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Description
Writer’s Block
    by Miss Mouse

    Note: This story is a sequel to Be Careful What You Wish For and you should probably read that first.

    Abigail was miserable.
    She had expected her nice, long, four-day break to be a time of relaxation and writing, alone in her apartment with her computer, snacks, and nowhere to go… Instead she’d spent her break skipping from story-to-story and wrestling with writer’s block.
    Now, time was up and she had to go back to work, her ideas still weighing heavy on her body and mind.
    One convenient feature of this curse (blessing?) was that other people never noticed anything was different—Abigail had figured that out after a rather productive day of daydreaming on the job—which at least meant she could go out of the house with incomplete stories.
    This time, though… Multiple unfinished stories at varying stages of completeness had left her looking full-term with triplets and she’d run out of time. Writer’s Block—the downfall of so many great authors—had come for Abigail with a vengeance.
    She waddled through the doors of the Target where she worked and stopped for a second, leaning against the rails that corralled the carts for support as she tugged uselessly at the front of her shirt. Most of her clothes were comfortably oversized, and she’d bought a few larger outfits for her big days, but she was in no way prepared for going to work this big.
    “Hey, Abby!” That one girl who worked the Guest Service walked past quickly, waving and smiling like a sunbeam.
    “Hey,” responded Abigail, not being confident enough in remembering the girl’s name to use it.
    “Is something wrong?” she stopped and looked Abigail up and down as she leaned on the railing.
    “Yeah, just another headache.” Abigail straightened up with a grunt and started walking towards the Team Members’ area to clock in.
    “Hope you feel better!”
    “Me too.”
    —
    By the time Abigail got to the Electronics counter at the back of the store, she was thoroughly out of breath. It was a relief to get behind the desk, which was just the right height for her to rest her heavy belly on, if very cold on the bare underside of her stomach.
    The morning shift had finished stocking the new merchandise and there weren’t any Team Leads around to make sure she was zoning, so she took a minute to feed her Tamagotchi and thought that maybe this shift wouldn’t be so bad after all.
    “Excuse me, I’d like to get a game?”
    Abigail looked up at the college-aged boy who’d snuck up on her.
    “Certainly, what game are you looking at?” She turned, bumping her belly against the cash register with a jolt. The next few seconds were spent leaning against the desk and rubbing the injured spot on her stomach while saying “ow” a lot.
    “Ouch, hit your funny bone? That’s the worst,” said the customer in an unhelpful manner.
    “Yeah,” said Abigail, kind of lost for words. “Alright, what game are you after?”
    It was Mario Kart 8 for the Switch, which was conveniently located at the top of the games display, putting it just a little below eye-level. She opened the display, got the game out, turned around…
    “Oh, while you’re here, could I get one of the Nintendo Classics?” asked another customer.
    “Of course,” Abigail locked the display. “Which are you thinking about, the NES or the Super NES?”
    These were located in a display cabinet beneath the Switch demo console. Abigail stood and looked at the cabinet for a moment, then groaned at the thought of retrieving one. There was nothing to do for it, though.
    She tucked the game under one arm and held on to the front of the Switch demo, slowly and carefully lowering herself to crouch in front of the cabinet, unlocked it, and got the NES Classic that the guest indicated.
    That was the easy part.
    Her belly was quite large, and as she tried to stand up, its weight put her off balance and she tipped forward, its bare underside pressing against the cold tiles of the floor.
    She groaned and looked up at the guests standing around her, embarrassed. No one seemed to really notice anything wrong, and so she took a few moments to collect herself, tucked the NES under her arm with the copy of Mario Kart, and made her second attempt. This time, she held on to the ledge of the Switch demo and tried to haul herself up.
    Abigail was a short and slim girl, never one for sports (or really any activity), and her small body was neither strong, nor quick. Now, burdened by this supernatural and extremely large pregnancy, her petite body was having a hard time dealing with it.
    Her fingers slipped and she landed hard on her bottom, only barely avoiding dropping the merchandise on the ground as she did.
    “Oh, careful,” Someone said.
    “Are you alright?” Asked another, unhelpfully.
    “Yeah, sorry,” she said, trying to recover.
    As much as it went against her instincts as a worker, she held up the game and console to the guests, freeing up both of her hands to hold on as she pulled herself up. It was humiliating, but no one blinked an eye.
    She got to her feet and stretched sorely, pressing her hands against the curve of her lower back, hearing a pop from the hem of her shirt as it met its match around her belly.
    “Okay, I can check you out over here.”
    —
    Falling down was only the beginning of Abigail’s problems that day. The effort it took to get around was exhausting and she drank her whole water cup in the first hour. It wasn’t long before she was thirsty again, but walking all the way to the front of the store to get a refill sounded awful, and she didn’t have time in any case.
    What few breaks she did find for herself, she spent trying to get off her feet. This usually meant leaning on the counter or trying to hoist herself up the extra inch or so to sit on the lower part of it. If she got caught, she’d be in trouble, but in the meantime she thought it was worth the risk.
    In addition to opening cabinets for people, she also had to take a cart of reshop around and stock the shelves. This wasn’t the worst, since she could at least lean on the cart for support, but constantly crouching to stock the low shelves was killer.
    As she wandered through the books, looking for a location on the back wall, someone called to her from over in the pets section.
    “Miss! Excuse me, miss?” Asked the middle-aged woman. “Do you work here?”
    Abigail took a second to look down at her red shirt with the Target logo, name tag, and the PDA device she was carrying in her hand, then over at the three-tiered cart of books and DVDs she was pushing around.
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “Could you get the cat litter down for me? I can’t reach.” She indicated the top shelf.
