by Wilson Barbers
Mindy had never received a certified letter before - much less one with so impressive looking a return address: Betterswane and Lipshield, Attorneys at Law, printed in elevated black lettering that shone in the hall light. Pretty fancy, she thought - and more than a little bit scary. She was tempted to throw the thing away, but, then, she'd already signed for it.
When she sliced the envelope open, though, she found quite a different message from the threats she was visualizing. Her aunt in California had passed away and remembered her in her will. Mindy hadn't seen Aunt Miranda in ages, and, in fact, the only solid memory she had of the woman was kind of embarrassing - one of those bits of childish thoughtlessness you found yourself remembering at odd times in adulthood.
Her family had driven west for summer vacation, and they were staying with relatives. Aunt Randy lived near Anaheim, so Mindy and her sister were anticipating a day at Disneyland. They were so focused on this, they didn't even ask about the aunt they'd never met. When they saw her, it was a major shock.
For Aunt Miranda was huge. Though one year younger than her sister, she was at least three times their mother's size. Dressed in a brightly colored muumuu that accentuated her voluminous frame, she welcomed them from her driveway, looking like an animatronic funhouse lady come to life. Mindy and her sister Charlotte exchanged knowing smirks in the back seat of their father's Impala.
They were both at the age when making fun of others came easy. As they unpacked their suitcases in the guest bedroom, they couldn't stop talking about their aunt's mountainous size.
“How much do you think she eats?” Charlie asked her sister for the fifth time that evening.
“I bet she never stops eating,” Mindy declared authoritatively, as she puffed out her cheeks and raised her arms as if they were held up by extra torso. Pulling a pillow from the guest bed, she quickly inserted it under her baggy tee-shirt, then made a penguin walk around the bedroom. “I'm Aunt Randy,” she said, sending her sister into a giggle fit.
That bout of giggles was cut off quickly, though. Aware that her sister was suddenly looking behind her, Mindy turned to see her aunt and parents looking at them both. On her folks' face was a combination of anger and dismay. In an instant, they could see their trip to Disneyland flying out of reach.
Amazingly, though, Aunt Randy was the one who softened this uncomfortable scene.
“Not every day these two get to meet a woman my size,” she said, sending a chuckle throughout her super-sized frame as a red-faced Mindy quickly pulled the pillow out of her clothes. “Perhaps when they're a little older, they'll learn to be a bit more tolerant.” With that, she patted Mindy on the shoulder and left the room.
Their parents didn't stop lecturing them the whole trip home. That one moment of thoughtless play had ruined the rest of their vacation, and the family never drove out to California again. It was a lesson Mindy never forgot, though Charlotte had characteristically shrugged it off. “If she didn't want to be made fun of,” Charlie would say, “she wouldn't have let herself get so fat.”
Mindy doubted her sister would make such a cavalier judgment today. For once she'd hit puberty, Charlie had a growth spurt that didn't stop until she was college age. End result of this teen-aged transformation: a gain of more than sixty pounds. In panicky response, Charlotte underwent a regimen of diets and diet failures that only succeeded in making her fatter. These days, her sister tipped the scales in the mid-two-hundreds: small compared to Aunt Miranda perhaps, but large enough to give her a different perspective.
Mindy, on the other hand, had been lucky. Keeping her appetite in check, she'd retained her girlish figure: tall, curvaceous and full-chested, with a pair of legs she knew her sister would kill to possess. She tried not to flaunt her good fortune whenever she was around Charlotte. But her sister had a knack for hearing digs in the most innocent statements.
Had Aunt Miranda also remembered her sister in the will? She'd find out in two days: enough time for her to pull her savings out for a round trip plane ticket to California. She didn't have the nerve to phone Charlotte ahead of time.
As a result, the first thing she looked for when she reached the offices of Betterswane and Lipshield was her sister. She'd arrived before Mindy and grabbed the most comfortable chair in the room. When Mindy entered, Charlotte looked up and nodded - about as cordial as she got with her sister these days. Behind her chair, hubby Mark was friendlier.
“Good to see you,” he said, risking the wrath of his wife by smiling Mindy's way.
“Been a while,” Mindy said, smiling back. Looked like her sister's weight had stabilized. Perhaps Mark had finally persuaded her to cease her fruitless dieting. When she wasn't looking petulant, Charlotte had a lovely face. They'd both inherited their mother's girl-next-door looks, though at this point, maybe a better description for Charlie would be matron-next-door. She favored outfits, Mindy noticed, that looked as gray and nondescript as possible.
Two more figures entered the room: Mindy vaguely remembered one from a family picnic. Once this new set of relatives were situated, a figure in a three-piece suit walked in and introduced himself as Clay Betterswane, “youngest of the firm's three Betterswanes.” He looked kind of cute in a neurotic Brit sort of way.
“I know,” the lawyer began, “you're all wondering about Miranda Carmall's assets, as none of you have reportedly had much contact with the woman over the last decade. Well, Miz Carmall could have taught the Beardstown Ladies a thing or two. Since her retirement, she was able to parlay her savings into quite a little nest egg.” He then named a figure so astonishing, it was a wonder that they all kept from whistling out loud.
Lawyer Betterswane nodded appreciatively at the group and gestured toward the doorway. Two collegiate types pushed in a wheeled cart with a TV VCR. Betterswane lifted a tape off the cart, inserted it into the machine then hit “play.”
“Your Aunt Miranda,” he said without further ado.
