The rhino was swelling.
It started out slowly, almost like a feeling that he was getting a little bloated when he waddled drunkenly out of the club for the night. He had noticed that his final drink had tasted rather funny, but he paid it little mind and instead just chalked it up to how many he had consumed that night. The lithe rabbit who had been feeding him all the alcohol had been quite the looker too, so that had also helped him ignore the taste. He was paying for drinking as much as he had now though, as he stood on the sidewalk and woozily swung from side to side. He wasn’t utterly drunk, but he felt very good out in the crisp night air outside the thumping noise of the club. He needed to head home, and thankfully lived just a few blocks away, so he could stumble his way there easily even in his inebriated state. He had to get pointed in the right direction first, and that took a bit of effort for the rotund pachyderm. He managed though, and began to waddle his way on back to his small apartment.
The walk was fairly uneventful, with only a couple passerby’s thanks to the late time at which the rhino was making his trek. He had managed to stay on the sidewalk for the most part, only bumping into a building once or twice after tripping over his ponderous feet. His wide gait meant that recovering from stumbles was hard, but his soft bulk allowed any impacts on buildings to be cushioned quite nicely. While the rhino had never liked his bulk, as he waddled along and bumped into the railing for the stairs leading up to his building, he had to appreciate it. His sagging paunch, the rolls of lovehandles that spilled over pants which he had to cram himself into, the flabby arms that spilled out of his tight shirt… All of it felt so soft, comforting, and warm on his body. It did present its challenges, but the pachyderm dealt with them as he could.
BRRRRRRRAAAAAAPPPP
He covered his muzzle with both paws, one of them smacking into his horn rather roughly, and flushed bright red with embarrassment. Those beers must have gotten him more gassy than he felt, even though that belch had done little to clear up the unsettled feeling in his gut. The rhino shrugged though, leaving a paw over his muzzle as the other gripped the railing beside him and slowly began to tug him up the stairs. He raised one foot up on the step in front of him, putting it down with a light grunt and then hauling his other foot up to meet it. He felt heavier than he had walking down the stairs earlier in the night, but that was most likely the alcohol. Standing on that step for a moment to catch his breath and calm his nerves, the rhino looked at the other three steps defiantly before moving his leg up to ascent the next one.
As he did this though, he stopped mid-step and looked at his gut again. He could have sworn he saw it move; pushing out against his shirt just a hair more. Drunk or not, that was not something that the rhino saw often, and he needed to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. He watched his stomach, not moving for a long moment, and indeed it did grow out just a little bit more. Blinking and rubbing his eyes, the rhino just oogled his sagging paunch for a few more moments, placing his foot down as the weight of his frame became too much for one leg to bear. He hadn’t been seeing things, he was rounding out right before his eyes. It was a slow and steady growth, but it was happening and it made the rhino start to panic as he stood on those steps.
Suddenly hustling rapidly for a beast of his bulk, he took the three remaining steps up to the door in a flash. He was panting softly already by the time he was at the top, and could feel the growth around his waist beginning to accelerate. It was strangely pleasant to feel his body grow all around him as he stood there. The rhino wasn’t quite ready to think on that though, as he reached down towards his pocket for his keys. His paw hit his sagging lovehandle, pushing against the ring of adipose far more than it ever had before. The pachyderm struggled and wiggled in place, pushing back against his blubber with what little strength the gluttonous beast had managed to maintain beneath his coating of lard. He forced his growing paw into his shrinking pocket, fishing around for but a moment before a thick finger grabbed onto a small ring. His eyes shut with the pain of having to reach into such a tight garment, but the alcohol in his system was dulling the pain of all his clothes constricting his growth so much; for the time being at least. Straightening up, he pulled out the keys with a tug, hearing several seams go along his pants in the process, and roughly shoved the key into the lock on the front door.
Twisting the lock open, the rhino all but kicked in the door as he pushed his expanding bulk against it. Groaning and wiggling in place, he looked at the doorframe and then down as his steadily-increasing waistline. He needed to fit in, and that looked like it was going to be a challenge. His still-inebriated mind accepted this challenge though, and with a loud grunt he pushed against the doorframe with the hundreds of pounds of flab which comprised his body. He stopped with a sluggish wobble, his girth sticking before it even got halfway through, and this made the pachyderm frown with disappointment. He backed himself up one step and then tried again, getting a waddling start this time. His bulk made it a good way through that time, but wedged firm in the creaking doorframe thanks to hips which were nearly twice as wide as when he had left the apartment.
