by Wilson Barbers
"Value Less Times! When every SIN, no matter how sordid or degrading, is romanticized on movie screens or teevee! When pleasures of the FLESH are elevated over spiritual joy! When even SATAN is just another prancing figure on your MTV! These are TRULY valueless times!"
Pause to let reader amen, Michelle thought, as she herself stopped to let her laptop save this part of Reverend Dan's screed. Even when he was writing, the Reverend managed to create the impression that he was speaking to a tent full of folk - which probably accounted for the success of his twice-monthly newsletter, The Voice of Righteousness.
Pulling a stick of CareFree cinnamon from her purse, Michelle Travelstead checked the time and figured the minutes until suppertime. Ever since the Reverend had pressured her into starting her new diet, she'd become increasingly aware of the time between meals. The long time between meals.
In the past, Michelle used to bolster herself with snacks - nothing heavy, just a candy bar, say. Something to get her through the afternoon. But once she moved from temp to full-time secretary for the Reverend Daniel Wilder, her appearance became more of an issue.
"You're a servant of the LORD, now," he'd said first day of her new position, leaning on her file cabinet like he was leaning on a pulpit podium. "You must look like one!" In his eyes, that meant looking as ascetic as possible, and Michelle had never looked ascetic.
Michelle was what her grandma called a Healthy Girl. Rubenesque, with a natural hourglass figure, fulsome breasts and plumply arresting legs, she had the kind of form that would have drawn wolf whistles in less politically sensitive times. There were even days - and Michelle was astute enough to recognize them - when her zaftig frame caught the Reverend's attention. Perhaps that's why he was so insistent on her losing weight.
As for Michelle, she vacillated on the issue of her looks. Some days, when the sun was shining and she caught some passing guy's appreciative look, she felt like a centerfold; others, she just knew she was a fat cow. It was this wavery sense of self that had made it so easy for the Reverend to bully her into dieting. That - and the realization that the line between voluptuous and blowsy was a thin one - and if she didn't take care of herself, she'd cross it forever.
She started her diet the day they moved into their new office. The Reverend moved from city to city throughout the Midwest, generally garnering enough media attention to bring the believers out to two or three shows, sell enough copies of the Reverend's books and get enough folks on the mailing list to keep them going to the next town. The operation was pretty small-scale: her, an advance man and the Reverend; a two-woman office back at the Reverend's main headquarters in Iowa. Reverend Dan didn't believe in frill or ostentation: "That's for the Hollywood Sin Factory," he said.
Michelle didn't know from all that. Raised a farm girl Baptist, she knew about sin, but there were times when she wondered if the world was really as bad as the Reverend portrayed it. Take this town. According to the Reverend it was a sinkhole of sinful behavior, when all she saw was a fairly prosperous community made even wealthier over the last decade by the presence of a foreign-owned auto factory. Folks looked happy and well fed - make that very well fed -- but you saw a lot of that in the midwest. Why just down the street from her motel was a strip of restaurants that offered several top-flight buffets.
There she was, thinking about food again. Sighing, Michelle returned to her keyboard and finished transcribing the Reverend's editorial. By the time she got to the end, it was close enough to evening that she was ready to log out. When had she starting taking off early? Six months ago when she started as a temp, she'd have willingly worked into the night for free. It was probably this darn diet, dampening her enthusiasm.
Shutting down the office, she thought about dinner. The Reverend was out of town, so perhaps she could hit restaurant row, get a good meal and return to abstinence tomorrow. No - her boss would never approve. Best to head back to her motel, microwave a Lean Cuisine and turn on an old movie.
As she drove to her Motel Six and reached the dreaded row, however, her resolve began to weaken.
According to the Reverend, this Marketplace of Gluttony had sprung up five years earlier with amazing speed. Almost as if "some Demon of Appetite were urging it." He traced this "wave of secular sin" to the building of the auto plant - raised by non-Christians to bring money and its corruptions to a formerly pristine community. At times, it sounded like her boss was less concerned with issues of redemption and more with pandering to xenophobia.
She didn't used to have such cynical thoughts. Something about this diet seemed to foster them. Maybe if she fed herself just once, she'd recapture some of her old loyalty.
