A Free Hit

[>_< 0_0]

It’s funny how what brings friends together sometimes pulls them apart, even simultaneously.

[swahilimonkfish]

1 hour ago, >_< 0_0 said:

It’s funny how what brings friends together sometimes pulls them apart, even simultaneously.

Yeah, relationships are rickety and complicated things, not the straight lines you hear about in the movies.

But if they were simple, our stories would be a lot more boring

[John Smith]

19 hours ago, swahilimonkfish said:

Yeah, relationships are rickety and complicated things, not the straight lines you hear about in the movies.

But if they were simple, our stories would be a lot more boring

That's why I like to read them.

[swahilimonkfish]

Hope this story is OK, it's very long now and I just hope I've not been wasting everyone's time by posting it

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 4

   Wiktoria and Rutherford had sat down resolutely on one sofa, sternly scowling and with their plump arms folded like disapproving parents, and Minnie and Leona sat on the other, sheepishly evading eye contact. They were like school kids in detention, with a restless nervous energy that manifested in fidgeting and twitching, and guilty expressions that they were desperately trying suppress. However, unlike school kids, one of them here was a teacher.

    “So, do you want to tell us, Leona, why Minnie Charnwood, nee Skinny, was in your bed this morning?” Rutherford asked faux-formerly. “And I only ask because, oh I don’t know, because what the actual fuck Leona!”

    The outburst initially unnerved them, it was a stark reminder that this wasn't just naughty in an oopsy-daisy kinda way, this could have ramifications for careers and for educations. Leona looked at Minnie resignedly and decided to fess up. This wasn’t how she planned on the girls opposite her finding out. In fact, she hadn’t really planned on them finding out at all. In fact in fact, she hadn’t really planned on there being anything to find out. But you know what they say about the best laid plans, and getting laid was the main item for today's inquest, so Leona decided to come clean.

    “So, you remember the broken cubicle door at the Chinese buffet?”

 

    And then she regaled them how the then 145lb Renaissance-style beauty dressed up in her fanciest attire with her most expensive jewellery made out with her utterly plastered 171lb student with Kung Pao stains on her mouth in the Chinese buffet loos, and then how making out lead to a little more. How it lead to wandering hands and wondering tongues. How it lead to quiet repressed groans as they travelled to Nirvana for a short stay. How alcohol and lust can negatively impact on your judgement.

    Well, she told half of it anyway. She may have omitted some minor details. Here and there. One or two. Just minor stuff. Minor stuff like, for example, she missed out the line “Fuck me like I’m American” and also the line “Fuck me like I’m Rutherford” and now you mention it, she may have omitted the line “Fuck me and think of Rutherford” and even the line “Fuck me like I’m 200lbs of all-American girl” come to think of it. Like I said, some minor details, that Leona thought would probably be the diplomatic thing to gloss over.

    “What! Before Christmas!” Wiktoria gasped.

    “Oh yeah, you two can talk. If I hadn’t seen you two at it, you probably would never have told us either” Minnie chimed in on the offensive, causing Wiktoria to glare at her girlfriend who had, herself, tried to conceal their own relationship.

    “Yeah, yeah, whatever, that was before Christmas. If you hooked up then, why are you still hooking up now, mid-February? Is this a thing? Because that is a whole world of inappropriate if this is a thing...” Rutherford said, eager for more details.

    “No, you’re right.” Leona again admitted. “Then, the next thing I need to tell you about was that Christmas day, when Minnie, like from a John LeCarre novel, came in from the cold.”

 

    And again, she embarked on detailing the narrative of how the emotionally contented and well-balanced 155lb responsible adult of great academic standing and prowess ended up screwing the 180lb hot mess teenager-student in emotional turmoil. How, whilst in an intermission of Dorito gorging and finger-food feasting, they found time to eat and finger other things. Such as, for example, each other. Whilst wrapping their fingers around the crisps that Leona had brought in, they wrapped their fingers elsewhere. Such as, oh I don’t know, down each other. She told this story in brutal, clinical detail, one confession of guilt and shame coming after another like an unblocked drainpipe. She told it all.

    Well, not all of it exactly. Not every single iota of a teensy-weensy minute minutia. Did she, if we're being honest with one another, really need to include the bit where they did it to the rhythm of the other two’s sexual liaisons upstairs? Probably not, it wouldn’t be in good taste now, would it? Or include the fact that they each closed their eyes and dreamed of Rutherford Stones whilst they explored each other’s bodies? No, some things are best left unsaid.

    “Do you have any idea, Leona, how morally reprehensible, how utterly irresponsible, how goddamn motherfucking exploitative that is?” Rutherford raged, fuming at the thought of her friend being taken advantage of.

    “Hey, I fucked Leona. Not t'other way around. Don't pin this on her, she was just caught in my headlights. I fucked Leona. I took charge and had lovely lady sex with my lovely lady teacher. I did that. And I’m sure, Rutherford, you wouldn’t be surprised to know I can be quite persuasive when I want to be” Minnie again retorted, needling Rutherford who squirmed in her seat, relieved that the insinuation went over the blissfully oblivious Wiktoria’s head.

    “But, why are you having sex in February?” Wiktoria pressed, none the wiser as to what Minnie was referring to just then.

    “Well, I think we had got it all out of our system after that Christmas… fling. You were all so pre-occupied with studies, and I've been completely drowning at work, and we all just went about our separate ways. Back to normal. But then I kept worrying about Minnie...” Leona then turned to the emerald-eyed, raven-haired vixen beside her. “You seem so wild and self-destructive at times, and I just wanted to show some support during one of your wild binges.”

    “When was this?” Wiktoria asked, as if making notes.

    “It was about mid-January, your honour. Yeah, that must be about right I reckon, because we’d been back two weeks.” Minnie answered this one. She had been knee-deep in empty calorie detritus and stuffing herself silly, embarking on the mother of all blow-outs in her room. Again. She had been letting off steam by having a one-woman food party in her bedroom, and it was now coming towards its gastronomic denouement. Again. And she was doing it in her underwear, as if the image of this ravenousness didn’t set alarm bells off earlier. She needed to feel utterly, almost erotically, out of control and free-falling. And she was doing this when Leona knocked on the door and entered, presented with the unflattering image of 192lb girl eating herself naked. The quondam queen of lean was now gluttonous gif of greed made flesh. And the image would have made anyone’s heart melt like the butter that Minnie was excessively partial to.

    “So, I was, perhaps understandably, worried. And you two were nowhere to be seen, presumably… umm… engaging in intercourse yourselves. So I felt the responsibility, as the resident adult, to try to offer some emotional support.” Leona took over, and described her listening to Minnie describe herself as dizzy with distress at all the change in her life. The severance from her parents and the sense of confusion about who she was. And all the time, she was plunging chocolate down her neck, and filling her over-stuffed stomach. Leona started helping with the pack of blueberry muffins in a case on Minnie’s bed, and the pack of raspberry and white choc chip cookies lying on her bedside cabinet in a bid of solidarity.

    “You see, I could kind of relate. I’ve been feeling so stressed about work, about my weight...” Leona said.

    “Ermm... your weight?” Wiktoria asked, surprised that the proudly feminist had these kind of worries, presuming her to be above all that.

    “Yes, my weight. With all the food lying about this place, and all you lot practising your Free Hit philosophy, I was grazing myself bigger than I had ever been. And with the work backlog I was having to plough through making getting to the gym so difficult… I think I had gotten to 164lbs by then. I had never been over even 145lbs when I was with Roman, so it was all kinds of unnerving. I was having to get new clothes to cover this pot-belly thing I had and allow all manner of other similarly undignified concessions.” Leona said. She didn’t go into to much detail about it, she wasn’t as confident about that sort of thing as she would have had them previously believe. The recurring memory of her stomach on show as she reached up to write on the top of the whiteboard, allowing her taut, tight top to ride up and reveal its vanilla contents. The growing worry about buttoning her shirts in the morning in spite of the laws of physics. And saying all of that, it was, in fact, her arse and thighs that were the main issue. As they always were. And one she tackled by fastidiously avoiding jeans and buying bigger black trousers. Or wearing a classic combination of a long black skirt over black leggings. Anything to throw a veil over the increasing issue of her increasing. But it had been preying on her mind something chronic, the idea of deterioration, the idea that she had been slippily sliding down from success-ville into the murkier waters below. That she was letting herself down by blowing herself up, and the sense of self-worth that she had cultivated through years of over-achievement. She was struggling with the idea of having to let the unwelcome guest of self-loathing into the room, with so much of her identity wrapped up in the importance of her own self-celebration.

    “So, she thought she could kick-start my confidence with the hope that I could kick-start hers. But I wasn’t looking for a pick-me-up. I was looking for a fuck-me-up, and I took advantage of her low self-esteem and feelings about herself.” Minnie confessed. “I showed her things that probably hadn’t even been invented in her day. I pounced on her and crawled over every inch of her skin, cherishing and cradling all that she fretting over. I took her to the moon and back. I took advantage of her.

    “Wait, you honestly think that you took advantage? Of Leona? No way. She’s a decade older than you, and is a fucking Buddhist monk of Zen compared to your mental state. No, she should have known better” Rutherford had no intention of letting Leona off, for what she perceived to be a heinous act of irresponsible recklessness. “So, that was fuck number 3. Is that it? Are we up to the present day, and a final fourth fuck? Or is that part of a serialised fuck-athon that we’ve been none the wiser to.”

    “Yes, that was it until yesterday.” Leona said, getting increasingly defensive and feeling increasingly guilty, like the full extent of her actions hadn’t dawned on her until she tried to say them out loud. The woman who had always prided herself on being strong and stable had been finding herself weak and wobbly. As Minnie further illustrated with sex account numero cuatro.

    “Leona was crying on the toilet, while you two were out in the library. She was crying on the loo and I thought it was my turn to help her. She had been helping me while you were doing your absentee landlord thing, so I owed it to her to help her like she helped me”

    Minnie recounted how she had sat down on the other side of the bathroom door and listened to her teacher cry and wail about how out of control she felt. Out of control from her work piling up. Out of control about her weight. Out of control about having had sex with a student… in three separate incidents, no less. She was perched on the loo with her trousers round her ankles and sobbing at how this time last year she was feeling happier than she had ever felt and now she was drowning. And, sitting on the toilet, it was clear to see why she had concerns about her weight. Another 11lbs had attached itself to her form, taking her 175lbs. If you had walked in on her, it would have been all there for everyone to see, her pooching tummy and her less pert breasts, her widthy thighs and her expansively outspread arse. The teacher that had seen so much mocking for being seen as getting to where she is on account of her looks, was now worrying that people had stopped thinking that. She was no longer transcendentally beautiful any more. She was cute. With the weight making her, by all accounts, plumpish, she was now only cute. And this felt like demotion.

    “Well you might as well be hung for lamb as mutton” was what Minnie had said to her, with her Northern wisdom and in her Northern tongue.

    “What does that even mean?” had been the reply.

    “If people think you’ve let yourself go, you might as well do it properly and indulge yourself. It means, you’ll get fired if they find out you’ve had sex with a student three times, so you might as well make it four times and get your money’s worth. It means, instead of bemoaning your bad habits, realise at this stage of the game, a few more bad habits won’t do any harm. You might as well be hung for lamb as mutton, because if you're going down anyway, you might as well have the good stuff”

    And that was when she unlocked the bathroom door. She still hadn’t pulled up her pants, but rather just taken them off. And as much as it pained her to see herself slip for being so notoriously desirous to only pleasantly attractive, it also pained her to know that it pained her. She was supposed to be better than that. And the only consolation was she had a friend who was going through the same thing, and didn’t mind exchanging tongues and digits with her. And so they did, consensually, sensually and as equals. This was not a clash of superstratum and substratum languages, but two abstratum languages co-mingling and co-opting. These were two broken people who were tired of breaking.

    Because, Minnie was going through the same thing, perhaps even more so. The consequence of the swirling dervish of gluttony and the hailing maelstrom of indulgence that was Minnie’s life had done irreparable damage to the once twig-like girl, and she was similarly demoted in the looks stakes. When she had previously been an elegant, albeit slightly scrawny minx that anybody would have salivated over during week 1, she was now 212lbs. Sure, her body managed it as well as it could, flaring out her hips and even starting to bulge out her formerly bijou breasts, but the girl had taken the brunt of it in the stomach, and the tightly swollen globe meant she was only ever going to be at best considered ‘pretty, all things considering’. She was 99lbs heavier than when she had her first lesson and she dreaded to think about how people saw her now. Minnie had once tried to pick up a 15kg bag of potatoes once, back when she lived in Yorkshire, and was struck by how heavy it was. She had gained 3 times the weight of that bag. There were 3 lots of that bag additional to her frame. What must her classmates think when they look at her, having undergone such a transformation? Did they snicker behind her bulging back when she stuffed Snickers in her mouth? And what did Rutherford think? That was what Minnie really wanted to know. What did Rutherford think? But she could never ask.

    Rutherford and Wiktoria leaned back on the sofa having taken in the accounts of the two accused, and looked at each other not fully knowing quite what to think. It was appalling behaviour by the pair of them, of that there can be no doubt, but they seemed equally complicit in the explicit. And they were grown adults. But this was so many kinds of wrong. So they did the only thing they knew how, when confronted with a challenge that they don’t know how to resolve.

    “Does anybody fancy takeout?

 

[swahilimonkfish]

Hi all, I like this chapter fwiw, it's a bit different in format (it mirrors the format of Bridget Jones' Diary - not the film but the actual book by Helen Fielding), but it's fun and light-hearted and could work as a standalone story

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 5

Leona Clefton-Brown’s Diary

Monday 3^rd March

176lbs (for fuck sake, another pound?), alcohol units 5 (that’s an improvement at least), calories consumed 3864 (wtf?), times fantasised about a student/flatmate 2 (both Rutherford, eyeroll emoji)

5.45am. Why must I get up at this unholy hour of the day? Oh yes, because of work. I left the three biscuit-teers (like musketeers, except all they do is eat biscuits. Not really that funny, I don’t think I’ll tell them that one) snoozing like the students they are. Got to prep for today. Back-to-back lessons all morning, I need print-outs of my handouts and Lionel is going to make some dirty pervy comment about me again.

10.30am. This morning had been a disaster. One day I’ll appear at one of my lessons on time. Photocopier on the second floor wasn’t working, so I had to go down to the one on ground floor. Maybe a good chance to get some steps in, except some zitty student kept me behind after the first lesson, yabbering on about potentially doing a Masters next year, despite being as thick as two short planks, so I had to rush meaning the lift it is. Or elevator as Rutherford would call it. Oh, I can imagine her saying it with the yankiedoodle accent of hers and, shit I’m not supposed to be doing that. Must stop fantasising over American teenage girls, I'm straight, remember!

1.40pm. Ugh, Lionel (Lionel Stewart, head of department, Chomsky fanboi and all round creep) made a comment about my tits in the staff canteen. Put me off my salad (I’m being healthy) and quarter pounder with cheese (not that healthy), but I persevered womanfully.

6.45pm. Slides up on the Intranet for the lessons, Emails all sent and time to go home. Lionel saw me leave and didn’t say anything inappropriate, so maybe things are looking up.

8.00pm Doing the unofficial private tutoring thing with Rutherford discussing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the most exciting thing you can study in the entire field of linguistics, but she seems unusually disengaged. Still, even disengaged Rutherford looking at you with sleepy eyes do things to me that no student should ever really possess the power to do to a teacher. Bollocks! I’m fantasising again!

Tuesday 4^th March

176lbs (get the fuck in!), alcohol units 2 (is a school night), calories consumed 3666 (not a problem as long as I don’t gain weight?) times fantasised about a student/flatmate 1 (Minnie, but I followed up on it)

7.45pm No, you are having a giraffe. Why am I doing this? Why am I having sex with Minnie again? I vowed not to, but now look at me. I’d be crap on the Wall in GoT, vowing not to have sex and then bonking Jon Snerrrr at the drop of a hat. Lord, give me strength.

It was because I ate a second slice of Wicky’s apple and cinnamon strudel even though I was already full. I thought, “might as well be hung for lamb as mutton” and then I thought of Minnie saying it, and then I thought of Minnie naked, and next thing I know we’re having a rematch.

Wednesday 5^th March

176lbs (is my weight gain issue now officially over?) alcohol units 16 (on a school night, really?!) calories consumed 4122 (justified but not wise) times fantasised about a flatmate 2 (once Rutherford – she wore that jacket I like, and then I wondered what she’d look like without it – and once Wiktoria????)

1.05pm Lunch time is me time. I don’t get much, and I spend as much of it marking second year’s test papers, so I deserve to be left in peace. Even Lionel knows not to hassle me mid-salad (healthy, remember) and burger (hungry, remember). But bitch-face Betty Bollingbrooke, the latest recruit to the department keeps trying to befriend me. Girl, I have salad cream around my mouth and my burger won’t be warm for much longer so leave me be! That’s what I think, what I say is “of course, sit yourself down here, and don’t mind me, I’m a bit peckish is all.” God, I am such a two-faced cow at times. Anyway, she only does it because she is thinner than me, bloody built like a pencil that woman.

7.25pm Exciting news, Dagenham Brewery have asked me to do a 20 minute set of stand-up comedy next week. As part of a cast of no-name comedians that they support every second Monday of the month. They will pay me in money, and everything. No idea when I’m going to get time to hash out my routine, but all the biscuit-teers (I’m still umming and ahhing over that nickname) were really encouraging and supportive, which was nice. Wiktoria hugged me and I enjoyed it a little more than a responsible adult such as myself should have. So, I have now fantasised about all of them now at one point or another, despite, and I cannot stress this enough, being straight.

