Stephen stopped on the sidewalk and looked up at the sun-soaked building ahead of him. The city’s art museum was an old building in an old district. Its weathered, pale stone facade and gothic embellishments didn’t look all that out of place around its neighbors. Small, well-groomed maple trees lined the grassy lawn separating the building from the road, interspersed with statues in both concrete and abstract forms. The air was filled with the sounds of other visitors laughing, talking, and otherwise enjoying the warm spring afternoon. Stephen smiled. This would be the perfect backdrop for his project.
“Are you ready?” the woman next to him asked. Her long dark brown hair was tied up in a simple bun, her deep brown eyes framed by thin spectacles. Her outfit was casual – a knee-length skirt and pale pink shirt – but she still looked stunning.
Stephen, who was dressed in a similarly minimal outfit of a plain t-shirt and dark pants, lifted the old camera hanging from a lanyard about his neck. “The film’s loaded and ready to go. Let’s find a good spot to start taking photos.”
The two began to stroll through the lawn, sometimes stopping to consider a tree or statue but ultimately moving on with no pictures taken. The areas were all either too bright, too dark, or too crowded. Even though he planned to take plenty of pictures that day, Stephen wanted to be sure he got the photo shoot off to a good start with the very first picture. This would be the anniversary of his first time working with Emily and he was determined to make it a shoot to remember. That was part of why he had brought the old camera rather than his usual digital equipment.
As they made their way toward a group of topiary sculptures, Emily cast a sidelong glance at Stephen. “So where did you find that camera again?” she asked. Her voice was low and rich, a fact that often took people by surprise the first time they met her.
“At a thrift shop downtown,” Stephen explained. “They had the price marked down because no one had been showing any interest in buying it.”
“Why is that? Does it not work?”
Stephen stopped his search for a good location to give his partner a frank look. “If it didn’t work, do you think I would have brought it with us today? Of course it works.”
Emily leaned in to examine the camera. “I’ve never seen the model before. What is it?”
“I did some research online after buying it. The company who made it, Zoom-Tek, no longer exists. Apparently, they were an experimental upstart in the seventies with the idea of specializing in some unique zoom lenses or something. I don’t completely understand what they were trying to accomplish, but I guess the fact they aren’t around anymore means they didn’t meet with the success they were hoping to find.”
“Perhaps you should have brought one of your normal cameras along, too. Just in case.”
Stephen waved a hand dismissively. “I have my usual stuff in the car. We can go get it if this camera doesn’t work.” In truth, he hoped the camera would work. He’d taken a few test shots at the apartment and the pictures developed fine. Even still, he had never photographed a human, or an outdoor scene. The aperture could be damaged and he would have no way of knowing until the first picture. Stephen shook his head to clear away the nagging thoughts. Everything would be fine, he told himself. There was nothing wrong with the camera, nothing at all.
Emily tapped Stephen on the shoulder to draw him out of his thoughts. “Look at that fountain,” she said, a gleam of familiar excitement in her eyes. “It’s the perfect place to start our shoot, don’t you think?”
Indeed, it was the perfect place to set up the photo shoot. The fountain’s basin was wide and shallow, the energetic water flowing over a mosaic bottom. A series of marble figures rose from the basin’s center, their chiseled robes flowing like the water that spilled from the urns carried on their shoulders. Topping the sculpture was a single golden eagle, wings spread and talons extended as if caught mid-swoop. Neatly trimmed hedges lined the edge of the little flagstone-paved pavilion and a few street lamps rose tastefully behind the fountain like black iron pillars. Stephen didn’t think he would be able to find a better place to start his photo shoot even if he tried.
“This is the perfect spot,” he said, grinning broadly. “Try sitting on the fountain wall and sort of leaning in, Emily.”
The woman moved to the front of the fountain and did as she had been instructed. “Like this?” she asked.
Stephen nodded. “Try leaning toward the water a little more, like you’re watching some fish. Oh, and try undoing your hair. I think wearing it loose would look really good for this shot.”
“Okay, but you’re helping me get it back into a bun afterward,” she said with a chuckle. After flashing a sly glance in Stephen’s direction, she removed the pins holding her hair in place in a quick, decisive movement that sent her lustrous hair tumbling down over her shoulders and partly obscuring her face. Her hair was normally straight, but having it up in a bun had lent it the slightest of waves.
For a moment, Stephen only stood in place and took in the composition. Even without any special adjustments, this shot was going to something special. He would keep taking photos after this one, of course, but even now, before he’d snapped the shot, a fluttery feeling in his heart told him this was going to be the best he would get for a while.
He couldn’t stand and admire his model forever, though. Stephen took a step back until he could feel the prickly branches of the hedge brushing against the back of his legs. He lowered himself into a half-crouch and brought the camera up to his face. Since it was an older model, the view finder was a tiny window in the back rather than a screen like the models he was more accustomed to, but the picture was crystal-clear nonetheless.
