by Wilson Barbers
They found the town off the beaten path (which is to say: miles from the Pennsylvania Turnpike). A small hamlet nestled between voluptuous green hills and miles from the tiniest road on their Wal-Mart Atlas, it beckoned to their faltering Plymouth Voyager like Circes' Island to an ancient sailing ship. How they got there, neither driver nor navigator knew. When you've gone off the road maps, all you can do is drive and hope that you eventually encounter a helpful sign. First sign they'd seen in over an hour was the city marker to Seerhaven.
The two were on the last legs of their vacation (and from the sounds that Vee-ger was emitting, the last legs of their car) and had left the safe route in search of Amish buyables. "Nothing too fake or touristy," Cheri had said, which meant eschewing anything advertised on the highway with a billboard. After wandering the back roads for hours, though, she would have settled for a plastic hex sign from an oasis gift shop. Hell of a way to end a vacation, she thought, reaching into a ziplock baggie for some Crispix trail mix. Whenever she got bored or anxious, Cheri snacked.
She pulled down the makeup mirror and frowned; a plump face frowned back at her. Who was she kidding? She didn't just eat when she was bored; she ate most other times, too. It showed in her size twenty-two hourglass, in the growing chinline on her face. This vacation had done nothing for her diet.
Ben claimed to be in love with her just the size she was, but all she needed to counter that was the memory of their first night in a motel. In the bright bathroom light, she'd seen herself with the kind of unflattering clarity only a day of driving can bring. Her pendulous breasts, round stomach and dimpled hips depressed the hell out of her.
Soon as they got back home, she was going on a for-real diet.
"Seerhaven, P-A," Ben said, as they drove into town. A few bright houses, and they were in a downtown so colorful that it looked like a technicolor imitation of Americana. Homey looking shoppes abounded, not a franchise among 'em. Contented, well-dressed burgers strolled the sidewalks, though as yet neither Ben nor Cheri noted their most consistent characteristic.
"We've driven into River City, Ioway," he exclaimed, as the young couple took in their surroundings.
"Iowa," Cheri corrected. At times, her husband's habit of comparing everything to movies got annoying. But at the moment, she was relieved enough by the sight of this pristine community to go along with it. "We say 'Ioway' now and then, but we don't like anybody else to."
"Bet ya we find a good shop here," Ben said, slowing down as a well-fed golden retriever sauntered into the street ahead of them.
"Maybe later," Cheri said, pointing to a pair of parking spaces roomy enough for their mini-van. Across the sidewalk was a white and blue storefront with the sign, "La Creamery Ice Cream Shoppe," above the awning. An old-fashioned looking malt shop. Just the thought of it set her mouth watering.
Well, she wasn't home yet. . .
"Maybe someone inside can tell us how to get back to the highway," Ben said, angling for the inviting space. Parallel parking the mini-van wasn't his strong suit, but in this case, ol' Vee-ger hit the spot first try. In the short time it'd taken him to park, however, his wife was already second thinking her impulse.
"We don't really need this, you know," Cheri said, as they pushed open the door to La Creamery. She gazed at her husband knowingly: all his XL vacation shirts, she noticed, had started to gap around the middle. Ben claimed it was from shrinkage, but she knew her husband's body well enough to see through that 'un. Maybe they'd both go on that diet when they got back home.
"You always say that," Ben responded, "but, hey, we're still on vacation."
"Agreed," Cheri said, eyes drawn to the fountain and the rotund blond teenager behind the counter. Looked like proximity to all this good stuff had done a job on the young girl's body.
"What can I do for you?" the counter girl asked. While Ben took his time dithering over his selection, Cheri scoped out the rest of the room. They weren't, she quickly saw, the only customers. Seated in a booth that barely fit either of them, working on a pair of banana splits large enough to serve a football team, was an astonishing couple.
They were dressed in sweatsuits that had to be custom made for them. A hugely obese man and woman, they ate steadily with no concern for the amount of calories they were adding to their already mountainous frames. Their sweatsuits clung to every roll and fold, showed off every jiggle that their bodies made. Definite fashion don'ts, Cheri thought. She'd never seen a man and woman so fat.
