she strode straight for it. Zach huffed loudly as he staggered behind her, struggling to keep pace with her long, powerful strides.
She knelt down before the object, colors, visible only to her, swirling in her mesmerized irises. She reached down, sliding her fingers around the bottom edge of the monolith. She tensed her massive muscles, glimmering with a sheen of sweat from the hike. They strained as she unleashed every ounce of her nearly superhuman strength.
Releasing a throaty roar, she raised the heavy tablet to her chest, then gave a victorious cry as she rose to her feet. She raised the object over her head with quivering arms, turning to face Zach, her wild eyes staggering daggers into him as she felt the object’s influence wash over her, far more strongly this time. Her hips began to buck with orgasmic pleasure as she felt her already hulking body gaining inches of height, her creaking muscles rippling as they surged anew with even greater bulk and definition.
Zach took a tremulous step backward, his eyes widening as he watched climaxes blast through his girlfriend’s massive, still swelling body. Her shoulders erupted as they grew from volleyballs to soccer balls to cannonballs of solid, striated muscle. Her biceps swelled as power gushed into them. Her triceps exploded into iron-hard ridges power as she held the monolith aloft with increasing ease.
Her abs clenched in time with her bucking hips, their chiseled web of definition growing more pronounced with every contraction, until the carved trenches that ran between each muscle became staggeringly deep.
Her smooth thighs rippled into mighty cables of corded muscle, deep ravines running between each powerful cluster of fibers. Her calves surged outward, bulging into impossibly dense, rounded balls of gnarled sinew.
April’s panting face transformed as well. Her lips filled in, becoming more lushly feminine as she panted under the onslaught of power the monolith pumped into her incredible body. Her eyes grew larger, dominating her face with their brilliance. Her delicate features sculpted themselves into sensual, expressive elegance.
April’s head rolled back, her gaze rising to focus on the dark object overhead. She could almost see the golden cascade of power pouring over her, instinctively welcoming it into her body.
As her orgasms began to subside, April gave one last shudder of pleasure before dropping the monolith to her chest and hugging it to her expanding breasts. Shouldering a stunned Zach out of her way, she carried it back down the trail to the car.
Lower lip trembling with a mix of horror and arousal, Zach shook his head in an attempt to clear the vision of an ascending April from his mind. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. Unanswered questions whirled through his mind, finding no answers.
When they reached the parking lot at the trailhead, April opened the door to the car, placing the monolith inside. The car’s suspension squeaked and groaned as the car’s wheel wells descended nearly to the top of the tires.
“No!” cried Zach, running toward the car as the sunset flared behind his girlfriend. “We are NOT taking that thing home! We don’t even know what it is!”
April turned to face him, her gaze calculating. She closed the door behind her, the action making it clear that she would be bringing the monolith with them whether Zach liked it or not.
Zach ran up to her and attempted to shove her out of the way to get to the car door.
She didn’t budge.
Instead, she looked down on him with contempt from her intimidating 7’8” height. “I can do whatever I want now, Zach. And with the monolith, I’ll only continue to become more powerful.
Zach’s eyes darkened, his features contorting in frustration. He reached out and shoved her again, her abs feeling like warm steel under his fingers. Again, she didn’t move. His frustration giving way to impotent anger, Zach began to strike her, again and again until his knuckles bled.
April only laughed.
Furious now, Zach ran to the edge of the parking lot, picking up rocks and throwing them at her as hard as he could. They bounced off her steely physique harmlessly.
His fury escalating to rage, he cast about for something else, his wild eyes finally coming to rest on a solid, five-foot long branch. He picked it up, wielding it like a club. He ran toward his girlfriend and swung it with every ounce of his strength.
*THUD*
His swing came to a harmless end against her left oblique.
April looked down on him with amusement, then covered her mouth as she gave an exaggerated yawn.
Incredulous, Zach pulled the branch back and swung it again.
*CRACK*
Same result.
He swung it again and again until April’s hand suddenly flashed out, caught the branch in mid-swing, and wrested it casually from his grasp.
Her other hand gripped his shoulder painfully, and she forced him to his knees. Zach writhed under her immensely powerful fingers as she spoke. “Get used to being on your knees, little Zachie. You’ll be giving me pleasure whenever I ask for it from now on. Consider it a punishment for your little temper tantrum here.”
With that, she hauled him off his feet, opened the passenger side door, and threw him inside. She closed the door behind him with an emphatic, car-rocking slam, then squeezed herself inside. She drove home in silence, her eyes hard as they flicked from side to side, surveying the dark road that she no longer needed the assistance of headlights to see.
CHAPTER 4: TRAPPINGS OF SUPERIORITY
Two weeks after the incident in the parking lot, Zach stared at the chessboard in disbelief. He should have known better than to request a rematch.
Looking helplessly up at April—even seated, she towered nearly three feet above him now—he was staggered. She had beaten him in ten moves, announcing its imminence just three moves into the match.