The tight doorframe, combined with the restricting clothes which were tearing all over as they were asked to contain several more inches than they were made for, all smooshed the bulking-up beast. He whined and groaned, shutting his eyes as the pain got to him. He could feel even his cheeks being pushed up as his moobs got to be painfully smothered, and his hips oozed out around both sides of the doorjamb. He was stuck tight, but thankfully the door and his clothes couldn’t take much more. Creaks, groans, and rips filled the rhino’s pointed ears as he just let out deep pants of exertion as he tried his hardest to suck in the massive ball of lard he was fast becoming. The effort was futile though, and before long he was going to be a nude beast with a ruined house.
That reality came very quickly, for not more than a few moments later the doorframe shattered to pieces around the beast. The top of it stayed in place, but the walls and the wood splintered and went flying as the force of the rhino’s adipose became too much to bear. Thankfully, his thick hide prevented any splinters or cuts, but it was still painful for the beast. At the same time, the sudden release of pressure sent all of his clothes flying as they all burst off at once. His shirt all but exploded off his chest, letting his moobs sag a full four inches lower than they were and exposing his black, silver-dollar-sized nipples to the night air. His legs and ass bounced free as his underwear and pants shot off like they had been stuffed in a cannon. No piece of either garment was bigger than a pancake as they fluttered to the ground several feet away, some going as far as twenty feet. The pachyderm groaned loudly as this happened, his whole frame bouncing up and down multiple inches at once as it settled, but that wasn’t going to be the last movement he made.
The sudden freedom of his girth let gravity recapture its hold on him, and as it did he began to topple forward almost immediately. Freed from the clothing which had been keeping his legs straight, the swollen appendages splayed and bent out at the same time, further weakening his stance. His weak musculature was already overtaxed just trying to keep him standing, and now that he was beginning to fall, there was no way he was going to stop. He just had to wait until he hit the ground, and the rhino knew it was going to be an impact. He thankfully lived on the first floor, so he wouldn’t go crashing through the floor or anything, but he was still dreading his fat slapping the wood floor below him. He had gained more than enough wait for there to be no pain, but he had to know how he would get up again, and when the expansion to his frame would end.
His gut hit far before anything else, slapping the wooden floor with a resounding slap as the doughy bottom of it hit. A cacophony of slaps and wobbles followed as the rolls and folds of fat which comprised the rhino now hit one another, and made impact with the floor. Further and further that stomach traveled, pulling its owner with it as it spread out like a flattened marshmallow. The whole thing didn’t bring the rhino completely over either, it just pulled him to his knees and then stretched him out again, almost acting like a bouncy castle attached to his torso in that respect. The pachyderm hadn’t fallen far before he was resting on his prodigious gut, his feet barely on the ground and his stomach spreading out over a yard in front of him. It was still growing too, and looked to be getting bigger at an even faster rate now that the weight was off his legs and onto its gravid mass. There was no way to stop it though, so the pachyderm just had to lay on his bulk and accept his fate…
**********
A bird landing on a fold of flab awoke the dozing beast, who shuddered sluggishly awake. He moved to stretch, only to find that he couldn’t move at all. He was sweating profusely where he lay, and tried to roll out of the blankets which felt like they had him trapped. He could hardly see anything beneath them either, and they all felt strange to him. He knew he had been out drinking the previous night, and had an incredibly weird dream when he got home and passed out. He had to hope that he had passed out in the right place though, and not in the tub like he had one time, as his shower curtain felt similar to the material he was wrapped in now. He struggled some more, but his arms refused to budge. His legs also did, but it was when the rhino went to move his fingers and his muzzle that he stopped cold. He couldn’t move those either, and instead could feel something sagging off those limbs as well. Synapses began firing in his waking brain, as his thick chest began to quake thanks to the panting, panicked breaths being forced into it.
It hadn’t been a dream.
“Hey mommy! Lookit the new house next door!”