The woman looked about three times Cheri's weight: close to five hundred pounds, much of it on the lower hemisphere. Her thighs pushed against the underside of the table insistently, while her calves drooped in triple bulges. The woman's hips were so wide they bulged past the edge of her seat cushion. Though the booth was several sizes larger than any other in the room, it still had difficulty seating her.
Her male companion was more globular: just as large, but with the weight distributed differently. His billowing belly surged over and under the table edge, hanging mid-calf in the dim space beneath the table. Jowls quivering as he eagerly dug into his ice cream, he lovingly locked eyes with his blubbery companion and said something that got her chuckling. Each giggle sent ripples through her sweatsuit.
If the counter girl weren't already scooping out her order, Cheri would have canceled it right then and there. Just the sight of these two massive figures made her nervous. When her husband picked a table, she was sure to get a seat with her back to them.
"You see those two?" she whispered to Ben, as he raised his first spoon of rocky road ice cream.
"Who? Them? Must be regulars." He grinned and took a second look over her shoulder. "Or extras in the latest John Waters movie."
"I shouldn't have ordered two scoops," Cheri thought out loud, tapping the top of her French vanilla with her spoon.
"Don't tell me you're worried, looking at them," Ben chuckled. "People that big don't typically get that way overeating. More likely, there's some medical reason behind it."
"Both of 'em?" Cheri said skeptically. "Just look at the size of those sundaes! If I ate like that every day, I'd be huge, too!"
"Maybe they figure: the size they are, might as well eat what they want. I know I would if I were in their shoes!" As if to demonstrate, he took another spoonful. "Why not try your ice cream? If it's like mine, you'll love it."
Before she could protest, a hearty voice from the doorway boomed across the room. "Thought that van looked unfamiliar," it said. "Looks like we've got a pair of visitors to our little village."
Standing in the doorway was a fortyish woman in a light brown police uniform. Local sheriff, from the looks of her. She leaned against the door frame nonchalantly, a welcoming smile on her broad face. Though nowhere near the size of the couple in the booth, she was no petite flower. Obviously, they grew 'em big around these parts. The woman had to be close to three-hundred-and-fifty pounds.
"Liz Granrie," this fat figure said, ambling up to their table. "What brings you to our little out-of-the-way burg?"
"Ben Giles. Just passing through," Ben told her. "Looking for a way back to the highway."
"Don't get a lot of tourists," Sheriff Granrie said. "Most everyone that comes into town does so for a reason."
"Can see why," Cheri said, finally digging into her ice cream. Something about the small-town lady sheriff put her instantly at ease. "You're a bit off the beaten track."
"Way we like it," the portly policewoman said. "Too much pressure on the beaten track. In Seerhaven, folks are fat and healthy."
"Don't often hear those two words linked together," Cheri said, between spoons of French vanilla. Ben was right: La Creamery's ice cream was like nothing she'd ever tasted.
"Just one reason we're glad to be away from the main drag. We're an old-fashioned community. Not too old-fashioned -- we like refrigeration and television too much for that -- but traditional enough to want to be away from that piece of the world we dislike."
"Which is?" Cheri asked, in spite of herself. Behind the counter, the blond soda jerk was filling two large glass mugs with chocolate sodas.
"Watch out; you'll get me lecturing," the fat woman said. "This is a bountiful country, with little appreciation for all it offers. In Seerhaven, we believe in giving thanks to the world that sustains us, not trying to deny its richness." She drum rolled her fingers on her prominent paunch, then smiled once more. "Which highway were you looking for?" she asked.
Ben told her, and while the couple finished their orders, she scribbled some directions on a napkin, all the while talking about her town. Seerhaven primarily served as a rallying point for area farmers. It had no other major sustaining industry, though it plainly was more prosperous than any other small town they'd seen. Miz Granrie was one-half the village government; her husband was the other half: mayor, coroner and local doctor. A typical small town.
