Grey groaned sleepily where he lay resting against his distended gut, the stark whiteness of the room around him blinding his vision as it shimmered into view. He was up early again. He had not moved for a very long while; his hooves had ceased to touch the ground some time before, it had been a longer time still that his weight had prevented him from taking flight. Even if movement were granted to him, the wide doors leading into the facility would provide no right of passage for his girth. Grey was, by all definitions, a very fat pony.
It had not always been like this, he thought to himself. It happened some time ago – maybe eight months? It was hard to keep track of the passage of time without the sun being visible. He had been a porky pegasus, sure, but that was a side effect of a desk job in Cloudsdale’s civil service, he hadn’t been all-out fat. Anyway, the civil service doesn’t pay well – the real money is in the military and the weather service – but he was a pacifist and kicking clouds was never something he was great at, so the civil service it was. Anyway, it doesn’t pay well, so alternative means of income were always a welcome addition to the budget at the end of the month.
That’s what brought him here. When a classified appeared in Equestria Daily offering 600 bits for a single evening of non-intrusive medical experimentation, well, he took it. I mean c’mon, 600 bits in one night! Score! Unfortunately, it had been quite a lot longer than one night since then. He was quite sure he didn’t actually have his job with the civil service anymore, or a home – unless his captors had somehow paid his rent for him. He could hope.
Still, they kept to the rest of the deal rather well, the medical procedure was indeed non-intrusive, not counting the long, clear tubing that was currently intruding upon his mouthy chops and had been rather forcefully inserted by a dark grey unicorn immediately upon entrance of the current room (well, after the ropes and straps that had stopped him moving in the early days); and had subsequently been filled with a thick sludge that was at least somewhat daisy-flavoured.
That had been his meal for the last however many months. Five minutes of forced daisy-goo every half an hour. Or maybe three minutes every fifteen. Damn it, if only he could see the sun. Anyway, it was frequent, frequent and by now quite boring. The flavour never changed. He wished it would, that would be nice.
He didn’t know what the daisy-goo did, the paperwork never mentioned it. He had devised a few ideas though, about it being an experimental food product (although if it was, they really needed to invent some new flavours) or maybe it was waste from a daisy farm (he didn’t like to dwell on that thought) or maybe it was some weird and twisted entertainment show of some sort (but he was quite sure that wasn’t in the paperwork either).
The latter theory would support the seemingly endless number of people who came by throughout the day – or hours – even though he was quite sure they were just science ponies. They never said much, they just checked on the machinery that was in the room and occasionally scribbled something down on a scroll.
He thought the first idea was the more likely one. It seemed pretty science-y, and he was quite sure that a pegasus wouldn’t get this fat even if he did eat a barrel full of daisies every hour or twenty minutes or something.
Grey wasn’t alone in his predicament at least. Over to his left was another pegasus, purple and cream in colour, with a cutie mark that looked quite like bacon ice cream. That’s awesome. Everypony else gets the cool cutie marks. Grey called him Baconator. He came in on the same day, and was pretty fat even then, he could have been rolled in if they wanted. By now he was maaaaaaaaaassive, you could fit a classroom of fillies into those flanks if you needed to. He must be on a more nutrient rich daisy-goo or something.
Life in the facility was pretty boring – maybe it was an experiment to see how bored ponies could get – Grey hadn’t been able to move since the day he arrived. He spent the first indeterminate amount of time shackled to the floor with straps and strings, enough to prevent more than a wiggle, it had been horribly uncomfortable. The straps came off the same day that his belly forced his hooves from the floor. He was told that he could leave if he wanted, though he was quite sure that was a joke. They’d attached a thick black tracking collar to him anyway, just in case. It felt nice except for the occasional chaffing against his neck folds, and- oh…
The humming. The daisy-goo was coming. He braced himself, closing his eyes as the creamy mixture was forced down his throat and into his slowly swelling barrel. Urgh, still daisy flavoured, they really need new flavours.
He chanced a look over to his side. Baconator appeared to be sucking the daisy-goo down eagerly again. He always seemed enthusiastic about meal times, maybe that’s why he was so fat before. Maybe he blended all of his meals into goo and drank them. Then again, he could see the reason for enthusiasm, meal times were the only time anything interesting happened around here, nothing wrong doing that with some vim and vigour, he supposed.
For the first time since his imprisonment, he sucked on the hose. It was painful at first, he had been force fed for so long, actually trying to eat was like a shoddy memory. The flow of daisy-goo came notably faster, he found it came faster, then stayed there. He winced slightly. The daisy-goo had never come this fast before.
Morbid curiosity filled his mind. This could be no coincidence. Cautiously he took a long, deliberate drag on the hose, pulling as much daisy-goo into his distended belly as he could muster in that one breath. A terrible idea, in hindsight. The hose had reacted accordingly, the humming becoming an octave deeper, the daisy-goo increased dramatically.
That day was the last day he saw clearly. The daisy-goo, normally a comfortable trickle, had become a torrent. His cheeks, already swollen by fat, had bloated themselves to cover the lower end of his vision and remained there to this day.
Come to think of it, that was the last day he did a lot of things. Each subsequent meal (maybe they were every ten minutes?) had sustained the new, heavier flow. Very quickly he was growing more in five meals than he did in twenty. He could feel it. The feel of the cold floor pressing against his new flesh. He had lost track, but it was around then that he lost the ability to even wiggle a hoof, too weighed down they were by the rings of lard; utterly smothered.
It had been a while, actually. With a strain, he tried to wiggle… nothing. His hocks were still smothered in his thighs; his horseshoes still pressed into his stomach. A great, useless blob. That was his life now. Unless they ever let him go, that is.
