Naturally Natural

Rachel pushed the Pulse button on her blender a couple more times. The brown sludge spun and the sweet smell of chocolate milk and grass grew stronger. Across the small kitchen island, Kristi swallowed and told herself the taste was going to be like the smell, not the look.

The fibrous, goopy look . . .

Rachel poured the mixture into two large cups, then slid one over to Kristi.

"Enjoy your Naturally Natural Chocolate Energy Smoothie" Rachel said, somewhat proudly. She tentatively sipped hers, frowned, then tried to pretend she hadn't. "Mmmm. It takes a sec, but it's good."

It wasn't. It was as grassy and chewy as it looked, and the chocolate was almost flavorless with a too sweet aftertaste. Kristi chugged it to get the experience over with, but that was a mistake. Her stomach churned.

Rachel shuffled through the Naturally Natural material sitting on her kitchen counter. "Jenn said we have to watch the first couple videos."

"O-kay," Kristi said. Rachel picked up on the impatience. She looked hurt.

"Hey, I hustled my chunky butt around that park five times this morning so you'd do this with me," Rachel said, her voice as threatening as a chipmunk. Her pale skin was still a red, blotchy mess. She wore sweat stains like medals. "That was the deal. I do your exercise thing with you, you do Jenn's thing with me."

"Actually, you said you wanted to get in shape," Kristi countered. She moved to Rachel's couch, found a blanket to lay out atop it, then laid herself out to relax. Her sore muscles hummed with delight as she sank into soft comfort. "And then Jenn came up." She paused. "And then Naturally Natural came up." She paused again. "And then you asked if I had a few hundred dollars . . . "

A small stack of suitcase-shaped, cardboard boxes stood on Rachel's dining room table, each one a starter sales kit. Cardboard or not, they were quality designed and made.

How much has Eric milked out of you already? Kristi mused, not forgetting the money she herself was out. She was just helping a friend, Rachel was getting pumped to stay ahead of debts.

"This is still what you said you'd do," Rachel continued. Her TV flipped on, and a loading circle spun. "This is the intro video. I watched it at Jenn and Eric's. Let's watch it, and then the . . . " Rachel read on her piece of paperwork. "The 'sales orientation' video. And then . . . " She stuck out her tongue in exhaustion. "And then I'm done."

The video started.

Kristi was immediately struck by the production value. Soft, energetic melody overlaid a slow, pulsing bass. The music faded seamlessly into the background as the long establishing aerial closed in on Eric and a bleach blonde, Asian woman with large bulging cleavage almost bursting from her top and hips that didn't stop curving.

Jenn?! Kristi's eyes widened. She couldn't believe it. How long had it been? Four years? And how much work did she have done in the meantime?

College Jenn was a willowy, dark-haired girl with Japanese eyes and a perpetual frown that only disappeared when she was with someone she liked. She was quiet and studious, though not really shy; she had to keep up with the always jovial, attention-seeking Eric Marnett after all. The last time Kristi had seen her friend, Jenn had just settled into a new psychiatry practice, while Eric was still . . . Eric. The new Jenn was all smiles and trophy wife glam. She'd paid good money for her new . . . body. Kristi glanced at Rachel, but she didn't seem concerned. Kristi frowned and returned her attention to the video, as it focused in on Eric for a proper introduction.

All in all, he looked okay. A few years had added a few pounds maybe. Looks weren't Eric's weakness exactly. And he had enough . . . magnetism that Kristi agreed to one date with him. He was just an ass. Jenn had once explained to Kristi he compensated for a sense of awkwardness by acting out. And that explained why he did stuff like chemically melt all the Beta Lambda Eta girls' underwear . . . and their dressers and half the sorority house when all was said and done.

Allegedly. Not the first nor the last time his parents bailed him out.

The video was over, leaving Kristi confused as to what she had actually learned.

Something, something, ethics? What a load of nothing!

"Exciting, right?" Rachel said, grinning proudly.

"Yeah . . . " Kristi said.

Rachel unlocked her phone, and soon another loading circle spun on the TV. "They just killed it with that intro," Rachel continued, shifting excitedly in her seat. "They're all in."

Kristi nodded blankly, and watched the next video with a bit more interest.