    Abigail sighed and walked over to the guest, looking up at top-shelf litter that she was after. The woman was of average height, wearing a dress, and looking somewhat perturbed by the situation. Abigail, on the other hand, was 4’11” and ridiculously pregnant (not that the woman was aware of that), and definitely in a far worse position to try and get the litter down.
    “It’s the one with the pink label.”
    “Uhh, certainly.” Abigail scratched her belly, uncertainly.
    If she could pull this off, she could do anything.
    She put one foot up on the bottom shelf and did her best to turn so that her belly was out of the way (it was always in the way), then stretched one arm up as high as it would go. Her fingers just brushed the edge of the box, but she tottered and fell sideways, stumbling against the perpendicular end cap.
    “Are you alright?”
    “Yep, just peachy.” She shook off the failure, not accepting defeat so easily.
    Abigail made another attempt, this time facing towards the shelves. It took a bit of doing, but standing on her tiptoes, she could rest her belly on the shelf, and its weight helped steady her. One hand held on to another shelf and the other reached up high, again just brushing the box of cat litter.
    She stretched and bounced as best she could, and her fingers caught the side of the box, knocking it a little catty-corner, so that a small portion stuck out over the edge. With another bounce, she grabbed the exposed bit and tipped it off the front of the shelf, falling back from her perch and scrambling to catch the weighty box before it could crash into the ground.
    “Thanks,” said the guest as she put it in her cart. She immediately began to move on.
    “No… problem…” Abigail panted as she bent forward as much as she could, her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.
    —
    The morning shift left and the evening shift arrived, and for a short time, Abigail was able to hang out around the counter and rest. At times like this, it wasn’t so bad. No one was asking what anything was, the phone was quiet, and there wasn’t a Team Lead in site.
    “Excuse me, can I check out here?”
    Abigail looked up from fiddling with her name-badge to see a pregnant woman standing at the counter with a basket of baby clothes under her arm. She was in her mid-twenties with red-brown hair and a cute pair of overalls on.
    “Sure, as long as you don’t have any alcohol,” Abigail laughed, and the guest laughed, too.
    “Thanks,” she said as she said smiling broadly. “Saves me the trouble of standing in line at the front. Why does the baby stuff all have to be at the back of the store? Pregnant women shouldn’t have to hike all the way back here to shop.” She had a joking tone, but it did make Abigail think.
    Abigail took the basket and started scanning the clothes, standing sideways to the register so her belly wasn’t in the way. As she worked, she noticed that there was two of everything.
    Could it be twins?
    She looked the guest up and down as she made small talk. The woman looked pretty big—not as big as Abigail—but she might be having twins. It was hard to tell, since overalls had the tendency of making pregnant women look even bigger.
    “Do you know anything about cribs?” asked the woman. “I didn’t see anyone working over there to ask.”
    “Oh, yeah, there’s not someone in the baby section a lot of the time. I don’t know a ton, but I’ll see what I can do.” She handed the guest her bag of clothes and made her way out from behind the counter.
    They made their way to the Infants section, which was just in front of Electronics and a little to the left. The guest walked a little slowly, her belly swaying back and forth as she moved, and Abigail was thankful for that as she couldn’t go very quickly, herself.
    The two of them stood around in the Infants section for a few minutes, discussing this and that about cribs. Abigail knew nothing beyond what her PDA told her, but the woman was very understanding. She was expecting twins, it turned out, and big ones if she counted the weeks correctly.
    As they talked, a baby started crying the next aisle over.
    Almost immediately, Abigail knew she was on a short clock. There was a growing tingling sensation in her breasts and a pressure that she’d become quite acquainted with since the curse first took hold.
    She smiled and nodded as the guest made conversation at her, all the while swaying back and forth on her feet with mounting nervousness. Time was running out, and she had to do something.
    As Abigail politely exited the interaction and turned back to her station (the guest deciding to come back later with her husband to help decide), she already felt the warm dampness spreading across the front of her red shirt.
    “M-marcia,” she did her best to keep her voice steady, keeping in mind that no one else could see what was happening. “Can you hold down the fort for a few minutes, I’ve gotta go take care of something.”
    “You better not be sneaking off to text some guy.” Marcia, the evening shift, popped her gum and without looking up from her phone.
    “C’mon Marcia, it’s an emergency.”
    “Oh,” she glanced up. “Girl problems?”
    “Yes,” Abigail rolled her eyes in exasperation.
    “Need to borrow anything?”
    “Nope, I’m good!” She started backing away.
    “Okay, you do what you gotta do.” Marcia went back to her phone. “I’ll tell’em you’re in the back.”
    “Thanks for covering for me!”
    It was everything Abigail could do to stop herself from running down the main aisle—or trying to run—but she hurried along doing her best to disguise her urgency as a diligent work ethic.
    Ever since the curse began, Abigail had had to deal with a variety of inconvenient things. Most obvious was the weight and size of her belly and how that affected her getting around, and this was present with all her story ideas, it seemed. Then there were the movements—these varying with the content of the story—which in some cases were enough to interrupt her sleep. In cases where she was working on labor-themed pieces, she would have somewhat-painful contractions throughout, growing more intense and interruptive as the story neared its completion.
    Neither of these last two were an issue at the moment (thankfully), but she was working on a lactation-heavy piece, and that could be far more inconvenient in its own ways.
    Abigail was used to having smallish-breasts, and found the vacillating reality of having boobs to be an exciting one, but the downsides were undeniable. Pregnancy made for sensitive breasts that swelled and ached with milk, dark and responsive nipples that poked out visibly beneath her shirt.
