Turn 7 of 226

Go to work in the same crop top and shorts I wore to work earlier. Start eating like a slob and don't hold back my burps and farts, I have a private office. I love farting and burping freely. I put in my best work performance as well. I still haven't showered or brushed my teeth

The alarm pulls Lena out of a sleep so deep it feels geological. She is face-down on the carpet, her belly pressed flat beneath her, and when she pushes herself up the peeling of her skin from the floor makes a sound like tape. Four days of sweat have turned her into something primal — her hair matted, her skin filmed with salt, her teeth furred over. She stands in the bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror and the word that comes to mind is not disgust. It is *real*. She looks real. She looks like an animal that has stopped pretending.

The crop top is worse today. She pulls it over her head and the fabric catches on her chest, stretches tight enough that the threading along the seams is visible, the black cotton strained to translucence over her breasts. The shorts require a shimmy and a tug and a full minute of wrestling, and when they are on they cut so deep into the soft flesh of her hips that her belly hangs completely over the waistband, the underside of it bare and flushed from the elastic digging in. She has no shoes. She does not care. She walks to work barefoot on the pavement and feels every crack and pebble with her soles, and the sun on her exposed belly is warm and good.

Her office is small and private — four walls, a door that closes, a window facing the parking lot. She sits down and the shorts ride up until they are essentially a thong and the crop top rides down until it is essentially a bra and her belly rests on her thighs, heavy and warm. She logs in, opens her dashboard, and starts working. The focus comes easily. Her fingers move fast, her mind sharp and clear, and she closes three tickets before ten o'clock and drafts a report that her supervisor will love. She is good at this job and she is doing it well and the fact that she smells like a locker room does not change that.

The gas starts mid-morning. A burp rises from somewhere deep in her stomach, loud and unapologetic, and she lets it go without thinking. The sound fills the small office — a full, resonant belch that she would have died of embarrassment over a week ago. Now it just feels like relief. Like her body doing what bodies do. She shifts in her chair and a fart follows, low and long, and the warmth of it spreads against the chair's fabric. She laughs. The freedom of it is genuinely intoxicating — sitting in her private office, belly out, gas flowing, and her work output better than it has been in months.

By lunch the pattern is set. She has ordered delivery to the office — a large combo meal, extra sides — and she eats at her desk with her door closed, tearing into food with her fingers, grease on her chin, belching between bites. The food lands in her stomach and the gas follows like a machine, efficient and constant. She burps and farts and eats and types and the quality of her work does not dip. She finishes the quarterly summary ahead of schedule and sends it to her manager, then leans back in her chair with her belly fully exposed, her hands resting on it, and lets out a long, low fart that vibrates against the seat. The warmth pulses. Everything is exactly as it should be.

Diane knocks on her door at four-fifteen. Lena pulls her belly in — she cannot, there is too much of it — and says, "Come in."