Jim reached out to touch the ring. As his right index finger brushed the cool metal, he shrieked and jumped, tipping over his chair in the process. Sharon scrambled up and rushed to his side. "Are you all right?!" she almost shouted.
Jim clutched his right hand with his left around the wrist, flexing his right fingers in and out of a fist. His features relaxed from the rictus they had assumed when he touched the ring, but he was still breathing hard. "Ah . . . I think . . . now I am. At least, it doesn't feel like there's any permanent damage."
"What happened?"
"When I touched the ring, I could have sworn that someone was boiling and flaying my hand at the same time. I've never felt pain like that ever before." Jim shuddered. "Whatever else that ring does or doesn't do, it seems to have definite ideas about who's allowed to use it."
Sharon looked at it, that glittering cursed circle of metal, and on a sudden impulse she knocked the box off the table, sending the ring and box flying into the wall. It made a slight clink as it bounced onto the carpet. Surging to her feet, Sharon snatched it off the carpet and headed over to the garbage disposal.
"Sharon, don't!"
"Why not?! It hasn't done us any favors. I'll never be able to use it again without being afraid something terrible will happen. It gave you breasts without your ever touching it! The fucking thing is cursed."
"It's inanimate, Sharon. Magic or not, it's just a ring."
"How do you know that? Magic rings can have their own wills!"
Jim started laughing so hard he got the hiccups. Sharon was perplexed and now even angrier. "What's so funny?!"
"You. Me. The fact that we're debating the properties of magic rings.
"Seriously, Sharon, destroying the ring won't help us. It might not have worked for me now, but that may be because we don't know how to get to it work for me. Plus, it's the only link we have to . . . well, magic. I don't think science is going to get us out of this mess. Maybe it can give us some clues to who sent it to you, and if we find him, or her, we can demand some answers."
Sharon stepped back from the disposal, picked up the case, closed the ring in it again, and walked it back to the dresser. When she came back, she said, "Jim, you're taking this more calmly than I am. That isn't right. I need you to panic more."
"Ok, but you have to promise me that you'll panic less. We can't have two people panicking, or otherwise we're liable to make even more stupid mistakes than we have already. Ok?"
"Ok." Jim always did manage to make her feel better.
"Now, you're not going to want to hear this, but I have a request to make."
"What now?" Sharon asked.
"I want you to make your breasts small, then have them lactate again."
"Why?"
"You suggested awhile back that if you gave me normal breast milk, maybe it would get rid of my breasts . . . I thought it would just give me normal breasts. Well, all things considered, I think either of those options is preferable to the present state of affairs."
"What if it just makes your breasts bigger?"
"That's a risk I'm willing to take. Normal breasts will be hard enough to disguise. Breasts that shade of pink . . . I could never wear anything white again in my life. Much less anything without a collar."
Sharon nodded. "I understand." But, again, understanding didn't help her feelings any.
That night, Sharon took out the ring and slipped it onto her finger. At first, she did nothing but stare at it, trying to suppress the combination of fear and loathing she felt for it. Jim held her, and that helped her do what she need to do: she concentrated on her breasts becoming smaller but full of milk. She gasped as a pair of contradictory sensations pulsed in her chest: a shrinking and tightening contrasting with a liquid fullness. She looked down and her breasts didn't seem to have changed size any, but now blue veins stood out on them and Sharon could almost see the milk bursting within them, waiting for release. Jim wasted no time lowering his face to her breasts and relieving the pressure.
It amazed Sharon how quickly the bizarre became routine. Every morning and night she nursed Jim, and while she hadn't felt up to it that first night, she admitted that the extra closeness made her feel amorous more often: it was hard to imagine doing something more intimate with her lover. The calories Jim was sucking out of her body also had a salutary effect on her waistline. Jim's breast growth continued apace, which Sharon wasn't happy about, but to their relief the pinkness started to fade from everywhere except his nipples.
Jim had always been . . . interested in her breasts, ever since they had started dating, but especially since they had started having sex. Now that he had his own pair, some of that fascination seemed have transferred. Not that his interest in her breasts had decreased; but he seemed to spend considerable time touching his. At dinner one day, when she noticed him looking down at his chest, she screwed up her courage and asked him about them.
"Jim, I've noticed the time you invest inspecting your chest these days. Do you want to talk about it?"
"Hmm? Yes, I guess I have been." He paused, then said, "You know how when you have a scab or something, you want to pick at it? Well, it's the same with these breasts. They . . . they don't quite feel like they belong to me. My nipples are more sensitive now; I guess it must have been all that new ductwork growing in underneath them. But even so, even though I can feel that, it's not like they're mine. Do you know what I'm talking about?"
Sharon said, "I've never felt like that about a part of my body, but I can imagine, a little."
At first, Jim kept his chest bound, but that became increasingly uncomfortable. One weekend, after his breasts had grown to about the size of a C cup, or so they were to discover, Sharon found him in bathroom hefting them while looking in the mirror.
When he saw her, he said, "I think I need to get a bra."
The words affected her more than she had expected. She took a deep breath and said, "You can't bind them anymore?"
"It's starting to hurt, a lot. I feel like I'm being strangled. But I think I'm too big to go around without support, plus the bouncing will make it even more obvious what I've been hiding.
"I went to a support website for transsexuals and got the name of a local lingerie store that caters to, um, unusual customers. I'd really like you to come along. For your experience . . . and so I won't feel as embarrassed. I know this is asking a lot, but it would mean a lot to me. Please, Sharon?"
"Okay," she said, but it was not okay at all.
The last time Sharon had felt that uncomfortable was when she had walked in one of her college roommates having sex . . . with a guy she wasn't dating. There, however, she had been able to walk out, while here, it just went on and on.
Jim went straight for the sports bras, for reasons that he summarized as, "More support, less girly." Sharon couldn't disagree. The second thing he did was call over a helpful saleslady. She was about 40 and matter-of-fact, selecting some promising bras and leading Sharon and Jim back to the changing room to try them on. Jim blushed as he took off his shirts (he wore two) and binding, but he was less inhibited about showing his breasts to the woman than Sharon would have been. It must come from a lifetime of being able to take off your shirt in public without attracting stares, she guessed.
Fitting Jim took awhile because he had a larger chest size than most women. He ended up getting several specialty bras in 42C that normal stores didn't even carry. Sharon nixed a few more because she thought they looked uncomfortable, assessments that the saleslady agreed with.
Worrying that her breast milk might be feeding Jim's expansion, she stopped nursing him. However, his breasts kept growing, white now except for the brilliant pink of his nipples; and by now, even those had faded a bit, to a more human color.
Jim's breasts stopped at a D cup; of course, they had to buy new bras. At this point, he was even larger than Sharon, who rated in at a mid-C size. When he asked Sharon to allow him to milk her again as an experiment, and pointed out that a little more size at this point didn't matter, they discovered that his growth had decisively stopped. Even imbibing more of Sharon's milk had no effect, and so they continued what had become a comforting ritual.
When she brought up the topic, Jim constructed an explanation of his breast size thus: "It's heredity. My mother's a DD, and both my older sister and my younger half-sister, who's not even out of high school yet, are D's. I sometimes wonder if the reason I like large-breasted women is because my entire family has big busts. If I had been born female, this is what I would have gotten."
Jim got used to having large breasts: that it was hard to look at anything below chest level, that they made it hard to balance when leaning over, that they got in the way and complained when they were bumped, that they made it harder to get comfortable lying down, that they made his back ache sometimes, and all the other little problems and annoyances. Then one day while Sharon was off shift, Jim came into their apartment crying.
Sharon had only Jim cry twice, both times when he'd been injured. She was about to ask what was wrong when Jim blurted, "I got fired."
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Tue Oct 07 17:57:31 2003
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