“I’m just going to need to zoom a bit,” he muttered under his breath as his thumb went to the zoom button on the camera’s side.
As soon as the button was pressed, something odd happened. Emily seemed to enlarge as normal, but the background stayed unchanged. At first, Stephen thought the camera was broken, although he couldn’t think of how it could possibly be broken in such a strange way. When he lowered the camera away from his eyes to tell her, though, he received the surprise of his life.
A sound of surprise mixed with what sounded like arousal escaped from Emily’s parted lips. “St-Stephen, something weird is going on…”
Emily hadn’t been appearing to grow larger in the viewfinder, she had actually grown larger. Just moments ago, she had been just under five and a half feet tall. Now, though, she was clearly over six feet. Her clothes had apparently not sized with the rest of her – her skirt now reached two or so inches above her knees and the fabric of her shirt was squeezing against her breasts.
“Do you feel alright?” It was a stupid question, he knew, but nothing else came to mind that Stephen might say to comfort her in this situation. “I’ve heard of growth spurts before, but this is pretty… dramatic.”
Emily looked down at her hands as if the answer to what had caused her to grow might be found in the lines on her palms. “I guess so. For a moment, it felt – Actually, never mind. I’m fine.”
“What were you going to say?” Stephen asked.
Emily flashed a shaky smile down at Stephen. She was more than a head taller than him now. “I’m fine, really. Let’s continue with the photo shoot.”
Continuing the photo shoot was no longer forefront in his mind, but Stephen agreed. The show had to go on, so to speak. Letting a little strangeness scare him away wasn’t professional at all. “O-Okay, let’s stick with the original shot. I didn’t get it last time.”
Emily rearranged herself on the edge of the fountain’s basin. Her newly resized body required it be held slightly differently, but after a bit of coaching, she managed to get into a position very similar to her first one. In fact, Stephen thought it might be even better than the first try. “This time for real,” he muttered under his breath as he brought the camera back up to his eye. “No more practice runs.” He took a few steps closer to Emily so as to avoid needing to use the zoom button this time. If it was broken, he would just frame the shot without its use.
There must have been a bird’s nest in the hedge, though, because as soon as Stephen took a step, an angry sparrow darted out and swooped past him. The animal was harmless, of course, but the suddenness of its appearance startled him enough to cause his hand to slip and press the broken zoom button once more.
“O-Ohhh…” Emily moaned. This time, Stephen was quick enough to see the change happen. The air around Emily seemed to shimmer slightly as if she had been caught in a sudden wave of heat. In the ethereal embrace, her body appeared to enlarge. There was no creaking of bone or straining of flesh. Rather, Stephen thought the sight looked more like a balloon being blown into than anything else. Her skirt became tighter and shorter on her until it only reached her mid-thigh and was strained as tight as if it was made of elastic. The front of her shirt was hugging against the soft curves of her breasts so tightly it looked like the fabric would tear apart at the slightest touch. Her shoes and socks popped off her feet with a soft tearing sound as they finally gave way.
“E-Emily,” Stephen stammered. He wanted to say more but had no idea where to even start. She had to be at least seven feet tall now. He had already known something weird was going on, but now there was no way he could deny the fact.
To his surprise, Emily seemed more pleased than frightened of her new size. There was concern in the way she looked down at herself, of course, but that’s all it was: Concern. She looked up and met eyes with the photographer and actually gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry too much, Steve. Models are supposed to be tall, right? Now I’ll be taller than any of the rest.”
“Well, yes, but this tall? I don’t even know how this happened.”
Emily pursed her lips in thought for a moment before answering. “What was the same between both times I grew? There has to be a cause for this.”
“I had the camera in my hand each time, but I don’t see how me holding something would make you taller. If anything, I would think that would make me taller.”
“But you were pointing the camera at me. Maybe that has something to do with it?”
“I’ve pointed the camera at plenty of things before. Nothing grew larger during my test runs with this thing.”
“Did you do anything different this time than you did during the test?”
Stephen was about to deny doing anything different at all when he remembered the broken zoom button. He hadn’t thought to test that feature when he had been practicing with the camera earlier. “There was one thing…” he said slowly. For some reason, he was reluctant to tell Emily about the zoom.
Emily leaned in. Her new height made towering over Stephen easy. “Yes? Go on, Steve. I want to get to the bottom of this and can’t if you don’t tell me what’s on your mind.”
Stephen took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. She was right, he told himself. Emily was his friend, and if he couldn’t trust her with something as small as this, what kind of a person was he? “There was one difference. I had never tested the zoom on this camera until today, when I was framing our first shot.”
