Turn 11 of 21
Order even more food and see if I can hit 220 by Monday. I hit 235. Slob behavior increases further. I burp, fart, and piss wherever and whenever I like. I leave shit stains on the couch. Be continuously high, drunk and stuffed with food. Next Saturday, I get a surprise permanent roommate, my 36-year old mom Lexi
Lena orders everything. The delivery apps have her saved addresses and payment memorized at this point — she doesn't even scroll, just taps the reorder button on her last five orders and adds three more for good measure. Chinese, barbecue, pizza, Thai, a sandwich platter from the deli, two cases of beer, and a bulk order of edibles from the dispensary that the driver leaves at the door without knocking anymore. She carries the bags to the couch in trips, her belly swaying with each step, her thighs rubbing together with a warm, sticky friction, and by the time everything is arranged on the coffee table and the kitchen counter and the floor the apartment looks like a warehouse exploded. She eats. She smokes. She drinks. She doesn't sleep so much as she passes out and wakes up and eats again, and the scale climbs — 215 Friday night, 219 Saturday morning, and she keeps going, pushing food into herself with the focused determination of someone who has found their calling.
By Sunday night she weighs 224 and the wish is working overtime. Her belly has become something architectural — a broad, heavy dome that rests on her thighs when she sits and hangs low and round when she stands, the skin warm and taut, stretch marks creeping along the underside like rivers on a map. Her breasts are enormous now, each one wider than her spread hand, heavy and pendulous, resting against the upper curve of her belly when she slouches. Her ass has expanded into a vast, dimpled shelf that overflows the couch cushions on both sides and leaves a permanent impression in the leather. She catches herself in the bathroom mirror and the body there is a monument to the wish — hairier, greasier, wider, the red hair matted into thick ropes, body hair coarse and dark across her underarms and legs and belly and the trail below her navel, the skin beneath streaked with food stains and dried sweat and the faint yellow residue of urine that she doesn't wash off because washing would mean standing up and standing up means stopping.
The slob behavior has crossed every line she used to have. She burps without thinking — deep, wet, resonant belches that taste like whatever she ate last and spray fine mist across her own chin. She farts wherever she is, the long, low rumbles vibrating through the couch cushions or echoing off the bathroom tile, and the smell doesn't bother her anymore — it is part of the atmosphere, part of the warmth, part of the comfort. She pisses herself without pausing whatever she's doing, the warm flood pooling beneath her on the leather and soaking into the cushions that are already dark and sour with it. And the shit stains — those start on Saturday when she doesn't quite make it to the bathroom after a massive dump and doesn't bother cleaning up afterward, and by Sunday there are brown smears on the couch cushions and the inside of her thighs and she looks at them and feels the warm voice hum with approval and doesn't even consider being ashamed.
Monday arrives and she weighs 228. She works through it — meetings and emails and reports, all from the couch, all while naked and high and full, her belly resting on her laptop, her fingers greasy on the keyboard. The team she's supposed to be managing doesn't seem to notice anything wrong. Her numbers are impeccable. Her feedback is sharp. She farts during a one-on-one with a direct report and covers it with a cough and the direct report doesn't say a word. By Wednesday she is 231. By Thursday, 233. The food deliveries never stop. The beer never runs out. The weed hums through her bloodstream like a second heartbeat and the warmth in her body is constant now, a low, persistent glow that pulses in her belly and her breasts and her thighs, adding layer after layer of soft, heavy comfort. Friday evening she steps on the scale and the number reads 235 and she stares at it and her whole body flushes with heat — ninety pounds in three weeks, and the wish is not slowing down.
Saturday morning she is woken by a knock at the door. Not the tentative knock of a delivery driver — three firm, deliberate raps, the kind that carry authority. She groans and rolls sideways on the couch, her belly sloshing against the cushions, and pulls a stained blanket over herself and shuffles to the door. She opens it a crack and the woman on the other side is her mother — Lexi Park, thirty-six years old, her red hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, wearing a fitted blazer and carrying a suitcase. Lexi's eyes travel from Lena's greasy matted hair to her food-stained shoulders to the blanket barely covering her enormous body and the expression on her face moves through surprise and confusion and settles on something careful and controlled. She opens her mouth and closes it and opens it again.
"Lena?" Her voice is quiet. "I called. I texted. You didn't answer, so I — I'm staying. I'm staying here until I understand what's happening to you."