    She’d bought a few maternity bras (ordering them online so as not to raise any questions) and was wearing her second-largest at the moment, but it had gotten uncomfortably tight this time around.
    At home, it wasn’t too difficult to keep the milk under control and she hadn’t expected issues at work, since it was a short shift and she’d taken care of it just before leaving, but no luck, it seemed. She’d heard that the sound of a baby crying could induce lactation in some women, and that seemed enough cause for her body to let down in the middle of her shift.
    Abigail had no idea what she was going to do. She tried to hurry, but jostling her breasts just made things worse, so she walked quickly and carefully and looked around nervously, still expecting someone to notice.
    “Excuse me, miss?” An old woman popped out from the greeting cards, catching her off-guard. “Do you carry calendars here?”
    “Yes ma’am,” said Abigail through a strained smile, still slowly moving down the main aisle. “They’re right over there in the office supplies.” She did a polite, two-fingered point over the grey-haired woman’s head, indicating the next section past the cards.
    “Well,” the old woman clucked her tongue in frustration. It wasn’t a rude sound, more one of folksy self-admonishment. “I was just there for what musta been fifteen minutes,” she said with painful slowness.
    “Here, I can show you.”
    Abigail was headed to the pharmacy, which had a single-person bathroom where she could take care of her problem, and it happened to be in the same direction as the calendars, so she figured it would be faster to just drop the old woman off at the calendars on her way past.
    She turned and tried to squeeze past the woman, her belly catching a hanging display of gift cards, knocking it to the ground with a crash.
    “Oh dear,” said the old woman, completely understating the horror that Abigail was experiencing.
    Abigail let out a cry of frustration, not yet trying to clean up the mess but just trying to comprehend how out-of-control her life had become. It was a few long moments before she braced against the adjacent shelf and slowly bent her knees to lower her bulk to the floor.
    “One moment, ma’am,” she sighed in utter defeat. “Let me just clean this up.”
    “Oh, did that thing fall again?”
    A tall, beautiful girl with white-blonde hair came around the corner.
    “Hey, Temperance.” Abigail smiled, genuinely happy to see the peppy young woman. “Yeah, you know me. Such a klutz.”
    “She was helping me find a calendar for my daughter-in-law,” said the old woman, as if vouching for Abigail’s character.
    “Abigail, you don’t have to worry about that. Here, let me get it, you just help this nice guest.” Temperance squatted and swept the fallen gift cards together with her hands before Abigail even got to the floor.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yeah, don’t sweat it.”
    “Temperance,” Abigail fought back tears as she stood back up. “You’re an actual, living saint.”
    Temperance just laughed waved a hand to dismiss the compliment.
    Meanwhile, Abigail hauled herself back up and did her best to step over the mess, then lead the old, slow woman off to the calendars.
    —
    By the time Abigail shut the bathroom door behind her, it was already too late. Her shirt was completely soaked through and thick, cream-colored milk was dripping from the hem onto her khaki pants. The darkened article stuck to her belly coldly, and a cloying, sweet smell filled the air.
    She stripped off her shirt and tossed it onto the sink with a sigh, shivering a little as the bathroom air blew across her damp skin. Her bra was one of those sports bra-like pieces which clasped above the cups in the front, which meant it was comfortable and easy to remove, but also very, very absorbent.
    Abigail checked the time on her Fitbit to keep an eye on how long she’d been gone, then got to washing. As she worked, from time to time she’d glance up at herself in the mirror and think about how strange she looked, how much her body had changed with these past few days of half-formed stories.
    “You’re a mess, girl,” she said, smiling wryly at the mirror. “But you look hot.”
    After a few minutes, she radioed to let Marcia know she was going on her fifteen, and then continued doing sink-laundry. Her breasts kept leaking a little as she worked, but she dabbed the milk away, then eventually resorted to squeezing the remaining milk out into a pad of paper towels.
    The rough towels irritated her nipples, but there was nothing to be done for it.
    With five minutes left on her break, Abigail was left with a damp shirt and bra, but they no longer smelled like milk. She put these on and snuck out of the bathroom, doing her best to not get noticed so no one could pin the massive waste of paper towels on her.
    She slipped past the pharmacy and through the doors in Cosmetics, which led into the Team Members Area, and from there got to the HR Counter (TSC? TSE? She couldn’t ever figure out what people called it, and had never asked), where Jessica sat typing on her computer.
    “Hey, Jessica,” she leaned casually on the counter, doing her best to look self-composed.
    “Hi, Abigail, how are you?” Jessica barely glanced up.
    “Pretty good, pretty good. Uhm… so I had a bit of an accident and spilled my drink all over my shirt…”
    Jessica actually looked up now and saw Abigail standing there in her damp, horribly wrinkled shirt.
    “How did you get it on the back?”
    “It was a big cup. Anyway, I was wondering if I could get one of those extra promotional shirts that are lying around so I can finish my shift.”
    Jessica sighed and stood up with a resigned expression, coming out from behind the counter and going into the supply room, from which she re-emerged with a folded red shirt in her hands.
    “Here you go,” she said, putting it in Abigail’s hands. “Try not to spill anything on this one.”
    “Will do,” Abigail saluted before waddling off to change.
    —
    One unforeseen failing in this plan was that Jessica—unable to see Abigail’s pseudo-pregnancy—had grabbed a shirt sized for Abigail’s petite body. Abigail, who had something like seven or eight unfinished ideas kicking around inside her, was much too large for normal clothing.
    Worse, Abigail hated tight clothes and always wore a size larger just for comfort, and now was forced to wear a normal-sized shirt. It fit over her chest, but left almost the entirety of her pale belly uncovered, and the inviting words of “Ask Me about Free Shipping” that was written on the front was hidden in its folds.