11.30pm We’re celebrating the good news with bubbles! Not champagne, I’m not that wealthy, but prosecco. Copious amounts of prosecco. And now we’re heading out clubbing, something I haven’t done since my student days. My dress doesn’t fit very well despite being new, making me feel like a fat slut, but hey at least I’m a fat slut with a comedy slot!

4.22am Oh shit, I’m shitfaced and eating my first Skinny Meal. This is excessive. Bottoms up.

 

Thursday 6^th March

179lbs (Shit, I guess it hadn’t magically plateaued then), alcohol units 18 (but all from last night going over into this morning), calories consumed 3226, flatmate fantasies 0 (back of the net!)

8.35am Bollocking shit-fucks, I’m super late. Not hungover though, which is nice. Except, oh no, that means I’m still drunk. Today is going to be a long day.

7.45pm well that was a long day. Prissy Betty Bollingbrooke said she admired me for eating what I liked, and not conforming to patriarchal pressures to diet, when all I did was eat a Subway. A fucking Subway! It’s practically just a salad sandwich. Glad she didn't see the 5 cookies I got with it. I hate that girl, with her trim figure and slinky build and all-round nice persona. I see through it, the witch! But at least Lionel is not sexually harrassing me any more, so maybe things are looking up?

 

Friday 7^th March

Not going to discuss the stats today.

8.45pm I’m going out clubbing with whore-face Betty Bollingbrooke. If she’s using me as a fatter wingwoman, I’m going to go all Jack the Ripper on her whore-face arse.

2.30am Was having a great night, until I kissed Betty. Then she slapped me and said she’d report me for sexual harassment, and now I’m pissed as a fart and having my second Skinny Meal of the week.

 

Saturday 8^th March

Weight 182lbs (it’s guilt weight) alcoholic units lost count last night, calories consumed again lost count, flatmate fantasies only 1 – Rutherford (but did try to snog my straight work colleague, at the possible expense of my career, so room for improvement still)

9.40am I’m trying to call Betty and apologise, but she’s not picking up. I don’t want to be fired over this! I was so drunk, it’s completely out of character. Except for that time at the buffet and… maybe it isn’t out of character at all.

11.00am I’m teaching Rutherford and Wiktoria French at the mo. It’s an easy language – try learning Hungarian like I am currently – but they seem to be a little over-awed by it nonetheless. Not over-gnawed by it though, they (well, Rutherford) brought in several packets of doughnuts for us to share as we studied. I swear that girl is my undoing. Talking of undoing, her clothes on her are so tight she should probably be undoing them. Or letting me undo them. Just a thought.

12.00pm My heart wasn’t in teaching, I’m trying to rescue my career. I don’t think Rutherford’s was either, but Wicky seemed keen. Polish, Spanish, English and now French, maybe my heir apparent is Wiktoria after all.

12.25pm Got through to her at last.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t report you”

“Sisterhood?”

“Hmmm, maybe. Okay, so are you a lesbian then?”

Wait, was I? I answered honestly

“I don’t know”

“Well I do. I’m not a lesbian. That was sexual harassment, and I expect that from Lionel, not someone like you”

“Look, I’m sorry, I really am” and I really was.

“I liked you, but only as a friend. You seemed nice [wrong, I’ve a heart of ice], and warm [wrong, see previous comment] and unthreatening.”

“Because I’m a woman, yeah I get it. Wait, has Lionel been getting you too?”

“Yeah, I think he’s moved on from you to me these past few days. Which is why what you did feels like such a betrayal. I’m going to have to report you. And no, not just because you’re a woman, but because you seemed so… normal.”

“Fuck, fine. Report me. But report Lionel too, I should have done ages ago. Wait, what do you mean ‘normal’?” What did she mean ‘normal’? I’m the Renaissance woman who looks like a Renaissance painting. Kind, no. Elitist, yes. But do not call me normal, I am magnificent.

“Normal looking I mean. You’re not one of them people who try to get by on their looks” Looks! I’ll have you know, that I may not get by on my looks, but you shouldn’t know that from looking at me. Ii could get by on my looks if I chose. I just choose to excel in both the looks and the talent department, bitch! Wait, hang on a minute, why was Lionel harassing toothpick Betty and not me?

“What do you mean, normal looking? I’m stunning”

“No, sorry, of course you are. Girls can look good at any size, I didn’t mean that, I meant...”

“At any size?”

“Yeah, I mean no, I mean, you’re not huge or anything, you’re just not as thin as… I dunno, some people.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that I was pleading for my job, I would have reached through the phone with a pickaxe and murdered the girl for saying that. She was trying to tactfully call me fat. Me!?!? Fat?!?! Tactfully!?!?! The fucking wench. The jacked-up prissy little shithead. “Really, so first you try to ruin my career, and now you call me fat. I guess I now regret kissing you for two reasons”

“No, I’m sorry...”

“No, report me if you must, whatever” and I hung up, livid. Fucking fuming. If you’d drawn me as a cartoon, there’d be steam coming out of my ears. Sacked and losing everything is bad enough. But sacked, losing everything AND being called fat. That just takes the biscuit. Which is actually how I got into this mess. I really am a biscuit-teer.

I’m going on a diet.

5.05pm Diet not going great, I’m eating fish, pie and chips, with mushy peas and curry sauce. And I’m doing this while Wiktoria is cooking us all dinner.

 

Monday 10^th March (nothing for Sunday, because it was a write-off)

Weight 186lbs (stop proving Betty right), alcoholic units lots, calories too many to mention, had sex with Minnie again (I’m going to stop doing this diary if I only have failures to report)

5.45am Not been sleeping well, hopefully I still have a job to go into. I’ve also got to tutor Rutherford this afternoon and deliver my comedy set at 9pm. Wish me luck.

7.50am Dickhead Betty is already in. We glance at each other and then she leaves the room. She’s not forgiven me then. That lecherous so-and-so Lionel was salivating all over her, but now she’s gone I guess he’ll make do with me. Second place to Girl Wonder over there. Nope, he’s just wandered off. I'm not even considered Plan B any more. How the might have fallen.

1.15pm Sitting eating lunch. Two big macs and two fries, a thickshake and a McFlurry. Fat girl food. Betty is sitting on the table behind and feeling guilty. I slurp loudly to rub it in. I can guilt her into not reporting me.

1.45pm Or not. Lionel the pervert has asked me into his office. So great, I’m going to get fired sexual harassment and get sexually harassed at the same time. Except, he doesn’t mention Betty. Well, he does, but in a different context. He says, Betty is getting to lead the English Language masters course next year. She reminds him of me when I was younger, that I used to be like that, but if I don’t sort myself out he’ll be moving me on or kicking me off. And my conference in Rome in a fortnight’s time will be my last trip since I am no longer the draw I once was. The insinuation is clear. I’m not sexy enough any more, he prefers Bony Betty.

He said “what happened to you?” in disgust at me. That hurt. I should have replied “Cheesecake”.

I guess I had been getting by on my looks after all.

 

Oh god, I think my world is falling apart.

5.20pm Finished bang on time and now explaining my day to the girls. Rutherford offers me a consolatory Bakewell tart. This is exactly the sort of thing that got me into this mess. Saying yes would be stupid. I say yes. She then kindly offers to drop the private tutoring so as to free up some more of my time. Wicky wraps her long arms around me to warm up my cold heart. Minnie just looks at me with her eyes set to stunning. Then, they leave to get ready for my comedy set tonight.

11.30pm Comedy set done. I included the bit about “dirtbags, douchebags and just bags generally” for Ruthers, since it was originally her joke. I also told them about bony Betty and the crowd seemed to like it. My bitterness amused them greatly. Talking of bitters, I’m getting pissed in London tonight. I’ve had a bad day and need to let off some steam. All I need to do is not fuck Minnie when I get drunk.

4.20am I got drunk and fucked Minnie

 

Wednesday 19^th March

Weight 194lbs (oh shit) Alcohol units 12 (oh shit) Calories 5812 (oh shit) sex with Minnie frequent (oh shit)

Apologies for not writing in my diary more often but I’ve been embarrassed. Every entry is an article of shame. I feel like I’m just banging my head over and over on rock bottom.

First, my weight. I had never topped 145lbs before, when Roman had left. I was 125lbs on the last day of term before Christmas. I am now so much heavier than that now. 194lbs is the kind of weight you associate with fat people, not people like me. Pretty people. I did the stupid thing of measuring my BMI, because apparently I’m a glutton for punishment and as well as a glutton for everything else. Obese. I am officially obese. Leona is obese. Obese obese obese.

How did this happen? I’m the most beautiful girl in any room I’ve ever been in. And now my panties give me wedgies. Now my arse fills my chair so well I can feel the armrest. Now my muffintop only serves as a reminder of all the muffins I’ve eaten. My stomach sticks out nearly as far as my breasts, and that’s only because they’ve grown too. And my face. My angelic face. It had always been so beautiful and smooth, now my neck and chin are hard to tell apart. I’m no longer sexy, I’m not even sure I’m cute any more. I’m just passable. Bordering on regrettable.

Second, my drinking. I drink too much. But wouldn’t you if you kept banging your head over and over on rock bottom?

Thirdly, calorie consumption. The diary was always warning me I had been eating unsustainably. I didn’t mean to. But my morning run or trip to the gym has been replaced by Wiktoria making us all pancakes and waffles and even croissants. The girl can even bake croissants. Ever since she’s been learning French, she’s been cooking French. I love that girl but hot damn is it making me fat. She’s even gotten so into French that Rutherford donated the beret to her. Things haven’t quite been the same between those two these past few weeks. They seem frostier.

My lunch routine has been established a while now, but it is the snacking that is my downfall. For example, if it is a tutorial and not a lecture, I even snack whilst teaching. It’s enough to drive Lionel to despair. And then getting to the flat is when things go truly pear-shaped for this pear-shaped teacher. If I’m home by 6pm, I don’t have dinner. I graze. Until dinner at 7pm. Wiktoria has been cooking French food for this course as well, sometimes for the whole flat, sometimes just for me to cheer me up. Stroganoffs and bouef bougignons and coq au vins and cassoulets, and then gateaux or soufflés for dessert. And then it’s crisps and ice cream and wine until 9-ish. Which is when Minnie orders takeaway for before our night on the town. Then we get pissed, grab a Skinny Meal on the way back and make love in her room. Despite all that gluttony, I still find room to eat one more thing. Her.

Every day for nearly a fortnight. And I don’t what is more unhealthy, my eating, my drinking or my being with Minnie. That girl is not right in the head, but it’s that kind of wrongness that seems so right so often. It’s filthy sex, ugly and orgasmic. Cold, cruel and spectacular. Roman couldn’t get me close to the places Minnie can lift me to. But it’s so unhealthy. I need this forthcoming trip to Rome to get away from her.

Have I mentioned this Rome conference? It’s the sort of things professors get to do to show-off and bring lustre to their university. And I have done a couple of these and they’ve always been great. Hobnobbing (is that a biscuit-teer joke?) with academia in an exercise in back-patting and networking. Bitch-face Betty is going to love doing all the ones I don’t get to do next year because Lionel no longer fancies me.

And best of all, no Minnie. I’m safe from her, and from myself with her.

Monday can’t come soon enough

 

Monday 24^th March

Weight 199lbs

The week has been a mess of regrets and drowning those regrets with regretful actions. Italy is going to be a clean break for me. A week from Minnie and her relentless kinkiness. I’ve been spending more time kinkying with that girl than I have been marking coursework of late. Which is why I have so much coursework that I’m behind on, but also a fair example of the sheer amount of debauching we’ve been doing. We’ve just been eating and fucking – it’s as if we were Rutherford and Wiktoria.

And I need a clean break from these eating habits. At this rate, I’m a day away from 200lbs, and I’m not sure my psyche could take that to be honest. That would be the tipping point that broke the camel’s back. I can’t be 200lb Leona. I just can’t.

So, I’m going to Italy to get my head sorted and reboot my academic career. Free from the temptation of Minnie. And free from the temptation of food – because it’s not like Italy is famed for its food or anything, is it?

 

[swahilimonkfish]

Sorry for the long chapter, it's just a challenge to juggle so many perspectives and do each justice. Hope you like it, I've always enjoyed it when TV shows do this, tell the same story from different perspectives

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 6

Before Leona leaves for Italy

From the Perspective of Minnie Charnwood (a.k.a the artist formerly known as Skinny)

    Minnie Charnwood was a naughty girl. She had sat there like a naughty school child, after getting found out about getting off with her go-getting teacher. She had sat there and stewed in the naughty seat whilst Rutherford and Wiktoria read them the riot act from the moral high-ground of having a strong, functioning and healthy relationship. There was nothing, however, healthy about her relationship with Leona. No, they were clearly bad for each other, playing their worst tendencies of one another and using the other as justification. They were two black holes caught in a death spiral, spinning destructively towards one another. And, like black holes, they had been eating everything even remotely close to them.

    So, the best thing for the pair to do was to keep their head down, have a nice cold pint, and wait for the whole thing to blow over. They didn’t formally agree to this, but they seemed to have reached the same conclusion independently and were both avoiding the other and the elicit temptation that gets served as a side.

    It had been so embarrassing to be caught red-handed too. Rutherford seemed so genuinely aggrieved at the discovery, like she had been let down by her best friend. Minnie hadn’t seen that coming, she had been feeling recently that she had the American wrapped around her chubby little finger. But she wanted Rutherford, it seemed, more than Rutherford wanted her. Worse still was the disappointment from Wicky. All the other girls were riddled with emotional deficits and issues, but Wiktoria was always the level-headed one. Admittedly, Minnie had thought Ruthers was level-headed too, until the FA confession, but Wiktoria just seemed so straight and by the book, while the other girls were rebels who didn’t play by rules. So, her more impartial perspective coming down against her in disappointment felt like a hammer blow. But worst of all was that it had really upset Leona, who deserved better than to be caught in the gravitational pull of Minnie’s black hole. Minnie was a walking textbook on how not to cope with her issues – denial, indulgence and implosion (which is how black holes are formed, incidentally). It seemed that the star of the English Language department was imploding also, and co-opting all of Minnie’s devastating bad habits.

    So, it was resolved. She would stay clear of her, at all costs. Simple.

 

    Leona was clearly struggling at work. The professor didn’t say why, she was a closed book and had a tendency to bottle her emotions, but it was clearly taking its toll. She was getting home later and later every evening, and looking more and more tired every time she did so. And Minnie wanted nothing more than to take her mind of it by feasting on her female parts. But, in a rare break from the regularly scheduled programming, Minnie showed some actual backbone and some actual self-discipline, and refrained.

    It was getting more difficult though, as Minnie was feeling more and more lonely. Avoiding Leona meant she was left with Wiktoria and Rutherford for company. And some company they were. Problem one? Well, that was the foreign couple spent 75% of the time getting down and dirty with one another, it seemed. Minnie’s favourite two hobbies, eating and fucking, were being explored almost incessantly by those behind the door across the hallway from her. It was driving her to distraction. Secondly, when they were not fucking and eating, or eating and fucking, or just fucking eating, they were colder and frostier than normal. They used to just talk idly, flirt regularly and giggle childishly. Now, everything was more formal, like somebody was sucking the fun out of it. Something had gone on between each of them, and a light had gone off between each of them, but they pretended that everything was all a-okay, la-di-da and hunky-dory and didn’t mention it. Which made them poor company.

    Minnie also felt a little bit frustrated that she was the only one not getting private tutoring from their teaching housemate. While, it was understandable for her to not be in the same room as Leona given that Minnie and her tried to avoid each other for fear of bonking, it did seem frustrating that Rutherford, in particular, got to monopolise Miss. It just didn’t seem fair. But Minnie tried to ignore these feelings of injustice because they sounded an awful lot like jealousy, and she was not jealous of people spending time with Leona. Leona was just a former fuck-buddy after all, no cause for jealousy at all.

 

    Minnie was sitting in her Creative Writing class – a class she didn’t share with any of the other musketeers – thinking about how much she shouldn’t be thinking about Leona, when suddenly the desperately unstable and deeply unconvincing mask of well-adjustedness fell. And when it fell, it fell. She was leaning back and listening to Mr Stewart witter on about ‘the importance of establishing a sense of geographical place by use of vivid environmental descriptions to evoke images in the minds of the readers’ in the nondescript classroom it took place in, when a girl from the row in front asked when she was due. As in, when was she going to give birth to the baby she mistakenly believed Minnie was incubating. Minnie’s eyed fixed on the girl’s face, trying to determine whether or not she was being catty or if she hands-on-heart believed that Minnie was bigger because she was pregnant. It was, worryingly, the latter. Minnie was so fat she was being mistaken for being pregnant, a role reversal on her parents still believing that Minnie got fat several years ago when she was actually pregnant. Minnie had to awkwardly smile and admit the only baby was the perpetual food baby that was now in its third trimester, but being mistaken for dazed her dizzy.

She had spent the best part of her life avoiding that word, the p-word, ever since the fucking abortion and the fucking self-harm and the fucking depression and the fucking descent into fucking suicidal fucking despair. And a train of emotions came charging back and hitting her direct.

    The violent self-destruction, the heart-wrenching parental abandonment, the pregnancy, all of the torrid emotions that Minnie barely had a handle on, were suddenly released onto her unsuspecting mind. Charging around like a bull in a China shop were concerns that she had since repressed, about self-loathing and loss of control, and they hit her like a brick wall. Her brain was suddenly slippier, like somebody had turned down the friction and now every thought was skidding about untethered and unguarded like a marble on ice. Minnie excused herself from the class. Mr Stewart agreed, not particularly fussed having stopped leering at that student quite some pounds ago. And the not-pregnant Minnie left the room through the door, before her brain could tell her to take the window and jump.