First buffet she saw was named Sinorak's. There was a nice hint of wickedness in the name: she decided to take her meal there. Soon as she entered, Michelle did a quick scan of the room just to make sure the Reverend wasn't about. The place was packed with portly Midwesterners, ranging in age from teen to retirement. One look at the menu - and the crowd of well-fed customers-- and it was clear the place gave good value.
Grabbing a two-person table in non-smoking, Michelle ordered a Coke and the buffet, and then went off for the salad bar. She spotted herself in a mirrored pole and did a quick inventory. Long blond hair and green eyes. Size twelve dress with a suitably modest lace neck and short sleeves. Her calves and thighs had always been a little fuller than she'd liked, but she had to admit they fit the rest of her.
The greens looked fresh, so she piled them high, topping the offering with at least a half cup of shredded cheddar and blue cheese dressing. The rolls were warm and lavishly buttered; she grabbed a couple then returned to her table. Next to her sat a young couple, both plump, working on plates of beef stroganoff with ravenous appreciation.
Perhaps it was the sight of these two, but she ate with twice her usual speed; when she finished, it was like she'd only just started. Going up for her main course, Michelle took two plates and covered the first with healthy dollops of stroganoff, Swedish meatballs and pepperoni pizza slices. The second, she filled with twice-baked potatoes and scalped corn, ringing the plate with those fantastic buns.
This was more food than she'd eaten since her last family Thanksgiving, but she polished it all easily. It all tasted wonderful. One thing about dieting: it made you appreciate just how good real food could taste. When she finished, she went for seconds of the same. Then she sat back happily, relaxed for the first time in days, and contemplated dessert.
The dessert bar was, unfortunately, pretty picked over by the time Michelle got to it. Spying the only decent piece of cheesecake left, she grabbed for it only to see the slice snatched from her reach. Looking up, she discovered a stocky young man in a flowered Hawaiian shirt.
"Scuse, me," he said, stepping back to let go of the plate. "You want this?"
"Me?" Michelle laughed, unaccountably nervous. "I don't need it."
"Need isn't the question," the young man said. "Who 'needs' cheesecake? But I'd hate to think I stole it from you."
"I was reaching for it," she demurred, "but I should go for something less caloric, anyhow."
"Don't see it. You look fine to me. Tell ya what. I'll go hit the soft ice cream machine. If you want the cheesecake, take it and I won't say a word."
He moved down the counter and started overfilling a plastic cup with chocolate/vanilla swirl. Michelle picked up her plate and returned to her table. Cheesecake melting in her mouth, she turned back toward the ice cream machine. The young man was nowhere to be seen. Too bad, she thought, returning to her slice; he looked kind of cute.
"Mind if I join you for dessert?" she heard from a booth nearby. The young man was peeking over a partition.
"Not at all," she gestured.
His name was Robbie Hues; he was a longtime townee who'd only just returned to the community. "Just finished grad school," he explained between spoons of ice cream sundae. "Can't believe how much this area's changed." When he'd been a high school student, he explained, restaurant row had been nothing but cornfields. "Some folks might be upset by all the construction, but not me," he continued. "Can't have too many good restaurants in town."
Turned out Robbie had been a business major with a special interest in the restaurant biz. It was, he told her, one of the most difficult businesses to get started; the majority failed within the first two years. "Not in this town, though," he said. "We're a statistical anomaly. Only place to close in the last three years was a spot specializing in nouvelle cuisine."
She told him about her work with the Reverend. "You a believer?" he asked her.
"I was when I started," she said, thoughtfully lingering over her last bite of cheesecake. "But working on the business end of religion can dampen your enthusiasm."
The dessert bar had been replenished by the time the two returned to it. They both had seconds, lingering over pie and coffee. Ordinarily, she would have thought twice about eating so much in front of a boy she hardly knew. But tonight was not an ordinary night.
"Think we could get together for a real dinner sometime?" he asked, as they prepared to call it a night.
"Sure," she said, and she gave him her phone number. What a nice way to end the evening, she thought.
When she finally returned to her room, Michelle was stuffed and happy. Stripping to her undies, she lay back on her bed and let her bloated belly feel cool freedom. Though she should've felt guilty for so radically busting her diet, she somehow didn't. Maybe it was her meeting Robbie, but that wasn't the whole story.
The fact is she liked to eat; she liked to eat a lot! Looked like she'd be looking for new employment sometime soon. The realization wasn't as scary as she'd thought it'd be.