Well, maybe not so typical on one point. As Ben and Cheri chatted with the amiable policewoman, as regular customers entered and left La Creamery, as the obese couple in the corner finished with their chocolate sodas and made another order -- one central fact about Seerhaven became clear. Everyone in town appeared to be fat.
Not just fat. Nowadays, anyone who filled out one of Ben's XL tee-shirts drew that adjective. This was super-fat, a size typically accompanied by tubas in your cheesier type of movie comedy. Young girls, boys, adults, the elderly -- everyone they saw was huge. It wasn't just La Creamery's customers either. Look out the window, and you saw them waddling down the sidewalk, sitting behind the wheels of trucks, laughing, talking, flirting, carrying mail.
They didn't see another soul anywhere near as small as them.
"What is this place?" Ben asked once they left La Creamery. Back in the shop, Liz Granrie was talking to the mountainous couple. "Next time you complain to me about feeling fat, I'm bringing up Seerhaven." He started the mini-van, and they pulled away from the curb. "What a town!"
"You said it," Cheri agreed, as they headed for the edge of town. On one street corner, a porky pack of teen-aged boys was flirting with a girl who outweighed every one of them. Standing in front of a plain brick building mysteriously called the Temple of Ceres, a rotund farmer was unloading heavy milk cans from the back of his Ford Ranger. On a park bench, they saw a couple who were almost as vast as the pair they'd seen in La Creamery.
By the time they reached the gas station on Granrie's directions, they were so used to obese figures that it was a shock to see the malnourished image of an evening newscaster on the counter TV.
"Is it that late already?" Cheri said. "Maybe we should get dinner before hitting the highway."
"We'll eat at an oasis," Ben decided, as he paid the penguin-shaped attendant for gas and candy. He was determined to get back on the road. But the road was not so accommodating.
It happened as they got near the town line. A sudden crack! and the driver's side windshield started spiderwebbing alarmingly. "What the hell?" Ben cried. He'd seen windshields chip before, but never so severely and so quickly. In an instant, the glass was crystalline with cracks; it was like trying to look through a fly's eye. "Help me!" the movie conscious part of his brain squeaked.
Rolling down the side window, Ben turned Vee-ger around and aimed for the service station. Over in the passenger seat, his wife nervously nibbled through her second Crunch bar. The attendant took one look at the windshield and told them there was a glass repair shop back in town.
"I'll call ahead for ya," he offered. "Looks like the old girl didn't want ya to leave."
"Old girl?" Cheri repeated, pulling a bag of Fritos from its clip.
"Just a figure of speech round these parts," the attendant told them. Climbing into Vee-ger, they carefully rode back to the center of town.
The shop was unnamed, a small slat building with the word "Glass" neatly painted on the inexplicably wooden door. "Anybody even in?" Ben wondered, but he never got an answer to his question. Before he stepped out of the mini-van, a flashing vehicle edged behind them in the driveway. In an instant, Sheriff Granrie and an equally round deputy were on both sides of Vee-ger, holding guns on Ben and Cheri.
"Well," the super-sized sheriff said, "you never know who Ceres will pick!" She gestured them into the back seat of her car.
"What is this?" Ben demanded, as the car door slammed behind him.
"Invitation to dinner," Sheriff Granrie told them as she backed into the street. "Ceres' will be done."
"Who?" the couple asked in unison. But they weren't going to get the answer to that one yet. They rode four blocks to the plain brick temple they'd noticed earlier and were prodded into a large, brightly lit room.
"Please be seated," the sheriff told them, indicating a pair of thick benches. Behind her, a cumbrous male in a light blue suit and apron wheeled in a covered metal cart. When he came up to Granrie and bussed her on the cheek, Ben said from his seat, "You must be Mister Granrie."
"Pleased to meet you two," he said, extending a handshake that barely made it past his ballooning belly, while his wife kept her gun on them. "Never know when we're gonna get some newcomers. But I think you'll find you were particularly lucky today." With that, he unveiled the tray and revealed a serving plate with six loaves of bread, plus several pitchers of cream.