 

    Minnie was lying in her bed when she reached into her bed-side drawer and pulled out a sewing knife. The world was so black, right now. She fiddled with it in her hand, letting the needle dance in her fingers morbidly. The world felt so cold, too, like God had been fiddling with the thermostat.  She then, without actually piercing the skin, ran the blade gently along parts of her arm, and exhaled. First it was the upper arm, where the scars were, drawn to the coping mechanism of old. Her brain was misbehaving and not responding to her instructions. Then, she drew it carefully along the main vein of her forearm, again without drawing blood, with even darker thoughts running through her mind. “A quietus make with a bare bodkin”.

    And as the cold metal tickled her flakey skin, a bolt of sexual charge erupted and raced up her spine from out of nowhere. Minnie gasped a deep, sharp and involuntary intake of breath. And suddenly suicide was the last thing on her mind. She had hornier things occupying her thoughts all of a sudden. Sorry Leona, she thought, but Minnie was going to fuck her teacher today. She had to. She needed to. She needed that teacher in her black hole. But she wasn’t going to do that without vodka and profiteroles for nibbles, first.

 

    Three days later, Minnie woke up with her worst hangover yet. It was, however, eased by the deep sensuous breathing of her naked teacher lying next to her, their chunky bodies intertwined. Minnie had been hiding from her feelings by drinking, eating and fucking furiously, and it seemed to be working. Her feelings were quieter than they had been in a few days. If they hadn’t been so quiet, Minnie would have been asking herself what the fucking fuck she was doing. As it was, Minnie's mind was numb as she removed herself from her sleeping teacher’s twine and made her way to the bathroom for a drink of water. She had been relieved that Leona had been so sexually compliant, but whatever the teacher was going through meant that they each needed each other’s distraction. Minnie finished the glass of tap water from the sink and was about to walk back when she noticed a remaining lemon meringue quarter from the night before, where they had rampantly pursued diabetes through cake, before turning their sweet teeth on each other.

    Minnie sat down on the toilet and ate the remaining slice of lemon meringue absent-mindedly when she spotted Leona’s scales on the floor. Scales that Leona used religiously despite them only ever being the bearer of bad news. Most of Minnie tried to ignore the metallic weighing device, with the idea that, ignorance, like the lemon meringue in her hand, was bliss. But the devil on her shoulder was morbidly curious. Because black holes were formed due to their large mass.

    It was no surprise that Minnie was torn about using the scales, she had only been getting bigger. Being mistaken for pregnant had been as long overdue as she looked when mistaken for the pregnancy, with her sizzlingly sizy form now sprawling over the space around the circumference of her body. Sitting down naked with the last of the meringue in her mouth, a dollop of cream dropped down onto her breasts. They had seen some growth in these gluttonous times, but it seemed disappointingly insubstantial, given the substantial nature of everything else about the girl. The cream, for example, had now slid down to her globular gut that had taken rest on Minnie’s thighs. It perched on them proudly like a sleeping dog resting its head, and it was working its way nearly halfway to her knee. Had she been standing, seeing toes might have been an issue. The thighs that were carrying her stomach had grown in parallel, keeping her impressively shapely – because round is a shape after all. This was now the body of a fat girl. Not the body of a once thin girl who had let herself go. No, something more permanent and defining. Skinny was a fatty. That was her black hole and revelation.

    She stood on the scales nervously, her breathing escalating and her body quivering. With fear, with cold, with excitement, Minnie knew not. But she was quivering, as the needle was arrowing towards its weight. The scales’ limit was 250lbs and the arrow stopped 7lbs short. Minnie quivered again, but this time it was sexual.

 

    Minnie had been in a daze since then. Her brazen indulgence seemed more sullen. It was as if she was still eating her feelings, but she no longer liked the taste of them. She ate continuously still, but she was finding it harder to deny that this was now out of anything other than self-harm. She couldn’t kid herself anymore. She was doing with food what she had done with a knife, ruining herself. She was in a state of emergency, and Leona was leaving soon to give a lecture in Roma, to plunge her further into chaos.

    Minnie was miserably eating one of two mid-afternoon takeaway pizza that she had ordered when a visibly distressed Wiktoria walked into the room, nearly in tears.

    “You are my last friend.” She said to Minnie between sniffles. Minnie didn’t even look up, just continued eating in disinterested auto-pilot. “I need somebody to go to the gym with me.” Minnie looked up at that.

    “To the gym?”

    Wiktoria nodded, undeniably upset. But rather than pry, and tenderly care like Wiktoria would have done had the roles been reversed, Minnie unleashed nihilistic hell on the clearly vulnerable girl, unfurling her own darkest neuroses.

    “No, I’m not going to the gym, sorry Wicky. I’m too fat now love. There are two types of fat in the world, recoverable fat and irrecoverable fat. I am now irrecoverably fat. I am nearly 250lbs, Wicky. I’m done. Done, I tell you. This is me now, the fat girl. I have been fattened. I have been fattened and I will never be unfattened again. I’m too far gone, there’s no road back. All that I can do is just get fatter. No point fighting it, it’s too late to fight. I’m just going to wave a white flag and accept that my former sexy body is gone now, never to come back.”

    “But… will you not try?” Wiktoria had been unnerved by this diatribe.

    “No, I can’t. Too embarrassing. I can’t be that fat girl in the gym. You used to be an athlete, you know the one I mean. How humiliating was it, seeing her there, the fat girl in the gym? And we all knew, back when we were one of the thin sexy gym people, that she would give up after week 3. The fat girl was too far gone. Well, I’m going to save mi’sen that embarrassment and just admit it. This is a one-way street to super-obesity with no opportunity to turn off.”

    Wiktoria just walked away, more upset than she had been before she asked. Minnie was so wrapped up in her own despair she didn’t clock why.

 

    Leona had suggested that they all go up together to watch her do a comedy gig, and all three girls jumped at the chance. They all needed cheering up, for various reasons.

    Minnie needed cheering up because the scales had fallen from her eyes and she now saw that she was in the dark place again. But she also saw that she was too proud to admit it this time. Minnie had no intention of doing anything other than self-harm through charging to obesity. When Shaun made his monologue all those months ago, back when she was stressing over a miserly 5lbs gain and not the colossal 120something pounds gained since, he said not to worry about your weight, there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed post-university. Minnie had decided that this was not true and that she had somehow contrived to get to that stage before the end of her first year.

    So, comedy sounded like a great idea. The opportunity to laugh hadn’t been found in recent time. Plus it was in London, a place famed for its array of food offerings albeit at exorbitant costs (seriously, London is way overpriced). So, to London they went, to watch Leona rock the mic. And boy did she. Like with Minnie the night before, she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand. Her weight worries felt like feminist fist-pumping and yet familiar and relateable. Her discussion of her boyfriend Roman the dick (‘he was called that because she was forever roamin’ his dick’, apparently) were delightfully scathing. Her dissing of Sheila Shithead (really it was Betty Bitchface, but she was still her colleague, so some anonymity was required…) for being too perfect and thin was catnip to an audience of mainly women who could relate to such woes. Having shed some of her previous glamour, by unshedding some serious pounds, Leona was suddenly far more likeable as a joker and jester, now that the prospect of jealousy had been mostly neutralised by her new-found plumpness and podginess.

    And Minnie loved watching her up there discussing all the gritty nasty bits about her life and spinning comedic yarn from them, like a Behind The Scenes of her own home-made porn video. Minnie lapped it up, whilst drinking herself silly, ready to lap Leona up later.

 

    Leona was leaving for Italy tomorrow, and Minnie was an emotional wreck. If there was any glue stopping this girl from coming apart at the seams, it was fucking her fuckbuddy. Without her, she didn’t know what to do. Wait, what did that mean? Co-dependence is a strong word for someone merely friends with benefits? Minnie didn’t have time to worry about it. She had Leona for one more night, and wanted to remember every last additional inch of her the only way she knew how. Skinny meal and sex as a parting gift, what more could a girl ask for?

    But then Minnie would be all alone again. This was going to be a long week.

 

From the Perspective of Rutherford Stones

    “But, the whole Inuit people thing, about having hundreds of words for snow is a mistake at best and a misrepresentation at worst”

    Rutherford was learning about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Or, at least, she was supposed to be. But for some reason it wasn’t sinking in. Unlike the chicken nuggets that she had eaten for breakfast, which was sinking into her stomach, or indeed unlike the stomach itself which was sinking into the waistband of her stretchiest trousers. And there, perhaps, was the reason for her poor attention. Rutherford was feeling bigger than ever, and quite accurately too. So, maybe this was the cause.

    It was a shame because Leona seemed so enthusiastic about this topic, gushing giddily about the possible ramifications of this hypothesis and studies around the topic, with such vim that she began jiggling on the spot. Oh, yeah, come to think of it, that might be reason two why Rutherford was struggling to concentrate. Her teacher’s jiggle. The thought spun her mind round in circles, until she shut them down. No, she was monogamous with Wiktoria, and very happily so too. With Wiktoria’s wintery discontent made glorious summer by introducing her to learning French, Rutherford was enjoying making hay while the sun shined. And she did that by licking out her girlfriend as often as she could.

    That said, even the tutoring and the licking wasn’t enough to satiate Wiktoria’s interests, just as two slices of banoffee pie was no longer enough to satiate Wiktoria’s hunger. She was still getting restless and it was irritating Rutherford, who thought she had fixed the problem. Wiktoria, it seemed, was getting increasingly antsy.

    Rutherford’s wandering eye might have been a source of consternation. Minnie had been sheepish ever since being rumbled for having intercourse with her English Language teacher and housemate. And hiding her feelings behind food. God, how much did she weigh? Was she near 200lbs yet, she must be close? And then there was her sent-from-the-heavens teacher who radiated beauty and style, but ate like rationing was coming in tomorrow. The story about her worrying over her weight delighted Rutherford in a way no person should be delighted when it is not the person they are in a relationship with. Rutherford’s twisted libido was like that pirate in that Tom Hanks film, commandeering the Rutherford vessel and saying “I’m the captain now”. And Rutherford was at the libido’s mercy.

 

    “Merci” said Wiktoria flirtatiously to Rutherford. She had been in a better mood today because of the forthcoming French tutoring. Rutherford might be being unfaithful with her eyes, but she was being a good girlfriend with this suggestion. The day was all going to plan except…

    Firstly, Leona seemed utterly distracted, making learning next-to impossible. She kept glancing at her phone like she was worried about something, like that time when she was first suggesting tutoring to Rutherford back in Week 6. And secondly, Rutherford was distracted too. She had brought in celebratory doughnuts in, and donuts too because she was an American girl at heart, much to the chagrin of Wicky who didn’t want to be distracted from studying but yet another bombardment of saccharine goodies. But Leona kept eating them and Rutherford couldn’t help but eye the strain between the buttons of her shirt when she did. Those two things made studying French très difficile for Ruthers.

 

    It was after the French lesson that Rutherford suffered the wrath of Wiktoria.

    “It is like Speedway again. You promise you will be interested, but you are just interested in eating” she snarled.

    “Look, Leona seemed distracted in there, she’s normally a better teacher than that. But we can commit to French outside of class. I’ve already downloaded the Duolingo app and started on French, see...” She showed the phone to Wicky as proof of concept. It may have worked.

    “Ok, maybe” Wiktoria was still suspicious.

    “Cool. We can learn the language with Leona and between the two of us. And we can watch French films and see how much we can understand without subtitles, Godard’s film Breathless is quite easy for that because of the American character.” Rutherford continued keenly.

    “Yes, this sounds fun”

    “And we can eat lots of French food, with your cooking skills, I’m sure you’ll enjoy doing that, you love cooking. And I love eating. Oh, and here, you can even have your beret” Rutherford said, offering her favourite piece of headwear.

    “No, I want you to have your hat” Wiktoria protested.

    “No, I insist. I don’t even want it any more, it’s like not my scene any more” Rutherford contested. But Wiktoria didn’t take the hat. No, she in fact just stormed off, much to Rutherford’s surprise, who that she had won her girlfriend over again. But, for some reason, the hat thing upset her. Rutherford didn’t know what to do with herself now, she was a little angry that the peace offering would be treated with such contempt. There was only one thing for it… Rutherford went to the cupboard and started on a pack of commiseratory doughnuts. And some commiseratory donuts too, after she was still an American girl at heart.

 

    This thing with Wiktoria was getting on her nerves now. She was being shut out and she didn’t even know why. They kept hanging out with one another and pretending everything is OK, but you could cut the tension with a buttercream coated cake knife. Or you could cut a buttercream cake with it. The choice is yours. But Rutherford would always opt for the latter.

    The sex hadn’t suffered. In fact it was better than ever. And just as often as ever, which pleased Rutherford no end, since it gave her the chance to not get changed into clothing. Which suited her growing frame down to the ground. The sex was great from Rutherford’s perspective because Wiktoria’s tongue-lashing tendencies had over-flowed into the bedroom arena, and Rutherford loved every moment of it. But even better was after Wiktoria fell asleep, when Rutherford would look at her own body and pleasure herself. Because as much as her wandering eye had spent a lot of time taking in the growing form of former form-fitting fashionistas Minnie and Leona, it had also enjoyed observing her own path towards debauched obesity.

    She had no idea how much she weighed. Leona’s scales only were those old analogue scales with a needle not like the digital ones Rutherford had, and they only went up to 250lbs. So the only thing they told her was she was now over 250lbs. How far over? She had no idea. And fantasising how much over turned her so on. Her own scales had been intentionally disregarded and binned, because she didn’t want her girlfriend weighing herself. This was downright Machiavellian of Rutherford and she knew it, but she didn’t want to get Wiktoria stressing about her weight. Any more than she already was anyway.

    Rutherford might not know how much she weighed, but she could see her weight gain visually. She could admire the way her stomach pushed out and down not only outwards but sidewards too. She could wrap her fat girl arms around it, and revel in how much further her belly button was from her these days. She could feel the way her thighs chafed and burnt as the rubbed together on the few occasions that Rutherford could be bothered to walk any distance further than the kitchen. She could see the way no rings on her fingers fit any more, forcing her chubby digits to be unadorned. She could observe the fat wrap itself round her back, causing ripples and furrows of adipose deposits. She knew all of this and it was enough to get her off.

    Had she weighed herself however, she would have seen the numbers 278lbs and gotten off on the thought of that almost instantaneously.

 

    This weight, however, was beginning to put a strain on her 5ft5 body, as well it might. Moving was becoming a bit more of a hassle now. Nothing major, but she would make a grunting noise every time she heaved herself off the sofa. And walking across campus to different lectures would cause her to sweat a bit, and allow her breath to get away from her a little. Stairs were becoming laborious even when just one flight. She was getting quite unfit.

    So gym should have been a useful suggestion, when Wiktoria curtly suggested that they go together. Apparently, in quite the snub, she didn’t want to ask Leona because she seemed so busy with work, so she thought to ask Rutherford second. Rutherford was shocked and insulted to be second choice, but not enough to prove Wicky’s doubt correct and turn the offer down. Fuck that, going to the gym would undo all the good work that the pair of them had been doing, was the message from her twisted libido. Wiktoria shrugged indifferently and went off to cry. Rutherford just stood there. She had just made her girlfriend cry now. Things were really going from bad to worse. But she wasn’t sure why. But it pissed her off. Rutherford felt that she deserved better, and was royally angered at the way she had been treated. “I am a goddamn delight, and I deserve to be treated delightfully!” She seethed to the empty room that she was standing in.

 

    Things went from worse to cataclysmic on the Monday. Leona had been in a right old state after work, and was telling everyone about the incident with Betty Bitchface, Bony Betty or whatever nickname that Leona saw fit to unleash at that point in the retelling of her story. And her justification for all of this tragedy was the toll of her busy schedule. Rutherford wasn’t sure how much to believe that the busy schedule was the thing to scapegoat, but Leona did and that was enough. The teacher looked tired around the eyes, and chunky around the arse, leaving Rutherford to worry about her and simultaneously yearn for her.

    “Well, I could like, maybe not have the private tutoring on Monday? I’m already asking a lot of you with the French classes and I feel guilty burdening you further, I guess?” Rutherford offered kindly. She was considerate like that.

    Leona nodded gratefully and took Rutherford up on her offer to downsize her commitment to private tutoring. Leona seemed appreciative.

    Wiktoria, however, was not. She just harrumphed and stormed out of the room. These temper tantrums were really frustrating Rutherford. Is there anything she could do that didn’t upset the grumpy Pole in any way? This was getting beyond a joke now.

 

    Leona had suggested that they all go up together to watch her do a comedy gig, and all three girls jumped at the chance. They all needed cheering up, for various reasons.

    Rutherford needed cheering up because she was fast approaching the end of her tether with her sulking girlfriend. Yes, yes, the sex was still nice, but the binge eating was filled with awkward silences and this was not nice. The constant mood swings were not nice. And given that Leona and Minnie seemed to be all suffering from their own issues, Rutherford felt the worst she had done since she had come to this country but without anyone to confide in. But stand-up sounded fun. Leona all trussed up sounded fun. London and their many eateries sounded fun, though very expensive (I’m not kidding, London is that bad). So Rutherford was grateful to go. And also, wasn’t this what Wiktoria wanted, to do something? She put on an amorphous blue cardigan to drape over her generous form, forgot about her make-up and went out.

    Leona was hilarious. The bit about “douchebags and dirtbags and bags in general” was a nice wink to the American, who had made that comment to her last semester. But the whole set in general was great. And such good weight gain material, from her FA perspective. She discussed it all. Her inferiority around a slimmer girl, her growing size, the joke about “here in London, you have to keep a knife by your bed for emergencies, to protect yourself. Me, I keep last night’s Chinese takeaway leftovers for emergencies. Because that’s my idea of an emergency, getting peckish. And if, Heaven forbid, I do have to protect myself, I’m beating their ass with my side-portion of barbecue spare ribs”. It was all so sexy to Rutherford. She would look on her phone at a photo of Leona at Christmas and then compare her to now, where she was doing it in a spangling dress of stretched material that emphasised her large arse and developing spare tyre, and her comic material seemed all the better.