She was close to dozing off when the phone rang. Robbie already? she wondered. When she lifted the phone, she heard a woman's voice instead. "Michelle Travelstead?" it asked. "Been hoping to get in touch with you!"
"And you are?" Michelle responded, her secretarial voice one more kicking into gear.
"Tracie Lyst," the voice said. "We're familiar with the Reverend's work and wanted to talk with you about a position in town that's available."
"Position?"
"A job," the voice continued, "one that I believe you've got a special aptitude for." With that, she gave an address and directions, then hung up.
"When do you wanna see me?" Michelle futilely asked the buzzing phone. What kind of a screwy deal was this? she wondered, as she placed the phone back on its resting place. The call had woken her past any chance of falling asleep now, and in returning to alertness, her appetite roused itself, too. Maybe she'd hit a Seven-Eleven for some junk then check this address out.
Turned out, the place was within walking distance, the only extant residence in an area that had been taken over by commercial properties. A single story brick duplex with two names on the buzzers: Foil and Lyst. Well, the woman had said her name was Tracie Lyst, so that was the bell to ring. The instant she saw the guy who answered it, though, Michelle nearly turned and ran.
She didn't, of course - she'd been raised better than that. But if she had decided to bolt and run, there was no way the man could've dashed after her. He had to weigh at least five hundred pounds: a round sphere of a man with a waist accentuated by the apron tied around it. "You must be Michelle," he beamed, wiping his hands on the aforementioned garment. "Come in!" He stepped back, great slab of a paunch quivering neath his taut polo shirt, and he gestured her into the apartment. Though every reasoning part of her said not to follow, she did, anyway. Something was smelling mighty luscious in the place. "I'm Cal Lyst," he told her. "Tracie's husband."
Inside, she saw a white room with minimal furniture and a home entertainment center. Across it was the entryway to a large kitchen with a woman sitting on a stool by an island, chopping vegetables. The woman had to sit side saddle because there was no way she could easily reach the island facing it straight on. Though she was dressed in a loose muumuu, it couldn't mask her immensity: she had to be at least two hundred pounds heavier than Lyst. Seven hundred pounds. Who'd have thought a person that size could even get around?
"Hungry?" Cal Lyst asked, and Michelle nodded. Her mouth was watering, and she was close to losing all will to fight its plea.
"Quite a place you've got, Missus Lyst," she said, as she followed the fat man into the kitchen.
The obese woman looked up from her cutting and laughed. "I'm not Tracie Lyst," she said. "I'm Wendy Foil. Fred's wife. We live next door."
"This duplex shares a kitchen," Cal explained. "Which suits us since Wendy and I like to swap recipes. We both cook for huge appetites."
"Excuse me?" Michelle said.
"Come," Cal said. "And all your questions will be answered." On the other side of the kitchen, Michelle saw, were two double doors; looked like the kitchen was in the exact center of the house. A unique arrangement. Cal pointed towards the entrance on the right, then bade Michelle to enter. In for a pound, she thought, and she stepped into the room to meet Tracie Lyst.
She almost bumped into the large banquet table waiting for her on the other side. Set as if to feed a dozen guests, it was packed with serving plates full of steaming offerings. Two glazed ducks. A large rolled roast. A dozen fried pork chops. Vast casseroles of au gratin potatoes. Bowls of cheese drenched cauliflower. Plates of shucked and buttered oysters. Enough shrimp and cocktail sauce to feed a good-sized Happy Hour. And more.
Who was this for? Once she saw Tracie Lyst, the question became pointless. If her husband was obese, than his wife was obesity cubed.
Seated on a backless couch, dressed in a sleeveless tee-shirt and shorts, Miz Lyst was eating petite-fours off one of several plates resting on her right breast. On the floor ahead of her was a cushiony pillow the side of a queen sized bed; Tracie's lower legs and belly both reposed on it. Her paunch flowed at least two feet past the tip of her toes, uncovered for most of its forefront. Beneath her great ballooning midsection, her legs swelled in ever expanding rolls.
She looked almost as wide as her seated height; her hips swelled a foot on each side past her massive arms -- no mean feat since her upper arms reposed at about a seventy-five degree angle from her body. Her arms were ridged with so much avoirdupois, it obviously took some effort to bend them to her mouth; eating with her right arm, she let her left arm rest within the rolls of fat that kept it static.
