Elise waited anxiously as the doctor picked up the thick medical chart and flipped through it. "Hmmm, he said after a moment. "Well Ms. Morgan, it's the classic case of bad news and good news. Elise stared at him, wide eyed. All she really heard of the statement was 'Bad news...'
"The bad news is, you have tested positive for Hothorn Syndrome. As I explained to you on your last visit, it's a chronic muscular degenerative disease. That's why you've been losing muscle tone so drastically lately, along with the excessive fatigue and other symptoms. I'm afraid the condition is not curable; there are occasional cases of spontaneous remission, really quite rare, but there's nothing we can do to end the condition itself.
"Now, normally that would not be a problem, because whilst we can't cure the condition we can manage the symptoms very well using anabolic steroids to promote muscle regeneration and growth. However, as we discussed last week, in your case there is the complication that you are allergic to normal steroids.
Elise nodded, her thoughts spinning. "Yes. Well, thankfully that's the end of the bad news. The GOOD news is, there is a new drug on the market, Mivalan. It's the latest thing, only been on the market for a year. A new type of designer steroid, specifically designed to avoid a lot of the side effects common with previous anabolic steroids. Its also should be safe for you to take, according to the results of the scratch test we did last time.
He paused. "Now, I have to say, Mivalan has not been used specifically to treat Hothorn Syndrome before that I am aware of. So we are taking something of a shot in the dark by using it. But that said, do rest assured that Mivalan has been very thoroughly tested over the course of many years, it's fully approved by the FDA, and it's been used in a good dozen different applications now, all without any incident whatsoever. Given that, any risks to you will be absolutely minimal. We will of course closely monitor your progress just to be on the safe side...
There was more, much more. She was weighed and measured and poked and prodded and finally handed a prescription and sent on her way. An hour later she was pulling into her driveway.
Rod came out as she arrived, of course ##" he always did, ever since she had moved in here five years ago. She sighed inwardly as he came out, blinking in the sunlight. Like a weasel coming out of a burrow, she thought. Something about his annoying little face always reminded her of a nasty little rodent.
When shed first moved in, he came out to leer at her. His eyes would crawl all over her body, especially given the tight-fitting clothing she favoured. He was always ready with some comment on her appearance, usually managing to make it sound dirty in the most creepy way imaginable. As if shed have anything to do with a loser like him!
Of late, though, he had started to look more disappointed and then even concerned, as the weight fell off her and her looks faded. His increasing indifference angered her even more than his disgusting leering had ##" how dare he, who was so beneath her, act like she was the one beneath him?
"Afternoon, Elise!" He said brightly. She managed a half wave as she headed for the house. He said something else but she ignored whatever it was, rushing into the house. Even that small effort left her panting and tired, but she forced herself to make her way to the bathroom. She stared at the reflection in the mirror, taking stock.
On a whim, she stripped off and examined herself in the mirror. At eighteen, she'd been stunning; she'd known it, and took it as simply how things were supposed to be. At almost six feet tall she had been an imposing figure; long silky blonde hair, and a superbly toned athletic figure, with large rounded, D cup breasts only helped. Elise had always had a titanic ego... she saw herself as special, as better than other people, as more than. Of course she had been gorgeous; why wouldnt she be? It was no more than she deserved, being the amazing person she was.
She had accepted the constant stream of male attention and female jealousy as nothing more than her due, revelling in it. She delighted in the power her beauty gave her... the power to make boys compete and grovel and even beg for her attention. She would play games with them, teasing them just enough to get another date, another present, always with the implication that she would "put out" in return... something she rarely did. It gave her pleasure to see how far a guy would go for that promise, how expensive a place he would take her too, how expensive a gift he would buy her.
She had even developed a habit of taking other womens boyfriends away from them, purely for the pleasure of knowing that she could. It had been so simple, so easy for her. A short skirt, a tight shirt, a little flirting, a little "come hither... any guy would dump his girlfriend if he thought he had a chance with her. Once the breakup was achieved, Elise would often as not dump the guy herself, having proved her own superiority to her satisfaction.
It had gone beyond her school days. As she moved out into the word, her power over men only seemed to grow. She had no need to work ##" she simply picked a wealthy man and took him as her own, using him until she tired of him or until somebody better came along. A string of such "sugar daddies mean that she lived a very comfortable lifestyle indeed without having to expend any effort to get it.
