Well, I didn’t expect to see my own face on a glossy magazine cover right before bedtime. Especially with said face peeking out from between some Italian girl’s breasts.
“CHEST,” I muttered, staring at the magazine. ‘The Magazine for Women Leading the Next Evolution’ read the line right above the masthead, with ‘Exploring the New Female Advantage’ below. Cryptic? Not really. Just another new media outlet jumping on the new trends. I stared a bit longer, hoping it might apologize if I gave it enough time. Big surprise. It didn’t.
Melissa had left it sitting on the kitchen counter, bright and intentional, like she wanted me to find it. Or like she didn’t think it mattered if I did.
So there she was, on the cover, the Italian: Lucia Antonucci. The bosomy glamor model that had become not just the distinctive hourglass embodiment of the ‘carrier dress’ fashion movement but had started her own company. She was also, now, partly my boss. I was now a house model, I guess. And there I was, on the cover of an international magazine, nestled between her tits.
I had only met her once in person, briefly for dinner about a week or so ago, in a room where I had been the least important person, and yet somehow the one being discussed the most. She and her team, along with Melissa, had worked out the details of my new career path with her fashion house, Incarnato by Lucia. That my likeness was becoming a commodity tossed around between women had been one of many clues that something in my life had gone structurally wrong. I guess I’m not necessarily one to take a hint.
Now here she was again, Lucia - professional lighting, immaculate posture, and a top that looked less like clothing and more like a work of architecture. And housed in the center of it -
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered, not wanting to be overheard
Me.
Well. Not me me. But close enough that my stomach did something unpleasant. I mean, I knew this was coming. I’d given the okay for Lucia and her company to use my likeness in a new line of “manikins” - small plastic figurines of men made to be displayed in women’s tops - so I shouldn’t have been surprised. How’d it get to press so quick? How’d they make this issue up so fast? This must have been some…
I should stop asking questions.
The money was good, and I have to admit that it gave me a small sense of agency about my life. After my humiliating, impoverishing divorce and spiraling fall from grace as the owner and lead physician of a healthy medical practice, maybe I was worth something, to someone. Even if it was just this.
Anyway, yeah. The manikin.The likeness was good, really good. Someone had clearly taken their time. The face, the posture, even the slightly confused, mid-sentence expression I apparently defaulted to - it was all there, miniaturized and positioned, displayed, framed by the blonde Italian’s enormous knockers.
“That is deeply weird…” I said out loud.
A pause.
“…and also kind of impressive.”
I leaned against the counter, the cool stone pressing into my upper chest as I flipped open to the article…
“There are women who follow trends, women who define trends. And then there is Lucia Antonucci…”
“Yeah, okay,” I murmured. I skimmed at first.
Carrier fashion. Manikins. Cultural symbol of Man, of Men, miniaturized.
I slowed down. Then, against my better judgment, I started actually reading. I swallowed.
“There’s something undeniably symbolic in Lucia’s work…”
“Oh good,” I muttered, my sarcasm lost on the world, “They noticed.”
I kept going.
‘At the center of the launch is a controversial and already much-discussed debut: the Dr. Vulni manikin. The miniature man every woman on social media suddenly seems desperate to own…’
Sigh.
Yes, I’d given Melissa permission to sign off on branding. Yes, because I needed the money, because my bank account had started making hollow, empty sounds I didn’t like. But I hadn’t really processed it, how it would feel. Not like this. Not until I saw it. Not until I saw her wearing me.
“I don’t just wear the future. I carry it between my breasts.”
I closed my eyes, and there was a long moment where I just stood there, breathing, the words kind of echoing around in my skull like they’d found a comfortable place to live. From somewhere deeper in the house, I thought I heard Melissa moving. A floorboard shifting. A presence. I stiffened slightly without meaning to. I exhaled slowly. “Okay,” I said to no one. “All right. Sure.”
Because what was the alternative? Object? To who? To her, to Lucia? To the magazine? To Melissa? To the version of myself that had signed that contract?
I looked back down at the image on the last page of the spread, at me. Small, contained. There was a strange disconnect. Because part of me - the rational part, the doctor, the one that still occasionally tried to assert itself - was horrified.
‘This is what you are now?’ it asked. ‘A product? A symbol? A tiny, decorative-‘
But another part, a quieter, less respectable part, was paying attention to something else entirely: the framing, the focus, the fact that out of everything on that page - her body, the dress, the lighting, the composition - the eye still went to him. To me.
