Split Infinity (Patreon)

[alternate realities, fit-to-fat]

[inspired by this image here]

Brad pushed the locker door open with one hand when it happened: his lean, thick hand suddenly plumped, his tan vascular forearm bloated and sprouted hair, and he felt gravity’s pull seem to double. He stumbled a bit, adjusting to the extra weight, then looked down at his paunch, trying (as he did so often in the moments after the shift) to squash his protruding belly back to the ripped abdomen it had been before.

In a moment, he went from a rock-hard 250 pound head-turning athlete to a jelly-soft 300 pound man who wheezed climbing stairs. His normally chiseled physique was now coated with soft brown hair, his tan faded to a creamy white. His beard looked more appropriate on this body, his jelled up faux-hawk more ridiculous. It was the kind of haircut a muscleguy could wear proudly, but as a middle-aged oaf he looked like he was trying too hard to be something he wasn’t.

Somebody behind him had said his name, just before the change. It sounded like Eric, the young bodybuilding phenom who had just moved to town. He hit Brad up for advice daily, clearly a fan. He turned his neck now and saw Eric posing behind him, facing a mirror. Eric never acknowledged this version of Brad. Why would he–a young up-and-coming genetic wonder give the time of day to an overweight man in his 40s?

Brad’s gym bag was different now–smaller, lighter. It had his wallet inside, his keys, and a small protein bar he had purchased in bulk from Costco. Gone was his huge duffel carrying his weight belt with his name embroidered inside, several prepackaged meals, his daily supplements, knee wraps, two different shakers, bands for stretching and three different sets of posing trunks. He chuckled, now, as he imagined the little brightly colored pairs of “panties”--the idea of cramming his big, soft body into those tiny thing was ridiculous, especially as he dropped his shorts and took a look at the sheer size of his 50-inch waist boxer shorts.

“Sup big man?” Cranston, the janitor, said, fist-bumping Brad as he wheeled his mop bucket past. Strangely, he had the same nickname for the other version of Brad, although said with slightly more enthusiasm when Brad was a chiseled pile of muscle. Brad smiled and nodded at him, letting out a sigh when he greeted Eric, who entered behind him, in the same way (but with the zeal Brad remembered).

Brad stared down at his sweaty body, then up at the showers as Eric shed his clothing easily and strutted past fully-naked, his body rippling with every step. Just go take a shower, man, he urged himself. He’d done it hundreds of times before, just as casually nude as Eric had been, but the idea seemed terrifying now. There was no way he could even strip off his shirt with all these buffed up gym guys around! He showered at home, now.

Home wasn’t the same in this form. Brad lived in a small apartment across town from the house he remembered buying with money he’d earned from competitions and personal training. He had doubled the sweat-stains on his clothes by the time he climbed the third flight of stairs to his apartment. His place was cramped, but enough.

Tuesdays were normally his day off, but he had gotten a call from his boss about a client with malfunctioning garbage disposal. He really needed the money. The husky guy buttoned up his “Geno Bros. Plumbing” shirt and grabbed his toolbox.

The fact that he knew how to repair a garbage disposal–or how to diagnose a running toilet, or the best way to get a shower to drain faster–proved that he had to be crazy. That other life, where he played college football, made money as a fitness model and as a bodybuilder, couldn’t have been real. He smiled as he looked at his handsome face in the mirror. “Bet I would have made a good-looking muscleman,” he thought as he examined his broad jaw and blue eyes in the mirror.

OF course I did, he thought to himself. I REMEMBER what I looked like as a muscleman! How could an entire life’s memories be a hallucination? That kind of thinking just made these days plodding on a treadmill and fixing rich people’s toilets that much harder to get through. He knocked on the door of the second-floor condo. His face lit up as he recognized the woman who opened the door.

“Oh, hey–” He stopped himself. His name was Jennifer. He knew her from the gym. She spent all of last summer texting him trying to set up a date, but he wasn’t interested (although he had liked the attention). But that’s insane, because this gorgeous brunette didn’t date overweight plumbers.

“Hi, thanks for coming,” he said, directing him into the kitchen. He dropped down and took a look. It was a brand new disposal unit, easy to disassemble. Inside was a twisted fork collecting debris. As he knelt there, reattaching the unit, he heard the sound of a phone’s camera sound behind him. He turned around to see Jennifer standing behind him, quickly hiding her phone in her sleeve.