That was then. By the time she had hit the wrong side of thirty, the years had taken their toll. The blonde hair which had once looked silken had come to look flat and dull. The skin which had once glowed with health had turned pale. Whilst she remained skinny overall, deposits of fat had developed on stomach and thighs, and her attempts at dieting did nothing to stop them. Gravity had won it's inevitable battle with her bust line, giving her nipples which pointed more down than forwards these days. She had come to hate her body, hate seeing it. It was more than just the usual fear of ageing; when she looked in the mirror she saw an affront against who she was, an affront against nature itself.
Over time the compliments had slowed, and stopped. The men she attracted had gotten poorer, less classy, less generous. One or two guys started making noises about her getting a job, of all things. She was disgusted with the idea.
Then two years ago, for the first time in her life, a man had dumped her. Her! Hed taken up with somebody younger, some pretty blonde in her early twenties. She hadnt been upset by it ##" she had been almost shaking with rage. The very idea that any man would be capable of rejecting her was almost incomprehensible. How dare he? Didnt he know his place in the scheme of things? Didnt he know hers?
And then, six months ago, things had started getting even worse. Her muscles had started wasting away; her eyes peered out of darkened hollows, her upper arms were skinny reeds, her shoulders sunken, her breasts sagging still further. She looked awful; like a combination of skeletally thin in some places, fat in others. Then for the last month, a general ache that he just got worse and worse.
"God, what I wouldn't give to have the perfect body, she muttered. She managed a laugh. "Sell my soul to the devil? Done deal! She opened the Mivalan bottle; little round red tablets with an 'M' on each side. The packet said they were to be taken three times a day, and since it was about noon she shrugged and popped one in her mouth, washing it down with a little water. "Well, she said to her reflection, "doesn't feel any different...
She shrugged again and went to bed.
***
In the morning she pulled herself out of bed and into the shower as usual. She was half way through brushing her teeth when she realised that the aches and pains were gone.
She frowned into the mirror and experimentally raised her left arm slowly, waiting for the aches to begin in the shoulder.
Nothing.
She tried rotating the arm, slowly bringing it round in a wide circle.
Nothing.
No pain, no stiffness, no trace of an ache. Her arm felt perfectly normal.
Elise whooped with excitement and spent the next ten minutes trying out every muscle and joint in her body. The pain that had plagued her for months was simply absent.
Unfortunately the tiredness wasn't. By the end of the ten minutes she found herself practically exhausted, and after taking the next of her pills she stumbled downstairs to lie on the couch where she promptly dozed off again.
She woke after an hour or two, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. Then the queasy feeling in her stomach resolved itself into hunger; ravenous hunger! She felt like she hadn't eaten for days. Elise stumbled to the kitchen and decided to scramble some eggs along with a couple of pieces of bacon. Only the two strips of bacon looked awful small and lonesome by themselves... she shrugged a 'what the hell' shrug and added a couple more. Then shrugged again and added a couple more. And some more eggs.
She ate every scrap with barely a pause or thought. Ten minutes later she found herself looking at the fridge again. She went back into the living room and tried to watch TV for a while. Elise had never worked a day in her life ##" even the last couple of years she had managed, living off the money she had stockpiled over the years, selling off the jewellery men had given her, etc. She was used to spending a lot of time home alone now. Boredom had not been much of a problem for her, she'd simply slept most of the days away. But now she found herself staring blankly at the TV and thinking of how good that bacon had tasted.
After half an hour she gave up and raided the fridge. While the rest of the bacon was cooking she ate a huge bowl of cereal, then decided on some toast, and figured what the hell and mixed up some pancake mix for afters. By the end of it the kitchen was a mess and she stared guiltily at the empty boxes. 'fifteen hundred calories there, minimum', she thought to herself. 'Maybe more like two thousand. God!'
Still, she did feel better. The hunger pangs had receded, a little, and she had a little tingling all through her body which felt like very slight pins and needles - odd, but not unpleasant. She also felt tired again, and went back to the couch to grab some sleep.
That was the pattern, for the rest of the day. Sleep an hour or two, wake up starving hungry, resist for a while before caving and eating a huge meal, then back to sleep. By the end of the day she must have eaten ten thousand calories. She should have felt stuffed... but she didn't.
She called the doctor. He asked a few questions about how she felt, and she had to admit that she felt pretty damned good apart from being hungry all the time. "Well, it's a good sign really, he said. "I admit it sounds a bit excessive, but maybe it's just your body trying to rebuild the lost mass. Frankly, given the results of your last examination Id be pleased if you even gained some extra weight through plain old fat right now. My advice is to eat as much as you feel you need for the next few days, and we will see if you are gaining muscle or fat when you come to see me next. If it is fat, we can decide what to do about it then.