“I’m the centerpiece,” I said softly.
I paused.
“…that’s not nothing.”
The thought landed heavier than I expected. Because it wasn’t nothing. In a world where I had been steadily reduced - professionally, financially, physically (Jesus, physically) - this was something. Visibility. Relevance. A role. Even if it was…this.
I flipped back a page.
A thought crept in then, uninvited but persistent.
I stared at the image on the page, at the small figure of me. At how neatly it fit. How naturally it seemed to belong there. And before I could stop it, the question formed:
How small would I have to get to…and if Melissa were to keep growing, and wear one of these dresses…until we could, for real…
I swallowed.
“No,” I said immediately, out loud, firm, “Not going there.”
I put the magazine down. Then picked it back up again about three seconds later. I looked at the pictures again. Slower this time, more deliberate, studying proportions, scale. Imagining it wasn’t Lucia, but Melissa.
My chest felt tight.
Would it ever be possible?
It was like Melissa’s face staring back at me from the page.
“I’m changing…” she seemed to say to me.
Yeah. Yeah, she was. And I was…what? Changing with her? Because of her? For her? So I could be useful? So I could…fit?
I exhaled sharply and dragged a hand down my face. “This is not a normal line of thought,” I informed myself. Normal for fantasy? Maybe, sure. Normal, though, for considering where one might find oneself actually living? No.
“None of this is normal,” I immediately replied.
“Now you’re talking to yourself…”
There was no version of this where I wasn’t at least a little horrified that I had somehow become the face of a trend involving miniature men being worn as accessories.
“Traitor to my gender,” I muttered, “Is that what I am?”
I winced. There was something there. For sure a discomfort I couldn’t quite file away neatly. It made me feel bad. But underneath it, something else. Not pride, not exactly. But maybe recognition.
I existed here, in this world that was shifting, reorganizing, recalibrating around forces I barely understood, female ones - and yet I had a place. A strange one, for sure. A small one, maybe. A very small one, potentially. But a place. A place at the side of one of the world’s prettiest girls - who could end up as one of its most powerful women. And also, this. This thing with Incarnato. Actually, I didn’t work for Lucia, not directly. As a “model”, or at least as the face of “Dr. Vulni”, I technically worked for a new company just recently set up by my ex-wife Sheryl and owned by Melissa. Incarnato would pay this new company, and it - Melissa, really - would pay me. It wasn’t nothing and like I said, it paid. I thought back on the unopened mail in my inbox. Bills, some of them, final notices. Account alerts. The quiet, creeping collapse of a life I used to understand, a life that was being replaced by a new one.
“I could do worse,” I said quietly.
“Are you still in here talking to yourself?”
Melissa!
I hadn’t heard her come in but even before I turned my head to look up at her, I’d felt her: a twist in the air, a warmth, a pressure. The room had suddenly decided to revolve around a different center, away from the magazine. I had to shake my head, f-focus.
“Whatcha reading?” she asked.
I flinched. I finally turned.
Melissa stood in the doorway to the kitchen, one hand resting lightly against the frame. She’d changed her outfit - something soft, casual. On her, everything looked incredible. I couldn’t peel my eyes away - she was wearing a gray henley top, unbuttoned but still straining to stretch across massive tits, and some extra-brief, soft white shorts. As long and muscular and shapely as her legs had become (and somehow she’d still retained her tan from our days at the beach conference, months ago), my eyes settled on her chest.
But her eyes had dropped immediately to the magazine, and she didn’t need to step closer to see it. In fact, I could tell she was able to read the copy from the body of text from that far away.
“You found it,” she said simply, recognizing my feelings for it instantly. She walked in slowly - not looming, not closing the distance all at once like she might once have. She was giving me space. I noticed that.
“Yeah,” I said, my gaze needing to angle itself up and up and up as she approached, still planted between her knockers, “I did.” The actual chest in the room was suddenly more fascinating than ‘CHEST’ magazine.
I turned the mag slightly toward her, like she hadn’t already seen every detail. She leaned down, bent at the waist, to read. To look at the images of her little plastic boyfriend nestled between the breastts of another woman.
I, meanwhile, stared at Melissa’s tits. Or rather, just one tit. Her left tit. I was aside her, with her leaned over and stretching the ribbed fabric of her long sleeve top to the max. It was so h-
“Enjoying the view?”