“Any luck?” she said, immediately performing a warm smile.

“All better,” Brad said. As he passed, he leaned in for a hug out of instinct, then pulled away as she recoiled. “Boss’ll send you a bill,” Brad said as he headed for his truck.

Outside, he opened his phone. All of a sudden Jennifer seemed a lot more appealing to him. “Wouldn’t turn her down now, that’s for damned sure!” he said as he found her Instagram profile. His heart sank as he saw her latest picture, a shot of his pants hanging down revealing three inches of his ass-crack and his jiggly white butt.

“More like Geno Bros. Plumpers!” read the caption.

He sighed. His vision blurred. He gasped as he realized he was sitting in his Camaro outside the gym. He patted down his lean muscular physique, grateful it was back.

There seemed to be no pattern to the length of each shift. When it first began, he was only spending an hour at a time as a big husky plumber, but he had recently spent three whole days in the other form, wondering if this would be his life forever now. Each morning as he woke up, grunting as he rolled his big body out of bed, was a shock. He had developed a mantra: “This is the life I have. Time to make the best of it.”

His doctor seemed surprised by his request for an appointment. He had just met with Dr. Jameson; despite the high level of PEDs he used to maintain his physique, his blood tests had come back in a healthy range. “What’s the issue, stud?” Dr. Jameson said. Brad had long suspected Dr. Jameson had been gay–not an issue at all for Brad, of course, but he was always unsure if the nicknames were friendly flirting or straight-guy admiration. “You’re as healthy as a fucking clydesdale–same size, too!”

“I’m thinking about dialing back on the bulk,” Brad said. He was shirtless, and his posture sagged, as if his impressive mass was trying to pull in on itself.

The good doctor’s face fell. “What? Why would you want to do that? All that size is the secret to your success, big man?”

Brad paused for a moment. Doc Jameson had always been enthusiastically in favor of Brad’s bodybuilding goals (which was uncommon with most doctors, who would talk him out of the physical strain of constantly aspiring to more and more size). In the past, he wondered if the Doc’s possible crush on him had any bearing on his willingness to let Brad run yet another Tren cycle year after year without any health warnings. “I think… I’m just done being huge.”

“Aw, c’mon, Hulk!” Jameson said as he moved the stethoscope around Brad’s muscular chest, pausing to listen and then nodding. “Seriously, with your genetics, you could easily double in size. Let me write you a few new scripts.”

“Wait,” Brad said. “What if I said… maybe… maybe I was having… psychotic episodes.”

Doc Jameson’s demeanor changed. “Aw, geez, big guy, that’s a totally different story. Psychotic episodes… That’s very serious language. What are you going through?” He clicked his pen and prepared to jot down on a notepad.

Brad considered opening up about the shifts to “other Brad” where he was living another life, but how could he do that without getting institutionalized? Each time he went to speak, the words caught in his throat. “Maybe… maybe I just need some therapy. Think you could refer me to somebody?”

“Not only that,” the Doc said as he scribbled on his prescription pad, “but I’ve found Xanax really cuts through a lot of the mental issues that bodybuilders have when they’re using gear to add on size.”

Brad shook his head as he took the prescription. He wanted to grab the doctor, shake him, and say, “DAMMIT, I keep dreaming I’m overweight and the idea of BEING big makes me feel like shit! I just wanna be small, dammit!”

Then it happened. The first thing he sensed was always the smell; the scent of his body shifted. His odor was thicker, muskier. Then his temperature spiked, and his dense body seemed to be taking up too much space. An instant later, it actually was, spilling out in firm bulky layers. All of this look less than half a second. He blinked, then shivered. He felt a drop of sweat trickling down his flabby man-boob, dribbling over his gut.

Doctor Jameson shook his head as he jotted on his notepad. “Honestly, we can get you into therapy, but without more diet and exercise… The high blood-pressure, the through-the-roof cholesterol… I mean you come in here talking about depression, sleeplessness, headaches, and the thing you need to do is EAT LESS and EXERCISE MORE. It’s that simple.”

Brad had never heard Doc Jameson speak to him so dismissively before. He was desperate to get his shirt back on, to get out of that office. He cringed as the Doc pointed to a poster of the dangers of obesity. “Type 2 diabetes, Brad! This is no joking matter! It’s your life! Being big is going to KILL you!”