"Come in," Tracie Lyst puffed, her mouth full of pastry. As she spoke, her entire body quivered. Her face was full and sensual, receding between chins and jowls that pushed forward as if mimicking her forefront. She was lightly made-up, with long and flowing hair kept back with a ribbon. Who'd have thought such a Brobdingnagian creature could have looked so lovely?
"I know you're shocked," she told Michelle, "and a little frightened. I remember the first time I saw my male counterpart, Fred. Looked appalling. But have a seat at the table, and see if we can't change your mind about what you see here."
Michelle took the nearest chair at the table. "What is this?" she asked. Without even noticing she was doing it, she pulled her seat's napkin off the table and unfolded it.
Tracie lifted the plate of remaining petite fours to her mouth and tilted it. "Just a small snack between meals," she explained before the first slid into her mouth. When she cleaned her plate, she tossed it to the side. There, Michelle saw a wheeled waste can packed full of dirty plates. "Thought it'd be obvious who I am," Tracie Lyst said. "I'm Gluttony. Or rather a representative of Gluttony."
Gluttony! In an instant, every sermon that she'd heard, every word of Reverend Dan's that she'd typed on the subject, all came to her. What in God's name had she stumbled into?
"Gluttony?" she said, between nibbles at the hors d'oeuvre plate that had somehow appeared in front of her. "That's a sin. How can anybody be a sin?"
"We prefer the term 'Behavioral Representative,'" the female leviathan said, pulling a cream horn within reach of her wide mouth. "What's a sin but a behavior that one culture deems reprehensible? In Northern Africa, for example, women were traditionally fed to divinely huge size; you'd hear no railing against the 'sin of Gluttony' in that part of the world." She paused, grabbed a second cream horn, and continued. "There are those who even say the word 'gluttony' comes from a Hebrew word meaning 'hoarding' and not 'overeating.' My husband and I don't believe in hoarding."
"But do you believe in sin?"
"Certainly. Hoarding is an act at someone else's expense. Sin's an act done to take from somebody else."
Michelle took a bite from her cut of roast beef. She'd never tasted a cut of meat so good, so inviting. She envied Tracie her chef husband.
"The concept of sin was established to protect people from each other," Tracie continued, nodding as the zaftig secretary began to dig into her offerings in earnest. "I don't believe a little harmless overeating falls under that umbrella. In this house, we value hospitality - and offering plenty of good food to our guests." She gestured above the table proprietarily - like a farm wife showing off Sunday dinner - and the moment charmed Michelle. She could see the woman's point about hospitality, but there still was that "s" word to consider.
"Say I buy your definition of sin," Michelle considered, cutting into a twice-baked potato. "If the old sins aren't real, then what do you do? Why go around calling yourself Gluttony?"
"Our boss is an old fashioned kind of guy," Tracie answered. "But what do we do? Our job's to inspire our representative behavior in others, help to maintain balance. There's a lotta pressure - from judgmental types like your old boss, for instance - against me. Too much effort is being expended to repress that urge for Just One More Piece. Nobody wants to appear gluttonous; even folks in the fat acceptance movement work to overcome the image of the gormandizing fat man.
"I say revel in it.
"You know what it's like: resisting your natural urges made you cranky and cynical, less humane than you normally were when you ate what you wanted. My job's to help folks regain their center. The universe thrives on balance. The more we try to extinguish a behavior, the more important it becomes.
"But here I am, chatting away, and you've got a plate getting cold in front of you. Dig in!"
Michelle looked down at the untouched plate before her: slabs of roast beef, two twice-baked potatoes with chives and melted cheese. For a moment, time seemed out of sync - hadn't she just finished a plate of this? Her stomach told her no.
While she worked on her dinner, Tracie explained how she had gotten to be in her present state. Six years before, she'd applied for a job at Emblems, Inc., which specialized in placing Behavioral Representatives in strategic parts of the country. While she'd interviewed for a different position, she'd soon transferred to the one she'd grown into. "Haven't regretted it one minute," she said, sipping on a long straw connected to a giant mug full of milk shake. Food just seemed to have a way of appearing in front of her.
Michelle started on her third plate. The longer she sat with Tracie, the more it seemed like every bite was her first. She was so focused on the act of eating, she barely heard the woman's words - or noticed the way she was starting to change.