Same music. Same aerial establishing. But now it faded in on Jenn alone. She had the contents of a sales kit spread out on the table in front of her. Kristi was amazed to hear her friend's voice come out of the trophy wife's mouth. Despite her somewhat vapid appearance, Jenn's voice was still calm, husky, and intelligent. It's evenness was engrossing. As Jenn explained the contents of the sales kit, each packet of nutrient powder, how the ingredients combined, Kristi only wanted to know more . . .

And again, after Jenn's very straight-forward explanation of the recipe combinations, the video seemed to go off the rails. Kristi was listening, she was paying attention, but it all seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

By the time the video was over, Kristi felt like she'd been sitting too long, and the old sweat was getting to her. As proud as Rachel seemed of the videos, Kristi was just as dissatisfied. It seemed . . .

Kinda dumb. Eric can't even do pyramid schemes right.

Rachel's enthusiasm waned as she picked up on Kristi's lack. "What's wrong?" she asked sheepishly.

"Nothing!" Kristi lied. She forced a smile. "I'm starting to feel gross. Tired from the park too. I really want to get a shower."

"Okay," Rachel said. She quickly pulled two of the sales kits from the stack. "Since you're being so cool helping me out . . . " She handed the boxes to Kristi. "Four hundred buys a starter kit, but I'm going to give you two. If you get someone else started, you can just keep the money. Call it a finder's fee."

"Thank you," Kristi said. Internally she groaned.

"Send me updates every day, and if you like it, I'll sell you a supplemental pack next month. It's only like fifty."

"We'll see." Kristi gathered her two kits, and the rest of her things and headed for the door.

"Oh! And you'll need to get some milk. You can use water too, but Jenn said it tastes terrible that way," Rachel said.

"Okay, I got it," Kristi said. She let Rachel give her a warm, damp hug, then blew her friend a kiss goodbye.

***

By the time Kristi made it home, she was nearly trembling with pent up energy. Her legs didn't even feel sore on the short walk to her apartment.

Inside, she set the two kits down in a chair, and poured herself a glass of water. As she slowly sipped it down, she considered her apartment, noting some scattered clothes for the hamper, a few dirty dishes on her coffee table, some dusty cobwebs along the edge of the ceiling, and various other things she could quickly knock out before she got in the shower. After finishing her glass and placing it in the dishwasher, she got to work. After a quick pick up, she got to dusting. As she moved her TV cabinet away from the wall to dust the cables, she noticed what a mess her baseboards were. Shortly, she was on her hands and knees scrubbing them. This led to a deep clean of her bath tub, her sinks, and a deep scrubbing of her oven.

By the time Kristi felt finished, it was getting dark outside. She was dripping sweat again, like a fresh run. Her apartment smelled and looked wonderful. Kristi considered it proudly as she slipped off her gloves and tossed them in the kitchen sink. After she rinsed her hands, she reached to strip her clothes so she could finally get a well deserved shower, and found that she was fully nude already.

When did . . . the heat . . . I pulled everything off because I was getting so hot. And I . . . Kristi opened her hamper. Her workout clothes sat heavily on top. She smiled, feeling a sense of delight and relief. I put them in there already. Good girl.

Kristi stepped back from the hamper, and frowned, feeling momentarily odd. She shook the feeling and continued towards her shower. The warm water quickly washed away any lingering concern, and by the time she was done, Kristi's body felt like lead. She dried herself, and soon went to bed.

There was a text from Rachel the next morning, urging Kristi to watch the first meditation video, or to come over later so they could watch together. Followed by an email with a dropbox link for Kristi to download all the videos, if she couldn't figure out how to get them off the flash drive in her own kit. Rachel also wanted photos to prove Kristi was doing it.

Kristi mentally groaned.

She followed instructions though, and read over the actual diet plan almost as soon as she opened her kit. It was simple: Drink two smoothies a day, replacing a meal each.

And feel your energy levels rise and your waistband shrink! said the company line.

Kristi definitely didn't need the latter, she was fit, but the former wasn't bullshit. She felt a little eager to have some of the energy from the previous day in the coming week.

Accounting had been given little time to complete the quarterly audit, and the Oklahoma office still used paper forms for accounts payable while using software more generally, which in turn led to duplications. Work hours were spent sorting out the mess and getting the paper-only numbers on the books, while her weekday off hours were spent typing up final reports. Kristi liked her job, she felt very good at it, but she didn't love the current crunch.