And, indeed, it was. Seated in a wheelchair that had to have been made to accommodate her, older and even fatter than either Mindy or Charlotte remembered, the elderly woman spoke into the videocam.
“Glad you could make it,” she said, for all the world like a hostess welcoming guests to her dinner party. “I know you're all wondering why this crazy lady's brought you to this room, so I'm going to cut to the chase.
“For years, I've been the talk of this family because of my size. All my life I've been the fattest person in it, and, I know, the subject of many jokes.
“You four are unique, though, in that each one of you managed to make one of these jokes in front of me. I don't even know if you remember the occasions, but I do.” She paused, took a deep breath, then continued.
“By now, you've been told the worth of my estate. Here's the deal. I'm going to give it all to the one among you who gains the most weight in one year!” She smiled, and her chins smiled with her.
“She's got to be . . .” Mark began.
“I'm not joking,” she said, “and my offer comes with a few provisos. Mr. Betterswane will explain them.” She paused to let them aim quizzical looks at the lawyer. “My goal is for this to be a learning experience to you all. Whoever wins this will have my old position in the family. But, hopefully, all that extra money will ease the sting of family jokes, eh?
“I do this not out of malice. Outside of a few rude comments, I haven't really minded being the size I am. I do it because whoever inherits my estate should also inherit the other major fact of my life.” She shrugged her massive shoulders and with that, the video ended. They all stared at the blank screen, openmouthed.
“I know you've got questions,” Clay Betterswane said, finally breaking the silence, “but let me assure you that Miz Carmall's will is totally legal. If none of you meet its conditions successfully, her entire estate will be donated to a designated size acceptance organization. Just so you know, I also do pro bono work for the group.
“As for the conditions, they're as follows:
“One: a supervised weigh-in one week from today.
“Two: a minimal weight gain of seventy-five pounds.
“Three: free use of Miz Carmall's home, cooking facilities and chef for the entire period. Both food and shelter will be offered to you, if you wish to take advantage of it. That way, nobody financially better off will have an advantage over a competing heir.
“Four: the winner will be decisively decided by a weigh-in on the same date one year from the initial check. To make sure this entire gain is legitimate and not just temporary water or binge weight, the difference must be a minimum of twenty-five pounds heavier than the next relative.
“Five: the winner will have their inheritance placed in trust for one year after the contest. If they lose any of the weight they've gained, the trust will go to the aforementioned size acceptance organization.
“Any questions?”
Of course, there were. But the core question came from Charlie.
“Is Aunt Miranda nuts?”
“Legally,” Betterswane answered. “No.” With that, he indicated a thick three-ring binder on the TV cart. “This is a battery of psychological tests willingly taken by Miz Carmall, testifying to her sound mind. This will is an unbreakable as they get.”
“So you say,” a dissipated figure who Mindy finally recognized as her Cousin Dexter said. “But you win, no matter how this turns out.” He looked around to the rest of the room for support.
“Your aunt anticipated that there might be some, um, resistance to her instructions,” Betterswane replied. “Which is why you have a week until the weigh-in. We've made copies of the pertinent documents. If you wish, you can have your own lawyers review them.”
“I will!” Dexter asserted. “I've never heard anything so crazy in my life!”
“Maybe it's crazy,” the fourth relation - a spindly, careworn redhead named Cheryl - said, “but if you think about it, it's a good way to get some time away. I'm a single mother with a daughter in college, though. What'll I do when she has to come home for the holidays?”
“There's room in the estate for family,” Betterswane told them. “Your Aunt Miranda had no desire for this to be a personal hardship.” Cheryl nodded and smiled; it was clear there'd be no resistance from her. Charlotte and Mark were also nodding agreeably - from what Mindy remembered, Mark wasn't that fond of his job either.
“Was Aunt Miranda really that affected by our joke?” Mindy thought out loud. “We were just kids!”
Clay Betterswane shrugged. “I can't answer that,” he said, as he started handing out copies of Miranda's will.
And so the relatives went their separate ways to consider what Aunt Miranda had offered them.
Mindy didn't have a personal attorney, was between both boyfriends and meaningful employment (she'd been temping for the last fourteen months) - so it was pretty much a no-brainer what she'd be doing. She could clearly use the money. A gain of seventy-five pounds? If Mindy got the dough, she could get it liposuctioned off. And if she didn't, she had faith in her ability to whip herself back into shape.
The next week was spent getting her affairs in order - not much of a task, actually. She put the bulk of her possessions in storage and bid adieu to the temp agency. Though the law firm offered to work up an arrangement with her landlord, she declined: she wasn't that enthralled with her old place, anyway.
Aunt Randy's estate turned out to be a sprawling ranch overlooking the Pacific. If Mindy had any doubts about the validity of her aunt's claim to wealth, they were banished once she saw it. The house was tremendous (it sure beat the little two-room apartment that Mindy had been calling home for the last five years), shining in the summer sun like a Disneyland storefront.
As expected, three of the heirs had shown up, while Cousin Dexter had chosen to contest the will in court. It seemed foolish to Mindy to not even come out and get weighed, but, apparently, he was putting all his eggs in one basket.
Clay Betterswane was waiting by the front door the day they arrived, leaning against the house with his hands in the pockets of his casual Haggar slacks. He smiled at Mindy as she got out of her rental car, and the look was enough to make her wonder if the attorney would be regularly stopping by the house. He had one of those classically crooked grins that she'd always been a sucker for.
