Turn 86 of 226

Celebrate like an animal, eating, masturbating, pissing. I always moan out loud. Then go back to work to cover my weaknesses. I do in time for the next tournament. I also weigh and measure myself. I'm 7'11" and weigh 820 pounds

The celebration begins on the warehouse floor. The twenty thousand dollars sits in an envelope on the steel shelf and the envelope is paper and the paper is not the thing being celebrated. The thing being celebrated is the body. She goes to the floor on her hands and knees and the hands and knees are the animal's posture and the posture is the position the body defaults to now when the body wants to feel itself. The concrete is cold against her palms and the cold meets the heat of her skin and the meeting is the contrast that opens every sensation wider. She crawls to the food — the delivery she ordered with the burner phone, two hours ago, before the tournament, knowing she would win and the knowing is not arrogance. The knowing is the body's calendar. Four large meat platters. Six pounds of rice. A gallon of broth in a plastic jug.

She eats on the floor. She does not use the containers as bowls. She tips the meat platters directly onto the concrete and the meat and the sauce and the grease spread across the stone and the spreading is the meal claiming its space. She lowers her face to the food. Her hands grip the meat — whole short ribs, fat and gristle and bone — and her teeth tear the flesh from the bone and the tearing is the sound of the animal feeding and the sound echoes off the warehouse walls. The grease runs down her chin, down her neck, between her breasts. The rice she scoops in fistfuls and presses to her mouth and the rice falls from between her fingers and the falling is not waste. The falling is the animal's way and the animal does not account for crumbs. She eats the broth from the jug, tilting her head back, the liquid running down her throat and down her chest and the running is the body bathing in the meal and the bathing is the animal's celebration.

She moans. The moans come between bites — low, guttural, the sound of a body receiving what it needs. The sounds are not performed. The sounds are the throat's involuntary response to fullness and the fullness is pleasure and the pleasure is the wish's language. She farts and the fart is long and deep and the deep vibrates through her belly and the belly is distended and round against the concrete and the roundness is the food packing into her. She burps and the burp is loud enough to echo and the echo is the warehouse giving back what she puts into it. She does not stop eating. The containers empty. The concrete is stained with sauce and grease and the stains are the meal's record and the record is permanent.

Her hands find her body before the food is finished. The arousal is already there — the fullness triggering it, the warmth of the food in her belly radiating outward, the weight of the meal pressing against her insides. She grips the fat of her belly with both hands and the gripping is rough and the roughness sends the sensation through her in a wave. Her hips grind against the concrete and the grinding is friction and the friction is raw. She moans — louder now, the moan of the body opening — and the moan fills the warehouse and the warehouse holds it. She comes with a rib bone still in her teeth and the coming is the animal's peak and the peak is not quiet. The sound she makes is a sound the warehouse has heard before and will hear again and the hearing is the warehouse's function.

She does not stop. The first orgasm rolls into the second and the second is slower and deeper. Her hands move — belly, breasts, thighs, the space between her legs where the hair is dense and wet — and the moving is the animal's hands on the animal's body and the animal does not gentle. The third orgasm empties her and the emptying is the release and the release is total. She lies on the concrete, face up, arms spread, legs apart, the food stains on her skin and the grease on her chest and the puddle beneath her warm and spreading. She does not move. The body rests. The body is fed and spent and the spent is the celebration's shape.

The pressure builds while she lies there. The hydration and the broth and the gallon of water she drank after the tournament — the body processes it fast, the metabolism running furnace-hot. She does not stand. She does not move toward the drain. She releases where she is — on her back, legs apart — and the stream hits the concrete between her thighs and the sound is loud in the empty warehouse and the loud is the acoustics of stone. The warmth pools beneath her ass, spreads across the small of her back, runs down the crack of her hips. She moans. The moan is long and satisfied and the satisfaction is animal and the animal does not distinguish between the pleasure of eating and the pleasure of release and the pleasure of orgasm because the body does not separate them. The body wants and the body receives and the receiving is the wish fulfilled.

The measuring happens on a rest day, three weeks into the correction cycle. The warehouse has a steel measuring strip she bolted to the wall — industrial-grade, marked in inches, accurate to a sixteenth. She stands against it. The top of her head touches seven feet eleven inches. She steps back. The number is not a surprise. The number is the wish's trajectory and the trajectory is a curve that steepens. She was seven-nine four months ago. She was seven-seven six months ago. The growth is accelerating. The ceiling clearance is nine feet five inches now and the nine-five is tight enough that she feels it when she jumps for knee strikes and the feeling is the ceiling saying *here* and the *here* is a boundary that is approaching.

The scale is a freight scale borrowed from the loading dock two warehouses down. The scale reads to a thousand pounds. She steps on. The digital display climbs — 400, 500, 600, 700, 800 — and settles at 820. Eight hundred twenty pounds. The number is a number that does not belong to a human frame and the not-belonging is the point because the body does not belong to a human frame anymore. The body belongs to the wish and the wish is building something the world does not have a category for. She is eight hundred twenty pounds of fat and muscle and bone and hair and sweat and the combination is the animal's full size and the full size is not the final size because the wish does not stop.

The corrections take nine weeks. The calf vulnerability is the first — she drills check timing against simulated low kicks, conditioning the lead calf with controlled impact, rolling a ceramic insulator along the muscle to densify the tissue the way the shinbone densified. The check becomes automatic. The chained takedown defense becomes a flowing system — whizzer to underhook to frame to separation, four links, each one flowing into the next, the defense becoming offense when the frame creates the angle for the cross. The ground game expands — the triangle from mount is the third option and the kimura from side control is the fourth and the options multiply because the tape is watching and the watching means every weapon has a shelf life. She drills all four corrections to automatic. The legal pad entry on the final day is short. 'All three Apex 256 weaknesses closed. Ready.'