First spot to show the effects of Gluttony's influence was her belly: neath her lightweight dress, it began to distend, developing a crease on both sides. This was quickly superseded by her hips and thighs, however, which widened over the edge of her chair. They pulled up the hem of her dress, exposing more of her developing calves.
While Michelle happily chewed her way through her meal, her chin filled in and became two. When she finished her third plate of roast beef and potatoes, it was replaced by glazed duck. She quickly stripped the meat off the carcass.
Cal Lyst waddled into the room, carrying a TV tray piled with warm brownies. "How's it going?" he asked the two women.
"Been telling Michelle about our wedding," Tracie said.
"Had Gluttony reps from every state in the Midwest at the reception," Cal said. "Lots of good eating that night. More than doubled my own weight."
"My own little wedding present to you," Tracie sighed. "That extra two hundred pounds really made you sexy."
Cal blew his wife a kiss then took several brownies off the tray before placing it within her reach. They both silently chewed and watched Michelle slide a duck leg into her mouth and quickly clean it. When she finished with her poultry, she reached across the table and started spearing pork chops with a fork.
"Reverend Dan was right," Cal observed. "This gal has a lotta potential as an eater."
"Night's still young," Tracie said, wiping her chocolate stained cheeks with the back of a pursy hand. "Let's see if she has the stuff to go the distance."
Cal lifted a pocket watch from his apron pocket - it was a few minutes into the new day - then returned to the kitchen. In the other side of the house, he knew, the male Gluttony was working his influence on Michelle's counterpart. He took one last look at Michelle, now shoveling au gratin potatoes into her mouth with a serving spoon.
The once Rubenesque blond had gone beyond zaftig to clearly fat. In the upper two hundred range, her belly spilled ahead of her, while her rear started to shelf out behind her. Michelle's thighs were developing textures that showed through her dress's fabric, while her upper arms grew puffy and soft. She was a ringer for one of the fat female customers at Sinorak's.
As Tracie watched her guest, she thought of the night she too had changed from a shapely young woman into an embodiment of gormandizing. At the time, she'd been so wrapped up in feeding that she hadn't been attuned to the way her body had evolved. She enjoyed watching it on someone else, though.
When Michelle finished everything on the banquet table, she weighed 400 pounds and change. Her dress hiked up over her dimpled knees, showing off both her calves and her thighs' drooping bulges. Her belly grew a vertical indentation that stretched her navel into an upright line visible beneath her form-hugging dress. The base of her paunch squeezed into the valley created by her thighs. From the sides, it was a toss-up as to which pushed out farther, her belly or her rear. Her 70-plus inch hips totally obscured the seat of her chair.
"Ready for seconds?" Tracie asked the panting young gluttonette. Michelle turned her head, body jiggling insouciantly, and nodded. All trace of the sweet young secretary was gone from her face; at this moment, Michelle was pure appetite. Tracie tipped a bowl of kouskous and dates into her mouth, gulping it quickly and expertly. Back when she'd passed her first ton, she'd developed a taste for ancient fattening meals as a means of getting in touch with primal gorging. By the time she finished her bowl, the banquet table was completely restocked. Michelle was into her first plate immediately.
At the end of this second helping, she'd more than doubled her weight.
Over the night, her chair had been replaced by an oak bench; wide and deep, it was large enough to support her voluminous bottom. At least two out of every three new pounds had found their way to Michelle's lower half. Her hips' measurement had gone into the triple digits, while her legs were such a thick collection of bulges that she could barely bend them.
Though her midsection wasn't stinted - it cascaded ahead of her magnificently - it was still small potatoes compared to her backside. Seated, it spread more than four feet across the bench, lifting her at least three inches higher than she'd been before the night began. Her breasts looked smallish in comparison, but, in reality, they took up eighty-two inches. Even more eye-catching were her upper arms, which swelled past her breasts and flowed against her sides.
Cal wheeled in a soft ice cream machine with a nozzle attached. "Dessert!" Michelle gasped happily, and she grabbed the nozzle eagerly. Between her fat-bordered eyes was a glint of excitement that both Tracie and Cal recognized. It was the look you saw on kids when the ice cream truck hit the block.
By dawn's break, Michelle had emptied the machine three times and worked on a selection of pastries that would have filled the night shift in a large city bakery. Inbetween each item, she stopped to down pint bottles of cream laced with flavoring. It wasn't until sunlight started appearing on the floor that the mega-sized blond started to feel full.