Besides the recipe/instruction booklet, the kit contained a variety of sealed pouches, mostly labeled with the flavor of the powder inside; some others were simply labeled "Plant Mix". The actual sales portion of the sales kit was laughingly small and cheap: two forms for filling out contact info, order amount, a baggy for checks and cash, and a short photocopied pamphlet. The starter sales kit alone could be purchased for four hundred dollars, monthly supplements were fifty, and multi-month kits started at three hundred dollars. No pitches. No scripts. Just raw data and forms.

Eric isn't actually practiced at making money, just spending it. Kristi mused.

She chose the strawberry powder mix to replace her usual breakfast protein bar. The powder and the milk went together smooth, but then she added the Plant Mix. The resulting mixture became the chunky mess she'd seen at Rachel's. She took a picture of the finished product, then a selfie of herself sipping it, and then sent them both to Rachel. The strawberry flavor was much better than the chocolate, and seemed to blend better with the Plant Mix taste-wise.

Rachel sent a gif of a happy, dancing penguin and a text that read, "Keep going! Naturally Natural!"

The strawberry mix did not seem to settle as quickly. She almost skipped her lunch replacement smoothie out of disgust. She tried the vanilla mix anyway, which was sufficiently bland to not be offensive. She cheated, poured the last half of it down the drain, and chowed down a large tub of premixed salad from the store instead. Dinner was a large order of cheese sticks from a drive-thru and another salad while she did some off the clock number crunching.

The next morning, Kristi woke up late, and had to cut her jog short. To her additional frustration, her time was 30 seconds longer per mile than her last comparable run. She forgot to grab any of the Naturally Natural materials in her rush out the door, so lunch was a small salad on the go and an energy bar. To her surprise, Kristi kinda missed the sweet taste and sugar rush.

She mixed another chocolate smoothie that evening. But she didn't replace her dinner. Instead, she enjoyed a soy burger and fries, then had the smoothie as a dessert. It wasn't too bad that way, although the chocolate was still too sweet.

The energy rush was overwhelming. Kristi could barely focus on her report, and eventually closed it in frustration. If she hadn't been so full from dinner, she'd have gone for a night run. Instead, she busied herself cleaning again, which took all of 5 minutes. Still worked up, she tried to lay on the couch and watch some TV. But she still felt restless. It didn't go away, even approaching midnight. She tried to pull up her report again, and managed to correctly reorganize a table. But that was all she could manage.

It's too late. My brain's too tired.

Kristi couldn't find anything she wanted to watch either. Eventually, Kristi sighed, put on a very dumb looking TV show called Hat Trick and began to toy with her nipples through her nightshirt, figuring she might be able to burn some of the energy off with some thorough self love. Her body immediately responded with warmth and eagerness. Her other hand sneaked into her panties and gently stroked along her outer lips.

As she watched former semiprofessional hockey players competitively bake hat-shaped cakes, Kristi's hands worked and worked, until she couldn't resist running a finger through her slick folds. She climbed up from the couch, and stumbled out of her panties on her way to the bedroom, where she found a big, thick toy that literally wriggled when she flipped the switch. She carried the toy back to the couch with her, flopped down, ran the toy over her clit, then slid it quite easily into her slit. Her muscles relaxed then clenched around it.

Kristi sighed and laid there, absently watching the hockey players fail miserably as she focused on the sensation of the toy's movement and the feeling of her fingers occasionally teasing her clit. She squeezed her hips, and traced her fingers softly over the lips of her mouth, loving the tingle that sent down her spine. After a satisfyingly hard orgasm, she slipped the toy out and relaxed into the couch. After a few minutes of heavy panting into the cushions, Kristi slid her toy back in and flipped the switch again . . .

***

Kristi woke up feeling great. Sunlight poured in through her blinds. She sat up with a lazy smile, stretched, and checked her phone.

8:46

Fuck.

She leapt into action to get ready, and barely made it to work on time. Kristi felt sluggish throughout the day, missing the energy from her jog and breakfast smoothie. She found herself reading and rereading emails, rethinking and rethinking relatively simple formulas in a spreadsheet, and she had to ask her coworkers what they'd been saying more than once. She went to bed almost immediately once she got home, intentionally skipping her evening smoothie and settling for a light salad instead.