"Six?" his wife gasped. "Never seen anyone given three loaves!"
"Ceres' will," the town's mayor said. "This was in the oven when they returned. This is what they're given." Turning back to Ben and Cheri, he continued, "Here's the deal. You two eat these loaves, and you're free to leave."
"What are you -- " Ben began, but before he could finish, the duo had backed out of the room and locked the door behind them. For a couple that weighed over 700 pounds combined, they sure moved pretty quickly.
Ben rose and tried the door. As expected, it didn't respond to his efforts.
"Bread's still warm," Cheri said from the bench. "Pretty tasty, too."
"What are you doing?"
"Working on the first of my loaves," she said matter-of-factly.
"You don't know what they put in that," Ben said, flabbergasted by her action.
"You're right. I don't. But you got any better ideas?"
Ben wracked his memory, but every movie escape he could recall relied on the presence of a dumb guard. No such luck here. Though he called through the door, no one answered. Resigned, he sat beside his wife and picked up his first loaf of homemade bread.
Halfway into it, he reached for a pitcher to slake his thirst.
"Wonder who this Ceres is that they keep mentioning," Cheri wondered as she tucked into her second loaf. Good thing they hadn't eaten dinner, she thought. Made it remarkably easy to eat all they'd been given.
"Don't know," Ben answered, mouth stuffed with wheat bread. "Whoever he is, he's obviously the one running the show."
"She," Cheri corrected. "The attendant called her an 'old girl!'" She returned to her half of the town's offerings, stomach crying for more of that divine bread.
They finished their loaves in no time, and it was like they'd both eaten air.
"Okay!" Ben shouted, pounding on the door. "We've done what you asked! Now let us out!" In answer, they heard the lock unlatch.
They hadn't paid much attention coming in -- when you've got a gun pointed at you, it tends to overshadow everything else. But now that they were alone, they saw they were in a long bright hall. Leading down the middle of it was a line of tables with chairs and place settings, plates piled high with farm-style cooking (roast beef, ham or pork; cheese or sour cream slathered potatoes; green beans cooked in bacon; heavily buttered buns and more) and pitchers of cream on the side.
"Where is everybody?" Cheri asked, as the first scent hit her nostrils. Looked like the whole village was being served here, but they were the only folks in sight.
"Who cares?" Ben answered, plunking down onto a chair. "Way we've been treated, we're owed a good meal. Don't know about you, but I'm starving!"
"Me, too," Cheri admitted, grabbing a chair beside her husband. "Don't you think that's odd?"
"Whole day's been odd, if you ask me," Ben said, between bites of roast pork. "I'm too hungry to analyze it now. . ."
Cheri followed suit and was quickly digging into her plate. Everything tasted so sharp and clear, it was like coming into sunlight from a matinee movie showing. When she finished off her plate, she simply reached over to the one next to her.
They ate in silence, and they ate without let-up. When Ben finished his first plate, he snuck under the table and took a place across from his wife. After they cleaned off their second plates, they simply slid over two chairs and worked on the plates in front of them. Every platter was different, sometimes subtly, other times less so. Each bite they took seemed to spark an even greater hunger. It was all uniformly mouth-watering.
By the time they reached the end of the hall, Ben had loosened his belt and unbuttoned the top of his shorts. They'd each devoured close to fifteen dinners, and every ounce of food seemed to have stuck with them. At least twenty pounds heavier, most of it in their middles, the famished couple still felt as if they were just sitting down to their first meals. Fortunately, the end of the hall did not mean the end of their binge. Both hall and tables continued around the corner to a row that was twice as long as the one they'd half finished. The feast ringed the entire temple. It was all still warm.
After they finished the second hallway's offerings, Cheri's days as a size twenty-two were done. The plates had been fuller -- more than two pounds of comestibles that turned into body weight soon as they were swallowed. Ben and Cheri hit the corner over eighty pounds heavier. Their shorts had both split halfway down the aisle; their tee-shirts were nonchalantly discarded the same time.