    And there was no replacement available for her damp bra.
    Utterly crestfallen, Abigail dragged herself to the back of the store to work the rest of her shift. No one saw anything strange, of course, but the cool breeze against her sensitive skin was an irritant, and she found herself rubbing it unconsciously, trying to hide her popped-out navel fruitlessly.
    “All good?” Marcia popped her gum as she leaned on the counter, scrolling through her phone.
    “Yep. How’re things here?”
    “Slow enough that Todd wants you to do backstock.”
    “I thought Backroom was taking over our backstocking?”
    “They’re busy.” Pop. “He said I should send you back there once you get off your break.”
    Abigail sighed, but didn’t protest. This was not a day for fighting back; she just wanted to clock out and go home.
    On the plus side, pushing the three-tiered cart to the back gave her something to lean her weight on as she walked, and she could look forward to not being bothered by guests for the last hour of her shift.
    The Electronics Stock Room was a tiny, cramped space with a few aisles of shelves and a veritable barricade of abandoned boxes and tubs and carts of unsorted backstock. The door wouldn’t even open all the way and she had to shove herself against it to scoot a box of batteries out of the way.
    She carefully squeezed into the room—her belly brushing both door and frame as she did—and found herself standing amidst hours and hours of potential work. Her shift was almost over, at least.
    Trying once more to tug her too-small shirt over her belly, Abigail got to sorting.
    There was no one to watch her here, and so she was free to struggle with the effects of her pregnancy as she needed. It took a solid minute to squeeze and climb her way to the books and dvds, where she intended to spend her time working. She grabbed the rolling ladder at the end of the aisle and lowered herself to sit on the bottom step of it, then scooted herself forward and backwards up and down the aisle.
    Her belly sat heavy between her legs, curving outwards more than half the way to her knees. This became her biggest obstacle as she tried to scuttle along the aisle, but it was better than standing.
    Abigail went to the end of the aisle and grabbed a few books, then scanned them with her PDA and scooted over to an empty spot to stow them, or else sought-out a pre-existing location that the system had on file. This oftentimes meant standing, which was regrettable, but the ladder was good for bracing against as she pulled herself to her feet, and the work was none-too harrowing.
    Rolling around on the ladder was nice, but it wasn’t too long before her legs began to burn from the strange exercise of pushing and pulling it around. She stopped now and then to breathe and rest, rubbing her belly idly as she did and counting the minutes until she got off.
    With ten minutes left, Marcia’s voice came over radio.
    “Hey Abigail, you there?”
    “Go for Abigail,” she sighed.
    “Go to channel 2.”
    She switched over.
    “I’m here.”
    “Hey, there’s a guest here looking for a book; it’s got a location in the back.” Pop. “I’ll give you the DCPI.”
    Abigail scrambled to get her PDA up and type in the number before she fell too far behind to remember what Marcia had said. The book came up and she saw the location listing.
    “Okay, got it, I’ll bring it right out.”
    As she glanced between her device and the markings on the aisle to orient herself, she thought about how fortunate this was. Ten minutes was a long time to be squatting in the back room alone, but finding a book and bringing it out to the Electronics desk would take up enough of the rest of her shift that she wouldn’t really have to do anything else.
    And then she realized where the book was.
    There were a lot of backstocked books and a lot of the easy-to-reach locations were filled up. Small books could be squeezed in without too much trouble, but a few big, hardbacks—the kinds celebrities liked to put out—usually ended up on the upper shelves. This was one such book, sitting as a four-high stack on a shelf some ten feet up.
    Abigail didn’t do heights.
    Heights were probably her biggest fear, followed by bugs and driving, but it rarely came up in work. There wasn’t a whole lot on the upper shelves of the Electronics Stockroom, but this book was there and she had to get it.
    Once before, she’d asked someone else to fetch a high-up item, and had gotten in trouble for it.
    Steeling herself, she determined to just do it. “Don’t look down” and all that.
    Her first attempted came to an end almost instantly, as she found she was unable to climb the steep ladder with her big belly sticking out in front of her. She got to the second step, but the rough surface of the steps brushed against her stomach painfully and she abandoned the endeavor.
    Abigail looked at her watch and saw the seconds ticking by as she tried to solve this. If she took too long, someone was going to ask questions she couldn’t really answer.
    Eventually she settled on a different idea: going up backwards. It was… not ideal. This was partially because the weight of her belly was threatening to pull her off the ladder and she had to hold on tightly to the handles to keep herself upright, but the other downside was the perspective, though this was tempered by the fact that her huge belly blocked her view of the ground as—step-by-step—she got further up the ladder.
    She came to eye-level with the book and quickly scanned the location with her PDA before tucking it back into its holster. Then she picked up the book with one hand (clinging to the rail with the other) and shut her eyes, lest looking to the side show her a glimpse of how high up she was.
    Abigail blindly descended the ladder, stumbling at the bottom as she reached the floor unexpectedly. She laughed nervously at herself and leaned against a shelf to catch the breath she’d be accidentally holding.
    Once she had recuperated, she carefully made her way back to the door and squeezed back out into the main stockroom.
    The guest was excited to have the book, but Marcia didn’t seem impressed by how long it had taken her to do such a simple task.
    “Did you get lost or something?” She said in a tone of voice that might have meant it was supposed to be a good-natured joke.
    “Nope.” Abigail was too tired to come up with an excuse. It was time to go home and take a shower. “I’m gonna go clock out.” So she made her way back to the front of the store, determined to get at least one of these stories done before work the next day.
