Forum Saradas
Female Muscle Art - Female Muscle Fiction => Muscular Women Fiction => Topic started by: JohnAubrey on January 27, 2020, 07:49:34 pm
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Here's the start of an idea I've been toying with - it will be a slow-burner and hopefully a bit different.
Undercover
It was a good knock. Firm without being intrusive, brisk without being impatient, and with a playful 5/4 time signature that suggested the person standing without was not all business. A lot of thought had gone into this knock.
No one ever noticed. After all, it was just a knock.
“Enter!”
Harriet opened the door and walked into a long, dark office, at one end of which sat a man reclining in his chair, feet on his desk, staring suspiciously at a cup of coffee as if he suspected it of harbouring seditious tendencies.
“DCI Beck?”
He ignored her, and sniffed at the coffee.
“I paid an extra twenty pence for the limited edition roast, and I reckon they’ve palmed me off with their standard slurry,” he announced, still not looking in her direction.
He swirled the cup and took a sip, closed his eyes and contemplatively swilled the coffee around his mouth, serious as a sommelier. By now standing in front of his desk, Harriet had to suppress the urge to take a step back, in the event he decided to spit.
“Top notes of camel rectum… gritty mouthfeel… burnt plastic finish… Yeah, this is their regular blend, all right; I’d know it anywhere. Great. I’ve been bilked by a beanmonger.”
“Sir?”
He glanced up at her, shaking his head ruefully, languorously uncrossed and then recrossed his legs.
“Can I help you with something?”
“I’m from the Serious Fraud Office, sir. I’m-“
“Fuck me, you guys are quick. And all for the sake of twenty pence? Still, the bastards have got it coming to them - they sold me a stale Danish last week too.”
“Oh. Um. No, sir…”
Harriet tailed off, unable to decipher the expression on Beck’s face, unsure whether or not he was being serious. He returned her stare, straight-faced but now raising an eyebrow.
“Anyway, throw the book at them, will you? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m very busy, as you can see.”
He took a long draught of the remaining coffee, but kept watching Harriet closely. She surveyed his desk, crenellated with uneven heaps of files. It certainly looked like he had a lot of work to do, but whether or not he was busy doing it was another matter. She must have seemed unconvinced, because Beck sighed, removed his feet from the desk, planted his elbows there instead and made a great show of staring intently at a report.
“See? Busy. Largo al factotum della città.”
“Ah, bravo, Figaro! Bravo, bravissimo!” Harriet responded sarcastically, before she could stop herself.
Beck looked up from his desk, smiling, and then smiled even more broadly when he noticed Harriet was biting her lip, staring at the ceiling, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut.
“You got the reference! Well done. No one in here in CID ever gets my opera references. Mention Bellini around here and everyone thinks Prosecco, not Vincenzo. No, who am I kidding? If you went back outside and asked all of my Detective Constables to name a cocktail, at best, someone might suggest a lager top or a pint of snakebite.”
Beck absent-mindedly scratched his chin and stared up at the ceiling, apparently lost in thought. Harriet felt the need to fill the silence.
“My sister is in the London Symphony Orchestra, sir. She started playing the violin at school - well, actually we both did - but she was the one with the musical talent, really. These days, I just go to a lot of concerts and listen to a lot of opera.”
“She’s the Squilliam to your Squidward, then?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
Beck seemed to have reached a decision. He stood up rapidly, shuffled some files around on his desk like a dealer playing a three-card trick and then picked one up.
“Well, unless you’re from the SFO’s rapid response minor coffee crimes unit, I take it you’re the investigator I requested on secondment?”
“Yes, sir. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
Harriet tried not to sound reproachful, with only limited success - but if Beck picked up on her tone, he didn’t show it.
“I can already tell that you’re what we’ve been looking for,” Beck said, handing the file to Harriet. “Here you go. Take this and go and see my Detective Sergeant. You will find her on the way to the gym, on the way back from the gym, or actually in the gym.”
He sat back down, selected and then began to read another report, seeming to forget that Harriet was still there. Eventually accepting that the conversation was over as far as Beck was concerned, Harriet started to edge towards the door.
“By the way…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Great knock.”
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Intriguing start! Lovely wit too. I look forward to it!
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Great writing! Love it
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Very nice start, like an old Columbo show...........has mystery wrapped up it. Nice style of writing. K+
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Thanks for the feedback so far!
Some horrendous weather and a lot of disrupted travel over the last few weeks means that I'm still working on parts two and three, but I'm slowly getting there. Hopefully it will be worth the wait.
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Here's Part Deux, hotshots:
Harriet walked down yet another anonymous corridor, absent-mindedly wondering whether the Minotaur ever felt this lost in the middle of the Labyrinth. She had been peripatetic for a good twenty minutes now, distracted and oblivious to the curious looks from the occasional uniformed passersby.
Not that she was keen to stop and ask for directions to the gym. Even though she was still in the early stages of her career she had spent sufficient time in various police stations to have learnt that the average copper, upon hearing her cut-glass enunciation, would stop and goggle at her, leaving her feeling as out of place as Brian Sewell ordering an Armagnac in The Rovers Return.
Mostly Harriet was distracted because her mind was replaying her conversation with DCI Beck, trying to make sense of their brief discussion. She had been warned that he was unconventional, but their interaction had not revealed any further information about why she had been specifically requested on secondment by one of the force’s most renowned investigators.
She was also, however, trying to suppress the image that had popped into her mind of an increasingly furious Minotaur trying to remove an Ordnance Survey Landranger map from his horns, where it had become impaled as he had tried to work out if he was on a footpath or a bridleway, folding the sheets in search of the key.
She stopped and sighed, wishing, not for the first time, that her brain would not pick such inconvenient moments to indulge in comic flights of fancy. She could almost hear her sister sarcastically referring to the ‘benefits of a classical education’ in her best Hans Gruber voice, as she had so many times in the past.
Harriet glanced around for any sign that she was heading in the right direction. From somewhere outside, a dull thudding noise rattled the glass in the windows, presumably the result of some sort of excavation work happening out at the roadworks on the nearby dual carriageway.
Except, as she meandered a little further down the corridor, it began to sound more and more like the thudding noise was coming from inside the building. She took a few more steps, turned the corner, and saw a heavy set of double doors, painted the same uniform grey as the walls, but bearing a small, old-fashioned legend stencilled in fading white paint: GYMNASIUM.
Relieved to have her bearings finally, Harriet walked towards the doors and pushed them open. The gym was poorly-ventilated, warm and fusty; if this room were a body part, then it unquestionably would have been an unwashed armpit.
It was also almost entirely empty, but its sole occupant would have been capable of immediately drawing the attention even if the gym were at full occupancy: half-crouching with her back to the door was a woman, an unusually substantial woman, in cropped leggings and a loose vest stained with sweat, a generous blot that would provide an interesting start to any Rorschach test.
As Harriet stepped inside the gym, the woman began to slowly straighten her legs and Harriet could see that she was lifting a bar even longer than she was tall, and loaded with weights at each end. Legs wobbling slightly, a whistling of air escaping from the moue of her pursed lips, the woman slowly but surely raised the bar, pulling it up and driving her hips forward; Harriet stared as the woman’s callipygian buttocks solidified and pushed together, jostling for space beneath the leggings like two cowled men butting heads.
The woman held her position for a couple of seconds and then dropped the bar. If Harriet had remained in any doubt as to how heavy it was, the sound of the weight hitting the padded floor and bouncing a few times before eventually succumbing to inertia resolved the issue.
The woman turned, rubbing her hands together like a miser anticipating a saving, a puff of some kind of powdered chalk scattering through the air, her upper arms balling and twitching with muscle. Noticing the new arrival, she started to walk towards the gym’s entrance, and Harriet couldn’t help but notice her slightly divergent strides, her legs moving forwards and outwards to accommodate the size of her thick thighs.
Harriet could not remember if she had ever met anyone as large and powerfully-built as this woman - perhaps, she thought, her mind travelling back to university and her college’s obligatory complement of rugger buggers, some of the members of the First XV were bigger, heavier, stronger, but only perhaps.
The giantess stopped in front of Harriet, her proximity and size almost entirely blocking out Harriet’s view of the gym. Although the stranger was definitely smiling, her broad mouth curling up at the corners, and nothing about her body language suggested she was trying to physically intimidate Harriet, her unexpected size made Harriet feel defensive and, for the second time today, she had to suppress the urge to take a step back.
“A’m DS Kane. Dae ye ken that you’re staring, pal?”
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Loving the slow build
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Slow indeed. But I love your writing style. Keep up the good work and you might get a pint for your troubles. Karma for all!
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Part 3 should shed a little light on where I'm going with this story, and will hopefully be up tomorrow.
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Part the Third:
Like so many miniature dogs, the dachshund currently standing on DCI Beck’s desk wore a look - currently directed at Harriet - of pre-emptive reproach, as if resigned to the fact that its ankle-height existence presented her with an inevitable trip hazard. Maybe not today, it seemed to be thinking, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point this stupid woman is going to fall over me; she’ll go arse over tit, and I’ll be the one to get the blame.
Not even the fact that the dachshund was at the moment well out of harm’s way and being fed cubes of cheese by Beck could make it look any happier about this potential scenario. It maintained eye contact with Harriet and paused for a moment between gnawing lumps of cheddar long enough to be lavishly flatulent, a peculiarly squeaky ebullition, as if it were a balloon animal losing all of its air.
The interruption seemed to make the little man, who had been droning on for the last ten minutes, lose his thread, and he paused to fiddle nervously with his collar. He had been introduced to Harriet only as ‘Pooter, from the Financial Conduct Authority,’ and if he enjoyed his job, he certainly didn’t give that impression. In fact, it was hard to imagine him enjoying anything.
Harriet didn’t feel particularly happy either. Even sitting down, her entire body ached, limbs trembling as if suffering from palsy, occasionally violently jerking in a sort of St. Vitus’ dance as her muscles spasmed; the taste of vomit still lingered in her mouth. Ninety minutes of working out with DS Kane had reduced her to this enervated state. A trip to the gym hadn’t seemed that deleterious a prospect yesterday, when she had first met Kane and the sergeant had told her to report back the next morning because apparently Beck wanted to know how Harriet would cope with a ‘proper gym sesh’.
The little man cleared his throat and peered around at the group, as if to make sure everyone was still listening to his litany. Harriet tried her best to look alert. Beck continued to focus on feeding the dachshund cheese. Kane stood leaning against the wall, her broad shoulders almost as wide as the lintel of the doorframe next to her, legs crossed like two inosculated trees.
Harriet couldn’t stop thinking about that first meeting with Kane yesterday. The embarrassment of being caught openly staring at the woman’s muscles had been immediately compounded by her inability to think of anything to say, tongue-tied as she tried to ostentatiously not look at the sergeant, ending up able only to stare at the floor and thrust forward the file Beck had given her into Kane’s calloused hands.
There was little to no chance that Kane could have thought that Harriet had made a great first impression but, if anything, the sergeant had looked even more unimpressed once she had opened the file only to find a selection of paperwork which, she informed Harriet with no little Glaswegian asperity, she had been pestering Beck to sign for the last fortnight.
He hadn’t.
Perhaps Kane regarded her as a collaborator, Harriet thought as her legs cramped and she squirmed again, trying to get comfortable in the chair; it might explain the relentless punishment meted out that morning.
The little man continued to expatiate.
Harriet had not spent much time becoming acquainted with the free weights in any gym in the past. Even when she had played hockey at university, sport had been a secondary consideration - her academic work had always come first, always - and while she had been considered ‘sporty’ and enjoyed physical activity, she had lacked the necessary obsession and singularity of focus needed to devote herself to becoming a better athlete. Her purposeful approach to her studies was not matched in the gym, where she had mostly spent her occasional visits on treadmills and rowing machines, happy to maintain a decent base level of fitness without ever looking to build on it.
These days, she still ran regularly and she did a few sessions of yoga at home each week. Until this morning, she had naively thought herself to be quite fit still - until, that is, Kane had introduced her to the concepts of ‘reps’, ‘sets’ and ‘working to failure’, and had finished their session with a series of squats, dizzying, winding, repeated exertion until Harriet had vomited.
An officer working out nearby had guffawed, but he had been instantly silenced by a single look from Kane who, not unkindly, had then manoeuvred Harriet over to the water fountain for a drink. Harriet could still feel the sensation of Kane’s huge arm across her back; she had found its size and power unnerving. Perhaps that must be what it feels like to be caught up by an anaconda, she thought, and feel it start to coil and constrict, knowing that you were entirely helpless and would be almost effortlessly overwhelmed.
Harriet snapped back to attention as Beck pretended to throw the last bit of cheese to the dog, didn’t let go of it, and then flipped it into his own mouth instead. The dachshund barked, now sounding as disapproving as it looked.
“Much as we all appreciate your rundown of the relevant legislation, Pooter,” Beck said, his voice slightly muffled by the cheese, “but how about you just outline the bare details for Harriet now, hmm?”
“Very well, sir. In short, we are investigating the Peyton-Maxwells of Walton-on-the-Manor. The current baronet - the third, if you’re counting-”
“We’re not,” said Beck, wearily.
“Hmm. Well, the current baronet is Roderick Peyton-Maxwell. Along with his mother, the widow of the second baro… I mean, along with his mother and his sister, he has been responsible for turning the family’s country seat, Wimbourne Hall, into a very exclusive country club and hotel attracting many high-net-worth individuals. Gyms and spa, swimming pools, polo club, golf course, a well-regarded series of operatic performances across the summer months which, of course, while not of the same stature as Glyndebourne are-.”
“All very nice,” said Beck, interrupting. “All very expensive. Enough money sloshing around to give Scrooge McDuck a hard-on big enough to open a Melchior with. As a result the Peyton-Maxwells seem to be doing terribly well, it would appear. Not that we’ve been able to unpick their various companies’ finances. As Pooter was, erm, so succinctly outlining earlier, the baronet’s non-dom status and offshore banking arrangements make it difficult to say with any certainty exactly what is going on there.”
Beck grinned mirthlessly and pointed at Harriet.
“I know what you’re thinking: I smell a muroid and I am in need of a talpid.”
“You smell a rat and you need a mole, sir,” hazarded Harriet quickly, delving into the slightly dusty corner of her brain where she kept her Latin vocab.
“You fit the bill,” said Beck, nodding. “Worst case scenario, we give you an alias, you go in, you spend the next few months there, and maybe that’s as good as it will get... but at least we’ll have some eyes in the place. Best case scenario, you befriend the Peyton-Maxwells, get to know their inner circle, maybe manage to do a little sneaking around behind the scenes.”
“What about the other aspects?” piped up Pooter. “The drugs and the disap-”
“Thank you for your time, Pooter. I’m sure you have things to be doing. DS Kane will show you out.”
The mismatched pair walked out of the room, Pooter entirely eclipsed by Kane as she moved in his wake, a tanker behind a tugboat. When they were gone, Beck stood up and lifted the dachshund into the top drawer of a filing cabinet, from where it surveyed the room like a soldier from a watchtower.
“This will be a big commitment,” said Beck, turning to Harriet. “Months of your life. And… there is something else.”
Harriet managed to sit upright, her heart starting to pound again, this time because of a nervous excitement rather than physical exertion.
“Yes, sir?”
“The Peyton-Maxwells are all very much involved in the day-to-day running of Wimbourne Hall, but they tend to deal with different aspects of the business. The mother, the relict of the second baronet, for example, runs the charitable arm of the family business, which organises the al fresco opera festival; hopefully you’ll get to know her later. But I want you to concentrate on the daughter for the time being. She’s a personal trainer with a big online following. She has a track record of befriending young female gym clients who want to undergo radical body transformations and compete on stage. I want you to attract her attention.”
“So I would join the club, work out in their gym, catch the daughter’s eye?”
“More or less. But, in this case, to catch her eye as quickly as possible, I think you’ll need to undergo a radical body transformation of your own. How shall I put this? You need to get… big.”
Harriet looked puzzled.
“Big like DS Kane, sir?”
“Well, it wouldn’t hurt.”
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Life under lockdown has proven to be unpredictable, but I hope to have the next part up tomorrow!
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Life under lockdown has proven to be unpredictable, but I hope to have the next part up tomorrow!
Yeah, that didn't happen. Anyway...
Vier: The Peepers
"Welcome, gentlemen, welcome.”
The men moved slowly, quietly, along the length of the narrow hallway, Savile Row suits barely rustling, ice clinking in their cocktails, their attention already diverted by the view through the floor to ceiling window forming one of the passage walls.
“I’ll let you inspect the merchandise at your leisure, gentlemen. Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to ask me and I shall endeavour to give satisfaction. I have already been furnished with choice biographical details and I shall be happy to share these with you, if required. Sealed bids may be submitted at any point after we leave this room until midnight tonight.”
One man, whose girth and old-fashioned style of dress gave him the air of a gouty Dickensian bon vivant, pressed his face to the glass like a child at an ice cream shop, excitedly rapping the ferrule of his walking stick against the floor. The young man next to him recoiled, shying back like a nervous pony.
“Do not worry, sir. The glass is an extremely robust one-way mirror. They cannot see you. It is largely soundproof, also - certainly the music would make it almost impossible for us to be heard - but discretion is the better part of valour, and we advise our clientele to maintain a certain serenity at all times, lest an unfortunate incident occur.”
“Her!” said the fat man loudly, ignoring this advice and jabbing a generous forefinger against the glass, a gesture which made the man next to him flinch again, despite the reassurances. “Oh yes. I want her!”
“Ah yes, sir, an excellent choice, if I may so. Her name is Chardonnay, and she is what I believe is commonly known as a WAG. She is twenty-two years old, and she is currently dating her third professional footballer - they have all been lower league players, but she has worked her way up from the Conference to the Championship, so I warrant she is an ambitious young lady.”
On the other side of the glass, the woman flicked her straightened, bleach blonde hair over her shoulder, ratcheted up her pout another notch, and took a cluster of selfies with her phone. Between each photo, she moved her head to a different angle, always staring into the camera, first this way, then that, in a manner that brought to mind sparrows or, perhaps more pertinently, great tits.
She did not appear to be dressed very practically for a gym environment, and her shorts and sports bra certainly did not conform to the dress code, being in many respects closer in form to that of a bikini than sportswear. However, as she had oh-so-slowly leaned over the front desk to sign in and fluttered her false eyelashes at the young man on duty, he had found that all thoughts of demurring had suddenly been waylaid by other, more prurient notions.
And perhaps it did not matter that her sports bra did not seem to conform to the usual standards of compression, and had apparently been designed for a woman several cup sizes smaller, or that her shorts appeared to have shrunk in the wash. After all, she did not appear to be doing any actual exercise. Granted, as the group of men watched her from their clandestine viewpoint, at one point she did pick up a pair of dumbbells, but that was only to place them carefully on the floor next to the branded water bottle at her feet, props for her next series of selfies. Shortly afterwards she wandered off, making no attempt to replace the weights, leaving them lying askew on the floor, heading to the adjacent spa to find a tanning booth, her version of the Fortress of Solitude.
It did not take long for the other bidders to start making enquiries as they observed various oblivious women going about their business in the gym - the young mother looking to get back into shape, the trophy girlfriend trying to make sure she stayed in it, the recovering anorexic, the model and TV star wanting to look her best, the Pony Club twins - they ran the rule over all of them.
Eventually even the nervous young man gestured towards the glass at someone who had caught his eye, and he watched her keenly as a personal trainer talked her through the required technique for a power clean.
“Are you desirous of knowing more about this young woman, sir?” enquired the auctioneer, quietly.
“Erm, yes. Yes, please!”
“Her name is Dina, sir. An athlete of some promise, I am given to understand. She is in contention to be named in next year’s squad for the European Athletics Under 20 Championships. She is a sprinter, and she has been sent here for a high-level training camp to improve her ‘explosive power’, I believe was the phrase her Performance Director used.”
Dina’s approach to training could not have been more different to Chardonnay’s: she watched her coach intently as he demonstrated each movement, and then replicated the lift, first, with an empty bar and a frown of concentration on her face, and then, once she had mastered the movement, several more times, on each occasion with an increased amount of weight on the bar.
Her limbs were long and surely gave her good leverage, but she was still slender, and obviously lacked the power of more mature competitors. She did, however, already have noticeably defined legs and a chiselled backside, and it seemed to be this was holding the young man’s attention.
In due time, expressions of interest had been registered in several of the gym-goers the men were there to inspect. Many had clear preferences for their bids; others clearly had lots to think about and decisions to make.
As a general movement back towards the doorway began, one man stopped and pointed at a new arrival in the gym, a lithe brunette with her hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail; she headed straight for the dumbbells and, without hesitation, started a superset of hammer curls and tricep kickbacks. If anything, her approach was even more meticulous and determined than Dina’s had been.
“What about her?”
“I’m afraid that I have no information on this woman, sir; I am uncertain as to whether she is one of the allocated lots for today.”
Looking disappointed, the man rejoined the rest of the group as his companions filed from the room - all but the auctioneer, who remained behind and wandered closer to the glass and stood and stared at the mystery woman, watching her intently. Eventually he reached for his phone and made a call.
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Great start! Please continue, I am certain you'll pick up more readers as you get further into the story.
:bravo:
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Great start! Please continue, I am certain you'll pick up more readers as you get further into the story.
:bravo:
Cheers! I've got more of this one sketched out, but got distracted toying with some other story ideas. Just about ready to crack back on though, so watch this space...
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Cinq (or Swim)
Naked and glistening, Harriet walked from the shower and into her bedroom. It was not exactly a cinematic sexy entrance - seductive femmes fatales tending, as a rule, to sashay rather than limp, and to do rather more in the way of looking winsome, than some wincing - but it was still a beguiling sight and, all things considered, it was a shame that there was no one present to witness it.
And anyway, bending down to put on a honey of an anklet was not even an option after leg day.
She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, the softer portions of her body continuing to jiggle for a little while after she did so. There were certainly fewer softer portions than there had been at the start of this mission, but she retained an improbably perky pair of breasts; they had always been much rounder and much fuller than one would have expected on a slender woman of her size, and in her typically understated clothing. Her sister had always said that Harriet had breasts like the Spanish Inquisition: ‘nobody expects them’.
And anyway, she wasn’t so slender any more.
Absent-mindedly, she ran her hands up and down her thighs. This was not only a reflex, her aching muscles requiring a massage, but also a response to the changing size and shape of her legs, which fascinated her. Her whole body was transforming, it was true, but perhaps nothing told the story of the many hours she had now spent in the gym as eloquently as the newly undulating lines of her legs.
Harriet’s entire life had changed. A standard routine of commuting, paperwork, and evenings out had been replaced by lifting, eating, and sleeping. She was no longer working nine to five, but her life had never been so structured. Early in the mornings, she discreetly visited the station gym for a beasting overseen by Kane, primarily focussed on the big, compound lifts, and now involving loaded barbells that weighed more than she did; in the afternoons she visited Wimbourne Hall for a second gym session of the day, peacocking her way around the public gym, powering through a range of isolation exercises and then paying a visit to the pool and sauna.
If anything, Harriet had found the eating more of a challenge than the lifting. She had, after all, some experience of pushing herself physically on the hockey pitch or during a run, and even if her current exertions were several orders of magnitude greater, she at least had an idea of what to expect. But going from a standard three meals a day up to seven - not including all the supplementary pills and powders - was a completely new experience, and her body had struggled at first to digest the huge amounts of fish, chicken and steak she was now having to eat. She felt like a dinner guest at La Grande Bouffe. For the first few days of her diet, eating ad nauseam had not been a figurative expression. She had felt febrile as her metabolism accelerated to deal with digesting the caloric surplus. Eventually she returned to a state of general eupepsia and - although she never would have believed it to be possible - she even started to feel hungry between meals.
Her hand lingered on her vastus lateralis. It was not the first time today that she had lovingly run her hands over her body. Earlier in the evening as she stood in front of the oven, impatiently waiting for her salmon to finish cooking, she had suddenly realised that she was no longer standing arms akimbo, but had slid her hands round from her hips to the top of her glutes, and was enjoying the feeling of the muscles hardening and changing shape as she swayed gently from side to side. She was alone, but she had still blushed furiously at the realisation of her own vanity.
Now she reclined on her bed and turned her body, reaching for the open laptop by her pillow and pulling it nearer to her, relaxing like a Roman diner in a triclinium as she stared at the screen.
Once again, she started to browse Florence Peyton-Maxwell’s insta**** page.
It was now a daily ritual. It had started as research, but had become an obsession. Over and over again she studied the progress pictures and workout clips of dozens of clients shot in various locations around Wimbourne Hall, all interspersed with pictures of Florence herself, bronzed, buffed, and beautiful. It was noticeable that, no matter how impressive the transformations of her clients - and many of them bordered on unrecognisable after submitting to her tuition - none ever looked as sleek and sexy as Florence herself, apparently always photoshoot-ready. Perhaps Florence ditched her clients before they became as hot as she was, Harriet speculated.
There were many workout clips on the page, but Harriet selected one she had watched many times before - a recent compilation of Florence spotting a succession of her clients on the incline leg press. Every clip in the montage was much the same, indeed it was almost a signature of Florence’s personal training program: a young woman, face incarnadine and often stained with tears, contorted by a tortured rictus, howling, legs wobbling, her shoulders pinned back by Florence, unable or unwilling to let her quit, and bellowing “Come on! Two more!” at her.
Once again Harriet watched, enraptured. When she had first found these videos at the start of her assignment, she felt as if she were back at school, a novice language student asked to study some foreign news bulletins. Always keen to learn, and knowing that what was happening must make sense, she had tried to work out the meaning of it all, but it was as if she then lacked the required vocabulary to fully understand. She could explain in outline what she was watching, but she could not explain why it was happening.
Now though, now she spoke the same language as these young women. She knew why they begged to stop even while they fought on; she could decode their screams of pain, and had even cried the same tears. Kane had bellowed in her face too, as Florence did to these girls, and as her training had progressed that shout of ‘Two more!’ had gone from what felt like a promise of absolution, to a finishing line tantalisingly close, to a mere suggestion, a target to be smashed.
The compilation finished with Chardonnay, recognisable if only because of her lip fillers, fake tan, and the fact she was looking like she was about to burst out of her gym clothes. But this time she was wearing proper athleticwear, her body was just subjecting it to an entirely different set of challenges to those imposed on the flimsy glorified bikini she had worn when she first walked into the Wimbourne Hall gym. Bug-eyed and snarling as she lifted multiple plates, she looked like a woman possessed, and Harriet half-expected a priest to pop into shot and start sprinkling the holy water. Anyone who had been familiar with Chardonnay’s voice - a babyish, vacuous affectation - would have been forgiven for assuming the guttural growling noise that escaped her lips was made by Zuul hearing Gozer coming home from the office.
Harriet’s time at Wimbourne Hall had seen her body develop in ways she could not previously have imagined, but had so far been a failure in the sense that she had still yet to encounter Florence, who mostly seemed to train with her clients in various private rooms around the main gym. But if Florence was elusive, Harriet often saw Chardonnay in and around the swimming pools, clearly angling for attention as she splashed about with all the subtlety of Anita Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain.
Harriet was weighing up a new scheme of her own invention, which was to attract Florence’s attention by first befriending Chardonnay, and she had been considering how to share this idea with Beck. Beck had been clear that he did not want Harriet to initiate contact with Florence, but to wait until she was herself approached. It had seemed a reasonable idea when it was first outlined, but it had become clear to Harriet that continuing in this vein might mean she would never get to meet her target.
But how to tell Beck she wanted to change the plan? It was not so much that she thought that Beck would dismiss her idea out of hand that gave her pause, as the fact she had hitherto always meekly done as she had been told and she wasn’t sure how best to argue her case.
As she weighed up the problem, her phone rang. It was Beck.
She panicked - she was naked. It may not have been a video call, but she couldn’t talk to her boss on the phone without any clothes on; it just wasn’t the done thing. She rolled off the bed, dashed across the room, grabbed a dressing gown, clumsily wrestled herself into it, realised she’d left the phone on the bed, dashed back across the room, lunged across the mattress, and answered the phone in bit of a tizzy.
“Hi-llo?” she said, deciding too late to abandon her initial casual greeting for something slightly more formal, mangling the words together in the process.
“‘Hi-llo’? Interesting greeting. I like it. Makes you sound a bit like an indecisive contestant on Play Your Cards Right.”
“Erm, sorry, just a slip of the tongue, sir.”
“No need to apologise. This is just a quick check-in. I'm hoping today might be the day you have a 'Brucie Bonus' for me?”
“Sorry, sir, still no contact made, I’m afraid.”
Beck sighed, and Harriet cleared her throat.
“Do I get the sense you do have something to discuss, at least?” Beck ventured.
“It’s just, well, sir, I thought, perhaps… it might be time to change your plan - just slightly.”
“You have something in mind?”
“I’m just not sure I’ll ever make contact, unless… unless I attract her attention through a third party, sir.”
“Ah, you have an intercessor in mind?”
“Yes, sir - are you familiar with Chardonnay Green from the case files?”
“One moment. I have them right here.”
“I see her quite often in the swimming pool, sir, and she’s a client of Florence.” This was going much more smoothly than Harriet had feared. “I thought it might be a good idea to befriend Chardonnay and then try to meet Florence through her.”
“Yeees. Yes. I can see that working. Very well. You have my approval. But we’ll need to give Chardonnay a codename.”
“A codename?”
There was a rustling of documents.
“Let me see, where was her photo? Ah, yes. Yes. How about ‘Duckface à l’orange’?"
-
Here we go again. I've had some free time recently, and was feeling in the mood to write again. Apologies for any mistakes you may spot - this was written quickly and only given the briefest of proof-reads.
Enjoy! Or not. But if you do enjoy, let me know! I hope the next chapter isn't too far away.
Starting to Feel Sechs-y
Harriet was aware that her heart rate was quickening and she was fidgeting non-stop as she changed clothes in her cubicle. It wasn’t just the usual jitters caused by the pre-workout kicking in; she was definitely nervous, and understandably so. After all, so far her time undercover had essentially comprised a holiday from her usual desk job and a lot of time spent getting paid to work out. She had done no investigative work, had interviewed no suspects, and followed no leads for months. Instead she had dutifully gone to the gym six days a week, every week, and spent most of the rest of the time eating and sleeping. Her detective instincts felt like a blunt edge in need of a whetstone.
Today was Harriet’s first opportunity to do some actual undercover work on this mission and this was an operation she had instigated herself. It was she who had suggested to Beck that she take the proactive step of making contact with Chardonnay with a view to inveigling herself into Florence’s inner circle, and she felt even more pressure because of the personal responsibility.
Harriet had always got nervous before interviews at the SFO, even though forensic accounting was hardly pulse-quickening stuff. And asking gently probing questions about a company’s accounts was her métier; all this cloak-and-dagger stuff was entirely new to her. So far her entire experience of successful covert work was limited to remembering not to announce herself as an officer of the law to the receptionist at the Wimbourne Hall front desk when she signed in for the gym.
In the past Harriet knew just what she had to do to ease her nerves before an interview: over-prepare. She would go over and over the case files and her notes, and then she would go over them again. It was like swotting for an exam, and her school and university marks were testament to the efficacy of her meticulous preparation. “Never half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing,” as a wise man had once said, quoting Ron Swanson.
This time was different though. Harriet couldn't prepare like she had in the past. This time it wasn’t about memorising facts and figures, or combing through spreadsheets. It was going to be a matter of attitude - it was going to be a performance. And whereas normally she would prepare her mind, today the main tool she had at her disposal today was her body, and she was going to have to amp herself up like an athlete getting ready for an event. A natural introvert, she was going to have to affect a new personality and a new attitude for the duration. She was going to have to go method.
Granted, what Stanislavski had in mind probably hadn’t specifically involved ordering the smallest pair of booty shorts and the most revealing sports bra Harriet could find from an online company that actually sold athleticwear as opposed to lingerie masquerading as gym clothes, but it was one way of getting in character. Even alone in her flat, Harriet had squirmed with embarrassment at how exposed she was in her new gym clothes when she had tried them on - and now, as she stood in the changing room cubicle with just a plywood door between herself and the hordes of gym-goers without, the half a dozen eggs she had eaten for second breakfast were at serious risk of making a premature reappearance.
All Harriet could think about was all the attention her exposed flesh was bound to attract. But that was what she needed, and she was just going to have to deal with it. She was going to strut into that gym feeling like the most confident woman in the world, she was going to go out of her way to attract attention, and then she was going to bask in it; she was going to get into the mindset of someone like Chardonnay, become shamelessly preening and exhibitionist, and, with any luck, all that fake confidence was going to transmute into real confidence.
Harriet took a deep breath. Youcandothisyoucandothisyoucandothispleasedon’tthrowup she repeated to herself like a mantra, and she opened the cubicle door.
The funny thing was, she reflected later, all the doubt, all the self-consciousness, all the nervousness, all the nagging little voices in her head disappeared as soon as she wrapped her hands around two dumbbells and hoisted them from their rack. She was transformed by the iron.
And with every exercise Harriet did grow in real confidence, especially when she spotted various men checking her out, with various degrees of subtlety. This was a novel experience. She had only ever witnessed men perving over other women before, and had always thought that in the event it happened to her she would have felt violated, but she was coming to realise why some women found it empowering.
They are in your thrall, she told herself. You control them; you are a Siren and they are enchanted by your song. She forced herself to walk closer past the ogling men than was necessary, and chose to linger in their lines of sight, taking much longer than was necessary bending at the waist to fiddle with her shoelaces. That’s right, she thought, take a good look, boys, because I am worth looking at.
