Atimist’s Spooky Halloween Story Atimist woke up in the middle of the night to a throbbing pain in his head, worse than any migraine he’d had before. It was like someone had turned on Skrillex in there. This headache at this late hour was definitely going to keep him up. No one could get to sleep like this. So the fox decided this was a good time for a quick, midnight snack run. Something sweet might help him get to sleep, and then he could take an aspirin for the headache. He sat up in bed and was surprised to hit his head on the ceiling. “Ouch!” he exclaimed. That wasn’t going to help his headache at all. Ati rubbed the tender spot on the top of his head. The strangeness of his situation still hadn’t registered yet, preoccupied as he was with the headache and drowsiness. The bed creaked and groaned as he stood up and his ears brushed the ceiling. The door posed a challenge to get through for the newly grown fox as he needed to bend over to get underneath the frame. Picture frames shook and ceiling fans swayed as Ati lumbered down the stairs toward the fridge and sustenance. The added weight of a much larger fox even caused a couple glasses and plates to fall to the ground in the kitchen. Still, nothing seemed amiss in his mind. All the food consumed that evening would’ve been enough to feed a family of five, or more. Atimist cleaned out every last edible morsel in the fridge, cupboards, and pantry while licking his fingers clean. He sat down with a thump that made the house shake and floor boards crack under him; the designer of his home hadn’t expected he would need to deal with that much fox rump when it was being built after all. In fact, all the eating was causing Ati’s stomach to poke out much further than it normally would. He gave his gut a tender rub as it rested against his legs. Pleasantly full, but not so much to be painful. Something orange and round grabbed Ati’s attention from the corner of his eye. A hollowed out, plastic pumpkin full of candy sat there invitingly. Memories of the night’s escapades around the neighborhood flooded back to Ati. And the memory of one candy in particular made the fox’s mouth drool all over again. A special Halloween-edition case of Oreos. He threw the other candy in that pumpkin aside as he reached in for his prize. The package glowed green as the green crème filling fluoresced under its own power. He’d already tried one of them that evening, but now he was filling hungry for the rest. He didn’t think too hard about the fact that a single house gave him an entire package of Oreos, or that crème filling wasn’t supposed to glow. Once that chocolate and crème cookie passed his lips, nothing else mattered. The orange tail behind him wagged as he felt the deliciousness flood his system. And it wagged even harder when he started getting bigger too. Just one Oreo wasn’t enough for Ati, and the more of them he ate the larger he got. His head bumped into the ceiling yet again even while sitting down. Tables and chairs were knocked to the wall by his tail, and his gut surged forward to press against the fridge. Once the pack of Oreos was empty the house was full of fox bulk. The roof of his home popped off and balanced on top of Atimist’s head. His body was enough to fill the entire two story house, with enough height to spare at the top to look out on the neighborhood. His tail was peeking out from the front door and had swatted away a car on the road. The monsterous fox was still hungry though. As though in a daze he stood and walked through the walls of his house out into the street. The houses came up only to his thighs, and he barely noticed himself walking straight through them. Nor did he notice the cars that bounced in time with his footsteps or the cracks in the road after each paw landed. Instead Ati was focused on sniffing at the air. He’d noticed something that smelled amazing; delicious and delectable and divine and right on the tip of his tongue. That smell drove the fox to the local grocery store. It was no effort at all for him to rip away the top of the store. No one was even around at the time. It was the middle of the night, and the entire store was closed up. But even without the lights turned on inside Ati could still tell what was in those aisles. He got on his hands and knees to get his nose up against each stack of food, breathing in deep to find whatever tasty treat was available in there. Everything smelled good. He wasn’t finding exactly the snack he wanted, but when everything smelled delicious… well a fox just can’t help himself sometimes. He devoured entire shelves of food at a time, cleaning out the entire store in mere minutes. His gut sagged lower with each bite, nearly reaching down to touch the road as the fox gorged himself. It wasn’t until the very last aisle that Ati found his prize. An entire shelf full of Oreos sat untouched and ready for consuming. He pulled them all out of the store to claim with his open mouth, sitting down in the parking lot to enjoy his precious cargo. Each pack of Oreos was picked out one at a time and tossed in, as though the shelf was an Oreo pack and each little package inside was a single Oreo. His tail wagged with each bite creating gale-force wind behind him, and he voiced his pleasure with long mmmmms. He didn’t even notice that his fingers were having trouble picking out single packages after each bite. The fox’s behind grew over cars and light posts as each Oreo seemed to make him even larger than before. His gut rolled forward to smash through the entire grocery store as though it were nothing. And his head slowly peeked over more buildings as time went on. Ati got more and more frustrated with the situation until he simply ate the entire shelf, still about half full of Oreo packages. Rubbing his gut he closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation of a city shrinking around him. His belly pushed between buildings and his tail ran down streets as the sky turned orange for many residents of that metropolis. Even now that the Oreos were gone his hunger wasn’t sated. At his height it wasn’t hard to pick out any grocery stores, digging his claws into the earth and pulling each store up in a single hand. Rather than bother with getting inside each one he simply chewed up entire stores with those massive teeth. He was rewarded each time with another flood of pleasurable growth as the whole city was dwarfed by Ati and his preposterously big belly. By the time it was all done, there was no city left anymore, all of it covered by fox floof. And the growth still hadn’t finished. The fox lay back and started massaging his stomach once again, enjoying the sensation of expanding, creating more of himself. Soon he would need to find other cities with other grocery stores. There was a whole planet of Oreos for the taking. It all felt so good, so right, so big and… --- Atimist startled himself awake in the middle of the night. That dream had been so realistic… he placed a paw on his stomach, finding it just as thin and fluffy as usual. Nothing out of place on this Halloween evening. Aside from a throbbing pain in his head, it seemed Ati was still in the same state as when he went to sleep earlier that night. He sighed as he relaxed. What a crazy dream… maybe a midnight snack would help clear his head after such fitful sleep. He sat up in bed and knocked his head on the ceiling.