With that sense of repleteness, Michelle started to remember where she was. The banquet table had been removed, she saw, and on the wall was a floor to ceiling mirror. In its reflection was the new Michelle.
Her dessert binge had added another four hundred pounds to her body, putting her in the Guinness Record range of onetime twelve hundred pounder, Rose Bradford. That was about a fourth the size of Tracie Lyst, but then Tracie had developed her current frame over more than one night. Looking at the new her, Michelle felt a strange sense of pride. She could just imagine the look on Reverend Dan's face if he saw her now.
So what? She was sick of letting other people's opinions dictate the way she felt about herself. In that moment, she knew that the woman she saw was meant to be Michelle Travelstead.
Slowly, unsure if she could even do it, Michelle rose from her bench. Her dress had kept up with her expansion, she saw, but the hem barely covered the lower hangs of her belly. One reason: the lightweight fabric was adhering to her flesh, doubling inside every fold it encountered. Her legs were almost totally uncovered: they were something to behold. With hips that exceeded the capacity of two sixty-five inch tape measures, they jutted eight inches past the widest part of her torso. Her legs rubbed together from top to bottom and were landscaped with so many draping bulges that they almost concealed her womanly curviness.
Ponderously turning to take in her profile, Michelle scanned behind her and saw: a rump that plateaued way out of reach of her arms, thighs that hung halfway down her calves, calves that drooped to the floor. Her back was a hilly progression of rolls that lead to a peak of swollen shoulders. In front, her belly hung ahead of her invisible knees; her mams draped to both sides and nestled into her upper arm fat. Michelle's upper arms were tremendous, individually the equal of her former hip measurements.
Her head looked neckless; as she'd grown, her chins had filled in all the space. Michelle's cheeks rose and blocked the lower half of her green eyes; her lips protruded with fleshy insouciance. Surrounded by so much, her face looked smaller, but she knew this was an illusion. There wasn't a part of her that wasn't enveloped in avoirdupois.
"Well, young lady," Tracie said from behind. "I've gotta admit I'm impressed. You managed to beat my original binge gain by at least a hundred pounds. Looks good on you, too."
Michelle straightened her dress, then tentatively swung around to face the Gluttony rep. It was like she was moving underwater, trying to shift her weight around, but she was able to do it. "What's going on?" she panted, waiting for her jiggling body to settle down around her.
"Job interview," Tracie said. "Wanna be my replacement?"
"Replacement?"
"Fred and I are both being promoted to the main office," Tracie explained. "Had a record breaking year in weight gain and busted diets. This is our reward."
"Main office?" Michelle repeated, the image of flames and caverns coming unbidden to her mind.
"You've gotta stop thinking that old mythology," Tracie cautioned, correctly reading her thoughts. "Emblems Ink H-Q is in Los Angeles."
"So Hollywood really is Sin City?" Michelle thought out loud, remembering the Reverend's regular rants about the entertainment industry.
"You could say that," Tracie answered, laughing. "Though I wouldn't."
"Neither would I," Michelle decided. Looked like she was going to have to rethink her beliefs. It was Tracie, the Gluttony rep, who'd helped her rediscover the simple joy of guilt-free eating, of letting her body be what it was. It'd taken time for Tracie to break through the Reverend's repressive influence, but last night she finally had, and Michelle felt great. No way could this be sinful.
If you believed the Reverend, these were valueless times. Yet Tracie and Cal had elevated the simple act of hospitality and dining to a higher calling. This was a value she could relate to.
"So you want the job?"
"You kidding?" Michelle said, happily patting her well-stuffed stomach. "After that great meal I never wanna hear the word 'diet' again."
"Knew you had potential when you blew your diet at Sinorak's," Tracie told her. "Let's go tell Cal." She winked at the bottom heavy blond, and without either moving, they were both in the kitchen. The Gluttony rep adjusted her shorts behind her tremendous belly apron. Standing, Tracie's paunch still rested on the floor, flattened in dual bulges. Back arched to accommodate the weight, her eyes aimed ceilingwards. When she moved her vision down toward the rest of the room, it gave her a regal air. This must be the way that fattened South Seas royalty looked: unimaginably huge and yet sensual. Someday soon, Michelle thought, that would be her.