“I knew every move you would make before we ever even started playing the game,” she said flatly, her expression almost one of boredom as she gazed into the eyes of her inferior opponent.
Zach swallowed nervously, stunned at the extreme intelligence in her luminous eyes as they seemed to bore into his brain. Those radiant irises were nearly as distracting as her heartbreakingly gorgeous face.
She rose, though she was forced to hunch over, her 10’6” stature now higher than the ten-foot ceilings of their living room. They had been measuring her daily in recent weeks until she had reached ceiling height. The final six inches were more of an estimate than an actual measurement, but with her incredibly sharp mind and eyes, she was certain that her estimate fell within 1/100th of an inch. She looked down her nose at Zach, her smile cold, gaze calculating. “Remember, we need to find a new house with more space soon...”
He remembered. He’d been working on little else for the past few days, knowing he needed to meet April’s demand that he find a place for them to move by the end of the week. Zach felt a shiver of terror jag down his spine as he recalled April’s warning about what would happen should he fail to execute any of her requests.
She sauntered over to the stairwell, picking at the hem of her tiny cutoff jean shorts, then adjusting her red tank. Her eyes lit up as she approached the place where she kept the monolith leaning beside the staircase. It was the one place in the house where she could rise to her full height without worrying about putting her head through the ceiling. She ran a finger along the top of the monolith, shivering in pleasure as she touched it once more. Her body swelled a bit, adding more inches with frightening ease after her repeated exposures to the mysterious tablet. She almost seemed to have a connection with it now. Her eyes smoldered when she glanced at it; her lips moaned whenever she touched it.
April stretched, her bare arms absolutely dwarfing those of even the largest, most chiseled bodybuilders as they rippled with unthinkable power. Her hands soared above her head to clench together in a grip that could bend steel to her will. She rose to her tiptoes, her bulging calves rounding into soccer ball-sized spheres of incredible power. Rippling waves rolled over her mammoth thighs, the tight rounded arcs of her perfect ass tightening into twin swells of absolute steel. As she reached toward the sky, her tank top rose from the upper edge of her shorts, revealing cobbled abs so unbelievably defined that two-inch deep chasms defined the grid of muscle that was her rock-hard stomach.
Zach gasped at the breathtaking display of leonine power. In spite of her size, April moved like a panther, her movements at once incredibly powerful and regally graceful as she finished her stretches and turned to face him.
“I’m going outside for my workout now,” she announced as she crossed an arm over her massive breasts, holding her elbow in place with her other hand to stretch her overdeveloped triceps.
Zach, wide-eyed, simply nodded. It wasn’t that she sought his approval; it was simply a fact. These days, she informed him of her preferences, and it was his job to accept them, carrying out her wishes whenever they required something of him.
Like finding a house! he realized with a start as the front door closed behind her. Before long, she wouldn’t be able to squeeze through the opening of even their abnormally wide front door.
Before getting back to his laptop to check for more potential living spaces, however, he walked to the front window, pulling up the blinds to see April in the driveway squatting down to slip her hands beneath Zach’s car. As she arose, she set her feet, then began to curl the Volkswagon to her chest with apparent ease. The bulges of her prodigious biceps swelled with the effort, exploding into breathtakingly smooth cannonballs of unthinkable strength.
Still curling the car, faced away from Zach’s ogling eyes, she somehow knew he was looking. “Come out here, little man.”
Zach swallowed. Perhaps she had simply anticipated what he would do? Or maybe her hearing was that good now?
Hanging his head liked a child having been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Zach emerged from the house.
“Feel my muscles,” she ordered, still looking away from him. “I know you want to…”
He did want to. He couldn’t get enough of her perfect physique.
Approaching her cautiously, not wishing to be accidentally crushed by the vehicle she was handling like a toy, Zach reached up until his heels left the ground. On the balls of his feet, his arms extended above him, he was just barely able to reach the lower portion of her beefy bicep.
“Squeeze it,” April commanded, her eyes focused distantly forward as if he were not worthy of attention as she issued him orders.
He did. Or, well, tried. Her body was like liquid steel, its sinuous curves flowing elegantly while at the same time, feeling like beautifully chiseled marble to his searching fingers. His hands could no more dent her flesh than they could the armor of a tank.
“God, Zach. You’re so pathetically weak,” said April, not bothering to hide her contempt. “I can hardly even feel your touch anymore.”
Zach released her arm, his heels falling back to the ground. His chin dropped to his chest at the admonishing words. As he turned to leave, April set down the car, the barely perceptible sheen of sweat that now covered her perfectly tanned skin glistening in the afternoon sunlight.
“Massage me,” April commanded as she grabbed his hand and gave it a shoulder-straining tug. She began to walk around the house to the back yard, dragging him in tow.
Zach dangled behind her, whisked off his feet by her unbreakable grip. He tensed his shoulder, attempting to prevent it from dislocating as she swung him along.
When she reached their deck around back, the boards groaned under her weight.
“Okay,” said Zach from between clenched teeth. He breathed a sigh of relief when she released him, letting him fall to the sanded wooden surface.