 

    Leona had been the one good thing about this terrible fortnight. Not just the eye-watering weight gaining but the fact that she could distract Wiktoria enough to stop her glowering at the American. Leona was the one that everyone looked up to. But Leona was leaving for Italy tomorrow, and going for a week. And Rutherford was terrified, the awkwardness between her and Wiktoria felt like it was going to come to a head soon. This was going to be a long week.

 

From the Perspective of Wiktoria Radwanska

    Something was different about Rutherford, and Wiktoria couldn’t but her finger on what. She seemed to glow less than normal. Her interest in so much had waned of late, that she was only really eating and having sex these days. And so was Wiktoria as a result. And the results were worrying her.

    Without a set of scales to weight herself, she had been using Leona’s. The problem was that it only went up to 250lbs. Now, of course, this shouldn’t have been anything even remotely resembling a problem for a girl who was competing nationally in the heptathlon only 9 months ago. But she was so far removed from that bygone time, and it was a problem. She found herself in a terrifying situation where she was, these days, just a fucking and feeding machine, and not a lot else.

    At least she was going to be learning French. That excited her. That felt like her growing as a person, but this time in a good way. She was really excited and quite desperately holding onto that excitement, since her enthusiasm elsewhere was at a low ebb.

    She had noticed a couple of things about Rutherford recently, and she didn’t like them particularly. Firstly, she was not the trendy glitterato that she had known in the first semester. She wore less make-up, rarely did anything with her hair, and wore really drab clothing. Not Audrey Hepburn clothing, but I’m going to be doing some painting today so I’ll wear this top because I don’t mind getting paint on it clothing. Shapeless jumpers and slacks when she was going out. And pyjamas or nothing if she was staying in – which was increasingly often for the increasing girl. And Wiktoria worried that this was her being superficial, going off someone because of their clothing choices relaxing, but part of Rutherford’s allure had always been her style. But these days, she was choosing function over form.

    But then, this might be down to issue number two, her increasing form. Rutherford had always been curvy in Wiktoria’s eyes, part of her glamorous style, but now she was getting fat. Really quite fat. And this wasn’t Wiktoria’s preference. And this, again, felt shallow to admit to herself. But she preferred Rutherford back when she could walk without having to shuffle her bum in a waddle-like manner. Back when the only way for Rutherford to make the bed creak would have been to provocatively bounce on it, and not just sit on it which was enough these days. Back when her curves weren’t all outward ones. Back when she looked like a movie star, and not a movie star in a fat suit.

    But it also felt hypocritical, given her own expanded form, so she kept quiet and focused on being tutored by Leona. She couldn’t hold Rutherford’s weight gain against her, given her own increasing form. That wouldn't be fair now, would it? The fact that her stomach danced every time she got up or sat down. The fact that her arse gyrated when she turned around. No, how could she complain? She still tried to look good though, her hair was long now and wavy, with exotic red streaks scorching through them. Her clothes choices were all in vogue, colour coordinated and stylishly flattering, making her look like a plus-size model. She may have been getting bigger, but she was still trying to look good. Better than ever, in fact. It annoyed her that Rutherford had drifted so far from this, and so fast. It felt as if Rutherford was now too lazy to make an effort for her own girlfriend and this shook Wiktoria’s self-confidence.

 

    French lessons came around and Wiktoria had a spring in her step in anticipation. She had high hopes of being a translator like her father had been, and was already feeling like she was getting the hang of her English, and that her Spanish was improving no end as well. Learning French would be a fantastic language to complement these, and make her feel like a consummate European. All she would need then is German and Italian and she would be able to call… it’s a Bingo!

    And Leona was such a great woman to look up to, with her back-catalogue of languages and the way she could alternate seamlessly between them. The English weren’t exactly known for their multi-lingualism, they preferred to arrogantly speak just their own language and wait for everyone to speak English too, but Leona was such an impressive exception. She was even learning Hungarian apparently as a potential seventh language, which is a mind-boggling number. And Hungarian is a horrible language too, Wiktoria knew that much, with an over-abundance of noun cases coupled with it having non-Indo-European roots. Leona was the woman that Wiktoria wanted to be when she finished university.

    Leona, however, was not her usual glacially composed self in the tutorial, skittishly glancing at her phone and diverting her eyes. And eating Rutherford’s doughnuts, and donuts, because of course Rutherford had decided to commandeer the lesson and make it a sucrose-inspired picnic instead of an opportunity to develop language skills. Oh, it annoyed Wiktoria so much! She was again not being supported by her girlfriend who was more emotionally engaged with engorging than she was with her lover. She had barely tried to learn any French in the tutorial, never not having a doughnut in her mouth can make pronunciation and articulation difficult. It was like the Speedway incident all over again, a token gesture made hastily and dismissively, and not followed through. It was becoming increasingly apparent that Rutherford did not care as much about Wiktoria as she used to. She just didn’t care.

    After the tutorial, Wiktoria tried her best to keep control of her second language and explain her frustration to Rutherford, but the American was decidedly uninterested. At first, she made some nice suggestions. She showed Wiktoria how she had downloaded the Duolingo app to learn French, and had planned to put some effort in to learning it. And it was the effort that Wiktoria wanted to see. Then she suggested re-watching French movies, but without subtitles, which seemed like a really sweet compromise on their two sets of interests. But then she blew it.

    She blew it by following it up with suggesting that Wiktoria cook French food too, to get into the Gallic swing of things. Of course it was all leading up to this, to food. To Wiktoria slaving over a stove while Rutherford just lounges about getting fed. Why was she suddenly like this?

    And then, Rutherford ruined it completely. She had meant it as a nice gesture but it sent Wiktoria off into a blind rage. The suggestion that Wiktoria have the beret. Because Rutherford apparently didn’t want it any more and “it wasn’t like my scene anyway”! How could she betray her own girlfriend like that, Wiktoria fumed. She KNEW that the beret had been such a part of that study week, that precious week where they got together and everything seemed right in the world all of a sudden. It was a symbol of so much and she was treating it with such disregard. It’s like she just didn’t care about anything any more. Rutherford didn’t care about Wiktoria, about looking good, about her education. Just food and fucking. Always just food and fucking.

    The sex hadn’t been a disaster, it had to be said. Wiktoria was more aggressive in bed, more dominant and assertive. She was expressing her frustration at Rutherford’s laid-back demeanour by letting Rutherford just lay back while she did all the work. She was taking her pent-up aggression out on the American and the net result was an exhilarating outpouring of kinetic motion and complicated feelings. But it was the rest of the time spent with the tubby American that was becoming an issue, who had been reduced to simply her two most base instincts these days and seemed shadow of the engaging girl that had wooed Wiktoria initially. Without the sex, there wasn't much else there any more.

 

    Wiktoria got up and saw the old sporting medals strewn across the shared bedroom, she saw the proud beaming smile of a younger iteration of her grander self jubilantly celebrating sporting achievement on an athletics track. And then she looked in the mirror and saw herself looking wider, softer and with bigger proportioned. And sighed. She looked at Rutherford lying in bed, with her bed-hair covering her face and the duvet covering her body, and sighed. Wiktoria was going to start going to the gym again, and she was going to need a friend to do it.

    The thought of exercising was a mixed one, of fear combined with agency. On one hand, she wouldn’t too dig her heels in further to spite Pawel the wanker, but on the other hand she realised that in doing so she was also spiting herself.

    The thought of exercise terrified her also, and she didn’t know how to turn to for positive reinforcement and encouragement. The mental image of her own muscle memory taking to the machines like a duck to water, but her muscles themselves being utterly novice. Of thinking she can use the apparatus from recollection and being confronted with the difficulties that come with being double the weight that she was last time she ventured into such an establishment. She needed somebody to go with her, and you would have thought she’d have no shortage of options, given that everyone in the house had been piling on the weight of late. But she couldn’t ask Rutherford because she would just break her heart and choose being lazy over being a good girlfriend. Also, she was reluctant to choose Minnie who seemed to be in a bad place emotionally of late, and would be a similarly bad influence. No, the person she needed to ask was the person she admired most – Leona.

    Leona was not fat, but rather curvaceous and alluring. And Leona had a can-do attitude and a warm heart. Yes, she would ask Leona.

 

    She ended up not asking Leona however. Leona was just sitting on her bed crying about how busy she was. The posh teacher was tucking into a pot noodle, hunched over a laptop and crying about how far behind she was on marking coursework assignments and updating lecture slides, and getting on top of her academic research and whatnot. Wiktoria hovered in the doorframe tentatively waiting for the moment to ask her when she heard this, and decided to let her be. Leona had been getting up so early recently, even by Wiktoria’s standards, and getting back so late. It brought back memories to Wiktoria of her own training days when she would have to work a similar span of time. She imagined then, in that situation, being asked by someone to use up more of your time. Wiktoria couldn’t do it, she couldn’t be a further drain on Leona’s time. The French tutroring was charity enough. No, she needed an option B.

 

    Option B was going to be Rutherford. It was begrudging, but Wiktoria figured she owed her girlfriend the opportunity, even if she didn’t believe she would take it. Rutherford needed the gym even more than Wiktoria, hell she needed the opportunity to leave the house for something other than university more than Wiktoria. She just seemed to be spreading outwards now, and her appetite was showing no sign of winding down. So, she would ask, and give Rutherford another chance to fix things, and see if she could be arsed to even try.

    When she asked Ruthers, the excuse making and weaseling was predictable if not disappointing. Her face told the whole story, it contorted in disgust while her widening eyes betrayed her worry. And she made her excuses, and tried to impose them, as she always did, on Wiktoria. She tried to press her into dropping the gym. That she didn’t need to go because she was beautiful. That there was nothing wrong with enjoying yourself, and they were just using their Free Hit before real life kicked in. Because this wasn’t real life to Rutherford, it dawned on Wiktoria. This wasn’t serious, and neither was their relationship. It was just an excuse for fun and indulgence now. The girll lost her virginity to Wiktoria back in November, and Wiktoria decided that it meant something personal, and was a sign of commitment. But maybe it was just Rutherford indulging. Again. After all, they hadn’t been that close until that one delightful study week that they spent together. Maybe that was the exception, maybe the real Rutherford was just pursuing cheap thrills and was including Wiktoria as one of those thrills.

    This thought broke Wiktoria’s heart. The Pole had undoubtedly rebounded with Rutherford and perhaps had over-committed emotionally, but she was looking for something more than just frivolous. And she thought she had it. Maybe she was wrong.

    Wiktoria in the living area and cried, she was losing her girlfriend.

 

    Option C was going to be Minnie. Yes, all Wiktoria’s fragile and crumbling hopes lay with a girl who was currently eating two takeaway pizzas just to kill the time until dinner. That she would would pivot into being the gym buddy that Wiktoria needed felt like a long shot.

    Wiktoria knew the answer would be ‘no’ and started contemplated Option D before she had even asked Minnie. Could she go alone? She used to go on her own, but her self-confidence was higher back then. Plus she felt more comfortable back in Poland than over here in the UK, with their excessively dialect-inflected slang and unusual customs. What were the UK’s gym customs? Were they the same as in Poland? She figured that once Minnie had said no, she would have to find out for herself, by herself.

    But first she had to ask.

    “You are my last friend.” She said to Minnie between sniffles. Minnie didn’t even look up, just continued eating in disinterested auto-pilot. “I need somebody to go to the gym with me.” Minnie looked up at that.

    “To the gym?”

    Wiktoria nodded, undeniably upset. But rather than pry, and tenderly care like Wiktoria would have done had the roles been reversed, Minnie unleashed nihilistic hell on the clearly vulnerable girl, unfurling her own darkest neuroses.

     “No, I’m not going to the gym, sorry Wicky. I’m too fat now love. There are two types of fat in the world, recoverable fat and irrecoverable fat. I am now irrecoverably fat. I am nearly 250lbs, Wicky. I’m done. Done, I tell you. This is me now, the fat girl. I have been fattened. I have been fattened and I will never be unfattened again. I’m too far gone, there’s no road back. All that I can do is just get fatter. No point fighting it, it’s too late to fight. I’m just going to wave a white flag and accept that my former sexy body is gone now, never to come back.”

    “But… will you not try?” Wiktoria had been unnerved by this diatribe.

    “No, I can’t. Too embarrassing. I can’t be that fat girl in the gym. You used to be an athlete, you know the one I mean. How humiliating was it, seeing her there, the fat girl in the gym? And we all knew, back when we were one of the thin sexy gym people, that she would give up after week 3. The fat girl was too far gone. Well, I’m going to save mi’sen that embarrassment and just admit it. This is a one-way street to super-obesity with no opportunity to turn off.”

    And that left Wiktoria leaving the kitchen utterly shell-shocked. Was Minnie right? And if she was right about herself then she would undoubtedly be right about Wiktoria, who knew she was a bigger girl than the pizza-scoffing girl.

    Was Wiktoria too far gone on the one-way road to super-obesity? Was she irrecoverably fat now? And maybe, just as Minnie stopped calling herself Skinny because of her escalating weight, Wiktoria should stop thinking of herself as a Pole. Because she wasn't built like a pole any more, either. Her Pole days were over.

 

    Things went from worse to cataclysmic on the Monday. Leona had been in a right old state after work, and was telling everyone about the incident with Betty Bitchface, Bony Betty or whatever nickname that Leona saw fit to unleash at that point in the retelling of her story. And her justification for all of this tragedy was the toll of her busy schedule. Wiktoria knew exactly hot much that the busy schedule was the thing to scapegoat, she had heard her crying about the volume of work the voluminous girl had to do. The teacher looked tired around the eyes, though stylish with her coiffed hair and trendy Angora top, leaving Wiktoria to worry about her and simultaneously admire her.

    “Well, I could like, maybe not have the private tutoring on Monday? I’m already asking a lot of you with the French classes and I feel guilty burdening you further, I guess?” Rutherford offered kindly.

    Leona nodded gratefully and took Rutherford up on her offer to downsize her commitment to private tutoring. Leona seemed appreciative.

    Wiktoria, however, was not. She just harrumphed and stormed out of the room. Again, somehow Rutherford had contrived to justify further laziness and regression. It was the only thing that she was trying to do ever, was not try to do anything at all. If Rutherford was no longer a Hollywood siren, and if Rutherford was no longer a fashionista, and if Rutherford was also no longer academically ambitious… then who was she? And who was the girl that Wiktoria had been falling in love with. And if they didn’t even have their enthusiasm for studies in common, what did they have in common? The answer was something she couldn’t stomach – the only commonality was her stomach.

 

    Leona had suggested that they all go up together to watch her do a comedy gig, and all three girls jumped at the chance. They all needed cheering up, for various reasons.

    In Wiktoria’s case, it was the opportunity to see somebody pushing boundaries and leaving an impression on the world. Leona was enviable in this regard, since she was always breaking down barriers and through glass ceilings. She worked so hard, and challenged herself so often, and was always doing new and exciting things. Wiktoria wanted to see these attributes in full flow. It made such a pleasant change given how a certain someone was being of late.

    She was a little unsure about Rutherford being there, given how badly things had kept going between them, but at least Rutherford was going to be leaving the house for a change, and at least she would have to make herself look pretty and not just throw on a jumper and say she’s ready to leave the house.

    Guess what’s happened. Rutherford just threw on a jumper and said she was ready to leave the house.

    The stand-up was a roaring success. Wiktoria spent the entire 20 minute set open-mouthed as Leona ruled the stage, and conducted an engaged audience as if she were Sir Simon Rattle before an orchestra. Leona knew when to be defiant and oratorical and whip the punters into a rapturous frenzy, and when to take her foot off the gas and be relatable and confessional. She used the microphone as a wand and the stage as her palace, and Wiktoria found the whole thing so empowering and magisterial. This was how Rutherford could be, nay should be, if she could ever get off her ever-fattening arse and do something other than ever-fatten. The whole routine was all so empowering to Wicky. And that she was doing it in a spangling dress that made her look like Aphrodite incognito made it all the better.

 

    So Wiktoria was devastated that Leona was leaving, the one strain of sanity in an ever-copulating and ever-corpulating household. The one with aspirations and positive momentum in her life. The one with intelligence and power and ambition. Now, Wiktoria was left with Minnie, who’s fat bum was permanently sat on the self-destruct button, and Rutherford who was making it her life mission to go from Princess Leia to Jabba the Hutt in the space of an academic year. This was going to be a long week.

 

[swahilimonkfish]

The most contrived chapter yet, sorry for that

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 7

“So, we will both put £500 of our money into this shoebox” Wiktoria said, grabbing a shoe box from her side of the bedroom, a shoebox that had previously housed some rather trendy low-heel smartwear shoes that she had bought as part of her upgraded look.

    “Wait, where did you get that kinda money from?” Rutherford asked as Wiktoria placed £20s and £50 into the box.

    “You got your money from your parents. I got my money from mine.” Wiktoria said, defensively. Despite the photos around the room, she didn’t actually speak much about her parents. And whenever somebody asked, she just deflected or shut them down. Had this been at a stage in the relationship where they felt that they could be honest and frank with one another, this issue would have probably been pressed upon. But it wasn't, so they didn't

    Rutherford sighed and put the money in the box. For her part, it had been true about her parents fronting up the cash. She didn’t like asking them for anything, or even speaking to them after the way they righteously scorned her just for her sexual orientation, but her grades so far had impressed them and their animosity fading slightly. Maybe homophobia was just a phase, part of growing up, you tend to experiment with those kind of things when you're around that age don't you. That said, they had only spoken to Rutherford on the phone, and they hadn’t seen their girl since she caught a flight to Heathrow back in the late summer. She was not the same girl as the one back then. Or rather, she was the same girl from back then, plus another one too, now that she was comfortably double in size. They would probably conclude it was Satan's way of punishing her for defying God's love of heteronormativity. Because we all know divine, omniscient creators have the horn for heteronormativity, it's the first rule (and second rule) of Bible club, I think.