There were no two ways about it: Harriet was starting to feel amazing. Now it wasn’t just pre-workout pumping through her system; she was overflowing with a lubricious confidence, and it was an exciting and intoxicating feeling for someone who had never before even sipped from that cup.
She felt so amazing that with each new exercise she began to challenge herself to break her PB, and when she smashed record after record, she felt even more amazing. Her excitement peaked when she started to do alternating curls and realised that she was actually lifting more than the middle-aged man next to her - okay, he was built more like a runner than a lifter, but he was obviously physically fit, and he was a man, and he was clearly trying so hard to challenge himself because he was so obviously embarrassed about standing next to a young woman who was easily curling dumbbells ten pounds heavier than his, and for more reps, and with stricter form.
By now the pump was real. Harriet’s arms were engorged with blood and looked bigger than they ever had before, her cephalic veins prominent and pulsing. Never mind the fake confidence now; when your arms looked like this, it was impossible not to feel as indomitable as a Gaul after drinking Getafix’s secret potion. But Harriet wanted more. She wanted the sort of pump where your arms feel like they are too exhausted to move while simultaneously also feeling like they are stronger than ever before.
Harriet decided to finish with sets of cable curls. Her arms were by now full of blood, to the point where contracting her biceps was difficult, not because she was struggling with the weight as she pulled on the cable handles, but because even at a ninety degree angle her arms were so ludicrously inflated that it felt like she may not be able to bring her fists any closer to her shoulders. But Kane had taught her not to give up so easily. She focussed, breathed deeply, and forced her way through more reps.
While Harriet had walked tentatively out of the changing rooms, she now positively swaggered back into them, red-faced, clothes saturated with sweat, but feeling like a million dollars. At the end of the room standing in front of the mirrors, she spotted a woman she recognised on sight as Amy Bain, not one of Florence’s pet projects, but a successful bikini competitor with a big social media following of her own.
Harriet’s only previous interaction with Amy was to be scolded by her for daring to walk in front of her camera when she was filming herself performing glute thrusts. Harriet felt sure that Amy wouldn’t even recognise her, not least because she seemed to spend almost all of her time in the gym filming herself and snapping at people who got in the way of her camera, as if they were intruding on a closed film set. Amy had a harsh, sarcastic tone and a carrying voice, and if she wasn’t using it to bitch at people, she was boasting on video to all of her online followers about how she wasn’t just a bikini competitor, but also a successful and sought-after marketing executive #ladyboss #bossbitch #shecandoboth.
If Harriet was being completely honest with herself, she would have admitted that it wasn’t just Amy’s unfriendly personality that had made her take an instant dislike to her, but the fact that Amy was also the sort of woman whose looks and lifestyle inspired envy - a lissom beauty queen who was gym-buffed, salon-coiffed, and who drove an expensive car and always but always wore revealing designer clothing.
When she had first seen her, Amy was the sort of woman that Harriet could only dream of becoming: athletic, desirable and completely self-assured. Except Harriet hadn’t spent the last few months only dreaming, she had spent them pumping iron, and now - a joyous epiphany - she realised that for all the finely detailed musculature, Amy the bikini competitor was actually small compared to her. At some level, Harriet must have been aware of this discrepancy for a while, but the image Amy projected, the force field of glamour, had not allowed her to see the truth clear.
Amy was certainly not a woman who suffered from shyness, and she had stripped to her underwear in the middle of the changing room to film a ‘check in’ for her posing coach - but also, frankly, to show off, because if you've got it, flaunt it, right? - loudly narrating her satisfaction with how she was bringing a ‘better package’ to the stage this year, and throwing in some bonus flexes to show off her gains to her followers.
This is level two, Harriet thought. She had shown off to a crowd in the gym from a distance, and now it was time to get personal; now she had to meet and dominate a woman like Amy one-to-one - and then her rendezvous with Chardonnay would hold no fear.
Unnoticed by Amy, who was staring over her own shoulder into the mirror and lovingly detailing how impressed even she was by how her rear delts were looking, Harriet retrieved her hoody from her locker, zipped it up, and then quickly walked over to Amy and stopped right in her personal space, coming face to to face with her as Amy turned around. At this close distance, Harriet calculated, Amy would be denied a sense of perspective - until it was too late.
“Excuse me!” hissed Amy, “Can’t see you see I’m filming; I need to update my posing coach with my latest progress.”
Harriet smiled what she hoped was a disarming, shy smile, and tried to channel her tongue-tied personality when she was baffled by a conversation with Beck.
“Oh, sorry, sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that, you just look so amazing and I was just wondering if you compete at all?”
The obsequious approach did not have its intended effect. Amy snorted dismissively.
“Erm, obviously I compete; I mean, look at me!” she said, gesturing at herself, “Nobody looks this sensational if they’re not planning on competing. Do you have any idea how much hard work and dedication it takes to look this fabulous? Oh, silly me; of course someone like you wouldn’t know. I doubt you could handle even one of my workouts.”
Harriet had been correct in assuming that by wearing her baggy hoody and by standing so close to Amy, the conceited woman would assume she was just a fatty. Little did Amy know this hoody was actually a pump cover. Harriet feigned embarrassment.
“I know, right? I saw you in the gym earlier with your booty bands and, well, you looked incredible. I can’t imagine what it must take to look as good as you.”
“Dedication, honey,” purred Amy, softening her attitude slightly in the face of more unadulterated praise. She twisted her hips, angling her torso away from Harriet, and pointed at the accentuated result in the mirror. “This squat booty didn’t build itself, you know.”
“Oh wow,” said Harriet.
“Damn right. You might not think it to look at me,“ said Amy, playing up to the still-rolling camera and tossing her glorious blonde hair while pouting in the mirror, “but I am actually a lot stronger than the average man.” She was warming to her theme now. “A lot of people think bikini contests are just beauty pageants, but we are definitely bodybuilders; we just happen to be bodybuilders who want to look sexy as hell in a bikini and heels. Strong and sexy. Take a look.”
Amy flexed her bicep, and a firm, lemon-sized bulge appeared on her arm.
In the past, Harriet would have been genuinely impressed by this display of strength, but now it took no little effort to fake it.
“You look so good, girl! Do you think you could show me some poses, please? I’d love to know if you think I’ve got what it takes to compete too?”
It was now or never. Without waiting for an answer, Harriet unzipped her hoody and dropped it to the floor. For the first time in her life, she hit a double-bicep pose outside the privacy of her own home, and in front of another human being. The results were gratifying. Amy’s jaw dropped. She stopped putting any effort into her own bicep flex, and the lemon disappeared, leaving a lithe arm poised in the air.
Harriet twisted her wrists and felt the big balls of muscle twitching. She didn’t look at her arms, but she could feel how big they were, and how the biceps were bunching and bulging. She didn’t need to look in the mirror: she could tell exactly how impressive they must have looked just by watching Amy’s stunned face.
“I’ve been doing some working out too, but I’m afraid I don’t really know any other poses. Maybe you could show me? What was that one you were doing earlier? When you made your back spread wide?”
“That… that was a lat spread,” Amy managed, after winching up her jaw.
“That one. Show me how to do that,” asked - no, ordered - Harriet.
Like a robot, Amy turned back to face the mirror, set back her shoulders and flared her lats. It wasn’t a pose in a bikini competitor’s routine, but she was proud of the width she had built after years of struggling with pull ups.
Harriet stepped behind her and copied her pose, a little awkwardly, because she had never attempted to flex like this before, but almost immediately dwarfing the size of the woman standing in front of her. Amy was in heels, Harriet in trainers, but they happened to be standing at almost exactly the same height, which made the span of Harriet’s inflating lats all the more impressive. Standing behind Amy and out-flexing the woman in front of her in this way, Harriet felt like a snake dislocating its jaws to swallow its prey.
Amy stopped flexing again, and her body subsided. She almost looked like she had shrunk a little. She was no longer a confident athlete striking poses, but a humiliated little girl who just wanted to pack up her stuff and run for the exit.
Harriet wasn’t done.
“Does this qualify as a squat booty?” she asked rhetorically, turning around and tugging down her sweat-stained shorts as she did so. Presented at close quarters with enough booty to keep even the most spendthrift of pirate crews happy on shore leave for a month, Amy’s jaw dropped again. Harriet pulled down and kicked off her damp shorts, her thighs billowing as her feet hit the floor.
“I asked you a question.”
Amy’s mouth flapped up and down, but no words came out.
“Well, if you’ve lost the power of speech, instead you will demonstrate to me how you pulled that pose a moment ago, when you sort of half-twisted and made your little booty pop. Quickly, now.”
Wordlessly, Amy repeated the movement. Harriet watched closely and then mirrored her movements. Her left glute ballooned out and smacked into Amy’s right buttock, knocking the smaller woman off balance. Taken by surprise, and in heels, Amy toppled sideways. Harriet flashed out an arm, hooked Amy around her waist, and hoisted her back upright.
“Careful there,” said Harriet. “Don't tell me you're one of those silly women that just can’t stand up straight in high heels?”
There was an awkward pause.
“Could you maybe put me down... please?” said Amy, squeaking the last word.
Harriet realised that she had not just caught Amy, she had actually hoisted her off her feet and was holding her suspended, coiled in one arm. She had a sudden flashback to the time Kane had wrapped an arm around her and helped her to the water fountain all those months ago. She wondered if Amy felt as awed by the strength in her arm as she once had in Kane’s grip?
“I suppose so. Oh, hang on, clumsy girl, one of your heels has fallen off. Let me just…”
Harriet easily flung the woman over her shoulder into a fireman’s carry position, and squatted down to retrieve the shoe. She could feel Amy panicking, incorrectly fearing that Harriet wasn’t going to be able to handle her weight as she crouched to grab the high heel, and giggled as Amy’s arms scrabbled around for hand holds, tickling the small of her back. In the end the only things Amy could find to grab on to were Harriet’s meaty glutes. Amy’s hands felt comically small to Harriet as they squeezed hold of her bottom; in her mind she pictured a small child struggling to grab a basketball in each hand.
Having retrieved the shoe, Harriet stood back up, without any obvious difficulty.
“How much do you weigh, anyway?” Harriet asked.
“One... one hundred and twenty pounds,” panted Amy.
“Oh, you little thing, that’s not even my warm up; no wonder you feel so light,” said Harriet, dropping once more into a squat and then working her way through a series of easy reps. She could feel Amy’s hands slipping from her glutes - either her new booty shorts had been too sodden to absorb all the perspiration from her workout, or Amy’s palms were damp with a panic-sweat.
Finishing the last squat, Harriet made eye contact with herself in the mirror. Or at least, she made eye contact with a woman whom she eventually realised to be herself. There she stood - formerly such a prude that she would struggle into a swimsuit after her workout just to take a shower in the public changing rooms - in only a sports bra and a thong, dripping with sweat, her body thick and heavy with muscle, pumped and veiny, and with a sexy woman slung casually over her shoulder, almost as if she were a cartoon caveman claiming her mate.
She looked unrecognisable when compared with the prim, nervous young lady in a smart trouser suit and sensible shoes who had hesitantly walked into Beck’s office all those months ago. And, more importantly, now she felt like a different woman altogether. Perhaps she could borrow one of those hashtags Amy was so keen on using - hell, no need to borrow it; now she could just take it. It wasn’t like Amy was going to be able to use it any time soon anyway...
#alphafemale
Harriet glanced across as Amy started whimpering. Could she? Of course she could: the tanned, toned buttocks draped over her shoulder were simply too inviting not to. She flashed a wicked smile at the camera and then delivered a ringing slap to Amy’s honed little arse. Amy squealed. The red imprint left by Harriet’s hand remained clearly visible on the otherwise flawless, peachy little bottom, as if Amy had been branded by her owner.
“Send that to your posing coach.”
-
Brilliant! But mare DC Kane. Right hoping she goes steaming in n right batters a few bams, ken?
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I've got to say, this is one of the best written pieces of work on this forum, in my opinion. Good luck and I hope you continue!
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Brilliant! But mare DC Kane. Right hoping she goes steaming in n right batters a few bams, ken?
Kane will definitely get her time to shine, but not just yet... ;)
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I've got to say, this is one of the best written pieces of work on this forum, in my opinion. Good luck and I hope you continue!
Thank you! I was a bit annoyed reading the last chapter back after I posted it because I think it needed a a few little tweaks. Hey ho. I'll try to be more careful next time.
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I've got to say, this is one of the best written pieces of work on this forum, in my opinion. Good luck and I hope you continue!
I concur. Excellently written. I'm looking forward to more.
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And here's the next instalment.
I've just started playing around with a body swap story in the last couple of days, and I've got an inchoate idea forming for a husband and wife story too, so I'm not sure what I'll have the time and inclination to write next. This one definitely isn't done though.
On Your Marks, Get Sept, Go!
By the time Harriet came back out of her cubicle, Amy was gone. She must have left in a disorganised rush, as she appeared to have left her high heels and a few items of her clothing in a pile on the floor next to the sink countertop where Harriet had deposited her before walking away without another word. Amy did appear to have accidentally taken Harriet’s shorts and hoody with her though, as they were no longer where Harriet had dropped them. Harriet didn’t give it a second thought; she had no need for them at the moment anyway.
She was on her way to the pool and had changed into her new bikini. It was a hybrid design that was marketed as being suitable for both swimming and playing beach volleyball. She had ordered it after admiring how athletic and sexy the model on the website looked wearing it, but now only false modesty would make her deny that she thought she looked even better in it.
Even taking into account her other recent purchases, the booty shorts and sports bra, the bikini was the most revealing item of clothing she had ever worn in public. Unlike the last time she had emerged from the cubicle though, she felt no trepidation at being seen wearing so little - she was even enjoying the fact that the bikini bottoms were already struggling with her glutes and had started to gather up into a wedgie, revealing more of her muscular curves. She didn’t unbunch them. Let people admire my murves, she thought, and smiled inwardly, realising that she didn’t just have a new body, but that all that time spent on social media admiring fitness babes had provided her with a new vocabulary with which to describe it as well.
Murves. She liked that word, with its suggestion of both strength and femininity, neither of which were attributes she would have formerly considered herself to possess in any great measure.
She liked the fact that she could justifiably apply the term to her new physique even more.
Despite the beach towel draped over her shoulder which obscured a swathe of her torso - and replacing the supple form of Amy who had occupied much the same position just a few minutes earlier - a single glance at Harriet would have confirmed to even a casual observer that this was a woman whose life revolved around exercise.
There were more than a few casual observers as she walked towards the swimming pool, and none of them were satisfied with a single glance.
After draping the towel over a chair next to the pool, Harriet casually stretched, buying herself a few moments to calm herself, allowing her to analyse the situation, and to locate Chardonnay. She was pleased with this simple ploy, deciding it was the kind of thing a spy would do in a film, cool and casual as you like.
Much like a teetotaller who had got tipsy after being persuaded to have a couple of large glasses of wine at a business lunch, as great as Harriet was feeling, she was aware that she had been starting to lose control of herself in the changing room, and now she was consciously trying to reign herself in a little, constantly reminding herself that she still had work to do.
Not that she wanted to completely sober up just yet - and who was to say that she might not embrace the opportunity to become inebriated once more, as long as she could still get the job done? After all, didn’t James Bond repeatedly save the world while positively sloshing with martinis?
As it was, Chardonnay was just where Harriet expected to find her, sitting submerged in the small jacuzzi adjoining the far end of the pool.
Business time. Harriet rotated her shoulders experimentally. The bikini top was, she now realised, too tight, but not so restrictive as to prevent her swimming in it. A lifeguard standing behind Harriet did a double-take as her still-pumped biceps jumped to life as she checked her hair was secure in its bun. He caught the eye of a colleague, waggled his eyebrows and jerked his head in the direction of Harriet, mouthing ‘WTF’.
With four steps forward and no hesitation, Harriet dived smoothly and confidently into the pool. She had always been a keen swimmer but now, with the explosive strength generated by her legs, she had no need to start her stroke immediately, letting her body glide through the water, until she was almost halfway along the pool.
As she enjoyed the feel of the cool water rippling against her hot body, she kept repeating her plan to herself, with the exaggerated care of a drunk trying to pull off something which she knew ideally required a clearer head. The plan, such as it was, was simple, and didn’t need to be over-analysed, but ‘preparation’ was Harriet’s watchword, after all: so yet again she told herself that she would swim a few lengths, then stop for a rest close to Chardonnay before innocently striking up a conversation, all so her target wouldn’t suspect Harriet was there specifically to meet her.
Those few lengths were the smoothest and speediest Harriet had ever swum, cutting as quickly and quietly through the water as a racing yacht, her arms no longer tiring out long before her legs as they would once do when she was younger, leaving her clinging to the pool edge and gathering her energy before starting again.
Eventually she made her way towards the shallow end, and the jacuzzi, and came to a stop, grabbing hold of the little dividing wall and making a show of catching her breath. Chardonnay was almost close enough to reach out and touch. She made eye contact with Harriet...
“Hey, sexy.”
Harriet and Chardonnay both started at the unexpected intrusion. A cocky pretty boy was standing at the jacuzzi edge, running one hand over his abs and another through his gelled hair. To Harriet, he looked like a complete waste of space, but Chardonnay would flirt with her own reflection if she noticed it looking at her.
“I’m Liam.”
“Hell-o” Chardonnay trilled, getting good value from her false eyelashes by fluttering them hard enough to generate a gentle breeze, and shimmying a little below the water, just enough that her submerged breasts were briefly, tantalisingly, visible.
This was no good, thought Harriet. Not this, not now. She had to get rid of this guy.
“Have you ever seen that before?” she asked Chardonnay.
“Seen what?” asked Chardonnay, looking back open-mouthed at Harriet, seemingly baffled by the question. In fairness, even less oblique queries addressed to Chardonnay often had much the same effect.
“A man with the legs of a chicken!”
Chardonnay snorted with laughter as Liam’s face reddened.
“Someone’s been skipping leg day. Someone’s been skipping leg year, from the look of things!” added Harriet.
It didn’t really make sense, but it made Chardonnay laugh even harder; her chest heaved and yet again caught Liam’s attention.
“How about you walk your scrawny little arse back to the rest of the boyband - they’re probably missing you,” Harriet said, a little more aggressively.
The young man’s circulatory system was working overtime: close proximity to Chardonnay had diverted most of the blood in his body southwards, but there was still sufficient to be pumped north and keep his cheeks glowing with embarrassment.
Seemingly unsure about what to do next, he plunged abruptly into the jacuzzi, perhaps trying to kill two birds with one stone: to hide his legs from further derision, but also to get closer to Chardonnay.
“They are skinny legs, though, innit,” laughed Chardonnay.
Liam finally snapped.
“Fuck you,” he spat.
Harriet watched Chardonnay closely. Her expression had shut down when she was insulted, and now her face was stoney.
“My ex had skinny legs as well. Which was funny, because he was actually a professional footballer, yeah? He told me I had to stop working out when my legs got bigger than his, but I didn’t want to. I said he should just, like, spend some more time in the gym, but he said his manager had banned him from working out with weights anymore because he was getting too bulky. I said his legs didn’t look bulky to me; they looked well skinny. It’s funny though - when we started going out, I didn’t think he was skinny; I thought he was proper buff. He was bigger than you, anyway. But he wouldn’t stop whining about it, so I dumped him. Skinny men like you are boring.”
“Fuck you I’m skinny!” said Liam furiously. “Ain’t no bitch calling me skinny just because she’s fat!”
Consider, if you will, the crocodile. They inspire fear, and rightly so. As Stirling Archer would tell you: “I’m afraid of any apex predator that lived through the K-T extinction. Physically unchanged for a hundred million years, because it's the perfect killing machine.” Perhaps the only thing worse than being in a body of water and seeing a crocodile snout emerge in front of you, is seeing two crocodiles.
Luckily, as a general rule, crocodiles tend to avoid jacuzzis in the grounds of country houses in the shires. Who can say why? Perhaps they dislike the bubbles. We may never know for sure. Anyway, the point is that this jacuzzi was a crocodile-free zone, but Harriet could have sworn she had glimpsed a couple of large, threatening... somethings lurking beneath the surface.
Chardonnay smiled an abrupt, forced smile and shifted her weight, seeming to recline further beneath the water. Her knees broke the surface and as they moved apart it was clear that she was spreading her legs enticingly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, babes. I didn’t mean nothing by it; it’s just a bit of fun. How about a kiss to say sorry?”
This was more like it, Liam thought; he had put the bitch in her place. All his blood started pumping south again. He waded forward.
Harriet watched as Chardonnay’s toes, nails painted hot pink, peeked out from below the water, and realised Chardonnay must be extending her legs.
Liam placed his hands on Chardonnay’s knees and looked defiantly across at Harriet, self-satisfied as only a horny man who thought he had bypassed a cock-block can be.
As Liam moved forward again, his hands left Chardonnay’s legs and his fingertips trailed through the water.
And then it happened. Chardonnay flexed and they surfaced. Not a pair of crocodiles, but just as powerful, and just as dangerous. Still sneering at Harriet, Liam didn’t notice, at first - but as the gigantic quads disrupted the surface of the water, expanding upwards and outwards, his fingers recoiled in shock. It was too late. Chardonnay scissored him around the waist and pulled him down until only his head and shoulders remained above water. Liam’s breath exploded from his lungs and he had no opportunity to even cry for help.
“Hnnnnnghh!” he wheezed.
“I ain’t no fat bitch, but I ain’t no skinny bitch, neither,“ Chardonnay whispered. “I’m a big, strong bitch. Do you like big, strong bitches, babes?”
Harriet guessed that Chardonnay emphasised each syllable in ‘big, strong bitch’, with an extra squeeze of her thighs, and Harriet could tell from Liam’s every wince that he regretted each application of extra pressure more than the last. Chardonnay’s expression meanwhile remained blank, disinterested, as Liam turned purple; Harriet half-expected Chardonnay to start studying her manicure to pass the time.
The bubbling water became extra choppy as Liam struggled to break free. Harriet could have told him he was wasting his energy; she had watched videos on Insta**** of Chardonnay leg-pressing the equivalent of multiple Liams. Liam was only getting free if he brought along his five-a-side team for help.
“I like being big and strong. Men can’t tell me what to do anymore. But sometimes that makes them angry.”
Harriet couldn’t look away from Liam’s face, the fear in his eyes, the helplessness. She pretended to take pity on him - in reality, she was suppressing a morbid curiosity to see what Chardonnay would do if left unchecked - but, if he actually passed out, it might attract unwanted attention and that wouldn’t make her job any easier. She easily pushed herself out of the pool and slipped into the jacuzzi.
“Why don't I show this guy to the exit?”
Chardonnay didn’t say anything, but released her hold. Harriet slipped her hands under Liam’s arms and supported his weight as he collapsed, coughing and spluttering.
Harriet walked backwards to the edge of the jacuzzi, dragging Liam along with her, until her heel hit the bottom rung of the steps. Liam still seemed incapable of bearing his own weight. Impatient to be alone with Chardonnay, Harriet placed her foot on the first step and started to ascend them in reverse, still pulling Liam backwards, until she was no longer just pulling Liam backwards, but backwards and upwards, her legs now carrying both their weight clear of the water. For the second time today, she unceremoniously dumped someone down on their arse, this time in a nearby chair.
She turned around and saw Chardonnay looking at her admiringly. Behind her, Liam stood up with legs as wobbly as those of a punch-drunk boxer, but determined to head for the nearest exit with all possible haste; he had no intention whatsoever of finding out if Chardonnay wanted to go another round.
“Looks like I’m not the only big, strong bitch,” said Chardonnay, clearly impressed.
“Yeah, I work out a little,” replied Harriet, trying to keep it casual. “Mind if I join you?”
“Let me just scoot over,” said Chardonnay, standing up to free some space on her perch.
As she did so, Harriet discovered that her recent experience of stunning Amy into silence simply by revealing her physique was no preparation at all for the feeling of finding the roles reversed.
She had thought that studying all the photos and video clips of Chardonnay online had left her well acquainted with the sight of her new friend’s impressive development, but as Chardonnay’s dripping torso emerged from the water it became clear to Harriet that all the progress pics she had seen had not told the full story. Harriet felt like she’d just tuned in to a favourite TV show only to find she’d somehow missed a key episode, and was now struggling to get back up to speed.
Chardonnay’s shoulders may have been no broader than Harriet’s, but the lines and composition of her upper body were very different. Chardonnay was absolutely shredded. Her body fat percentage must have been a number lower than an England opening batsman’s test average; it was certainly several points below that of Harriet’s, as relatively lean as she had remained throughout her months of carefully-controlled bulking. Chardonnay’s silhouette diverged from a tiny waistline, spreading into the chiselled V-shape of a competitive bodybuilder ready to step onto the stage.
Her extreme level of conditioning made it more obvious than ever that her breasts were implants. Whereas once she could have passed for a comely all-natural Page 3 girl, now her breasts sat like big, round finials on squared-off plinths of pectoral muscle. She had cephalic veins like Harriet’s, but with an additional network of pullulating blood vessels spreading across her arms and delts that looked like a series of catastrophic events branching off from the Sacred Timeline.
Chardonnay was a study in incongruity. Compared with someone like Kane, who was just built on a different scale to most people - naturally big, and tall, and heavy - and on whom all that muscle looked like a natural fit, Chardonnay looked like the result of an experiment.
With striations accentuating every pound of beef on Chardonnay’s body, Harriet could see her muscles flickering beneath the surface of her skin as she moved, almost as if she were spotlit by a strobe light.
Just to add to the confusion, there was Chardonnay’s face, which seemed to belong to another woman’s body entirely, a delicate bimbo whose skin, lips, teeth, lashes, brows and hairdo were all subject to the skilled ministrations of a small team of cosmetic professionals, and who looked like she had never broken a sweat in her life.
Harriet waded back in and they both sat down, not without some difficulty - the underwater ledge on which they were sitting was designed as a perch you wouldn’t necessarily want to share with a stranger; and two powerful women, both significantly broadened by muscle, were obliged to wedge themselves against one another. It was snug.
“I’m Chardonnay.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Harriet.”
“He was a knob, wasn’t he? Just like my ex. Men always say they want a strong woman, until they find out how strong a woman can be, then they just turn into scared little boys.”
“Oh, tell me about it,” replied Harriet casually, even though she had never dated anyone in her life.
“I think it’s the girls that attract the wrong kind of man.”
“The girls?”
“Yeah, you know, the girls.” Chardonnay thrust forward her chest to make her point and her implants pushed clear of the surface. “Somehow men always just see the girls, and never seem to notice the rest of me.”
To Harriet, who had been doing nothing but drinking in the entirety of Chardonnay’s stunning physique from the second she had seen it, this seemed bizarre; but then, she told herself, she didn’t have a penis doing her thinking for her.
“And then when they find out I can do this, they think I’m some kind of freak.”
Chardonnay started to rapidly flex her pectorals, her implants jumping upwards and outwards, rocking back together like a two-piece Newton’s cradle.
“Gosh! How do you do that?” Harriet exclaimed, unable to help herself.
“Don’t tell me you never flexed your pecs though?”
“No, never.”
“Oh, it’s easy. Look, do this.”
Chardonnay’s personality and expression were so animated and excited now that it was hard to reconcile this version of her with the blank-faced woman who was a few seconds away from choking out a man between her thighs. Now she was happy and giggly; ditzier than the company Harriet normally kept, but totally lacking in affectation. Harriet couldn’t help but warm to her.
Chardonnay was also very tactile. She reached over and hooked a forefinger in the front of Harriet’s bikini top, pulling it down to expose the clearly defined channel that now ran down the front of Harriet’s sternum, between her pecs.
“Okay, now imagine you’re squeezing your boobs together without using your hands.”
Trying out a new flex for the second time that day, Harriet again surprised herself with how easy she found it to master. Her body was so responsive now; it could easily answer all sorts of questions that she had never thought to ask it before.
“Yassss, babes, that’s it! Make the girls dance!”
Harriet’s flexing was slower and more deliberate than Chardonnay’s, and the end result wasn’t as dramatic, but Harriet could feel that familiar intoxicating sensation sweeping over her again. All the ideas that had been circulating in her mind about Chardonnay and her body were forgotten; her own muscles were the only ones that concerned her now.
Why had no one ever told her that being strong and showing off your strength felt so good?
She thought of all those times as a student when she had gone to the gym and spent most of her time on the treadmill in a Sisyphean slog - because lifting weights wasn’t what girls did; because she didn’t want to get bulky; because she hadn’t known the thrill of watching her body change and grow; because she didn’t know how exciting it was to lift more than the man standing next to her - and she could have screamed with frustration at the memory of all those wasted hours.
Chardonnay released her grip on Harriet’s bikini top and started to flex her own pecs again, raising her arms above her head and wiggling, for all the world looking like she was on the dance floor in a club. Together, they must have been quite the picture, because a young man walking past was so distracted that he didn’t see the chair in his path and sprawled over it in a classic pratfall. Harriet and Chardonnay burst out laughing.
It was natural, spontaneous laughter but, as it subsided, Harriet remembered her professional obligations and reluctantly started to calculate her next move. Clearly she had made a personal connection with Chardonnay, and if she wasn’t disarmed now, she never would be. She just needed to proceed cautiously and find the right combination of words to subtly plant the idea in Chardonnay’s head of making introductions between her and Florence. Where to begin?
“I like you, babes; you’re fun. You remind me of my personal trainer - she’s posh like you are, but she’s fun too. You should meet her.”
Well, that was easy.
-
Acht-ung Baby!
“I’ve been a good girl, mummy.”
Harriet didn’t even hear the little voice, completely absorbed in admiring her own body, until the curtain was pulled back by a small child clutching an iPad in her spare hand.
“You’re not my mummy,” the girl said crossly.
---
Harriet left Wimbourne Hall with no particular plan or destination in mind, too preoccupied with processing the events of the last couple of hours to think much about where she was going as she started the engine and headed for the exit. Normally this wouldn’t matter too much as she would drive home on autopilot, physically and mentally exhausted by her second training session of the day, but not this evening; at the moment her body was tingling with a nervous energy and her mind was buzzing.
As a woman who prided herself on always being organised, running through all the possible scenarios and precluding any complications, she was unused to finding herself dealing with the aftermath of unexpected situations - and now the repercussions of her afternoon's activities had provoked such an unexpected tangle of confused, and confusing, thoughts and ideas, all of them inchoate and hard to define, that she didn't know quite where to start in dealing with them all. She was aware that other people may have taken all this in their stride but, for Harriet, this was like one of those panic-inducing nightmares where you find yourself about to sit an exam for which you haven’t studied.
She drove around aimlessly for a while, until a rumble of thunder and the first fat drops of rain bouncing like golf balls off her bonnet jolted her from her reverie and she realised that not only had she driven past her flat, but that she had reached the outskirts of town, with the option of either joining the ring road or turning off into the shopping centre.
It wasn’t a difficult decision; she didn’t want to go back to an empty flat. Normally a quiet, solitary person at the best of times, her new regime had left her with so little free time that she had become even more isolated. She had become used to shuttling between gym and home and gym and home but, right now, she just didn’t want to be alone. She felt a need to be around other people in a social setting that wasn’t the gym; she was suddenly very aware that she had completely removed herself from normal life when the mission had started, and now she had an overwhelming desire to be back around normal people going about their normal business.
---
“You're not my mummy.”
Nonplussed, Harriet struggled to formulate a response.
The little girl continued to scowl at her, as if Harriet was the one who had burst in on her, intruding on her privacy.
---
Having parked, Harriet thought that perhaps a little retail therapy wouldn’t go amiss. She was not a woman who had ever previously considered shopping to be a leisure activity - quite the opposite, in fact: if she had been a character in Dawn of the Dead and the shopping centre was the last possible refuge from the zombie apocalypse, she would have opted to take her chances outside, thank you very much - but, realistically, she did need some new clothes. Although she had been ordering gym apparel online, she hadn’t bought herself anything else for months now and - she tingled at the thought - she cut a very different figure to the slender woman who used to spend her days working at a desk in a pretty blouse and slim legged trousers. She didn’t even know many of her old clothes would even fit her any more.
Harriet grabbed her emergency waterproof, a one-size-fits-all kag in a bag, from the glove compartment, pulled it on, and splashed her way across the tarmac to the entrance.
---
“You’re not my mummy. You’ve got more muscles than my mummy,” said the little girl. She paused, and tilted her head to one side, as if considering a problem. “You’ve got more muscles than my daddy,” she said eventually.
From somewhere outside came a voice, raised in complaint.
“No, I asked for the sports bra in white in a size down; this one is too big for me.”
“That’s my mummy,” said the girl, nodding in apparent satisfaction.
“Katy, who are you talking to? I told you to sit quietly with your iPad. Are you bothering someone?” snapped the disembodied voice.
“Mummy, come and look at the woman’s muscles; they’re much better than yours,” chirped the girl, in the guileless manner of the very young. “They look bigger than daddy’s!”
There was the sound of someone moving down the corridor.
---
Once inside, Harriet felt lost and aimless again - she didn’t like shopping centres, and she didn’t recognise the names of most of the shops. She couldn’t settle on where to go, or what to do, and she felt increasingly frustrated, almost aggressive, like she needed a way to let off some steam. Without any idea of how to relieve herself of this pent up feeling, she continued to wander up and down the halls, pacing like a caged animal.
Harriet was almost beginning to feel like she wanted to start an argument with someone, or perhaps even pick a fight. Still struggling to clear her mind and organise her thoughts, it began to dawn on her that perhaps she had not been wandering around as aimlessly as she had supposed, and that, rather than pacing like a caged animal, she had in fact been stalking prey like a tigress on the savannah.