She didn’t seem to notice his words, however, as she reached down to grab the hem of her tight top. She pulled it over her head and flung it aside.
Zach gaped at her body, which became more staggeringly perfect every day. Her tanned flesh was completely flawless, lacking even the tiniest blemish. But the massive, hyper-developed musculature that it encased was beyond flawless. Her body, especially when fully revealed like this, was absolutely magnificent! Her superhuman physique seemed to radiate crackling power.
“Make sure we have a concrete patio at the new place,” she said absently, not bothering to look at her insignificant boyfriend. It was as if she knew instinctively that her bare torso would be commanding his complete and utter attention.
Which it was.
Zach watched as April pulled the cushion from their outdoor sofa and lay it on the ground. She lowered herself until she was lying face-down on the deck, her lush mane shifting as she turned her head to place once cheek on the soft cushion.
“Well?” April’s voice was expectant as she settled into position, bordering on annoyed.
Zach startled, roused to action from his ogling by her tone. He had no desire to incur April’s wrath!
He knelt down onto her lower back and reached his hands down, moving them in a kneading motion. Her back was just so unbelievably hard. Her muscles were like iron! How was he supposed to massage her?!
He regained his feet, walking beside her, looking over the firm muscles of her back. He checked various portions of her sumptuously muscled form in an attempt to find any part of her that he could actually work his fingers into. He found none.
April began to giggle, her laughter sending twitching waves of motion through her lushly sculpted physique. As Zach leaned over his massive girlfriend, his hands roaming the smooth swells of her back, the undulation of her body threw him off balance. Her arm reached out, and she placed her hand on the deck, pushing against the wooden planks to flip herself over. However, as she did so, her elbow caught Zach in the side. Stumbling backward, his head struck the deck’s railing with a light clunk, and he yelped in pain.
“You are sooo weak,” April said, turning over to face him, her eyes shining darkly. “Like a pitiful little baby.”
She reached out to palm his head, gripping it as if it were a basketball. “Come here, little one. Come to mommy...”
“Ow!” Zach cried as she dragged him atop her hard, massive body.
“You’re nothing to me now, you know. A plaything to be discarded if I tire of you,” April said, her eyes hard as she gazed calculatingly at the squirming man in her grip. “Sound familiar?”
“F-familiar?” asked Zach, attempting to pry her fingers from his head without success.
“That’s what you thought of me, isn’t it?” she continued, her voice emotionless. “Before the monolith?”
“No!” Zach lied, still struggling to twist out of her unbreakable grip, nearly breaking his neck in the process. “I loved you!”
“Loved?” April raised an eyebrow, nearly crushing his head as she pulled it back, forcing him to look at her. “You don’t even pretend to love me now, but you’re lying about then. You never loved me. Not then. Not now.”
Horrified, tears welled in Zach’s eyes. His voice was desperate. “But April…!”
“Stop!” she cut him off vehemently. “I never really loved you either. I thought I did. But you were simply a modest upgrade from my last boyfriend. Less obviously shaming, but shaming nonetheless. I can see it so clearly now.”
“I-I…” Zach attempted to think of what to say. But April seemed so certain. Her confidence was overwhelming. It seemed to steal any further lies or excuses from his mind before he could manage to speak them.
Moving one hand to the back of Zach’s head and the other to his lower back, she squeezed his hips into her cobbled abs, his face tucking under her massive breasts. Zach felt his erection rage as it ground into the deep trench between twin rows of iron bricks that lined her magnificent stomach.
Smiling darkly, April pushed him inward and upward, crushing his body into hers, grinding his member between her impossibly hard muscles.
“It’s okay,” she whispered as she pulled Zach along her perfect body, his head ascending the lower curves of her right breast, bowing him backward. “You’re still a perfectly serviceable toy, good for plenty of entertainment before I finish with you.”
April’s voice became husky as she crushed him into her, seeming to reap sexual pleasure from the act. “I know you like my new body. Let’s see how easily I can make you come.”
Zach, helpless in her mighty arms, breathed heavily. He felt his lips dragging against the perfect sphere of her breast, his breath heating her already deliciously hot skin. As his engorged cock continued to slide over the tensed, sinuously rippling muscles of her core, he could feel his heart rate rising.
Giving a quiet moan, he couldn’t resist flicking out his tongue to taste her silky flesh. He shivered, the salty sweet flavor of her sweat electrifying his mouth. Overpowering need welled within him.
The feel of her breast under his lips, her wickedly powerful muscles against his member—it was too much! Zach shuddered as he felt the flames of a coming climax lick at the already smoldering interior of his body.
Each passing second she gripped him harder against her, grinding his hyper-aroused penis into her muscles, crushing his face further into her breast, Zach felt himself falling further under the enthralling spell of her absolute physical perfection.