    They also didn’t know what the money was for. The answer being that it was for travel during the summer. The plan that the pair had concocted was that Wiktoria and Rutherford would put some money aside for the summer holidays and use it to travel Europe and to do all the things they both wanted to do; engage in the culture, practice the languages and, yes, even sample the local cuisine. It would be a compromise that would hopefully suit both and thaw some of the frostiness between the pair.

    There had to be a resolution to the frostiness between the pair, after all. Being trapped in the house with only each other for company would have been too much otherwise. So, they agreed early on that they would try to patch things up formally, and that this would be way to do it. If either wanted to back out, they could just take their half of the money and at least they would each know where the other stood. But, hopefully, reparations were under way.

 

    Minnie was drunkenly coming home from an uproarious night out with her old flatmates back in student accommodation. She decided to spend a bit more time back with them in the absence of Leona and her decreasingly slender digits. She had missed her flatmate girls with their salaciously gossipy ways and their ability to drink more than their teeny bodies could handle. Of course, Minnie’s body was now considerably less teeny than the rest of her entourage, but the girls never commented on the ongoing expansion because commenting on it was something that could wait until after her back was turned. And Minnie knew this, and appreciated them sparing her the comments to her face. And let's be honest here, while Minnie had obviously ballooned considerably and quite startlingly, the remaining rat pack of 18 year old girls were all facing the creeping threat of pounds creeping on, themselves.

    Coming back was when Minnie decided to give the Mecca of moreishness that was Kebabland another visit. She hadn’t been there in person for over a month, since usually she would just order in through Deliveroo or a similar app. But since she was out with the girls, she thought she would visit in person, for old time’s sake. Or she would anyway, if she could withdraw any money from this goddamn ATM to pay for the damn thing. But the ATM was telling her something that she already knew, she had reached her overdraft limit. Apparently her eating habits weren't just unhealthy on her waistline, they had been just as detrimental to the well-being of her funds. And it wasn’t like she could ask her parents for money, though lord knows they could afford it, it was an option that she couldn't face facing. No, she had severed all ties and needed to fund her Skinny Meal another way.

    She decided that the best way to get that Skinny Meal that she couldn't do without, would be to flirt with Ahmed. It had been a fair old while since he had last seen her in the plentiful flesh and she had put on a lot of weight since then. On the other hand, she had put on a lot weight before then also, so her growth and girth would not be a surprise to the moustachioed old man. He had seen the 113lb party animal with emerald eyes and a saber-thin waist become a 202lb girl with a tummy that surged forward further than her modest breasts. That she was now 50lbs further down the same road would presumably be neither here nor there. The dress didn’t flatter her gain one iota. It was black and sequin-covered and strapless. It hung desperately to her every convex bodily flourish. The straplessness meant that her deliciously coated shoulders were on full display, her fat concealing any evidence that a skeleton lay beneath her skin somewhere. Below was where the dress started, and it started as it clung to her breasts like barnacles to a ship, her shallowest outward parabolae still reasonably projected and looking juicier than they had ever looked previously. But the clinginess of the dress only really became a problem further down over her stomach. The dress outlined her stomach, providing a thin cast for every dimple on her skin. The most embarrassing aspect of it was the way the dress had to swing back in again beneath the stomach, providing a material perch for it to rest on. From behind you could see her derrière that was merrier than ever before, chunking outwards and sidewards with gleeful abandon. Then came the legs and this was where the dress finished. Fleshy trunks of pale white skin that were now visible from more than halfway up her widthy thigh. The material had been used up on her other expanded body parts that it simply ran out as soon as the legs started, showing all of their meatiness in all of its glory. Even her knees were fatty, the sides of them protected with adipose protection, a development that would have seemed impossible back in September. So, when you put it like that, it was no surprise that when Minnie walked into the joint, Ahmed’s eyes nearly popped out his always smiling face.

    Ahmed was always a loveable rogue who felt like he could talk his way out of any given situation, but he was never a pervert. Think an older Han Solo, but without the fetish for furries. And while he had recognised the Minnie was once a young attractive girl, he instead always treated her like an old friend. Yes, her overly affectionate persona boosted his healthy sized ego, but he never ogled or leered. Over the months, he had seen her grow bigger and whilst the rest of his staff grew disappointed, it was always just Skinny to him, his good friend and most loyal customer. But every time he saw her grow, it always caught him off guard. And this time was no different.

    “Ah Skinny!” Ahmed said happily as she thrust the doors of Kebabland open dramatically. “Long time no see”

    “I have missed yer soo much Ahmed. You’re a good lad, and I’ll always love yer” she grinned brightly at the greying man. He was the only person in the world who could get away with calling her Skinny still. Anyone else, she would correct. But Ahmed was exempt because he named a meal after her.

    “Is it the usual?” He said, leaning back and chortling to himself as she continued grinning inanely.

    “Oh, I can’t Ahmed. I’m stony broke”

    “Oh, well that will never do. I’ll tell you what, we’ll set up a tab, just for you and you can order whatever you like. And if push comes to shove, you can pay back when you get your next student loan installment. We’ll call it… the Skinny tab.” Ahmed said, showing how customer satisfaction is the key to customer retention with all his salesman nous.

    “Oh, you’d do that for me? Oh Ahmed, they don’t make ‘em like you any more” Minnie beamed.

    “No they don’t, no they don’t” he laughed merrily. “It will be ready in five… and I’ll put it on your tab”

    “Well, if you have me a tab. It might as well go all in. Let’s double it! Two Skinny meals!” Minnie drunken eyes were bigger than her gigantic belly.

    “If you insist, my number one customer” he said

    And that was how Minnie spent the remaining hours of her night, eating them whilst in a dress that was too tight.

 

    When she had finished the meal, night-time had departed and morning had taken its place, and at 7am, she figured it was too late to go to bed, so she might as well carry on eating and drinking through the day. She was also, by this point, paralytically plastered and drinking vodka from the bottle. The new plan was simple – she had arranged to see her flatmates again the following night so she would just keep partying in the meantime. The booze and food had been making her sleepy however, so she decided she needed a sugar rush. She drank from the bottle of Pepsi in the fridge, and started nibbling on the salted caramel cake she had bought herself with her last pennies before she went out. She couldn’t possibly eat any more, but she did anyway. Because salted caramel is her favourite, because she needed the sugar rush to stay awake and because she was just a glutton these days.

    Half an hour into the cake, Wiktoria wandered into the kitchen for breakfast.

    “Wow, are you hungry?” She asked, knowing the answer.

    “Yes, and pissed. You?” Minnie replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

    “Haha, yes I am hungry too. But I am trying to eat healthier so will just have toast.” Wiktoria said, reaching into the cupboards to grab a small plate down.

    “No, don’t leave me on my own being fat. Eat something else. Maybe have some of those French croissant things you like, you have some ones you just need to warm through in the cupboard down there” Minnie said, pointing with chocolaty fingers to where they were kept.

    Wiktoria paused, and thought. She shouldn’t, should she? But then again, she was going to Europe in the summer, not to mention that she was a budding francophile who was keen to get her francophilic fix whereever she could. And anyway, it was too late now to be healthy, as Minnie said.

    “Fine, I will have the croissants, but you also have to let me have some of the cake.” Wiktoria’s idea of a compromise amused the greedy Minnie, who sliced a hearty sized piece off for her and then got back into digging in.

    “But...” Wiktoria continued, adding mainly for herself but also to ensure that nobody would think less of her. “Just because I like food, doesn’t mean I want to be fat”

    “Oh love, you’re not fat, this is fat” Minnie said, before standing up in the kitchen, and with sticky chocolate fingers, rolled up her dress from the bottom upwards to show her impressive stomach, that folded over sufficiently to cover her knickers.

    “We are both fat Minnie, haha” Wiktoria said. She was glad to be talking to Minnie, her first UK friend. They hadn’t spoken enough recently. Apart from that time when Minnie mentioned the one way road to super-obesity, they had been preoccupied with their own respective relationships; Wiktoria with eating out her girlfriend, Minnie with eating.

    Minnie was doing the phrase belly-laughing justice at this point, at Wiktoria’s deadpan comment. It may not have been that funny, but it tickled Minnie and, to be fair to the lass she was absolutely steaming. Her belly reverberated as the chuckles bubbled up from her lardily encased diaphragm. And her belly was still on full display since she hadn't rolled her dress back down. And she hadn't done this because her over-extended stomach was proving to be to large an obstacle for an uncoordinated Minnie in her attempts to get her dress back down. So, in no fit state to recognise how she looked, she left it rolled up beneath her breasts, and sat back down to her cake, with her bare belly bursting forwards unblemished by clothing.

    “What shall I do Minnie? I want to be a brilliant person and Rutherford just wants to eat and get fat. But I still like her and I don’t want to give up” Wiktoria asked tenderly.

    “Do both. You can be a brilliant person and still get fat. They’re not mutually exclusive. You can be a great linguist, and be a world-renowned translator and still be fat. You choose what it is to define yourself by, you can choose your waistline, your sporting achievements, your command of languages, whatever. You choose the rules that you play by. Choose not to play by the rule that involves dieting.” Minnie said, whilst going back in for another slice of salted caramel goodness.

    “So what do you want to be defined on?” Wiktoria asked concernedly.

    Minnie paused. Did she know? What was she doing, where was she going, why did it feel like all of her trajectories were turning downwards?

    “I have three years to decide that. I have a free hit. And then I will decide what I want to be defined by. But in the meantime, I am not going to not eat, just in case I want to be defined by my dress size” Minnie said, surprising her stupored self with some sort of sagacity.

    “You are very wise Minnie” Wiktoria said, smiling. “Can I have another slice of cake please?”

 

    It wasn’t until Thursday that Minnie’s food and drink binge came to a close. She had explored the very limits of every aspect of her capacity, and then pushed through it. And she was feeling the after-effects that Thursday morning. She had decided to set aside this day to go to the bank and see if she could coax yet another overdraft extension. They nearly always said yes to students, so she wasn’t expecting much resistance, but she was going to have to find some clothes that fit first.

    And she was down to her bare bones in this regard, she had now even exceeded the limits of the clothes that she had bought as part of a perverse curiosity to see if she could even wear without it looking like a smock. And now she had surpassed them. And yet, still, the alarm bells of her mind were being suppressed by her rampart id.

    She tried a t-shirt was designed to be baggy but was in fact figure-hugging. She found some leggings that still had enough give in them to cover her thick stumps of leg. And then she put on her dependable shades and made her way down.

    She couldn’t keep relying on the charity of her friends to buy her drinks, or the kindness of her house mates to factor her insatiable appetite into their weekly shopping. She needed enough money just to get through until the summer holiday, where she could get some full-time work.

    A further £500 extension was granted to her, taking her limit to £2500. Minnie knew this wouldn’t take long for someone of her desirous hunger to burn through, but it gave her leeway until she had an idea for more. Once she had come back into the house, she heard the familiar sound from upstairs of American sexual groaning. Minnie’s advice to Wiktoria had given the pair a new lease of life, and put a temporary plaster over the re-surfacing insecurity of the Polish girl. Walking back into the kitchen she noticed a shoebox hidden under the sofa. Having spent 3 consecutive days and nights off her face on booze and biscuits, she hadn’t noticed it before. She leant down to have a look inside it and saw a stash of cash like she had never seen before. There must have been nearly a grand here. Who’s money was it? And how much could she pinch without anyone noticing. Half? Could she really take £500 from one of her house mates? And, given her ceaseless yearning for consumption, did she have a choice? She could always just take it for now, and give it back later. They wouldn’t even notice. Would they?

    Minnie didn’t like to think of herself as the type of person who would do something as cruel as steal from a friend, but her self-worth had already hit rock bottom and had nowhere lower to go. She had abandoned her family, despite them only ever looking out for her. She kept trying to have sex with her various house mates despite her knowing full well that she was emotionally virulent and needed to be quarantined. And she had gone from being beautiful to being a behemoth. When you put it like that, being a thief and a traitor to her best friends seemed like a logical regression. Might as well get hung for lamb as mutton, she thought, as she rammed the money in her purse. She now had a grand to play with until the Summer, and she really fancied Chinese food.

 

    Leona was coming back tomorrow on the Sunday afternoon, and Wiktoria was proud at how the girls had managed without her. Even Minnie stopped drinking for a 12 hour period over the course of the 6 days, as she waged war on her liver with a bottle and waged war on her stomach with a takeaway menu.

    RaW (Rutherford and Wiktoria) seemed to be in an uneasy alliance. The prospect of jam tomorrow had bound them together, in the summer they could fix all their problems and go travelling etc. In the meantime, both of the girls could fulfil their respective ambitions. Wiktoria’s ambition that she wanted to fulfillwas becoming better at language, and had been hitting the Duolingo hard. Rutherford’s ambition that she wanted to fulfil was to always be filled full, and had been hitting the fridge hard. But this was OK, because the future hope that they could resolve and reconcile these differences and divergences by a three month tour of Europe. All would be resolved then. It would have to be.

    So, in the meantime, Wiktoria strolled downstairs to make Rutherford a second breakfast in bed. Meals that were only being separated by the pleasuring of one another. While the bacon was frying and the croissants were in the over, while the bread was toasting and the pancakes were being cooked, Wiktoria just decided to check the money box. For peace of mind’s sake. What she was confronted with left her stunned.

    Half of the money had gone, which could mean only one thing. Rutherford had reneged on her promised over the trip to Europe and, fitting given her laziness, hadn’t even been arsed to let her know. She had just taken her money back and left it at that. Wiktoria didn’t know what to do apart from cry. Everything remotely good these last few days must have been just another lie to placate the Pole. Wiktoria just hovered over the shoebox and sobbed.

    Then the smoke alarm screeched. Shit, the bacon. Wiktoria wiped away the tears, composed herself and took the bacon of the hob. Rutherford had made up her mind, and Wiktoira didn’t know what to do, but it was nothing that couldn’t wait until Leona was back. Serving the breakfast up onto plates, she took a look in the mirror to make sure the tears hadn’t stained and that Rutherford would be none the wiser, and then took the colossal second breakfasts upstairs. If Rutherford couldn’t be arsed to talk to her, then she was going to return the favour. Wiktoria would play dumb.

    With that resolution in her mind, she served her back-stabbing girlfriend yet more breakfast and prepared for some angry love-making afterwards.

    This anger, heartbreak and resolution distracted Wicky from fully inspecting the image in the mirror for residual markers of weight gain. If she had, she might have noticed the unfavourable fact that there was 282lbs of her looking back.

    
    Wiktoria was in the shower and Rutherford decided to go into the kitchen and cook something for the Pole as a thank you for the sex that they just had. It was head-spinningly mesmerisingly earth-shatteringly good, and the best way that Rutherford could think of to say thank you was the one meal she knew how to make. Steak and fries. She didn’t know how to cook much, at least well, but she fry a steak perfectly. Medium-rare with a lovely juicy red centre and succulent brown skin encasing it. What better way of showing gratitude.

    While the fries were in the oven, but before she started the fiery frying of flesh, Rutherford decided to hang around in the seating area, eating a family pack of Doritos as she did. It was then that she noticed the shoe-box with their European funds had been moved. Still eating, she leant down so that her stomach bunched up and flopped down, and looked in the box. It was half-empty! That Polish fucker had clearly withdrawn her half of the fund. And without telling Rutherford no less. Though that didn’t surprise Rutherford, Wiktoria just never communicated with her. She just sulked and reacted without ever telling her why. Rutherford valued openness and honesty over everything. It had been the thing that nearly wrecked her relationship with Minnie, her endless secrets. And now Wiktoria was doing it. Maybe this was the real her. Not the kind-hearted girl she had known early on. Maybe the mask had slipped and the real girl was a hoarder of emotions who would lash out without ever explaining why.

    Rutherford broke down into tears. Just when she thought things were looking up between them, Wiktoria wrecks it. There could be no coming back from this kind of betrayal, could there? Well, if Wiktoria was going to fail to communicate, then so would Rutherford. She was going to bottle up her anger too. No, Wiktoria would not have the last life. Rutherford would keep going on without telling Wicky that she knew, and wait until the guilt gets the Pole to confess. And then, they will either make up or break up.

    But first, Rutherford would have to just pretend she hadn’t seen this, so she pushed the box back under the sofa. Before she would fry that steak, she quickly glanced at the mirror and make sure her pallid face didn’t show the tears that had previously tumbled down. It was fine, you could never tell. So, back to the steak it was. Maybe she would make the steak rare. Make the steak rare and bloody.

    And distracted she went about it in the kitchen. Of course, if she had spent just a little longer looking at the mirror, she might have been surprised at the size of the girl staring back. Surprised at the 318lb girl staring back.

 

[supermax1200]

• This is one of the best stories I have read in a long time! Is it possible you, Swahilimonkfish are Swordfish from Dimensions? Your work seems similar. Your stories take place in the UK and are so well written I would believe you were professional writers. Keep up the good work!

[swahilimonkfish]

1 minute ago, supermax1200 said:

• This is one of the best stories I have read in a long time! Is it possible you, Swahilimonkfish are Swordfish from Dimensions? Your work seems similar. Your stories take place in the UK and are so well written I would believe you were professional writers. Keep up the good work!

Haha, no I'm not Swordfish but you've made my day by saying that! I suppose our names do begin with 'sw' and end in 'fish', never noticed that before. He is/was one of the greats and one of my favourite writers, but glad you appreciate the story, thanks!