    —

Description
Writer’s Block
    by Miss Mouse

    Note: This story is a sequel to Be Careful What You Wish For and you should probably read that first.

    Abigail was miserable.
    She had expected her nice, long, four-day break to be a time of relaxation and writing, alone in her apartment with her computer, snacks, and nowhere to go… Instead she’d spent her break skipping from story-to-story and wrestling with writer’s block.
    Now, time was up and she had to go back to work, her ideas still weighing heavy on her body and mind.
    One convenient feature of this curse (blessing?) was that other people never noticed anything was different—Abigail had figured that out after a rather productive day of daydreaming on the job—which at least meant she could go out of the house with incomplete stories.
    This time, though… Multiple unfinished stories at varying stages of completeness had left her looking full-term with triplets and she’d run out of time. Writer’s Block—the downfall of so many great authors—had come for Abigail with a vengeance.
    She waddled through the doors of the Target where she worked and stopped for a second, leaning against the rails that corralled the carts for support as she tugged uselessly at the front of her shirt. Most of her clothes were comfortably oversized, and she’d bought a few larger outfits for her big days, but she was in no way prepared for going to work this big.
    “Hey, Abby!” That one girl who worked the Guest Service walked past quickly, waving and smiling like a sunbeam.
    “Hey,” responded Abigail, not being confident enough in remembering the girl’s name to use it.
    “Is something wrong?” she stopped and looked Abigail up and down as she leaned on the railing.
    “Yeah, just another headache.” Abigail straightened up with a grunt and started walking towards the Team Members’ area to clock in.
    “Hope you feel better!”
    “Me too.”
    —
    By the time Abigail got to the Electronics counter at the back of the store, she was thoroughly out of breath. It was a relief to get behind the desk, which was just the right height for her to rest her heavy belly on, if very cold on the bare underside of her stomach.
    The morning shift had finished stocking the new merchandise and there weren’t any Team Leads around to make sure she was zoning, so she took a minute to feed her Tamagotchi and thought that maybe this shift wouldn’t be so bad after all.
    “Excuse me, I’d like to get a game?”
    Abigail looked up at the college-aged boy who’d snuck up on her.
    “Certainly, what game are you looking at?” She turned, bumping her belly against the cash register with a jolt. The next few seconds were spent leaning against the desk and rubbing the injured spot on her stomach while saying “ow” a lot.
    “Ouch, hit your funny bone? That’s the worst,” said the customer in an unhelpful manner.
    “Yeah,” said Abigail, kind of lost for words. “Alright, what game are you after?”
    It was Mario Kart 8 for the Switch, which was conveniently located at the top of the games display, putting it just a little below eye-level. She opened the display, got the game out, turned around…
    “Oh, while you’re here, could I get one of the Nintendo Classics?” asked another customer.
    “Of course,” Abigail locked the display. “Which are you thinking about, the NES or the Super NES?”
    These were located in a display cabinet beneath the Switch demo console. Abigail stood and looked at the cabinet for a moment, then groaned at the thought of retrieving one. There was nothing to do for it, though.
    She tucked the game under one arm and held on to the front of the Switch demo, slowly and carefully lowering herself to crouch in front of the cabinet, unlocked it, and got the NES Classic that the guest indicated.
    That was the easy part.
    Her belly was quite large, and as she tried to stand up, its weight put her off balance and she tipped forward, its bare underside pressing against the cold tiles of the floor.
    She groaned and looked up at the guests standing around her, embarrassed. No one seemed to really notice anything wrong, and so she took a few moments to collect herself, tucked the NES under her arm with the copy of Mario Kart, and made her second attempt. This time, she held on to the ledge of the Switch demo and tried to haul herself up.
    Abigail was a short and slim girl, never one for sports (or really any activity), and her small body was neither strong, nor quick. Now, burdened by this supernatural and extremely large pregnancy, her petite body was having a hard time dealing with it.
    Her fingers slipped and she landed hard on her bottom, only barely avoiding dropping the merchandise on the ground as she did.
    “Oh, careful,” Someone said.
    “Are you alright?” Asked another, unhelpfully.
    “Yeah, sorry,” she said, trying to recover.
    As much as it went against her instincts as a worker, she held up the game and console to the guests, freeing up both of her hands to hold on as she pulled herself up. It was humiliating, but no one blinked an eye.
    She got to her feet and stretched sorely, pressing her hands against the curve of her lower back, hearing a pop from the hem of her shirt as it met its match around her belly.
    “Okay, I can check you out over here.”
    —
    Falling down was only the beginning of Abigail’s problems that day. The effort it took to get around was exhausting and she drank her whole water cup in the first hour. It wasn’t long before she was thirsty again, but walking all the way to the front of the store to get a refill sounded awful, and she didn’t have time in any case.
    What few breaks she did find for herself, she spent trying to get off her feet. This usually meant leaning on the counter or trying to hoist herself up the extra inch or so to sit on the lower part of it. If she got caught, she’d be in trouble, but in the meantime she thought it was worth the risk.
    In addition to opening cabinets for people, she also had to take a cart of reshop around and stock the shelves. This wasn’t the worst, since she could at least lean on the cart for support, but constantly crouching to stock the low shelves was killer.
    As she wandered through the books, looking for a location on the back wall, someone called to her from over in the pets section.
    “Miss! Excuse me, miss?” Asked the middle-aged woman. “Do you work here?”
    Abigail took a second to look down at her red shirt with the Target logo, name tag, and the PDA device she was carrying in her hand, then over at the three-tiered cart of books and DVDs she was pushing around.
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “Could you get the cat litter down for me? I can’t reach.” She indicated the top shelf.