When his lips met the exquisite nipple at the crown of her magnificent breast, Zach suckled it desperately. The sudden attention to her sensitive flesh caused April to suck in a sharp breath. But Zach was too far gone now to hold in his impending climax. Already quivering, his body began to buck, his cock to spasm. Warm, viscous fluid exploded out of him, spattering her hard stomach before running into the chiseled grooves that separated her beautiful muscles, down her sculpted body.
April laughed heartily, tightening her grip on his head once again to pull him off her and cast him aside. Zach grimaced as blinding pain radiated from her painfully tight fingers. Her casual motion flung him across the deck like a rag doll. He crumbled in the corner, his body still shuddering and pulsing in climactic ecstasy.
April rose to her full height and walked away, the thunder of her footsteps reverberating the wood beneath Zach’s spent, still-pulsing form.
***
April, lounging inside the house on the carpet, since her body was now too big for the couch, clicked on her investment account on her tablet. $3 million. Not bad. The amount represented a 300,000% return on her $1,000 investment from a month earlier.
Gorgeous lips curling into a pleased smirk. That should be sufficient seed money to start her competitor to the misogynistic company she had left several weeks earlier. She had given notice after receiving a memo from upper management requesting that she remain seated as much as possible so as to present a “profile less intimidating to the company’s management”. And it just so happened that the company had a management team that was almost entirely male.
She had read seven books on the legal requirements of establishing a corporation yesterday, and her eidetic memory allowed her to recall every detail with perfect clarity. She was confident that she would have the logistical details of the new company finalized within the day. While it was unconventional to name a CEO while the formulation of the company was still in progress, April didn’t care. She had no intentions of running the company herself. She didn’t need to trouble herself with mundane affairs like running a call center firm, so she fired off a message to Susan, the most competent—and overlooked—manager at her old place of employment to request a lunch meeting. The smart, capable woman would make the perfect leader for her new enterprise.
A calculating look in her eye, April began to strategize a plan to take each of her old company’s clients within the week. Grinning, she thought of the look on Zach’s face when his boss came to him, furious after having lost every enterprise client within the span of a few days.
Stretching her unbelievably long body once again, she laughed delightedly. As wonderful as her new strength was, her beyond-genius IQ was even better.
***
Zach staggered into the house to find a note from April inside.
“Gone to the tailor for some new custom clothes,” it read.
He slumped into a seat, dropping his head into his hands. How had this happened? How had the dynamics of his relationship changed so utterly and completely? April could dominate him without effort physically, mentally, and even emotionally now. A part of him liked how powerful she was becoming. But a growing part of him feared it.
She was too insightful now, able to see right through his prevarications and half-truths. More concerning, however, was that her growing abilities continued to make her colder, less caring. When combined with her immense power, that scared him. A lot.
Now that she no longer needed him, she seemed to delight in toying with him. Even tormenting him. He thought back to how she had driven him to climax with just the chiseled surface of her sexy stomach. He shivered, remembering how wonderful her steely muscles had felt against his cock, how tantalizing her smooth, flawless skin had tasted against his hungry lips.
Feeling himself growing aroused once again, he attempted to shake the mind-consuming thoughts away. He needed to figure out what was happening before she became any more powerful. He needed to know what this monolith was and how to halt—or even reverse—its effects.
Pulling out his laptop, he began to search for information on the monolith. References to 2001 abounded, as did a number of pranks and other meaningless information. Revising his search to look for rectangular stones, he finally found something that caught his attention.
Clicking on it, his eyes widened as they scanned down the article to a picture. The woman, Mandy Tan, looked much like April had after her first encounter with the monolith—tall, impressively fit, and beautiful. Zach eagerly read the article. She had reported finding a strange clearing and a small, black rectangular stone.
Bingo!
The article didn’t give him any true information about the monolith, but it did provide him with a lead. Quickly looking up the woman’s address, he jumped to his feet and left the house.
When he arrived, Zach took a few deep breaths before knocking on the door, unsure what he would find inside. Would this woman be as strong and intelligent as April? More even? Given the longer period since she’d encountered the monolith, it seemed a possibility.
When she opened the door, he was forced to look up to meet her eyes.
She was gorgeous.
The Asian woman standing in the doorway was not as stunning as April now was, nor as huge, but she was still breathtakingly attractive in her own right. Standing about six feet tall, the woman he presumed was Mandy looked much like April had a couple of weeks ago, shortly after her first encounter with the monolith.
Clad in a sleeveless top and tight-fitting shorts, the woman’s chiseled arms and powerful legs were fully on display. As she eyed him, shifting her weight from one leg to the other, her sculpted abs tensed, rippling the taut fabric of her top as it clung to the edges of her muscled torso.
She smiled before speaking, her voice dripping with honeyed sweetness. “Well, hello there. Who might you be?”
Tingles rolled down Zach’s spine with the sensual delivery of her words and the intense gaze that accompanied them. He could almost feel the heat of her smoldering eyes as they examined him.
“I’m, um, Zach,” he replied, flustered.