Cal and Wendy Foil were both sitting by the sink, sipping cups of latte and cutting up a row of coffee cakes. In the kitchen doorway stood a tall man in a Giorgio Armani suit. "She said yes?" he asked.
"You must be the 'old fashioned boss,'" Michelle said, waddling across the kitchen. Overnight, she'd somehow grown more assured about herself than she'd ever felt. As she slowly walked across the room, she felt her legs rub together, felt the press of her billowing belly apron, the push of her dangling rump cheeks. The feel of all this flesh around her was surprisingly sensual. Moving, she was discovering even further how much different her body had become.
"Jerry Moorcock," he answered, lifting her fat right hand to his lips. "Emblems, Inc., regional manager." He gave her an appreciative once-over, pulled out a five-pound box of Godiva chocolates and handed it to her like it was the key to the city. "You've got a bright new career ahead of you," he said, as she shucked the box top and started popping chocolates into her mouth.
With that, he outlined the terms of Michelle's new job: as long as she kept eating - and inspired others to keep overeating - she'd have a long and fruitful life with the company. Her own home. Unlimited meals. Anything she wanted to keep comfortable and diverted while she ate.
"Great health benefits, too," Tracie assured her between bites of coffee cake. "No matter how large you get, your body adapts to it. No way you can lose the weight, of course. But why would you want to?"
"Do I get a chef like Cal?"
"If you wish," Moorcock said, grinning.
"Don't really need one," Tracie said. "Last two years or so, my appetite has surpassed Cal's ability to keep up with it, but I haven't suffered one bit." She raised her right hand, and a bowl of kouskous appeared in it. "See?" she smiled, holding it inches from her mouth. As she tipped it, the fattening meal flowed in a straight line between her lips; she didn't spill a drop.
"That may be," Michelle said, not entirely sure where she was leading with this. "But Cal's your husband, too."
"Let me assure you," Moorcock intervened. "There are plenty of men out there attracted to a robust woman like you. In fact. . ."
"Fred!" Wendy Foil said, so Michelle looked back to see Tracie's male counterpart enter the room.
He was more belly than Tracie, but in a jowl-to-jowl contest, he still looked several hundred pounds shy of her prodigious weight. It figured, Tracie thought. Hadn't she read somewhere that women had more fat cells than men? Before she could take this thought any further, she saw the young man standing beside Fred Foil.
He looked like someone she remembered seeing years ago in a magazine. She'd never forgotten the photo: an elephantine figure in overalls and farm shirt who weighed (so the caption said) over a thousand pounds. So big that he had to be buried in a piano case. For years, the heaviest man on record. When she'd seen the picture, the first reaction she'd felt was pity. Now, confronted with a younger version in the flesh, she had a totally different response.
"Nice to see you again," the young man said. Like her dress, his jeans and Hawaiian shirt had grown to fit him.
"Michelle," Moorcock was saying. "Like you to meet Fred's replacement. Robby. Michelle."
If Tracie or Fred had any doubts about the appropriateness of their selections, they were erased the instant these two set eyes on each other. The air became charged with an almost palpable feeling of physical attraction and surging appetites. The young couple didn't break their connection even when a plate of bagels popped into their hands. But that didn't stop either from automatically biting into the start of their breakfasts.
"Looks like these two are eager to get to work," Moorcock said, appearing between Tracie and Fred, as they thoughtfully chewed on their own fresh offerings. He'd hoped the youngsters would hit it off. Not only did it appeal to his sense of symmetry - it also was looked on favorably at corporate headquarters to hire coupled Gluttony reps. Even the forces of universal balance were down-sizing these days.
He moved a pair of size-friendly seats behind the couple and watched them sit down to their breakfast together.
"Welcome aboard," Tracie said before winking out of the room. "We'll let Reverend Dan know that you've found another job."
"He already knows," Moorcock laughed.
But neither of Emblems, Inc.'s new Gluttony reps heard him. They were too busy working on enhancing each other's hunger.
"You said we should get together for a good meal," Michelle said, mouth full of bagel. "Why not now?" With that, the kitchen counters filled with a country buffet's a.m. menu. On both of Michelle's massive knees were two serving trays filled with a variety of breakfast pastries.
"Why not?" Robbie agreed, and the two young gourmands happily started in together.
From the look of things, Gluttony was going to have another banner year.
Revised version copyright 2001 - OakHaus Designs