[supermax1200]

I'm glad you mat least know who Swordfish is. He has always been one of my favorite writers. I have been reading this stuff since the beginning of the internet but I rarely comment. Your writing style and skill forced me to comment though! Have you written anything else or is this your first story?

[swahilimonkfish]

Just now, supermax1200 said:

I'm glad you mat least know who Swordfish is. He has always been one of my favorite writers. I have been reading this stuff since the beginning of the internet but I rarely comment. Your writing style and skill forced me to comment though! Have you written anything else or is this your first story?

Wow thanks. Yeah, he is a legend, remember him from way back, so many great stories. You're right about them seeming professionally written, I always felt they were too. Sometimes I would just read and enjoy the writing and forgot about the WG stuff.

This is my first story, not too confident about it so really glad that you like it. I do have a one-off short-story on my DevaintArt but the WG takes a back-seat and I focus on the feelz so not posted it here.

And thanks for your comment, it really helps, glad you broke your habit and said it!

[swahilimonkfish]

A short but sweet one, about less about Leona and more about this chapter. Hope you enjoy it!

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 8

    Home at last. Home at fucking last.

    Leona sighed in relief and breathed in the cold crisp air of British early-Spring mid-afternoon, as she walked from the Uber to the house that she was currently calling home on the outskirts of Brighton and Hove. She was dragging with her two large leather luggage bags having asked the uber driver to help her get them out of his boot. He, of course, obliged because he was all about dat uber rating, like most uber drivers are. She fortunately only had to drag them up the length of a very shallow front garden since the house didn’t come with a driveway. Which was no problem to Leona who, having been raised and living in London, never learnt to drive. Still the short journey wasn’t easy when you’re as overloaded as a packhorse, and she was panting when she got to the front door. Waiting at the front door were three girls just nibbling cream cakes and watching the poor teacher having to wield everything single-handedly.

    “So, none of you are going to help me then, I take it?” she asked, as she strained and lifted the luggage containers over the step and through the door into her house. “I’m letting you live here for free, it’s the least you could do” she continued, but to nobody as the girls were now sitting in the living area eating their cream cakes in there. Leona closed the door behind her, left her luggage in their narrow hall and walked into the living area to join them.

    “I was expecting a better tan from you, I’ll be honest” Minnie mused as the tired teacher sat next to her in the remaining space on the second sofa. And indeed Leona didn’t look as sun-kissed as the girls had expected off the back of a university-funded jaunt to the ancient and illustrious city of Rome. She wasn’t a particularly pale young woman, she had that year-long glow that comes from a childhood in warmer climates on the European mainland, but her skin didn’t have that warm glow of time spent out in good weather either.

    “Yes, tan’s a bit crap because, well, it rained the entire time. I mean, it is only early spring but I was hoping for some of that Mediterranean sunshine, I’m not going to lie. Still, glad to be back” Leona sighed, dragging the table towards her and helping herself to a chocolate éclair and a bear claw. “But Rome is such an awesome city. I haven’t been there in years and there are so many famous sights and classic architecture, that I wish I had more time to spend scouring its historic centre.”

    “Is that the one with that Leaning Tower?” Rutherford asked, much to the visible annoyance of Wiktoria next to her who had such an insatiably burning desire to see Rome and was sat next to and still sort-of dating a girl who didn’t realise that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was, *shock horror*, in Pisa. For all Rutherford’s knowledge of European cinema, she could be really ignorant in terms of her knowledge of Europe itself, hiding in a film bubble.

    “No, Ruthers. But there is the Pantheon and the Piazza Navona… I’ve seen them all before, but last time I went I was with… well… you know. Roman.” Leona said, immediately failing to avoid the subject that she had been intending to avoid.

    “You took Roman to Roma?” Rutherford giggled, annoying Wiktoria this time by dominating the conversation. But for all Rutherford’s ignorance of European sights, she was clued up on Leona’s love life with her ex – Roman the dick.

    “Yes, I did” Leona admitted. “It was our first trip together and I should have realised he was a narcissist then, when he chose to go to a place that was basically his name. I thought it was funny at the time, I should have read the signs. And the signs should have read ‘Roman the dick is a dick’.”

    “So, if it rained and you didn’t see the amazing things… what did you do, my very beautiful friend?” Wiktoria posed to her.

    “Eat. When in Rome… I just spent the time eating. I was looking forward to doing all this walking and exploring of the city, but it was raining and I was feeling… oh, I don’t know. It’s been my first trip abroad on my own, I’d always gone with Roman and I just felt aimless. Like the experiences and sights were being wasted on me because I had no-one to share them with. I’m sorry, that sounds pathetic” Leona just put her head in her hands, and ran them through her hair. Rome was supposed to be the week that she got her life back on track and that hollowness that Roman had left behind all those months ago was still plaguing her. And she was angry at herself because she thought that she was being pathetic, and unfeminist.

    “Hey, that’s okay, don’t worry” Minnie wrapped her arm around the teacher. “We’ve just spent our time eating too”

    “Haha, there’s a surprise” Leona said meekly, still disappointed in herself for not having got over her ex yet. “But, I gotta say, some of the places to eat in Italy are amazing. Have you had authentic Italian pizza before? Ah Roman pizza is so good, even better than Neapolitan pizza, seriously. Have you never tried it?”

    The girls all shook their head obediently as they ate their cream cakes.

    “It’s amazing. Really amazing. And it’s considered street food, so that means it’s basically a snack. Pizzas, hot from a pizza oven, as a snack - it's a great idea. Not a healthy idea, but a great one. Oh, and what about the pasta dishes? And the gelato. And the fritti. Have you guys ever had fritti before? And some of the fish dishes that you can get. Oh God, I ate for England, in Italy” Leona said and exhaled, pushing out her stomach as if for emphasis.

    And there was more stomach to be emphasised than ever before. Leona had remained bottom heavy, and the fact that sitting down next to Minnie in the two-seater sofa was such a tight squeeze suggested to the pair that their had been growth and widening there, but, sitting down, it was her tummy that showed her gain the most. For it now was a tummy, not just some nebulous growth that might become a tummy further down the line. It pooched out still, but it pooched out further than ever. The weather-inappropriate summer dress downplayed the extent of the pooching, but there was no mistaking that pooching was happening, and it was happening moreso than ever. The flowery dress may have also been flattering on her arse, but it gave her legs nowhere to hide. And her legs had never been thin, even at her lowest weight, but they had never been this big either. Her arms were also on display and they had that warm wiggle to them that you get around the upper arm of a larger lady. All in all, there was no hiding how much she had been enjoying the Italian food and avoiding Italian walking. And the numbers 210lbs backed that up. That food had come at a price, and that price was 11 further pounds. Remember when her highest ever weight was 145lbs? Of course you can, it was only 4 months ago.

    And the blame lay firmly in the hands of her eating habits and her lack of exercise habits. The first time she visited, she ended up with blisters from walking so much to take photos of all the places. Yes, she took photos even though it was before Instagram was popular. This time she stayed around the same area, not far outside the busy centre. It was still a lovely part of a lovely city, with its great coffee and even better food, but these might not have had the impact on her figure had it not been for the surprisingly sedentary nature of her time in Rome.

    The reasons for it were the ones laid out above. Bad weather and bad memories. The weather literally dampened her enthusiasm for travelling, the light wasn’t very good for photographing and nobody wants to stand outside in the drizzle and rain all day, not even the British. So that deterred her, for one. Also putting her off was the absence of Roman. And this did her head in, but the few things she did see felt hollow, as she remembered seeing all these sights and sites with a companion to share it with. It gave the whole experience value. She had memories of walking down a street and an old woman sneezing on her and not apologising, and Roman joking that maybe that was the custom over here and everyone was rude, and then a different old woman sneezing on him as if to prove him right, and then they both laughed. A really meaningless anecdote but one that carried so much warmth. And the kind of experience you can’t have when you’re experiencing it on your own.

    “Anyway, less about me, what about you guys?” Leona asked naively.

    The three girls just sat in silence, refusing to look at each other. Rutherford and Wiktoria not talking because they blamed each other for the money being withdrawn, and Minnie for stealing the money.

    “Oh, okay, I’d hoped you’d all sorted that stuff out by now, but moving on… what are we having for tea?”

 

    What they were going to be eating was homemade pasta, by Wiktoria. She had the idea earlier that day and decided to break Leona back into the swing of things gently by making an Italian-style pasta dish. As a celebration of of the return of Leona from the boot of Europe. She had chosen a tagliatelle carbonara dish that she had found the recipe for online, because they had left over bacon from their morning fry-ups, and she was slaving away frantically and furiously in the kitchen, while Rutherford went up to their shared room to decide which film the group should watch. She too was thinking Italian, to celebrate Leona's return from Itay, and was drawn towards the works of Fellini.

    And this left Minnie to finish off the cream pastries with Leona as they discussed things.

    “So, how was the actual conference itself?” Minnie said, convincingly feigning interest since she couldn’t care less. She just wanted to talk to the blossoming teacher.

    “Really good actually, lots of people there afterwards said really nice things, gave me lots of feedback. It was about how much we can apply from the learning techniques of hyperglots in regular language teaching environm….”

    Minnie interrupted because this wasn’t what she really wanted to here. “So, you said you did a lot of eating?”

    “Yes, can’t you tell?” Leona asked self-consciously, hoping that Minnie would lie to her and tell her that she couldn’t and that her outward bulges weren’t visible at all.

    “I think you carry it well, there’s nothing wrong with being a bit bigger.” Minnie unleashed that devilish smile again and Leona knew what was coming and started feeling awkward. Fortunately Wiktoria was nearby in the kitchen and could hear the conversation, and she came in at this point and kiboshed the sexual frisson in the air immediately.

    “Yes, I agree with Minnie.” Wiktoria said, kindly. “You are the most beautiful movie star in the whole house.” Which was a flattering compliment and a not-to-subtle jibe pointed at her sorta girlfriend.

    “Thanks you two, it means a lot. I really don’t feel it, and I know I preach that it doesn’t matter and that a woman’s worth is more than just her body… but I’m just really dreading going to work and seeing that twig of a teacher – bitchface Betty – and feeling so fat and past it by comparison.” Leona said sadly, her eyes evasive in that way that they did when she got lost in thoughts that upset her. Insecurity wasn't a common look on her, but she didn't hide it well when it shone through.

    “I have some good advice for you. It was Minnie’s advice for me, and I think you will like it.” Wiktoria said, before explaining to Leona about choosing the thing that you want to be judged on. She said that the person who wanted to be judged on how skinny they were was boring, but the person who wanted to be judged on how strong they were, how independent they were, how successful they were, how talented and funny and clever and multi-lingual they were… they were the kind of people that Wicky wanted to know.

    It was then that Minnie realised that Wictoria wasn’t just being kind. She hadn’t come in just to support emotionally. Wiktoria was… flirting? It was hard to say for certain because Wiktoria thought nothing of calling a platonic friend beautiful or sexy. But this was more than just kindness and emotional backing. This was early stages of courting. And Minnie realised this. But Wiktoria hadn’t.

    And with that realisation came a weird surge of jealousy that Minnie was not expecting. She had expected to be experiencing Leona’s fingers crawling over her later that night, and she was irritated to see that she wasn’t the only one who had the hots for teacher. She had her own woman – in fact she had the woman that Minnie wanted the most – so this just seemed unfair. But, Wiktoria was a hard person to hate, as everybody but Rutherford thought, so Minnie just watched with curiosity and suspicion.

    “That’s a really good speech, the pair of you. Thanks actually. I do have a lot to be proud of, you’re right. The fact that I’m a bit bigger is the least important thing about me! Yes, thank you, you two girls!” Leona said, emotionally recharged.

    It was at that point that the water started boiling so Wiktoria had to go back into the kitchen to put the pasta in, and that Rutherford came down ready to cast a film to the television. The film was Fellini's timeless classic and magnum opus - 8 1/2

 

[swahilimonkfish]

Bit of an experimental one, so bear with it. But you don't get a lot of WG fiction chapters based on Fellini films

A Free Hit - Chapter 8 1/2

 

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Swahilimonkfish Presents

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The Chapter

 

8 1/2

 

by Swahilimonkfish

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    The lights were off, leaving the room lit solely by unnatural blueish hues of the television in the corner of the house’s main living area. Opposite the television were the two 2-seater sofas that they had, lined up in a series facing it, to create that 'at a cinema' feel. They were a pair of garish teal blue fabric sofas that Leona had forked out for at a car-boot sale many moons ago and had owned from before she went abroad to live and study in Lisbon even, which was where she met Roman. It was crazy to think given how long Leona and Roman had been a couple, but her relationship with these increasingly tired looking sofas were her longest relationship. However, the ominous signs were that even this relationship might be approaching its final furlong. Because, filling every inch of these two sofas were four ever-widening girls, their arses spreading out into any available gap like polyfiller so no bit of the sofa lay un-arsed. Each sofa was not really wide enough to fit more girl.

    In fact the only way they fit was if Rutherford and Minnie sat on one seat, and Wiktoria and Leona occupied the other. Between their various weights and body-sizes, this was the combo that caused the least strain on the poor seats. And this seating arrangement suited all parties at this moment in time. Rutherford and Wiktoria were glad to be on different seats given that their relationship had found its lowest ebb of late. And Minnie and Leona were kept apart, making things considerably less awkward given that they both had strong memories of fingering one another on these very sofas whilst listening to the cries of pleasure emanating from Rutherford’s and Wiktoria’s room, back when they were in a good place. Rutherford and Minnie were happy to be sitting side by side as oldest friends, who, for all the things they had seen and known about one another, never judged each other negatively. And this was a trait that they really needed at this emotionally vulnerable point in time. Wiktoria and Leona were also happy to be together, they had been getting on like a house on fire with increasing admiration for one another.

    The Criterion Collection title card appeared on the screen and the girls wriggled into their seats ready to watch the movie. In front of each sofa was smorgasbord of gastronomic offering piled high on two small tables. The one in front of the linguists of Wiktoria and Leona was European food market of nibbles and nutritional nuggets, all spawned from the culinary capabilities of Wiktoria; piping-hot Polish pierogis and Russian piroshkis, salamis and cured Italian meats with soft French cheeses and British crackers, Danish pastries and Dutch waffles. The Euro-centric delights so diverse that tt would be enough to make Nigel Farage queasy. On the opposing table, the gluttons of Rutherford and Minnie had gone for greasier fare; skinny meals stacked on ordered in pizzas, cheesecakes and cream cakes. It was like a summary to the previous 7 months of their lives and how they had spent them.

    And all this would have been beyond plenty for a party of ten, but this was only an accompaniment to the pasta dish that Leona had served them all, and that the girls were currently sitting on their knees and filling their fat faces with. Pasta bowls whose size far more ‘Super’ than any American Football championship game, stocked to their brims with lashing of dense tagliatelle, smeared and smothered with gelatinously thick and gloopy Pecorino cheese sauce and peppered with pepper and pancetta, and topped with a decadent layer of parmesan. All served with cheesy garlic bread on the side, causing a fresh and arguably pungent garlicky aroma to permeate through the downstairs rooms.

 

    And as the film got started, the girls got stuck in, with the intention of having worked through the lots of it before the 138 runtime had expired. And, in the dark and with the girls watching the movie casually engaged in the story of the day-dreaming Italian director and the lustful and self-sabotaging relationship he has with the women of his life, Rutherford looked around at the enormity of the gorgeous and gorging girls of her life and drifted into a daydream of her own. A daydream that real life was getting closer and closer to realising. She bit her lip and tried to watch the movie, but her daydreaming mind kept wandering to all the wonderful women around her, and how she was still somehow lonely. How had this happened? She was in heaven and every dream and wish-fulfilment fantasy was coming true, and with an exclamation point on the end for emphasis no less. All the beautiful women of her… and that was when the film reached its ending. Wait, was it already two hours later? She looked at the tables in front of the girls and observed the cartons and plates where food once lay, and accepted it must be.

    She turned around to Minnie next to her, who told her that…

    “I’m not even sure you’re capable of love, and that’s why no-one loves you, love” whilst putting her hand down Rutherford’s trousers and taking her to pleasure-town, leaning in on the American’s bulk with her own and feeling their thighs rub against one another.

    Wiktoria pipes up “How can anyone love you, if you don’t love them back?” and Leona adds “Yes, you don’t love anyone but your stomach, how can you love anyone but yourself” as both the girls climb on top of Rutherford, smothering the American with their soft billowing curves of abundance. Leona’s famed arse on Rutherford’s knee, and Wiktoria’s tall frame poured on Rutherford’s top half. And Rutherford climaxes as she realises that she’s all alone and it’s all her own fault. As tongues and limbs and breasts and necks and fingers and food and food and food and food all fill every orifice that Rutherford has ever possessed, she climaxes and climaxes and climaxes.

 

    Suddenly Rutherford woke up to find herself leaning on Minnie…. And that was when the film reached it ending. Wait, was it now two hours later? She looked at the tables in front of the girls and observed the cartons and plates where food once lay, and got serious deja vu. Was she still dreaming?

    She turned around to Minnie next to her, who said…

    “Wow, that was actually quite a good movie by your standards, eh love. Weird but cool, yeah I reet enjoyed myself. Eh, did you enjoy it Ruthers?”

    Rutherford looked down and saw that Minnie’s hands were still down her trousers and that she was soaking downstairs.

    “Yes, I did enjoy it. I really enjoyed it.”

    And then the three girls got up and started clearing up the rubbish on the table, leaving Rutherford, alone, in the dark, with trousers dripping with pleasure. And Rutherford couldn’t decide if this was still a dream, or indeed whether she wanted it to be.

 

    And this time it wasn’t a dream. And she had just cheated on Wiktoria despite her Polish girlfriend being on the sofa next to her. And still Rutherford, surrounded by everything she ever wanted, felt lonely and sad. And so so pleasured.