    Abigail sighed and walked over to the guest, looking up at top-shelf litter that she was after. The woman was of average height, wearing a dress, and looking somewhat perturbed by the situation. Abigail, on the other hand, was 4’11” and ridiculously pregnant (not that the woman was aware of that), and definitely in a far worse position to try and get the litter down.
    “It’s the one with the pink label.”
    “Uhh, certainly.” Abigail scratched her belly, uncertainly.
    If she could pull this off, she could do anything.
    She put one foot up on the bottom shelf and did her best to turn so that her belly was out of the way (it was always in the way), then stretched one arm up as high as it would go. Her fingers just brushed the edge of the box, but she tottered and fell sideways, stumbling against the perpendicular end cap.
    “Are you alright?”
    “Yep, just peachy.” She shook off the failure, not accepting defeat so easily.
    Abigail made another attempt, this time facing towards the shelves. It took a bit of doing, but standing on her tiptoes, she could rest her belly on the shelf, and its weight helped steady her. One hand held on to another shelf and the other reached up high, again just brushing the box of cat litter.
    She stretched and bounced as best she could, and her fingers caught the side of the box, knocking it a little catty-corner, so that a small portion stuck out over the edge. With another bounce, she grabbed the exposed bit and tipped it off the front of the shelf, falling back from her perch and scrambling to catch the weighty box before it could crash into the ground.
    “Thanks,” said the guest as she put it in her cart. She immediately began to move on.
    “No… problem…” Abigail panted as she bent forward as much as she could, her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.
    —
    The morning shift left and the evening shift arrived, and for a short time, Abigail was able to hang out around the counter and rest. At times like this, it wasn’t so bad. No one was asking what anything was, the phone was quiet, and there wasn’t a Team Lead in site.
    “Excuse me, can I check out here?”
    Abigail looked up from fiddling with her name-badge to see a pregnant woman standing at the counter with a basket of baby clothes under her arm. She was in her mid-twenties with red-brown hair and a cute pair of overalls on.
    “Sure, as long as you don’t have any alcohol,” Abigail laughed, and the guest laughed, too.
    “Thanks,” she said as she said smiling broadly. “Saves me the trouble of standing in line at the front. Why does the baby stuff all have to be at the back of the store? Pregnant women shouldn’t have to hike all the way back here to shop.” She had a joking tone, but it did make Abigail think.
    Abigail took the basket and started scanning the clothes, standing sideways to the register so her belly wasn’t in the way. As she worked, she noticed that there was two of everything.
    Could it be twins?
    She looked the guest up and down as she made small talk. The woman looked pretty big—not as big as Abigail—but she might be having twins. It was hard to tell, since overalls had the tendency of making pregnant women look even bigger.
    “Do you know anything about cribs?” asked the woman. “I didn’t see anyone working over there to ask.”
    “Oh, yeah, there’s not someone in the baby section a lot of the time. I don’t know a ton, but I’ll see what I can do.” She handed the guest her bag of clothes and made her way out from behind the counter.
    They made their way to the Infants section, which was just in front of Electronics and a little to the left. The guest walked a little slowly, her belly swaying back and forth as she moved, and Abigail was thankful for that as she couldn’t go very quickly, herself.
    The two of them stood around in the Infants section for a few minutes, discussing this and that about cribs. Abigail knew nothing beyond what her PDA told her, but the woman was very understanding. She was expecting twins, it turned out, and big ones if she counted the weeks correctly.
    As they talked, a baby started crying the next aisle over.
    Almost immediately, Abigail knew she was on a short clock. There was a growing tingling sensation in her breasts and a pressure that she’d become quite acquainted with since the curse first took hold.
    She smiled and nodded as the guest made conversation at her, all the while swaying back and forth on her feet with mounting nervousness. Time was running out, and she had to do something.
    As Abigail politely exited the interaction and turned back to her station (the guest deciding to come back later with her husband to help decide), she already felt the warm dampness spreading across the front of her red shirt.
    “M-marcia,” she did her best to keep her voice steady, keeping in mind that no one else could see what was happening. “Can you hold down the fort for a few minutes, I’ve gotta go take care of something.”
    “You better not be sneaking off to text some guy.” Marcia, the evening shift, popped her gum and without looking up from her phone.
    “C’mon Marcia, it’s an emergency.”
    “Oh,” she glanced up. “Girl problems?”
    “Yes,” Abigail rolled her eyes in exasperation.
    “Need to borrow anything?”
    “Nope, I’m good!” She started backing away.
    “Okay, you do what you gotta do.” Marcia went back to her phone. “I’ll tell’em you’re in the back.”
    “Thanks for covering for me!”
    It was everything Abigail could do to stop herself from running down the main aisle—or trying to run—but she hurried along doing her best to disguise her urgency as a diligent work ethic.
    Ever since the curse began, Abigail had had to deal with a variety of inconvenient things. Most obvious was the weight and size of her belly and how that affected her getting around, and this was present with all her story ideas, it seemed. Then there were the movements—these varying with the content of the story—which in some cases were enough to interrupt her sleep. In cases where she was working on labor-themed pieces, she would have somewhat-painful contractions throughout, growing more intense and interruptive as the story neared its completion.
    Neither of these last two were an issue at the moment (thankfully), but she was working on a lactation-heavy piece, and that could be far more inconvenient in its own ways.
    Abigail was used to having smallish-breasts, and found the vacillating reality of having boobs to be an exciting one, but the downsides were undeniable. Pregnancy made for sensitive breasts that swelled and ached with milk, dark and responsive nipples that poked out visibly beneath her shirt.
