Years for Sale - Epilogue (Commission)

This is an optional epilogue to Years for Sale as requested by a generous supporter. I leave it to you if you want to consider this the real ending or not.

Two years later…

***

Audrey woke up in her luxury hotel room, stood up from the bed, and stretched her body. Her fingers reached all the way up to brush against the ceiling. That surprised her.

“Another growth spurt?” she asked herself, relishing in the bassy sound of her voice. She looked down past her breasts and smiled at her lengthy feet far below. Gleefully, she flipped on a light and sat on her bed to get a good look at herself in the mirror. Her body had grown ridiculous, and she loved it. There was so much of her to love, and she was always growing more and more of her to love.

Audrey could admit that it was greedy to have taken Caroline’s growth potential in addition to her years. She had made herself into a woman, and then started going through puberty as an adult, piling Caroline’s growth on top of her own natural development. She was nearing seven feet tall and would likely surpass it in the years to come if she let things progress as they were.

Why had she done it? That was a question she had asked herself, occasionally. There was no practical benefit to it. Certainly, this continuous growth made her new life somewhat more complicated. Besides the inconvenience of needing to search for increasingly larger clothes, she was standing out more and more conspicuously in a crowd as she grew up beyond normal adulthood. And, for someone trying not to be found, that was less than ideal.

Maybe the best explanation Audrey could give for why she did it was that she would have missed out on growing up if she had not. As much as she had wanted to break out on her own, she did not want to skip the whole experience of puberty. In spite of all its awkwardness, she appreciated the sensation of becoming gradually larger over time and the increasing power that came with it.

In the first year, men had been intrigued enough to start up a conversation with Audrey and maybe go to bed with her later on. However, after she had outgrown most of them, the men had generally become too intimidated even to speak with her. Some stared and tried to avert their gaze after they noticed her noticing them. She found it amusing, like being surrounded by nervous boys, scared silent in the presence of a beautiful big girl. No one dared bother her or get in her way, and consequently, she got her way in most circumstances. It was lovely being large.

Still, Audrey could sense herself reaching a limit. Any taller, and she would become the center of attention wherever she went. As much as she wanted to hold on to every inch she grew, she knew she would need to offload some height onto someone else, soon. She dug around in her suitcase and pulled out the bracelets, gold and silver, master and servant. No doubt she could find someone new to wear the silver bracelet, someone wanting to be taller or older, a horny teen boy, perhaps. She could make his dreams come true and make her own life a little easier all at the same time.

While thinking of the bracelets again, Audrey remembered Caroline. She smirked as she imagined what life must be like now for her cousin as time had passed for everyone but her. Briefly, Audrey considered paying Caroline a visit, but she thought it best to keep away from her family, altogether. Their transaction was complete. Her cousin had gotten her greedy wish. The girl was richer. What a pity that Caroline would have a hard time enjoying her wealth.

Audrey stood up, extended her arms above her head, and touched the ceiling again with her fingers, enjoying her height once more before she prepared to give it away. Then, she began planning her next scheme, putting Caroline out of her mind for good.

***

Elsewhere, Caroline woke up in her bedroom, and out of habit, she walked over to the wall to check her height against the growth poster hanging there. She frowned. The ruler said she was 4’4” tall. It always said she was 4’4” tall. For over a year, she had been hoping to see signs of herself growing back into the teen she had been but was cursed with daily disappointment instead. She no longer felt depressed by the results and held out little hope that anything would change. Slowly, she had begun to accept that she would never be more than 4’4” tall. Caroline was a little girl, and it seemed she would always be a little girl. No amount of hoping and measuring would change that.

She might have been able to handle the permanent loss of her adulthood a little better if not for the fact that she still needed to attend grade school to get back the education that Audrey had taken away with her when she disappeared. Since the end of the last school year, Caroline had become all too aware of how much she had fallen behind her new friends in height and maturity. They all looked two years older than they had been when they had first met, while Caroline remained the same little girl. Today would be her first day of middle school. She was not eager to go, as she felt anxious about interacting with the older students there while still looking like she belonged in the fourth grade.

Caroline dragged herself over to the mirror and removed the blanket she had draped over it. There was no surprise waiting there in her reflection. The same plain little girl stared back at her, never changing, always stuck just the way she was.

“We can do this,” she told herself, but her chirpy little voice did not sound confident at all.

She draped the blanket over the mirror again and went to get ready for school.

***

The middle-school hallways were crammed with students, and Caroline felt like a lost little trout trying to weave her way through the enormous bodies that flowed around her, not seeing further than the person’s back in front of her and the chest behind her. She tried and failed to fight the current of adolescents and ended up so turned around and confused that she arrived late to most of her classes, becoming the center of attention again and again as she walked in.

Like the bus driver that morning, all the teachers doubted that Caroline was in the right school and gave her a brief interrogation before letting her sit down, sometimes while the whole class stared and giggled at the sight of her. She was getting more used to people doubting her age, but it never stopped embarrassing her. She would give the teachers her name. They would look it up and see she was on their rosters. Then, she would be directed to take a seat at a desk that was too large for her, where she would focus on keeping her dangling feet from swinging childishly. She would try to follow what the teacher was saying after that, but she had a hard time seeing the board past the much larger students in front of her. She would need to lean to the side to get a clear view, but then she would need to lean back to write notes. Eventually, some of the teachers noticed and moved her up to the front row, but that just left her feeling on display before everyone. By the end of class, she was rushing out the door to get away. When it came time for lunch, she found that her friends had not saved a seat for her, so she ate alone while watching her friends chat with some boys. Yet another activity she would never get to do herself.

At that point, Caroline considered begging her parents to let her be homeschooled. She knew there was little chance of that happening, though. They both worked, and she had been determined before to keep going to school even if she was not growing. She had wanted to learn how to exist in the adult world while looking like a child. So far, all she had learned was how futile it was to try. Everyone immediately assumed she was as old as she looked, and they would keep thinking that unless given proof of her actual age. How could she ever live independently like this? If she was living on her own, people would start wondering where her parents were as soon as she stepped outside. Life would be a constant struggle to avoid someone getting the wrong idea and trying to “help” her, over and over again. There would be no escaping childhood, no freedom, no hope.

Just when Caroline thought she could not be more miserable about her situation, it came time for P.E. class. Even the smallest gym uniform was too large on her, so she had hers pinned up to fit better. In the gym, she was a full head shorter than the next shortest person. They picked teams for volleyball. Unsurprisingly, Caroline was picked last. She managed to hit the ball up once or twice, but mostly she was too slow to reach the ball when it got near her. Her teammates just started to play as if she was not there. When it came time for Caroline to serve, she failed to get the volleyball over the net. Despite a heroic effort from the rest of her team, she cost them a win.

“It’s okay, kid,” one of the older girls told her as they went back to the locker room. “You did your best.”

Was this her best? Caroline worried that it might be true. She would never be better at volleyball or anything physical, never more capable than a little girl, always a disappointment, no hope for improvement. Her life was basically over even before it had begun.

School let out, and Caroline rode  the bus home in a daze. As the other students around her chatted hopefully about the school year to come, Caroline felt as though she were in a different world from them all. For the first time in a long while, she allowed herself to hope that Audrey might return to fix her life. It was the only chance she had. Then, Caroline remembered the type of person who Audrey was and knew her cousin would never do that. Their deal was done. Audrey was never coming back. And so, Caroline gazed blankly out the window, watching life pass her by.