Fortunately, two robes were hanging on a nearby coat rack. Grateful for the chance to doff underwear that felt like doubled-over rubber bands on their thickening torsos (the elastic being the only intact part left at this point), they pulled the loose fitting garments around themselves, then peeled off their tattered undergarments. Neither stopped to consider the change their bodies had undergone. Together, they were so focused on the meals in front of them (at each new place setting a quarter slice of pie had been added to the offering) that they sat and started to work their way down hall three. This bout they ended more than 125 pounds fatter.
By the fourth row of tables, they swept through each place setting in under five minutes. Though their bodies were becoming increasingly less familiar to them, they didn't drop a single speck of food. Whatever force was influencing them clearly meant to insure that every calorie possible found its way onto Ben and Cheri.
It was close to dawn when the duo returned to where they started; they'd been eating solidly for twelve hours and showed it. Robes straining to contain bodies that individually passed 600 pounds, Cheri and Ben looked around for more but saw that the tables had been cleaned ahead of them. Cheri gave a little mew of disappointment. She still didn't feel like she'd eaten anything more than a light snack.
She had a hard time judging, but if she was anything like her husband, she was even bigger than the woman from La Creamery. Her belly swelled before her imperiously, its apex out of reach of hands that had become much harder to stretch ahead of her -- thanks to upper arms that at their widest were over forty inches in diameter. Seated, her breasts hung so that their lowest point was parallel with her navel. A horizontal fold radiated from her navel, visible at the top through her robe's lengthy cleavage. Somewhere blocked from view by her forefront, her legs were forced apart by her belly squeezing inbetween her thighs.
Amazingly, the reality of her new size did not distress her. All she could think about was her flourishing appetite. And only yesterday she'd been berating her old skinny self, agonizing over a simple bowl of French vanilla ice cream.
What she wouldn't give for a quart or two of that ice cream now.
"Good work!" Sheriff Granrie said, stepping into the hallway. She'd put away her gun. At their present size neither Ben nor Cheri would be leaping up, overpowering her. It was an effort for them just to switch chairs. "We knew you had it in you to eat our offering! Ceres knows!"
"That it?" Cheri asked, impatiently tapping her sides, sending waves throughout her pre-eminent paunch. "Don't know about Ben, but I'm still famished!" Ben nodded his head, and his jowls swung with the effort.
"That third loaf of bread," Granrie's husband said, stepping out from behind his wife. "Looks like our work's not done yet!"
Sheriff Granrie nodded and left the hall. She returned with a dolly that contained two milk cans full of cream. Quickly prying the first open, she filled a bowl and gave it to Cheri. Cheri drained her offering and smiled.
"It's tradition for the newest members of our village to meet everyone once they've been initiated into the ways of Ceres," Mayor Granrie said, handing Cheri another helping, as his wife filled a bowl for Ben. "Looks like your initiation is far from over, but why not meet your neighbors, anyway?"
And so their first full day as members of the community Seerhaven began. As townfolk came before them, each carried two full bowls of cream. Cheri and Ben gratefully accepted and downed them all -- gallons and gallons of thick, sweet cream. By mid-morning, the service station attendant appeared and told them their windshield had been repaired.
"Damage wasn't as bad as it first looked," he said. "Hardly any work at all." Ben and Cheri exchanged looks then returned to the task at hand. They weren't surprised to hear about the car. Ceres, after all, was not a destructive goddess.
It was Sheriff Granrie who'd given them the scoop on the town's patron deity. Seerhaven's ancestors had been farmers who kept their religious practice hidden for centuries. They worshipped Ceres, the goddess of grains and abundance, a fat pagan figure who saw her worshippers' own corpulence as a sign of their respect and devotion.