“Last one here,” he said jovially. “Shall we do your first weigh-in?” Opening the front door, he lead them into the foyer. Inside, they found a rotund figure dressed in white. He introduced himself as August Harman, Aunt Miranda's former personal chef.
“So glad to meet you all,” he said. “It'll be a pleasure to be cooking for more than two.”
“Any other servants?” Charlie's husband asked.
“Nope,” Betterswane explained. “The cleaning's done weekly by an outside service. You all should have plenty of room to spread out.”
She couldn't help it. The remark made Mindy giggle. Cousin Cheryl looked over at her and smiled; her sister gave her a dirty look.
“Let me show you to your bedrooms,” Betterswane said. “You'll probably want to change into the robes lying on the bed. That way you'll all start out even on the weigh-in.”
He lead them to a corridor which had four large bedrooms attached to it. Inside, Mindy found a king-sized bed, twenty-nine inch TV, a walk-in closet plus her own connecting bathroom with a small eye-level mirror. On an end table, she saw a snapshot of her and Charlie, taken from their trip to California. She didn't remember Aunt Miranda taking any pictures, but then that was the sort of thing you did so often on vacations that it barely registered.
Her robe was lightweight silk, big enough for a quartet of Mindys, with a sash belt that doubled as a measuring tape. She stripped to her underwear, put it on then stepped barefoot into the hall, wrapping the sash around her thirty-inch waist. “First one out,” Betterswane observed. “Might as well get the vital statistics now.” He lead her back through the house, past a large dining area and kitchen, to an indoor pool. There, she saw a large platform scale, a human-sized version of the type you saw in animal hospitals.
Mindy's starting weight: 133 pounds.
“A mere wisp of a girl,” Clay Betterswane said, and Mindy didn't know whether to be charmed or insulted. It was hard to tell what the lawyer thought about all this. Did he think her foolish to even agree with her aunt's wacky will? Did he see her as just another greedy relation, eager to jump through any hoop for a shot at her own fortune?
And why'd she care what he thought about her, anyway?
“Lunch is in the dining room, if you'd like to get started,” Betterswane said, and he indicated a large set of double doors with his hands.
“Would it be fair for me to start eating before the rest have even had a chance to weigh themselves?” Mindy asked.
Betterswane nodded approvingly. “Probably not,” he said, looking up to welcome Cousin Cheryl. Beneath her robe, you could see Cheryl's too skinny legs and prominent knees. A little extra weight would definitely look good on her, Mindy thought.
Cheryl's weight: 104.
They waited longest for her sister, of course. Finally, Charlie appeared with her husband in tow. She stepped on the scale like a petitioner entering the confessional, then cringed as the lawyer read her weight out loud.
284 - heavier than Mindy would have guessed. But, then again, like many average-sized folks, she had little sense of the actual weight of fatness.
With that, the lawyer gave them all a tour of the house. In addition to the dining room and indoor pool, the ranch had a well-stocked library. All of the furniture was ultra-fat friendly.
Lunch turned out to be a large buffet table filled with cheese, meats, sour-dough bread and crackers plus beaucoup appetizers. “Our first meal together,” Cheryl said in passing as she made her way to the table. She piled her plate high and sat back with a satisfied look on her face. Whatever the results of their time together, it looked like she really was going to make a vacation of it.
There were, Mindy thought, two ways to start this project: throw yourself into it full tilt or build up to it. Over the week Mindy had decided to take her time. Reaching for a basket of crackers, she delicately placed a slice of meat and cheese on one. This, she slathered with a teaspoonful of mayonnaise. She idly noshed on the bite-sized offering, then picked up a second.
As for Charlotte, it was difficult to tell what her strategy was. She eyed the table before her suspiciously, and though she let her husband fill her plate generously, she didn't look enthused about it. Mark seemed to be enjoying himself, though.
Perhaps Betterswane's presence at the table made them all self-conscious. He barely touched his own meal; every time Mind looked up at him, though, he smiled convivially. She'd return the smile and feed herself another loaded snack cracker.
When the lawyer finally rose, saying that he had to return to the office, Mindy saw him to the door. “I think of all the heirs, you'll be the one who gets the most out of this,” he said. “If there's anything I can do to make your time here more enjoyable. . .”
“I'm sure there is,” Mindy said flirtatiously, “but it might be seen as a conflict of interest.”
Betterswane laughed, then headed for his car. “You'll do just fine,” he said in farewell. Mindy watched him drive off, then returned to the dining area.
Her companions had left the table. The room was empty and had the dejected look one associated with the morning after a party. For the first time, she noticed the walls. They were covered with tapestries that were decorated with images of food and revelry. Mindy pushed her chair back in, straightened her place and was startled to see August standing behind her.
“Made some stuffed crab pastries,” he offered. “Want to try one?”
“Sure,” she decided, and she followed the fat chef back into his kitchen.
August proved to be a charming host in his own turf. His kitchen was gleaming and obviously well-used. The chef grabbed a well-padded stool with clear indentations on it (Aunt Randy's?) and offered it to her. Adjusting her robe, she daintily scooted it under her shapely rump. A silver platter full of pastries slid across the counter toward her.
“Asked your sister and cousin if they wanted to join me, but they begged off,” the chef said. “They both overdid it on their first meal.” Mindy lifted her first piece of pastry. It was delicate and rich, practically dissolving in her mouth. She made a little moan of appreciation and quickly took a second. These could be highly addictive, she thought. “This race isn't going to be won by sprinters,” August said. “Take your time and enjoy.”