 

[swahilimonkfish]

A bit of a return to normal after some experimental stuff, hope you enjoy!

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 9

  The end at last! Assignments were all handed in, exams were all finished and the summer off was fast approaching for musketeering students of Brighton University. It was Friday 24^th M­ay and everything was winding down.

    Except for Rutherford, who was wound up. Wound up at herself. Wound up because she was no longer angry at Wiktoria – whom she had betrayed, though without Wicky’s knowledge, with Minnie's wandering hand over a Fellini flick – just guilty. Her first response after being treated to Minnie’s fine fingers was one of stubborn belief that she was still somehow in the right. Wiktoria had brought this on herself surely with her haughty arrogance and inability to communicate. But as the weeks passed, Rutherford realised that she was kidding herself and it was her that had in fact done the unforgivable and cheated on her girlfriend. For all the tit-for-tat of their relationship breakdown, this was the ultimate transgression. So, Rutherford was sleeping on those blue sofas, pushed together to make something remotely resembling bed-sized. It was self-elected excommunication on Rutherford’s part, she couldn’t bare the guilt of sharing a bed with an oblivious Wiktoria having betrayed her like that. She couldn’t have Wicky’s long fingers scurrying across her body like a spider on a hot plate, and not be reminded of her adultery. So she volunteered to sleep on the two sofas pushed together to make something remotely bed-sized.

    Length-wise wasn’t great, even for someone of Rutherford’s diminutive stature, she couldn’t straighten her legs on the sofas but rather had to contort her chunky pins into a passable interpretation of a foetal position just to have somewhere to put her feet. Width-wise, mind, was still not an issue for Rutherford, because even her grown build couldn’t cover that much space. And, believe it or not, she was still growing. Perhaps it was a consequence of sleeping so close to a stocked-to-the-brim kitchen every night, meaning that midnight snacks could be accompanied by 2am and 4am snacks. Or maybe it was the loneliness that drove her to seek further comfort in food, even though it was food that had caused her to drive everyone away in the first place. Or maybe it was simply horniness, since she had to rely on her own hand to the job in the absence of any female affection in the flat, and nothing accompanied the growing feeling of horniness than the horny feeling of growing.

    So, grow she did, in every way but emotionally, and at a heretofore unseen rate. In fact, it saw her sail way past the 300lb barrier for the first time a goodly while ago. She didn’t know this, and would have probably guessed far more conservatively, without the means to weigh herself, but the mirror in the living room area showed the damage that the 358lbs had wrought upon a body that was starting to feel the consequences. After all, it was only 18 months ago that she was still weighing only a third of that. She had piled on weight at a rate that was utterly unsustainable on a mortal frame, giving her hedonism the bitter aftertaste of consequence. The first consequence had been that she had to sit on the floor these days because her rotund rump could not co-operate with any other enlarged arse from the flat on the narrowish two-seater sofa, since hers required more than 50%. It was an arse mottled the familiar dimples of cellulite and the familiar sag of gravity, and it was the arse of a big girl whichever way you looked at it. The next issue she had was her FF-sized breasts, massive fatty things that felt most at home resting on her stomach, which were causing her back to ache at times, particularly when she stood up for too long. Though, that could easily be remedied by becoming increasingly sedentary and spending even less time on her feet. Walking was also causing her issues, the chafing of the thighs and the aching of the feet as she heaved her heavier self about the place. So walking was something she had tried to drift away from more and more also, culminating in an increasingly insular life. The Spring sunshine had barely touched her masses of pale skin as she hid from the world. And this was down to the final consequence of her weight gain, the first signs of insecurity about her appearance. None of the other girls seen Rutherford show such nervousness about herself apart from Wiktoria during that one week in November, but Rutherford herself had never shown any about her looks before in her life. But the sexual charge of shame could not compensate for the humiliation of heaving her heft out and about, finding herself too wide for the wider world. Her stomach was simply too obtrusively obese, swarming forwards when she sat to closer to her knees than ever before, that she had been shamed into social reclusion. And this had included from attending her studies. She had slacked off her lessons considerably and worked from home as best she could. But it was causing her previously enviable grades to slip into something concerning, and felt like the final piece in Rutherford’s self-imposed self-implosion. Her twisted libido was like that tapeworm from that Irvine Welsh novel she'd read last year, and that story ended with a downward spiral that culminated with the definitive bang. Rutherford felt like she had lost to hers too.

    Feeling like she had lost, Rutherford sat up on one of the two sofas, eating a loaf of garlic bread on its own at 2am, and looked at her phone. And just when she thought she couldn’t nosedive further, she saw a Facebook message.

    It said “Hey grrrl, long time no see, how u bin, miss u xx”

    It had been sent by a girl called Shania Kroeger.

    Shay was trying to get back in touch with Rutherford.

 

    Minnie had recently come to the conclusion that she was slowly getting her shit together. It helped that Rutherford was losing hers. That sounded vindictive but it really wasn’t. She just didn’t feel like the black sheep of the musketeers for the first time, and that ray of self-love had been the instigator for better and healthier behaviour.

    Healthier behaviour included not sexually stimulating her best friend, who was clearly at a low ebb that she had partially brought about. It stung to know that she was partly complicit in Rutherford’s break up with Wiktoria and pull away from the world, but it was consensual and that’s what mattered, right? Truthfully, Minnie was avoiding her own responsibility because she knew it would sabotage any progress she would be making emotionally. So denial over the incident was Minnie’s best approximation of emotional progress. Y’know baby steps.

    Healthier behaviour also included drinking less wildly. She hadn’t left the sauce behind her or anything, but those crazy nights that went on so long they became crazy days were becoming less common. Not completely eliminating them. There was that Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday bender from a month back when she was processing the guilt that she had now locked back up. But, as I said before, baby steps.

    Healthier behaviour included hooking up with Leona less often. Though that was mainly down to Leona doing her utmost to pull away from the girl with an excess of id. Minnie hadn’t been showing her healthier habits here, and had repeatedly prowled for Leona, but the teacher was making herself scarce more and more often, afraid of Minnie’s bad influence and also to concentrate on this final deluge of marking that came as term time drew to a close.

    Healthier behaviour didn’t, however, include eating healthier. No baby steps even. Just a continuation of the established routine that saw her almost impartially curious as to the effect that her eating habits could have on her body. It was more out of wonder that she compared her former self with the current incarnation. And incarnation was an appropriate word given how fleshy she now was. Her stomach didn’t droop like drapes in the same way that an upright Rutherford stomach did, there was still enough elasticity to give it a semblance of upright form, like a fat girl who was also pregnant. Her stomach would rest on the belt of her dark denim jeans – remember when she opted for the high-waisted variety? - to help give the massive mass firmness and posture. The jeans themselves were fans of her bigger shape, and saw it as a chance to hang onto the skin tighter than ever, ironing out the cellulite of her legs and arse with its tightness. Her breasts were still more moderate in proportion, which seemed unfair given the rest of her, but had now at least becomes D’s. Her face had finally fallen foul of her fattening, sanding down the harshness of her features to the point where they were beginning to store fat even there on her face. Nothing and nowhere was safe from the tar-black haired hedonist’s propensity for pudding and padding.

    However, like Rutherford, and indeed nearly the entire cast of girls, the 250lb limited scales were not sufficient to give Minnie the numbers that would tell her just how far she had come in such a small period of time. So she was none the wiser as to the fact that she was on the absolute precipice of 300lbs herself, hiding marginally under (as if moral victory was to be found there) at a still colossal 294lbs. At this dizzying pace, she would be in triplicate before June was over. This impressive lady didn’t even look like a relative of the scrawny ass girl who first complimented Rutherford’s glasses, those 113 pounds now partnered with a further 181 of them over the course of just one academic year. If that annual gain was a person, it would be overweight. It was a monolithic, jaw-dropping, mind-blowing explosion of weight from the girl that never stopped eating, and her food-intake was the one thing she hadn’t broached tempering.

    But all those healthy habits were behind her today, thanks to a text she had received from her old flatmates. Her flatmates remained loyal to the girl for her ability to bring the party with her, wherever she went, but they would admit amongst themselves that they were a tiny bit grateful to not have to have a girl that size bringing their looks average down single-handedly. Not that they were exempt from the freshman 15 or what have you, just that it was nothing in comparison.

    And one of the girls had sent her a text saying that her parents had come down to find her.

    Her parents had come down to find her?

    That sent Minnie’s head spinning and brought down her recently re-assembled house of cards.

    She couldn’t see them. She was too far gone. No, they couldn’t see her like this. Oh dear god, it all came flooding back like PTSD. The sound of the christmas pudding hitting the wall, the sadness of her mum and the way she stressed the word ‘mischief’ when she described what was running through her veins. And then everything else did to, as if the blockage had been dislodged that had concealed every stain of guilt on her conscience. The stealing of £500 to pay for her takeaway habit from her very best friends. The sex with the teacher that drove her to despair and tears. The fingering of her best mate, which broke up the relationship of her best mate with her other best mate and, oh god it was too much to process. Everything was on fire, nothing was fine and she just wanted it all to stop. And, even though it was 8.30am, she opened a bottle of wine and started drinking from it straight. And she got her phone out and decided how much takeaway she could afford. Despite the £500 overdraft extension, the tab at Kebabland, and the £500 she robbed from her two best friends, she still only had £80 left. She intended to burn through that on various takeaways today. Fuck tomorrow, she didn’t even want to think about it. Minnie was in freefall and she didn’t want it to stop, because the only thing that stop freefall is rock bottom. Those baby steps felt like a long time ago.

 

    Leona had been keeping her head as far down as it went. When everyone else is bottoming out, you can either pull them up or cower away disloyally, and Leona was going all in on the latter. It was all getting too much for her, despite her being the only one who was maintaining the illusion of control. She had been wilfully naive in hoping that her trip to Italy would be a panacea that would cure all her ills, but her wilful naivety was being rubbed in her face at every opportunity since at home, so she was hiding out at work.

    Not that being at work was much better. Every day started badly, since she would have to walk into her office, past the photo of her that they had taken of her at the beginning of the year. She looked glamour model stunning in it, and she hated it. She hated the way she smiled as if she was trying to repress her irrepressible beauty, the smug bitch. She hated the way she hadn’t done much with her hair because she didn’t want to look too good, she wanted to be taken seriously after all, the show-off. The way her eyes made contact with the camera in that Mona Lisa way, as if to say I’m much better than you. And this annoyed Leona the most, because she knew it was true, the girl in the photo was much better than her.

    The next kick in the teeth was Lionel no longer treating her like she was a piece of meat. How this thought would have angered the girl in the photo but Leona missed it. Not the actual harassment from a Chomsky-loving creep with a receding hairline, but rather the feeling of self-superiority that came with it. She loved looking down on him for his creepy-ass ways and rolling her eyes at every lustful ogle or throwaway comment. But now she felt like she wanted him to tell her that she was still pretty because she didn’t feel like she was.

    And he was, of course, punishing her for this deterioration in physical appearance, stripping away her career opportunities as a conference speaker and taking her masters course from her. Her love life failing hit her hard, the unflattering face in the mirror just as much so, but hurting her career and thus undermining the decade of dedication that had got her to that point just depleted Leona’s very being. Her fiery feminist flame felt extinguished and there was just an underwhelming looking teacher with below-middling prospects and a dysfunctional love life.

    The final body blow to her bigger body came from Bitchface Betty Bollingbrooke, the apple of Lionel’s eye. Bitchface Betty had made up with Leona for her undignified approach – of course she did, she was unpleasantly magnanimous and forgiving like that, the cow – and was now back to being her mate. She knew why. Pity. Betty hadn’t ratted on her so as not to kick her colleague whilst down, out of female camaraderie and sorority. Leona wished that the goody two-shoes had just committed to the righteous indignation that she expressed earlier, so Leona didn’t feel so guilty for hating her. This way, she had to confront the reason for her hatred – petty jealousy and nothing more. And very little demonstrates how far a person has fallen, then by how jealous they can get of someone they once considered beneath them.

    There was a lot to be jealous of with Betty, no wonder Lionel had taken a seedy shine to the young teacher. Pencil was the brunette’s aesthetic. A pencil-thin girl in a pencil skirt. The 26 year old (how could she only be two years her junior? She looks like a first-year student?) was about the same height as Leona, but she was most definitely not the same weight – that pencil thin waist topped with barely anything up top, to maintain the pencil illusion came to a downright frugal 108lbs. This meant she was clinically underweight, but somehow it was just her style. Facially she was skinny-adorable, with that youthful gleam made to look even more thin (mighty close to gaunt) with her sheer straightened hair. Again – it made her look like a pencil. A very attractive, downright sexy pencil.

    And in her irritating way, she would trample on Leona’s feelings further by regaling how she is feeling bullied and traumatised by the lecherous department leader. She is just being young and un-hardened by the cruelty of the real world when she did it, not meaning to rub Leona’s face in it. But to hear how she was now ‘the pretty one’ was a final stark reminder that Leona no longer was. And feminism or no, that stung.

    And this is what was happening now.

    “And then he stroked my hair when he said what a great job I was doing. It was so gross, urgh! I swear his nails are longer than mine, and they have dirt underneath. He’s like something out of The Twits. Blergh!” Betty ranted in her high-pitched voice.

    “Yeah, well at least he still hasn’t made a move for your bum. He used to be terrible for that with me. He just loved pinching my bum, fucking pervert.” Leona reminisced ruefully. He wouldn’t go for her bum now, he wouldn’t know where to start. So much bum to pinch.

    “But he doesn’t do it know. I mean, that’s something. I’m so jealous of you for that” Betty whined sweetly. Always so annoyingly sweet and adorable.

    “Ha, don’t be jealous. The only reason he’s stopped is because I’m not hot enough for him any more. You’re getting his advances because you’re pretty and I’m… I guess I’m not pretty any more.” Leona sighed. This was getting disconcertingly close to bonding openly with the sugar and spice and all things nice cliché opposite her.

    “You’re pretty Leona. You’re really pretty. You shouldn’t put yourself down, as a woman you have to stand up for yourself. Because no man ever will.” Betty had also faithfully caught Leona’s feminist bug, and was even using her words against her now. So frustratingly straight a do-gooder.

    “Thanks, and you’re right. I am still pretty. I just needed to hear that.” Leona said, and in an unusual turn of events, meant it.

    And she was still pretty, when all said and done. There was just a lot more of her to be pretty. And the growth in size was exacerbated by the gulf in size from being sat next to a woman who belonged in a pencil case, a girl who was now more than half her weight. Leona was double Bitchface Betty and that was distressing, thanks to the 37lbs she had further accrued of the past month and a bit. That was a pound a day despite trying not to be a fatty any more. Not by exercising, no she didn’t fancy the shame of possibly being recognised as a former frequent patron. And not by snacking less, it was her defense mechanism against the cavalcade of shit that life was unleashing on her freshly fragile self-esteem. And not by eating healthy, not as long as Wiktoria cooked dinners and Minnie ordered takeaways, and as long as Leona avoided home with frequent pub lunches at the place Shaun introduced to the musketeers. No, she was just hoping that she would lose weight simply by working hard at work, but that work was either sat down in her office, or leaning on her desk in a lecture hall. Not exactly a zumba class is it?

    So that’s why she was 247lbs of English Language professor, with her fatty arse half unsupported by the narrow and unarmed chair that she was currently sitting in. And unlike everyone else in the flat, she knew exactly how much she weighed, and it weighed on her mind. Nobody likes being told that they’ve nearly doubled their weight in less than 6 months. A 122lb gain, or one Bitch-face Betty perhaps.

    It wasn’t just that junk-laden trunk that carried the weight, though it did carry a large amount, even hidden from view by a skirt and cardigan combination. No, her tummy was now a belly, and it flowed forwards when she sat by a good 6 inches when she sat, straining the buttoned shirt beneath the cardigan. Her breasts remained the same size, out of spite probably. But her face had changed, smoothed over and over until it looked like it had been glossed. Her face was still undeniably pretty, but her chin now had a drooping pouch beneath it where fat was stored. When your body is so out of ideas as to where to put your fat that it chooses your face as a storage solution, then you have a weight problem.

    “I wish I could be more like you, and less superficial. I swear being pretty isn’t as important as feeling safe at work.” Betty said, typically ignorant as to how hard-hitting her words were, accidentally confirming that she didn’t really think Leona was pretty.

    “Ha, do you really?” Leona snorted in derision.

    “Yeah, you are my hero. I admire you so much, you kick so much ass and take no prisoners. I don’t know how you do it”

    “I told you, by getting fat. Only reason I am no longer a victim to Lionel is I’m too fat for his tastes, I mean look at me. And then look at you. Of course he’d rather have you.” Leona said, hurting herself with her own honesty.

    “Is it worth it though? I mean, are you happy now? Happier?” Betty asked, looking with rabbit-like eyes straight at Leona.

    Leona paused a second. What was the right thing to do? The morally right thing to do? What answer is the kindest thing I can say to this clearly lovely girl? Then she thought again – fuck it, I don’t care.

    “Much happier. Honestly, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I feel powerful, strong, safe. I get to eat what I want, I gain time from not going to the gym every fucking day. And Lionel doesn’t even look at me any more. It’s bliss.” She lied. Through her teeth, Leona lied. Out of jealousy and frustration she lied to the pint-sized bottle of innocence across from her.

    “So, do you think I should… maybe… put on a few pounds?” Betty asked anxiously.

    “I can’t answer that for you Betty. You have to make that decision. Remember, nobody, not even another woman, can tell you what to do with your body. But… I’ll give you some advice that an old friend gave me. About how we all have in life… a free hit.” She said, standing up and putting her chubby hand on the bony shoulder of Bony Betty.

