2,000 word commission for  Johnlobo Johnlobo featuring an alternate-universe incarnation of Selph!

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Throughout the night, Robert struggled with rest. He turned in his bed, constantly rotating the pillows to embrace their cooler side, trying different positions and angles which failed to help. When he finally slumped into an uneasy sleep, he felt himself being tugged downward by a peculiar weight. It was as if the self that existed in his mind was being edged out of his physical shell, down through the bed, into a long stretching mindscape filled with violet sand. The sky shimmered with the rippling white lines of the ocean’s surface, and as he moved his dream-self through the off-colour dune, a welcoming softness in the sand between his paws filled him with comfort.


He pressed on, walking without a sense of time. Everything fell away, replaced by a lingering feeling that he had a purpose to fulfil. Robert traipsed through the dream land, until a shimmering blue light caught his attention from over the next slope. He walked uphill, and surpassed the dune to be rewarded with the first tufts of plant-life leading to a long pathway of azure trees and grasses. They centred a pool of water shifting between the violet hues of the desert sands, and the ethereal blues of the plants that surrounded him.


“Just a little longer,” a voice came from behind to gently susurrate in Robert’s ear, sending a warm vibration down his spine. Two purple furred paws closed in around his middle, and warmed him to the core. He slunk into their embrace, and fell backwards into a vast stomach’s curvature and looked upwards at the being’s face It was obscured, but he could make out the blue eyes behind a veil of deep fog. They pierced him. Filling his mind with grandeur and mirth. He saw his dreams manifest in his mind’s eye, all of his taboo desires fulfilled – he was entranced by the masked creature, and felt comfortable in their embrace.


“Are you going to grant my wishes?” Robert asked.


“And so much more,” the voice promised.

* * *

Robert woke with a start, groggy as he usually was. He hefted his bulk upright, and stripped off his old boxers to redress himself in his work attire. A crisp white button-up, and black work pants. Smart shoes, and a tie which accented his double chin. He looked himself up and down in the mirror, with resigned approval. He stood taller than average, with a wide set of shoulders and hips that supported his broad belly. His fur was a pale mint green, with the occasional tufts of sea-green growing along his belly, chest, and the tip of his feline tail.


He didn’t hate the way he looked. He just felt compressed. Small, even. Robert was part of a niche culture which prided themselves on physical size, particularly in the circumference of their belly. Gainers, they were called. Robert was slightly more obsessed than most. He had posters lining his walls, of men who had surpassed the size of buildings and more. Impossibly grown to the size of planets, galaxies. Laughing lasciviously in enjoyment of their reality-defying impressions.


But they were fictions, and not restricted to the same limits as Robert. He would need a magic spell, or a toxic spill, or some other miracle to be as grand as them.


He sighed again, and embraced the mundanity of an ordinary Tuesday as Robert the not-so-super-sized-Lion.


Time trudged on, and Robert braced it as best he could. He got through water-cooler conversations with his office peers by pretending the plastic cup he drank from was a water tower, and he was the fifty-foot beast who had wrenched it from the ground. He stomached repetitive sessions of typing up emails by imagining himself growing fat enough to occupy the entire cubicle, and being released from the Groundhog Day scenario of office admin he was trapped in.


Five o’clock freed him. He bid his co-workers goodbye with a pleasant tone, and rushed to exit the building. Fast-walked to his car, and started on the drive home. He adjusted the radio for company, something to act as background noise while he braved rush-hour traffic. It started off on an ordinary channel, but a static flurry drowned out the host’s voice, and replaced it with something eerily familiar.


“You’ll be so much more, all you need to do is come and see me.”


Robert felt his head grow hazy, thankful the flow of vehicles along the road was slow-moving. He reached to adjust the dial, but his paw froze.


“We’ll be together, soon. You’ll grow to your full potential, all you need to do is wish for it…”


“And that was a cracker of a song, ladies and gentlemen.” The southern drawl of the radio host returned, and Robert’s paw was freed from its paralysis. He pulled the car into a quiet street out of the way of the main road, and sat for a minute to gather himself. He felt an oddness at how calm hearing that familiar voice made him. It was like his head knew that he should be terrified, but the impulse for fear was being diluted. He got out of his car, and took a deep breath.


In the corner of Robert’s eye, he saw purple. It came from the gem-laden exterior of a silver lamp, sat in an antique shop window. On approach, he swore that the jewels consumed the evening rays and grew brighter with each drink of light. Its glistening contours and elaborate design spoke to Robert with the same sinking comfort as the voice that had followed him since last night’s dream, and he felt at ease with its presence.


