Chapter 7

"Close your eyes and empty your mind of all outside thoughts," Anya instructed.

"This sounds like a bad version of every TV show on cable," Travis murmured aloud.

He couldn't quite duck the flying hand that thwacked the side of his head. Still sitting cross-legged on couch, Travis reached up to massage the sore spot on his skull.

"If you want to use power, you need to concentrate on it to the exclusion of everything else around you. You do the same thing when you are working on your wood projects in the gar-bage," Anya tried to explain.

"It's called a 'garage'," Travis corrected her.

"You're not concentrating!"

Not wishing to encourage a greater wrath upon his head, Travis settled down and closed his eyes. He took a couple of deep breaths and relaxed the muscles in his shoulders and neck.

Anya walked him through the steps of locating, containing, and ultimately using the gift that The Prince had forced between his eyes. Travis grunted and sweated through the exercises, sweating through his flannel shirt.

"How did I do?" Travis asked as she called an end to the lesson.

"You are so human," she judged without much enthusiasm, "vast potential contradicted by narrow horizons."

"That sounded like you in bed before you watched the movie last night," Travis swiped back.

He had to duck another incoming at his skull. Fortunately for him, it was a half-hearted attempt. He noticed that the room had a new definite chill and Travis was far too aware of what she was thinking at the moment.

"I'm not saying that you're a bad lover," Travis hastily explained, "I'm saying that you didn't have a clue to all the possibilities until you watched that movie. You did learn a lot from it, true?"

"You are speaking the truth, Travis, but you are not wooing me to your bed, or making a friend, by taking this path."

Travis felt a bit of panic, "I'm just making a comparison. You're right that I don't know what to do with this power your daddy gave me, but that's because I've never heard or witnessed it before. You're judging me because I am ignorant. I haven't demonstrated that I'm stupid yet."

Travis paused and scratched his head.

"Wait, that didn't come out the right way," he protested.

"Yes, it did," Anya responded with utmost seriousness. She unlaced her blouse and twirled it over her head. Travis found it every bit as sensual as the first time she did that little aerobatic trick. She sat across from him and stared at his face.

"Watch my breasts," she commanded.

Travis watched as her breasts started to glow slightly and then to expand before his eyes. What had been pert mounds of feminine proportion grew into large swaying tits. Travis's eyes swelled as large as her breasts.

"How? How did you do that?" he blubbered in astonishment.

"Touch me and I'll show you," Anya answered, and then added, "not there. Put your hand on my head. Press your thumb against the soft spot behind my eye."

Travis felt the power gather and flow from her thoughts through her body, shifting this, that and other. As he experienced her power, he watched her breasts return to their normal shape and size.

"How did you know to make your boobs, er, your breasts in that way?" he asked, keeping his hand on her head. He was enjoying the contact.

"Power gives the user the ability to understand the balance of the physical body. This shape completes me; that larger shape, which heated your interest, so I noticed, overburdened me. I felt out of balance."

Travis popped a couple of buttons on his shirt and tugged it over his head with a display of ungainly arm flapping. He tossed the shirt aside and held his back straight.

"Hold your hand on my head and let me try this," he asked like an eager child.

He spun up the power in his head and sought out the layer of fat under the skin of his stomach. He could feel it squirming on top of his gut, stretching his skin.

"That's what it feels like to be out of balance, Travis," Anya commented.

"To where do I move it so that I'm right again. Hey, maybe I should move it to my cock," Travis gleefully wondered aloud.

"You are such a little boy; it doesn't belong there and you know it. With this fat, you may dump it into your digestive system and not harm your body. You can't do that with muscle, bone or organ without doing harm, but this fat is extraneous to your balance."

Travis gathered the material, watching capillaries open and close as he isolated it from the rest of his body. Then with a mystery that he failed to penetrate, he shifted the mass into his intestines.

Travis opened his eyes to an unreal vision of the nightly news swimming before his eyes. The vision cut to the commercials leaving behind the far too serious talking head. He could distinctly hear the voiceover discussing intestinal bloating and discomfort, while a thin, aristocratic looking actress with grey hair handed him a swimming glass of orange smelling swill. "Fiber," she said with a dazzling smile.

"Fiber," he repeated aloud and then leapt to his feet crying, "Oh Shit!" The woman disappeared and his front room came into focus. His feet were asleep too and the pain shooting up his legs was unexpected. Squeezing his buns as tightly as possible while his bowels trembled, Travis hobbled to the bathroom and dropped onto the toilet.

The sound and the smell were unbearable, and Travis treated himself to a courtesy flush. He could only manage small groans as the gas pains rocked his tortured intestinal pipes.