He then told her about his time as chef for Aunt Miranda. “She, too, believed that eating should be savored,” he said. “Though there were times, I must admit, when she wasn't so restrained. She loved beef stroganoff, for example, and could never hold back when I served it.”
“I'd be that way with lasagna,” Mindy told him, and she could see the information register.
As the afternoon progressed, she polished off two plates worth of pastry, August happily nodding with every bite. Each little helping was loaded with calories, but they were like eating air. When it came time for dinner, Mindy still had room for four full courses.
She retired early that night and lay in bed, watching television. Next morning, she awoke feeling refreshed and optimistic. First order of the day was to hit the pool and work up an appetite. That didn't take much effort; by the time she climbed out of the pool, Mindy was famished. She ate a hearty meal of pancakes and eggs, with English muffins and cream cheese on the side.
From there, Mindy headed for the library and grabbed a Danielle Steele. She returned to the pool and fell back on a chaise lounge. In the interim, August had set out two coffee pots and a fruit plate. She took a cup of decaf, added whole cream and sugar, then cracked open her book. The fruit, she discovered, was glazed with sugar.
She ate a light lunch, then joined August in the kitchen. As before, her time with the chef did not put a damper on her dinner performance. After supper, she played a game of Scrabble with Cheryl, then went to bed with Leno on the tube.
So went her first week at Chez Carmall. While Mindy was eating more than she used to, she by no means was pushing herself. Both Cheryl and Charlotte continued to outdo her at mealtimes, Charlie more than Cheryl. She barely saw her sister outside of the dining room, though at least her level of surliness had diminished. It helped, Mindy suspected, that a third party was there to temper things.
Mindy found herself spending a lot of evening time with Cheryl. In a way, she was like the sister Charlotte no longer seemed to want to be. As they snacked and chatted happily, Mindy soon grew accustomed to the house's schedule. Their time spent in Aunt Miranda's estate had quickly become, as Cheryl had noted, an extended vacation.
The tenth night of their stay, Mindy's attitude did a 180.
August served lasagna for dinner.
The moment was inevitable, but the intensity of her response surprised her. Soon as she entered the dining room and caught the scent, a feeling of hunger waved through her like nothing she'd ever known before. Rushing over to the table, Mindy sat and cut herself a slice twice the size of either Cheryl or Charlie's and quickly dug into it. Eating it so rapidly her stomach barely had time to register what it was receiving, she cut a second serving of equal measure. Everybody else at the table stopped eating and watched her.
“Bravo!” Cheryl said, as Mindy grabbed a slice of sweet Italian bread to mop up her tomato sauce. Even Charlotte seemed impressed, smiling at her sister for the first time since they'd arrived at the estate.
Though she felt pleasantly full, Mindy knew what she needed to do. Cutting a third slice, she placed it on her plate and started stuffing forkfuls into her mouth. The lasagna was starting to lose its allure, but that was no longer the point. She forced her serving down, and then compounded it by ordering seconds on dessert.
Charlie smiled at her sister, and it was almost like they were kids again.
That night, Mindy went to bed stuffed past capacity for the first time. She couldn't even sit up straight - her bloated belly ached when she tried. All she could do was lie on her back, TV nattering senselessly as she savored the memory of her meal. She fell asleep in her robe, only to wake up in the middle of the night, craving a midnight snack.
When she made her way into the kitchen, three large cream puffs were on the counter waiting for her. Grabbing a carton of chocolate milk, Mindy sat on her stool and picked up the first. Had August been setting out these treats nightly for them, and, if so, was she the first to discover them?
She didn't know, but to play it safe, Mindy decided to leave the remaining pair for Cheryl and Charlotte. Biting into her offering, savoring the mix of whipped cream, chocolate sauce and custard, however, she found herself re-experiencing the same sense of uncontrolled hunger she'd felt at dinner. In no time at all, the cream puff was gone, and she was gobbling down a second. And a third. Three helpings of lasagna, she remembered thinking at one point, equals three cream puffs.
When she finished, she couldn't believe what she'd done. Returning to bed, she collapsed on her back and slept until breakfast. Showering, she pulled on her robe and stumbled into the pool area. Stepping on the scale for the first time since her weigh-in, she read the figure on the digital dial: 147. In ten days, she'd managed to put on fourteen pounds.
It hardly seemed possible. Yesterday had been the only time Mindy had really pigged out, yet if you believed the scale, she'd averaged a gain of nearly one-and-a-half pounds daily. Those afternoons with August were deceptive, she realized. Grazing nonstop, she'd been feeding herself more than she knew.
Grabbing the measuring sash, Mindy did a quick tallying of her figure. Her breasts and hips were their standard measure, she saw: 35 inches on top, 34 on bottom. Where she'd added extra flesh was in her middle. What had been a thirty-inch waist was now thirty-one.
She was so stunned by the realization that she couldn't leave the pool area. Fourteen pounds in ten days - her weight hadn't varied by fourteen pounds at any other time in her adult life. Mindy sat on the edge of the pool and stared at the blue. She hadn't, she realized, swum in it since her first morning there.
Did she really have it in her to go through with this crazy competition? Maybe she should say to hell with it before she went too far.
“You look thoughtful,” a voice by her side suddenly said. Mindy looked up to see Clay Betterswane. Self-consciously, she pulled her robe together and rose.
“Just wondering if I should give this up,” Mindy said. “Let either Cheryl or my sister get the inheritance. I'm having a bad case of the second guesses.”
