Grow

Lois took a deep breath, mouth suddenly dry. Her skin felt itchy, hair standing up all over...she stared down at her stomach, hand running over the smooth skin where the ghost had touched her and dissolved. There was no mark on her belly—no sign of change at all—but the reporter felt something off...and that's when she felt it.

It felt like the bloat during a period. A band of painful pressure around her abdomen, kidneys feeling as though they'd been punched, like someone had lid a bladder up under her skin and started to pump it up, putting pressure on her internal organs. Lois placed a hand on her belly, wincing at the pain, expecting the soft feel of water-weight...but the flesh on her hand was firm, solid, and...concentrated.

Looking down, Lois stared at the flat expanse of her stomach...or what had been the flat expanse. There was a bulge there, a hard round bubble, below her navel, buried inside beneath the muscle. She could feel the shape of it with her fingers...like a peach or an apple. Except as she placed her fingers around the lump, trying to measure the size of it, the reporter could feel the edges press against her finger tips, the painful pressure spreading...as it grew.

Then Lois noticed her hand.

The tendons on the back of her hand were standing out prominently. Lois watched in fascination as the normally smooth, soft flesh began to sink in, ever so slightly, shrinking against the tendons, arteries and bones...

Her heart hammered in her chest, breath coming out in quick pants. The reporter stared as the skin about her wrists began to fall in as well, blue veins more prominent on the pale skin of her forearm, and now the shape in her belly was the size of a grapefruit, distending the shape of her stomach a little from the inside.

Lois took a step and staggered, the room momentarily spinning. She blinked, but the spell of light-headedness didn't go away. Her hands and legs shook as she sagged against a wall, and leaned on it for support. Dragging one foot in front of the other, the naked woman staggered into the bedroom. Her eyes lit on the phone at the bedside table.

Phone. Danger. Call.

There was an open space of maybe three feet between the doorway and the bed, a distance Lois normally would cross in a single stride without a thought. Now lethargy stole on her...arms and legs didn't want to work...she ran a rough tongue over dry, hard lips...and the pain in her belly was enough to keep her half-doubled over, one arm grasped around her growing middle.

She took the lunge. The room swam around Lois as she half-crashed into the bed, right out out and grasping the phone. Her eyes were heavy...it was hard to **** her fingers to press the buttons, dial the number...

The phone was ringing when Lois looked over her shoulder, to stare through the open bathroom doorway at the mirror above the sink. To see reflected in there the emaciated figure clutching the swollen, distended belly, skin taught against the round shape of it as though she had swallowed a bowling ball, ribs stark against the thin flanks...and as Lois heard the other end of the line click, she saw the stomach push her hand farther out as it continue its growth.

She screamed, a short primal cry of horror...and then fell back on the bed, sunken eyes shuddering closed, succumbing at last to the terrible lethargy.