The city laid oddly quiet, even for the crack of dawn. Maybe there was an occasional night owl driving through the streets, but Gala certainly couldn’t see them through the thick morning fog that seemed omnipresent in its… well, presence. It was all for the better; the peach-furred deer had a place to be before the sun was fully up, and the less distractions keeping her from her destination, the better. As the heavyset doe passed a nearby shop, she made a quick note to check her outfit for what felt like the dozenth time. Her reflection, with its stunning blue eyes and pink-highlighted brown hair, did little to derail her confidence. There was nothing for Gala to worry about, especially when the job was so simple. All she had to do was follow the dress code (a red t-shirt and blue jeans) and there’s no way she wouldn’t get paid.

The job itself had seemed like easy money. A local parade was about to hit the town to kick off the holiday festivities, and of course such a big undertaking required a healthy number of extra workers to manage the floats and decorations that would pass through the downtown area. Gala had signed up expecting a basic objective and a simple payout; that was almost exactly what she got. The float she
 (and three other furs) were assigned to was fitting: a giant reindeer balloon that would need many hands to keep from drifting into buildings. The maintenance and upkeep of the parade float would be handled by different furs altogether; all Gala would have to do is hold some ropes for an hour. It was child’s play with a holiday skin slapped atop it; waking up this early would probably be the hardest thing the deer would do today.

Gala put aside the thoughts of her paycheck as she made her way through to the city’s industrial district. Here, warehouses lined the streets, the perfect hiding spot for a couple dozen parade floats of varying sizes and purposes. The one she needed to find stuck out like a sore thumb, not just due to its jarring spruce-green color but also due to the fact that it seemed to be the only building on the block that wasn’t shy about being occupied. Furs ran in and out of the loading bay doors, moving boxes of decorations as if they were precious works of art. It was an odd sight, seeing workers dressed in a variety of themed costumes slip in and out of the fog. Thankfully it was that same mild chaos that made it easy for the deer to slip in undetected. There was no time to waste, she had to find the parade coordinator and clock in- wherever he may be.

There he was, standing in the middle of the warehouse. A minty green hippo clad in a red tracksuit, looking rather festive though seemingly by complete accident. Gala had met this coordinator once before when she signed up, though then he certainly didn’t look nearly as frustrated as he did now. Humphrey was stuck looking at a clipboard and frowning like he’d lost a bet; the impending rage that was about to follow could be felt from a five-yard radius.

“Dammit,” moaned the hippo under his breath, “How the hell am I going to fill these positions this late?”

“Hey, boss,” chimed in Gala as she came up to him. “Just coming through to make sure I’m all accounted for. Everything going okay?”

“Oh ho ho, I fucking wish.” Stated the parade coordinator. “You’re not gonna believe this; I’ve had three flakes in one hour.”

“Three… what?” said Gala.

“What I’m saying is that three separate furs have gone and flaked out on me at the eleventh hour.” Replied Humphrey, his eyebrows squirming. “It’s horrible, I’ve never had this many people call out on me at once, and we were already working with a skeleton crew to begin with!”

“Well, geez,” began Gala, throwing her hands up, “I’m guessing there’s nothing I can do to help you, then.”

“Not if you can’t suddenly become four people at once. If that happened I could leave you alone manning the reindeer float and fill the gaps in the lineup from there. But to provide proper ballast to the float you’d have to weigh enough to count as several furs, and that wouldn’t be possible unless…”

Humphrey trailed off as he eyed up and down Gala’s body. The deer was already plenty stocky, yet everywhere the hippo looked he saw room for expansion. Yeah, what if Gala was suddenly several times bigger? Doing some mental calculations, Humphrey could feel his gears turning. They’d have to cut it close, but if this plan worked then the parade would go off without a hitch.

“Say, Gala, would you be willing to do me a huge favor?” said the hippo.

“Gee, boss, I have no idea what you could possibly mean,” said the doe sarcastically, “Is it that you want me to stuff myself till’ I’m about to burst, gain several hundred pounds from it, and then weigh down the float solo?”

“Bingo,” replied Humphrey emphatically. “I’ll even pay you extra for going alone with this harebrained scheme.”

“Fine, I’ll do it, but you better get me something better to wear. This,” Gala said, gesturing to her current outfit, “Isn’t going to hold up once I outsize it.”

“Oh, but of course.” Said the coordinator as he shook hands with the deer. “Now, let me lead you to the snack table. You start devouring everything in sight, and I’ll call catering and tell them to make another delivery!”

And so, Gala was led by the hippo, out of the warehouse’s floor and away from the hustle and bustle that was going on outside. They turned down a path and through a set of doors that were almost unnoticeable, and suddenly they were in the backrooms of the building. The manufacturing design philosophy had partially given way back here, with a very prim and proper breakroom acting as the centerpiece of the area. Openly designed yet distinctly a space of its own, the room had a set of eternally running coffee machines, a water cooler, and most importantly: a table piled high with confectionaries.