    She’d bought a few maternity bras (ordering them online so as not to raise any questions) and was wearing her second-largest at the moment, but it had gotten uncomfortably tight this time around.
    At home, it wasn’t too difficult to keep the milk under control and she hadn’t expected issues at work, since it was a short shift and she’d taken care of it just before leaving, but no luck, it seemed. She’d heard that the sound of a baby crying could induce lactation in some women, and that seemed enough cause for her body to let down in the middle of her shift.
    Abigail had no idea what she was going to do. She tried to hurry, but jostling her breasts just made things worse, so she walked quickly and carefully and looked around nervously, still expecting someone to notice.
    “Excuse me, miss?” An old woman popped out from the greeting cards, catching her off-guard. “Do you carry calendars here?”
    “Yes ma’am,” said Abigail through a strained smile, still slowly moving down the main aisle. “They’re right over there in the office supplies.” She did a polite, two-fingered point over the grey-haired woman’s head, indicating the next section past the cards.
    “Well,” the old woman clucked her tongue in frustration. It wasn’t a rude sound, more one of folksy self-admonishment. “I was just there for what musta been fifteen minutes,” she said with painful slowness.
    “Here, I can show you.”
    Abigail was headed to the pharmacy, which had a single-person bathroom where she could take care of her problem, and it happened to be in the same direction as the calendars, so she figured it would be faster to just drop the old woman off at the calendars on her way past.
    She turned and tried to squeeze past the woman, her belly catching a hanging display of gift cards, knocking it to the ground with a crash.
    “Oh dear,” said the old woman, completely understating the horror that Abigail was experiencing.
    Abigail let out a cry of frustration, not yet trying to clean up the mess but just trying to comprehend how out-of-control her life had become. It was a few long moments before she braced against the adjacent shelf and slowly bent her knees to lower her bulk to the floor.
    “One moment, ma’am,” she sighed in utter defeat. “Let me just clean this up.”
    “Oh, did that thing fall again?”
    A tall, beautiful girl with white-blonde hair came around the corner.
    “Hey, Temperance.” Abigail smiled, genuinely happy to see the peppy young woman. “Yeah, you know me. Such a klutz.”
    “She was helping me find a calendar for my daughter-in-law,” said the old woman, as if vouching for Abigail’s character.
    “Abigail, you don’t have to worry about that. Here, let me get it, you just help this nice guest.” Temperance squatted and swept the fallen gift cards together with her hands before Abigail even got to the floor.
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yeah, don’t sweat it.”
    “Temperance,” Abigail fought back tears as she stood back up. “You’re an actual, living saint.”
    Temperance just laughed waved a hand to dismiss the compliment.
    Meanwhile, Abigail hauled herself back up and did her best to step over the mess, then lead the old, slow woman off to the calendars.
    —
    By the time Abigail shut the bathroom door behind her, it was already too late. Her shirt was completely soaked through and thick, cream-colored milk was dripping from the hem onto her khaki pants. The darkened article stuck to her belly coldly, and a cloying, sweet smell filled the air.
    She stripped off her shirt and tossed it onto the sink with a sigh, shivering a little as the bathroom air blew across her damp skin. Her bra was one of those sports bra-like pieces which clasped above the cups in the front, which meant it was comfortable and easy to remove, but also very, very absorbent.
    Abigail checked the time on her Fitbit to keep an eye on how long she’d been gone, then got to washing. As she worked, from time to time she’d glance up at herself in the mirror and think about how strange she looked, how much her body had changed with these past few days of half-formed stories.
    “You’re a mess, girl,” she said, smiling wryly at the mirror. “But you look hot.”
    After a few minutes, she radioed to let Marcia know she was going on her fifteen, and then continued doing sink-laundry. Her breasts kept leaking a little as she worked, but she dabbed the milk away, then eventually resorted to squeezing the remaining milk out into a pad of paper towels.
    The rough towels irritated her nipples, but there was nothing to be done for it.
    With five minutes left on her break, Abigail was left with a damp shirt and bra, but they no longer smelled like milk. She put these on and snuck out of the bathroom, doing her best to not get noticed so no one could pin the massive waste of paper towels on her.
    She slipped past the pharmacy and through the doors in Cosmetics, which led into the Team Members Area, and from there got to the HR Counter (TSC? TSE? She couldn’t ever figure out what people called it, and had never asked), where Jessica sat typing on her computer.
    “Hey, Jessica,” she leaned casually on the counter, doing her best to look self-composed.
    “Hi, Abigail, how are you?” Jessica barely glanced up.
    “Pretty good, pretty good. Uhm… so I had a bit of an accident and spilled my drink all over my shirt…”
    Jessica actually looked up now and saw Abigail standing there in her damp, horribly wrinkled shirt.
    “How did you get it on the back?”
    “It was a big cup. Anyway, I was wondering if I could get one of those extra promotional shirts that are lying around so I can finish my shift.”
    Jessica sighed and stood up with a resigned expression, coming out from behind the counter and going into the supply room, from which she re-emerged with a folded red shirt in her hands.
    “Here you go,” she said, putting it in Abigail’s hands. “Try not to spill anything on this one.”
    “Will do,” Abigail saluted before waddling off to change.
    —
    One unforeseen failing in this plan was that Jessica—unable to see Abigail’s pseudo-pregnancy—had grabbed a shirt sized for Abigail’s petite body. Abigail, who had something like seven or eight unfinished ideas kicking around inside her, was much too large for normal clothing.
    Worse, Abigail hated tight clothes and always wore a size larger just for comfort, and now was forced to wear a normal-sized shirt. It fit over her chest, but left almost the entirety of her pale belly uncovered, and the inviting words of “Ask Me about Free Shipping” that was written on the front was hidden in its folds.