“What are you doing here, um Zach?” she asked, the hint of a smile turning the corners of her lips upward. Her sultry voice again sent shivers down Zach’s spine. She leaned forward, giving him a breathtaking view of her sumptuous cleavage. The woman was clearly accustomed to using her body to influence men to acquiesce to her desires.
“I wanted to ask you about something you’ve seen. You see, my girlfriend and I ran across this monolith in the woods, and—”
“You found it!” she cried, her voice losing a bit of its seductive appeal as her tone shifted to one of excitement as she interrupted him. “Where is it? Do you have it?”
Eagerly, she grabbed his arm, pulling him into the house with a powerful tug. Zach stumbled forward into her living room until he reached her sofa, reaching out a hand to steady himself.
“You don’t know how many times I’ve gone back there to find it!” she gushed. “But I never could. I thought it was gone!”
She approached him quickly, grabbing his shoulders, her large breasts hovering enticingly just below his eyeline. Zach struggled to keep his eyes on hers, sensing the lushness of her body as it swayed before him.
“It’s at my house,” he confessed. “But…”
Mandy gave him a dazzling, slightly predatory, smile. “You’d take me there if I asked, wouldn’t you?” Her voice was back to its previous purr, perhaps even more suggestive this time.
“I, well…” Zach said, struggling to gather his thoughts. “...I’d have to see if my girlfriend is okay with it first.”
“Your girlfriend, eh?” Mandy intoned, raising an eyebrow as her smile faltered slightly. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then her gaze returned to his, blazing with intensity.
“So you have a girlfriend.” She shrugged. “Who fucking cares? Just imagine what I would be like with another exposure to the monolith…” She trailed off, letting her words hang in the air suggestively. As Zach swallowed tremulously, she leaned in, moving her lips within a millimeter of his. He could almost taste their succulent flesh. “I promise I’ll make it worth your trouble if you take me to it.”
She withdrew slightly, reaching down to grab her top by its lower hem and pull it over her head. A moment later, she shimmied out of her shorts, revealing her magnificent body in all its considerable glory. When she kissed him a moment later, Zach couldn’t resist slithering his hands over her naked back, hugging her to him.
Mandy spent the next hour making sure he knew exactly what she had to offer. The woman definitely knew how to use that phenomenal body of hers. Zach had felt as if he were in the eye of a hurricane, furious activity happening all around his prone body.
When she’d finished with him, she went to her room to shower and change. As she did, Zach, sore from the overwhelming sexual experience, fished out his phone.
He dialed the number for the ranger station. Harvey, the same ranger he had talked to before, answered.
“Why did you lie to me?!” Zach demanded immediately, skipping past all usual pleasantries to get straight to the point. He didn’t have much time before Mandy came back.
“W-what?” the voice on the other end of the line was clearly taken aback.
“Why. Did. You. Lie!” Zach repeated emphatically. “About the monolith!”
There was a pause. Then, a sigh.
“Forget that you ever saw it.” The voice was hushed, nearly inaudible.
“What?! I can’t forget it! It’s in my fucking house!” Zach hissed, venting frustration born of weeks of being manhandled by women on the only person he could.
“It’s what?!” This time, it was the ranger’s turn to be shocked.
“It’s in my house! My girlfriend brought it home!” Zach lowered his voice, not wanting Mandy to overhear. “She’s using it constantly.”
Another pause.
“Destroy it!” Harvey said flatly, a little too calm. His voice sounded as if he were making a conscious effort to control it—as if afraid of what might happen if he let his true emotions show through. “Now! Before it’s too late!”
Too late? Zach reeled, his thoughts spinning. Judging by April’s power, it may already be too late!
As he attempted to wrap his mind around the ranger’s words, he heard footsteps. Mandy was coming! Quickly, he hung up the phone and slipped on his shirt. Alarmed, he decided to leave as quickly as he could—without Mandy. The last thing he needed right now were two woman April’s size. He dashed out of the house, leaping into his car just as Mandy opened the door. She looked confused, surveying the yard for him.
When she spotted him, her eyebrows furrowed, and she began to sprint toward the car. Zach started the car, threw it into reverse, and stomped on the gas pedal, narrowly pulling away from her outstretched arms before she reached the driver’s side door.
When Zach had put twenty feet or so between him and the sexy amazon, he slammed on the brakes, shoved the transmission into Drive, then mashed the accelerator once again. He glanced at the rearview mirror to see the frustrated Asian woman stomping her feet in anger as she shrank into the distance. Focusing his eyes forward, he sped home as fast as he dared, determined to follow the ranger’s unambiguous advice and get rid of the monolith once and for all.
***
When Zach pulled into his driveway, he leapt from the car, ran into the garage and grabbed a hammer and his ancient chainsaw. He entered the house, eyes instantly locking onto the black tablet by the stairwell. With manic determination lighting his gaze, he studied his tools. He set down the saw, deciding to try the hammer first.