“Don’t be afraid about chowing down,” said Humphrey as the two approached the overloaded snack table. “Everyone else has already had their fill, and even if they hadn’t they’d be willing to make a small sacrifice for the sake of the show.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” replied Gala as the doe took hold of a star-shaped cookie the size of her fist. “Now go make your silly preparations!”

Humphrey fled the scene as quickly as he entered, but it wasn’t even before he left that the cookie was gone, disappearing down Gala’s maw as easily as if it had been a gulp of air. Inhalation described Gala’s early eating habits perfectly, taking a second treat and a third, until she was grabbing every cookie shaped object in sight without a second thought. Munching on snacks was second nature to the deer, which came in handy as the repetitive motion allowed her to really scope out just how much food laid before her. 

And what a bountiful pile it was. The standard cookies were already running low, but in their place lie a veritable field of brownies, cupcakes, and snack pies. A variety of sodas and juice was peppered in between the bundles of sugar, as if somebody knew that someone was going to need to wash each stack of sweets down. Cartons of ice cream lay in the back of the table, wasting away for that someone to also start chugging as they gradually melted into a milkshake-like slush. The table’s mission, it seemed, was to give every worker in a three-block radius a sugar rush for a week; who even knew what effect it’d have on one singular deer.

Gala was damned ready to find out, cracking open a two-liter and slamming back its contents with a ferocity that would make an eating contest champion blush. Pie, crackers, chips: it was all going inside her at a thunderous rate, and the doe could feel it collecting in her stomach as she ripped open each package and hastily devoured its contents. Her belly was playing catch-up, expanding as quickly as she could shove food in it, rushing forward to distend from her middle and stretch the fabric of an outfit that already could be charitably described as snug. Her crimson shirt casually rode up with each gigantic bite, a doughy cream-colored belly billowing like streamers in the wind and filling every nook and crevice that it could.

It was such a smooth process, an organic conveyer belt of pure gluttony traveling directly into Gala’s muzzle. The deer faltered only once as she continually ramped up the pace of her binging; she gave pause when she heard a light *POP* emanating below her. Gala shrugged, correctly attributed the sound to her pants button tearing off and went back to seeing how many juice bottles she could bring up to her lips at once. Indeed, her overpacked stomach had stretched too far for the garment to handle, with her jeans deciding that holding firm across her burgeoning thighs was more important than any button’s stability. With the extra room to grow suddenly in front of it, Gala’s gut began to surge, sagging below her waist as it bloated with enough snacks to feed a crowd.

Yet the onslaught of dessert didn’t stop. If she exhausted one of the food sources on the table, Gala would move on to the next as calmly as if she was following a checklist. To her body, the choice was clear: expand or explode. Now sharing the brunt of the assault on her stomach, the rest of Gala’s body slowly began to puff up: her hips were steadily packing on fat while her limbs grew chubbier with dough. Her already ample hips grew wider and wider as the inches sloughed onto her waistline, a cacophony of moaning fabric signaling that she was already outgrowing the garments that formerly “only” squeezed her like a vise.

“Oh no you don’t,” thought Gala towards her clothes as she sliced a cake and began noshing on it. “When I bought these pants they said they had ultra-durable fabric. You’re gonna hold up until that moron gets back with a bigger suit!”

Gala’s pants didn’t try to argue with her; the fabric miraculously held while her rear bulged out, the now melon-sized asscheeks threatening to mince her jeans but never actually following up on it. Her shirt, however, probably wasn’t as lucky: the red fabric positively strained as Gala’s tits swelled beneath it, looking more like a bra than actual lingerie as that yoga-ball of a belly below it rode it up ever higher. There were many ways you could describe Gala by that point- gargantuan, obscenely swollen, maybe even a parade float in her own right, but most of all she was the doe that had just swallowed the last of the snack table, her bloated form a monument to her ability to gorge on a moment’s notice.

“Well, that should be the last of it.” Said Gala to herself as she surveyed the piles of refuse that now comprised the cleared-out table. “Now where’s Humphrey?”

Speak of the devil, the hippo had just re-entered the room carrying some rather necessary gifts. Under his left shoulder was a heap of red and black fabric, undeniably a Santa suit that was properly adjusted for Gala’s newfound bulk. In his right hand, however, was the handle to a small cart that was being pulled behind the guy, one that contained a large gray tanker that managed to come up to Humphrey’s waist.

“It took a little while, but I finally found an XXXL suit,” explained Humphrey. “You’d think they account for the size of the guys who usually wear these…”

“Glad you found some appropriate attire,” said Gala, “but what’s with the tank?”

“Oh, this? It’s something I pilfered from our stock. It was supposed to be for the afterparty, but if we’re going to make you as big as can be then a few concessions had to be made, after all.”

“I assumed as much, but what’s it full of?” replied Gala.

“Why don’t you try it out for yourself if you’re so eager to taste it!” exclaimed Humphrey, letting go of the handle and grabbing a long stretch of hosing that was attached to the cooler. The hose was quickly tossed to Gala, who looked at it a bit blankly.