She realised she had been tailing passing strangers, sizing them up, calculating their probable weight and level of fitness, considering the width of their shoulders, searching for the definition in their arms, assessing the girth of their legs.
Still feeling the effects of the pump, Harriet had been feeling improbably huge - but ‘improbably’ was the operative word and she was beginning to worry that this feeling was deceptive, that it was all in her head. And so she was prowling the halls of the shopping centre looking for some kind of confirmation that although she may have been surrounded by normal people, she was no longer one of them, no longer a normal person herself any more. With this realisation her inner monologue began to echo loudly in her head as she searched for vindication in the physiques of passersby: I’m bigger than her; I’m definitely bigger than her; I think I’m slightly bigger than him; I’m bigger than her; am I bigger than him?
---
“Don’t be silly, Katy, daddy is a man and men have much bigger muscles than women.”
A svelte woman appeared in the entrance to Harriet’s cubicle. Two lines of thought suggested themselves to Harriet, two paths of deduction based on two different types of experience.
The first, conditioned by her well-established instincts as a financial investigator, was that here stood a high maintenance yummy mummy who wanted you to be left in no doubt that she was a trophy wife. The ostentatious wedding ring made it clear that her husband was rich, the Cartier watch and diamond earrings established that he continued to lavish her with gifts. The healthy tan suggested a recent holiday somewhere hot and doubtless exotic, and her artful blonde balayage spoke of regular visits to a salon to keep looking her best.
The second was directed by Harriet’s more recent experiences, particularly the countless hours scrolling through fitness inspo pics on Insta****: the sports bra and leggings this woman wore were designed to showcase her body, and not for the rigours of strenuous exercise; the body itself looked honed by pilates, all long elegant limbs and taut abdominals. She was a prime example of what happened when an attractive woman worked out to stay skinny rather than to grow strong. The overall effect was to make, say, Gwyneth Paltrow look a bit dreary, and like she could stand to lose a few pounds in comparison.
And, as was now the custom, when she spotted Harriet’s body, the mother stopped still in stupefaction.
---
Harriet was stalking new prey, her attention drawn to two young men who might uncharitably have been described as ‘neds’. She was moving ever closer to them, and they had definitely noticed her presence, because they were glancing back at her and scowling, wondering what the hell she was doing. Harriet got the distinct impression that if she had been a man they would have already kicked off; as it was, the fact that she probably looked like a crazy lady at the moment, bedraggled after the heavy rain in a baggy, still-dripping, lime green anorak was in her favour.
The men were dressed in branded sportswear, trainers and hoodies, but Harriet got the distinct impression that if they were ever spotted running, they wouldn’t be jogging, but making off from a police officer shouting ‘Decamp! Decamp! Decamp!’
But what did she really want to happen, she started to wonder... To provoke them? To start a fight? To overpower them? To prove to them how strong she was? Or maybe she just needed to prove that to herself? No, this was insane. She had never even thrown a punch in her life. She stopped walking. The young men continued on, still giving her the occasional defiant glare.
The last couple of hours were starting to feel like an unlikely dream to Harriet. She needed confirmation that she wasn’t crazy, that she hadn’t been hallucinating; that she was, in fact, as strong and as dominant as she felt.
---
It was funny, thought Harriet, how women’s muscles seemed to have the greatest effect on other women. It was like they were discovering something they had never even suspected of existing, and that shook the very foundations of their beliefs, like an uncontacted Amazon Indian walking into a jungle clearing and finding a branch of McDonald’s.
The blonde continued to gawp at Harriet in silence until her daughter started giggling.
“Katy!” the woman exclaimed, coming out of her trance, “You can’t just walk into someone’s cubicle; you need to leave the woman alone,” she said, grabbing her daughter’s hand.
I’m very sorry about her,” the mother muttered to Harriet, but with an averted gaze, staring fixedly at a point on the floor near her feet, like a bashful schoolgirl.
“But mummy, don’t you think the lady has bigger muscles than daddy?”
The woman still couldn’t make eye contact with Harriet, but Harriet noticed that she couldn’t resist flashing a glance at her thick torso.
“No, Katy, daddy is a man and men have bigger muscles than women.”
Wordlessly, slowly, pointedly, Harriet brought her arms up into the classic double bicep pose. Her pump was still very much in evidence, and she could feel the blood throbbing in her veins and pounding in her temples as she balled her fists, set her jaw, and squeezed her arms down as hard as she could.
---
As the young men disappeared around a corner, Harriet wandered over to a nearby plinth which displayed a map of the shopping centre, and looked at the available options, searching for a high street name she could recognise. She was dimly aware that many of the shops where she had used to buy clothes had got into financial difficulties and closed over the last few months, but she was shocked to realise the only name on the floor plan she recognised was M&S - and she had no intention of suffering the ignominious fate of buying her clothes from the same shop from which her mother bought her underwear.
Then she spotted a name she did recognise: there was a branch of Lululemon nearby. Although she had been intending to buy some formal clothes, and would not normally have considered buying such expensive athleticwear, she felt like she deserved a treat - and anyway, she needed to replace the clothes that had gone missing from the gym floor.
Plus, the really important thing was just to find somewhere where she could enjoy the privacy of a changing room with a mirror.
---
“Look mummy!”
The skinny blonde’s eyes widened and she raised her hand to her mouth.
“She is stronger than daddy! She is!”
“Well… just because the lady’s muscles look big, doesn’t mean she’s stronger than a man,” said the mother quietly, but without real conviction.
Harriet could barely conceal her irritation at this woman and her negative attitude. Who was she to keep denigrating women’s strength to her own daughter? Just because she lived on what was almost certainly a restrictive, faddy diet to help her stay tiny, and clearly thought that a flat stomach was the aesthetic peak of female muscularity, that didn’t mean that all women had to be as frail as her.
---
Feeling out of place in the shop, and having hurriedly selected a few items, Harriet made her way to the changing rooms to try them on. And here she had another happy revelation: the mirrored cubicle was definitely her friend. In the past, Harriet, like many women, had found being surrounded by walls of mirrors like being subjected to harsh criticism; the mirrors were the bearers of bad news, the unflattering reminder of every physical flaw.
Now though, as she stripped to just her sports thong, she realised that she had never had such a good all-round view of her body, and her back in particular, and she delighted in twisting and turning, unashamedly admiring the width, the thickness, the definition of her physique. Once a smooth expanse, pleasant enough, but almost entirely featureless, her back’s topography was now disrupted by an intricate jigsaw puzzle of interlocking muscles; she had a hinterland.
Her trapezius looked like a butterfly with its wings spread, basking in the warmth of the sun, she thought; she rolled her shoulders and watched, amazed, at all the rippling undercurrents of movement in response. The bright lighting in the cubicle highlighted every twitch and contraction. Harriet sighed in contentment. It hadn’t been a dream; it was real. She had remade herself into a bigger and better version of the woman she once was, and built her body to become stronger than she had ever thought possible.
As she admired herself, the curtain twitched open to reveal a small girl.
---
“May I?”
Harriet reached over, took the open-backed top from the woman’s hands and let it dangle from her fingers, turning it this way and that, seemingly admiring the workmanship. Eventually, she slipped in first her right arm and then her left, and wrestled it over her head. As she struggled to pull it down her torso the elasticised fibres strained, the material becoming shiny as it stretched beyond its natural limits. It may have been too big for skinny Gwyny, but it was clearly far too small for Harriet, and the broad expanse of her back put it under extreme pressure.
Even standing at ease, the seams of the material were already cutting into Harriet’s sides, leaving red welts on her soft skin. Still without saying a word, Harriet insouciantly moved her body into the pose Amy had taught her earlier that evening, arms angled at her sides like the levers of a winged corkscrew, her lats unfurling and flaring like a sail catching the wind. In the silence the sound of threads rending became audible. The lattice of straps across Harriet’s back popped apart, one after the other, the bra peeling from Harriet’s pecs, her uncompressed breasts thrusting forwards, propelling the crumpled material, ruined, to the floor.
The little girl started clapping.
Harriet gave her a wink and cocked her arm at her side.
“Want to feel how strong a woman’s muscles can be?” she asked.
The mother immediately stepped forward and wrapped a dainty hand around Harriet’s tumescent arm.
“I was actually speaking to your daughter,” Harriet said, smiling.
If she heard Harriet, the woman didn’t respond; she was engrossed in squeezing Harriet’s bicep. The metal of her wedding ring felt surprisingly cold against Harriet’s arm as it pressed against her engorged muscle, warm with pumping blood.
---
The rain hadn’t stopped by the time Harriet walked back across the car park, picking her way around puddles as she tried to find her car in the gloaming. It was hard to be sure over the sound of splattering raindrops, but an occasional splash made it sound like someone was walking along behind her. She glanced over her shoulder and spotted a hooded head ducking for cover behind a car. She was definitely being followed, and by someone who didn’t want to be seen.
She kept walking at the same pace, resisting the urge to break into a run, making sure not to pass too close to any potential hiding places, aware of the possibility that, if it was one of the neds from the shopping centre, his mate could be hiding up ahead.
Even if she did run, where could she run to? She still had no idea where her car was parked and there were no other people to ask for help, or places to seek shelter in sight. She started to feel sick at the thought of how she had been seriously contemplating the idea of provoking a fight inside the shopping centre. Not only had she never thrown a punch, she didn’t even know how to. Kane had offered her some self-defence lessons once, but the prospect of fisticuffs at Wimbourne Hall had seemed a distant one and she had politely declined. Oh, to have Kane by her side now!
She may not be able to fight, but she knew she was strong. If she could grab hold of an assailant her chances of overpowering them had to be good, better than evens anyway. She started to cut diagonally across some parking spaces in a direction that would take her down the side of a Transit van; if she was quiet enough, and timed it right, she would be able to hide behind the rear of the vehicle and take her stalker by surprise. She just hoped they didn’t have a knife.
---
The sound of the shop assistant returning broke the spell. The blonde gave Harriet’s arm a final, admiring stroke, and quickly stepped backwards, grabbing her daughter’s hand, and then pulling the curtain closed; Katy giving a final cheerful ‘bye bye!’ as she was led away.
Harriet heard the woman tell the shop assistant that she would take the bra in both the smaller and larger sizes and then ask her if she wouldn’t mind ringing both through the till now and bagging up just the smaller one before she came out to pay, as she was thinking of wearing the larger size home; the self same torn garment that currently lay on the floor of Harriet’s cubicle.
If the shop assistant wondered why the woman wanted to wear a bra that she had been complaining was too big for her just minutes ago, she didn’t ask. Just another day in customer service.
Harriet could hear the mother’s and daughter’s muffled conversation from along the corridor as they readied themselves to leave.
“Are you okay, mummy? Your face looks all red.”
“I’m fine, Katy. Would you like an ice cream? If you promise not to tell daddy about today, I’ll buy you an ice cream on the way to the car.”
“Not tell daddy about the lady’s muscles, you mean?”
“Yes, Katy, not to tell daddy about her muscles.”
“Okay, mummy.”
“Good girl.”
“But the lady’s muscles were bigger than daddy’s, weren’t they?”
“Yes, Katy. Bigger and harder.”
---
The splashing grew louder. Harriet stood in a half crouch, arms spread by her side, the stance of a goalkeeper in a penalty shootout. A figure emerged, and Harriet leapt forward, her powerful spring taking even her by surprise, her body slamming into her opponent’s, wrapping them in a bear hug designed to pin their arms by their sides. Harriet used her momentum to gather them up and pirouette, not delicately, like a ballerina, but with the brute force of an Olympic hammer thrower, and slammed them into the back of a SUV, where she pinned them tight against the boot.
“Who are you?” she grunted.
Her stalker struggled and squirmed, but must have been aware they were hopelessly outmatched; pressed tightly together like this, the size disparity was obvious and Harriet was clearly much bigger. Adrenaline pumping, Harriet squeezed even harder. Her attacker moaned.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
No answer. Feeling sufficiently in control of the situation, Harriet shifted her grip and brought her right arm up to grab hold of the hood. For a brief second, she had the weird sensation of a familiar smell and felt on the verge of a Proustian rush.
She pulled back the hood.
It was Amy. And the smell, Harriet now knew, was that of her own shampoo. It was Amy, and Amy was wearing her missing hoody.
Amy moaned again and bit her bottom limp seductively, shyly making eye contact with Harriet.
“I’ve been a bad girl, mummy.”
-
Great chapter and hope she will show daddy that she is stronger than him
-
Almost e-neuf excitement for one day
Harriet’s arms dropped to her sides, adrenaline ebbing away, fear and anger replaced by confusion. Amy may no longer have been wrapped in a bear hug, but she remained effectively trapped against the back of the SUV by her proximity to Harriet’s taller, wider, and heavier body. Not that Amy seemed to mind, although it took the naive Harriet a few moments to realise that Amy was breathing heavily not because she had been badly winded, but instead because she was panting with sexual excitement.
Confusion gave way to embarrassment, Harriet’s face becoming suffused with the roseate flush of pudeur, as shy and awkward now as a callow teenager being presented with their first Valentine’s card. But if Harriet had no sense of what to say or do, Amy on the other hand had some very clear ideas about what she wanted - arching her back off the car she began to writhe against Harriet, her smaller, but still sculpted, body pressing up against that of her captor. Harriet could feel Amy’s tight abdominals rubbing against her, as easily discernible through the layers of clothing as if Amy were wearing a cuirass below the hoodie, hard muscle pressing up against hard muscle.
Harriet’s instinctive reaction to this unanticipated, intimate physical contact was to try to push Amy away from her, forgetting there was a car in the way which left Amy nowhere to go, and so she managed only to emphatically pin Amy back against the SUV with her hands wrapped around the bikini competitor’s biceps, which tensed and hardened beneath her grip. Amy squealed in excitement at the force with which she was thrust back, then moaned with pleasure at being so roughly womanhandled.
Disconcerted by the effect she was having on Amy, but reluctant to release her in case her behaviour became even more erratic, Harriet maintained the pressure. Amy continued to push back, although if this was more in hope than expectation of escape, or perhaps because she was simply enjoying being unable to free herself, Harriet couldn’t tell; but as Harriet felt Amy’s arms twitch and grow beneath her hands, she couldn’t help herself and succumbed to her haptic fascination, her thumbs beginning to trace the sharp peaks of Amy biceps, gently massaging them, pressing into them, feeling how compact and resilient the balls of muscle were.
“Do you like them?” Amy asked coyly. “They’re so small compared to yours; yours are so big and strong. I’m just a skinny little bikini girl. I don’t have real muscles. Not like you do.”
As the words registered, Harriet was convinced that Amy was being self-deprecating, certain that she was angling for a compliment. After all, as spitefully as Amy had spoken to Harriet earlier that day, she had not been lying when she mentioned the dedication required to maintain her appearance. Finding a woman with Amy’s type of commitment and motivation was a rare enough occurrence, but for that woman’s laser focus to settle its crosshairs on a life spent in the gym in the quest for gains was even rarer.
After all, Harriet had marvelled more than once at the wealth of online contest pictures and videos that recorded Amy’s peak week body strutting and sashaying up and down the stage as she wore a bikini that was only some yellow polka-dots away from being celebrated in song. Harriet had watched Amy stand proud in a gleaming rank of bronzed glamazons, and noted Amy’s ersatz surprise as the judges had formally announced what was obvious to anyone with eyes: that Amy had the best physique of them all.
No woman like Amy could feel inferior to her, could she? Harriet’s insecurities began to occupy her attention again, insidious but no less insistent because of that.
Maybe Amy wasn’t looking for compliments?
Maybe Amy was mocking her?
And then Harriet looked down, and as she looked down, she was reminded how much bigger than Amy she was now.
More memories quickly followed, a cinematic montage of flashbacks illuminating her thoughts: Harriet remembered flinging Amy over her shoulder; and heaving Liam out of the pool; and the swelling muscles of her body reflected in the changing room mirrors; and tearing apart a sports bra just by flexing; and the soft caress of Katy’s awed mother…
Amy was not wrong: compared to Harriet, she was just a skinny little bikini girl now.
Amy strained forwards, craning her neck towards Harriet’s bowed head, clearly desperate to plant a kiss on Harriet’s lips; she continued to wriggle, straining for the freedom to move closer, but there was no leeway to be found in Harriet’s unwavering grip and the two women’s mouths remained separated - by the merest, tantalising distance, but separated nonetheless. Harriet started to feel light-headed as rational thought became subsumed by a mishmash of memories, crystallising realisations and surging emotions. Separated, but dangerously close, she thought, hazily, like Scylla and Charybdis.
Amy’s face was so close to Harriet’s now that not even the lack of physical contact between them could prevent Amy’s presence overwhelming Harriet’s senses: she could look deep into Amy’s limpid eyes, coruscating even in this dark corner of the car park, could feel Amy’s warm breath on her face, could smell Amy’s cherry lip gloss, could sense a stray lock of Amy’s hair, disordered as the hood had been pulled back, tickling her neck.
“I know I’ve been a bad girl, mummy, but I want to make it up to you,” whispered Amy.
Harriet bowed her head just a little further, just a little further, just...
BEEP BEEP!
The SUV’s lights flashed as it was unlocked remotely from across the car park by the approaching driver.
---
The crouching figure scurried across the garden, back to the cover of the garage, where he straightened up and delivered his report.
“It’s PVC, sir, definitely reinforced from the inside, too. It’s going to take a while to get in, even with the big red key.”
Twelve pairs of eyes turned simultaneously to the clearly nervous young officer standing next to the compact battering ram. He quailed at the extra attention.
Beck thoughtfully tapped his chin with his right forefinger, and then used it to point into the darkness, beyond the squad of officers clad in riot gear.
“Tempus fugit. I think it would be best if Kane expedites ingress.”
“Sir?”
“My sergeant will get us in quicker,” Beck translated.
“But, sir, that door’s just not going to come down quickly. Not unless you drive a car into it.”
“So you’ve met my sergeant, then?” asked Beck, smiling broadly.
“No, sir, but-”
“Sergeant! Time to blow the bloody doors off!”
Kane emerged from the darkness and strolled towards Beck. As she approached the squad of officers, all of them big, burly men primed for action, they quietly stepped aside to allow Kane passage. Kane didn’t have to ask, and the officers didn’t wait to be told - something about Kane’s physical presence, and the way she moved, suggested getting out of her way was a very good idea.
“Jesus, she’s built like a brick shithouse,” muttered one of the officers.
“Aye, and you’re built like a shit brick house, ya bawbag,” Kane casually tossed back, her sense of hearing apparently as well developed as her body.
She stopped in front of the nervous young officer, whose eyes, already wide, now bulged as he looked up at the woman mountain in front of him.
“D’ya mind, wee man?” asked Kane, nodding at the battering ram.
The officer bent down, grabbed the ram with both hands, and stood up, cradling it in his arms like a baby. Kane casually slipped her fingers around the handle, and then raised it experimentally in a bicep curl, gauging the weight; it didn’t present her with any difficulties - if anything, she seemed deeply disappointed it was so light.
Beck’s mobile started to buzz; he glanced at the screen.
“Ah, inconvenient as it is, I’ve got to take this call. I’ll leave you all in the capable hands of my sergeant. Oh, and sergeant?”
“Aye, sir?”
“Do try to remember it’s just the door you’re knocking down; let’s see if we can avoid causing any structural damage this time. It just means extra paperwork for me.”
“Aye, paperwork that you’ll dinghy.”
“Oh, probably, but I won’t take any pleasure out of it. Anyway, I think all that unsigned paperwork is affecting the feng shui of my office. Do you know, I actually phoned up to see if Changing Rooms would be interested in coming round to sort the place out, but once they’d seen a photo they suggested I try to get on Hoarders SOS instead?”
Kane rolled her eyes and turned to face the front door. It was business time.
-
Hope you enjoy this new chapter!
If I may, I have a couple of quick questions to ask, and I'd be interested in hearing any responses.
For readers: do you prefer shorter, more regular story updates; or less frequent but more substantial chapters? Or are you happy to just let the author crack on at their own pace?
For any readers who are also writers: do you prefer to write in short, regular bursts; or less frequent, but more sustained sessions? Do you find one approach works better than another for you, or is it simply a case of making use of whatever time you have available?
There's no obligation to reply, obviously - but I'm curious to hear how readers and writers approach stories!
-
Your work has a great sense of humor and pacing! To answer your questions, I prefer longer, more substantial chapters. And for writing, I tend to get overcome by inspiration and bang out a few thousand words, neglecting other basic functions of life to do so. That other thing, short, regular writing sessions, would probably be a lot healthier in terms of time management and all that good life balance stuff... yeah... when I figure that out... anyway!
-
Your work has a great sense of humor and pacing! To answer your questions, I prefer longer, more substantial chapters. And for writing, I tend to get overcome by inspiration and bang out a few thousand words, neglecting other basic functions of life to do so. That other thing, short, regular writing sessions, would probably be a lot healthier in terms of time management and all that good life balance stuff... yeah... when I figure that out... anyway!
Thank you!
I know what you mean in terms of writing... if I could just get used to sitting down for brief, regular sessions then I'm sure that approach would fit around daily life much better and I'd be more productive, but somehow I only ever seem to write on the rare-ish occasion when I have a good chunk of free time.
Anyway, I'd like to keep the chapters of Undercover fairly substantial each time, so this story will continue to progress slowly but steadily, I think.
-
As much as she wanted time to gather her thoughts and then make her report to Beck, there was an even more pressing matter Harriet had to attend to when she finally got home: fuelling her body. Luckily she was now well into the routine of meal-prepping and had spent yesterday evening readying dinners for the coming week.
It was a sign of her agitated state of mind upon returning home that she didn’t even bother to lay the table as was her custom every evening, instead wrenching open the tupperware straight from the fridge, grabbing a bag of peas from the freezer, and beginning to eat the contents with her fingers, cold fistfuls of turkey steak and rice wolfed down with little concern for good manners. Eventually she realised what a mess she was making, retrieved some cutlery and sat down, telling herself this was a matter of efficiency rather than etiquette; but the reality was she could picture her mother's pained expression if she discovered her eating in this manner.
Having met her macros for the day, she walked through to her bedroom, pulled off her sweaty gym gear and tossed them carelessly onto the floor. But then she thought better of it and made a concession to tidiness, kicking the clothes into a pile next to the laundry basket, the better to neaten up tomorrow. She collapsed onto the bed and lay unmoving as the minutes ticked by, pondering her options, weighing up how much of the day she should report to Beck, and in what detail.
She came to a conclusion: she would sing only half the mass to Beck. She wouldn’t be lying, she told herself, merely omitting certain events and eliding others. That wasn’t dishonest, right? After all, Beck didn’t need to know everything. And really, when you thought about it, a lot of the stuff she would be leaving out of her report wasn’t even germaine to the case anyway. Beck simply didn’t need to know all of it, she rationalised.
She reached for her phone and made the call. As she waited for Beck to answer, she realised her spreadeagled form was completely naked. She accepted this was indecorous, but couldn’t bring herself to get up and find some clean clothes. In a compromise, she pulled the duvet over her body until only her head poked out, swaddled in a protective cocoon.
When he answered, Beck seemed happy enough with her highly selective précis of the last few hours, especially when he learned that Chardonnay had offered to introduce her to Florence, but Harriet found herself distracted throughout the call by the sounds of violence in the background.
“Um, is everything okay where you are, sir?”
“Oh yes, I’m just supervising a raid on a property outside town.”
“It’s just, well, it sounds quite violent?”
“Oh, nothing serious,” Beck said cheerfully. “Just some of the occupants resisting arrest. Unfortunately for them, the arresting officer is D.S. Kane.”
Harriet could make out the sound of a heavy crash and a scream.
“That reminds me, sir - a while ago Kane offered me some self-defence lessons, and I didn’t see a need for them at the time, but- “
“You think there’s a chance things may become violent at Wimbourne Hall?” Beck interjected, sounding concerned.
Harriet cursed under her breath; she had chosen her words badly.
“No, sir, I’m not worried by anything at the Hall - but I’ve been regretting not taking her up on her offer ever since, and, well, you just reminded me that there’s probably no one better to teach me self-defence.”
“Very true. Although if she offers to teach you how to fight off a man wielding a machete by throwing a chaise longue at him, I’d politely decline.”
“Sir?”
“A purely hypothetical situation, you understand, and not at all based on anything that’s just happened; it’s just that some people might consider that to fall under the heading of ‘police brutality’. Hypothetically, that is. Anyway, I’ll pass on your request once we’re finished up here, and we’ve picked up all the pieces of this broken, erm, fainting couch.”
Beck signed off, but Harriet couldn’t bring herself to put down her phone - she needed the distraction; she needed the comfort of a conversation. Then she remembered that her sister had emailed earlier. She had only skimmed through the lengthy message that morning, too distracted by the prospect of heading to Wimbourne Hall to start her mission to read it properly at the time, and couldn’t recall any of the contents now - but maybe her sister was back from her orchestra tour? Maybe she’d be free for a much-needed chat? She opened the email and read it thoroughly this time. Alas - bad news: the tour was such a success that extra dates had been added in several countries and she wouldn’t be home for months.
Disappointed, Harriet accepted that the best thing for her right now was to get some sleep. Which is to say, she couldn’t think of anyone else she could call up out of the blue for a late night chat. Never exactly a social butterfly, her bodybuilding routine had left her as isolated as if she were a specimen pinned to a board by a lepidopterist.
She put down her phone and turned off the light.
Lying in the darkness, she tried to clear her mind.
But try as she might, she couldn’t push the evening’s events from her thoughts, or forget the feelings they had evoked.
And now she was no longer lying still, but tossing and turning, suddenly hot and bothered.
Harriet gave up trying to fall asleep and reached for her phone again; she opened Youtube and searched for a video from Amy’s last competition. In fact, she was spoiled for choice as most of the available footage of this contest seemed to feature Amy prominently, even though all of the videos were uploaded by different users, and had been filmed from slightly different angles in the auditorium - Harriet could only imagine that the various husbands and boyfriends tasked on the day with filming their respective loved ones had all found themselves ineluctably distracted by the haughty beauty who had ended up walking away with the title.
After all, Amy had a way of always becoming the centre of attention, even when she wasn’t parading in front of an audience wearing only a bikini and heels. A fully-clothed Amy was still the kind of blonde who could make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window and then set fire to a cathedral. (Apropos of nothing, Amy had taken a city-break in Paris in April 2019.)
While her narcissism was obvious, nothing about Amy’s chilly demeanour gave any indication that she was aware of the effect her presence had on other people in her vicinity - but in reality, she was permanently attuned to every admiring and envious glance in her direction, and even if her mean mien gave the impression of total indifference, almost nothing thrilled her as much as knowing with unshakeable certainty that she could walk into any room and instantly raise both libidos and hackles.
Almost nothing: because, for Amy, even better than the unspoken understanding that she was the most attractive woman in any room - even more of a tonic than the resigned and resentful looks on the faces of all the other women once she walked in and they had each realised how deficient they were in comparison with her - was having her supremacy made official. And panel after panel of expert judges had unanimously decided to crown her the winner in a series of bikini competitions, each result as foregone a conclusion as the outcome of a Russian election.
Lining up alongside other highly ambitious, muscled-up glamour babes - all of whom had structured their lives around the contest, thinking of little else for months on end, training and dieting like Spartans, and spending thousands of pounds to look their absolute best - and being so obviously destined to win from the moment she stepped on stage? Amy knew no finer feeling, and winning contests like this one as a matter of course was what underpinned her complete self-confidence.
In truth, it went beyond self-confidence; it was arrogance, and it was on full display as Harriet lay in bed watching the video...
Amy was so arrogant that she deliberately began her stage walk while the previous competitor was still working through her routine; as the unfortunate woman turned around for her back pose, Amy locked eyes with her and began her implacable advance across the stage. Flustered and, yes, intimidated, the woman stumbled awkwardly and then staggered towards the exit without completing her set of rotations, and with no dazzling smile for the judges.
So arrogant, that Amy made sure she walked the centre line of the stage, totally nonchalant, with all the easy elegance of Claudia Schiffer modelling Valentino on the catwalk in her 90s heyday. Amy appeared oblivious of the fact that there was still someone else on the stage with her, or that she was forcing this woman into an ungainly and embarrassed scurry off to one side to make way for her own grand entrance, her predecessor’s walk of shame made even longer and more unbearable by the detour.
So arrogant, that Amy then lingered on stage beyond her own time limit, a complete lack of compunction seeming to allow her to ignore the next competitor hovering uncertainly at the top of the stairs. The reality, Harriet guessed, was that, unseen by the judges or the audience, the stoney expression and imperiously arched eyebrow Amy used to repel fellow gym-goers from her personal space at Wimbourne Hall were now being used to hold this woman at bay. And so Amy had extra time for an additional wiggle here, another shimmy there; one more unhurried transition to show off her muscles in motion; no, make that two more; and then a toss of her tresses that made Rita Hayworth look like she was having a bad hair day in Gilda.
So arrogant, that during the first callout, Amy calmly and casually manoeuvred herself to take up more than her fair share of space on stage, hitting her front pose with her arms swung out in a manner which should have looked aggressively clumsy, but was instead somehow dynamic and graceful; her fellow competitors were each forced in turn to take a step back and shuffle to the side, giving Amy greater prominence, leaving her looking like a royal surrounded by deferential courtiers.
Just watching Amy in motion was an education in itself, her athletic, sensual movements across the stage, and her combination of poise and power, fierce but feminine, almost making Harriet feel inadequate as a woman. As the video continued, Harriet started to feel like she had been letting her gender down, like she had been moving wrong her entire life, hobbling everywhere like a hungover cave troll in comparison - she began to empathise with Jack Lemmon in drag watching Marilyn Monroe arrive at the railway station in Some Like It Hot.
“She must have some sort of built-in motor,” Harriet whispered, smiling despite herself, and shaking her head in disbelief. The movement aggravated the pain of her black eye, which began to throb again. She winced and put down her phone, continuing her line of thought while staring straight up at the dark ceiling, trying to ignore the discomfort.
And yet, and yet… as sexy and strong as this woman undoubtedly was, Harriet thought, Amy had been easily overpowered by her own new muscles.
She was aware of the fact that she still thought of her powerful body as ‘new’, as a sort of enjoyable accident, rather than the cumulative result of months of hard work. Perhaps that would all change after today, the first time she had ever truly reckoned with her own strength and explored what her body was capable of doing when in direct competition with other people.
Lifting bodies just hit different to lifting barbells, no matter how many plates you were squatting.
Just getting hit was different too.
Newly strong or otherwise though, it didn’t matter: the important thing, thought Harriet, was that, pressed against her powerful body, Amy the flawless ice queen had melted, and had been left concupiscent and quivering.
But so what? Harriet thought, glumly. She tentatively touched the swollen flesh around her eye.
So what if Amy had tried to kiss her? In that moment, where had all her new-found swagger and main character energy gone? She had instantly become the timid and prudish young lady of old, too embarrassed to react, her control of the situation disappearing. She had gone from a proud, sparky Austen heroine in control of her destiny one moment, to the heroine’s plain, spinterish sister the next, relegated to an ironic supporting role.
What might have happened had she seized the moment, had she eagerly responded in kind and met Amy’s lips with her own, before they were so rudely interrupted?
Well, she might still have a black eye, but she suspected she would also be feeling much less frustrated.
Harriet sighed, She had left the bag of frozen peas in the kitchen, and she needed it for the swelling. She turned on the bedside lamp, threw back the duvet and rolled out of bed. A few steps across the room, she paused in front of the wardrobe mirror and was immediately taken with the way the angle of the light across her body cast shadows caused by her muscles.
Her muscles were big enough to cast shadows!
She raised her arms, admiring the effect of the distorted, exaggerated images she threw across the room, just as she had admired the size and shape of her actual body in the changing room mirrors earlier that evening.
Her muscles weren't big enough. She knew that now. As large as she had become, as impressed and satisfied as she had been with her own physique even just a couple of hours earlier, this evening had taught her that she needed to get bigger and she needed to get stronger. She angled her arms until the silhouette of her biceps on the wall became monstrous... Now, this was a version of reality that would make it worth staying in the cave forever!
But she wasn’t just suffering from body dysmorphia. Her bruised eye hurt, of course, but not as much as her pride. Right now, the embarrassment of having felt powerful, dominant, virtually invulnerable, only to pick her first fight and lose it, stung more than a bruise ever could. She simply wasn’t strong enough yet, that much was clear.
She still didn’t really know why she had done it. Was it that same yearning from earlier, a bubbling curiosity to see who else she could overpower? Was she just angry that her intensely private moment with Amy had been interrupted? Or was she grateful for the interruption, the chance to strike out and relieve all the tension that she had been unable to resolve by succumbing to temptation and kissing Amy?
Regardless, he had provoked her.
When he had seen strangers leaning on his car, his step had quickened.
“Oi! What the fuck are you doing?”
And then, as he had taken in the scene and realised the two women were apparently entwined in an embrace, he had stopped and surveyed the scene. A lecherous grin had spread across his face, his whole demeanour had changed.
“Looks like you’re missing the filling in your sandwich, girls. Don’t worry: I’ve got plenty of meat.”
Harriet remembered turning around, but not how she had felt... Had she been angry? Embarrassed? Relieved?
There had been a sound behind her, she had glanced back over her shoulder and had found Amy had slipped away, swallowed up by the darkness of the night.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, darling.”
He had stepped forward threateningly, one hand on his crotch.
“Oh, why don’t you just fuck off!”
“What did you say, you fucking dyke?”
Then she had taken a couple of steps forward, and had squared up to him. What had she been thinking? Nothing she could call to mind now; these all may as well have been the actions of a complete stranger.
“What did you call me?”