Kneeling down before the black object, he raised the hammer over his head, and tensed his shoulders, ready to unleash a stone-shattering blow on the strange monolith. He unleashed his long bottled anger, eager to drive his hammer through the cursed tablet with every fiber of his being. He willed his arms to swing the heavy tool downward with all his strength…
...but nothing happened.
Instead, a large, warm hand slithered over his own, holding back his arm effortlessly. He turned, already knowing who he would find behind him. His hands began to tremble in fear.
“Honey? Why do you look so nervous?” she said, an oddly serene smile molding her gorgeous lips. “You really shouldn’t be. You don’t have the mental capacity to predict the future.”
Her voice was light, sounding amused, in direct contrast with her hard eyes. Those breathtaking eyes flashed with anger.
“I do,” she finished.
Zach felt his lips tremble, swallowing hard. What was she going to do to him?
He didn’t have to wait long to find out.
April wrested the tool from Zach’s hands as if he were a child. An open-handed slap, carefully calibrated to avoid separating his head from his shoulders, drove him to the ground. His mouth hit the monolith face first, sending a splatter of hot, tinny liquid into his mouth. He rolled over to face his girlfriend, bringing his hand up to feel the damage to his split lip. As he did, his spinning hammer whizzed past him, embedding itself into the stairwell a millimeter from Zach’s ear. The reverberation of cracking plaster and splintering wood rattled his eardrum as it struck. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he realized just how close he had come to death.
Extending a powerfully sculpted arm toward Zach, April hooked a single fingertip under his belt buckle. She lifted him, hefting his weight as effortlessly as if he were a soap bubble. Flicking her eyes upward, she smiled cruelly. A millisecond later, Zach’s limp, dangling body accelerated skyward. He bounced off the ceiling, then slammed to the floor, this time slamming the back of his head against the stone monolith. Dazed, he reached back to feel sticky warmth leaking from the back of his head.
“I know about Mandy,” she said quietly, only her eyes betraying her true emotion. “I have a new ability, you know. I can read your body language so easily that I might as well be reading your mind. It’s really quite impressive, actually. It tells me who you really are.”
Zach gaped at her in horror, blanching as she reached a massively muscled arm toward him. When her fingers wrapped not around him, but the monolith, he wasn’t certain whether he should be relieved or even more alarmed.
Picking it up without difficulty, she placed a hand on either side and squeezed. The black stone tablet crumpled under her unbelievable strength until it was crushed into a long, cylindrical column.
“I already knew about your feelings for Laura. So I had to give the little bitch a few deformities while you were gone. She probably won’t be returning to work anytime soon…”
Ripping off her undersized shorts with a casual flick of her wrist, she threw them aside. Smiling darkly, she stared at Zach, maneuvering the re-shaped monolith until it hovered before her hips.
“But this Mandy character…” April continued, fingering the cylinder as she angled it to align with her sleek sex. “...I can’t wait to have some fun with her.”
“No!” Zach yelped as he recognized what she was about to do. But he was powerless to stop her. April was gaining abilities faster than he could keep up. She was orders of magnitude stronger than he was and far larger. Not to mention vastly more intelligent.
“After all,” April continued, ignoring Zach’s outburst. “I don’t need you anymore. Not when I have this.”
As she finished her statement, she plunged the monolith into herself, gasping in pleasure as she began to pleasure herself with the mysterious object.
To Zach’s utter astonishment, the monolith disappeared inside of her as he pulled it inward. Somehow, she was absorbing the mysterious tablet into her womb!
April let out a long, carnal moan of ecstasy. Zach’s quivering eyes widened as she grew even larger, her magnificent body absolutely exploding with incomprehensible power.
“Oh my God!” he whispered in hushed awe.
CHAPTER 5: MALEVOLENT MISTRESS
“Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!” April roared as her body absorbed the reality-defying power of the strange stone.
Every muscle in her body seemed to clench at once, their powerful fibers tensing and rippling in insanely powerful waves as she climaxed. The taut striations within her boulder-sized deltoids seemed to vibrate the very air around her as they surged outward with unbelievable might.
The aura of her absolute invincibility washed over Zach like a raging tsunami, slamming into his chest with almost tangible force, leaving him breathless and badly shaken.
April grew even taller, ascending through the second story ceiling as her mighty body expanded to contain such incredible power. She reached up, spreading her hands outward, sending a shower of plaster and wood cascading over the floor—and Zach’s prone form.
Good God! She must be over twenty feet tall! Zach thought, as detritus from his damaged house fell around and on top of him. But her height was the least of her changes. Her physique was so huge, so incredibly developed now that she looked as if she could juggle tanks with ease! Her face was so gorgeous that it bordered on divine. Zach’s pulse raced to near heart-stopping levels as he gazed at her perfect visage adoringly. Her breasts were monstrous, though still achingly magnificent, thrusting proudly outward from her breathtaking body.
She was colossal. Hypnotically sexy. Absurdly voluptuous. The epitome of feminine power.