“Anything the matter?” asked the hippo after a short period of time had passed.

“At least let me change outfits before we start,” sighed Gala, “I’d like to at least pretend that I can get through today without shredding the clothes I came in on.”

Humphrey silently agreed and left the Santa suit behind as he left Gala to change clothes. The deer found her new outfit to be surprisingly loose on both her stomach and her hips, a welcome surprise given how hard her gains had targeted those areas. Beyond the obvious alterations, it was your standard Santa costume, just obviously upsized in every aspect to contain an obviously upsized deer. Red fabric cloaked Gala’s bloated form with utmost grace, while coal-black cuffs accented her new wardrobe like any good Santa getup would. She certainly looked ready to climb down the chimney on Christmas Eve- but with her new layers covering her curves Gala almost seemingly lacked the defining trait of a good Santa: mass.

“Gee, no wonder that hippo thought I needed extra fluff,” thought Gala as she grabbed the tanker’s hose once more. “I almost feel tiny wearing this!”

Well, that was about to change. Gala turned a nozzle atop the tanker, starting the flow of the mystery liquid up the tube. Putting her muzzle around the open end of the hose, Gala started to suck down whatever would end up coming out. She didn’t have to wait long for an answer; creamy eggnog practically flooded her maw the second she put her face to the tube. High in calories and full of delicious sugars, if this was a last-ditch effort to make Gala put on weight, then it’d surely be a successful one. Bit by bit, Gala eased into a cycle of letting the eggnog pool in her mouth, swallowing, and repeating the process anew. Her stomach, already impossibly full of Christmas cheer, didn’t appreciate having its cracks filled in with cream, yet continued filling all the same. With the nog’s flow set to max speed, Gala slowly began to fill out once more, her suit taking the expansion in stride as it conformed to her billowing body.

“So, this must be what’s it like to be a parade float,” thought Gala as she drank. “Big, bloated, and with a hose pumping deep inside you. Heh, maybe I should see if they need any reindeer balloons for next year!”

The parade’s honorary second deer balloon did just that, ballooning outward and rapidly filling her suit as gallon after gallon of eggnog washed down her throat. Tree trunk thighs, arms wider than honey hams and a gut that you could easily use as a yoga ball: Gala was more firmly packed than a snowman, and despite the suit’s best efforts it showed on her figure. Her stomach once more came into view as it lifted up the top of her suit, and Gala could feel the belt buckle on her waist grow tight as her lower half began to really test the capabilities of the red pants. With a refreshing snap, the buckle quickly broke off, allowing her gut to slosh its way down and over her crotch. The tanker may have stood tall, but the liquid inside did not; already the flow was dying down in her throat, the latest of the day’s culinary challenges to fall to the overly obese doe.

“Hey again, Gala, just checking up on you…” trailed Humphrey as he came in through the doorway once more. The sentence quickly died on his tongue as he realized a new problem reared it’s ugly head: Gala had successfully filled out the suit, alright, a little too well. The gluttonous doe was truly huge, a monolith of creamy fat that threatened to pop open her clothes in numerous points, like an advent calendar gone horribly wrong. Neither hippo nor deer really minded her bulk, of course, but it was getting to be less of a boon as she digested the contents of the tanker. If they didn’t get her on the streets soon, there was a decent chance Gala would be just too plain fat to walk at the pace required to stay with the parade.

“Well,” said Gala, patting her belly, “we might have… overshot our goal, to say the least.”

“I mean, we can still work with this.” Stuttered Humphrey as he overlooked the deer with utmost scrutiny. “Just let me figure out some proper accommodations…”

*****************************

There must’ve been hundreds, if not thousands of furs lining Main Street that day as the annual holiday parade kicked off. Everyone was there with a unified purpose: to partake in pure whimsy as the floats made their way down the road. Those that came a hint early even got to see the opening float get set up: a sort of throne for Santa herself, constructed out of presents and placed atop a flatbed truck.

It was there that a particularly portly Santa took her place, her gut wobbling and jiggling like a bowlful of jelly thanks to the truck’s vibrations. As expected, she was a huge hit with the crowd, especially as she single-handedly towed a reindeer float behind her with relative ease. Anyone taking a good comparison of the deer and the float would’ve noticed that the deer seemed somehow more overinflated than the reindeer balloon. Thankfully, if it was obvious, nobody seemed to notice.

Gala couldn’t help but shake the mild embarrassment, however. Fattened or not, as the reason for the season all eyes were on her, and even though it was only positive attention Gala was still digesting her massive feast in plain sight. Her tummy rumbled like it was trying to beat the motor of the truck’s engine, churning through countless pastries and a limitless supply of eggnog. Did that make the event appearance a tad uncomfortable? Sure, but to Gala, that just meant the parade had combined two of her favorite things: lazing around after eating, and being treated like a star.

“What a wonderful festival,” thought the doe as she smiled and waved to the crowd. “Maybe next year I’ll see if I can’t fill in for Santa again. Of course, that’d be after a permanent raise!”