“August told me he'd served your favorite meal last night,” Betterswane offered, showing his slightly crooked teeth. “No need to feel bad about appreciating what's been served to you.”
“I guess the reality of what we're doing only just hit me.”
“I understand,” Betterswane said, and he took hold of her nearest hand. “Whatever you decide, it's okay. But from what August tells me, it'd be a shame to deny your appetite once you've finally opened yourself to it.”
What was he trying to tell her? Looking up into the lawyer's eyes, Mindy felt her spirits lifting. A sense of longing almost adolescent in its intensity struck her. The stuffed feeling in her belly melted.
“You're a lovely woman,” Betterswane told her, “but I think you'd be even lovelier if you saw this through to the end.”
“You flirting with me, Mr. Betterswane?”
“Just telling the truth,” he answered. “And maybe doing a little cheerleading.” He led her into the dining room, where the rest of the group was still at breakfast. “Sure you don't want a little something to break the night's fast?” he said.
Amazingly, Mindy found she did. Pulling up her usual chair, she sat down to breakfast. Under the watchful eye of the family and Clay Betterswane, she ate twice her usual a.m. fare, then returned to the pool to nap.
So much for her crisis of will. . .
From that day forward, Mindy ceased being tentative about her eating. She approached each meal with gusto, and the rest of the day as opportunity for snacking. Every night, she went to bed stuffed past repletion - and woke several hours later, eager for a late-night trip to the kitchen. There was always something waiting.
As if to reinforce her new resolve, her body started seriously gaining weight.
She took to weighing herself weekly. By month's end, she was already up to 185 pounds, a plumper version of her shapely self. Her belly continued to be prime repository of her extra weight, but by now both her 38-inch breasts and hips couldn't help but benefit from her bingeing. Catch Mindy from the neck up, she could easily be mistaken for her sister. Her face had lost its former girlishness in favor of a well-rounded womanliness. When she looked down, her chin became two.
As for Charlotte herself: while she by no means matched Mindy's gain, she'd put on enough to make Mindy's twenty-five pound lead uncertain. At 310, she looked happier than she'd ever been before, a jovial fat woman whose laugh reminded Mindy more and more of Aunt Miranda.
Cheryl's gain was less apparent than the sisters', a mere eighteen pounds. But, as expected, the extra weight looked good on her. Her face lost its stress lines, and her frame became more sensual. Unlike Mindy and Charlie, her new weight was primarily affixing on the lower half of her body.
That look appeared to be genetic, for when Cheryl's daughter Tracy showed up for a weekend visit, she turned out to be a heavy-hipped coed, the kind of girl who never seemed to lose their baby fat. She watched her mother's weekend meals with amazement and dismay - and never returned for another visit. Perhaps she was worried that her mother's eating habits were contagious.
Their dinners, in particular, became a longer and longer affair, as all three women's capacities grew. They'd sit at the dining room table, barely speaking, and avidly dig into their respective meals. Mark ceased coaxing his wife to eat; he'd just sit and watch the display before him with a rapturous look on his face.
One night, Charlotte looked up from her second helping of fettucine alfredo and asked Cheryl across the table, “What was your joke?”
Cheryl looked confused: they'd been concentrating on their meals so intently that spoken words almost seemed alien. “What?” she asked, her mouth full of stuffed mushroom.
“Your joke, the one that got you on Aunt Miranda's blimp list. Do you remember what it was?”
The single mother put her fork down, then nodded. “I do,” she told the group. “My family came to visit one summer. Most of the family did at one time or the other, you know, because her place was so convenient. Second day of our vacation, we went to Sea World. I bought some postcards of Shamu the whale and wrote Aunt Randy's name on one. Being a kid, I left it out on top of the dresser.”
“And Aunt Randy found it?” Mindy completed, momentarily forgetting her meal.
“She showed it to my father, who gave me the worst whipping of my life,” Cheryl finished. “The thing is: back home, he made jokes about Aunt Miranda all the time. I thought he'd think it was funny.”
“Obviously, he didn't,” Charlie observed.
“He might have in a different venue,” Cheryl said ruefully. “No one laughed at put-down jokes louder than Dad.” She cut into another large mushroom, then asked, “How about you?”
“Pretty much the same story,” Mindy said, and she launched into their Aunt Randy tale.
“Similar story, same finish,” Cheryl said when Mindy was done. “Hardly seems like enough to pin a will on. But I guess Aunt Randy had her reasons.”
“Revenge,” Charlie said, slathering a slice of French bread with butter. “It's as simple as that.”
It didn't seem that clear-cut to Mindy. After all, she was enjoying her time in the house, as were the others. None of them expressed a desire to leave the estate, go into town or wander very far from the property. It was as if they were building a world away from the mundane, fat-bashing one they'd all inhabited.
As icing on the cake, Mindy's relationship with her sister had finally improved. The tension between the two of them had evaporated, replaced by a teasing competition over who could gain the most weight in a week's time.
“I'm fat already,” Charlie would say with an exaggerated Southern twang, “you're still just a skinny thang. Pretty soon, I'll be passing you by. . .”
The whole next month, in fact, it looked as if she was right. Though her capacity continued to expand, Mindy's body seemed to be slowing down when it came to holding onto it all. When all three of them did their weigh-in at month's end, she'd only added thirty pounds to her body. It put her over the seventy-five pound mark, but still not in a clear-cut lead - her sister had gained thirty-three pounds.
