Turn 10 of 228
Take a deep breath and relax on the floor. Start an OnlyFans and post my photos. On Monday morning, eat more than usual again, farts and burps more frequent and louder. Don't shower, shave, brush teeth or wipe after using washroom. Wear smallest and tightest clothes to work, still barefoot. Outperform everyone at work.
Lena lies on the floor for a long time after she wakes, staring at the ceiling, feeling the cool hardwood against her bare back and the warm weight of her belly rising and falling with each breath. The balcony door is still open and the evening air moves across her skin in a slow current. She lifts her phone and scrolls back to the favorite photo — herself on the couch, covered in crumbs, belly full and proud — and stares at it. Then she opens a browser tab and types "onlyfans.com" into the address bar.
The signup process takes twenty minutes. She uses a username that doesn't include her real name, uploads the couch photo as her first post, and adds a simple caption: "237 and growing." She queues the rest of the photos behind it — the mirror shots, the scale, the balcony, the bodega bikini series — and sets a subscription price low enough that it doesn't matter. What matters is the posting. What matters is the fact that somewhere out there, strangers will see her body and know what it's becoming. She hits publish on the first three photos and closes the app and feels a pulse of heat move through her that has nothing to do with the warm air from the balcony.
She sleeps on the floor again, naked, and when she wakes on Monday morning her body has changed overnight. The gain is visible everywhere — her breasts heavier and wider against her arms when she rolls over, her belly deeper, the curve of it pressing further into the space between her thighs. She stands and walks to the kitchen and feels her thighs rub together with a thick, soft sound that's louder than it was yesterday. She opens the refrigerator and pulls out the leftover cupcakes and the second pint of ice cream and eats them standing at the counter, naked, not bothering with a spoon. The ice cream melts on her fingers and she licks it off and her stomach gurgles loudly, a long rumble that builds until she belches — a deep, resonant sound that bounces off the kitchen tile.
She doesn't shower. She doesn't brush her teeth. She doesn't shave the dark stubble that's growing on her legs and under her arms. She uses the bathroom and doesn't wipe afterward, just pulls up whatever she's going to wear. She finds a pair of black leggings in the back of a drawer — the last clean bottoms she owns — and pulls them up over her hips. They're a size small and the fabric stretches until it's nearly transparent across her backside, the seams creaking at the outer thighs. She finds a white t-shirt that used to be oversized and now clings to every curve, the hem riding up to expose the lowest curve of her belly. No bra. No underwear. No shoes. She walks out of her apartment barefoot, feeling the hallway carpet under her feet, and takes the bus to work with her belly pressing against the hem of a shirt that can't contain it.
At the office, people notice. She can see it in the quick glances and the deliberate non-looking and the way her coworker Marcus's eyes travel from her bare feet up her thick calves to the tight leggings to the strip of bare belly between the shirt and the waistband. She sits at her desk and her body spreads across the chair, hips pressing against the armrests, belly resting on her thighs. She farts loudly during the morning standup — a long, low sound that fills the silence after her project update — and she doesn't apologize or acknowledge it. She burps into her hand while reviewing a spreadsheet, and then drops her hand and burps openly a minute later. She eats two breakfast sandwiches and a bag of chips at her desk, crumbs falling onto her belly and the chair, and she doesn't clean them up. By 3 PM she's closed three tickets more than anyone else on the team and sent the cleanest Q3 report draft her manager has seen all quarter.
Her manager, Diane, stops by her desk at 4:30. She looks at Lena's bare feet under the chair, the tight shirt, the strip of belly, and opens her mouth. Then she closes it.
"The report is excellent," she says. "Send it to the client as-is." She walks away and Lena leans back in her chair, which groans under the shift of her weight, and she feels a slow, warm satisfaction spreading through her that has nothing to do with the report.