Paradigm Shift

The guy at the door should not have been Millicent's new boyfriend. Millicent was supposed to trade up, and Jose couldn't look at the pale, skinny little shrimp standing in the doorway with his weedy little mustache that looked like it came out of a cereal box and imagine that she'd ever want to dump him in favor of that. Not that he was here to get Millicent to take him back or anything, because he respected her decisions even when they were pretty clearly mistakes, but seeing some dopey twerp who barely came up to Jose's chin stare back at him with muddy brown eyes as if he couldn't quite process the arrival of a real man definitely put a chip on Jose's shoulder at the start of their interaction.

And seeing Millicent only made it worse. Jose could only catch a glimpse of her from this angle, but... Jesus, this fucking creep had really done a number on her, hadn't he? They hadn't been split for even three weeks, and already this guy had her dyeing her hair platinum blonde and--and had he convinced her to get a boob job? It was kind of hard to tell from here, but she sure looked like she'd gained a couple of extra cup sizes since Jose saw her at the mall. And she looked bigger then. Jose didn't know much about cosmetic surgery, but he felt pretty certain that trading implants every week or so couldn't be good for a person.

And that outfit he had her wearing... it was fucking trophy wife shit, was what it was. A hot pink miniskirt with a neckline that plunged all the way down to her navel, and six-inch platform heels that he knew damn well Millicent couldn't even walk in. She'd fucking lost her balance three times in the pumps they wore to his cousin Tono's wedding, a complete departure from her usual physical grace; there was no way she wasn't tottering around this dude's apartment like a fucking toddler in those things. And--and holy shit, was that a fucking dog collar around her neck? Jose was glad his russet brown skin hid his blush. He'd never even been able to convince Millicent to try on a blindfold, and this scrawny little shit had her in a fucking dog collar in less than three weeks. Yeah, that had to be some abusive shit.

It made him feel a little bit better about what he came here to do. "Yeah, um, hi, can I help you?" the man at the door asked, running his fingers loosely through his thinning blond hair and staring at Jose as though he'd just woken up from a nap. Maybe he had. None of Millicent's friends had any idea what her new boyfriend did for a living, and it wasn't like Millicent was being very forthcoming with details. From everything Jose had heard, she'd simply dropped out of her old life without so much as an explanation for why she was ghosting her friends and family. Jose would think she was spending all her time riding this guy's dick, if not for the fact that he could see the dude's bulge through the boxers that were all he'd put on to answer the doorbell and knew for a fact how unimpressive it was.

He put out his hand to shake, and when the dude responded Jose gave it a good hard squeeze just to make sure the other man understood that he wasn't going to be dealing with someone he could intimidate physically. "Yeah, I'm Jose, Millicent probably talked about me," he added, leaning in a little to assert his personal space. "I'm here to pick her up." He kept his expression stony and emotionless, not hostile but suggesting that hostility could come calling at any moment if this guy decided to try something. Not that he looked like someone who got in many fights, at least not ones he started.

The dude furrowed his brow for a moment, looking for all the world as if confusion was his natural state of affairs, then at last his face lit up in recognition. "Oh, right! Jose! Milly's ex. Yeah, yeah, she mentioned you to me a couple times. Sure, come on in. I'm Larry." He stepped aside, gesturing in welcome like he didn't even notice Jose's intimidating attitude. "So what, you here to take her to the mall or something? She didn't say anything to me about needing new clothes, but hey. If she wears them as well as she does, I'm not going to tell her no, right?" He gave a little chuckle and what was probably supposed to be an ingratiating wink. It really just made Jose want to haul off and deck him.

Jose shot him back a glare that should have quelled any doubt as to his opinions. "No, dude. I'm here to pick her up. Her, and her stuff, and her new clothes, and anything she wants to take along with her, and I'm going to bring her home to her family. They've been worrying about her." Strictly speaking, that went a little bit past the official remit of his visit--Milly's mom had really just asked him to stop by and check up on her and make sure her silence wasn't anything more than infatuation with her new boyfriend. But looking at her....

Fucking Jesus. Milly's whole goddamn demeanor had changed, even in the week since he bumped into her at the mall coming out of the lingerie shop and he started worrying about her change in attitude. She was sitting there staring at the television with a glassy look in her sapphire blue eyes and a faint, vapid smile on her face, barely taking in some dumb reality show the woman he knew wouldn't have been caught dead watching. Her legs were parted exactly like her surprisingly plump lips, and Jose could see that she didn't have anything on under the skirt that didn't even come down to mid-thigh. She looked like a parody of overblown sexual desire, right down to the long wavy curls of blonde hair that came down to her ass.