He sighed as he walked out of the office. He hated Doc Jameson, but his whole life he’d been overweight and doctors had always looked at him the same way. When he got home, he would call the receptionist and get the referral to a shrink. Maybe with the right meds, he could forget that froofy “muscle flexing” life so he could really start to live his life without that bizarre fantasy making things even harder.

Outside the office, he wiped the sweat off his brow. Good god, it was hot out! Ten steps to the car and he had already soaked through his shirt. “Damn, Brad, you’re the only guy who needs a shower BEFORE he goes to the gym.” He froze when the blue-haired bespectacled man with the camera approached him with a smile.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but have you ever done any modeling before?”

*

“I’m going crazy,” Brad said to himself as he stood outside his house, waiting for the Amazon delivery truck. “I’m just fucking losing it.” After meeting Diego for the three hour photoshoot, he had assumed he was absolutely pranked, that his thick barrel-sized body was going on the internet for scorn and mockery, but instead, Diego had produced some actually stunning pictures.

“Can I, uh, borrow some of these?” Brad asked as he perused the proofs. One, of him in a flannel shirt and some fitted jeans, actually looked DAMNED good!

“Course,” Diego said. “Pick two you want to use and I’ll release my rights so you can use them on dating sites or whatever.” He raised an eyebrow at the hefty plumber. “What, uh… what do you date?”

Brad was confused at the question at first. “Oh! Girls. I date women.”

“Too bad,” Diego said. “I know about a hundred dudes who would KILL to be with a hot bear like you.”

The delivery truck pulled up and Brad considered just leaving and heading to the gym. “You’re out of your mind,” he thought as the man approached with the blue and white package. “Brad, you’re nuts. Don’t let this photoshoot thing go to your head!”

In his truck he tore open the package and looked at them: blue, red and silver trunks, just like the little panties the bodybuilders wear. (Just like *I* used to wear, he thought, although he was trying to get away from that line of thinking. “Fantasies are fine,” his therapist had told him on their first visit, “but it’s best to stay grounded in reality and make decisions from there.)

He drove to the gym, his chubby hands sweating as he gripped the wheel. Was he really going to do it? That room, where all the muscleguys went to flex and take pictures… they all said the lighting was “just perfect” for showing off their bodies. It seemed like the best possible place to slip on this new attire–which still spiked his anxiety every time he looked at the pile of ludicrously skimpy clothing–but ever since Diego had said how hot he would look like that, he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

Brad felt his usual level of discomfort arriving at the gym, like he had no business being there, but ever since Diego helped him love how he looked, he was desperate for more. Imagine being confident walking around wearing these, he thought, his hand stroking the silky material of his new purchases. He felt awkward showing up to the gym just to beeline toward the posing room, so he walked on the treadmill at 1 MPH for twenty minutes, building up his courage.

Finally, he saw his opportunity: the lunch rush had died out. He grabbed his bag, doublestepped to the room, and slammed it shut. His heart pounded as he pulled out the package. “This is stupid,” he chuckled as he grabbed a handful of his belly and lifted it up, letting it fall. He chose to abandon the idea, considering a call to his therapist from the parking lot. What was the point in trying to accept this body of his? Was it just another way to refuse dieting and exercise, the things nearly everyone recommended since he had been a teen?

“No, wait,” he thought. Diego had complimented his arms. Taking a deep breath, he flexed his arms like the muscleguys did. “Damn,” he said, blushing. His arms were like tree trunks! Sure, he wasn’t that strong, but it LOOKED like he was! “BIg strong manly man,” he chuckled, stroking his beard. With a burst of confidence, he stripped off his shirt. He had to look away from the mirror to get his shorts off. He stumbled as he threaded his feet through the holes of the little trunks.

Just as he looked up, he felt the tingling again. His softness felt hard, aches in his joints shifting to a dull ache throughout his solid muscles. “No!” he said as his vision cleared and he saw his shredded muscles filling out his old posing trunks the way they always had. “No, take me back!” he said, slapping his face.

The door opened and Eric walked in. “BIG MAN! Looking fucking PHENOMENAL!” he said, clapping a hand against Brad’s rippling muscles. Brad sighed. Of course he looked good like this. But he had been so close to (possibly) looking great in the OTHER world, but like a dream, he had woken up just before the good part.