Heart thudding so heavily in his chest that it hurt, Zach somehow managed to find it within himself to act. Tearing his eyes away from April’s heartbreakingly resplendent visage, he stumbled to his feet, a pile of building materials sliding to the ground as he rose. He ran outside, eager to escape, hoping desperately that April would be too distracted by her ongoing transformation to notice. His stomach plummeted as he saw that his eyes barely rose to the level of her knees.
Shaking thoughts of his girlfriend’s newfound enormity from his mind, he sprinted toward the car, a sudden blast of wind knocking him to the grass. Tumbling head over heels, Zach came to a stop in a seated position. He shook his head, then looked dazedly ahead to see April standing between him and the car.
Giving him a knowing smile, she reached behind, bending her knees slightly to lower her hands enough to wrap her fingers around the roof of his car, then swung it around her massive body. Tossing it casually upward, as if it were a ball, April caught it in a viselike grip, her fingers proving far harder than mere steel as they punctured and dented the groaning metal. Placing one hand on the vehicle’s undercarriage and the other atop the vehicle’s roof, she pushed down. Her smile widened as the car collapsed under her awesome might. Hundreds of pounds of muscle tensed, steely cables erupting from the tanned, silken flesh of her arms as they tightened. She pressed inward with impossible power, the body of the car lurching and crunching, glass shattering as her hands moved inexorably together. She crushed it into a rumpled, platelike slab, then, using her huge fingers, began to curl the mangled edges inward, packing the thing into a cube so small that no hydraulic compactor could ever have managed the feat.
April casually tossed the metal brick up and down, returning to her casual motion, albeit with a far smaller toy this time. “Still want your precious car, my pathetic little Zachie?”
Zach was stunned. Just how strong was she now? He’d never even imagined the kind of strength she possessed! Collapsing his car into a shape akin to that of a loaf of bread had seemed to present no challenge at all to the woman. He didn’t know what to say in reply, simply sitting there in dumbfounded awe.
April shrugged, then whirled and launched the compacted vehicle into the sky as if it were a football. It sailed into the sky until it disappeared from view.
“If you want it, it’ll be at the bottom of Oxbow Lake in a handful of seconds. Of course, that would be a bit of a hike. It’s a good two miles away.”
Zach blinked uncomprehendingly. She had just thrown a car two miles. A car! His car. Two miles!!!
“I guess you’ll have to tell your insurance company what happened. Think they’ll believe you?” she winked, her delighted smile showing that she was clearly enjoying the moment.
As Zach attempted to wrap his mind around what April had just done, a Forest Service pickup truck raced up to their house and skidded to a sudden stop. Harvey, the ranger Zach had spoken with an hour earlier, emerged from the truck, shotgun in hand. Eyes wide but determined, he trained the gun on the superhuman giantess and cocked it.
“Stop!” he shouted. His finger slithered over the trigger.
April looked completely unafraid, her confidence such that staring down the barrel of a shotgun no longer seemed to concern her. “Or you’ll what exactly…?”
Taking advantage of April’s distraction, Zach scampered into the house to find something he could use as a weapon for his own protection.
Harvey looked down at his weapon uncertainly, then glanced back up to meet her supremely confident eyes. “Or I’ll shoot!” He did his best to look calm and in control, but his voice was slightly unsteady, betraying his fear.
April smiled and leaned against the front of the damaged house, crumpling the eavestrough as her sleek back pressed into it. “Give it your best shot…” she intoned, spreading her hands invitingly, showing off her powerful, rippling stomach. Her full lips were curled into a sly smile.
Zach emerged from the house, where he had taken advantage of the distraction to collect his hammer and chainsaw. He threw his hammer at April as hard as he could, but it bounced harmlessly off the outside her powerfully muscled thigh. She didn’t even seem to have noticed his attack. Undeterred, he pulled the drawstring of his chainsaw, and it rumbled to life with a choking billow of black smoke.
At his truck, seeing no other option, Harvey swallowed hard, then let out a deep breath and squeezed the trigger of his shotgun.
*BAM!*
A shower of lead shot ricocheted off of April’s brick-like abdominals, pelting the house and driveway. She looked down to see her perfect body completely unharmed.
Harvey gasped. He had done absolutely no damage to April’s invulnerable form.
April, seeing his reaction, laughed. She undulated her massive hips to push against the outer wall of the house and stand upright once more, glaring down at the ranger below from her twenty foot vantage point as if he were an annoying insect.
Harvey fumbled to put another shell into his shotgun, unsure what else to do, but in his nervousness, he dropped it.
As Harvey fumbled for the rolling shell, Zach cried out, sprinting toward her, his chainsaw held high before him. April made no move to stop the tiny man, as he thrust the power tool into her bulging, boulder-sized calf. The impossibly dense muscle didn’t tear apart. It didn’t even so much as dent under her boyfriend’s power-assisted assault. Instead, the chain of the saw fractured, flinging segments of its snakelike chain outward at incredible speeds. Chunks of chain embedded themselves into Zach before he could react.