Had to be a wig. Had to be contacts. Had to be this asshole Larry convincing her somehow that she needed to look like some kind of sex-crazed airhead to make him happy. Jose was going to drag her out of here, kicking and screaming if he had to, and if this dude with biceps the size of Jose's wrist wanted to make something of it then he'd be happy to give the guy a few reminders about how to treat a woman.

But weirdly, Larry didn't seem fazed by his threats, spoken or unspoken. "Hey, man, if her mom wants to stop by and say hi, she's always welcome. I'm sure I can put her mind at rest." He gave a little shrug, seemingly unbothered by the presence of an angry ex-boyfriend who outweighed him by at least 150 pounds. "Milly's very happy here. She doesn't want to leave, and I'm pretty sure you can't just sling her over your shoulder and walk out with her."

He must have seen the disbelieving look on Jose's face. "Hey, man, go ahead and ask her yourself," he added, gesturing over to the couch. "I don't mind. She'll be happy to tell you how good she's got it here with me." Larry stumbled over to the easy chair in the corner, looking for all the world as though the effort of simply breathing knocked the wind out of him. Jose ignored him and went over to Milly, closing the door behind him with a carefully controlled click instead of the loud, forceful slam he wanted to give it.

"Hey, Milly," he said, sitting down on the couch next to her. She didn't seem to be able to concentrate on both Jose and the television at the same time, so he turned it off with the remote control and gently cupped her chin between his fingers to turn her head to look at him. "I was thinking you, um... you look a little different lately. You've been acting kind of different, too. Your mom's worried about you. Is this guy... is he maybe coming on a little strong?"

Before she could answer, Larry spoke up from his chair. "She only seems different because you're on the outside looking in," he said, the strength in his voice belied by his exhausted appearance. He had his eyes shut, and he somehow managed to look even paler than he had when he opened the door. He actually looked like he'd somehow lost a couple of pounds of muscle mass over the last couple minutes. "If you were on the inside looking out, you wouldn't think anything of it." God, that sounded like such stoner bullshit. Was that what he'd done? Had he gotten Milly into drugs?

Jose's train of thought was interrupted by a helpless, tittering peal of laughter from Milly. "Uhm... sorry, that just sounded so funny for some reason. Uhm, like... what was the question?" Hearing that soft, breathy babble come from the lips of the woman he thought he knew shocked Jose almost beyond the point of speech. He'd never heard Milly sound like that, not unless she was mocking some performatively feminine advertisement and putting on the voice as an affectation. She'd always been so fierce, so focused, and to see her like this... it infuriated Jose. And after everything she'd done to raise his consciousness, too. She'd made it so clear that he needed to respect her consent and not pressure her into anything weird or freaky or even just kind of dude-focused, and now here she was acting like the new guy's personal fucktoy. It couldn't be the real Milly, the one he knew. Something had happened to her. Jose needed to get her out of this. He stood up, tugging Milly to her feet along with him--

And stopped. And stared. Because even with six-inch platforms on, Milly barely came up to his shoulder.

Jose was used to noticing people's heights. When you stood 6'6" in your bare feet and had to adjust the seat every time you borrowed someone's car, it was a thing that you paid attention to on a pretty regular basis simply as a matter of course. Jose remembered the day he grew taller than his father, he knew which members of the football team he could see literally eye-to-eye with... and he knew that Milly O'Rourke was one of the only women he'd ever dated who could lean in to kiss him without needing to stand on her tiptoes. It was one of the first things he noticed about her, back when they met in the campus athletics facility. And it wasn't true anymore.

He looked over at Larry. "What the fuck did you do to her?" he asked, sounding utterly aghast. For the first time, he experienced a shiver of... not fear, exactly, but an unnerving sense of wrongness that somehow felt honestly worse. The more he looked at Milly, the more he realized that the changes in her appearance couldn't possibly be explained by cosmetic surgery. Not in the three weeks since they'd broken up, and certainly not in the week since he'd seen her last. Surgery had recovery time, there was always swelling--he remembered that from his own time in the hospital with a broken tibia. But Milly looked like this was her natural appearance.