    And there was no replacement available for her damp bra.
    Utterly crestfallen, Abigail dragged herself to the back of the store to work the rest of her shift. No one saw anything strange, of course, but the cool breeze against her sensitive skin was an irritant, and she found herself rubbing it unconsciously, trying to hide her popped-out navel fruitlessly.
    “All good?” Marcia popped her gum as she leaned on the counter, scrolling through her phone.
    “Yep. How’re things here?”
    “Slow enough that Todd wants you to do backstock.”
    “I thought Backroom was taking over our backstocking?”
    “They’re busy.” Pop. “He said I should send you back there once you get off your break.”
    Abigail sighed, but didn’t protest. This was not a day for fighting back; she just wanted to clock out and go home.
    On the plus side, pushing the three-tiered cart to the back gave her something to lean her weight on as she walked, and she could look forward to not being bothered by guests for the last hour of her shift.
    The Electronics Stock Room was a tiny, cramped space with a few aisles of shelves and a veritable barricade of abandoned boxes and tubs and carts of unsorted backstock. The door wouldn’t even open all the way and she had to shove herself against it to scoot a box of batteries out of the way.
    She carefully squeezed into the room—her belly brushing both door and frame as she did—and found herself standing amidst hours and hours of potential work. Her shift was almost over, at least.
    Trying once more to tug her too-small shirt over her belly, Abigail got to sorting.
    There was no one to watch her here, and so she was free to struggle with the effects of her pregnancy as she needed. It took a solid minute to squeeze and climb her way to the books and dvds, where she intended to spend her time working. She grabbed the rolling ladder at the end of the aisle and lowered herself to sit on the bottom step of it, then scooted herself forward and backwards up and down the aisle.
    Her belly sat heavy between her legs, curving outwards more than half the way to her knees. This became her biggest obstacle as she tried to scuttle along the aisle, but it was better than standing.
    Abigail went to the end of the aisle and grabbed a few books, then scanned them with her PDA and scooted over to an empty spot to stow them, or else sought-out a pre-existing location that the system had on file. This oftentimes meant standing, which was regrettable, but the ladder was good for bracing against as she pulled herself to her feet, and the work was none-too harrowing.
    Rolling around on the ladder was nice, but it wasn’t too long before her legs began to burn from the strange exercise of pushing and pulling it around. She stopped now and then to breathe and rest, rubbing her belly idly as she did and counting the minutes until she got off.
    With ten minutes left, Marcia’s voice came over radio.
    “Hey Abigail, you there?”
    “Go for Abigail,” she sighed.
    “Go to channel 2.”
    She switched over.
    “I’m here.”
    “Hey, there’s a guest here looking for a book; it’s got a location in the back.” Pop. “I’ll give you the DCPI.”
    Abigail scrambled to get her PDA up and type in the number before she fell too far behind to remember what Marcia had said. The book came up and she saw the location listing.
    “Okay, got it, I’ll bring it right out.”
    As she glanced between her device and the markings on the aisle to orient herself, she thought about how fortunate this was. Ten minutes was a long time to be squatting in the back room alone, but finding a book and bringing it out to the Electronics desk would take up enough of the rest of her shift that she wouldn’t really have to do anything else.
    And then she realized where the book was.
    There were a lot of backstocked books and a lot of the easy-to-reach locations were filled up. Small books could be squeezed in without too much trouble, but a few big, hardbacks—the kinds celebrities liked to put out—usually ended up on the upper shelves. This was one such book, sitting as a four-high stack on a shelf some ten feet up.
    Abigail didn’t do heights.
    Heights were probably her biggest fear, followed by bugs and driving, but it rarely came up in work. There wasn’t a whole lot on the upper shelves of the Electronics Stockroom, but this book was there and she had to get it.
    Once before, she’d asked someone else to fetch a high-up item, and had gotten in trouble for it.
    Steeling herself, she determined to just do it. “Don’t look down” and all that.
    Her first attempted came to an end almost instantly, as she found she was unable to climb the steep ladder with her big belly sticking out in front of her. She got to the second step, but the rough surface of the steps brushed against her stomach painfully and she abandoned the endeavor.
    Abigail looked at her watch and saw the seconds ticking by as she tried to solve this. If she took too long, someone was going to ask questions she couldn’t really answer.
    Eventually she settled on a different idea: going up backwards. It was… not ideal. This was partially because the weight of her belly was threatening to pull her off the ladder and she had to hold on tightly to the handles to keep herself upright, but the other downside was the perspective, though this was tempered by the fact that her huge belly blocked her view of the ground as—step-by-step—she got further up the ladder.
    She came to eye-level with the book and quickly scanned the location with her PDA before tucking it back into its holster. Then she picked up the book with one hand (clinging to the rail with the other) and shut her eyes, lest looking to the side show her a glimpse of how high up she was.
    Abigail blindly descended the ladder, stumbling at the bottom as she reached the floor unexpectedly. She laughed nervously at herself and leaned against a shelf to catch the breath she’d be accidentally holding.
    Once she had recuperated, she carefully made her way back to the door and squeezed back out into the main stockroom.
    The guest was excited to have the book, but Marcia didn’t seem impressed by how long it had taken her to do such a simple task.
    “Did you get lost or something?” She said in a tone of voice that might have meant it was supposed to be a good-natured joke.
    “Nope.” Abigail was too tired to come up with an excuse. It was time to go home and take a shower. “I’m gonna go clock out.” So she made her way back to the front of the store, determined to get at least one of these stories done before work the next day.
    —