The Whale and the Ocean
-
NOTE: If you read a chapter 9 earlier, replace that memory with this one. I switched perspective characters, and it all fell into place…
Chapter 9
July 4, 2025
.
.
.
The next day, Jessi and Adam had another day-long conversation. They mapped out rules and scenarios for having more intense fun at more intense size differences. They read how-to’s on negotiating kink scenes when the submissive partner can’t speak (loud enough to be heard).They came up with safe words and gestures. They practiced them. Adam had plenty of extra sounding rope lying around, unused. She even tied him up, at his request. As he struggled against his bonds, they both felt something stir in themselves that they didn’t expect, and they decided that side of their desires was worth revisiting later.
One of the biggest problems that they discussed was lighting. Adam was not comfortable with many of her ideas without being able to clearly see Jessi, but the fact that they had to worry about being seen from a distance meant that lighting themselves better just increased the risk of discovery too much.
The other problem, which Jessi wasn’t discussing with him that day, was his treatment. She needed to finish one final test in order to be sure that when she left the island to go back to her life, she’d be leaving this bizarrely dangerous person permanently in better shape than how she had found him.
Jessi had to take one of the beta blockers she ordered for him to prevent herself from visibly shaking. She had to lie in the face of a man who, with or without trying to, could crush everything, and everyone, around him.
She was hiding behind the closed door of the studio. She closed her eyes, and pictured herself pulling it all off, and walking away alive. She grabbed his large, plastic-cased flashlight, and put her pepper spray in a hip holster, hidden under her flowy shirt.
She looked in the mirror that was part of the studio’s painting area to put on a convincing face of shock. She turned around, and slammed the studio door open. She could see him dancing while hand-washing the dishes.
“Adam,” she started.
“Almost done, then we can get –“ he turned around to look at her in the middle of the sentence, but then he saw her expression.
“What’s wrong?”
“The marine radio. There’s chatter about a monster sighting on this island. They must have seen you standing up last night.”
The color drained from Adam’s face.
“That isn’t funny,” he said. He put the sponge down, and dried his hands on the dish towel.
“I’m not joking,” Jessi said flatly. “The US Navy is sending a helicopter. The Canadian coastguard is sending a boat to escort them.”
He looked at her with suspicion, but her stony, serious facial expression was enough to convince him that she was telling the truth.
His eyes went wide with fear. He ran out of the house without putting his shoes on. Jessi followed behind him into the misty summer night, at a leisurely pace, trying to stay far enough away to not catch a stray pine tree, but close enough to see and hear anything that might happen.
He ran towards the forest path that leads to the cliff. Jessi turned on the big flashlight, tracking his shape with its spot. Other than the tiny spark of the pocket flashlight in his hand, he looked like shifting movement against the grey background of the densely cloudy night. She got a few feet from the edge of the forest, and something in the pit of her stomach told her to not walk into the dark misty woods, with a thing like Adam in there.
She stayed still, a tree-height away from the edge of the forest, and kept her flashlight pointed in his general direction, actively listening. She was expecting the trees to erupt from his explosive growth any second. She waited. All that she could hear was the ocean waves hitting the nearby cliff, and the wind rustling through the pine boughs, for several minutes.
Then, she heard laughter. Distant at first, but getting closer, until she recognized it as him at his most amused. She shone her light in its direction, and saw him running towards her.
“Jessi!” he cheered. He put his hands on her shoulders.
“I didn’t grow!”
“Did you have a panic attack?”
“Yep. A short one.”
He ran past her, towards their testing bed, past the compound. She ran after him this time.
“Aren’t you afraid of the helicopter?”
“Not really?” he answered. “Oh, here, take these, I don’t want them thinking they’re weapons,” he said, and handed her his folded pocket-knife and multitool. She tucked them away.
As she watched, he took out a ponytail holder from his pocket, and tied up his hair, something he normally only did when using powertools. He combed through his beard with his short fingernails, and wiped his hands on his pants reflexively. He looked more neat, less like a hermit who had just run out of the woods at her.
He asked for the big flashlight from her, which she traded for his small one. He pointed the flashlight’s beam of light through the air, which had been condensing since sunset into a thick fog. He moved the light beam back and forth, like a searchlight announcing a grand opening.
Jessi watched this whole display with the intense scrutiny of a clinician.
“They are probably going to take you into custody,” Jessi said. “Why are you happy about that?”
“They’re coming, there’s no way I can stop it. But I’m thrilled to know that the panic attacks don’t cause the growth anymore. Because now, the worst thing that could happen during all this, isn’t possible.”
Jessi said nothing, staying still, alarmed by his unexpected attitude. He continued.
“After the accident, my only goal in life became: just don’t kill anyone. If my panic-growth happened while in custody in some crowded place like a jail or a government lab, it could kill hundreds of people.”
Jessi paused for a moment.
To be fair, that much pressure riding on anyone’s limbic system for that long would probably cause emotional instability.
“You don’t want to grow bigger to defend yourself?” she asked pointedly.
“No,” he scoffed, like the idea was ridiculous. “I’ll just go with them. I’ve already been in solitary confinement here. I don’t think jail would be much worse.”
He waved the flashlight around the sky a few more times, but then, he stopped, and looked at her sadly.
“Except for one detail. You wouldn’t be there.”
Jessi’s heart skipped a beat.
“Jessi. You’re incredible. I don’t think anyone else could or would have solved this bizarre problem with me. I want so badly to spend more time with you. I know I could give you more good memories before you leave. But it seems we won’t get all that.”
He walked forward to kiss her goodbye. She stepped away, turning her head, and winced in shame.
“Stop.” Jessi said. “There is no helicopter.”
He looked at her with confusion. He stepped back, and looked down, away from her. He put his hand on his chest, like he felt something wrong in it. His confusion shifted into disgust. He looked back into her eyes.