At 218, Mindy was on the lower edge of mid-sized: distinctly double-chinned now with a 41-inch belly that was close to rivaling her hip measurements. It didn't just round out; when she sat, it started to bulge over. Beneath her robe, she felt it press against the tops of her thighs, and it was almost like the first teasing touch of a lover.
She hadn't expected this: to start to find her own growing body more erotic. But perhaps it made sense. Outside of an irregular flirtatious exchange with Betterswane, her sex life was nil. As she focused more of her life on eating and gaining weight, her sexual energies had to go somewhere. She'd lie in bed with visions of meals that were bigger than she could eat in a lifetime, and she'd grow aroused to the point of release.
To find a way to accelerate things, Mindy searched the library. She found a shelf of books devoted to herbal medicine: native medicines designed to enhance your appetite, improve digestion or make metabolism more efficient so that more calories stuck around. Saw palmetto, Swedish bitters, vitamin B and wheat germ - and even more that were totally unfamiliar to her: she put together a shopping list for August and took each item religiously. Perhaps it was all a panacea, but, if so, it was a successful one.
Her weight once more blossomed.
Mindy started clocking gains of two pounds a day, more on those nights when August served lasagna. By the end of their third month, she was up to her sister's starting weight, practically double her old size. Her body had added pounds all over, but the main repository remained her waistline, which had passed the 45-inch mark.
Clay Betterswane had taken to showing up weekly, usually just after the three women weighed themselves. He never asked their weight, but, somehow, it always came up. Whenever he heard Mindy's new size, he'd smile at her, showing those winsomely crooked teeth. That look alone was enough to make Mindy wish the contest never ended.
Her between meal snacking seemed to be evolving, ebbing and increasing so that midpoint between regular meals she was eating so fast and furiously that August had to prepare extra food ahead of time. There were very few waking moments when she didn't have something edible in hand - or at least was thinking about grabbing something edible.
Mindy had also become a voracious reader. Thanks to Aunt Randy's library, there was a wealth of literature for Mindy to explore. She'd run through all the Danielle Steeles, but there were plenty of other writings for her. A book-stand set by her plate, she devoured the library's offerings almost as intensely as her meals. It was as if her capacity for knowledge was growing to match her developing body.
By their four-month weigh-in, Mindy was within passing distance of her sister. Her two pound daily gain had, amazingly, continued unabated. She shot over the 300 pound mark, while her sister still hung in the mid-300's. As she got closer to Charlie, it almost seemed as if her sister was hanging back, as if she too were looking forward to the day they'd both be twin weights. Neither one of them could have said why this was suddenly so important - the contest wasn't about equaling each other's size, after all - but it just was.
The moment occurred happened near the end of their fifth month. Mindy had continued at her current pace; it had paid off in an additional seventy-two pounds. When the sisters hit the scale, they found they were within a pound of each other: 425 to 6 pounds, give or take some water weight.
They stared at each other, two fat women in brightly colored robes and sandals, and it was as if they were united in a way that transcended even the bonds of love. When Mindy looked at Charlie, she saw herself - and vice-versa. Because there were no visible full-length mirrors, there were parts of herself that had grown out of Mindy's sight. She relied on her sister's body to get a sense of the way she looked.
They'd grown near the end of their robes' capacity. Every major measurement was in the mid-fifties with one exception: Mindy's belly was encroaching the sixty-five inch mark. Seated at the dinner table, it gapped at the front of her robe whenever she reached for another helping. Hanging ahead of her, it was an even stronger sexual presence, a lover pushing against her womanhood.
“You know,” Charlie said. “We could stop now, if we chose. You've clearly got the contest won and met all the conditions weeks ago. What do you think?”
Mindy stood by the scale and considered this. What would stopping mean? Cutting back on her current dietary regimen? The thought of doing that was unaccountably distressing. “The year's not over,” she decided. “I'm going to take full advantage of it.”
Charlie nodded, unsurprised by Mindy's decision.
With Mark and Cheryl acting as August's aides and servers, they continued to dine their days away. It didn't take long for Charlie to match Mindy's levels of gluttony - perhaps some part of her had been holding back all along - so it was a good thing August had the help. By the half year mark, the two women were eating five meals daily and snacking in between.
It was then that they heard about absent Cousin Dexter. His attempt, Betterswane reported, at challenging Aunt Miranda's will had been unsuccessful. To be honest, they'd all but forgotten him: in the Carmall house, all that mattered was sociability and feasting.
Their gains slowed but remained inexorable. Mid-year saw them at 463, near physical copies of Aunt Randy. They shifted to muumuus with new versions of the ever-present measuring sashes. Two large lounge chairs were moved from the library into the dining room, and they spent most of their time in them.
At their current size, it was easier to just sit and let it all be brought to them. Mindy's waist was now greater than her standing height of 5'9”. Seated in her taut muumuu, her belly hung between her outstretched legs, cooled by a fan aimed towards her massive bare legs. By day's end, they'd both slowly make their way to their respective bedrooms.
From the sounds coming through the wall, Mark was obviously enjoying his wife's new size. Mindy would listen to the two of them, thinking of Betterswane as she caressed her enormous forefront. She was no longer waking up hungry at night, at least.
The rest of their year was a blur of endless meals. Gorging had become so second nature that neither woman could imagine not doing it. Charlie's slight lag put her about fifteen pounds behind her sister, but at that size, it was barely noticeable. They ceased their weekly weigh-ins and concentrated thoroughly on bingeing for the big day. When time for the annual weigh-in came, they both had to be helped to the scale. Mindy's final tally: 642 pounds, twenty-eight pounds more than her sister. Over the course of a year, she'd gained more than five hundred pounds.