"Most people associate heavy eating with a lack of control," Sheriff Granrie told them, carrying a hastily stitched together set of robes that were twice again as large as the pair barely covering Cheri and Ben, "To Ceres, it's the highest form of worship." She turned to the line of townsfolk still waiting to feed Ben and Cheri; as she moved, her wonderful belly swayed ahead of her. "In some old country villages, the people annually elect a new King and Queen based on size. Makes an effective way of both celebrating and anticipating a good crop. We don't feel the need to be that clockwork; we let the old girl tell us when it's time."
"Then the couple in the ice cream shop," Ben began.
"Were our last king and queen," Sheriff Granrie completed. "Drove into town five years ago, and they've done a bang-up job."
"So what do you do now that you've been dethroned?" Cheri asked the couple when they waddled up with their own pair of offerings. In place of bowls, they'd brought two ice cream cakes to their successors.
"It's a bit of a bring-down," the male half told them, "but one of us gets to be mayor." He squeezed his partner's hand, and she gave a tiny grin. "Had a feeling it was gonna be you two when we saw you both tucking into your bowls," he said. "From the looks of you, you've got a long reign ahead."
"See ya round," they said together, as they left Seerhaven's newest king and queen to their offerings.
It was close to three when the two of them started feeling sated -- though Cheri took a little longer than her hubby to pronounce herself full. Almost twenty-four hours since they'd first driven into Seerhaven, and their old way of life was just a dim memory.
Sheriff and Doctor Granrie stood before them appraisingly. "Looks," the former mayor said, "like we need to do some remodeling at La Creamery."
His wife nodded in agreement. Seated before her was the largest man and woman she'd ever seen. That bode well for the crops ahead. Nobody in town, she knew, was going to complain about the renovating these two demanded -- or the tremendous amount of feeding they'd require. Ceres' Chosen were the lifeblood of this village. . .
Ben and Cheri Giles never returned from their vacation. The day his paid leave ended, Ben phoned his job and tendered his immediate resignation, willingly accepting any penalty for not offering a full two-week notice.
Later that month, a middle-aged blond and her husband showed up at Ben and Cheri's home in Vee-ger (the refurbished vehicle had been given to the Granries since neither Cheri nor Ben fit behind the driver's seat.) They tossed the dead plants and, using a list they'd been given, loaded everything on it -- a collection of country antiques, VCR with vast tape collection, books and so on -- into back of the mini-van. The rest of the house would be sold and the proceeds put in the Giles' bank account back in Seerhaven.
Not that they needed any money. As Ceres' Chosen, their every want was filled by the village.
The following summer, another pair of strangers entered the little village of Seerhaven. Tall, thin and anxiously urbanite, they entered the widened doors of La Creamery with the air of vegetarians entering a butcher shop, quickly made their way to the counter and perused the wall menu. "Excuse me," the taller and thinner of the two said to the full-figured blond behind the counter. "Have you got any yoghurt? Or Fat-Free?" The question brought a head shake from the counter girl and a chorus of chuckles from behind them. The city visitors turned to see: a couple sitting on two heavily reinforced benches that had been build into the wall. To their sides were small plastic table that brought their opulently scooped bowls of ice cream within reach. Their clothes were snug and showed off every aspect of their tremendous girth (as, indeed, they'd been designed to do.) The man wore a tent's worth of lightweight fabric pants and a polo shirt that crept up his mammoth belly; the woman was in a cotton jumper with nothing underneath. Though the shop's air conditioning was working overtime, her face and arms glistened.
She sat on her bench, tri-fold belly blossoming far ahead of her. Occasionally, when she chuckled, its lower bulges appeared neath her dress' hemline, wavering only inches from her sandaled feet. The outer edges of her lower legs were all that was visible from behind her billowing forefront; they drooped with pendant shapeliness, rolls of avoirdupois gathering over her ankles. Her arms rested against her swelling sides, individually weighing more than either the driver or his girlfriend. It was a wonder she was able to lift her hand to her mouth, yet this she did with slow regularity, savoring each large spoon of ice cream that she swallowed.