Larry sighed, his limbs sagging as if he was deflating into the chair. "I told you, you're on the outside looking in. I brought you in a little, just by accident, but... I guess you won't be satisfied until you're all the way on the other side of the looking glass, huh?" He sounded exhausted, like he'd just been doing windsprints, and his head lolled back against the padded headrest as if he could barely stay awake. But somehow Jose felt intimidated by him in a way he hadn't before. "Fine. Fuck it. She's always looked like this."

Jose glanced back over at Milly. "Always looked like what?" he asked, unable to hide the bemusement in his voice. Of course she'd always looked like that. It was one of the first things he noticed about her, back when they first met at the campus athletic facility. There she was, this tiny little woman who didn't even come up to the shoulders of the other basketball hopefuls, trying her hardest to run up and down the court with a pair of gigantic breasts that bounced harder than the ball even with her sports bra on. No wonder she'd... she'd never....

Jose's head swam for a moment, and he looked back at Larry with a shadow of terror on his face that he couldn't quite explain. The man looked weary beyond measure now, his breathing labored and his already scrawny body now genuinely emaciated from some titanic effort that had consumed hundreds of calories without actually involving movement of any sort. And yet Jose felt awed by him. Not amazed--awed. Jose didn't just take the 'rocks for jocks' classes, he'd studied classical literature, and he knew the difference. You were amazed by the beauty of the ocean. You were awed by a hundred-foot wave in the instant before it crashed down on your boat.

Milly gave another giggle, startling Jose out of his momentary lapse into distraction. Her attitude was so strange, so unlike their first meeting--she'd just failed at basketball tryouts, and he'd gone over to comfort her, but she was so fiercely independent that she simply shrugged off his concern. She never wanted anyone to take pity on her, and now.... "Milly, are you okay?" he asked, not quite sure how to bring up her apparent vapidity without insulting her. "You're acting a little, um, a little off."

"She's always acted like this," Larry answered for her, his voice dull and wheezy as he sighed out the words through a hoarse, struggling breath. "Remember?" Jose's brow furrowed, and for just a moment he felt a sense of strangeness as he tried and failed to hold onto the reality that had always seemed so solid and immovable around him. Then the strangeness was gone, taking even the memory of it along with it, and he was looking at Milly with new understanding dawning in his eyes.

Of course she'd always acted like this. It was one of the first things he noticed about her, back when they first met at the campus athletic facility. He recalled chuckling at this ditzy little airhead with tits twice as big as her waist, struggling to understand even the simplest plays the coach drew up for her and winding up passing the ball directly to the other team. But she had such a cheerful attitude about it that it drew Jose right to her, and that night... well, goddamn was she a freak in the bedroom. He'd never met a woman so enthusiastic about pleasing her lover. She did everything he asked, sometimes even some of the things he never thought of trying. No wonder he'd come over to, to... come and... get her?

Behind him, Larry sighed. "Fuck it. You're already inside the paradigm, right? Might as well get some enjoyment out of it." He didn't move--if anything, he looked like he probably couldn't. But there was a sense of a gesture behind his words, a motion that subverted things on a level beyond gross sensory perception. It washed outwards in a radiating wave, capturing Jose before he could even understand what was happening to him and drawing him into a swirling eddy of altering reality that he only noticed as it was happening. And when it receded....

Josie tottered backwards, a last fragmented remnant of disorientation leaving her uncertain of her own balance in heels. She sat down hard on the couch, giggling as she pulled Milly down on top of her and the two of them wound up wriggling against one another in a way that made Josie's cunt wetter even than usual. It was always like that between them, ever since that first day when they both tried out for sports at the same time and both lost out to the stronger, smarter girls. Ever since then, they'd decided to stick to what they knew they did best... and what Master liked the most out of them. Josie looked over at him, hoping that the lewd display might tempt him into another threesome--

But it looked like Master was all tuckered out. He was snoring gently in his chair, the same way he got sometimes when he had to do a... a big thing. He'd probz wake up super hungry, and he wouldn't even want to get out of bed very much for a few weeks, but that was fine. They could make sure he didn't have to do anything for himself until he had his strength back, and anyway it wasn't like Milly and Josie really minded being in bed with Master a lot. And until he woke up, they knew just what to do to pass the time together. Josie tugged down her lavender skirt, exposing her heavy tits, and began to rub them against Milly's breasts until her thoughts melted away into warm, wet lust.

THE END