The following morning she woke hungrier than ever. She examined herself in the bathroom mirror, frowning. Was she putting a little weight on around her shoulders and arms...? It looked like it... but surely that wouldn't happen overnight, no matter how much a person ate. She pinched at her hips and thighs gingerly. There was less fat there than before, too... which seemed incredible given the events of yesterday, but this she was certain of. A television commercial from long ago had always stuck with her... saying that you were in trouble 'if you can pinch more than an inch...' on your hips or thighs. She remembered the day that she had first been able to do just that, and the hollow resignation to advancing age that had come with it.
Well, yesterday she had been able to pinch maybe three inches. Today... less. Significantly less.
She stared into the mirror, uncertain, then shrugged. The doc hadn't said anything about how fast any of this would go.
She considered doing some online grocery shopping... at the rate she was eating, she would be out of food soon. But then, she did feel a little stronger, more alert today. Maybe a quick trip to the shops would be okay.
She found an old pair of jeans, noting that they definitely seemed to go over her hips a little easier today. A faded T shirt and some old trainers and she was good to go.
She found herself piling the food on and on at the supermarket. Most especially when she got to the meat section... she piled every kind of meat imaginable into the cart, steaks, mince, chops, you name it. She was almost on autopilot, just piling it in whilst humming along to the god-awful music they were piping through the store.
Finally she realised just how much food shed piled in there. Embarrassed, she moved to put some back... hesitated... and shoved the overloaded cart on towards the dairy aisle.
By the time she finished the cart was piled so high she actually considered getting another one. Instead she steered the tottering pile carefully through the checkout, letting them bag everything up before heading out to the car.
She got home feeling elated. Normally an hour or so of walking around like that, not to mention pushing a heavy load, would have left her feeling exhausted. But she felt great, energised, stronger than she had in months.
And she felt famished. She didnt even put half the stuff away, just tore into it and started grilling up some steaks. "Steak for breakfast, she mused to herself. "Four of them, no less. This cannot be normal. Nevertheless she polished off the huge pile of meat in short order... and then found herself making some toast and spreading a slab of pate on it, just for a snack.
And that was the rest of Elises day. Eat, watch TV, eat, nap for a bit, eat, do a little housework, eat. She fell into bed that night feeling bloated beyond belief, but with the familiar slightly pleasurable tingle she had felt the day before. Her last thought before falling asleep was that whilst things may not be exactly normal, they were at least better than before.
In the morning, Elise practically bounced out of bed. She felt amazing, full of energy, and practically rushed into the bathroom to look in the mirror. What she saw there took her breath away.
The fat that had decorated her thighs, abdomen and hips for the last few years or so... was gone. Simply gone, every last trace of it. Elise poked at her flat, smooth stomach, gaping in surprise at the soft, tight skin over flat muscle.
More than that... her once large, rounded breasts, which for a decade or so had pointed steadily more and more towards the floor... were now jutting high and firm from her chest. She actually jumped in place, stunned to see that they were as firm as they had ever been. Firmer!
"God, I havent looked like this since I was twenty, she muttered incredulously. "Just what the hell is going on?
She picked up the bottle of Mivalan and looked at it. It was the only possible answer, the only new factor in her life, and the incredible physical recovery that she had gone through had started almost to the hour after she started taking the stuff.
She went downstairs, not even thinking to dress, and sat down in the kitchen, staring at the bottle.
Anabolic steroids made people more muscular, yes. That was the whole point, it was why athletes took them, why the doctor had prescribed them for her. But such a total and utter physical reversal, in a matter of a day or two? No. A drug that could do that would be headline news around the world. It would be bigger than Viagra.
It was a new drug, he said. Maybe they hadnt noticed the effect yet?
"Nonsense, she snorted. Drugs went through years and years of testing, clinical trials in which they were given to hundreds of people for prolonged periods and the effects carefully studied.
So... it was a new effect. Something they hadnt tested for before?
"The combination of this particular drug and this particular illness... she muttered. Hadnt the doctor said that Mivalan had never been used to treat Hothorn before, that he knew of? Perhaps the combination of the two...
Or maybe she had some genetic quirk, some biochemical anomaly. Shed read once that everyone is a mutant; not in the Hollywood sense of shooting lasers out of their eyes or anything, but DNA is a long, long molecule, and in the process of splicing together the DNA in sperm and egg, the average person picked up about a hundred errors along the way. A hundred mistakes, most of them amounting to nothing, making no difference at all.
But in her case... maybe one or two... or ten or fifty... of those little mutations had added up to something. And maybe the Hothorn had compounded that, created a situation where her body was eating away at itself... but conversely in which it was also waiting... just waiting for the right chemical spark to come along to trip things into some sort of overdrive...