Emily grabbed Stephen by the wrist and lifted his hands up so she could get a better look at the camera. Apparently, her strength had increased along with her size as the photographer was unable to resist her pull. “What company did you say made this camera again?”
For a moment, Stephen was only able to stare up at the model, blushing slightly. He had always found her beautiful of course. That was a big part of why they took pictures together so often. Now, though, something had changed. The feeling in his heart was different somehow.
Emily tilted her head and arched her eyebrows. “Steve? You okay?”
“Uh, y-yeah. The company was Zoom-Tek.”
“And you didn’t think to check the one feature they chose to name themselves after?”
“I guess it just slipped my mind at the time. Anyway, I don’t think the zoom would be making you bigger. That wouldn’t even be possible… right?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Stephen looked from Emily to the camera and frowned slightly. He didn’t feel right testing the growing properties of this camera – if any such properties even existed – on her. “I don’t know, Em…”
Emily slapped him lightly on the back and sent him stumbling backward with the force. “Don’t be such a baby, Steve. I’ll be fine. Besides, it doesn’t seem to grow inanimate objects if my clothes are any indication, so it’s not like we could test it on a rock or something.”
“Speaking of your clothes, wouldn’t you rather test this somewhere more private? I don’t know how much more growing your current outfit can handle.”
Emily waved a hand dismissively and reclined against the fountain. “No one’s around. Besides, this is an art museum. There’s statues of ladies in various states of undress all over the place.”
“A statue’s very different from a living person, you know.”
“Look, I’ll test the camera myself if I have to. But you’re the photographer so I thought you’d like to be the one to do it.” Emily’s voice dropped almost seductively as she draped a hand over Stephen’s shoulder and continued her appeal. “Besides, I thought you might like to get a shot of the result, too.”
Stephen closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. “Alright, I’ll give it one more test run. But that’s it, okay? Pose like before, so we can at least pretend I’m taking a picture.” The instruction was unnecessary as Emily was already settling into a reclining position along the fountain. Her eyes twinkled mischievously and the corners of her mouth lifted in a sly, crooked grin. He wouldn’t have believed it earlier, but his shot kept getting better and better.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked. “Are you going to press the button or not?”
The photographer had to take another breath to steady himself before pressing the zoom button. He couldn’t let her down by backing out now, though. Before he gave the matter too much thought, he slid his thumb forward and over the button. There was the softest of clicks as the zoom was triggered and the now-familiar shimmering started up around Emily.
Before, he had only held in the button for a second at most. This time, though, he kept it down for an agonizing span of several heartbeats. If he was going to test this, he figured, her was going to test it properly. Sure enough, his efforts weren’t in vain. Emily lowered her eyelids and parted her soft lips in a silent moan as her body started to expand before the air had even settled down.
“Wh-Why does this feel so good?” she asked, her voice low with restrained pleasure. The fabric of her shirt, already stretched thin by her enlarged breasts, gave a soft tearing sound as it finally reached the point where it could contain Emily no longer and tore up the middle. All that was covering the soft mounds of her breasts now was a mostly-destroyed black lace bra that had somehow miraculously hung on through the explosive growth. Her skirt, being a less constricting garment, didn’t tear like the shirt did, but it grew so short and tight on her thighs that it hardly served a purpose anymore. By the time Emily finally finished growing, she was over triple Stephen’s height.
“Well, I guess the zoom is what’s making you grow after all,” Stephen said with a nervous laugh. When he looked up to meet Emily’s face, he couldn’t help but get a view straight up her skirt. Her lace panties had stretched nearly to their limit, just barely covering her womanhood now.
Emily smiled down from her new height. “Looks that way.”
“You aren’t worried you’ll be stuck at seventeen feet?”
“Not especially. Your camera can zoom out as well as in, right? I imagine that’s the key to reversing any growth. I might as well enjoy being so much taller than anyone else for a while, don’t you think?”
The sound of two museum-goers talking drifted toward the fountain pavilion on the breeze. Stephen blushed as he realized he and Emily were about to be found. “We should hide,” he muttered, looking around for a place he might possibly be able to hide a woman as tall as Emily now was. Predictably, potential spots were few and far between.
A massive hand suddenly closed around Stephen’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Steve. I’m having fun with this new camera of yours and you have a shoot to finish up, don’t you?”
“But…” Stephen let out a sigh of defeat. This was bizarre in the best of lights, but Emily looked like she genuinely meant it when she said she was having fun. It was almost like a long-held desire of hers was being fulfilled. Even ignoring all that, she was right. They did have a shoot to finish. “Okay, let’s take this from the top then. I think our old setup won’t work anymore, so let’s try to find a new pose for you.” Stephen took the camera up one last time and readied himself while Emily tried various poses around the fountain.
It looked like the good feeling about this shoot he’d been having earlier wasn’t that far off, after all.