“That’s a really cruel joke, Jessi,” he said.
He cooly swapped the big flash light back to her for the pocket one.
“Why on earth did you lie about that?” He asked angrily.
“It was the final part of the experiment. We knew you could force the growth without panic, but we didn’t know if panic still forced growth on its own. It was the last unknown, Adam.”
“Oooh,” he said, understanding dawning.
He grumbled in annoyance, and rubbed his temples with his fingers. Finally, resigned, he said, “That was a good way to test that.”
Using just the pocket flashlight beam in the dark and humid night, he walked past her, and towards his house.
Jessi stayed in the testing field. She used the privacy of his sudden absence to open up her phone’s clinic notes app.
She had only just told him about the first of the four parameters she had just finished testing:
“
WANOFI CLINIC NOTES v 4.2
GROWTH DESENSITIZATION – KOHL, ADAM
TEST 12 OF 12: PANIC AND BETRAYAL CONDITION (“REALLY BAD DAY” TRIAL)
1. Patient grows unintentionally as a result of the physical effects of panic (Result: Negative)
2. Patient grows intentionally, in order to physically defend themselves against expected heavily-armed threat (Result: Negative)
3. Patient grows unintentionally as a result of strong emotions other than panic. List strong emotions and their result: (Rapid onset mania, Betrayal, Anger) (Results for all: Negative)
4. Patient grows intentionally, as part of antisocial self-expression (Result: Negative)
“
While filling this all in as patient notes, she reminded herself that she was performing important medicine. This was a mandatory part of discovering whether or not he was safe enough to end his isolation.
He had even brought up one more reason why she had to complete this: this was also for the benefit of anyone who might force him to stay anywhere, which was something he couldn’t avoid forever. He was 40. What if he had cardiac symptoms some day, and had to go to a hospital?
Jessi looked towards his house, its warm back door lights visible from here. Even given all of her reasons, she still felt like an asshole. She had never entered a romantic partner in her Clinic Notes before. It felt too intimate - it was invasive. She was honest when she said this was the last test, so she closed the Clinic app, and didn’t open his file again.
When she walked back into the house, she found him, clothes still on, flopped onto his bed sideways, belly-down, head hanging off the other edge. His butt, clothed in olive-green Carhartts, was facing the door. His boots were still on, hanging off the edge of the bed.
She turned off her phone, and put it on the side table. She took off her boots before she joined him on the bed. She managed to resist the urge to spank him through his pants.
“I’m really sorry about that. I didn’t like lying to you,” she said.
He sat up, and realized that he still had his shoes on. He took them off, and moved to the headboard, where she followed. He then wrapped his one arm around her. She cuddled against him.
“I know it had to happen, but it did feel pretty shitty to be duped like that. Apology accepted.”
“This whole struggle was worth it, I hope, so that you could move on. You have to get off of this island and re-enter the world. Your isolation is not healthy.”
He took a few moments to let her frank advice sink in. Then, he nodded.
“Growth is painful,” he mused. “Personal growth,” he clarified. “The other kind felt kinda good, last night.”
“Oh, I know,” Jessi said.
She put her desires for that to the side for a moment.
“I know what might be a good, next. What if we tried a trial of you living in the world again? We could take your boat to Howard’s Bay, reintroduce you to civilization? Catch a movie, go to a restaurant?”
She wondered how he’d clean up to go out on the town.
He agreed to that plan. They stripped, and did their bedtime routines.
“Let’s see the best time to leave, though, weather looks bad.” he said, and went to his desktop in the studio to check the weather forecast.
She stayed in the bed, and mulled over what she had just offered.
She normally dated using sex as the basis. This was typical in med school, but she had been a resident for many years, before landing her new role. Her most recent relationship had been a friends with benefits situation that mutated into a drawn-out, confused mess. She hadn’t felt serious about a partner since she was in undergrad, 12 years ago.
But, after this growth desensitization treatment she did with Adam, she had to be honest, mostly for her own reasons, she had just abandoned her kinky urges to prioritize his emotional needs.
“Do I actually like this weird burnout?,” she asked herself.
“I figured it out,” Adam announced excitedly from the other room.
He walked into the bedroom doorway.
“Fog,” he said, pointing at her, like he was answering a recent question.
Her eyes lit up, catching his context out of thin air.
“Yes!” she said. “If it’s dense enough, we could see each other just fine during the day. But ships wouldn’t be able to spy on us,” she said. “It solves the lighting issue!”
Adam walked back to the computer desk, and Jessi followed. He pointed to the forecast for the next day.
“Dangerously foggy! Extremely low visibility! Avoid boating!” The website said in bold red letters.
“It lasts all day tomorrow. We can’t go to Howard’s Bay at all. Let’s stay here, and get back to the real project,” Adam said, and grew himself just enough to be noticeable, “Jessi.” He growled her name.
Jessi was making herself blush from the power of the plans that started running through her filthy head.
“Fog,” she said again, dripping with suggestion, like the dirty word that it had now become between the two of them.
“Let’s go mess around in the fog now.” She said.
“In the morning, with the light,” he responded. “We need to get some good sleep before then.”
“OK, let’s fuck here, then, I’m ready,” She proposed.
“I’d like to save it for when it really counts,” he responded.
“Can we cuddle on the bed with you bigger?” She was begging.
“Mmmm,” he said, slowly growing to 7ft, 8ft, 9ft tall while holding out the hum, “Nope,” he said finally, zipping back to normal on the last syllable.
“You tease!”
“You are very cute when you beg. But, have some patience.”
Jessi tried to remember the meaning of the word, in the face of her feelings for him. They ramped up the lust even more. At least she had tomorrow morning to look forward to.