“I called you a fucking dy-’”
He had staggered backwards, as Harriet had planted her hands on his chest and pushed. His eyes had widened - while he had evidently been expecting her to lash out in some way, he had not thought her capable of such explosive power. Still, he had clearly known what he was doing, and had already subtly shifted his weight and adjusted his stance the moment Harriet had approached him. He had stayed standing.
Harriet had fully expected to have taken him by surprise and dumped him on his arse; she had wanted the satisfaction of leaning over him as he cowered on the floor, suddenly afraid of her, and of telling him mockingly, ‘You’re strong - for a man, that is’.
“You’re strong - for a woman.”
It wasn’t a compliment - it was a taunt.
And now Harriet remembered getting angry. She had already been acting irrationally, but now reasoned thought evaporated like cartoon steam from her ears in the heat of her rage.
With the benefit of hindsight, she realised that her opponent was taller than her, was heavier than her, had a longer reach than her, and - crucially - clearly had more experience of fighting than her. Even if she was stronger than him - and she was no longer as certain about this point as she had been at the time, her self-confidence left cracked and crumbling after her defeat - the odds had been stacked against her. With a personality like his, Harriet thought bitterly, he must get a lot of practice fighting - social interactions ending in violence were probably a daily occurence.
When she had swung a clumsy and telegraphed punch at him, he had easily avoided it. Off-balance, she had barely deflected his left fist whirling in retaliation; it had not even occurred to her that this might only have been the first blow in a crude combination, and that he had jabbed at her immediately with his right arm. Fireworks had gone off in her head and she had crumpled to the ground.
She remembered him laughing, and stepping closer; the disgusting drawn-out bubbling noise as he had filled his mouth with saliva and then spat on her; the sound of a fly being unzipped. She remembered feeling powerless, any notion of self-worth and of her own strength extinguished.
And then she remembered hearing voices, lots of voices, getting closer, ever closer. Crowds of people heading across the car park. Closing time! The shopping centre was kicking everyone out!
“Ah, fuck it. Little bitch.”
He had jumped into his car and driven off. From the ground, Harriet had an excellent view of his rear bumper.
She stood still and concentrated. Then she walked back into the kitchen, grabbed a bag of peas for her eye, found a pen and a notebook, and scribbled down the personalised number plate she had just managed to remember.
-
Happy New Year! Here's a new chapter to celebrate...
Ever since she was a little girl, Harriet had been used to winnowing her way through crowds. She had been a small child - sylphlike and nimble - so she could easily slip into the narrow gaps that larger adults couldn’t fit into, and she would necessarily take the path of least resistance. Hers was always a circuitous route through a crowd, neither the most direct nor the quickest, but certainly the most non-confrontational. Even now as an adult, she always took the same approach; she would still yield at the slightest pressure, and she would never push past other people, because not only was there no need, but that would also have been impolite.
—
Harriet’s morning started badly.
She had suffered a fitful night’s sleep, full of disquieting dreams that illuminated her brain with images that made her heart pound and left her sheets drenched with sweat.
There were certain recurring features from dream to dream, the last of which featured a 4x4 inexplicably parked in the middle of the Wimbourne Hall weights area. At first the gym seemed to be deserted, perhaps because the fire alarm was sounding and the sprinkler system had been activated - but there was Amy, draped over the car bonnet, her clothes sodden to the point of transparency, writhing her hips from side to side in time with the windscreen wipers.
Then another sound started, arrhythmic and percussive, punctuated by an occasional rattling. On the far side of the gym, Harriet’s assailant was working over a punching bag, which swung back and forth like an eccentric pendulum in an unreliable longcase clock. Then the man noticed Harriet and started to walk towards her. Harriet turned back to Amy and tried to warn her to run, but her voice wasn’t working; she started to run herself but somehow made no headway, her legs attenuated and ineffectual. Again she tried to warn Amy, and again she found herself mute; she turned and found the man's ghoulish face leering at her, looked back and found both Amy and the car vanished. The fire alarm grew louder, shriller, ever more insistent.
—
“Oh, sorry!”
Harriet apologised as her right shoulder hit a man heading in the opposite direction, and then she immediately found herself apologising again as a woman on her left squawked with indignation as she too received an inadvertent blow.
Harriet was mortified. How could she have been so careless, not once, but twice? She glanced from side to side, trying to judge if tiredness had affected her peripheral vision, but found her attention drawn to the way her sleeve heads were distorted by the fullness of her deltoids. She gave an experimental shrug and belatedly realised quite how tight the jacket was, how the sleeves had bunched in her armpits, how the cuffs were stuck partway up her forearms, the ratio of material to muscle all wrong.
—
Harriet was eventually roused from her hypnopompic state by what she came to realise was not, in fact, a fire alarm in her dream, but the ringing of her doorbell. As she sat up, her phone slid from the duvet and hit the floor; the battery, she realised as she picked it up, was dead. She rarely wore a watch these days, and the heavy curtains allowed in no daylight, so she was unsure of the time, or if her alarm should have woken her already.
The doorbell rang again. Still groggy and yawning widely, she pulled on her dressing gown and made her way to the front door. Without stood her neighbour, Mrs Jones, carrying a large box prominently stamped with the branding of the sports nutrition company whose products Harriet had come to know so well. Harriet mumbled a greeting.
“Yikes, looks like someone kissed you good and proper last night!” Mrs Jones laughed as she caught sight of Harriet’s face.
“What? No! No one kissed me! No!” Harriet replied, altogether too loudly and too quickly to sound relaxed and normal, the sudden panicky recollection of the previous night - and the idea that other people might somehow have heard about it - doing the work of a cold shower and a double espresso and jolting her awake.
“I meant a Glasgow kiss. You know? How’d you get the shiner?” Mrs Jones responded after an awkward pause, gesturing at her own eye to emphasise her point.
“Oh, that,” said Harriet, trying to compose herself. “Just, just an accident at the gym. Silly of me, really - I wasn’t being very careful.”
“So you do go to the gym? That explains this box - I thought the postie had got the address wrong when he asked if I could take this in for you yesterday. I thought it must really be for that big lad downstairs - what’s his name again? Tip of my tongue… No, can’t remember it. Anyway, I said to myself, there’s no way this was for you; you’re a nice young lady, not the sort who goes to the gym and gets all sweaty and muscly.”
“I’ve been working out at the gym for quite a while, actually,” said Harriet, defensively.
“Really?” came the reply, polite but dubious.
“Isn’t it… isn’t it obvious?”
Mrs Jones registered the disappointment in Harriet’s voice and gave her a curious, appraising look. The thick fleece dressing gown in which Harriet was mantled gave no hint as to what lay beneath.
“Sure, if you say so. You look great. Anyway, got to go - late for work.”
Briefly, Harriet considered calling Mrs Jones back and dropping the dressing gown to the floor in an act of glorious defiance. Only the fact she was completely naked it beneath it stopped her, and even then after a moment of hesitation.
Feeling deflated and regretting her timidity, Harriet carried the box inside and closed the door.
—
As commuters surged around her, Harriet stopped still by a shopfront, shoulders slumped and arms rigid by her sides, trying to take up as little space as possible, as if a mere change of posture would magically shrink the powerful body which now bore little relation to her lithe frame on which the jacket had looked so chic when she had first tried it on a couple of years ago.
A businessman in a hurry forced his way past Harriet’s left side. As Harriet had straightened her arms, she had inadvertently flexed her triceps, and the lateral head had hardened and jutted out, digging into the man’s ribs as he pushed past her. He looked back at her angrily, in the mistaken belief that she must have deliberately stuck her elbow into him - after all, what other piece of her anatomy could have been so solid?
Red-faced and scowling, he stopped to confront Harriet.
—
Harriet dropped the parcel on the kitchen table and went to inspect her black eye in the bathroom mirror. Yesterday’s swelling had largely subsided and it was, in fact, no longer just black, but had turned an interesting shade of purple overnight; she was so pale that if she stood really still she looked like a marble statue on which the sculptor had decided to experiment with a porphyry inlay for the eye socket.
She gave the bruised flesh a tentative poke, flinched, and then gave herself a rueful smile in the mirror. Idiot, she thought. Idiot, idiot, idiot.
If she didn’t want to answer the inevitable awkward question that everyone she met was bound to ask her, she needed to do something to hide it. Given how gloomy it was outside today, wearing sunglasses would be impractical - and besides, did she even have a pair? It wasn’t as if she was one for sunbathing on a beach holiday; she had spent the last summer on a walking trip in the Highlands where it had been so dreich that she was more likely to get rickets than a tan. Instead she grabbed her laptop and searched for a Youtube video on how to use makeup to hide a black eye.
Ten minutes later she had a basic idea of what she needed to do, but a rummage through her kitchen cabinet and bedroom drawers only confirmed her suspicions: namely, that her selection of cosmetics was just marginally more impressive than her range of tinted eyewear. She owned only one dried-out lipstick that had not seen service since the office Christmas party two years ago, and some mascara that looked even more clumpy than her mum’s porridge. She checked the clock and decided that she could get ready, make it to the high street, pop into Boots to buy the necessary items, and get back home with just enough time to spare.
—
Constantly jostled by the stream of commuters, Harriet was starting to feel harried and discomfited. She felt strangely out of place and out of control. She stopped pulling at her jacket lapels - as if it were a simple matter of teasing the material into place so it fitted her better, and nothing to do with the uncompromising taper of her torso - and looked up to see the businessman staring down at her, his face angry…
Suddenly Harriet was back in her nightmare, her assailant close enough to strike, and she was unable to speak, unable to move. The entire world was collapsing in on her. As her pulse quickened and her breathing became ragged, she remained just aware enough to recognise the telltale signs of a panic attack.
She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, let this feeling overwhelm her. She was strong, she told herself, she was disciplined, she was in charge. She tried to clear her mind and get into the zone, pretending she was preparing for a big lift - going for a PB was always a little scary, but any apprehension on her part was always tempered by anticipation and excitement as she stepped up to face the challenge. Focus on the positives; you can do this, she thought.
No matter how difficult things seemed in the moment, lifting had taught Harriet that ultimately she was the one in control. Her breathing fell back into its usual rhythm and she started to feel more like herself - but she knew that she needed to get out of this crowd, and quickly, if she were to find the space and the peace required to properly gather her thoughts. Slowly she inhaled and then exhaled deeply, opened her eyes, and stepped forward.
—
Harriet was pressed for time, so she decided there was no point showering before hitting the gym for her first workout of the day and getting sweaty all over again. Besides, an increasingly audible borborygmus left her in no doubt as to what her body’s priority was at the moment: eating her first breakfast of the day - and she could only have been anticipating this meal more keenly if she were a hobbit.
She may have felt sticky and disgusting, and would not normally leave the house unwashed, but to make an omelette you had to break a few eggs - although, strictly speaking, the egg whites Harriet used for her breakfast omelette actually came straight from a carton (after months of fiddling around separating out the yolks, discovering this product a few weeks ago had made Harriet happier than she would care to admit).
Her mind still occupied with keeping to her schedule, Harriet dressed without much thought; when she couldn’t find a hoodie, she grabbed an old jacket from the coat rack, draped it over her arm and headed for the door, stopping only to grab her keys and purse.
—
Opening his mouth to unleash a stream of invective, the businessman was taken aback, first, by Harriet’s thousand-yard stare lasering straight through him as if he wasn’t there; and, second, by the fact she then also walked straight through him as if he wasn’t there. It was enough to give a man an existential crisis. Off-balance and too startled to even call out, he tried to resist her advance, but found himself driven backwards into the crowd, trapped in a rolling maul.
If anything, Harriet was even more surprised than the businessman at her easy progress. Her intention had been to press her way through the crowd a little more quickly and a lot less politely than usual, just as she had often seen other people in a hurry do on many occasions… But instead with every stride forward she was actually bulldozing commuters out of her way, and she didn’t seem able to prevent it.
Harriet was discovering that, while the high level of strength and aggression she had developed was necessary for her to push herself to the limit in the gym, she could not easily modulate this physical intensity when applying pressure to passersby to make headway in a crowd. Weightlifting had trained her muscles to rebel against the very notion of passivity, and to fight back until the point of exhaustion.
Once upon a time her slight frame would have bobbed around in a crowd like flotsam in a current, but not any more; now, she was the one making waves, and the surprised businessman was not the only person tossed aside as she advanced.
—
What Harriet hadn’t counted on when she left her flat was that the high street would be clogged with commuters on the way to the station, a seething mass that would slow her down considerably. To make things even worse, roadworks had closed one side of the street and scaffolding covered the frontages of several buildings, further narrowing the available space and causing a lengthy bottleneck into which people were obliged to squeeze by each other.
Realising that her strict timetable was now imperilled by the crowd in front of her, Harriet quickly pulled on her jacket and joined the hordes. Perhaps pausing for breakfast had been a mistake - there was no way she could get to the shop and back home in time now. She should probably preemptively admit defeat and text Kane as soon as she had a quiet moment to warn her she was running late. How inconvenient! She wished there was a way to cut through the crowd more quickly, but experience told her that she would make painfully slow progress.
—
It wasn’t that Harriet wanted to push the businessman - or anyone else - out of her way, it was just that she didn’t seem able to avoid it. Used to slipping gently through crowds, she was finding it physically impossible to make headway without barging into other people and knocking them bodily out of her way.
Even though Harriet had abandoned her usual strategy of squeezing into the gaps in the crowd, she was still taken aback at first by her total inability to avoid collisions, her sense of spatial awareness now incommensurate with her muscular bulk.
She was like a captain piloting a cruise through the Corinth Canal in the mistaken belief that the ship’s beam was several feet narrower than the reality.
Wherever and however Harriet moved she seemed to hit someone, unused as she was to manoeuvring her larger frame in this manner. Her body was wider and thicker than ever before and the geometry of her gains still eluded her. She twisted and turned, but if her delts weren’t obtruding on passersby, her glutes were militating against slipping through gaps that would once have been manageable; her meaty quads and thick arms were too powerful to remain inconspicuous, the exigent breadth of her limbs clearing space with every swing.
Eventually, Harriet realised the futility of trying to avoid people, and stopped making any effort to do so, choosing instead to plough straight on, her face set, apologies far from her mind now. Everyone she barged into was at fault for not getting out of her way quickly enough, she felt; those people must be as stupid as Mrs Jones if they couldn’t see how big and strong she was, and avoid her accordingly; it wasn’t her fault if they couldn’t see what should have been obvious, was it?
You’re a nice young lady, not the sort who goes to the gym and gets all sweaty and muscly… Ha!
-
A short chapter, just to move the story on... More to come, obviously, but I'll probably try to get a new chapter of Body Swap finished first.
“Ah, Pooter. Welcome. Come join us - we’re just plotting the overthrow of the government.”
Beck stood next to a low wall, flanked by a pair of pigeons.
Coo. Coo.
“Admittedly my co-conspirators have been reluctant to vouchsafe any details more precise than that, but they’re probably still establishing my bona fides and I expect to gain their full confidence soon.”
“Be… Beck, what in god’s name… What are we…”
The little man was puffing like a steam train and his peevish voice died away, his complaint abandoned while he leaned back against the firedoor and mopped his brow with his pocket square.
“What in god’s name are we doing, meeting on the roof?” Beck said, finishing Pooter’s query for him.
“Pre… precisely.”
“Well, if I learnt one thing from Infernal Affairs, it’s that it’s cheaper to buy speakers from Cheung Wai…”
“Wha… what?”
“But if I learnt two things from Infernal Affairs, it’s that it’s cheaper to buy speakers from Cheung Wai and that undercover cops like meeting on rooftops.”
“I don’t… understand, Beck - we’re not undercover. So why… have you made me walk up twelve… flights of stairs to meet you up here?”
“Precisely, Pooter, we’re not undercover; and, as such, no one would anticipate us holding a clandestine meeting up here.”
Not for the first time, Pooter found himself thinking that he would rather be unpicking a complex tax avoidance scheme than Beck’s perverse logic.
“But-”
“Plus, it does a man good to get out of the office from time to time. I worry about you, Pooter - stuck indoors all day, poring over spreadsheets and legislation… I thought you’d be grateful for the chance of some fresh air and a nice view while you provided me with an al fresco update.”
Pooter had just about regained his breath and, with it, his equanimity. The sight of clear blue sky and the warmth of the sun were undeniably pleasant.
“Well, I have been tied to my desk all week, I suppose.”
“Besides, up here we can kill two birds with one stone,” Beck said, pointing to the low wall at the edge of the flat roof.
Coo. Coo.
Pooter looked alarmed.
“Surely you don’t mean you want to kill those pigeons?” he asked.
“No, Pooter - treasonous plots aside, they seem like unimpeachable members of avian society. But from up here, as you update me, we have a splendid view of, well, come and take a look.”
Pooter edged his way to the wall, in a manner that would have suggested to someone who didn’t know him well that he was acrophobic, rather than just a man who was so cautious about everything that he would read the instructions for a new stapler twice before first using it.
Below them, on the other side of the street, they looked down on the roof of a multi-storey car park.
“It’s not the most scenic of vistas, Beck.”
Beck glanced at his watch.
“Wait for it…”
On cue, a black SUV with tinted windows drove up the ramp and onto the roof, eventually pulling up behind a similar vehicle at the far corner of the car park.
Beck nodded to himself, as one professional appreciating the work of another - the size and position of the cars meant that they now occupied the one place in the car park behind which the CCTV cameras could provide no coverage. Only from the elevated position where Beck and Pooter stood on the roof of the adjacent building was there a clear line of sight to what was going on.
Two men emerged from one of the SUVs and hauled out a large, obviously heavy, black bag. With some difficulty, they manoeuvred it into the back seat of the car in front of theirs and then returned to their own vehicle. Transfer complete, both cars headed down the exit ramp, the whole transaction over in under a minute.
Pooter looked worried. “Oh dear, oh dear. I don’t suppose that was…?”
“No,” Beck replied, opening the firedoor. “Not yet. Anyway, now the show is over, let’s head back down. And you can tell me all about the myriad ways in which those funds you’ve been trying to trace are, in fact, ingeniously and deviously untraceable - and while you do that, I’ll show you where the lift is.”
“Well, it’s actually a very interesting arrangement involving no fewer than seventeen shell corporations… Wait, there’s a lift?”
Coo. Coo.
—
The heavy door closed so smoothly that the young man didn’t even hear the auctioneer enter, totally absorbed as he was with the view through the window.
“Ahem, excuse me, sir.”
The young man jumped and turned around, a guilty expression on his face.
“I’m sorry if I startled you, sir; but I was given to believe you requested to speak with me?”
“Yes, yes. It’s just, well, I heard that Johnson was taking delivery of his order, and I wondered if I could… if it’s possible for me to…”
“I’m afraid we are not ready for despatch, sir. We always endeavour to stagger delivery dates and my latest information is that you will not be able to take receipt for another few weeks yet, sir.”
“But I can’t wait any longer! I mean, just look,” the young man whined, gesturing yearningly to the window with his arm. “Just look…”
“I appreciate you are keen, sir. I believe a few refinements are still required if the order is to meet the exact specifications with which you provided us.”
“Never mind refinements! I can’t wait any longer!”
“Very well, sir. I will see what can be done. Please rest assured that I will plead your case most assiduously. May I bring you anything in the meantime, sir?”
—
“Jab, jab, right cross. Good! Jab, right cross, left hook. That's braw!”
Harriet’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
“Jab, right cross, left uppercut, right cross.”
Harriet knew that her technique was still far from perfect, but the satisfaction of channelling all of her pent-up aggression into every punch only made her even more eager to improve.
“Dinnae drop your hand so much for the uppercut. Let’s try that again.”
Harriet didn’t reply, but she nodded to show she’d understood.
Sweaty and panting, Harriet readied herself for the next flurry by shifting her weight experimentally from foot to foot, still learning to gauge exactly where her centre of gravity was now - the size and shape of her body was so dramatically different to when she had last played hockey at university that she had quickly found that she was unused to making quick, precise movements while retaining her balance at all times.
Before the session had started, she was like a child who believed she had mastered riding her bicycle; but then the stabilisers had come off, and it had become clear that staying in control as she moved was not as easy as she had imagined.
Harriet was aware that it would take a lot of hard work to improve her technique, but new physical challenges were what she craved now, new ways to push her body to its limits, and to establish what she was capable of achieving.
“Ready? Again! Jab, right cross, left uppercut, right cross. Good!”
-
The two teenagers were so engrossed in the view that they didn’t hear Harriet approach. They didn’t even notice when she tried to establish what the girls were gaping at through the half-open door, stopping directly behind them and peering over the top of their heads; together they formed an impromptu tableau reminiscent of the way a gurning local might photobomb a pair of oblivious tourists.
By all rights, they should have been gaping at Harriet, who had regained her amour-propre since the incident in the car park. The gym had become her therapy, and two sessions a day, six days a week, with additional daily boxing lessons, had assuaged her trauma better than lying on a couch and talking about her feelings ever could.
There was, of course, another benefit to taking refuge in the gym: her fight had shown her that she wasn’t as strong as she thought. The solution to this problem was simple: get stronger. She had never been the type to give up after a setback anyway. Retreat was not an option; in defeat she had learned that she was a revanchist.
But as well as resolving to grow stronger, she also wanted to start making it unambiguously clear to other people how strong she had become, and how strong she was continuing to grow - or, as she had been amused to think of it, driving to the gym that morning and watching her biceps twitch as she gripped the steering wheel: putting the guns in gunboat diplomacy.
Her muscles had grown bigger, yes; but now her willingness to show them off had finally developed correspondingly. This was in marked contrast to the size of her new gym outfits, which had shrunk in inverse proportion to her increasing swagger.
Comfort and modesty were no longer her primary concerns when choosing her workout clothing - instead she had taken a deep, calming breath and then picked out her latest purchases based on a simple, albeit totally alien, principle: what’s the scantiest style of this item currently in stock?
In truth, she had not particularly enjoyed the number of times she had needed to stop between sets today to tug her tiny shorts back down after they rode up the inside of her meaty thighs, nor how there was essentially no material at all to wick away the sweat which poured down the muscles in her exposed back and left the seat of her shorts stained wine-dark.
It was worth it though. It felt like there wasn’t a single person in Wimbourne Hall that hadn’t admired her as she destroyed her delts that morning, and by the end of her workout she realised that she was not only enjoying attracting all this attention in the gym, but also that she had almost come to expect it as something due to her, recognition for all her hard work.
So at any other time that morning she might have felt slightly affronted at being completely ignored - but then she spotted what the two teenagers were looking at.
“Oh my god. Look at her quads; they’re so big you can see them from behind,” one girl whispered to her friend.
Inside the private studio that lay beyond the doorway, Harriet - not without some difficulty - recognised Dina standing at the far end of the room. The young sprinter stood in front of the floor-length mirrors, looking a little ungainly in a pair of high heels, practising some poses. Her shorts, which looked even more inadequate for their task than those currently clinging to Harriet’s own glutes, had been forcefully hiked up into an awkward-looking wedgie to reveal even more glistening flesh for inspection in the mirrors, and her sports bra was noticeably well-filled. Dina turned to face the other direction.
“And you can actually see her glutes from in front. They’re like… they’re like…” the second girl’s voice trailed away as a suitable simile escaped her.
‘They’re like shy twins, peeping out from behind their mother,’ thought Harriet, privately completing the comparison.
Harriet remembered Dina from when they had both first joined the gym at Wimbourne Hall. She recalled overhearing Dina’s then-coach discussing power-to-weight ratios and block starts with her, and admiring the young athlete not just because of her obvious determination and focus, but also because of her commitment to function over form.
At the time it had seemed to Harriet, then a mere weightlifting neophyte, that everyone else in the gym was working out simply to look a certain way, to maintain a certain aesthetic. She had quietly judged them all, these slaves to narcissism, so obviously checking themselves out in the mirrors as they lifted, and interupting each workout with regular stops to take more selfies than Rembrandt painted self-portraits in his entire life.
But time in the gym had clearly served a different purpose for Dina: it was necessary drudge work to help her develop more power so she could become a better athlete. How she looked was immaterial; improving her times on the track was all that mattered.
“Oh my god. She is such a freak. Her muscles are so gross.”
“Shut up! You’re the one who wanted to start coming to the gym to impress Tristan. You’re just well jel that you don’t have a dumpy like that!”
“Can you even imagine trying to fit a bum that big into a pair of jeans?”
“Can you even imagine how good a bum that big would look in a pair of jeans?”
Harriet was aware that, soon after joining Wimbourne Hall, Dina had become one of Florence’s clients and had disappeared from the main public gym. Since then, just as with Chardonnay, Harriet had only glimpsed Dina in photos on Florence’s insta**** feed. She had been impressed, but also a little disappointed, by the progress those photos recorded - impressed because Dina was clearly packing on muscle; disappointed because Dina now seemed to have become just another gym-bunny prioritising form over function.
But, and there were no two ways about this, Harriet knew that she had herself become consumed by the pursuit of gains above all else. She couldn’t even really remember life without the gym any more. Lifting had become her entire personality.
“I think each of her thighs is bigger than my waist.”
“Not after all that pizza you stuffed in your face last night, you fat bitch!”
The two girls giggled.
“It was a cheat day, okay?”
“Yeah, whatever. Everyday’s a cheat day for you. Anyway, you don’t get to look like that if you take too many cheat days.”
“Oh my god, you do actually want to look all… freakish like her, don’t you?”
Freakish, thought Harriet. Yes, the word applied. Not necessarily to Dina’s physique, but to the circumstances: another one of Florence’s clients had undergone a dramatic development; and the photographic record of Dina’s progress on Insta**** did not reflect the reality any more than Chardonnay’s pictures had.
“I’d rather have a dumpy like hers than a pancake like yours. And you want to impress Tristan so bad, but I bet he wants a girl with a squat booty like that.”
“Oh my god, you’re a fucking lez for her muscles. No wonder you’ve been secretly gyming it on your own so much recently.”
“Um, bitter much? You drag me along to the gym; I don’t go without you. It’s not my fault I’m getting all the gains because I work harder and actually follow a diet plan.”
“Bitch.”
Harriet knew from Insta**** that Dina had started to build pounds of extra muscle under Florence's tutelage, and from what she could see now it was clear that Dina hadn't stopped - however her physique was very different to Chardonnay’s; while the latter was so lean she might have been excarnated of all adipose tissue, Dina retained a softer look. Chardonnay, implants apart, was all razor-sharp edges, whereas Dina was smoother, en cabochon rather than faceted.
And while Dina’s upper body was much more muscular than it had once been, it was her glutes and quads that really caught the attention, her lower body developed to the point where the circumference of her thighs would probably prove a hindrance to her if she were to try to sprint.
In fact, there was a pronounced disparity in development demarcated by Dina’s waistline which brought to mind the border between North and South Korea.
“Hey, you’re the one who said she was all about wanting a big peach.”
“But I just want to get toned; I don’t want to look like a… like a man - not like her.”
“I keep telling you: there’s no such thing as ‘tone’; there’s just muscles. And she does not look like a man”
Harriet nodded. As unusually muscular as she was, Dina could never be mistaken for a man - her curves were too abundant, her face was too pretty. However, an image had popped into Harriet’s head when she first caught a glimpse of Dina, and she had been unable to shake it ever since… The mismatch between Dina’s upper and lower body put Harriet in mind of Hylonome, the beautiful centauride.
Dina walked tentatively towards the far side of the room and the girls leaned forward to keep her in sight. Inadvertently they put too much weight on the door, which yielded to the pressure and swung open, leaving the two girls sprawling forward. One toppled into the studio.
“You girl! This is a private studio!” came an imperious voice, sharp and sudden as the crack of a whip, from an unseen corner of the room.
The door swung shut and the second girl squealed, suspended as she was in mid-air. As the teenager had fallen forward, Harriet had reached out with her right arm and grabbed her round the waist, stopping her from following her friend onto the floor of the room beyond the door, and pulling her back towards her own body.
The teenager dangled from Harriet’s arm like an uncooperative toddler scooped up by an impatient parent at bedtime. Harriet used her left arm to pull the girl back upright, and then rotated her suspended body through 180 degrees until they were face to face. Harriet’s arms were rock-steady, but the girl was so disconcerted by what was happening that she reached forward and grabbed Harriet’s shoulders as if she needed to steady herself and prevent a fall.
Her eyes went from darting back and forth in an attempt to work out what was going on, to opening wide as she focussed on the powerful woman in front of her, her hands getting further apart as they stroked up and around each of Harriet’s swollen anterior and then lateral delts, occasionally stopping for a squeeze all that muscle, her fingers unable to make any dent whatsoever.
Harriet couldn’t help but smile at her amazement.
“Don’t worry - it’s not the first time I’ve literally swept a girl off her feet. Actually, it’s becoming a bit of a habit. You’re in safe hands.”
“What… How… Is this place, like, the island of the Amazons, or something?”
-
Trying to produce some shorter chapters on a more regular basis. We'll see how that goes, but for now here's another slice of action from Wimbourne Hall...
There are not many women in the world capable of casually picking up a young adult and then holding them off the ground at arm’s length; and among the members of this exclusive club there is perhaps just one who could achieve this physical feat while also becoming distracted by the minutiae of classical mythology. That woman was Harriet.
“‘Island of the Amazons’? Oh, you’re talking about Themiscyra. Interestingly enough, it’s only in the Wonder Woman comic books that Themiscyra’s an island - in Greek mythology the Amazons were associated with a variety of places, but most of them were around the shores of the Black Sea, including the actual town of Themiscyra.”
“Erm… what?” came the mumbled reply, Harriet’s didactic tone confusing the teenager even more than her muscles already had.
“Um, but if you were favourably comparing me to an Amazon warrior, thank you; I appreciate the compliment.”
The girl's face became animated again, her hands moving from Harriet’s shoulders to linger over the pronounced chevrons of her triceps, her fingers splaying as she tried and failed to circumscribe Harriet’s arms.
“Oh my god. Yeah, you’re just like a badass Amazon warrior. You should totally be Wonder Woman; you’d be so much better than that skinny actress who plays her. I mean, she’s beautiful and all, but she’s not buff. She’s nothing like you. Oh… I don’t mean, like, you’re not beautiful. I mean you’re buff and you’re beautiful. Yeah…”
The door swung back open with a bang and, red-faced from the scolding she had just received, the other teenager burst from the studio and fled in the direction of the changing rooms. She passed so quickly that she completely failed to notice her friend dangling from Harriet’s arms; for her part, her friend was so absorbed in admiring Harriet’s physique that the disturbance behind her went unheeded.
Harriet gently lowered the girl to her feet. The teenager loosened her own grip, but then slowly trailed her fingertips down the length of Harriet’s arms to her wrists, as if reluctant to relinquish all contact with Harriet’s muscle. The girl’s probing touch tickled Harriet’s forearms as her fingers explored the vascularity made especially obvious by Harriet’s pump, her veins as pronounced as rivulets of wax running down a guttering candle.
“I think you’d better catch up with your friend - she looked a little upset.”
The teenager stopped staring at Harriet’s abs long enough to glance briefly over her shoulder, and then did a double-take as she spotted her friend disappearing into the changing rooms.
“Oh! I’d better go,” she said reluctantly, looking back round and addressing her remark to Harriet’s six-pack. Harriet wondered if this was what it felt like to be a busty woman wearing a low-cut top and talking to a man.
“Hey, eyes up here,” Harriet said, jokingly.
The girl didn’t seem to notice. She started to shuffle backwards away from Harriet, as if taking leave of the Queen, her eyes fixed on Harriet’s thighs now. Harriet shifted her weight from one foot to the other, knowing this would make her muscles jump.
Trying to keep track of all the undulating ripples Harriet’s change in stance caused, the girl’s focus kept shifting back and forth between each of Harriet’s legs like she was in the crowd at a tennis match following the flight of the ball during a rally.
“Oh. My. God,” the girl muttered to herself, before finally turning around and starting to follow her friend, but not without another couple of glances back at Harriet over her shoulder.
Harriet watched her go, then turned back to the studio door. The teenager who had unexpectedly burst in had clearly received a frosty reception, and Harriet hesitated slightly before reminding herself that technically she had an invitation.
She just hoped that Chardonnay was somewhere inside, because the plan had been to meet here and there was no sign of her.
Oh well, no turning back now. She pushed open the door.
-
“I’m sorry, I know that pedagogical standards these days are so low that if you leave school barely literate but without getting pregnant that is considered quite the academic achievement, but this is simply too much! The door clearly says ‘Private’. Leave, immediately!”
Harriet made eye contact with Dina, who was fiddling with the waistband of her shorts and looking in Harriet’s direction with a diffident expression on her face. The owner of the imperious voice was standing between them and currently had her back to Harriet, but despite the fact this woman was facing the other way, looking down at her phone, and was partially hidden by stacks of plyo boxes, she was undoubtedly Florence Peyton-Maxwell.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. My name is Harriet. I was supposed to meet Chardonnay here; she said she would introduce me to her personal trainer,” Harriet said, ensuring she sounded suitably contrite.
Florence looked up slowly and caught sight of Harriet in the mirror. She regarded Harriet’s reflection for a moment or two without turning around. Harriet had the distinct impression that every swollen inch of her body was being quickly but thoroughly scrutinised. Over the course of the last two hours that Harriet had spent in the gym, she had become unable to resist flexing whenever she noticed someone staring at her, but now she restrained herself, feeling there was no need for such ostentation here.
Florence raised an elegant eyebrow, although Harriet couldn’t tell if it was done quizzically or in grudging respect, and then her expression became one of amusement and she nodded slightly.