In terms of the contest, this made her the winner by about 150 pounds: the old distance in weight between her and Charlotte.
”You two have been amazing,” Betterswane told them once the results had been tallied. Off to the side, the 290 pound Cheryl was beaming; in the last six months, a relationship between her and August had developed that was fun to watch. Though she'd given up competing with the sisters months ago, it was clear she'd developed a love of good eating that showed up on her 48-inch hips and thighs. “You've met the first terms of the will; the rest is down hill.” He smiled at Mindy, and, as usual, she melted.
“So now we have a year to keep our girlish figures,” Mindy said. “Long enough to establish this size as our set weight.”
“From what I've seen, Mindy,” Clay answered, “you should do fine. No constraints on your sister, of course, if she wants to lose some of her weight. But the will is very specific: the winner must not dip below her winning weight at any time during the year.”
“No more low-cal dieting for me,” Charlie told the lawyer. “The weight never stays lost long, anyway.” Mark grinned happily, then patted his wife on a cushiony shoulder.
“Well,” Mindy decided, “if I can't lose anything, I'd better give myself some breathing room.” The lawyer nodded knowingly.
And so, Mindy continued with her current course of eating. Off to the side, Charlie started slowly decreasing her intake, sending the leftovers to her sister across the table. Mindy was so focused on her own plates that she never even noticed. Within weeks, she was eating more than half of Charlie's servings.
A month of this put thirty-seven more pounds on her form. The terms of the will clearly met, Mindy finally began to consider slowing down. But where Charlie had experience in the area of self-denial, she was a complete novice. After more than a year of overfeeding her appetite's every whim, even the thought of denial was appalling.
Mindy tried to do it slowly, turning down that fourth piece of cake, say. But soon as she did it, she'd hear herself changing her mind out loud. It wasn't in her to say “No” for very long, simply because she knew how good “Yes” could be. As the weeks passed, she continued to dine and gain.
For the first time since she'd started really eating, Mindy began to worry. It was obvious what had happened: in working so hard to meet the terms of Aunt Miranda's will, she'd become hooked on gluttony. Her mocking words about Aunt Randy came back to her: “I bet she eats all the time!”
Perhaps the answer was to sever things more distinctly. On the start of her fourteenth month, Mindy announced that they were no longer going to have more than three meals in the house: the extra two would be cut off, effective that day.
That one lasted all of twenty minutes. For as the morning brunch hour approached, her belly began to anticipate its next meal. When nothing appeared in the dining room, a sense of profound agitation overcame her; fifteen minutes in, and her stomach was practically crying out in pain for something to eat! As soon as the words, “I'm starved!” left Mindy's lips, August, Cheryl and Mark were rolling trays of mid-morning meal into the room.
Her sister watched her gormandising with a sense of amused detachment. By sixteen months, Mindy was eating their year-end intake combined - and doing it without breaking a sweat. She'd stopped taking her nutritional supplements months ago, but her body wouldn't stop packing on the pounds. It seemed like she'd never plateau: every month saw her fatter and fatter.
In part, her continued growth was connected to her decreased mobility. Mindy was barely able to cross the dining room without losing her breath, so the only muscles to get much work-out were her jaw and arms. Surrounded by her encouraging family members, she was rarely at a loss for something to eat or the desire to eat it.
Inevitably, she gave up trying to fight her appetite. All she was doing was making herself miserable. She'd see things through to year's end and worry about stopping then.
If she wanted to stop.
Clay Betterswane took to coming by nightly, a five box of candy in his hands. He was a charming guest, even without the candy. The handsome young lawyer was clearly enthralled by the sight of her eating, and she was happy to oblige him. Whenever he was around she wanted to feed herself even more.
By the end of her second year, she could barely remember her earlier life.
“You ready?” Betterswane asked, gesturing to the super-sized motorized wheelchair that had been her prime mode of transport for the past four months. Mindy finished her final platter of butter-soaked pancakes and nodded with her mouth full. Already, she was anticipating brunch. She straightened her voluminous muumuu then clasped both armrests, the rolls at her wrists flowing against the back of her hands.
“You've never looked lovelier,” he said, as she hesitantly stood before him, then dropped heavily onto her wheelchair. As she did, her body jiggled all around her. She wished she could get this over quickly so she could go back to feeding, but she suspected this was not to be. “Let's check the final tally, shall we?”
Subtracting chair weight, the end result was impressive: 1278 pounds, twice her sister's weight. Mindy had grabbed the mantle of Fattest in the Family with a vengeance. A feeling of completeness came over her that she'd never known before. Looking into the lawyer's eyes, Mindy smiled and said, “Now that the contest is over, I'd like to see more of you.”
“Easily done,” Betterswane answered. “Assuming you still want to talk to me after this last bit of business.” He clapped his hands, and a host of people entered the room.
It was a group of men and women, all of them fat - close to Cheryl and Charlie's weights, but small potatoes compared to Mindy. Amiably talking among themselves, they marched up to Betterswane.
“Would like to introduce you to some friends of your Aunt,” the lawyer said, as the first member of the group, a short brunette who weighed in excess of 400 pounds, waddled up to Mindy. She smiled, almost apologetically, then said, “You look like a big 'un. What'd you do? Swallow a bus?”
The group behind her started to chuckle, then a second member took the first woman's place. It was a rotund gentleman in his fifties, and the look he gave her was a combination of admiration and lust.