The woman was almost unreal in her immensity: her lightly made-up face was so wide and round it made a Botero woman look waifish. Her hair was held up in a bun so as not to obscure any of her fat feminine features. Her cheeks spread past her ears, while her chins hung in imitation of her belly apron. Her lips pursed with the kind of fullness actresses got collagen injections to achieve. Behind the crest of her cheeks, her eyes sparkled, as if to say that there were levels to living that neither city visitor could ever know. Clearly, there were secrets in this gleaming ice cream shop. But in an instant's clarity both visitors knew that they didn't want to know them.
"We need to get back to the highway," the driver said to his model-thin wife, and she silently indicated their agreement. The couple backed out of La Creamery, eyes locked with Ben and Cheri Giles. Cheri tilted her spoon in mock salute, then patted her belly for emphasis. It wavered neath her cotton jumper, pushing her stripper-sized breasts up and down. Then slowly, deliberately, she rose from her bench. Her body trembled all around her, layers and layers of actualized gormandizing moving with a mind of its own. Despite themselves, the city couple stopped in their tracks and watched in horrified fascination as this elephantine figure swung her right arm and took her first ponderous step towards them. She made a come hither gesture with her sausagey index finger.
The couple jumped and made a beeline for their car. Cheri grinned with self-satisfaction and slowly dropped back onto her bench. Then she returned her attention to her current helping of ice cream.
"They were already leaving," Ben observed. "No need to frighten 'em off like that."
"City folks," Cheri panted, exhausted from her exertion. "Can't imagine anything worse than being fat." Over the past year, she'd become fiercely proud of her size and more than a little contemptuous of the outside world's attitude towards it.
"Boy, you're beautiful when you're angry," Ben said, reaching from his seat to pat a mountainous hip. As he leaned over, the lower hang of his belly started to spread against the floor.
"I'm even more beautiful when I'm hungry -- which is all the time," she said with a wink.
It had been an unbelievable year for both of them. Their initiation complete, their weight gain slowed to a rate that made it a whole lot easier on their wardrobe. Not that they didn't stop adding poundage. How could they not when they always had something edible within reach? A year of this put more than a hundred additional pounds on them each.
Cheri had learned to love each new part of her as she continued to grow: the way she rubbed against herself whenever she moved, the way her body ventured further and further out, an explorer in the hitherto unexplored world of unlimited obesity. Under Dr. Granrie's care, both she and Ben were untroubled by any health problems. All of Ceres' Chosen lived lives that confounded the insurance tables.
She looked over at Ben happily. She'd also grown to love her husband's mountainous body, the way it shouted his appreciation of life in Seerhaven, the way it felt pressing against her. Nights they spent feeding each other, lying at an angle on the combination of futons and cushions that made their size-friendly bed, VCR showing a movie from Ben's library (last night had been "The Wicker Man," a film that Ben asked to see monthly), trays all around them. Then they'd explore each other's bodies -- something they could both do for hours without backtracking.
"I miss some visitors?" Liz Granrie asked, breaking into Cheri's thoughts. Grabbing an egg cream from the counter girl, the village sheriff sauntered up to Seerhaven's two most prominent townspeople.
"Just passing through," Cheri opined. "Didn't look like the kind of folk to spend a lot of time in our village."
"Be fair," Ben teased, as he tilted the pool at the bottom of his dish between his blubbery lips. "When we first drove into town, we didn't know Ceres' ways either." He placed his empty dish on the table nearest, then blew a kiss to the counter girl as she carried over a replacement.
But Cheri was right. The Saturn and its occupants drove away from Seerhaven without incident. Ben and Cheri were destined to preside over the small village for decades, a position they accepted with enthusiasm and humility.
They lived long, prosperous lives and continued to gain at the pace they'd established over their first year. When they grew past their legs' capacity to lift them, past their arms' ability to bend and push past their layers of forefront, they were moved into the Temple itself. There, in the room where they'd been given their goddess blest bread, they were fed throughout the day by the fat sons and daughters of an ever more affluent farm community.
As everyone in Seerhaven agreed: nobody embodied the old ways as fully as Ben and Cheri.
Ceres' Chosen.
Copyright (c) 1996 - Oakhaus Designs