“Of course, how silly of me! I certainly recognise you from the public gym; I’m just not used to seeing… so much of you. Yes, Chardonnay expressed an interest in coordinating a tête-à-tête. In a manner of speaking. How did she actually put it again? Oh yes, she said she wanted me to ‘have a chinwag with another big strong bitch.’ Such a lovely turn of phrase Chardonnay had. But didn’t she tell you? She flew to Guadeloupe yesterday night. A last minute holiday.”
“Oh,” said Harriet, genuinely taken aback, “she didn’t say anything about that to me.”
“I understand it was a grand romantic gesture on the part of her latest suitor - he whisked her away for an unanticipated tryst. Again, not Chardonnay’s actual words - If I recall correctly, I believe she felt ‘dirty weekend’ was the mot juste - although I got the impression we won’t be seeing her again for quite some time,” said Florence, finally stepping out from behind the boxes and smiling at Harriet.
Any puzzlement at this revelation on Harriet’s part melted away as she found herself dazzled by the full force of Florence’s undeniable charms.
As unlikely as it seemed, Florence was even more beautiful in the flesh than she appeared in photos. Harriet found herself wondering how that was possible. She was aware that many Insta**** influencers and others who relied on their online image often had teams of people dedicated to making them look as good as possible, or that at the very least the pictures that eventually made it onto their pages were carefully selected from dozens - or scores, or hundreds - of other photos in order to show themselves at their absolute best.
In this way any unflattering realities could be obscured. The camera could lie, after all, even if they were only lies of omission. Nonetheless, some careful curation ensured that your online followers need never see your frizzy, flyaway hair, blemished skin, cellulite, or bloating.
And yet, standing before her now, Florence was so perfect that Harriet wondered if she had entered the uncanny valley.
Always thorough, Harriet had researched the Peyton-Maxwells’ family tree before first visiting Wimbourne Hall, and the results had confirmed her belief that aristocratic families often had a gene pool barely deep enough for a paddle. When a family stringently maintained centuries of snobbery regarding making suitable matches for their issue, it meant that debutantes had limited access to any unapproved balls.
The risk of this approach, of course, was that down the generations your progeny could end up more inbred than Hovis, running the risk of becoming trapped in a genetic cul-de-sac. There was only a vanishingly small chance that, if they were lucky enough to avoid suffering some variation on the theme of a Habsburg jaw, they’d become such a sensational thoroughbred that they’d make a eugenicist shout ‘I bloody told you so!’
Florence had beaten those odds and was inarguably one of the lucky few, the kind of timeless beauty as capable of launching a thousand ships three millennia ago as she was a new fashion line today.
And it was immediately obvious why women were so desperate to be lucky enough to call Florence their personal trainer; if she taught you even half of what she knew, you would almost certainly become at least twice the woman you were.
Florence was a living, breathing advert for the benefits of working out, glowing with health, her naturally athletic body supplemented with a beautifully-balanced musculature fine-honed in the gym. Serendipitously, her mesomorphic genetics were complemented by an innately voluptuous distribution of her minimal body fat.
Florence looked like she could step onto the stage to compete at a few day’s notice, or star in a fitness photoshoot at the drop of a hat; but she also looked like she could model lingerie, or be the new face of Dior.
She was a walking optical illusion.
To look at Florence was to have your brain turn somersaults: at first glance, you saw a beautiful woman; and then you slowly became aware of her muscles; but, conditioned by normal beauty standards, your brain refused to accept that this beautiful woman could actually be as muscular as she first appeared; and then the muscles slowly swam back into focus, and you realised how dense and defined they were, how they were actually even bigger than you had first thought; and then your brain crashed, rebooted, and focussed on her beauty again.
Harriet herself remembered the first time she had seen a photo of Florence hitting a double biceps pose. She had been scrolling past various workout pics until she was compelled to stop and stare at this one. In trying to make sense of what she was studying, at first her brain had leapt to the conclusion that this was one of those jokey photos where the woman hides her own arms out of view as her bodybuilder boyfriend crouches behind her and flexes in a way that makes it look like the bulging biceps belonged to her. There was no way a woman who looked like that could have arms like that, Harriet had thought.
And then she realised that she was wrong. Very, very wrong.
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:wow:
Don't know how I'm only coming across this one now. Awesome work!
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Fantastic story, wonderfully written. I love it!
I'm anxiously awaiting the next installment. :rock:
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Thanks for the comments! Here's the next chapter:
Once upon a time, the simple act of crossing her arms had given Harriet the unfortunate appearance of timidity. Even the most callow, unobservant student of body language would have confidently declared that every time she did so, Harriet made herself look defensive and insecure.
For her part, Harriet had always been completely unaware that she had given people this impression; and she had no idea of just how often she had unthinkingly crossed her arms in a manner open to such an interpretation during even the most mundane of working days.
By no means an extrovert, Harriet had, however, never considered herself to be a particularly timorous individual, and she would have been shocked to learn how her colleagues - even those of them who knew her to be clever, experienced and entirely competent - frequently perceived her to be nervous or out of her depth, a conclusion based purely on her gentle physicality and meek demeanour.
But there she was, day after day, sitting or standing with her arms crossed, making herself look small and uncertain, putting a protective barrier between herself and the world, in meetings with management, in casework conferences, even walking around the office on a warm day with no cardigan as she worried that her eminently sensible blouse was perhaps too revealing.
No one would think Harriet timid when she crossed her arms now, her forearms and biceps surging to greet each other like long-lost friends, the suggestion of striations playing across her obrotund shoulders, her surprisingly hard décolletage compacting and becoming even more deeply delineated.
This pose could only be considered defensive in the same way that Hadrian's Wall was defensive - in reality it was a show of strength designed to intimidate.
It wasn’t just all the additional muscle that gave Harriet this new bearing - it was an obvious difference of attitude as well, a sense of quiet but unshakable determination and a newfound confidence that came from knowing that she’d never been bigger, or stronger, or better equipped to defend herself.
The number on the scales when she weighed herself continued to go up, but so did the numbers for all her lifts; and Kane, a woman not known for her fulsome praise, had nonetheless recently been moved to compliment both her improved punching power and hand speed.
In other words, it wasn’t just the additional muscle; it was the knowledge of what all that extra muscle allowed her to do. These days, if Harriet were to cross her arms in public it would send a new, entirely different message to anyone watching her: fuck around and find out.
Not that Harriet was looking to pick any more fights, not for the moment at least. While it was true she had become more aggressive, she was channelling all of that violent energy into her workouts.
Anyway, these days, Harriet was more likely to cross her arms in the privacy of her own home.
Not only was it the perfect excuse to feel her biceps - to casually cup each hand around a hard malicorium of muscle and to be thrilled anew by how big and solid she felt - she also found it soothing.
Just as other people would relax after a long day by sitting on the sofa and lovingly petting their cat or dog, Harriet would cross her arms and stroke her own biceps as she waited for the bath to run, or as she stared hungrily at the microwave as it reheated some chicken.
And just as other people might rub their temples or scratch their chin when trying to remember something, Harriet would thoughtfully squeeze her tumid biceps or run her fingers up and down the ridges of her triceps, effectively using her muscles as aides-mémoire.
Harriet was doing just this as she stood in her kitchen and concentrated on recalling the details of her conversation with Florence earlier that day…
—
Harriet’s awed reverie was broken by Florence directing a question at her. Florence spoke as one used to issuing orders to the staff and having them unquestioningly obeyed, and her patrician voice was difficult to ignore.
“Well, you may have missed Chardonnay, but what do you think of my latest project? Do stop cowering in the corner, Dina, and come here! Show our unexpected guest what we’ve been working on.”
Dina mumbled something inaudible, and stepped forward cautiously; it was clear that she was not accustomed to wearing heels.
“I must apologise on Dina’s behalf,” tutted Florence, turning back to Harriet. “She lacks confidence in herself, not to mention poise. How one yearns for the days when one could simply dispatch awkward young ladies like her to a Swiss finishing school.”
Looking down to make sure she placed her feet correctly, Dina carefully adjusted her position and started to draw herself up into a front pose.
“No, not there, you silly girl; there! In front of that mirror, so we can all see you better!”
Dina bowed her head, wobbled over to the position indicated, and began, once more, to strike a pose.
Harriet forgot all about Dina’s clear discomfort as she focussed on the erstwhile sprinter’s legs, which were even more mesmerising up close than they had appeared from the doorway. For a moment, in the silence of the studio, Harriet thought that she could actually hear the sound of the muscles in Dina’s quads flexing and solidifying, just as a nature documentary might embellish fast-forwarded footage of a plant growing with audio created by a foley artist. Eventually she realised that the sound was actually Dina’s contorted shorts stretching under the pressure.
“Well, what do you think? A fine figure of a girl, is she not? Even if she moves with all the grace of a blindfolded elephant.”
“Wow. You look amazing, Dina. You remind me of some of those Brazilian competitors you see on Insta. You would absolutely smash it on stage in Wellness,” said Harriet, smiling and trying to appear as encouraging and friendly as possible as she addressed Dina directly.
“Ah, someone is certainly au fait with their divisions! Yes - I was tasked with training her to look like a Wellness competitor,” replied Florence. “And I always deliver what I promise.”
As she said this, Florence stepped forwards with a slight frown on her face, her attention perhaps diverted by some flaw she had spotted in Dina’s physique. Harriet and Dina were able to share a quick look before Florence stepped between them.
“Anyway, speaking of ‘Brazilian’, that reminds me of something that needs to be attended to: Dina, don’t forget that I’ve booked you in for a long overdue full pamper session and massage at the spa. You don’t want to be late,” said Florence.
Dina looked mortified at the implication her bikini line needed some attention, but wordlessly turned to grab her things and leave.
“Oh, one moment, Dina. Before you go, why don’t you show Harriet just how hard we work here?”
Without saying anything, Dina reluctantly started to pull down her shorts, unbunching them and slowly peeling the sweaty material from her skin, revealing a thong nestled between a pair of gleaming, glabrous glutes so prominent that the county council could have added them to their sightseeing map of the local area.
With her shorts in her hands, Dina turned to face Florence and Harriet and began to twist the garment roughly, wringing it tight. A stream of perspiration poured from the material, splashing onto the floor. Dina did not hold back; Harriet could see her biceps knotting as she applied more and more pressure, until the final few drips were squeezed out.
Dina looked up from the puddle at Florence like a bashful schoolgirl, uncertain of the quality of the work she was showing to her teacher, but nonetheless still hoping for a gold star.
“Good girl,” said Florence, briskly. “Well done. Now, as you are so obviously in need of the practice, I want you to keep your heels on and walk straight to the spa. I suggest that you take the shortcut through reception, otherwise you’ll miss your appointment, and that simply wouldn’t do, would it?”
Dina flinched.
“Can I… can I put my shorts back on first?”
“No, I’m afraid there’s no time, Dina; you’re running late. Hurry along now, hurry along like a good girl.”
Dina paused, and shot a glance at Harriet.
“Bye. Nice to meet you,” she muttered.
"Yes, you too."
Slowly and inelegantly, Dina walked off towards the studio doors. Harriet could only imagine the sensation she was bound to cause on the other side of them.
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Absolutely one of the best stories I've read. Thank you. Living the Britishisms too
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Absolutely one of the best stories I've read. Thank you. Living the Britishisms too
Glad you're enjoying it!
I had a quiet weekend, and managed to get some writing done. So without further ado, the next chapter...
Harriet had been pacing back and forth across the kitchen as she dwelt on that afternoon’s encounter, her lips twitching as she subvocalised her recollection of the conversation like an actor going over her lines; and any theatrical director who might have happened to observe her at this moment would have immediately recognised the frown which clouded her face as a prelude to some awkward questions about the script, particularly about a certain character’s motivation.
She stopped still and shook her head, frustrated by her inability to interpret Dina’s behaviour.
Harriet knew, better than most people ever would, that a conspicuous physical change could be accompanied by a markedly new attitude, but in her personal experience both the physical and the mental shift should be positive ones. In her case, building muscle and strength had given her a new confidence, a new sense of purpose, almost a new identity; Harriet had come to the conclusion that, before she had started her training, she had been inchoate, but now she felt more fully-formed, like she had unlocked her potential and was becoming who she was supposed to be.
She couldn’t imagine ever wanting to forgo her gains, or the way they made her feel - nor indeed, the way those gains made her look - and she was struggling to reconcile Dina’s own formidable new physique with the young woman’s lapse into discomfited anxiety.
Dina’s demeanour. Dina’s demeanour. Dina’s demeanour.
The words ran through Harriet’s mind over and over, rhythmical as a train rattling along a track.
From what little Harriet remembered of Dina when their paths had crossed in the period after they had both joined the public gym, Dina had been a determined and inquisitive athlete, dedicated to self-improvement and unafraid to ask her coach questions. Even these brief encounters had given Harriet the sense of a driven personality, of a young woman who was motivated, focussed, and unafraid to be assertive. But the impression Dina had given after today’s meeting was that she was as coltish and awkward as a teenager after a growth spurt, apparently yet to come to terms with her magnificent, glistening muscles and uncomfortable with the attention they attracted.
Clearly not all of Florence’s clients felt this way, and Dina was completely unlike Chardonnay in this regard. Harriet could still vividly remember her own fascination when she had first experienced the way Chardonnay had luxuriated in her powerful, pumped-up body, basking in all the attention she received, positively purring with self-satisfaction as she flexed and posed. And in her fascination Harriet had come to recognise a sense of longing, a sense that she was missing out on fully enjoying her own body. An aphorism sprang to mind: carpe diem; or, to put it in terms that Chardonnay would have understood: YOLO.
Or was she just guilty of projecting, Harriet wondered. After all, just because she herself envied Chardonnay’s attitude - her unashamed, almost guileless, exhibitionism; the way she was self-obsessed but also constantly aware of, and courting, bystanders’ attention; and always as satisfied as the cat who had got the cream - it didn’t necessarily mean that Dina felt the same way.
And Harriet had to admit that, while she was privately delighted with her body and increasingly enjoyed showing it off in the gym, she was still coming to terms with the little voice in her head - sounding awfully like her mother - which would make itself audible, criticising her behaviour as narcissistic and gaudy and unbecoming; she could ignore it during the exhilaration of her workout, as her muscles filled with blood and she enjoyed taking a perverse pleasure in feeling the pain of the burn, but the voice would grow louder on the drive home until, alone in her flat in the evenings, Harriet started to feel ashamed of her behaviour and began to worry that people had found her confidence obnoxious and that she had been embarrassing herself in public.
For all that Harriet was inspired by Chardonnay’s outlook on life and her flamboyance, and as much as she wanted to enjoy herself in the same unabashed manner, she had yet to fully overcome the message that had been drilled into her ever since she was little: well-behaved girls are quiet and modest. Some small part of her remained unconvinced that it was proper to make oneself the centre of attention like Chardonnay always did, and made her feel guilty about taking pleasure from pumping up her muscles in the gym and flexing in front of the mirrors in full knowledge that she was showing off.
Vanity, thy name is Harriet!
She considered the possibility that Dina was sharing this mental struggle, but she could tell that the jigsaw she was trying to piece together didn’t match the picture on the box. Dina had taken no pleasure in her body at all. So how had she stayed sufficiently motivated to achieve such impressive results?
The metamorphosis undergone by Dina was no less remarkable than that of Chardonnay; granted, the focus of Dina’s training had clearly been different, with a focus on her lower body, and her diet had been designed to achieve a softer look, but in both cases Florence had achieved miracles with her clients, pushing them past the point which most people would consider achievable, the non plus ultra, and then far beyond, forcing them into a state of such fecund hypertrophy that their bodies had grown to a size which most women would not even have imagined to be physically possible.
Why, then, did Dina seem so out of sorts? Hadn’t Florence said that Dina wanted to become a wellness competitor? In which case, shouldn’t Dina be delighted? She had, after all, been transformed from a strong but slender young athlete, who looked so unremarkable when fully clothed that she would surprise people when she informed them that she was a sprinter, to a woman so abundantly muscled that telling strangers that she worked out would be entirely redundant, and whose thighs couldn’t be hidden even if she borrowed a pair of M.C. Hammer’s parachute pants.
Perhaps it was Florence herself that made Dina so uncomfortable? Maybe Dina quailed at being the focus of Florence’s attention? Florence was an incredibly domineering personality, of course, but Harriet had encountered plenty of posh girls like Florence at university, and as a result was perhaps more used to their forthright, often abrasive manner. It didn’t help that Florence was so beautiful - people were even less likely to object to her behaviour when she was so attractive, and so that had provided her with no incentive to develop a more emollient approach to interpersonal relations either.
The children of aristocratic families were used to giving orders, and the possibility of their directives not being followed, or much liked, didn’t even occur to them. Their ancestors had passed down a sort of generational memory of bellowing orders on various European battlefields in various centuries. The Peyton-Maxwell personality was a forceful one, although Florence herself almost certainly gave it no thought at all; perhaps Dina had simply yet to come to terms with it?
Thinking about Dina’s progress sparked a thought, and Harriet started to search for her phone, wanting to check Insta**** again to study some photos. She looked round the kitchen, but remembered her phone was charging in the bedroom. Then she spotted her laptop behind a pile of supplements on the kitchen table; her usual seat was likewise covered in a tower of tupperware pots, ready for her next meal prepping session.
She grabbed the heavy old wooden chair from the corner of the room, where it normally served a purely ornamental purpose and which had last done duty in lieu of a stepladder when a light bulb had needed to be changed the previous year, and easily swung it forward with one hand as she walked around to the far side of the table; she was so preoccupied that it didn’t even occur to her that the last time she had moved it, she had struggled to lift it with both hands, and instead had dragged it across the kitchen floor.
She sat down hurriedly and cursed as the underside of the table scraped across the top of her thighs. Gingerly, she extricated herself, stood back up and inspected the chair. Was it too high to comfortably fit under the table? No, that couldn't be the case - she had inherited both the chair and the table from her grandmother, and they had once formed part of a set. It took a few moments for her distracted mind to solve the problem, the solution coming as she squatted down to look for an obstruction under the table, and placed her hands on her solid, spreading quads - a solution which made her smile in pleasure: her thighs had grown so much that it was her legs, and not the chair, that were too big to fit under the table.
She sat back down and slowly edged herself forward, this time grabbing the edge of the solid oak table and lifting it off the floor a little, creating enough room that she could squeeze her legs in underneath. Intrigued by how easy she found this, she removed one hand and kept on lifting, the table sloping like a tilting bridge. She only stopped when the cluster of tubs slipped dangerously close to the edge.
She lowered the table back down until it rested on the top of her thighs, her legs leaving its legs sitting proud of the floor. She shifted in her seat to get comfortable. As her quads twitched and jumped, the table bounced upwards again; Harriet found herself distracted from opening her laptop by experimenting with this new trick, and she spent a happy minute diverted by lifting the table with only the power of her expanding thighs until a tub of pre-workout was finally jolted off the edge and fell into the tower of tupperware which collapsed and scattered across the kitchen floor. As a final flourish, the pre-workout rolled into the fridge whereupon its lid popped off, strawberry-scented powder spreading across the tiles.
The nagging, guilt-inducing voice started to whisper once more, chastising Harriet and reminding her that this was what happened when she was self-indulgent and silly.
Harriet sighed and tried to remember where she had left the dustpan and brush.
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A new chapter. It could probably have done with another quick bit of editing but, yet again, time is against me. I hope it's not too much of a mess to read!
Harriet finished tidying up the mess and carried the dustpan and brush back to the hallway cupboard where she had eventually found them, hidden away out of sight, nestled among other items, all once quotidian but now largely forgotten relics of a life she had left behind.
Inside the cupboard were piles of her office clothes - trouser suits, blouses, cardigans and sensible shoes - all of which had been gradually relegated from her bedroom wardrobe as her collection of gym wear had grown ever larger.
After all these months, Harriet wasn’t even sure how many of these clothes would even fit her now. She briefly considered making a trip to the local charity shop to make a bulk donation, but then she rummaged through the pile, picked out and unfolded a blouse, and held it up against her torso; it looked so small in comparison to her upper body that it may as well have been a child’s size. Harriet laughed in surprised delight. What was it that Marie Kondo said? Only keep things if they sparked joy? In that case, she was definitely keeping these clothes - they were proof of her progress, evidence that showed how far she had come on her fitness journey, and that definitely sparked joy.
Harriet spotted her waffle maker sitting on a shelf next to a sandwich toaster, both made redundant given that butter, sugar and cheese barely featured in her diet anymore. They had occupied valuable kitchen counter space and had been moved along with Harriet’s modest collection of cookbooks to make way for the neat rows of tupperware Harriet laid out each weekend to form a production line during her food prepping sessions.
No more waffles dripping with syrup, no more toasties oozing cheese, instead Harriet ate nearly all of her meals from tupperware containers, the contents of each box precisely weighed and the meals inside blandly uniform and monotonous. Harriet could see Nigella Lawson’s face smiling down at her from the cover of a book - a smile that would have turned to a dismayed frown if the author had been aware of Harriet’s ascetic approach to cooking. But that didn’t matter; Harriet’s body was a machine and food was fuel, nothing more; lean protein was essential above all else, the rocket propellant her muscles needed to keep on growing.
Here, too, were to be found a music stand, bundles of sheet music and Harriet’s violin, which she had played nearly every evening before she had first entered Wimbourne Hall. No matter how difficult her day had been, rehearsing a Beethoven sonata was a guaranteed way of soothing her nerves. But she didn’t have time for hobbies now and besides, if she wanted to relax, she would just heave her sofa out of the way to make room for some shadow boxing or to practise some advanced push-up variations in her living room.
As Harriet closed the cupboard door, she caught sight of herself in the small rattan-framed mirror that hung next to the coat hooks. She stopped in her tracks and scrupulously surveyed her reflection. There was nothing particularly unusual about this: even outside the gym, it had become Harriet’s standard response to catching sight of herself in a mirror, and a prelude to checking out her gains. In fact, the bedroom carpet in front of her full-length mirror had become noticeably worn where she stood and flexed every morning after waking up and every night before going to bed.
The procedure was actually much the same when it came to any reflective surface in which Harriet could catch a glimpse of her body: when she noticed her calves in the washing machine door, she would stand on her tiptoes and flex until the jutting lozenges of muscle made contact with each other between her legs; when she spotted her glutes in the shine of a supermarket fridge, she would twist her hips and admire her booty pump; when she noticed her vascularity as she reached to open her car boot, she would clench her fist and roll her wrist, admiring the thickness of her forearm reflected back at her.
In the moment, Harriet didn’t consider this behaviour to be narcissistic, until, that is, she became aware that someone was watching her, at which point her old insecurities would take over. On more than one occasion in Sainsbury’s she had realised that someone had seen her admiring herself and - flustered and hastily improvising - she had gone into an unconvincing routine of pretending to be inspecting her leggings for dirt, which she would then ostentatiously brush away before grabbing the nearest item on the shelf and retreating down the aisle. She would rather go through this awkward charade than leave any curious strangers thinking that she was inspecting her own hammies rather than the ham.
Social awkwardness aside, the simple truth was that Harriet’s behaviour in front of mirrors truly wasn’t narcissism: it was the result of disbelief. Her brain was still unable to process the idea that this was what she looked like. No matter how many times she looked at herself, a mental double-take was necessary because her internalised self-image still lagged behind the reality.
Compounding this confusion, Harriet still struggled to comprehend that she had achieved all of this by virtue of her own hard work. A cynic might quibble that she had resources at her disposal far beyond those available to most gym-goers: she had Kane as her personal trainer, crafting Harriet bespoke workout routines with the benefit of her years of experience; and Harriet’s gym membership, not to mention all of her and food and supplements, were on expenses - but it was her drive, her discipline, her dedication that had allowed her to achieve this transformation.
She had not known that she had the capacity for such physical or such mental strength.
But unlike every other reflective surface she encountered, Harriet never stopped to check out her physique in this particular hallway mirror. It served a decorative purpose more than anything, too small and placed too high up on the wall to be much use for anything other than quickly making sure she didn’t have unwanted interdental spinach before leaving her flat.
And unlike every other mirror Harriet checked herself out in, because her view of herself was limited in it, and her body not at all visible, she was not impressed with what she saw.
Her hair, still mostly pulled back into a deteriorating messy bun - part of her no-fuss preparation for her workout - looked flat and greasy after her exertions in the gym. A smear of pink powder was stuck to her pale, grimey forehead where she had pushed some stray fringe out of her eyes as she tidied up the spilled pre-workout. Her hoody was rumpled and - she noticed now as she glanced down - stained with food.
Her fairy godmother might still just be able to get Harriet to the ball, but the barman wouldn’t have enough time to finish mixing her first cocktail before the clock started to strike twelve.
On any other day, Harriet would have been unaffected by her dishevelled appearance - it would probably have resulted in little more than a pause for a self-deprecating chuckle before she forgot all about it. Harriet had been perfectly content with her modest, if unremarkable, good looks ever since she was a teenager, by which early age she had even come to terms with the fact that her sister was prettier than her. Given how effortlessly superior her sister had been at most things, Harriet had had plenty of opportunities to calibrate her own self-worth accordingly.
She might not be looking her best right now, but it was nothing that a good, hot shower, a comb, and a change of clothes wouldn’t solve. Even then she might not be the most glamorous of women, but the compensation was the fact that she could easily bench-press most glamorous women, Hermės handbags and all.
But today was different: today Harriet had spent time in the presence of Florence, by some considerable measure the most beautiful woman she had ever met face-to-flawless face, and it was hard not to compare her own appearance with that of Florence and to feel self-conscious as a result.
Harriet had been so preoccupied with thinking about Dina that she hadn’t yet had time to consider her meeting with Florence, or wonder why it had had such a profound effect on her.
Perhaps it was because one rarely encountered women as perfectly pulchritudinous as Florence in day-to-day life. Instead, such women were to be found in the pages of glossy magazines, on the big screen at the local multiplex, or dating Leo DiCaprio - assuming, of course, that they were not a day older than 25. Actually meeting one of these elusive creatures was as discombobulating as encountering a unicorn.
Harriet couldn’t even console herself with the thought that she was Florence’s physical superior. Florence may have been as striking as a supermodel, but she was not scrawny and underfed like most of the women favoured by designers to parade up and down catwalks. Florence was every bit as buff as she was beautiful, both beauty and beast.
And yet, for all that she was now harbouring feelings of inadequacy, Harriet had to admit that this was not how Florence had made her feel during the time they had spent together that afternoon. It had been invigorating to have been the sole focus of Florence’s attention. As pathetic and needy as it sounded, Harriet found the notion that she was capable of fascinating such a beautiful woman made her feel in some way worthy; she certainly couldn’t deny that she had found the level of undivided attention she had received from Florence to be undeniably flattering.
There were no two ways about it: their time together had made Harriet feel good about herself, and full of anticipation and excitement.
Harriet closed her eyes, partly so she didn’t have to look at her reflection, but mostly to help savour the memory of her interaction with Florence…
After Dina had left the studio, Florence had turned to face her, and had slowly looked her up and down again with a confident, unwavering stare that made it clear that she considered herself to be in charge. Then Florence had started to walk a circuit around Harriet, nodding her head in appreciation.
Harriet had felt like a horse being inspected by its rider before an equestrian event.
As she stood in her flat with her eyes shut, Harriet found it very easy to picture Florence at a dressage competition. and then became distracted by the mental image of Florence wearing tight jodhpurs, leather boots, and carrying a riding crop…
Harriet shook her head and tried to focus. What had Florence said to her?
“Size, shape and symmetry. Splendid, simply splendid,” Florence had murmured, as she had stopped and stood directly behind Harriet. “I am not often so sibilant, but I must say I am very impressed. I can see why Chardonnay thought we should be introduced. You must be a very dedicated young lady.”
“Yes. I… I like lifting,” Harriet had blurted in response, unable to think of anything better to say, and then she had flinched as Florence had unexpectedly placed her hands at the uppermost extremes of her lats, before gently running her fingers down the tapering ypsiloid form of Harriet’s back, stopping only when her forefingers had hooked themselves in the waistband of Harriet’s shorts.
“And you say you’re looking for a personal trainer? You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve achieved all this by yourself?”
Before Harriet could answer, Florence had stepped forward and had pressed herself up against Harriet’s back.
Harriet recalled the feeling of pressure applied by Florence’s body to her own - it may have been gentle, but it was assertive, a subtle indication of the weight and power of Florence’s muscles. The old Harriet would have crumpled, or stumbled away; the new Harriet had stood her ground, and this pleased her.
Florence had rested her chin on the hard downward slope of Harriet’s right upper trapezius, from where she had smiled at Harriet in the mirrored wall.
“Where do you go from here? What are your goals? What do you want to achieve?” Florence had asked.
Harriet had struggled to answer, and not only because she had never been asked these questions before, but also because it was hard to formulate a response as she continued to process the sensation of Florence’s unexpected physical contact, Florence’s warm, solid body still pressing into her back.
In her hallway, with her eyes still closed, Harriet tilted her head to the left and touched her neck in the spot where she remembered the soft skin of Florence’s cheek tickling her. No one had been that intimately close to her since Amy had flung herself at her in the car park. Thinking about Amy came as a surprise to Harriet, who had until now successfully suppressed her memories of that night because recalling what had happened - or what had nearly happened - made her feel uncomfortable.
This scenario was totally different though: Amy had been a woman in a frenzy, whereas Florence had been calm, cool, and in complete control of both herself and the situation. It had been a business conversation, and nothing more. Right?
“I don’t know. I… just like lifting,” Harried had replied.
“So you said. Between you and me, darling, I think that much was manifestly obvious even before your lips formed those rather prosaic words,” Florence had said, with a wink. “Perhaps you can tell me why you like lifting so much?”
Harriet had made eye contact with Florence in the mirror, and then had felt inspired to bare her soul.
“I… I like challenging my body. I like knowing I’m in competition with myself. I like the fact that I’m rewarded for my hard work. I like my muscles, and I like knowing how much stronger I am now - not just how much stronger I am than I used to be, but how much stronger I am than other people. I like knowing I can lift more than other women, but I especially like knowing I can lift more than most men; and I like it even more when I stand next to them in the gym and watch the men as they realise that I’m stronger than them. I like standing in front of the mirror and flexing and watching my muscles bulging and I like seeing how much I’ve grown - and I’m tired of feeling guilty about it, and of pretending I don’t like it, because I do, more than almost anything.”
Florence had turned her head towards Harriet slightly as she had blurted out her confession, which had brought her lips closer to her ear. Florence had waited until she had fallen silent before whispering, “If you want, I can make you bigger.”
Harriet remembered how her mouth had gone dry, and the way her tongue had stuck to her palate. Even now, the memory of those words made her shiver.
“Bigger. Wider. Thicker. Leaner. Stronger,” Florence had continued as she lifted her hands to squeeze Harriet’s biceps, unignorable even at rest. “Assuming that’s what you want, of course? It’s what I specialise in - I transform women’s physiques to make people’s wildest dreams come true, and I could do the same with you. And you’d certainly be very popular.”
“Popular?” Harriet had asked, distractedly, desperately trying not to squirm with excitement at the thought of building even more muscle. Oh god, yes, she wanted more muscle. Her knees had grown weaker and weaker with excitement at each enticing comparative enunciated by Florence.
“With my followers, darling. They will simply adore you on Insta****.”
“Oh, of course,” Harriet had replied, almost dizzy at the thought of training in the gym alongside Florence, with hundreds and thousands of Insta**** users from around the world envying photos of her growing muscles.
“There’s just one problem: I only take on new clients at certain times in the year. No exceptions, not even for women as impressive as you. I run open auditions for anyone who wants to work with me, and I only agree to take on those women for whom we have a clear vision. Even though Chardonnay appears to have no need of my services for the time being, I’m afraid I’ll be too busy for any new clients for at least a few more weeks.”
“I can wait. I can audition,” Harriet had stammered, desperate not to lose this opportunity to work with Florence, and ready at that moment to make even a Faustian pact if it meant she could grow bigger.
“Oh good. I did hope you would say that. I think we can achieve wonderful things together. I’ll ask reception to give me your contact details and I’ll definitely be in touch. Splendid, simply splendid. Oh look, you’ve made me come over all sibilant again.”
Harriet opened her eyes and once again caught sight of herself in the small rattan-framed mirror. She no longer looked drab and frowzy; her eyes gleamed and a beatific smile lit up her face.
-
Not bad for a turn of events. Good luck on more.
-
When her alarm rang the following morning, Harriet jumped out of bed like a child on Christmas Day, full of excitement, her body tingling with excess energy. Naked, she dropped straight to the floor and began to work her way through a set of 100 push-ups with the precise regularity of a metronome.
When Harriet had first begun to work out regularly, the concept of the ‘mind-muscle connection’ had puzzled her. You raised a weight, and then you lowered it - what was there to think about? But over time, and with prompting from Kane, she had learnt to concentrate on the contraction of her muscles as she exercised, ensuring that her form was strict and her results were maximised.
This morning Harriet particularly savoured that ability to exclude all other thoughts and to focus on the sensation of her muscles straining against gravity. She relished the feeling of how thick her pecs were as they squeezed together when her arms straightened, her chest a dense palimpsest of muscle fibres built on top of muscle fibres. Not even the sensation of her nipples brushing against the carpet could distract her from the meditative exaltation of physical exertion.
When Harriet finished her push-ups, she made a point of heading straight to the shower without her customary posing routine. A few minutes later she emerged from the steamy bathroom in her dressing gown, wet hair slicked back, and headed straight to the hallway, where she stopped and stood once more in front of the same small mirror in which her reflection had displeased her so much last night.
Harriet wanted to know what she would see this morning, now she was in a better mood, and without her swollen muscles hogging the limelight. She wanted to forget the headliner topping the bill and focus on the support act.