“How's it feel to be so fat?” he asked. “To know that when you ask what time it is, not all of you's in the same time zone!” He stepped back, gestured to another group member, a mid-sized teen-aged girl who vaguely reminded Mindy of Cheryl's daughter. Quickly, she pulled out a note card and haltingly read her joke: it was much pretty much like the others.
Mindy sat and quietly took it all. Secure within her armor of avoirdupois, she felt immune to every bad joke. She'd worked hard to get to be the size she was; she wasn't ashamed of it. Each lame one-liner was like a commercial for a product you had no intention of buying - it barely registered on her consciousness.
When they finished, the group reassembled by the door. Mindy looked at them all from behind her spreading forefront and smiled, deepening her dimpled cheeks. “I appreciate what you've done,” she told them. “You've taken away any sense of guilt I might have had about my childish joke.” The fat crowd nodded happily, and with that, Clay Betterswane pulled a cord that dropped every tapestry in the dining room.
The uncovered walls were floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Getting full-view of herself for the first time, Mindy saw an elephantine woman, wider than her sitting height.
Her hair was long and straight, with utilitarian bangs framing the top of her face, a series of chins flattening and widening against the top of her chest. Between these and her tremulous jowls was a face that testified to gluttonous excess: great pursing lips, nose squashed between her bulbous cheeks, eyes peering across the crest of those self-same cheeks with a look of overfed contentment. Her face was placidly beautiful in a way she never could have foreseen. She licked her swollen lips thoughtfully, then continued her examination of herself.
Immediately beneath her compressed chins were her voluminous breasts, both spreading atop her paunch beyond the reach of her fingertips, quivering gelatinously with every heavy breath she took. Her dress was cut to show her yard deep cleavage, her pale white flesh lined with signs of growth and gravity. Settled atop her ballooning paunch, they looked larger than life until you saw the base they were resting on.
Her belly: so overwhelmingly huge that even the word “belly” seemed inappropriately diminishing. It swelled before her grandiosely, pushing between her legs, its magnificent overhang visible beneath the clinging fabric of her dress. Depending on how she sat, it hung as one or two distinct bulges. If she leaned too far forward in her chair, it touched the wheelchair foot rests, covering the tops of her feet in the process.
This was the paunch that called for Cheryl's whale joke. It took more than a pillow - more than a whole beanbag chair - to imitate this! It burgeoned ahead of her in a trio of folds barely visible as dark lined through the translucent fabric of her dress. Out of reach, her navel hung lower than her heavily dimpled knees, a deep and mysterious shadow radiating behind her dress' white cloth.
When she moved even the slightest, this monumental testament to appetite started wavering with a life of its own. She watched it quaver in the mirrors. Where most women would have been appalled at the sight of it, she saw her Brobdinagian forefront as symbol of a job well done. Though there probably were bodies larger than hers in the world, she doubted that any of them had grown so large so quickly. If asked when this began if she saw herself gaining this much weight, she would have said it was impossible.
Yet here she was: so fat that even the act of rising from her chair took prodigious effort, so gluttonous that she was incapable of going even a short period without craving something tasty. In two short years, she'd made herself like this - and couldn't see herself living any other way. Eating had become her foremost means of expressing herself; building her elephantine form had been the first real accomplishment of her life.
Fortunately, she now had the resources to feed herself indefinitely.
Idly raising a hand, smiling as her upper arm shifted, Mindy fanned herself and said, “Woo, such a big girl! No skinny little thang here!” Charlotte laughed and clapped her hands.
“Got two more folks who want to say something to you,” Betterswane said. Charlotte and Cheryl stepped forward.
Her bottom-heavy cousin went first. Dressed in cook's white, an outfit that her fiance August had bought for her, she waddled up to Mindy and did an exaggerated curtsey. At 398 pounds, her sixty-eight-inch hips accentuated the move. “The last two years have been wonderful,” she said, “and I hope August and I can continue to work in your kitchen.”
“Stay as long as you wish,” Mindy told her. “You don't have to work to remain here, though.”
“You were the first to discover August's kitchen,” Cheryl said, “but over the last year I've learned to love it, too. Wherever my husband is cooking, I want to be.” She stepped back to make way for Charlotte.
Her sister had taken to getting around with a cane, but this by no means detracted from her matronly beauty. Her weight stabilized at the size Mindy had been only a year before; she was red-faced from the exertion of walking up to her sister.
Taking a breath, she said, “I'm proud of you, Sis. All your life you seemed to take things way too easy, but not this time. You really worked to get where you are.”
“I had your help,” Mindy said, thinking back to all the time they'd spent eating together, her mouth watering with the memory.
“It has been fun, hasn't it?” Charlie agreed.
“It doesn't have to end,” Mindy said. “You and Mark can stay here as long as you wish, too.”
“We hadn't thought much beyond this day,” Charlie said. “We'd like to stay for a while at least.” Behind her, Mark nodded in agreement. Then the two of them joined August and Cheryl by the kitchen doors. Pushing the swinging doors open, they showed row upon row of packed food carts. In the kitchen, an army of extra help was putting the finishing touches on the feast.
“Well,” Betterswane asked the mistress of Carmall house. “Anything to add?
She looked over at him, anticipating the time they'd be spending together. Then she smiled, gesturing both guests and food carts in the direction of the dining table.
“Sure,” Mindy shouted. “Let's eat!”
Copyright (c) 1997 - OakHaus Designs