Harvey, protected from the bits of chain by the door of his truck as he knelt down to retrieve his ammunition, curled his fingers around the shell and shoved it into the chamber of his gun. Hurriedly, he rose to his feet, swung the barrel of the shotgun over the top of the door, and fired another blast.
The second shot was no more effective than the first, reflecting off her flawless skin as if it were made of thick steel plating. This time, however, Zach was close enough to receive the brunt of the reflected metal. Several bits of broken lead punctured his body, already gashed and bleeding from the bits of chain that had struck him. He fell backward, flailing and bloodied, to the ground.
“Had enough, boys?” April asked them in a sultry, playful voice. “Or do you want to keep playing?”
Zach gave a gurgling choke, a small spurt of blood spattering the front of his shirt.
She laughed disdainfully. “Well, you’ve certainly managed to cause some harm. Too bad it was only to Zachie here.”
Striding toward a quivering Harvey in three long-legged strides, April knelt before him, bringing her bare hips level with his head. She ran her long fingers down his back, forcing him forward a step.
“I can see that you like my body, Mr. Ranger.” Her voice was velvet, throaty and suggestive, causing a wave of goosebumps to wash over Harvey’s skin. “I bet you’d just love to bring it pleasure…”
Harvey suddenly smelled something on the warm afternoon air. Something wonderful. His pupils dilated, and he staggered. Dizzy, he stumbled forward, his head colliding with April’s powerful inner thigh.
April plucked the shotgun from Harvey’s grasp as the man stood dazed and helpless before her magnificent body. Her powerful fingers curled around the weapon, crumpling it as if it were a child’s plastic toy. The steel barrel shrieked as it bent to her unbelievable strength. The gun’s stock burst into an explosion of splinters. When she opened her fingers again, the mangled weapon fell from her hands to the ground.
An image formed inside Harvey’s reeling mind, showing him what she wanted from him. No longer in control of his own actions, Harvey complied dutifully. He clasped both hands together and reached out to find the folds of her beautiful sex. He stepped forward, jamming his hands into her, his arms stiff as they formed a makeshift phallus large enough to please her.
April’s head rolled back, sending a shimmering ripple through her lush mane as she breathed a massive sigh of pleasure.
Harvey drove his arms deeper, eliciting a rapturous moan from April’s huge, perfect lips. In this way, he plunged his arms into and out of her, again and again. After a half-dozen such thrusts, her face turned skyward, her moans becoming pants until the ranger brought her to a ground-shaking climax. She cried out, shattering the windows of Zach’s house and Harvey’s truck.
Zach seemed to be released from his zombie-like stupor as she quaked, and he fell to the ground in terrified awe.
As her body’s tremors slowed to rumbling aftershocks, April brought down her chin to focus her luminous eyes on the small man before her—not a trace of empathy for the ranger in her cruel gaze. Rising to her feet, she picked him up by the shoulder. He cried out in pain from the pressure of her impossibly strong fingers. Examining the man for a moment, an oddly curious look on her face, she finally discarded him. She tossed him aside like a ragdoll. Harvey crashed into the asphalt, lying on the street unmoving.
Done with Harvey, April turned to face Zach. “How do you feel, Zach, knowing your April has become a Goddess?” April took two steps, until she stood beside her boyfriend, towering him as he stared, unblinking, into her hypnotic eyes. “Would you like the honor of pleasuring me too?”
Mesmerized, Zach couldn’t help but nod his head. April smiled beatifically, then straddled him, kneeling down to either side of him. He lowered herself over his head until she could feel the light spatter of hot blood against her inner thighs with his every breath. Her hips hovered above him. Receiving an image in his mind, Zach immediately understood what he was to do. He reached up to wrap both hands around her engorged clit.
Massaging it gently at first, then with increasing vigor, he felt the giantess shudder above him. The movement sent a tremor of fear through him. If she fell to the ground, she would crush him to death instantly. Knowing he had no choice, however, he continued his sensual motions.
April gasped, issuing a long, languid groan, before finding her husky voice.
“My abilities are growing by the second, Zachie. I’m so powerful now. My mind is becoming so powerful that I can communicate in images in addition to words. I can feel more strength flowing into me even as I say this. It’s… intoxicating…” Her words were breathy by the end of the sentence, her own ascending powers clearly arousing her.
Zach’s lips trembled fearfully, the reeling man having difficulty wrapping his mind around April’s accelerating changes.
“Will you worship me, Zachie?”
Mmmmmm… she moaned.
“Bring me pleasure whenever I wish it?”
Mmmmmm… she moaned again.
“Be my cute little enslaved concubine?”
Her eyes closed as she finished her question, her arousal soaring both from her own words as well as Zach’s massaging hands.
“This… will be… the last time… you get… to make a choice… of your own,” April finished breathily between pants as Zach continued to work her. As the magnificent body above him tensed in a rapidly building climax, Zach considered her words.
As the answers to her questions formed in Zach’s mind, April shuddered, her muscles exploding into relief as a powerful orgasm detonated within her staggeringly perfect form.