This time, as Harriet looked into the mirror, she saw a strong, confident woman staring coolly back at her - and that strength and confidence would have been evident to anyone; there was no need to see Harriet’s remarkable body to reach that conclusion.
She had presence, an attitude, an aura.
As Harriet turned her head from side to side she was also interested to note some changes in her face that had previously passed her by. She had been so preoccupied by the remarkable evolution of her body over the last few months that she had missed the fact that her cheekbones and jawline were looking more defined now, and her skin had a healthy glow even if she remained as pale as Lady Agnew of Lochnaw.
She had certainly been too harsh in her estimation of herself the previous evening, she thought, when the harsh lighting had doubtless exacerbated her tired and sweaty appearance.
As Harriet stood admiring herself in the hallway, she became aware of a strange noise growing gradually louder in the corridor outside her front door: a scraping and a puffing that made it sound like Thomas the Tank Engine was slowly struggling home after an all-night bender.
The noise stopped and, after a pause of a minute or so, the doorbell rang. Harriet pulled a puzzled face at herself in the mirror and turned to open the door.
Outside she found Mrs Jones standing next to a large box, her face red and her hands on her hips, clearly struggling for breath.
“Hel… hello. The post… the postie left this for you… yesterday. I wanted it out of the way because I’ve got some men in… and it was blocking the hallway. It’s very heavy,” said Mrs Jones, delivering the last few words in an accusatory manner, as if she thought Harriet guilty of plotting to inconvenience her as much as possible.
“You’ve got some men in?” asked Harriet, puzzled.
“Some builders. I’m getting my bathroom and my kitchen redone. Did I mention that the box is very heavy?”
“Yes, you mentioned,” said Harriet, trying not to roll her eyes. “Couldn’t one of your big strong men have brought me the box?”
“No, they’re downstairs getting bits and bobs out of their van. It’s too heavy to pick up so I had to push that blasted thing all the way along the corridor all by myself! Well? Aren’t you going to say ‘thank you’?”
Harriet resisted the temptation to ask why Mrs Jones hadn’t come to ask her to retrieve the box rather than struggle to move it herself. Besides, she already knew the answer: to have done so would have precluded the opportunity for a good old moan.
“Oh, I’m sure it can’t be all that heavy,” said Harriet.
Mrs Jones snorted dismissively in response.
With a serene smile on her face, Harriet bent her knees and smoothly lowered herself until she was in a position to grasp either side of the box.
“Step back, please,” she instructed.
In one explosive, fluid movement, she stood up and raised the box high above her head as if she were snatching a barbell.
Mrs Jones gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.
Unbeknownst to Harriet, an exposed twist of parcel tape had stuck to her dressing gown cord as she had raised the box, and had pulled it undone.
Harriet’s dressing gown unfurled like parting curtains and Mrs Jones might as well have just borne witness to the door of the TARDIS opening, because what was hidden inside was much bigger than she had expected.
Nearly naked, Harriet stood before Mrs Jones, her body revealed to be almost as detailed as an écorché model in its muscularity, and just as shocking.
Harriet still had no idea she had become an inadvertent ecdysiast: she assumed Mrs Jones was stunned by her display of strength.
“Oh, you’re right: it is quite heavy. Not for me, though. What do you think? Impressed?” asked Harriet, innocently.
Mrs Jones mumbled something incoherent in reply.
“You have to admit, you weren’t expecting that, were you?” laughed Harriet, enjoying Mrs Jones' surprise.
“What… What is happening? Is that some kind of outfit?” Mrs Jones managed to ask, stepping further backwards, titubating with shock.
“What do you mean?”
“Is it some kind of muscle suit like you see in the movies?”
“What?”
Harriet looked down, and saw her bared pecs thrusting forward like ziggurats, nipples erect.
Harriet’s eyes briefly widened in shock, and then narrowed purposefully.
“No, Mrs Jones, this is not a muscle suit. This is all me. I’m sure you won’t approve, but it turns out that although I am a nice young lady, I do also like going to the gym and getting all sweaty and muscly. I like it very much. Now, unless you want to take a picture, stop gawping, come here, and re-tie my dressing gown cord for me.”
Mrs Jones stepped forward. Her hands trembled as she reached for the cord and pulled it tight. Harriet’s gown was secured at the waist, but the shawl collar still hung loose, leaving her chest exposed
“Pull the material tighter,” Harriet prompted, her arms still unwavering as she continued to hold the box high above her head.
Mrs Jones obliged, her hands still shaking as if she were in the grip of delirium tremens; as far as Mrs Jones was concerned, seeing pink elephants right now would have been no more shocking than the sight of Harriet’s body.
As Mrs Jones tugged on Harriet’s collar, there was a brief tinkling sound. Harriet felt a metallic coldness against her skin.
“Mrs Jones, is it possible that you have just dropped your keys inside my dressing gown? Honestly! If you wanted me to undress again so you could take another look, all you had to do was ask.”
“Oh! Sorry! Yes. I mean no. I mean, yes: I dropped my keys; but no, it wasn’t on purpose!”
“Well, you’ll just have to reach into my dressing gown and pull them out, won’t you?”
Mrs Jones’ face twitched.
“Could… couldn’t you just give a little shake so the keys will fall down onto the floor?”
“No, Mrs Jones, that won’t work and I’ll tell you why: I’ve caught your keys between my pecs. Reach in and remove them.”
Mrs Jones’ hand moved towards Harriet’s chest, the older woman staring at her own arm in disbelief like it was acting against her will and she had been struck down by Dr Strangelove Syndrome. Her nervous fingers tapped against Harriet’s collar bone, and then the top of her left pectoral. As far as Mrs Jones could tell, the difference in hardness between Harriet’s bone and Harriet's muscle was imperceptible.
“Lower.”
Mrs Jones’ fingers hesitantly followed the course of the well-defined furrow between Harriet’s pecs, eventually reaching the keys.
Sighing with relief, Mrs Jones fumbled for a grip and tried to pull the keys clear.
They didn’t move. Harriet was still flexing and the keys were trapped in a pectoral vice.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Harriet chided, “aren’t you going to say ‘thank you’ for keeping your keys safe for you?”
Mrs Jones stared wildly at Harriet, still pulling on her keys to no avail.
“I’m not getting tired, Mrs Jones, but I am getting bored. I need to take this box inside and then pick out a cute gym fit because right now I’ve got the feminine urge to go and pump some iron. Well?”
Mrs Jones stopped trying to pull the keys free.
“Thank you for catching my keys. Please can I have them back?”
“All you had to do was ask.”
-
Harriet left her flat and walked into the corridor for the second time that morning, but this was not an encore: she was no longer en déshabillé and there was no audience applauding wildly. Mrs Jones hadn’t hung around to shout ‘Brava!’, and not just because she thought that was a type of Fiat.
By now Harriet had changed and was more appropriately dressed for a trip to the gym. Finding the lift was out of order, she skipped down the stairs instead, although she may as well have been floating, because she felt as light as a feather.
After Harriet’s first appearance in the corridor that morning, and once she had allowed Mrs Jones to retrieve her keys, she had returned to the privacy of her own hallway, closed the door behind her, and carefully placed the package on a side table. She had calmly walked back to her bedroom, stopped to adjust a vase on the dresser, opened the blinds to let in some light, and then shrugged her dressing gown over her rounded, cucurbitaceous shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
As she had stood naked in front of the full-length mirror, Harriet slowly, thoughtfully, raised her hand to pinch herself, to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.
Harriet’s core had become sufficiently solid and defined that this had not been easy. Initially she hadn’t applied enough pressure and her forefinger ran between her obliques like a stylus slipping into the groove of a record; she was so lean that there was very little that was soft to squeeze between thumb and finger. A doctor with callipers trying to measure her body fat would have struggled just as much. In the end, Harriet really had to dig her digits into her side for the pinch to take effect through her carapace of muscle.
Having established that she was, indeed, awake, Harriet had continued to stand in front of the mirror, still and silent and contemplating this confirmation for a few moments, staring at her reflection impassively.
Suddenly, like a switch had been flipped, Harriet had started to jump up and down and scream like an excited schoolgirl who was celebrating her outstanding exam results, something she had not even allowed herself to do when she had actually been a schoolgirl, preferring instead to politely thank her teachers for their hard work and support over the years.
Then Harriet had turned and jumped full-length onto her bed. The frame had registered its objection to her weight with a cracking sound, but she hadn’t noticed it - she had been too busy burying her face in a pillow to muffle her excited laughter.
By the time an outwardly composed but still ecstatic Harriet reached the ground floor, she was aware that she was running late and bustled through the main door and into the car park. She walked the length of a badly-parked Transit van and continued on towards her car, passing a couple of men in conversation by the van’s open rear doors.
The wolf whistle was piercing and loud enough to echo off the nearby building. Harriet turned her head in surprise to look back over her shoulder and saw two men all staring at her, the older man removing his fingers from his mouth.
“Alright dahlin’? Goin’ to the gym? I can give you a workout in the back of the van instead, if you like? Go on! At least get ‘em out for the lads!”
He started to laugh and the younger man joined in, but reluctantly. Harriet’s pulse quickened and she swiftly looked away and made ready to step smartly towards her car, a place of safety, the instinctive and ingrained reaction of most women when catcalled on the street, before she stopped in her tracks.
She no longer belonged in the category of ‘most women’.
Harriet’s fists clenched. She could feel the material of her sleeves being pulled tight across her biceps. She turned around.
“There must be some mistake: I didn’t order coq au vin,” Harriet said. “Besides, from the look of you, I think I’m more likely to get filled up by an amuse-bouche.”
The joke was delivered in a tone that was polite but so chilly that you could sense icicles forming on Harriet’s words even if you couldn’t quite grasp the full meaning of them. She started to stalk back towards the men, staring fixedly at the whistler, much like an art historian closely examining Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.
They looked startled; the younger man stopped laughing entirely. He hadn’t expected such a cool, combative response and he looked to his leader for reassurance. His colleague forced a smile and closed one of the van doors to lean against, revealing the word ‘Plumbing’ and half a telephone number.
“Calm down, love - I was just jokin’ around. Actually, my mate here made me say it,” the older man, tubby and balding, replied, elbowing his partner in the ribs. “He thinks you’re well fit,”
“That would be an understatement,” said Harriet, through gritted teeth.
She was just a few steps away from them now, hands still clenched. She imagined how satisfying it would feel to bury her left fist deep into the fat slob’s stomach and then snap his head back with a right uppercut as he doubled over; the younger one was so skinny she could probably pick him up and throw him clear over the van. It would be over in an instant.
Harriet looked sternly at the young man - in all likelihood, still a teenager - who had been poked by his older colleague. He couldn’t even manage a show of bravado, unable to meet her eye, staring at his trainers like they were a portal to a dimension where he wasn’t apprentice to a boorish oaf.
Harriet took pity on him and forced herself to relax. Thinking more rationally, she realised that the teenager was entirely blameless and that she had been seconds away from physically attacking him and another grown man; she also realised that she had been utterly confident in her ability to take on, and crush, both of them. But this wasn’t worth picking a fight over. Perhaps a spot of reeducation was in order instead…
“Are you working for Mrs Jones? Because she’s waiting for you upstairs.”
“Yeah, well, she’ll be waitin’ for a while. Lift’s fucked.”
“There are stairs.”
“I’m not carryin’ this toilet up four flights of stairs!”
“Interesting. You won’t, or you can’t?”
“You what?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a big, strong man? So why are you telling me you’re not able to carry that up a few stairs?”
“You’re fuckin’ kiddin’, ain’tcha? With the cistern, that’s 120 pounds, that is. I’m not luggin’ that up to the fifth floor”
“Oh, 120 pounds? Is that all?”
Harriet flashed a wink at the young man, who had cheered up considerably as he watched his mate so quickly discomfited - and by a woman, no less.
“And, and it’s a weird fuckin’ shape. It’s awkward to carry, that is.”
He was scrabbling for excuses, and they all knew it.
“Never send a man to do a woman’s job. I believe some mention was made of ‘getting them out for the lads’?”
“Eh?”
“I doubt it's what you had in mind, but I’m happy to oblige.”
Harriet unzipped her hoody and theatrically pulled back each sleeve in turn to reveal arms which would have shamed a stevedore. Just like with her dressing gown, it took some tugging to get the material over her powerful shoulders. She balled up the hoodie and tossed it into the back of the van, leaving only a sports bra covering her upper body. The two men goggled at her, struck dumb by the unexpected mass of beef revealed to them.
Harriet rolled her neck like Antonio Banderas in Desperado preparing for a shootout.
“You: go ahead to open the doors; and you: stay behind me to make sure anyone else on the stairs keeps a safe distance,” ordered Harriet, pointing first at the older man, and then at his younger companion.
“Wait, what?”
Harriet reached into the van and wrapped her arms around the base of the toilet.
“Oi, what you doin’? Leave it - you’ll only fuckin’ drop it!”
With a small grunt for dramatic effect, Harriet hoisted the toilet into the air.
“Off we go, boys. Do try to keep up.”
Without waiting, Harriet started to retrace her route back across the car park. Behind her she could hear a muffled argument. As she approached the main door, the pudgy plumber overtook her, already out of breath after a brief dash to catch her up, and pulled the door open.
Harriet didn’t break her stride as she entered the building, nor as she began to ascend the stairs. She wanted to keep up an impressively unrelenting pace and focussed on keeping her breathing steady, trusting in the power of her legs to keep pushing herself, and her load, upwards.
Right foot up, and: push.
In her mind, Harriet kept telling herself that no matter how tough this got, it could never be as bad as Bulgarian split squats.
Left foot up, and: push.
Bulgarian split squats were the absolute worst.
Right foot up, and: push.
As she approached the first floor, the fat man struggled to accelerate past her on the stairs, his beer belly apparently proving more of an impediment to him than an unwieldy 120 pound toilet was to her.
Left foot up, and: push.
By the time Harriet reached the second floor, her legs were beginning to burn. She didn’t worry about it: the arrival of lactic acid during a workout was as familiar a feeling as hunger these days, and she knew how to fight through the fatigue. To help keep her motivated she closed her eyes and imagined that Kane was walking alongside her, haranguing her.
Right foot up, and: push.
On the third floor, Harriet had to briefly pause to readjust her grip on the toilet; she was starting to get sweaty and the porcelain had a slippery surface. She made the adjustments as quickly as she could, determined not to put the toilet down before she reached her destination.
Left foot up, and: push.
As she passed the fourth floor, Harriet could feel the drops of sweat rolling down her back. She had begun to feel slightly dizzy, but she fought to keep up her steady pace. She closed her eyes to conjure up the image of her personal trainer again, and was surprised to find herself imagining not Kane, but Florence walking alongside her, brandishing a riding crop. She hesitated and misplaced her foot, almost slipping. She opened her eyes
Careful now. Right foot up, and: push.
Approaching the fifth floor, Harriet’s legs began to wobble. She closed her eyes again and once more was greeted with a vision of Florence, pursing her lips and shaking her head; the hallucination grasped the riding crop in both hands and bent it, testing its flexibility while she tutted. Whatever am I going to do with you, you naughty girl? she seemed to say.
“Go on! Nearly there! You can do it!” came a voice of encouragement from the young man a few steps below her, who had hitherto been silently enjoying the spectacular view.
Nearly there. Left foot up, and: push.
Harriet reached the fifth floor landing. The rotund, puffing man standing ahead of her filled her line of sight and intruded into the last vestiges of her fantasy - it was like hoping to see Lady Chatterley but being greeted by Mellors instead.
With her destination now in sight, Harriet powered on past the plumber, soon arriving at Mrs Jones’ front door, where she carefully placed the toilet down on the floor. Both men were standing behind her and she could feel their eyes boring into her. Without turning round, she stretched extravagantly, the muscles in her back rippling slowly like a flow of lava.
Harriet was tempted to continue her demonstration with some even more serious flexing, but was interrupted by the sound of her mobile ringing in the pocket of her jogging bottoms. The screen showed an unknown number. She shrugged, purely for the men’s benefit - knowing full well how it would make her traps tower - and answered the call.
“Harriet, darling, it’s Florence. I was wondering if you could do me a teensy-weensy favour?”
“Yes, of course! No problem!”
“But you silly thing - you don’t even know what I’m going to ask you yet!”
-
Wow, how have I only just discoverd this story?!!
This is truly incredible muscle fiction. The standard of writing is excellent, the slow development of story and character is really impressive. The scenarios you are creating and the descriptions of strength and muscle are fantastic. Harriet is such a fascinating and multi-layered character I can't wait to see what happens next! :bravo:
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This is such an amazing story, are we close to an update? :thanks:
-
Thanks for the kind words!
I've got the next few chapters mapped out in my head, but I need to find time to get them down on the page. I started a new job in November last year and it's been keeping me busy - as I've had less time to write, I've concentrated on adding short chapters to 'My Type of Woman' as they're quicker to produce.
I hope things should become quieter later this month, at which point I'll have some more free time to update both 'Undercover' and 'Body Swap'.
So for the moment I'll keep things spoiler-free and just say: watch this space!
-
It was a distrait Harriet who drove into town that morning, skittish and not a little rueful. Her triumphant mood had not lasted long. Once she had proudly strutted past the two plumbers - with an ostensibly polite ‘You’re welcome’ that she had nonetheless intended to sting like an insult - and skipped back down the stairs, she had not even returned to the ground floor before her excitement had dissipated and she had started to regret the choice she had made.
Not, that is, her decision to show off how much stronger she was than the plumber; no, he had been thoroughly deserving of his humiliation - rather, her decision to say ‘Yes’ to Florence.
By the time she was sitting in her car, she was assailed by further doubts. Why had she said ‘Yes’ so emphatically? ‘A teensy-weensy favour’? It was anything but. Just thinking about what would be required of her gave her stage fright! She should at least have said that she would think it over, or given some other non-committal response which would have allowed her the option of gracefully declining at a later date. But no. She really hadn’t been thinking clearly. She must have been too exhilarated by her physical domination of that chauvinist pig. Perhaps she had even been a little light-headed by the time she had climbed to the fifth floor while carrying all that weight. Goodness knows she had been hallucinating some very unexpected things by the time she had reached Mrs Jones’ front door.
But despite all these misgivings, Harriet realised that she was still gratified that Florence had thought of her as someone reliable whom she could ask for help, in spite of their very recent acquaintance.
And, Harriet wondered, even if she had wanted to say ‘No’ outright to Florence, would she have been able to?
When Harriet had first met Florence, it had been immediately obvious that she was a woman with a forceful personality; Harriet could easily imagine that it would be difficult to deny her anything she wanted and that she was someone who would be quick to make her displeasure clear. But Florence hadn’t bullied Harriet into saying yes. She hadn’t needed to. When Florence spoke to you she had a way of making you feel like you had become the cynosure of her eye. The rest of the world ceased to exist. Unprepared and overcome, Harriet had been ensorcelled by Florence’s luminous radiance.
It was a magic of sorts and it had meant that Harriet had wanted to please Florence so badly that she hadn’t vacillated or reluctantly acquiesced; she had eagerly accepted without a second thought. She had told Florence it would be no trouble at all; she had professed herself delighted to be able to help.
How could she tell Florence she had changed her mind now? She didn’t want to risk going down in Florence’s estimation; it was important to her that Florence felt she could be relied upon. Besides, there was the secondary consideration that this could well be the chance to cement her friendship with a Peyton-Maxwell, the very reason why Beck had sent her to Wimbourne Hall in the first place.
Harriet mentally corrected herself: this wasn’t a secondary consideration; this was the primary reason for her mission.
That first meeting with Beck felt like an age ago now - another era, almost; enough time had passed for Harriet to have evolved into something new, a different form entirely. Survival of the fittest, thought Harriet, catching sight of the corded muscle in her forearms as she turned the steering wheel.
Harriet pulled into an expensive - and nearly always empty - short stay car park on the edge of the town centre. She made a point of leaving her car here no more than once a week. From here she would walk in the opposite direction of the high street and, she reassured herself, she would also have some time to think things over. She pulled the release lever to move her seat back, the better to slide her thick thighs out from under the steering wheel and to allow her to manoeuvre the breadth of her body through the small car door.
The warmth of the morning sun on her bare skin had a pleasant, calming effect on Harriet and she relaxed as she walked round the car and opened the boot to grab her bag and hoodie. Her tranquillity was short-lived however, spoiled by the realisation that she hadn’t retrieved the latter from the back of the plumber’s van. She cursed and half-heartedly began a search for an alternative.
It was the work of a minute to establish beyond doubt that the only other option was her lime green kag in a bag.
That morning Harriet had planned to make the most of the balmy day by heading down the quiet, tree-lined residential streets that led to the boomerang-shaped public park that bordered the north-west edge of town; then she would follow the overgrown dog-leg footpath that ran from one end of the park to the other, before doubling back down a serpentine alleyway and skirting round the outside of a derelict council building; from there she would cut through the loading bay and eventually reach her destination: a fire escape door, hidden around a corner at the edge of the station garage.
While no one had really expected Harriet to be followed, Beck had been very clear that she couldn’t risk being seen regularly visiting the police station, and so she had walked a variation of this meandering route five times each week for the many months she had been undercover.
It had been a simple but effective compromise to ensure that Harriet could meet Kane for her daily training sessions. At first Harriet had found this low-level subterfuge exciting, but it had quickly become obvious that no one was at all interested in the anonymous woman in her shapeless, nondescript clothes walking around town.
She was entirely indistinguishable from ary other person going about their daily business, even if she was pretending that she was a spy in Cold War Berlin, and the process had become sufficiently routine that Harriet could automatically vary the path she took each day without much thought and without any concern about being noticed.
As a plan, it relied entirely on Harriet remaining inconspicuous; the circumspect approach would be pointless if she were to draw a lot of attention to herself.
Normally Harriet excelled at being unobtrusive, even when she didn’t necessarily want to be. Over the years she had grown accustomed to being overshadowed by her taller, prettier, more talented sister, and to sitting demurely to one side, untroubled by the fascinated relatives or the solicitous tutors who lavished her sibling with attention. As a teenager, unlike her peers, she had never courted or received boys’ attention; other girls were always more willing to flirt or to wear shorter-than-regulation skirts. At school, she had been thought of by her teachers as hard-working and self-sufficient at best. At university, she had always met her academic obligations, but had largely blended into the crowd; she had also been an unremarkable hockey player, a teammate who could be relied upon to make up the numbers and warm the bench.
Harriet was used to being underestimated.
And today, in baggy clothes and from a distance, Harriet could still pass for unexceptional, a fausse maigre, albeit of the most astonishing type. A more observant passerby might note a certain steely resolve about her, an understated confidence that hinted there was more to her than met the eye, but nothing overtly unusual, nothing that would make Harriet difficult to ignore or to forget.
Harriet walking around town in a sports bra was another matter entirely, her powerful body revealed to onlookers, her torso so much wider and thicker than they would expect, or than most would have even believed achievable, her muscles like the hawsers of an Atlantic liner, her smooth skin punctuated by reticulated patterns of veins.
Harriet’s body was a deliberate act, a statement that she was different.
No one, no matter how naive, could imagine that Harriet had come to look like this by accident; she had made a commitment to become as muscular as possible, that much was self-evident. Just as it was impossible to view a cathedral without appreciating the labour of the many stonemasons required to build it, you could not look at Harriet’s body, once willowy but now buttressed with precisely hewn muscles, and fail to recognise that it must have taken a great deal of time and effort and determination to craft its formidable physicality.
Harriet took up space, and she did so unashamedly, unequivocally, defiantly. Her strength was evident even in repose, and not just her strength: Harriet looked purposeful, she looked poised, she looked dangerous.
It was impossible to underestimate her now.
Harriet’s was no longer a body you could easily ignore. Harriet’s was no longer a body you could easily forget.
Harriet’s was a body you went home and mentioned in awed conversation to your spouse, or animatedly discussed with friends in the pub, or enviously gossipped about with your colleagues around the office watercooler.
Harriet’s body was an event, a close encounter, an anecdote waiting to be shared.
Not that Harriet wanted to admit it, at least not if the alternative was to walk across town wearing a garish waterproof on a glorious sunny morning, the pristine blue sky untroubled by a single cloud.
Her muscles were not that unusual, she told herself; it wasn’t as if she was a professional bodybuilder, or anything - their lives revolved around working out in the gym and dieting and… Well, it wasn’t like it was unusual for a woman to take fitness and strength-training seriously these days. Plenty of women worked out - Insta**** gave the impression the world was full of hard-bodied gym bunnies proudly reminding everyone that #strongisthenewsexy or that they were 'muscle mommies'.
She refused to believe that simply walking around in a sports bra would make her more eye-catching than dressing like she was preparing for a monsoon while wearing some budget Mike Wazowski cosplay.
It wasn’t as if when she wore a sports bra in the gym that everyone stared at her… Well, maybe they did, but the point was she wanted people to stare at her in the gym; it was part of the plan.
But people wouldn’t stare at her otherwise, surely?
Harriet started to close the boot, hesitated for a second, and then stuffed the cagoule in her bag, just in case.
—
Half an hour later, Kane opened the fire escape door and looked from Harriet’s face of thunder to the boundless blue sky.
“Nice coat. Has it been stoatin’ down, aye?”
-
Congratulations! Your style is elegantly ironic and the plot of your stories avoids the mundane.
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I've been waiting for an update to this fantastic story and this was a real scene setter, can't wait to read what happens next, and if the sister will be introduced at some point :bravo:
-
The sweat coursed down Harriet’s body like snowmelt from a mountain range in spring. Rivulets ran down the undulant muscles in her back and coursed along the sharply-defined declivities of her abs. Her workout had been long and it had been draining, but she remained in perpetual motion nonetheless, dancing forwards then back, rocking from one foot to the other, and the perspiration dripped and sprayed from her body with every dart and sway, every feint, every lunge, but especially with each aggressive thrust, each vigorous swing of her arm, each reverberative hammer blow of a punch.
Moist prints on the grubby floor left an ephemeral record of her footwork, their traces quickly scuffed and spoiled with each new sally. Those that remained extant told the story of quick, certain movements and a choreography of controlled violence.
Kane loomed at the side of the room, stern and solid as an Easter Island statue, watching Harriet closely as she threw a final flurry of punches, the thwacks of leather on tarpaulin in counterpoint to the guttural exclamations with which Harriet accompanied her blows.
Finally spent, Harriet slumped forwards, gloved hands resting awkwardly on her knees, her body exhausted but her mind comparatively soothed and her frustration beginning to ebb. She glanced briefly at Kane, knowing better by now than to expect any sign of approval, but still hoping that her application and, yes, her prowess might be acknowledged; once upon a time she would only have been able to move this heavy bag by giving it a full-body push, but now with the power and the placement of her punches the bag was positively terpsichorean. In return for its punishment, Harriet’s inanimate dance partner had exorcised a few of her demons.
But not all of them.
Even before she had reached the park that morning, Harriet had started to realise that not wearing her cagoule had been a mistake. An elderly gentleman wearing a garish MCC tie, his hands full with a copy of The Telegraph and a hamper, had nonetheless paused to fumble with his phone and take a photo of her as she had walked past; a postman pushing his buggy along the pavement had eyed her up with all the subtlety of Mr Magoo trying to read some small print; and the driver of a passing van had repeatedly honked its horn at her as he drove by, his companion leaning out of the window to shout something incomprehensible but doubtless lewd.
Harriet looked at the implacable Kane again. It was difficult to feel even moderately muscular when in the presence of this gigantic woman, let alone sufficiently muscular to justify being gawped at on the street like you were a Victorian side-show freak, but Harriet could not dispute the evidence of her walk to the station. The vox populi was clear: she may not be the Elephant Man, but she was an elephantine woman.
Nah, bruv, that bitch is butters; she is fully hench. The words of the teenagers hanging around by the park entrance still played on her mind. She could rip your dick off, bruv. Had they known she could hear them? Would they have cared that she had?
As she caught her breath in the gym, Harriet still felt humiliated. But even worse was the feeling of regret. The feeling of inaction. She felt stultified. She had shown herself how satisfying it could feel to take retaliatory action in the face of insults or abuse, and she had wanted to say, or - even better - do, something in response to each and every arsehole to have belittled her but, intent on keeping a low profile, she had swallowed her pride and kept on walking.
In the park, she had quickly scuttled behind a tree and pulled on the ugly waterproof to hide her body. As she had continued her walk, the passersby she had subsequently encountered on that fine, sunny morning had certainly given her some inquisitive looks as a result of her choice of outfit, but they had not felt entitled to pass comment on her. Harriet felt sure everyone she had passed had quickly forgotten her.
Apparently, while a woman choosing to dress differently may have been odd, evidently a quirky dress-sense was both acceptable and also common enough to prove only briefly diverting; it was expected behaviour. Women were supposed to be slaves to the bizarre and arbitrary vagaries of fashion, after all. But if a woman chose to rebel against body standards, against being skinny and weak, to some men she obviously became a punchline, an abomination - even a threat.
As Harriet had continued her walk to the station, she had felt ashamed. She had been sexualised and demeaned, insulted for the crime of being a strong woman - but the real source of her frustration was that she had not had the pleasure of showing the voyeurs and the hecklers that she was capable of fighting back. Unlike earlier that morning, she had not made a scene. It had doubtless been the right thing to do, at least for the mission, but she found no satisfaction in her self-restraint, only disempowerment.
The French talk of l’esprit de l'escalier, the Germans of Treppenwitz. Harriet didn’t regret thinking of a witty rejoinder too late: she regretted not getting mediaeval on someone’s arse. Never mind a belated riposte; she lamented the fists left unthrown. She stood up straight and scowled at the punchbag: it had done its duty but it had been a poor excuse for an opponent and undeserving of her retributive anger.
“So who ripped yer knittin’? You’ve been pure growlin’ all morning.”
Kane’s words interrupted Harriet’s psychological self-flagellation.
“What? Oh. Oh, no, it’s nothing.”
“Aye? Because ye look scunnered.”
“No, it’s really…” Harriet began, and then paused, hit by a flash of inspiration. She could think of no one more deserving, nothing more satisfying. “Perhaps I can ask you for a favour?”
“Aye.”
“Actually, no. Never mind. It was a bad idea.”
“Ye sure?”
Harriet hesitated, and then she caught sight of herself in the mirror. The sheen of sweat made the muscles in her upper body glisten; the anabolic lighting only served to highlight her impressive size and definition. Her marled grey leggings clung to her tightly. Like many women, Harriet had enjoyed how the right pair of leggings could have a flattering effect on your body, lifting here and shaping there, streamlining your frame, making you look tighter and more athletic. At least, that was once the case: as she watched her reflection now she could see how her thighs fought back against their imprisonment; her solid muscle shaped her clothing, rather than the other way round. And even beneath the resilient material, the separation in her quads was visible like cracks in a limestone pavement.
Maybe it was a bad idea, but there was only one way to find out. She was ready to take that risk.
“Well, what would you say if, erm, unofficially, I asked you to look up a number plate for me and…” Harriet’s voice died away in the face of Kane’s inscrutable stare.
“Aye, I could do that. Unofficially, I could do that.”
“Really?” asked Harriet, trying not to look surprised at how casual Kane had been about her request.
“Aye, nae bother.”
“So if I gave you a number plate, you could just… find out who the owner of the car is for me, and where they live?”
“Easy. Just one thing ye’ve got to do first.”
“Oh?” Harriet tried to look calm, but she was worried that Kane would want to be told more. Why this number plate? Why did she want to know where the driver lived? What did she intend to do with this information?
“Against the wall; hands on yer heid.”
For a second, Harriet failed to comprehend Kane’s meaning and thought she was being arrested, until she saw Kane reaching towards her own pair of boxing gloves.
“First ye’ve got to survive this conditioning drill. Twenty, no, thirty jabs to the stomach. Then some sparring. Get through that and we can talk business.”
“I suppose you’re the boss,” said Harriet, relieved, before exclaiming: “Oh, wait!”
Harriet hesitated, unwilling to divulge the promise she had made to Florence. “Could you not punch me in the face, please? I’ve got an… event to attend.”
For the first time that day, Kane smiled.
“I cannae promise that. Just dinnae let me hit you. Simple as.”
-
Love it! Please continue :bravo:
-
Despite the pain, Harriet couldn’t help but smile at her ridiculous appearance as she looked at her reflection in the mirror.
Scattered around her feet like she was surveying the results of a trolley dash through a jumble sale were the upended bags of clothing she had retrieved from the hallway cupboard and brought through to the bedroom.
Searching through them for something suitable to wear - with a sense of futility which grew with every passing minute - she had been struck by how all these formal clothes that she had once worn nearly every day now looked, felt - and, indeed, smelt - unfamiliar.
As she had unfolded blouses, skirts and trousers, shaking out creases and stroking rumpled material flat, she had looked anew at her old clothes.
They were smart, yes, and she supposed they were practical up to a point, but they were drab and conformist, they were restrictive, they were designed for passivity, for inertia.
They didn't stretch, or support, or wick. They weren’t hard-wearing. In a sense, they limited the woman who put them on, discouraging her from action. You couldn’t be dynamic in these clothes; you couldn’t do anything except look acceptably and inoffensively feminine.
The clothes were soft and delicate and sedate, just like the unremarkable women they were supposed to adorn.
Harriet’s spirit had rebelled at the very sight of them.
She had tried and failed to imagine a trouser suit wrapped around her body like cling film, her muscles coiled, writhing and straining underneath the material, perspiration patches staining her underarms, back and crotch, grunting brutishly as she squatted three times her bodyweight.
And so she was delighted when she realised that wearing these clothes was entirely out of the question anyway.