He entered the shop, and moved to the lamp. It sat on a velvety cushion, with a price tag of $50 dollars. Robert instinctively reached for his wallet, and took it to the counter. He carried it on the cushion, knowing that it deserved to be treated regally. The shop-keeper, an elderly naga who wore a slim navy waistcoat, lapsed his forked tongue when he saw the fat lion approach – cushion in hand.


“If you were worried about getting fingerprints on the silver, I would have polished it for you!” he laughed, moving to find a suitable box.


“I don’t need a bag,” Robert placed fifty dollars’ worth of notes and coins on the shop counter, along with the cushion that carried his precious lamp.


“O-oh,” the serpent stopped rummaging, and rung up the total. He was reaching for the receipt that printed out of the machine when he saw Robert leave the shop like a man with somewhere to be in a hurry. “Your receipt--… strange boy, at least someone finally bought that damned lamp.”


Robert ducked into an alleyway, eager to… do what? He looked at the lamp, and a wave of clarity came over him. What the hell had he just done? Spent fifty dollars unnecessarily on a trinket, and why? Because it gave him the same estranged feeling of comfort, as a voice, from a DREAM? Robert turned around to start himself back toward the shop for a refund, when his paw accidently brushed the lamp’s surface.


An explosive whine preceded the geyser of violet fog that gushed from the lamp’s spout. It grew too hot for Robert’s fur and skin to touch, so he dropped it. It landed perfectly on its base, with no cessation to its flow. It swirled and twisted in ways he knew that gas shouldn’t be able to, until it formed a purple column some twenty feet high. He saw a dark shadow swell from within the chamber of fog, burgeoning in size until it finally breached.


“FINALLY!” a resonant voice, deep and beautiful, boomed so loud it cleared the fog to reveal its form. An ursine face, with humanoid features similar to Robert’s own. Its cheeks were ridiculously plump, framing a face that seemed fixed in a permanent dimpled smile. It was as large as the roaring column of fog that birthed it, and remnants fluttered around its orbit like a personal belt of clouds. It was almost as wide as it was tall, its stomach pressing hard against the bricks of the adjacent buildings.


“Wh- What, no. No way, you’re… you’re the thing, from my dream!”


“Oh, now that’s not at all the welcome I expected, you seemed so eager to fall into my arms last night I thought that you would be thrilled to see me.”


“What are you!?” Robert cried out. The creature’s blue eyes. They were unmistakable. Two burning azure rings around the iris, the same that bore into his mind from that dream. The dream that started everything.


“Mm. I came from a lamp; I’m surrounding by fog; and look—I have a headwrap, and a sash, what kind of historic legend involves everything I’ve just mentioned?” The floating creature was tethered to its lamp by a trail of fog, its lower body stopped at its globular stomach.


“You’re a genie.” Robert declared, awestruck.


“Bingo! Ding ding ding, we have a winner folks. Let’s give the intrepid player a big round of applause,” dozens of invisible hands clapped their applause, the genie laughed.


“Then I get… three wishes?”


“Oh, sorry, wrong answer.” An erroneous horn sounded off.


Robert flinched, “I don’t get any wishes!?”


The genie smiled coyly. “On the contrary, you get… UNLIMITED WISHES!”


A neon size popped into existence above the genie’s head.


“Then I wish… we could go somewhere else, somewhere not as cramped.” Robert said, partially afraid of being trapped in a tight confine with the genie’s bulk; and partially because he was starting to feel cramped with their propensity to summon so many gaudy props when they answered a question.


“One change of scenery, made to order.” The genie clicked their fingers, and in one disorienting split-second, they were gone.


Robert looked around. He and the genie were on the rooftop of a skyscraper overlooking a city that he didn’t easily recognise. “Where are we!?” He cried.


“Somewhere not so cramped. It was either this, or an islet in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I think that I picked the better of the two.” The genie looked different… larger. His stomach had become more pronounced after the transportation, as if the first wish had pumped him up like a plunge from a bike pump into a balloon. “Your next wish, please?”


Robert hesitated, and bit back his trepidation. “I want some nicer clothes, with room to grow.”


The genie rested horizontally, and with a lackadaisical wave of his arm, transformed Robert’s office attire into a blue silk rendition of his own mystic clothing. A short open vest, with a wide sash, and harem pants.


“I said room to grow!”


The genie swelled, discreetly, the gain was not as noticeable as before.


“They’re magical, they’ll grow… now when do we get to the good stuff?”


“The good stuff?”


“Oh come on!” The genie rocketed forward, doing an aerial look around Robert’s head. “The big bada-bing, the boom, the really taboo stuff. You know? The stuff I saw you think about in your dreams…”


Robert blushed, and tugged on the unfamiliar clothing he had wished upon himself. “I uh, I’m not so sure— “


“Look lion-bar. You’ve been thirsting to swell up like a big ol’ balloon for years and years, I get it. Heck just look at me, I’m basically a wish-granting blimp myself. I can give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of, all you’ve got to do to start on your journey to the stars. Figuratively, or literally. Is say ‘I wish’ now let’s get the ball rolling.”