"All that craving for food, she muttered to herself. "And not just any food. Protein. Because protein is used to build new tissue, isnt it?
She opened the little bottle and rolled a red pill into her hand, staring at it contemplatively for a long moment before swallowing it slowly.
Elise spent the rest of the day cleaning up the house. For months she had been almost confined to bed; now she seemed to have energy to burn. She cleaned the whole house from top to bottom, virtually without rest. Not only didnt it tire her out, it seemed that the more she worked, the more her body wanted to work.
She though it over for a while... and got on the net to look up local gyms. An hour later she was walking out of the changing room slightly nervously. She climbed onto an exercise bike and began pedalling.
Half an hour later shed covered fifteen miles according to the readout, and she wasnt particularly tired or even a little out of breath. She switched to a rowing machine and rowed another fifteen miles with the same effect.
"Hmmm, she muttered to herself. "Maybe some weights...
Elise hit the weigh machines and began doing some curls. Thirty pounds, fifty pounds, eighty. At a hundred she was straining, but just about able to continue... and not feeling any particular tiredness even after fifty repetitions.
For three hours she worked her body, pushing it, looking for her limits. Eventually she had to just give up. Her strength certainly wasnt infinite, to be sure ##" if she added enough weight, she would reach a point where it was just too much. But endurance seemed to be another matter. No matter what the exercise, no matter what the weight, if she could do it once, she could do it ten times, fifty times, a hundred times, with no appreciable tiredness. After more than three hours of working out she left the gym feeling massively energised. In fact, she felt like she could turn around and do it all over again.
The following morning, the sight in the mirror was even stranger. Muscles had sprouted all over her body. Nothing huge, but where before there had been soft, feminine curves, now there were slender but clearly defined muscles. She traced the contours of her biceps, marvelling at the feel, then ran her fingers across the budding six pack on her abdomen.
"Oh my god... she murmured. Even at eighteen she hadnt been this toned.
During her illness, life for Elise had become a series of routines. She slept, ate when she could force herself to, did what little housework she could. Now and again shed force herself out of the house on some trip, but that was rare. Mostly she shopped, paid bills, and interacted with friends via the internet.
Now, life settled into a different routine, though routine it still was. She ate a huge breakfast. She worked around the house still, but now she cleaned the place top to bottom, every day, just for a way to shed a little excess energy. She hit the gym for a four hour workout that left her just wanting to do more. Shopping for a mountain of food, then back home for the next of what would become five or six huge meals.
And each and every morning she would inspect herself. And each and every morning the results were amazing... and becoming somewhat alarming.
The smooth, sleek muscles sprouted and multiplied prodigiously. Elise found herself looking up women on the net and comparing herself. For a few days, she looked like some sort of fitness model ##" though rather more busty than most of the women in that field, she thought to herself with a grin.
Within a week she was shading more into female bodybuilder territory. "Catherine Zidell, she murmured, looking in the mirror. "Maybe Rachel McClish?
She became fascinated with the process. Shed never thought of muscles as particularly attractive before, even on a man, but there was something about watching the change... after so long of thinking of herself as weak, as a victim of some random illness, now her body was changing incredibly, becoming stronger and stronger by the day, and she found herself both captivated and more than a little turned on by it. Her body resembled something from Greek mythology; she seemed to have not an ounce of fat anywhere. Only her breasts remained, and even there they stood larger and prouder and firmer than ever before.
After a week, she was comparing herself to Amy Owen. After two, it was Alina Popa. And she just kept on sprouting.
A month later, things seemed to stabilise. Elise looked through lists of female bodybuilders to find somebody to compare herself to. She couldnt.
She took to going to a 24 hour gym, late at night when nobody else was around; her figure drew just too much attention. As did the incredible performance her body seemed capable of. For as impressive as her muscles looked, how they actually performed was positively inhuman. She supposed there must be some practical limit to how strong she was, but if so she couldnt seem to find it. She went to the barbell station one night and loaded every single weight she could fit onto the bar, a full 200 kg. She not only lifted it, she lifted it easily. After some thought she set the bar down, looked around to check nobody was watching... and then lifted it with one arm and started curling the 200 kg load.
"I shouldnt be able to do this, she murmured. "Even with this muscle... this should be impossible.
She stood there doing curls with the 200 kg barbell, determined to exhaust herself, trying to push herself right to her limit. Four hours later she stopped at three thousand... and she didnt feel tired at all.
From then on she used every machine in the gym at its maximum setting, loaded ever bar to its maximum load. None of it felt particularly difficult, none of it left her tired. It seemed that she was outgrowing the gym.
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