“U-uh-ugh I’m s-sorry-“
“Oh don’t worry,” she giggled, “When you’re alone with me it’s all okay, I don’t mind. After all, soon Dr. Vulni is going to be spending quite a lot of time in there.”
“Th-THAnk you…” I stammered, voice cracking. But what did she mean by that? Did she mean once she got her own figurine? They must be sending her one. I decided not to ask. “I didn’t mean to stare like some, I dunno-“
“Random guy that’s fixated on my breasts?”
“Uh…um…”
“It’s okay. Really.”
It was no secret that Melissa actually enjoyed the looks she got, from men or women who looked at her body. The stares, the awe, and the adoration when she was seen by people and the comments she read made her excited. She’d maybe always had this streak in her - I’d spoken to Randi, who’d known her since high school, about it - but she’d only recently begun embracing it. She really enjoyed it when people looked at her, up at her, and up to her. And now that she was big, growing? And developing her powers? She knew that there was maybe also some fear in them - and that was exciting too - but the admiration she got was what really got her energized.
Melissa’s gaze settled on the images: on Lucia, on the manikin of me. For a moment, she didn’t say anything but I felt it, that flicker of interest, focus, and something deeper turning behind her eyes. “You look good in there,” Melissa said softly, then with a quiet giggle, “right at home.”
I blinked. “I’m, like, a toy,” I lamented, “a product.”
Her gaze went back to mine.“No,” she said, quiet but firm. “You’re not just that.” Something in her voice made me stand a little straighter without meaning to. “They’re looking at you, not just her,” she went on, “Thinking about you. Talking about you. Anybody who buys this magazine. Anyone who reads it online.”
A beat.
She bit her lower lip. “That matters.” Another beat. ”To me.”
I hesitated. Because…yeah. It did. Something about me being in this magazine was going to be good for Melissa. And she could tell I knew that.
Her expression softened. “You feel it, don’t you?” she asked.
My stomach flipped. “Feel what?”
“The attention,” she said, “Even just from seeing it. From knowing they’re seeing you.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Because the honest answer was uncomfortable. “A little?” I admitted. Because I had. I’d felt a buzz, knowing that others, everywhere, all around the world, were reading this article, seeing the videos online, looking at the Instagram posts and looking at…me.
Her eyes lit, just slightly. Not predatory, or overwhelming, but pleased. “Yeah, you can feel it too,” she whispered, “I thought so.”
“And it’s channeling into me?” I asked. As bizarre as this conversation had become, I knew something equally bizarre was happening. “And then from me…into you?”
She shifted her weight, like she was resisting the urge to step closer. “Yes,” she answered.
That landed. Hard. I looked back at the magazine. At myself. Small. Centered. Wanted? So weird…
“Melissa,” I said carefully, “what does this mean?”
She didn’t answer right away, but I could see her thinking - actually thinking, not just reacting.
Growing into the question, maybe.
“I think…” she started slowly, “…it means you’re part of it now.”
A pause.
“Part of what I’m becoming.”
My chest tightened. Part of her, part of what she’s becoming. Images of myself, stuck to her in ways I don’t want to describe, began to form in my head. I needed to shake them away. I wasn’t ready for this!
“Th-that doesn’t exactly make me feel better,” I said, as the little gremlin of pride and self esteem that still lived in my chest - withered and worse-for-the-wear that he was - clawed at my sternum.
She smiled - just a little. Adjusting. “Okay,” she said softly. “Then…what part of it doesn’t feel good?”
That stopped me, because that was new. That question. That concern. I looked down again. “Th-this,” I said, gesturing vaguely at the magazine, “Being…like that. Small. Carried around. I mean-”
I hesitated. Then pushed through it.
“Wh-what if I actually end up like that?”
The words hung there. Ugly but honest.
Melissa didn’t giggle, didn’t laugh it away, didn’t dismiss it. Instead, her eyes went to the images in the magazine article again, the tiny plastic figurine of her boyfriend nestled between the tits of another woman. Then back to me.
“You might…” she said.
My stomach dropped. But before I could react-
“...but not without you wanting it.”
Was that supposed to be comforting? ”wh-what do you mean?” I implored.
“Don’t worry about it now, sweetie. We have to talk about Thanksgiving,” she told me, “And it’s about time I got you ready for bed. Now, what did I come in here for? Oh yeah. Your bottle…”
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