No longer could she be compelled to vesti la giubba: it was a physical impossibility…
Inserting her right arm into the sleeve of a blouse, she had found that her forearm was too thick to pass through the armhole.
A pair of tapered-fit trousers had bunched around her knees, unable to be pulled past the promontories of muscle directly above them, let alone encompass the intimidating circumference of her quads at their thickest.
A pencil skirt had fared a little better by virtue of its long zip which allowed more room for manoeuvre, but even that was defeated by the size of her glutes. She had hopped and wriggled just as she had to in order to squeeze into her leggings, all to no avail. Eventually she had accidentally torn the skirt in half when she had become impatient and taken a big step forward to grab another bag of clothes.
The first pair of tights she had tried on had laddered when she had accidentally snagged them on her jutting calf; the second pair she had ripped deliberately in a spirit of investigation, her muscle shearing through the sheer material as she repeated her movements to try to establish whether it had been a one-off.
And now the process of elimination meant she stood wearing a bizarre combination: a pair of frilly granny pants that made those worn by Bridget Jones look like skimpy lingerie in comparison; and a strapless bra that had been stretched so tight around her chest and back that it looked like a tourniquet.
She considered flexing to put the bra out of its misery and pull it apart, but her nipples were already tightly pinched under the twisted, distorted material and she was worried the pressure would only get worse before it got better.
Then again, she had only been able to get the bra into position by hooking it up around her waist, her torso’s narrowest point, where it had sat like a novelty cummerbund. The lace trim had disappeared into the ridges between her abs, the muscles craggy as an importuous coastline; from there she had slowly rolled the bra up her body.
Rolling it back down would probably be marginally less painful but significantly less fun than flexing out of it, and it wasn’t like it was remotely worth keeping, anyway.
She leaned forward slightly, extended her arms until they were in a cruciform position and then arced her fists forwards and together as if she were doing cable flies. She bit her lip and winced as the band was pulled tighter, her pecs swelling and rising like she was watching fast-forwarded footage of two loaves of bread left to prove in a warm room.
The hooks didn’t last long. Fatigued and distorted, they suddenly slipped out of their corresponding eyes and the bra catapulted off to Harriet’s left with a satisfying twang.
Harriet gently rubbed her chafed nipples and sighed. A shopping trip was in order.
Ten minutes later, she had pulled on a more comfortable sports bra, a pair of jogging bottoms and a hoodie, climbed into her car and set off for the shopping centre.
—
Harriet started walking across the car park but, after fifty yards or so, she stopped abruptly.
There was no historical marker or blue plaque visible, but she recognised this place: it was both a battleground and a site of great significance, to her if no one else.
She had hauled herself back to her feet on that bent fencing and she had tripped and stumbled on the edge of that distinctive pothole as she had staggered back to her car.
This was where she had been punched to the ground.
She stared blankly at the nondescript patch of tarmac.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, Kane had said to her recently.
Harriet had thought the sergeant an unlikely aphorist at the time and so she had Googled those words when she had got home; if anything, she had been even more surprised to find out that Mike Tyson had said them, presumably between nibbling on mouthfuls of ear.
Brillat-Savarin, Confucius, Wilde, Tyson. Spot the odd one out. Would you like to phone a friend?
Not that Mike Tyson was wrong. Harriet remembered how she had been totally incapacitated by the crippling explosion of pain as the fist had connected with her face.
Her chest tightened and her breaths became shallower.
She remembered how helpless she had felt, how her legs had crumpled beneath her; she remembered her disgust as his spit had covered her face and her fear, her all-consuming fear.
She blinked rapidly and forced herself to start taking big, slow, calming breaths, to tell herself that she was in control.
Never again, she thought. Never again.
She continued her walk towards the shopping centre, but hesitated as a thought struck her.
Nodding decisively, she unzipped her hoodie to reveal the sports bra she had changed back into before leaving her flat, and tied the hoodie around her waist.
Heads turned as Harriet walked through the entrance and into the building. A susurration of whispering voices followed her progress until, as she passed the crowded food hall, she heard an excited child’s voice cry out.
“Mummy, look, it’s the muscle lady! Hello, Miss Muscle Lady!”
Harriet looked to her right and saw Katy and her mother sitting at a nearby table. Katy was waving enthusiastically; her mother looked embarrassed but, after a second’s pause, shyly joined in with her daughter.
Harriet waved back and, having acknowledged their greeting, felt obliged to go and say hello. She headed towards them, navigating carefully between the chairs and tables scattered haphazardly across the floor.
Now Harriet did start to feel self-conscious: it was hard not to when she was in such close proximity to the people staring up at her from their seats that her bare arms were brushing against people’s exposed backs and shoulders. She could see the surprise - or worse, disgust - on their faces as she edged past them.
She found herself worrying about being too large and clumsy to manoeuvre through this tight space and tried desperately to avoid looking like a bull in a china shop. Then she remembered all the agility and footwork drills Kane forced her to run through and relaxed: as big as she was, her balance had never been better.
“Well, this is a coincidence!” said the mother, greeting Harriet with a brittle smile and half-rising from her chair, looking as if she were about to bow, as Harriet reached their table.
“Yes, it is a coincidence,” Katy chimed in, “because we’ve been coming here every Thursday evening since we met you that time and we always wait to see you but we never do.”
Katy’s mother sunk back into her seat, her smile looking even more fixed than it had done initially.
“Katy, you know we come here every Thursday so you can meet your cousin,” she said hurriedly to her daughter. “Remember? So you can go to the cinema together and I can do some shopping in peace and quiet.”
The last three words were gently but unmistakably stressed.
“But you told me to look out for the muscle lady and let you-”
“Hush now, Katy. Finish your drink like a good girl.”
Katy resumed sucking on her straw, looking happily between Harriet and her mother and swinging her legs from her chair in a carefree manner.
Harriet stood awkwardly by the table, unsure if she should limit herself to exchanging some brief pleasantries before moving on, or sit down. She prepared to excuse herself; the woman’s smile was forced and she was rigid in her seat. She obviously didn’t want Harriet to hang around.
“Please, won’t you join us?” the woman asked.
“Of course,” said Harriet quickly, taken by surprise not only by the offer but also by the speed with which she accepted it.
Harriet extended her arm to reach for a spare chair at the adjacent table.
“Look, mummy, her muscle looks just like a velociraptor’s claw!” said Katy, pointing at Harriet’s tricep as she grabbed the chair.
“I’m sorry,” the mother said to Harriet, “she gets over excited easily. She’s learning about dinosaurs in school at the moment so her daddy let her watch Jurassic Park, even though I said it was too scary for her.”
“That’s okay,” replied Harriet, sitting down and grinning at Katy. “I’d never really thought of the similarity before. That’s a very good comparison. But I hope I’m not as scary as a velociraptor?”
“No, you’re much bigger than a real velociraptor but you’re a nice muscle lady. Mummy thinks so, too. Mummy’s been lifting weights because she wants muscles like you.”
“Katy, I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear about that! Stop bothering her!”
“Go on, mummy, show her your muscles.” Katy tapped insistently on Harriet’s hand to ensure she had her attention. “Mummy’s muscles are much bigger than they used to be. They’re not nearly as big as yours though. And daddy doesn’t like them, so he doesn’t want mummy’s muscles to get bigger.”
“Ssshh, Katy!”
Harriet studied the mother’s face. The woman looked embarrassed, although there was a defiant gleam in her eye now and her jaw was set resolutely. Harriet glanced down at the woman’s covered arms - she was wearing a buttoned up white blazer over a black top - but it was impossible to tell if Katy was telling the truth.
As Harriet’s eyes lingered on the woman’s arms she heard a voice say I would love to see you flex your biceps; I bet they look great.
It slowly dawned on Harriet that those words had been spoken in a voice that sounded surprisingly like her own.
For a moment, Harriet wondered if it had just been her inner monologue but, unless the woman was a mind reader, Harriet must have spoken out loud because a response was quickly forthcoming.
“Really? No, you’re just being nice… Unless… Really?” said the woman, nervously.
“No, I mean it,” said Harriet, trying to collect herself. “You’re… you’re a very stylish woman, but nothing looks as good on a muscle as a woman… I mean, nothing looks as good on a woman as muscle. I think you’re… erm… I think muscle on a woman is beautiful…”
Harriet’s voice tailed off, and she cringed at the way she had stumbled over what had been intended as a simple compliment. She was babbling. This woman must think she was an idiot. Harriet looked for the escalators, ready to gesture towards them, make her excuses, and leave.
Harriet turned back to see the woman slowly tucking a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear. Odd, thought Harriet, because her hair had been so flawless just a moment earlier. They shared the briefest flash of eye contact before the woman looked back down at the table, still playing with her hair.
“I think muscle on a woman is beautiful, too,” she replied quietly.
“Show her, mummy, show her!” said Katy, clapping her hands in excitement.
“Yes. Please? I would love to see you flex.”
The blonde looked back up, a genuine smile slowly spreading across her face; she looked a different woman now, revivified by Harriet’s request like a plant by water.
“Really?”
“Definitely.”
The woman slipped off her blazer. Underneath it she wore a sleeveless silk blouse, elegant and expensive-looking, entirely in keeping with what little Harriet knew about her.
But Harriet barely noticed that: as the blonde planted her right elbow on the table, the silver chain bracelet on her wrist gently tinkling against her Apple Watch, Harriet’s attention was immediately drawn to the woman’s shoulders, no longer slender to the point of being boney, but thicker and rounder than she remembered.
With one quick movement, the woman flexed her arm. As she looked down at the surprising expansion of her own muscle, her eyes sparkled with pleasure and the smile became positively radiant.
Harriet, prepared to politely feign admiration, found no need for dishonesty.
“Oh wow, that is… that is seriously impressive. I wasn’t expecting that. That’s amazing! And your delts are looking pumped, too!”
“Thank you,” said the blonde, modestly. “If I’m being honest, I had no idea building muscle was such hard work!”
“Well, if I’m being honest, I thought you were the one of those women who probably did pilates and wouldn’t like to even break a sweat in a class… I mean, you look so glamorous, and your hair’s so perfect and everything, that I couldn’t really picture you-”
“Pumping iron?” The blonde laughed. “It came as a shock to me too, but you… I felt inspired to start… And once I saw the results and the way my body responded… I just wanted more and more… It’s definitely been nice to be able to eat as much as I want though. I’ve been ravenous recently.”
They both fell silent, staring at the conic peak of her flexed bicep.
“Can I feel it, mummy?” piped up Katy. “I promise I won’t tell daddy that it’s got bigger since the last time.”
“Okay, Katy, but only if you promise.”
The blonde’s smile had vanished again. She saw Harriet’s inquisitive look and sighed.
“My husband… he’s very traditional. He was very surprised when I started lifting weights. He likes to think he knows what’s best for my health because he’s a surgeon, even though he’s just a cosmetic surgeon. He always says I’m a walking advert for his business, that I’m what women want to look like.”
“He always says mummy needs to make sure she stays slim and beautiful.”
Harriet felt herself getting cross on the woman’s behalf.
“For the record,” the woman continued, “I never did like breaking a sweat in my pilates class, but that’s because I never liked pilates, full stop. My husband was the one who signed me up. When he found out I’d hired a personal trainer at the gym instead and started weight training and eating to build some muscle, well, we had a disagreement…”
“When he came back from his last trip he said mummy had to stop because he didn’t want her to have more muscles than him.”
Harriet rolled her eyes and snorted.
“You don’t know him,” said the blonde. “He means well. Even though he’s away travelling a lot, he’s always checking in and video calling me at all times of the day to make sure we’re okay. I just wish he knew how happy lifting weights and gaining muscle made me. I’ve never felt better. I didn’t know how amazing-”
“Being strong felt?” said Harriet, seeing her own opportunity to finish a sentence and taking it.
“Exactly! But look who I’m talking to - you’re the single most amazing woman I’ve ever seen. You’ve got muscles on your muscles!”
“Yeah, it’s your turn to flex now, muscle lady!” said Katy.
“Definitely,” said her mother. “And I don’t think I’m the only one who’s put on muscle since we last met. You look incredible.”
Happy enough to spend time alone flexing, Harriet now felt lost for words, a little giddy, even, at being cajoled into doing so by other people. She took refuge in cliche: “Flattery will get you everywhere,” she mumbled.
Unlike the blonde, Harriet flexed slowly; she knew the value of delayed gratification when she flexed. The slower her muscles expanded, the bigger they appeared to grow. Hours of practice in front of the mirror meant that she was so in control of her body she felt she could almost sense the movement of the individual muscle fibres.
Her bicep waxed gibbous.
“Now who’s seriously impressive?” said the blonde, dazed disbelief writ large across her face.
The occupants of nearby tables were pointing and staring. Harriet ignored them and continued to hold the flex. The blonde stretched out her hand to touch Harriet’s swollen bicep, but as she moved closer she hesitated.
“Be my guest,” encouraged Harriet. “What do you think? Has it got bigger since the last time?”
The blonde’s fingers gently, tentatively, brushed across Harriet’s soft skin, pulled tight as a drumhead over the hard muscle. Harriet wondered if the woman was feeling embarrassed or if she wanted to savour the moment. Finally the woman slipped first her fingers and then the open palm of her hand across the precipitous peak of Harriet’s bicep, adjusted her grip, and squeezed.
Harriet had no idea how long they stayed in this position - realistically it was only a matter of seconds, but entire minutes could have passed and she wouldn’t have noticed.
The blonde moistened her lips with her tongue and exhaled slowly.
“It’s definitely bigger,” she said, and Harriet thought she detected a slight tremble in her voice. “And it’s so hard! I mean, my personal trainer at the gym is a total badass but she just looks tiny compared to you. But I think I know your secret now: muscle is addictive. Once you know how good muscle feels, you just want more and more - and I definitely want more muscle.”
Her hand lingered on Harriet’s arm for a moment more, and then she slowly withdrew it.
“Me too,” said Harriet, fervently. “I can’t imagine ever having enough muscle.”
“I feel like, I don’t know… like a switch has been flipped inside my brain. I’ve always been such a girly girl, I’ve always wanted to be skinny and pretty… but muscles like yours… I can only imagine what it must feel like to be that strong! Even though my muscles are still small and I’m still not lifting that much weight, there’s nothing better than flexing them in front of the mirror when I’ve got an amazing pump after a brutal workout. I feel like a different woman when I do that - like an animal, almost.” Perhaps concerned she had said too much, the woman paused and seemed to be composing herself before continuing. “Of course, I’m still a girly girl at heart: when I get home I still love to light a few candles and slip into a bubble bath to relax. It’s how I spend most evenings these days.”
“I have to stick to showers: my shoulders are too wide for me to fit in the bath. I kept getting stuck,” said Harriet, her mind elsewhere, lost in a cloud of scented bubbles.
The blonde’s mouth dropped open. She reached out for Harriet’s bicep again, but this time she didn’t ask before running her fingers up Harriet’s arm to her capped delt, grooved and scalloped like a seashell.
“Thank you for complimenting my muscles,” she said. “I know you were just being nice to me, but it means a lot, coming from you. I can only dream of becoming as strong as you. I mean, shoulders so muscular you can’t fit in a bath? That’s… that’s just crazy.”
“I meant it: your bicep is seriously impressive. Besides, being as muscular as me isn’t all fun and games: you can still look stylish in normal clothes, whereas I’ve basically grown out of everything I own that isn’t made of Lycra.” A note of panic entered Harriet’s voice. “I’m meant to be attending an event soon and I have no idea what I’m going to wear. Not a clue. Nothing fits, not that any of my clothes were really suitable anyway, even if they did still fit me. That’s why I’m here today, shopping for something nice to wear.”
“Mummy can help you,” said Katy, who had been listening along. “She always picks out the nicest clothes.”
Harriet could feel the blonde staring at her, as if trying to gauge her reaction. Reluctant to look too desperate, despite thinking Katy’s idea was a brilliant one, Harriet started to speak slowly, thoughtfully, as if she were still weighing up the suggestion.
“I suppose… if it wouldn’t be too much tr-”
“No! I’d love to help. That is, if you wa-”
“I need all the help I can ge-”
“What sort of thing were you-”
“It’s a kind of awards ceremony, so something quite dressy…” Harriet took a deep breath before continuing. “Maybe something… I don’t know… a little sexy? What do you think - could I pull that off?”
“Oh my god, yes! Are you kidding? With your figure? You’d look stunning in a bodycon dress.”
“Wouldn’t that be very tight? I’m not sure I want a dress that’s too tight. It’s not very… me.”
“Oh no, it should definitely be something tight; your body deserves to be shown off.”
“Well, I guess I was actually thinking of something sleeveless to show off my arms a little,” said Harriet, feeling sheepish at sharing her intention to flaunt her body.
The woman laughed. “A little?” she said. “I don’t think you can only show off your arms a little. They have a way of attracting attention… In fact, ooh yes, that could work: what about a long, fitted sleeve?”
“Really?” asked Harriet, uncertainly.
“Imagine the way you’d fill out a sleeve with all your muscle. And then flexing and your bicep bulging through the material because it’s just too big to hide!”
The blonde was staring off into the distance, lost in thought, her hand absent-mindedly stroking Harriet’s shoulder.
“I hadn’t thought of that; that sounds quite-”
“No! I’ve got it: a quarter-length sleeve. It would sit just around the midpoint of your bicep,” the woman said, running a single finger back down Harriet’s arm to demonstrate where she had in mind, “and when you flex, the sleeve will slowly be forced up your arm, revealing more and more muscle, accentuating it, highlighting it… It’s perfect!”
The blonde’s hand stayed on Harriet’s bicep. She sat back in her chair triumphantly, gently caressing Harriet’s muscle as she pictured the effect.
Harriet knew beyond all doubt that she needed this woman’s help.
“And… can you give me a hand finding something like that? I’m not really sure where to look, but I don’t want to ruin your plans for the evening…”
“It’s no problem. Katy’s cousin will be here in a minute and they’ll go to the cinema for a couple of hours so I was planning to go and do some shopping myself anyway.”
“Can’t I come too?” asked Katy. “I like shopping for clothes too.”
“No, Katy, I think it’s best if I help the nice lady on my own. Oh!”
“What is it?”
“It’s just occurred to me: I don’t even know your name.”
“I’m Harriet.”
“My mummy’s name is Jessica.”
Harriet laughed.
“Thank you for the introduction, Katy. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jessica.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Harriet,” said Jessica, giving Harriet’s arm another stroke and then looking worried. “Oh, sorry - I should stop squeezing your arm. It’s just…”
Jessica’s voice tailed off.
“It’s just that you needed to size me up properly to help you pick me out the right dress,” said Harriet.
“Yes, yes, exactly! Shall we get started, then? I have a couple of shops in mind.”
Jessica stood up and started to head towards the escalators.
“What about me, mummy?”
“Oh! I’m sorry, Katy! Of course, we’ll wait for your cousin to turn up first,” said a flustered Jessica, sitting back down. “I wasn’t sure where we needed to go so I was just checking how to get up to the next level.”
“Silly mummy! It’s the same way we came down earlier.”
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Man, oh man, another fantastic chapter! Can't wait for Harriet's fitting session. Jessica is one lucky lady.
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Love how you've slowly delevoped the Jesica character, can't wait for more! :clap:
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“I’m from the Serious Fraud Office, sir. I’m-“
“Fuck me, you guys are quick. And all for the sake of twenty pence? Still, the bastards have got it coming to them - they sold me a stale Danish last week too.”
:clap:
Hilarious!!
Been meaning to write up my review of MKOW, which is seriously good. I'll do that first before I finish this story.
Btw I can't access people's profiles to find other posts/stories, any idea what has to happen to enable that?
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What a fantastic story! I am hoping beyond hope that you will write another few chapters. I hope that’s not too much to ask. Mostly, though, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me/us so much pleasure in your wonderful, imaginative writing.
K+++
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What a fantastic story! I am hoping beyond hope that you will write another few chapters. I hope that’s not too much to ask. Mostly, though, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me/us so much pleasure in your wonderful, imaginative writing.
K+++
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Oops!! Sorry about the duplicate responses!! It reflects my great enthusiasm.
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Thanks for the positive feedback!
I took a break from writing over the summer, but now it's colder and darker outside again I think that staying indoors and dabbling with my stories is a much more enticing prospect!
Anyway, here's the next chapter...
“Ooh, now what do you think of Hervé Léger?”
What did she think of Hervé Léger? Had she ever thought anything about Hervé Léger?
“Oh. Um. Yes. He’s good.”
Oh god, that was stupid. Stupid. Stupid!
“I was thinking of a Hervé Léger bandage dress for you. Or… yes, maybe we should look at some cut-out dresses! That would be a great option. Have you ever thought about wearing a cut-out dress to showcase your abs? Maybe something in, like, a Grecian style?”
“Uh, no.”
Did that sound dismissive? That sounded dismissive! Too abrupt! Although the answer was technically Grecian style - well, it was laconic, at least.
Harriet ran her hand down the abdominal archipelago of her six-pack and tried to relax. Why was she so tense? Jessica was trying to help her, after all, and goodness knows she was terrible at shopping for clothes by herself…
Harriet could still remember the last time she had ventured into a luxury department store looking for a nice dress: her sister had invited her to a swanky fundraising event at the Barbican. The generosity of the offer had been somewhat spoiled by the way her sister had emphasised that the dress code was glamorous while she had slowly looked Harriet’s outfit up and down in a manner that made it clear that she considered Harriet’s vestimentary options deficient in this regard.
To humour her sister, and repeatedly reminding herself that the invitation was generous even if the spirit in which it had been delivered had not been, Harriet had reluctantly gone shopping, comforting herself with the thought that the expense and inconvenience would be worth it given that the night’s showpiece performance would be one of her favourites: Berlioz’s Grande Messe des mort.
Inside the shop she had wandered aimlessly, lost and overwhelmed among the racks of designer clothing, not quite sure what she was looking for or where she might find it, uncertain what size she would fit or which style would be the most appropriate for her body shape.
Becoming convinced that her indecision was making her look furtive, and worried that she might be mistaken for a skulking shoplifter, she had made an attempt at spontaneity and picked out a midnight blue dress simply because she liked the colour.
She had gasped in horror at the price tag.
And then had come the indignity of the retreat, and the attempt to avoid making it look too hasty.
She had tried to maintain a casual facade that she hoped suggested she was a woman who would happily pay four figures to add the perfect statement piece to her capsule wardrobe, if only this shop’s clothing collection was better curated; and not that she was more accustomed to shopping in Primark and getting back change from a tenner.
Ultimately she had turned up to the event in her standard subfusc work clothes, having prepared an excuse about how she had been unavoidably detained at the office and had therefore been unable to go home and change as planned. No one had asked her for the details.
One glass of champagne and two canapés later she had been unable to bear any longer the company of the various glamorous patrons of the arts; their judgemental stares had followed her around the room with all the subtlety of a hallway of portrait paintings in a 'haunted' mansion being investigated by Scooby-Doo et al.
She had retrieved her coat from the cloakroom and slipped away.
And so now Harriet watched Jessica with quiet admiration, not only envying the ease with which her new acquaintance shopped for clothes, but also how elegant she looked wearing them. Harriet followed Jessica gratefully, happy to defer to her expertise and fascinated by the assured way Jessica moved from rack to rack.
Jessica had, in fact, visibly grown in confidence as she led Harriet through the labyrinthine women’s clothing department, the Ariadne to Harriet’s Theseus.
The hesitant Jessica with whom she had made awkward small talk en route to the shop became a woman who moved with a clear sense of purpose as soon as she crossed the threshold. There was no more nervous, aimless chit-chat, at least not from Jessica - instead, she began to pepper Harriet with questions, many of which Harriet could not satisfactorily answer.
What did she normally prefer: midi or maxi? Halter or Sabrina? French or Italian style?
Harriet ummed and ahhed, mumbled and stuttered, glad that the conversation was flowing more easily for Jessica, but painfully aware that she was contributing little to their duologue. The unexpected interrogation had left her on the back foot - it was as if Jeremy Paxman had started doing interviews for Vogue.
Harriet began to worry that, with each new uncertain answer, she was at risk of compounding the impression that she was not only clueless about fashion, but also inarticulate and uncooperative. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful; she was desperate to let Jessica know how appreciative she was of her advice and suggestions. She just didn’t seem able to find the words to provide the fulsome responses that Jessica’s ideas deserved.
Harriet tried to comfort herself with the thought that her fashion sense was fixed at a point in time before the efflorescence of her musculature and that her sense of style was now redundant because of these changes - tempora mutantur, and all that. But deep down she knew that she would have been no better placed to answer Jessica’s questions at any point in her adult life.
If Jessica was finding Harriet’s meagre contributions frustrating, however, she didn’t show it; she remained enthusiastic, darting between concessions and displays, keeping up an animated running commentary as she took Harriet on a zig-zagging tour of the shop floor.
As Jessica stopped to investigate some backless dresses, Harriet caught sight of herself in a mirrored column. She had forgotten that she had taken off her hoodie and had been walking around in a sports bra, but it wasn’t the sight of her heavily muscled torso - or the realisation that it felt completely natural to reveal so much of her body in public now - that made her stop abruptly: it was the expression on her face.
She looked eager, but worried - almost puppyish, come to think of it; wanting to be helpful, keen for praise, but not sure what to do.
Harriet stared at her anxious reflection, finding herself ridiculous.
She drew herself up to her full height, chest out, shoulders back, her muscles transmuting as she moved, jockeying for room, fighting for prominence. The mirror was no longer wide enough for her to see her entire body reflected back at her. She took a deep breath and flexed her pecs, radial striations shimmering across the surface of her skin.
Just look at these muscles. Remember how strong they are. What did she have to be scared of?
Nothing. She was fearless. Nothing could scare her now.
As Harriet admired herself in the mirror, Jessica took her by the hand.
Harriet shied like a skittish horse, her eyes widening, her cheeks mantling, her tongue tangling with her uvula.
Jessica’s soft palm nestled against Harriet’s own. It felt small and delicate in her hand.
Jessica wasn’t facing Harriet; she was absorbed in inspecting a floorplan by the escalators and didn’t seem to have noticed Harriet’s reaction.
Then Jessica stepped onto the escalator; Harriet followed quickly, obediently, wondering what would have happened if she had needed to be pulled along like a reluctant child: would Jessica have let go or tightened her grip?
They remained hand-in-hand as they ascended. They remained hand-in-hand as they walked the length of the next floor. They remained hand-in-hand as Jessica paused to ask a shop assistant for directions.
Harriet didn’t speak. She stared blankly at the back of Jessica’s head. Had Jessica become impatient with her? Had she simply felt that she was dawdling? Or was she worried that she might get lost? Whatever the reason, Harriet was so surprised to find Jessica’s fingers intertwined with her own that she was too tongue-tied to say anything.
Eventually, Jessica slipped her hand free.
The experience passed without comment and Jessica focussed her attention on another rack of clothing. Harriet stood and studied her new friend’s movements, trying to get an indication of what had just happened, of Jessica’s intentions or feelings; but Jessica seemed unaffected, continuing to talk in an enthusiastic voice as she selected a red midi dress with a scoop neck to add to the selection already draped over her arm.
As Harriet scrutinised Jessica with all the concentrated intensity of an anthropologist trying to squeeze years’ worth of fieldwork into just a few seconds, she was unable to divine any sense of unease or unhappiness.
Instead, Harriet once again found herself becoming distracted by how comfortable Jessica looked and her mind wandered...
Harriet might worry that she herself stood out as an interloper among the luxury brands and the clothes from the high-end fashion houses; that she was obviously too gauche for haute couture and too lacking in the required self-confidence to wear something expensive, clingy or revealing. And try as she might she couldn’t suppress the feeling that at any moment a member of staff might walk over to her, shake their head and then politely but firmly usher her out.
But no one would doubt that Jessica - so effortlessly stylish, obviously wealthy and distractingly beautiful - was anywhere but in the right place. She so clearly belonged here.
Harriet wondered if people might view her in the same way when they watched her in the gym - did she also look like a woman in her natural habitat? She felt a sudden yearning to be recognised and admired as a powerful woman, formidable, perhaps even scary. She certainly believed that the gym was where she belonged, and that she was an authority on getting the best out of every piece of exercise equipment, no matter how arcane its purpose or opaque its instructions.
She enjoyed speculating that this might be the case, that a total stranger could glimpse her from a distance and be both impressed and intimidated by her body.
What would it be like if the roles were reversed and they were in the gym now instead, with her quizzing Jessica on her goals and offering her advice?
She would be a hard taskmaster as Jessica’s personal trainer; she would always encourage Jessica to squeeze out more reps and to struggle on until failure; she would check Jessica’s form as she lifted and watch her every movement; she would spot her in the squat rack, poised behind her, hands reaching out ready to grab her, to help her if anything went wrong, to hold her, to…
“Oh no, I’ve been boring you, haven’t I?” laughed Jessica, as she once more took Harriet by her hand and squeezed it gently. “You’ve totally zoned out. I wondered why you’d stopped answering my questions.”
The second dose of unexpected physical contact jolted Harriet back to reality. She blinked rapidly as she tried to recall the last few seconds of the conversation and work out what Jessica had asked her.
“No! No, I’m not bored - I was just thinking about something I, erm, I really need to do later,” said Harriet, hurriedly improvising. “You see, I-”
“Hmm,” said a smiling Jessica, raising a sceptical eyebrow, “I don’t know. I think I got carried away and you were too polite to say anything.”
“I’m sorry,” said Harriet, shame-faced, “I guess I’m not… Let me put it this way: I’m more used to thinking about RDLs than LBDs. But you’re so cute when you’re enthusiastic that I didn’t want to disappoint you by asking to change the subject-”
“You think I’m cute?”
The question hung there, unanswered. Harriet silently cursed her unguarded choice of wording.
Jessica made eye contact with Harriet and started to giggle.
“No one’s called me cute since I was a girl,” said Jessica. “But thank you for the compliment, I guess?”
“When I said ’cute’, I meant... I meant that you looked really happy and enthusiastic… You must know what I mean - you get all excited when you talk about fashion, your face lights up. It’s nice to see people get enthusiastic about the things they love.”
“You honestly liked listening to me? I’d like to believe you, but I recognised that faraway look in your eyes - I see it every time I buy a new dress and start describing it to my husband…”
The smile faded from Jessica’s face. There was another pregnant pause. Harriet tactfully changed the subject and pointed out a dress behind Jessica.
“Talking of new dresses, what do you think about that one? I like it, anyway.”
Jessica quickly turned. She had to stand on her tip-toes to get a better look at it.
“That’s actually very nice. It’s a bit of a stretch for me to reach it...”
Jessica leaned forward and reached upwards, her blazer riding up her back as she did so.
The chance to admire Jessica’s arms and shoulders earlier that evening had served to pique Harriet’s interest, and she would be lying if she denied using the opportunity to follow Jessica around as a chance to study her physique, to try to establish how much Jessica’s body had changed.
Jessica’s oversized blazer may not have been as large as David Byrne’s Big Suit, but it was nonetheless effective camouflage for any muscles that lay underneath, and it gave no indication at all that the body it obscured was in any way athletically proportioned.
As Jessica reached to unhook a hanger from a high rail, Harriet sneaked a look at Jessica’s glutes.
At least that was the plan, but Jessica was unexpectedly swift, suddenly turning around while triumphantly clutching the dress. Harriet had insufficient time to react and averted her gaze from the seat of Jessica’s trousers a second too late, instead trying to appear intently interested in an adjacent display of mannequins.
It slowly dawned on Harriet that she was now admiring an array of maternity wear.
In an attempt to distract from the awkwardness of the situation, Harriet turned to focus her attention back on the dress, stroking it as Jessica also busied herself inspecting the material, eventually holding it up in front of Harriet, trying to judge if it would look good on her.
“Do you think it’s big enough for me?” Harriet asked, still feeling embarrassed and trying to keep the conversation firmly set on another topic, any other topic. “I thought it would be backless - I don’t think it will be big enough for these…”
To help illustrate the point, Harriet flared her lats until the width and taper of her muscles spread like a bat’s patagia. It was a simple but attention-grabbing flex which immediately made the dress appear comically inadequate for her physique.
Jessica gasped.
“How do you flex like that?” she asked, earnestly.
“How do I flex my lats, you mean?”
“No, just… how do you flex with such control? Like when you flexed your bicep earlier. It’s as if you can make every muscle move in exactly the way you want it to, exactly when you want it to. It looks so natural and easy. I always feel like I’m straining whenever I flex.”
“Practice, practice, and more practice. I didn’t like flexing in the mirror at first - in fact, I didn’t even think of it as practice. Back then it just felt really self-indulgent and, well, totally narcissistic standing in front of the mirror and watching myself flex my muscles. But eventually I realised that building up my muscles is one thing and learning to flex them is another. Flexing is a skill in itself; just because you have big muscles it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at flexing them. I wanted to get better at it so I had to start practising.”
“So… if I want to improve, I should do what you do and spend some time every day in front of the mirror, naked, flexing my muscles?”
“I didn’t say anything about being naked!”
“Oh! That’s how I imagined you practising your flexing… No, that came out wrong! I didn’t mean that I was imagining you naked - I meant that I imagined that would be the best way for someone to practise, so you… no, so whoever was practising could easily see all their muscles.”
Harriet giggled.
“I’m just joking; I know what you meant.”
Jessica put her hand on her hip in a stance of mock annoyance; the twinkle in her eyes and the smile on her lips made it clear she was not being serious. She tilted her head to one side and regarded Harriet closely.
“You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you relax and look like you were enjoying yourself? I was starting to think you didn’t like me.”
“What? Of course I like you!” said Harriet, quickly. “I’m sorry - it’s just, I don’t know, I guess I’m not used to opening up to people easily. I’m naturally very reserved.”