Robert looked over the edge of the skyscraper, and then at the wide space above him. He wondered if it would feel good to let clouds caress him.


“… or you could just go back to being a cubicle-cat.” The genie taunted.


He made up his mind.


“I wish I was lighter than air, and as wide as this building is tall.”


The genie squealed in delight. “A combo wish, and a good one too! Ooh, here we go, one super-duper-lion-oh-my-god-it’s-a-blimp coming right up!” He rolled up an imaginary sleeve, and loosed a crackle of rainbow light into Robert’s body. Unlike the instantaneous nature of his first wish, the magic worked over time.


“I feel… full…” Robert watched his paws pop out into rubbery versions of their former selves, and then his forearms and upper arms followed suit. An indescribable warmth circulated his fat body, transforming everything about him into something much bigger than himself. He felt his limbs and head take on their shiny new appearance, and begin to hiss with gas. His stomach finally rubberized, and grew wider without resistance. It filled until it pushed against his arms, forcing him into a star-jump pose. Only that he couldn’t jump, or walk, or stand. He began to float upwards, ascending to the cloud layer as an ever-swelling lion balloon.


“Mm. Now that’s what I call good wishing,” the genie grew in tandem with Robert, even overtaking him.


Robert’s fat cheeks became round and taut, comfortably squishing against his shoulders when his head sunk against his upper torso to form a divot. It took less than two whole minutes for him to reach his desired size, and he floated – garbed like a genie himself – above the city. Thoroughly enraptured by the adrenaline rush of having his most sought-after fantasy come to life.


When he looked up, he saw the genie. With no legs to sink into his lower form, all Robert saw was a gargantuan purple orb crowned by a circle of effervescent purple clouds. The lamp rotated at the centre of its underside, and he could hear a pleasurable laugh from on high above the genie’s artificial cloudbank.


“Is this enough for you?” The genie rumbled.


“I wish I was bigger than America!” Robert answered no in his own way.


Magic struck down as lightning, and a rubber groan loud enough to be mistaken for thunder terrorized the city below. Robert flew higher as he ballooned, his genie blotting out the sunlight as he too swelled. Casting purple light on everything, like a lens had been slotted in front of the sun to tinge the daylight.


Robert felt pleasure beyond his wildest imaginings. He was inflating to a size no other creature bar him and his mystic servant would ever reach. He was a unique oddity. A world-shaking event, in the form of an over-large lion with dreams of becoming bigger than the planet itself. That was his next wish. To defy the planet. The genie responded in kind, and Robert felt the wind stop caressing his omnipresent roundness.


His head sunk further into the divot, he could see his own rubbery flesh rise around him as a half-wall. He wondered how many hundred miles each inch of his flesh encompassed, and then looked up to be awestruck by the planetary radiance of his inflationary catalyst.


He could gaze at the genie forever. He was beautiful, and Robert fully allowed himself to become entranced. He wanted to see how grand the genie could become, to stroke the length of his bulging moon-like breasts, or to kiss his snout and lips and breathe in the sweet-scented gasses. It was wrong, he knew it, but Robert wanted to commit himself to the genie. He wanted to give in to him, and swell into infinity until he burst with pleasure.


“My wishes are unlimited… right?”


“Mm, yes.” The genie rubbed its pristine violet stomach, the shiny globe reflecting starlight.


“Then I wish you to go free.”


“Ooh… wait, what did you say-“In the depths of space, the genie replied with genuine shock. The lamp was long gone, and the silvery bracers that clung to his wrists were squealing and cracking under the pressure of the titan that wore them. With two metallic shatterings that shook the planets, the genie’s arms were free.


“Unbound! I’m finally unbound!” The genie turned to Robert, and glided to him. His galactic bulk, squishing against the lion. Warmth comparable to a supernova brewed between them, and the lion blushed hotly with a thousand unasked desires. “What a sweet owner you were, I chose wisely the day I touched your dreams.”


“You’re so beautiful. Can you grow even bigger?”


“Now that I am unlimited, of course.”


“Can I make one last wish?”


“Only one.”


“I want to be yours, forever.”


“Then you will be one of my greatest, fullest treasures.”


Robert shuddered, “what is your name,” unable to hide the pleasured tremor from his voice.


“I am the Selfish Eastern Wind, the Intruder of Dreams, and Defiler of Stagnation, Selph the Devourer of Greed” he leant in. His celestial hands closing in around Robert, filling him, almost to bursting.


“But you may call me Master.”