<i>Sorry, Rachel.</i>

She straightened up her apartment, and gave it a good dusting, then washed her face and went to bed. Laying down made Kristi feel significantly more comfortable, and slightly more awake; so she caught up on a couple episodes of a web show, used another, smaller toy to have a small, gentle orgasm. That woke her up, and soon she was trying to figure out how to stream porn on her TV while she used her toy to have some rather violent orgasms well into the evening.

She got going on time the next morning, but still felt sluggish as she stumbled out to the street for her morning jog. Kristi punished herself for not getting out the previous morning . . . or at least tried. It felt like every smoothie had poured into her ass, which now seemed to drag along behind her, wobbling uselessly. Even pushing herself to near exhaustion, she was 15 seconds per mile above average. A couple orgasms in the shower washed the frustration away as easily as her sweat.

The next couple days were a blur of the same: Get up, jog, get frustrated, fuck herself in the shower until it didn't matter as much, make a smoothie, take some pics, send to Rachel, go to work, come home, clean, make a smoothie, take some pics, send to Rachel, find something else to eat, masturbate some more, clean, and sleep. Repeat.

Mass continued to gather around her hips and ass. Parts of her actually jiggled when she ran, which was an odd sensation. She was far too horrified to actually weigh herself.

One morning, Kristi came home to find that her leggings were stretching so tightly against her bottom that she could make out the shape and color of not only her panties but the caramel color of her cheeks. Kristi quickly snapped a picture of her ass and sent it to Rachel with a quick message "Naturally Natural" and a rolling eyes emoji.

Rachel's response was hard for Kristi to make out at first, as she wasn't quite expecting it. Two pudgy, perky white breasts sat perched on a small, freckled arm. The large, fluffy, pink nipples almost stared Kristi in the eyes. There was a winky emoji, and another quick message "Naturally Natural!"

Oh . . . Hello . . .

Kristi didn't know how to respond, so she didn't. That didn't get Rachel off her mind though. She glanced at the photo a couple more times, and zoned out at work thinking about the shape of them. It didn't help that she seemed to be perpetually aroused. She felt weird even contemplating masturbating to thoughts of Rachel, but there she was.

Kristi distracted herself as much as she could making buttered asparagus for a light dinner, then mixed a strawberry smoothie for dessert. The satisfying glow of fullness and the oncoming rush of energy brought back her arousal right on cue. That brought her mind right back to Rachel's titty pic, and Kristi found herself staring at the picture, getting wetter and wetter.

"Those are kinda cute," Kristi typed into her phone. It really got her juices flowing too. Her fingers slid easily around her clit. In the moment, she slid her panties off and took a picture of her glistening slit. Then she sent it to Rachel. Immediately, she felt a pang of regret and embarrassment. That just made her hotter.

You slut. Your pussy is just out there. Rachel is such a gossip. Everyone's going to know what a fucking slut you are.

Kristi fingered herself, staring at the pale titties on her phone screen and waiting for some response from Rachel. It never came, but Kristi did. Afterward, she continued her masturbation in the bedroom. Kristi sent another pic to Rachel, this time with a couple toys in place, then came hard and passed out.

***

Kristi woke up the next morning. Still aroused. Like she hadn't gotten off in days. She came without really trying, then stumbled out of bed, half awake. She lazily plodded into her living room and started cleaning as she collected her thoughts. She masturbated again while she made a chocolate smoothie with a hint of pussy, then checked her phone. There was still no response from Rachel. Kristi was still very aroused, but she didn't want to text Rachel again.

So she flipped through her contacts until she saw the name Ricky. That gave her a nice warm pulse. Little guy, big dick, lots of energy, and tons of time on his hands. She sent the pics she'd sent to Rachel to him.

Oh God, that was too much. He's going to show those to somebody. Kristi's pussy flooded. He's gonna tell everybody whose pussy that is.

Ricky was much more responsive than Rachel: a picture of his hard dick came back and a text, "thats some fucking good pussy! What do you think of that?"

Kristi sent a video of her slowly working her way up to four fingers slipping in and out of her pussy. Then a pic of her soft, brown hefty tits pressed up in the air and a desperate look on her face.