“What was it you said earlier? ‘It’s nice to see people get enthusiastic about the things they love’? If I didn’t know as much already, I’d say you love flexing your muscles.”
“Oh god, I must have sounded totally obsessed with myself. I did, didn’t I?”
“Not at all. I just realised what you meant about me as I watched you talking about your muscles. Your face lit up. Has anyone ever told you you look cute when you’re enthusiastic?”
This time they both giggled.
“Your face changes so much when you laugh. It’s like you’re a different person,” said Jessica.
“Really? In a good way?”
“Yes. You… you have no idea how… how forbidding you look most of the time, do you?”
“Forbidding?”
“You’re so stern and so serious-looking. And combine that with all this,” Jessica continued, freeing her hand to wave it in the general direction of Harriet’s body, “you can look a bit scary. I mean, you look like you could snap someone in half if you wanted to.”
Harriet glanced down at herself. She had never really thought about it before, but from this angle her peripheral vision was dominated by her muscles, their development occluding her surroundings. Beneath the proscenium arch of her clavicles was a dramatic stage of pectoral muscle, substantial enough for a full symphony orchestra and choir; her shoulders loomed large to each side, so far apart it was like they were doing their best to avoid each other; to her sides hung her arms, thick and heavy-looking, vascular, defined.
“I guess I am a bit scary,” Harriet said softly. “But I don’t want to be - okay, maybe sometimes I do want to be scary, just a little bit, but not all the time. I’m nice, really. You… you do like me, don’t you?”
“I know you’re nice. I definitely thought you were scary the first time I met you, but even then I knew there was more to you than meets the eye,” replied Jessica, laying a reassuring hand on Harriet’s arm. “Besides, I know what it’s like to be judged for my appearance. People who don’t even know me expect me to behave in a certain way because of how I look. I think it must be the same for you. But I know you’re nice, really I do. And I do like you. I like you a lot. I even like that you can be scary!”
“I like you, too,” said Harriet, her voice still very quiet, worried that to say those words with a greater emphasis would mean speaking too loudly, too urgently, too awkwardly.
“I’m glad you like me. I just thought, you know, really we barely know each other and yet here I am bossing you around and telling you what you should and shouldn’t be wearing… I kind of forced myself on you; I just thought I could help you.”
“Honestly, you have been so helpful! I feel like the last hour has been a crash course in amazing fashion tips. I should have been taking notes!”
“Has it really been an hour already? You should head to the changing rooms so you can try on some of these dresses. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but I think I’ve picked out some great options for you. You are going to look incredible in all of these.”
“Oh, but you’ll come with me, won’t you? I think I still need you. Need your help, that is.”
Jessica smiled and nodded enthusiastically.
“Of course! You don’t think I’m going to abandon you now, do you? Besides, I’ve been looking forward to a fashion show, thank you!”
“Oh good,” Harriet replied, before pausing and smiling nervously. “Also, there’s something I need to admit to you… I feel like I’ve been misleading you and I want to tell you the truth.”
Jessica was silent, staring curiously at Harriet.
Harriet beckoned Jessica closer and then leant towards her ear.
“The truth is, I do practise my flexing in front of the mirror totally naked.”
Harriet didn’t wait to see Jessica’s reaction to her confession; instead, she turned and walked quickly towards the changing rooms.
The shop floor was crowded and uncomfortably hot, and Harriet told herself that was why her cheeks were burning. At least, that would be her story if anyone asked, and she would be sticking to it.
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"I’m more used to thinking about RDLs than LBDs."
Yes, he's back! So glad to see you writing again. This was a slow burner but things are heating up between Harriet and Jessica - please continue :bravo:
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So glad to see you continuing this one (and hopefully your other amazing stories on the site too!) This story is so well realized and Harriet's transformation has been a pleasure to read. Looking forward to more!
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Harriet walked into the changing rooms, a reverberating chorus of totally naked, totally naked, totally naked playing over and over in her head like an earworm. Had she really just said that out loud?
She was greeted by an austere woman, tall, thin and angular, her hands crossed limply in front of her body. She looked like a praying mantis, but with none of that insect’s charm, warmth or generosity of spirit.
“May I help you?” the woman asked, in a disdainful voice that suggested she would much rather not.
Harriet, still distracted by her own boldness in making her surprise confession to Jessica, was brought to a halt by the woman’s acid tone.
“Um, yes. Yes. I’d like to try on some clothes,” replied Harriet, her voice trailing off as she looked down and remembered that her hands were empty.
The woman stared at her and, although her expression did not change, with a mere flicker of her eyes she managed to convey the impression that she thought Harriet was a badly-dressed simpleton.
“Are you looking for some more athleisure,” the woman said, enunciating the last word like she found it distasteful, “or do you need assistance finding something… nice?”
Jessica appeared by Harriet’s side, her arms full of expensive dresses.
“She’d like to try these on, actually,” Jessica said firmly. “I hope that won’t be a problem?”
The assistant did some quick mental arithmetic based on the number of items Jessica carried and, like a sallow waxwork coming to life, her face twitched. A disquieting, insincere smile jerked into place.
“But of course! Please, follow me. All the changing rooms are presently occupied but we have a couple of seats free on the banquette in the waiting area.”
The smile wavered as Harriet sat down and - for the first time - the woman seemed to notice how broad Harriet’s shoulders were and how much space she occupied. Evidently her hatred of sportswear had blinded her to this fact. Until that very moment, perhaps it had never even occurred to her that some women actually wore gym clothes for the purposes of exercise.
Harriet’s back and arms spread across most of the two seats indicated; barely any room was left for Jessica.
“Ah! There’s normally… You are… I shall try to find a chair,” said the woman, turning and bustling away down the corridor.
Harriet looked sheepishly up at Jessica.
“These seats aren’t really designed for me. I don’t think there’s enough room for us both to squeeze in. I’ll just stand until another seat becomes free. You should sit down instead.”
“No, no, it’s fine; you stay there. I’ll just sit on your lap,” Jessica replied, quickly.
Jessica abruptly sat down, the bundle of dresses in her arms covering them both like a warm blanket. Rather than sit on Harriet’s lap, Jessica settled herself on top of Harriet’s left thigh, upon which she wiggled around for some time, apparently trying to adjust her position.
“Am I comfortable? I mean, are you comfortable?” Harriet asked.
“Hmm? Oh, yes, yes, very,” said Jessica absently, still squirming.
“I can move slightly, if that would give you more room?”
Harriet raised her left foot off the ground and cautiously extended her leg until it was straight to ensure that none of the dresses got snagged and stretched over her knee; then she shifted her legs further apart and placed her foot back down.
As Harriet adjusted the angle of her legs her left quad shifted and surged upwards with an epeirogenic movement. Jessica rose up by a couple of inches and went rigid; her own legs parted like branches ramifying from the trunk of Harriet’s thigh, before quickly retracting.
Jessica’s whole body shivered.
“Are you okay?” asked Harriet, concerned she had inadvertently hurt Jessica.
Jessica wiggled on top of Harriet’s thigh again, and pressed her back more firmly into Harriet’s torso. Harriet could feel how tense Jessica’s shoulders were as they pressed against her pecs.
“Yes!”
“It can’t be comfortable for you - I suppose my quad is pretty solid to sit on. I’ll stand up and you can have my space on the banq-”
“No! No… Right here is good. I’m fine right here.”
“Oh, okay.”
The waiting room was silent.
The assistant had not returned, and was either struggling to find a chair or was perhaps busy biting the head off her mate. Harriet glanced at the other shoppers, wondering if she and Jessica had attracted any attention, but no one had so much as looked up from their phones when they had first entered the room, and they all continued to remain entirely uninterested in the new arrivals.
Jessica scooted forwards slightly along Harriet’s thigh, then arched her back like a stretching cat before slowly relaxing her body, reclining limply against Harriet.
Harriet looked down and caught a glimpse of goose pimples on the back of Jessica’s neck; she could feel Jessica’s fingers clench into a fist and press into her right thigh.
Jessica’s head tilted back to rest on Harriet’s shoulder, almost as if she had settled in for a nap.
Harriet stayed as still as she possibly could. She didn’t want to move. More importantly, she didn’t want Jessica to move. After a while it dawned on Harriet that she had taken her commitment to immobility to the extreme and had been holding her breath ever since Jessica had relaxed against her. In need of oxygen, she tried to start inhaling and exhaling again as gently as possible, to completely minimise the chances of disturbing Jessica.
Jessica remained in repose, her body warm and soft. Her head turned to the side and nestled against Harriet’s neck; her hair tickled Harriet’s chin, her perfume likewise Harriet’s nose.
Was the waiting room silent?
Harriet’s heart was beating as loudly as a particularly exuberant timpanist playing the opening of Also sprach Zarathustra. She once again glanced nervously at her fellow customers, fully expecting someone to look up and ask where that drumming sound was coming from.
But no one else seemed aware of the noise that filled her world.
Jessica wiggled her hips again, slower this time, more deliberate in her movements, and gave a little sigh.
“I can hear your heart beating,” Jessica murmured.
Before Harriet could respond, a shopper emerged from the changing rooms and the assistant reappeared to lead one of the waiting women inside.
Everyone else shuffled along one seat. There was now room enough for them both to sit side-by-side on the banquette.
Neither Harriet nor Jessica offered to move into the empty space.
The assistant returned again and gestured pointedly at the vacated seat. Harriet paused for a moment, weighing up her options. She didn’t want to displace Jessica, but maybe there was a way they could both move along together.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” she whispered to Jessica, who gave a start.
Harriet wrapped her arms around Jessica’s waist and pulled her friend’s body tightly against her own until she was satisfied that she was safely held in place. Then Harriet stood up, easily lifting Jessica into the air, smoothly stepped to the side, and sat back down again in the free seat.
The entire manoeuvre was completed so quickly and quietly that no one else in the waiting room even noticed what had happened - a breathless gasp from Jessica as she had been hoisted into the air and a rustle of material as she nearly dropped her armful of dresses had been the only noises.
For a few moments they both sat still and silent, until Harriet realised that she was still hugging Jessica around the waist; she started to let go but Jessica made a soft, disapproving sound and placed her hands on top of Harriet’s own.
Hidden under the blanket of dresses they stayed in this position, Harriet’s powerful arms around Jessica’s slim waist; Jessica’s hands resting on top of Harriet’s.
Gradually their fingers intertwined.
Several happy, laughing women, obviously friends, exited the changing rooms in a group and the assistant began to usher the waiting shoppers into the available cubicles. She eventually returned for Harriet and Jessica.
Jessica stood up, clearing her throat and gathering the dresses tightly against herself.
“It’s very warm, isn’t it?” she said to no one in particular, fanning her face with a hand.
The assistant led them down to the end of the corridor and the last available room. Harriet held the door open for Jessica to walk in first and then followed her.
As Jessica began to hang up the dresses, Harriet hesitated by the half-open door in an agony of indecision, unsure if Jessica intended to stay inside or wait outside the changing room, not wanting to make her feel unwelcome but also afraid of being presumptuous.
“Don’t forget to close the door!” reminded Jessica.
Harriet’s hand trembled as she slipped the bolt into the lock. She took a deep breath and turned around. Jessica was hanging up her own blazer now, and Harriet took the opportunity to admire her arms and shoulders again. The extra muscle certainly suited Jessica’s svelte frame - she looked not only stronger but shapelier as well; as she raised both hands to flick back her hair from her shoulders, the definition in her biceps immediately became more pronounced.
Jessica turned around with an excited look on her face.
“So which one do you want to try on first?”
Harriet’s eyes quickly flitted from Jessica’s arms to the dresses.
“The white cut-out one,” Harriet replied impetuously, not really caring at all, forgetting why she was even shopping for clothes in the first place.
“Good choice! Like I said, this one will really show off your abs. It’s very ‘Greek goddess’, I think, like a sexy version of a toga.”
“Chiton,” said Harriet, automatically.
“Excuse me?”
“Um, or a peplos, maybe.” Harriet noticed the confused look on Jessica’s face but she carried on robotically, unable to stop herself. “The toga was worn by Roman men.”
“Hey, I thought you claimed you didn’t know anything about fashion?”
“Modern fashion. If you want to know about Archaic Greek fashion, I’m your woman,” said Harriet. “I’m a bit of a history nerd, I’m afraid.”
“Buff and brainy?” smiled Jessica. “You’re making the rest of us look bad!”
Harriet mumbled something unintelligible but intended to be self-deprecating, trying desperately to hide her delight at this suggestion.
Jessica sat down on the bench, crossed her legs daintily and rested her hands on her knee. She looked expectantly at Harriet, who tried to work out what was expected of her before she finally remembered where they were and what she was doing there.
“The dress! Yes, I’ll… um… time to try it on...”
Harriet started to reach for the hanger.
“Aren’t you going to take off your jogging b-”
“Oh! Yes! Yes, I should um…”
Jessica, perhaps sensing the note of panic in Harriet’s voice, uncrossed her legs and moved as if to stand up.
“Would you prefer it if I waited outside? I can give you some priv-”
“No, no, it’s, erm, it’s fine. I’ve just never… done this before. Shared a changing room, I mean - not even with my sister. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette; I thought you might want to leave, you see, and I didn’t want-”
“Do you want me to leave? I can leave, if-”
“No, please stay. It will be easier! There are so many dresses to try on and if you had to keep going in and out all the time, we’d be here forever,” said Harriet, trying to play it cool.
She was relieved to see that Jessica looked pleased by her suggestion.
“I was thinking the same thing!”
“Okay. Good. So...”
“Actually, when you think about it, the first time we met, well… I’ve already seen you n-”
Jessica’s voice trailed off, her eyes widening as Harriet pulled down her jogging bottoms.
Aware of Jessica’s stunned silence, but not certain what had caused it, Harriet looked down and suddenly remembered her unfortunate choice of underwear.
“Oh god! Erm, sorry, I haven’t got round to doing the laundry for a while. All my other underwear is sweaty from the gym and, no, you didn’t need to know that, did you? Oh god! Um. This was the only clean pair I could still fit into. They’re hideous, aren’t they?”
Jessica looked dazed. She gave her head a little shake.
“Sorry, what?”
“My granny pants.”
Jessica continued to look confused. She shook her head again and finally seemed to realise what Harriet was talking about.
“Those?” she asked. “Oh, we’ve all got a pair like those!”
Harriet relaxed and laughed with relief.
“But you looked so shocked when you saw them!”
“Not at those - at your legs!”
“My legs?”
“They’re huge! And when you stepped forward, all the muscle in your thighs sort of… moved like it had a life of its own. And look at all those veins!”
“I’ve been making some tweaks to my diet; I’ve been trying to lean out a bit. I guess it’s paying off because I’m definitely getting more vascular,” said Harriet, running her hands over the anfractuous veins in her quads. “But my legs aren’t that big,” she continued, contradicting the abundant evidence to the contrary.
“They. Are. Huge,” insisted a rapt Jessica, emphasising the last word with relish.
“I guess I’m used to seeing them every day - I sort of take them for granted,” Harriet said, thinking out loud. “It’s weird - when I started working out and I first noticed the muscle definition in my legs, I felt massive. And now my thighs are so much bigger and I can’t even fit into my old pairs of trousers, but I can look at myself in the mirror and still feel… small.”
“Small! You know I mentioned my personal trainer earlier? Her thighs are nowhere near as big as yours and everyone at the gym calls them her ‘man crushers’.”
“I suppose I’m used to feeling small. Being ignored or overlooked, you know? Made to feel insignificant.”
“It’s not your fault if other people can’t appreciate you for who you are. I think you’re amazing.”
“Thank you,” said Harriet, in a small voice.
“And your legs, they’re definitely a pair of ‘man crushers’ if ever I saw them. Do you… do you have a nickname for your legs?”
“I’ve never really thought about giving them one.”
“So… you don’t call them your ‘man crushers,’ then?”
Harriet wrinkled her nose.
“No, I’ve never called them that.”
“And… have you? Ever crushed a man with them, I mean?”
“No! That’s not something I’ve ever… I’d ever…” Harriet stumbled and stopped, lost for words.
“I was just being silly. I didn’t really think you’d be going around crushing men with your muscles,” said Jessica. “Although you totally could.”
Embarrassed, Harriet turned to reach for the dress again.
“I think you’ll have to take off your sports bra,” Jessica interjected. “The way the dress is cut, your sports bra will spoil the lines of it. You won’t get a true sense of the fit.”
“Oh, of course,” said Harriet sheepishly.
Lowering her arms across her torso, Harriet grabbed the underside of her bra with both hands and pulled upwards. She had done this countless times before, yet repeated practice had never made it much easier, her improving dexterity constantly outpaced by the growth of her lats.
In theory, it should have been easier to remove the bra today, as she wasn’t all sweaty and sticky from the gym, but her fingers were clumsier than usual and she got the rhythm all wrong, moving too fast initially and then trying to slow things down, worried that she might look too eager to undress. Unfortunately the loss of momentum caused the bra to tangle around her head and become stuck to her face like a giant cobweb.
By the time she finally removed it, she felt even more flustered and awkward than she already had, her hair now unkempt and wild. How could something she usually managed with relative competency be made so much more difficult by the fact someone was watching her do it? She threw the sports bra to one side, a little crossly.
Harriet tried to tidy her hair and finally looked back at Jessica, who had clasped her hands tightly together like she was praying. Jessica didn’t seem to care that she was ogling, a look of wonderment on her face.
“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it. I just… After all this time, all these months since I first saw you, I’ve been telling myself that I can’t have remembered properly; that the time we met and you flexed right out of that sports bra… I convinced myself that I remembered wrong, that there was no way you could have been that muscular… Like, sure, your body was spectacular, but that bra must have been faulty, or something, because how could you flex right out of a sports bra?” Jessica paused and took a deep, calming breath before continuing. “Except, you’re actually even bigger than I remembered. Your legs are huge. And your chest… Your chest is just so… thick. So meaty. Does that sound weird? I’m sorry. It’s… I don’t have the words to describe it. I didn’t know a woman could have a chest like that. It’s amazing.”
Harriet fought the rising tide of self-consciousness and the urge to cover herself up. She looked at her body in the mirror and could see Jessica’s awed face staring at her too; suddenly she was inspired to see herself through Jessica’s eyes. Harriet’s daily posing practice - not to mention her compulsive need to check herself out in every reflective surface - meant that, when it came to her own body, while familiarity had not bred contempt, it had fostered a serious lack of objectivity.
But here and now Harriet had to admit: she was definitely bigger and leaner than ever before.
And Jessica did have a point: her chest was thick; it was meaty; it was amazing.
The thrustingly dramatic protrusion of Harriet’s pectorals was exaggerated by the overhead lighting, and the shadows cast down her body. And while she wasn’t delighted with the way her boobs had gradually shrunk over the months, she did love the way the outlines of her pectoral muscles flowed into those of her smaller breasts. It was a seamless transition, a serendipitous adaptation that nonetheless somehow looked entirely natural, planned from the beginning, a perfect complementary fusion of her new and old forms. Meant to be.
Something about Jessica’s excitement was catching and Harriet became swept up in the thrill of admiring her own gains. Maybe she should show off a little? Jessica would like that, she told herself; actually, they both would.
Jessica’s phone started to buzz. Without even looking at the screen, her eyes riveted on Harriet’s body, she reached out and dismissed the call.
Immediately, the buzzing started again; this time, Jessica picked it up to see who was calling.
“Oh, it’s… it’s my husband… I should answer it, or he’ll get angry; he doesn’t like it when I don’t take his calls.”
“Want to see me flex my chest?”
Harriet concentrated on showing off the control she had over her muscle and slowly flexed her right pec, making it ripple like the surface of a mill pond disturbed by a pebble thrown into the water.
The phone slipped from Jessica’s fingers and fell to the floor.
“What do you think?” Harriet asked shyly, repeating the flex with her left pec this time.
Jessica’s phone continued to buzz.
Harriet flexed both pecs simultaneously.
A strangled sound escaped Jessica’s lips, her ability to form words having momentarily escaped her. She stood up on shaking legs and stepped towards Harriet, her movements unsteady and staccato. She reached out, extending her arm, extending her fingers; her eyes wide, her mouth wider.
The buzzing stopped, and a message notification pinged. Then another. Then another, and another, and another; as insistent a refrain as an entire peloton ringing their bells at a dozy pedestrian ambling along the bike lane.
Jessica lunged for the dress, grabbing it so clumsily the hanger spun a full 360 degrees and continued to rock violently backwards and forwards after completing its loop-the-loop, scratching against the wall like nails down a blackboard.
“Let’s get this dress on you and see how it looks,” Jessica said hoarsely, thrusting it towards Harriet.
The phone fell silent.
“Okay,” said Harriet, deflated.
Jessica stepped behind her to help her into the dress. Harriet was unable to see her friend’s face, but it seemed to her that Jessica was assisting only reluctantly, her hands shaky and her movements tentative, as if she were trying desperately to avoid touching Harriet.
“What do you think?” asked Harriet, pulling the straps into place in the grooves between her traps and her delts.
“It, erm, it looks great,” replied Jessica flatly, sounding non-committal and stooping to retrieve her phone from the floor.
Harriet turned to inspect her side view and found that she had a clear line of sight to Jessica’s reflection in the mirror - unaware that she was being observed, Jessica’s head stayed bowed over her phone as if she were reading her messages, but the screen was black and her eyes were clearly glued on Harriet’s exposed back. Harriet watched as Jessica stroked her throat with her hand and bit down on her bottom lip.
Emboldened, Harriet turned around to face Jessica; she leant back slightly and exhaled, crunching down on her core muscles.
“Does the dress show off my abs like you thought it would?”
Jessica gulped. She moved towards the bench and, for just a moment, Harriet thought she had lost Jessica’s attention for good, that Jessica was going to sit down and read her messages, ignoring Harriet’s muscles. But Jessica carefully placed the phone down on the bench and stepped closer to Harriet, her hands again slowly reaching out until she glanced up, met Harriet’s stare, and froze, blinking rapidly.
“It’s okay. I don’t mind if you want to touch me.”
Jessica slipped behind Harriet, once more disappearing from view. Harriet watched in the mirror as her friend’s arms slowly appeared at the sides of her own torso, the hands moving towards each other until they met above Harriet’s navel.
Jessica’s hands slowly stroked down and up and down and up Harriet’s six-pack, then settled delicately on Harriet’s sides, exposed through the triangular cut-out panels of the dress.
“Rock solid,” Jessica murmured, her hands running across the powerful digitations of Harriet’s obliques, each of them thicker than any one of Jessica’s fingers.
Harriet giggled and squirmed slightly as Jessica’s fluttering fingers began to move faster, stroking up and down like a harpist running her hands over the strings of her instrument.
“Hey, that tickles!” Harriet squealed, reflexively adopting a defensive position, hunching her shoulders forward and bringing her elbows closer to her body with the result that Jessica’s hands became tightly clamped between the gunwales of Harriet’s lats and her arms.
Jessica cried out in surprise.
“Ha!” said Harriet. “I’d like to see you try to tickle me now!”
Laughing, Jessica tried to pull herself free, her upper body leaning backwards as she pushed her hips forwards in a desperate attempt to gain some leverage, her mons pubis thrusting against Harriet’s unyielding glutes. Try as she might, her escape attempt was clearly a futile one, and yet Jessica did not give up the struggle without a fight, even butting and burrowing her head into Harriet’s back in an attempt to tickle her with her hair rather than her fingers.
“Okay, okay. I surrender,” Jessica panted, eventually. “Please let me go - your muscles are so hard, they’re literally cutting off the blood flow to my fingers.”
“And if I let you go, do you promise to stop tickling me?” said Harriet jokingly, like she was admonishing a child.
Jessica played along, peering out from around Harriet’s arm to look at her in the mirror, strands of hair across her eyes, a sulky pout on her lips, a suitably contrite tone to her voice.
“I promise to try to be a good girl.”
Harriet relaxed and straightened up. Freed, Jessica shook her hands energetically, trying to get some feeling back in her fingers.
“I really did cut off the blood flow to your fingers! Why didn’t you say something? I’d have let you go sooner if you had.”
“It was fun. Besides, I wanted to see if I was strong enough to break free.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t mind if you want to be a bit rough with me.”
Harriet felt lost for words again, an explorer who had crossed the border into terra incognita and was staring at a map, unhelpfully blank apart from the legend ‘Here be dragons’. She stared at Jessica in silence. Jessica’s hair was tousled, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed, an irrepressible smile lighting up her face. She had never looked more beautiful.
Harriet blurted out the first anodyne thing she could think of, desperate to avoid saying something else she might regret.
“You never told me what you thought of the dress? Do you think it’s the one?”
Jessica gave a wicked smile and put a thoughtful finger to her lips in a cartoonish manner; she seemed to be enjoying herself.
“Hmm, you look great in it and it definitely shows off your abs, but, I don’t know; I’m not feeling it. I think the best thing will be if you take that one off and try on another one. How about this?”
Jessica unhooked the Hervé Léger bandage dress and dangled it from her fingers.
“It looks so tight - will it even fit?” said Harriet, doubtfully.
“I’ll help pour you into it.”
“Okay…”
In silence, Jessica helped Harriet disrobe and then took her time carefully hanging up the white dress while Harriet waited expectantly, wearing only her granny pants, once again admiring the definition in Jessica’s shoulders and arms. It dawned on Harriet that she was standing virtually naked in a room lined with mirrors and for once she had no interest in checking out her own muscles, not even out of the corner of her eye.
Jessica turned around and bent down in front of Harriet to allow her to step into the second dress. Once Harriet had done so, Jessica - carefully, precisely, unhurriedly - eased the dress up and over Harriet’s powerful decussate frame, the skin-tight material contoured by her marmoreal muscles. There was no hint of reluctance this time; now Jessica was attentively fondling Harriet’s body as she smoothed out the wrinkles that formed over her abs and pecs and encouraged the shoulders of the dress up and over her capped delts.
Harriet was amazed at what she saw in the mirror. She knew she was wearing a dress - she could feel the dress, she could see the dress - and yet something about it made her feel more exposed, more naked than she had before she had put it on. She told herself that this feeling made no sense and reminded herself that she routinely wore only shorts and a sports bra in public, which exposed more of her skin, more of her thews and sinews, but somehow those clothes did not feel as revealing as a form-fitting midi length dress with three-quarter sleeves and a scooped neckline.
The dress hid almost everything, but it hid almost nothing. Every curve and muscle was enhanced. Something about the way it fitted her and the way it made her look was… indecent.
Something about the way it made her feel was indecent too.
Jessica suddenly crouched in front of her.
“What are you doing?” asked Harriet, alarmed.
“Sorting out your VPL. Hold still.”
“What? Wait!”
Jessica slipped her hands up Harriet’s dress, running her fingers up her thighs. Harriet gasped like she had just plunged into an ice bath.
“Don’t move!” warned Jessica. “If you bend over to pull them down yourself, you’ll rip right out of it; this dress is already working overtime just to contain your booty. I’ll just… hang on… nearly!”
Harriet felt Jessica’s fingertips reach her hips and fumble for the waistband of her knickers, but the dress was so tight that Jessica struggled to get an adequate grip. Harriet looked down at the top of Jessica’s head, her friend’s face so close to her body that she could feel the damp warmth of her breath on her crotch. With every passing second, Harriet could sense the heat building and what felt like Jessica’s breath beginning to condense on the thin material.
Finally, Jessica managed to hook a finger over the knickers’ elastic and slowly slip them down. Harriet flinched as she felt them peel away from her body; as they reached the hemline she shook her left leg until her knickers quickly dropped to the floor, and then she kicked them towards her bra and out of the way.
Jessica stood up, stepped back, and surveyed the results.
“Wow.”
“Do you think it looks good?” Harriet asked.
“I think it looks… scandalously, sinfully sexy.”
Harriet wanted to deny that she thought the same, wanted to say something self-effacing, something modest, if only for her own benefit, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead she stood and stared at the vision in the mirror.
“You never told me what you wanted the dress for, but if it’s a date, you’re going to be a total knockout,” continued Jessica in a hushed voice.
“A date?” Harriet began, ready to correct Jessica, but then changing her mind. “Yes, I’m going on a date… Do you… I’ve not had much experience with dating… Do you have any advice for me?”
“What sort of advice?”
“Well, how should I behave on a date if I want to let someone know I, um, I like them? Like, really like them.”
“People like it when a strong, beautiful woman takes charge, so you should definitely use that to your advantage.”
“Me?” mumbled Harriet, “Beautiful?”
“Yes. You. Beautiful. Beautiful and powerful: there’s something about soft femininity meeting hard muscle that’s just… intoxicating.”
“So I should take charge? How should I take charge?”
Jessica took a few steps backwards until she was pressed up against the wall. She twirled a lock of her hair around a finger and looked coyly at Harriet.
Harriet watched her, her mouth dry.
“I think you should walk slowly towards them, so they can watch all your muscles moving and rippling underneath that skin tight dress. Really slowly, like you’re a lioness stalking your prey… Slowly, slowly, right up to them until they’ve got nowhere else to go and you’ve got them trapped.”
“Like this?”
Harriet edged forwards.
“Slower. With more confidence. With more… arrogance.”
Harriet suppressed the urge to rush forwards and tried to remember the way that Amy had moved in her competition videos.
“Yes! Like that, and then, when you’re close enough, reach out and lean against the wall with your arm just to the side of their head. Casual, but… deliberate.”
Harriet extended her arm until her palm pressed against the mirror. She shifted her weight and turned her hand as she leant forwards, funicular fibres in her forearm twisting and tensing; even without contracting her bicep, the convex mass of her muscle bulged out from her straightened arm. She heard Jessica shakily exhale through her nose.
“They’ll feel intimidated by your muscles, but also fascinated. They’ll want to stare at your broad shoulders, at your thick pecs, at the outline of your ripped abs through your dress. Let them. You’re in no hurry. Let them admire your body; your body deserves to be admired, after all. Flex your muscles for them. Show off your strength and let them drink you in.”
Harriet cocked her other arm and flexed her bicep in front of Jessica’s face. It was like watching orogeny in action; a mountain of muscle formed.
“They… they won’t be able to look away from your muscles. They’ll have never seen anything like it before, maybe in their dreams, but not in real life, not this close up… You’ll have to remind them you’ve got something you want to say to them. Grab their chin and tilt back their head so they have no choice but to stare deep into your eyes…”
“Like this?” Harriet whispered, raising Jessica’s face with a firm but gentle movement.
“By… by now, they’ll be at your mercy, squirming with anticipation, barely able to contain themselves. Their knees will be weak, they’ll be trembling, their breathing will quicken, their pulse will be racing, and all they’ll want is for you to take them, there and then. So do it!”
Harriet nervously flicked her tongue over her lips.
“Take… them?”
“Take them! Press your body tight against theirs, pin their arms above their head, squeeze them, grab them. Don’t be afraid to be rough with them, to show them how easily you can dominate them. And then kiss them. Kiss their shoulder, their neck, their throat, their chin, their cheek, their ear, make them wait, hold them back, make them wait, drive them crazy, and then kiss their lips… kiss them until you’re both dizzy and out of breath, and then kiss them some more.”
Harriet closed her eyes. She already felt dizzy and out of breath. But she knew now what she needed to do.
What she wanted to do.
What she had to do.
Jessica didn’t resist as she grabbed her arms - not that it would have made a difference if she had: right now Harriet felt like she could have held back a charging bull.
Harriet pinned Jessica’s wrists to the wall above her head.
“Tighter,” whispered Jessica, “harder.”
Harriet transferred both of Jessica’s wrists to just one of her hands and pushed them back more firmly; she used her other hand to caress Jessica’s breasts, Jessica’s waist, then to pull Jessica’s hips towards her, to squeeze a handful of Jessica’s firm arse.
Jessica moaned.
And then Harriet pressed her heavy body forwards, pushing her abs into Jessica, pinning her whole body against the wall, grinding her crotch against her, trembling, panting, her very breath quavering with desire. She could feel her pecs squash Jessica’s breasts, Jessica’s nipples hard and sharp through her blouse, Jessica grinding in rhythm against her.
They kissed.
The world stopped spinning. Everything stopped. There was only Harriet and Jessica.
A lifetime passed. Several lifetimes. Aeons.
Eventually they both came up for air.
Gasping, panting, laughing, nose to nose, they stared into each other’s eyes.
“Have I mentioned that you’re scandalously, sinfully sexy?” asked Jessica.
“Have I mentioned that I like you? Like, really like you?”
“No, I had no clue! None!”
They dissolved into giggles and then shares another passionate kiss.
Jessica’s phone began to ring. Jessica pulled back, her expression changing immediately.
“That’s Katy’s ringtone. The film must be finished. I have to go.”
Harriet’s face fell as Jessica grabbed her blazer.
“Do you have to go now?”
“I’ll give you my number. When are you free? You’ll have to come round,” said Jessica hurriedly.
She spotted the distraught expression on Harriet’s face and stepped back to give her a last, lingering kiss.
“Promise me you’ll come round?” Jessica whispered. “We have… unfinished business.”
“I promise.”
“Good. I’ve got to go, but I can’t wait to see you again.”
Jessica paused by the door and had one last admiring look at Harriet in the dress.
“Did you mean it? Does this dress really make me look that sexy?” asked Harriet.
Jessica laughed.
“It’s not the dress,” she replied, and then she was gone.
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Amazing! Hopefully the next part is even more action filled than this one!
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Great start and I hope for more
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So happy to see another chapter of this epic story :bravo:
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Oh wow, that last chapter was incredible!! This is 'published author' quality writing - great characters, fantastic descriptions and oh so sexy. Please continue! :bravo: