Garden of Cruel Delights, The

Ethan laughed at John as the boy messed up yet another throw, the football missing his outstretched fingers by at least a foot. His blonde bangs danced over his flashing green eyes as he stopped to pick up the gently spinning ball. “John, you expect to be trying out for the football team this year and you can’t even play a simple game of catch right?” Ethan grinned and rested a bit, hands on his knees as his smoothly muscled shoulders rose and fell with breathing. He knew he was John’s better, and he enjoyed showing off, even to go so far as to play catch shirtless, just so he could flex his muscles.

John frowned and kicked a dandelion, sending the yellow flower head into a bush. “Hey, that throw was perfect...you’re just to fat!” He poked Ethan in his chiseled abs, teasing the blonde boy. Ethan snorted. “Pppfttt...lame excuse.” “I’ll never let myself go like that”. “Come on, toss it again.” John held back and threw again, this time more or less on course but with a pronounced wobble. Ethan grabbed it, grazed his fingertips, and sent the football arcing over a nearby stone wall, landing far behind it with a soft thump somewhere.

Both boys stared a second and John fidgeted nervously, biting his lip. “You owe me a ball Ethan.” “I know that throw was perfect.” Ethan put a hand behind his head and laughed. “It’s just in someone’s yard jackass.” “I’ll get it.” Ethan stepped on an overturned garbage can by the stone wall and braced himself to climb up and over when John pulled at his pant leg nervously. “Ethan, that’s Mrs. Caraway’s yard.” Ethan paused his climb to roll his eyes. “John, I’m twenty-one...way to old for the story we heard as kids....she’s just an old lady that people gave a bad name just cause her husband died from falling on a rake.”

John lowered his eyes and let go of his friend. “Well....yeah...I was thinking more on the lines of you never being able to find the ball in that weed-pile she calls her garden.” “Just hurry back, okay?” “And don’t get lost!” Ethan huffed and slid a leg over the rough stone of the wall and pulled himself up, waving to John once before dropping into the land beyond.

Ethan paused, looking around. Mrs. Caraway’s place was supposed to be big, but he realized it was hard to tell from where he was standing. Behind him stood the cool stone wall, while around him slender stems of roses twined and grew everywhere, rising taller then his six-foot frame and loosely trained around faded wood trellises. It was obvious to Ethan that the roses had not been pruned in a long time, perhaps years, and the roses were tangled up with each other and the trellises, producing cramped passageways of thorns and impenetrable walls. Despite this apparent lack of care, the roses bloomed in profusion, with thick dark petals that reminded Ethan of wine, blood, and women’s lips. A sickly sweet musk rose from the flowers, a smell that caressed Ethan’s nose like a lover’s touch, and bruised petals lay on the ground, releasing more of the scent whenever Ethan took a step.

“Of course her yard is gonna be like this, not like a woman that old is gonna be up for housework” he grumbled, pushing his way tenderly through the thorny stems. There was a path, outlined with old stepping stones, thick with lichen and moss, but branches zigzagged around it, making navigation difficult. All the while, the heavy odor of the roses made Ethan’s head swim, and he was glad when he finally got to a break in the hallways of greenery and came to a small clearing.

Ropy, thick vines were spread out before him in a tangled mess. Pale, round gourds of some description were growing from them, and Ethan laughed to see some of the gourds resembled ugly people, or maybe trolls. He marveled at the many shapes he could see in their grotesque features, even as he kept an eye out for what had brought him to this place.

“I’m going to have to be really lucky to find that frickin ball” Ethan mumbled to himself, slicking a bang out of his eyes. “I can’t even see the wall anymore” Indeed, the roses stretched out behind him, while tall, prairie like grass rose from his right. He could see a glance of a Victorian-era mansion beyond a plum tree heavy with fruit, but his line of sight was blocked with fruit trees, sunflowers, and heavy weeping willows. As he turned to head back down the rose path to return to John, now pretty sure he wouldn’t find the football in this mess, his footsteps made something pop and splatter messily under his sneaker, staining it with a dark red juice. As Ethan looked down to see what it was, his friend and the ball were forgotten.

“Strawberries!” “Lots of them!” Ethan grinned and stopped down to pick up a ripe berry, popping it in his mouth. “Wow, these are better then the cold waxy ones you get in the supermarket.” As he stood up, he made another discovery. “Hey...that tree over there has figs....and those vines over there have grapes!” Ethan went from plant to plant, savoring each different flavor. He wasn’t feeling guilty about eating fruit that didn’t belong to him, after all, he reasoned, the old lady wasn’t likely to come out here herself. His lips were stained with the juices of many fruits before he found a series of bushes with glossy leaves and dark blue fruit hanging beneath them.

The young man grinned and pulled one of the blueberries off the plant with a gesture. The berry was huge, far bigger then he’d seen, about the size of a gumball, and its siblings still on the plant matched it in size. Ethan put it to his mouth, biting through the thin skin of the fruit with his teeth and letting the soft insides of the berry explode on his tongue. Juice as thick as blood swept around his mouth, and oozed between the corners of Ethan’s mouth, coating his tongue with the tart sweet flavor of blueberry.

A shrill buzz of a cicada broke Ethan’s fruit reverie, and he looked guiltily up as he remembered he had left John behind the wall for at least thirty minutes. “Ah...why didn’t he yell for me?” Ethan shrugged and turned around to go back, realizing he had rushed off after the different fruits and now was completely lost. He didn’t see the roses, the wall, or even the mansion. Just strange plants and weeds and garden implements left to rust over the years. “I....I’ll just pick a direction and walk.” He mumbled to himself half-heartedly. As he strode in a likely direction, Ethan caught a glance of his slim hand.

The back of it was dark and bruised looking, obviously from getting juice from some fruit or another into it. Ethan tried to wipe it off on his jeans, cursing when he couldn’t get it off, then feeling a bit worried when he saw the same dark stain on his belly and on his arm as well. And they were spreading. Dark blue lines radiated from the splotches, traveling up and down Ethan’s tan skin, spreading out like a cancer. The young man yelped and cursed, believing that he had contracted some disease from eating a strange plant in the garden.

“What the hell?” “What kinda crap is in here? Poison Ivy?” Ethan moaned helplessly, pulling the front of his pants out to check the spread of the color. Sure enough, it had spread in between his thighs, coloring his manhood like a blue blanket. Ethan was shocked at this, but was even more concerned when he felt a gurgle in his gut, and the feeling of fullness and cold liquid deep in his belly. As the horrified boy cradled his gut, he saw in shock and mounting disbelief the edges of his beloved six-pack subside and smooth out. At first he thought they had simply vanished, but then he realized that his stomach was getting larger and heavy, gurgling and pumping from unseen force deep within him.

“John?” “You there?” Can you here me?” “Help!” Ethan screamed, his voice cracking. He ran through the vines and plants around him, stumbling over roots and rocks in his desire to get out of the now seemingly malign garden. His grossly swollen belly reminded him of his presence with every step he took, riding over the edge of his belt buckle and growing larger with every step. The pain from whatever poison he must have consumed nearly doubled him over, but so desperate was the boy to escape he kept running until a branch somehow appeared in front of his vision, braining Ethan as he ran full force into it, knocking him backwards into the dirt.

Ethan groaned, seeing lights sparkle before his eyes, trying to get his breath back from the blow. A pressure on his thighs made him realize something was amiss, and as he pushed himself up a bit from the ground, he could see his once slender legs filled up his jeans like a glove, even as the poor boy noticed his bloated belly now filled his lap. It pulsated and gurgled wetly, his navel a deep hole, while his legs plumped out, throbbing with pain from the cramped jeans. Just when it seemed to Ethan that he couldn’t stand the pain, his throbbing flesh split the fabric, taunt shiny blue flesh pouring out through the holes like rising dough, pushing Ethan’s legs apart as his belly billowed between them.

“What’s the hell is happening to me?” Ethan sobbed out loud. Dimly the distraught boy remembered a movie he had seen once long ago, but that was laughable. After all, it was just a story, and it was bout a girl, not him, and gum, not some crazy grandmother’s yard. Ethan braced himself to set up, his jeans falling apart as he wobbled upright, crying out in dismay at the parts of himself he could see. His muscled pecs, that had shown so nicely through his T-shirts, were now inflated parodies of themselves, heavy hanging bags of juice that flopped against his rounded pregnant belly like half inflated water balloons. His nipples were grossly distended from the weight and pressure, and as a blue fluid started to leak from one, Ethan realized that his unspoken theory was coming true.

“A blueberry?” “I’m...this...fuck this, this can’t be happening!” The bloated boy stood up shaking, his belly bobbing in between his plump juicy thighs, his arms softening and loosing the muscled striations he had worked so hard to achieve. Behind him his ass swelled with fluid, bouncing with every step he took, hanging out from over his massive legs like twin melons that reflected the sun across their shiny surface. Every step was agony now, as fear gripped Ethan’s heart. His legs were thick and rubbery and could not slide past each other easily, and he had to force them to move his gargantuan stomach out of the way. His belly hung to his knees, and only Ethan’s strength kept him moving. His juicy rear kept jiggling and wobbling and threatening to throw him off balance, while his engorged pecs flopped under his arms, upsetting his center of balance.

Juice dripped from his pointed nipples now in a steady stream, sliding wetly over the smooth taunt skin and rolling over his belly. Beneath that turgid orb of dark flesh, Ethan could feel a spread of wetness between his legs, and he knew he was leaking from his shaft as well. It was horrifying, embarrassing, and surreal all at the same time, the horrible bloated feeling of pain the only thing convincing the boy that this wasn’t a dream. And then as he stumbled into another clearing, his massive body jiggling, the nightmare began anew.

He had found the planted rows of the strange gourds again, but this time...this time the fleshy tendrils were writhing like a bed of snakes, circling and entwining each other. Ethan turned and encouraged his mammoth form to run, but a vine as thick as Ethan’s forearm curled around his thick leg and brought him crashing down. For the second time in just a few minutes, he hit hard, but this time the liquid in his body cushioned the blow, sending ripples through him and making his belly and breasts shimmy. Getting up was surely impossible now, for even could he shift the beach ball sized orb that was his belly, more vines crept around him, encircling his limbs and tightening around his blue flesh.. Before Ethan’s horrified gaze, the thick vines started to climb up over this bloated torso.

They were insistent and seemingly sentient in their movements. A vine curled around one of Ethan’s pecs, which now more accurately resembled the tits of a crazy porn star with a homemade silicon kit. The vine wrapped around the boy’s breast, squeezing the lump of swollen flesh in its embrace and causing a gush of blueberry juice to spurt out. Ethan moaned, as much in fear as in pleasure at the slight offset of pressure in his body. Wet juice dripped over his shaking form, dripping into the soil as another vine curled around his other breast and a third dove deep beneath the swell of his gut, snaking in between Ethan’s spread out legs and grasping the man’s shaft in a coil. The plant pulled and rubbed itself in between Ethan’s thighs, fondling him and touching him, making the poor boy cry out lustfully even in his terror and disbelief.

And he was not done growing yet. The inexorable welling of fluid took it’s toll on the formerly athletic young man. Even with the milking of his fleshy pecs, even when his shuddering body finally came and spurted out what felt to Ethan like gallons of wet liquid juice from his cock, the growth continued. With a wet snap the grip of the probing vines went limp and Ethan realized his expanding limbs had rent the constricting vines apart. They moved limply, curling about feebly as Ethan gasped and pushed himself painfully up, using sheer panic to force himself into standing.

He tried to yell for help now, freed from the vines, but when he screamed out, instead of sound, juice poured from his mouth. As he coughed, Ethan realized that if he had just fought of the vines, it meant he was near the wall, and freedom, and help for his condition! This realization gave Ethan the strength to move painfully forward, even as his rounded shoulders started to swallow up his cone-shaped arms and his jiggling bouncing ass enveloped more and more of his legs. With a glad, juice-gurgled cry, Ethan spied the path he had come into this hellish place from, surrounded by the dark scented roses. As he pushed himself forward, his gut pressing into the ground now and his arms at almost right angles from the blue flesh spilling around him, he gave another cry of despair.

In his rush for freedom, he had forgotten the thorns. Even as he took his last painful step, and his legs vanished into the round, spherical blue blob he was fast becoming, he saw the serrated brambles of the roses. Even as his arms disappeared into his sides as he tried to rock his sloshing body backwards and away from danger, his belly rumbled and expanded the last few inches it would need to brush one of the points...

John muttered sleepily and opened his eyes when someone poked him. An elderly lady with a sun hat and gold rimmed spectacles smiled down at him in a matronly sad way. And in her frail arms...
“My football!” John crowed, jumping up and taking it from the women happily. “Thanks Mrs...uhhh” John paled a bit as he realized who this must be. “Caraway” “Miss Caraway” the old women said nodding. “Your friend was in my yard searching for this.” “He had to go home suddenly so he told me to return this to you.” She said in a soft voice. John felt a bit guilty, after badmouthing this lady and treating her like some monster, she was in actuality a nice person. He clutched his ball to his chest and then paused, feeling a wet stickiness. “Hey, what’s this stuff on it?”

“Oh that?” Mrs. Caraway said, turning a bit as she hobbled back through the iron gate of her yard. “Your ball landed in one of my blueberry bushes. It must have crushed some of the berries.” “It will wipe right off” She then vanished in a thick mass of flowers.

As John watched her go, he absently took his sticky finger to his mouth and licked it. Mrs. Caraway was right, it was blueberry. Damn good too.

Not far in the mansions gardens, wet juice dripped from hanging leaves and flowers, even as hungry roots sucked up the sugary liquid that once, not so long ago, had been Ethan.