    “What’s a free hit?”

    “Well, I’ll tell you what a free hit is...”

 

    But as bad a day as everyone was having. Wiktoria was having the worst. She’s seen neither hide nor hair of her liferaft that was Leona, leaving the Pole unbuoyed and untethered. She’d broken up from only her second ever relationship, and first ever good relationship. And, worst of all, Sunday was Dzień Matki. In Poland, they would be celebrating Mother’s Day. And, for only the second time, Wiktoria would be celebrating it without her mother.

 

[swahilimonkfish]

Just a polite heads up, I've finished this story on my DA page, and will probably get the last four installments posted by early next week on here. Thanks for all your kind words and whatnot, I've really enjoyed it

[swahilimonkfish]

A return to more traditional form of story-telling after some experimental chapters. 

 

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 9B (Dzien Matki)

    She was 16 years old and just leaving school for training. The sun had been beating down fiercely all Autumn, for Poland was feeling the full force of a heatwave, and the new school year was now in full swing. But while most kids were enjoying the heat by cattily gossiping or by hanging around the old building site just down the road from the school, Wiktoria was being studious and disciplined as ever. She had always had that iron rod of focus, right from when she was just a child, and her mama had always been proud of her little girl for this. The tenacity, the relentless drive, the monomania, the sheer hunger of the girl to achieve her objectives. She hardly ever hung out at the building site, larking about and having a crafty smoke. She was never at the centre of frivolous gossip, nor partaking in it from the sidelines. Wiktoria studied hard and then trained hard. That was her life.

    So, she was leaving school and heading for training with the trainer/coach for the Junior girl’s athletics team for Krakow and the towns and villages in its proximity, which included Wiktoria’s. His name was Pawel and he knew how to push the girls to get results, something that Wiktoria appreciated as a stubbornly ambitious girl with a success fixation. And this fixation was currently squared on competing amongst all of the impressive senior Polish heptathletes at a National level. If she put her mind to it, she knew that it would only be a matter of time before she achieved it, because that simply was the way that Wiktoria was hard-wired. As a wise man once said, "do or do not... there is no try"

It was this reason that Pawel had taken this particular girl under his wing as his protégée. He felt that with his experience and coaching prowess, he could harness this dedication and concentration towards national and even international success, and elevate himself and his reputation as a coach in the meantime. Wiktoria’s mama had been appreciative of all of the effort he had put in with Wiktoria, since raising her as a single mother - after her dad had died the previous year - was a difficult task, regardless of how well behaved and diligent Wiktoria was. And Wiktoria appreciated the feeling of being special, and a father-figure to give her that special feeling. It was her desire to be special that fueled her, and her nagging belief that she wasn’t that turned that fuel into propulsion. He was disciplined but warm, and somebody she felt she could trust, and would look out for her come what may. And never let her down or betray her.

    But before Wiktoria had even left for school, a waddling school secretary came scurrying hurriedly out of the school's reception area and called her name frantically. The way her voice cracked as she hollered would be forever ingrained in the young Pole’s mind, the secretary’s voice unable to carry the bad news without giving way from the weight of it. There had been a chip-pan fire. At her mama's house. And by the time the emergency services got there…    

    Wiktoria dropped her books, her bag, her gym gear and stood still, staring vacantly, leaning on the wooden gates that served as the school’s perimeter. It was just a normal day, just a regular day. The sun was shining like it was a good day. Wiktoria had plans. She knew her future, she knew where she was going, what was coming next, it was all laid out in front of her. And all of that had been caught in the chip-pan fire too, and burnt to cinder. Wiktoria had gotten up with the world at her feet, and was coming home an orphan.

    Wiktoria was coming home an orphan.

 

    Wiktoria tearfully looked at the photos of her mum being hugged by her daughter, all positioned across the bedroom desk. The girl in the picture was so happy in the earliest photos, like she had never known pain. And as the photos got more recent and the girl in them got older, a sadness had spread across her eyes. You could see from her eyes which ones were while her dad was alive. And then, to be without her mum too. Wiktoria's resolute passion for sports had been for her mum, who was, contrary to gender stereotypes, the sporty one of the family. Her dad was bookish and multi-lingual. Learning languages had been for her father. She had maintained the language studies, even excelling at them with that famed juggernaut approach to any challenge that ever stood in her way, and he would have been proud of her for doing so. But she had abandoned even the pretense of being sporty. Watching the occasional circuit of Speedway did not constitute being involved in sport. She felt that she had abandoned her mother, by abandoning sport. Abandoned her mother. Abandoned by her mother. Abandoned by her friends. Abandoned.

    Rutherford was a two-faced (and now two-chinned) kurwa, who had brutally stabbed this Caesarian girl in the back. To withdraw the money from the shoe-box and say nothing was just typical of how she had been behaving lately. And she could see on Rutherford's face how guilty she was feeling. She knew she was in the wrong for doing it but still insisted on saying nothing. Just eating and getting fatter. And the past few days had been the worst, with her not even making eye contact with her former lover when they were in the same room. And now she wasn’t even in the flat when Wiktoria came downstairs. What was going on? What was going on in her mind?

 

    Rutherford had so much going on in her mind since Shay had reached out to her. Rutherford felt she had nothing to lose so messaged back. Just ‘Hey, long time no speak! U ok, how was yale, herd u were doing film studs. Wanna catchup?’. It was short, but open for the prospect of more. She had spent a long time decided how to approach this, given that they had not spoken since the attempted snog incident. And given that Shay had made Rutherford’s life a living hell for nearly a year, allowing her previously best friend to be bullied and tormented. But time heals all wounds and Rutherford felt like she missed Shay more than she hated her. She was tired of turning her own friends against her.

 

Shay     H-E-L-L yeah! It’s been so long. Watcha been up2? Enjoying uni? U studying eng lang?

 

    Was the message that popped up on her phone not five minutes after the reply, and soon enough Rutherford was diving down the rabbit hole of their old friendship. They talked about being in the throes of university life, and about how much they didn't miss Georgetown, and about the latest filmic entries to the Criterion collection. In fact they talked about everything apart from the elephant in the run. They never talked about that… until they did.

    Last night/this morning/4am snack time Rutherford got the message she had been dreading.

 

Shay     U gna apologise abt that nite then 

 

    Winky face? Why the winky face? Was she been short or… flirty? Rutherford panicked, put down her packed plate of profiteroles, and tried to catch her breath. Which was getting harder and harder. And harder and harder. Suddenly all the oxygen in the room felt thinner, and her gasping breaths still somehow insubstantial, like it was clawing for air and feeling it slip through its fingers. Her too-small nightie felt like it was constricting her breathing around the neck, like an anaconda clamped on her air tract. GASP. But trying to take the nightie over her head and off was difficult and her breathing was only getting worse. GASP. She was trying to yank her nightie over her head and she couldn't see know because the nightie was obscuring her sight  and panic was flooding her mind. GASP. Oh god, she just needed to get some air. GASP. Why couldn’t she get her head through the stupid gap. GASP. And suddenly the nightie was hurled off and she could breathe again. Deep breaths. That's right, deep breaths. Steady now. Deep, calm even breaths. And then Rutherford started crying. She was topless, eating profiteroles at 4am, flirting with the girl that ruined her life, while ruining her life with the girl she was with, by screwing around with the other girl she lived with, because she fancied the third girl in the flat, and she had just had her first ever panic attack.

 

 

Shay     Hey, jus messin. sorry if it upset u, i shudnt have dun it. I miss you up here. wen u cummin back?

 

    Thank god. Rutherford felt relief wash over her.

 

Ruth     not coming bk, dun with the states. all of it. just gna stay here and get fat lol

 

Shay     haha, yeh rite. fat ruth? ul always be thinking

            *thin

            fkin autofill

 

    Nobody knew. Nobody in the whole of North America knew. An entire continent on the other side of the Atlantic was still under the belief that Rutherford was a weedy girl from a Christian family. They were all out by over 200lbs. Should she tell Shay? She had previously been relieved of this iron curtain between her past self and current self. But Shay was piercing it and her two worlds were colliding. Why should she care? America was in the past and 5 time zones away. What were they going to do, judge her? Fine, go ahead. Why should she care what America thinks? Apart from her parents. Oh god, her parents. What should she do? She grabbed a pawfull of pastry profiterole and pondered.

 

Ruth     haha I h8 autofill 2 lol

 

    Was that a cop-out? Probably

 

Shay     haha me 2

            hey talkin of fat

            guess whos not fat any more

            down to 160 grrl n lookin gud

            if i say so myself lol

            wanna see

            swap photos

            ?

 

    Oh god, what should she do now? Nothing. Easy. Don’t flirt with the girl that made your life hell AND you don’t reveal that you’re now fat too. Two for the price of one, the only sensible, responsible decision. To do anything else would be utter self-destruction

 

Ruth     haha yes go on then

            u first tho

 

    Self-destruction it was

 

    Rutherford received a ping of an email to her old email address. With a the final profiterole in her mouth, and with one hand under her obtruding stomach that was in the way of her labia, she opened the email attachment.

    To the uninitiated, Shay was still not a gorgeous girl by any means. The weight loss shone a light on her wide jaw and slightly upturned nose. But to Rutherford, she was her first love. And she was standing in a sexy hand-on-hip pose and duck-face expression, wearing a striped tanktop and shorts. The 160lbs suited her, mind. She seemed unilaterally narrower and more manageable. Her legs had shape, though they were by no means lean, and her waist only stuck out like it was curious, and not like it was on a mission to leave. Rutherford's non-profiterole hand had slipped down her topless body and was working her way to stimulation when a Facebook message popped up again.

 

Shay     ur turn

 

    Rutherford was never going to take a selfie now, she was 360lbs of butt naked bulge and fingering herself frantically for a start. She decided to pick an older selfie, but how far back should she go? Back to 138lbs at the beginning, no that seemed a lie too far. Or 154lbs when the musketeers first formed way back then, or was that also stretching the truth further than it could flex? She had been 163lbs that time with Wiktoria, when she probably felt at her prettiest. Wow, that was the weight that Shay was now, my god how the tables had turned. She was at 191lbs when she confessed to being an FA to Minnie, and 199lbs at the Christmas meal, maybe that would be the best era to refer to, a compromise between the unbelievable truth of now and the believable untruth of then. Big enough to not feel guilty about how much bigger she was now. She had been 211lbs by Christmas day, but she wouldn’t be able to use a photo in case there was an incriminating bauble of Christmas decoration in the background to give away the lie. She was just over 250lbs when she found out about Minnie and Leona, and was truthfully looking a bit too big to admit to by that point. And, after that it was all guess work as to how big she had gotten since. She certainly felt much bigger than even then. She just felt so wide, so long, so gravitational. How big was she? She surely hadn’t reached 300lbs? That would be crazy, maybe 280lbs? If she had, would that be a stopping point, had she reached an upper limit and now enough was enough? She decided she could worry about that later, she had an old flame to text.

    She opted for a photo of around the 191lb mark, and trawled through her phone for a photo that did her justice. Oh, wait, hang on, this one with a cream leather jacket undone to reveal and striped top that flattered her fattened chest. And she was sporting her beret. She used to love that thing. But her heart wasn’t in such pretence and prettiness these days. She had more primal urges to tend to.

    And send…

 

    And wait.

 

    And wait.

 

    And wait?

 

    And what’s going on?

 

    And why isn’t she replying?

 

    Was she too fat? Why was she not replying? Was she suspicious? Why was she not replying? Was she sharing it with her old friends and laughing at her expense? Why was she not replying? Was she forwarding it to her parents? Why was she not replying? Had it all been a ruse on their part? Why was she not replying? Was she laughing? Was she impressed? Shocked? Disturbed? Why was she not replying? Why was she not replying? Why was she not replying? WHY WAS SHE NOT REPLYING?

 

    And 20 minutes of nothing, and 20 minutes of Rutherford staring at a phone, her phone lit up!

 

    Low battery.

 

    Rutherford sighed in distress. This was all getting too much for her. She needed to get out. Out of these four walls. The same four walls. Just a break. A reprieve from all the bad thoughts and fears that were pin-balling around her skull.

    That was it, she was leaving. For a bit. Just back to her old flat, just for some peace and quiet. Somewhere she could just cry on her own without anyone to judge her. Somewhere to have a mini breakdown away from prying eyes. So at 5:00am, Rutherford gobbled up the last few profiteroles that had come in the family pack, grabbed her phone charger and her wallet, and put on the only clothes that still fit her, and wandered back for her own personal crisis, free from the hullabaloo of her housemates’ crises, and to her old flat for one. She would, of course, have to get something to eat on the way. How many more packs of profiteroles could her fatty arms carry?

 

    Wiktoria picked the latest photo and frame up and brought it downstairs with her to the empty living area, that had been recently departed by Rutherford. All the other photos were downstairs, and all of her medals, including her prized Junior Polish Heptathlon winner trophy. This trophy was her greatest sporting achievement, a tall thin gold-coated bust of a sports girl standing proud, and it was the last sporting event her mother saw her do before the fire. Now, however, she was gone and Wiktoria felt all alone and needing someone more than ever. And Rutherford was supposed to have been that someone. Her pillar of support when all else had abandoned her. But maybe their relationship was just a fling of convenience to Rutherford. Just fucking and feeding, and forget any feelings. Feeling further betrayed, Wiktoria kicked the sofa that Rutherford had been sleeping on. However she only ended up stubbing her toe.

    Once the pain had eased, she got back to her intention. Commemorating her dearly departed mother. She took some candles and lit them, before gently placing them either side of the photo. Then she went to the cupboard and got an unopened bottle of rose wine, and poured herself a glass. Sure, it was only 7 in the morning, and sure, she didn’t really like rose wine, but it reminded her of her mother and that was reason enough. Then she sat in front of the photo, and raised a glass to her mama.

    Last year’s Dzień Matki had been monumentally difficult on the poor Pole. She had been struggling to make the step up to compete with the professional and semi-professional athletes of her home country. Had her heart been truly in it, like it had been for the years previous, then she would have managed the ascent. But her enthusiasm had felt hollowed out and left empty as a husk. It was around this time that she had stopped eating as well as she should do.

    At least Pawel had been there for her. He said he didn’t mind that she wasn’t as pretty as the other girls, and he didn’t mind that she was a failure, because he had faith in her, and because he loved her. And, in the absence of all else, she clung onto that desperately. But she needed more than his love, and needed to do more than just live her life like her mother had never been snatched from her. So she had tried to diversify her interests. She had started cooking for one. Even though she wasn’t eating very well, she was cooking very well for her and Pawel. It connected her to her mother in a way that heptathlon didn’t. It felt closer to the woman and further from the memory, if that made sense. So, cooking was what she did. She would catch live Speedway with Pawel. She had decided that she would learn Spanish, and improve her English, and feel closer to her dad. Share the burden of loss evenly across her two deceased parents.

    This year, Wiktoria thought it fitting to spend the day cooking, all the home favourites from the motherland. Stews and meats were her prevailing memory of meals back at home, with dumplings on top or served with cheesy breads. And a glass of rose wine, because it was the only wine a 16 year old girl could drink without spitting out because it tasted like mouthwash. So, that’s what Wiktoria would do. Cook, and eat. Her most revisited hobbies.

    And this hobby had continued to make itself manifest on the magnificence that was Wiktoria’s lofty frame. It was a goodly while ago that she had crossed into 300lb territory, though she had no idea and in all honesty didn’t even suspect, and the intervening time had been not wholly dissimilar to the months before it. And while gorging had ceased being Wiktoria’s raison d’etre, it hadn’t stopped being her default state. Rutherford had truly done a number on her, and now Wiktoria couldn’t remember what healthy eating habits were. Month after month of smothering her with doughy delicacies had made Wiktoria a doughy delicacy herself, and the last two months were made from the same ingredients. So, it made sense that she was now 338lbs of Polish pudge, meaning that not only was she obese, she was nearing being twice the weight of an overweight woman, even at her height. And now the fat was no longer spread thinly, it was most assuredly spread fatly. Wiktoria had worked a mini miracle in an effort to style it out with her long curled hair with now green tips, with big Michael Caine glasses that dominated her face so much that her second chin and chubby cheeks didn’t. Every clothing item was curated to flatter each and every extensive curve, exaggerating the good and mitigating the bad. Though miles different from before, you would be hard pressed to say this family-sized edition of Wiktoria was anything other than an upgrade. She had always been pretty, but now she had made an effort to work it. And work it she did.

    But 338lbs is still a lot to carry around all day, even for an athlete, and darting around the kitchen in her typically efficient manner, Wiktoria noticed herself get… winded? Was cooking an exertion to her now? That was a terrifying thought.

    Another terrifying thought was one of being alone. It had felt like a leitmotif than ran like a vein through Wiktoria’s life. Abandonment. And she had never felt more alone than now. She could really do with Minnie about now.

 

    Minnie had entered her room sometime yesterday, however, and not returned. She would wave a white flag, except it would be an unnecessary expenditure of calories. She was head-spun and lost. She kept repeating the same thought processes over and over again, looking for a way in which her life could end up as anything other than a cautionary tale to never have a free hit. And coming up with nothing. Everything in her life was wrong and broken and getting worse and breaking, and Minnie didn’t know how not to be resigned that it would never be fixed again. She was beyond redemption now. A lost cause. She had permanently severed ties with her parents and practically hiding from the only people in the world who ever consistently her back. She had ruined any chance of having anything remotely resembling emotionally productive with Leona by her propensity for fucking her. She had home-wrecked Wiktoria's relationship with Rutherford, her supposedly best friend, at about fourth time of trying. And she had then robbed one of the musketeers blind, pilfering their pelf like the prick she was.

    She felt like she was in the endgame now and nearing nothingness, she was struggling to see any alternative at all. Everywhere she turned she was confronted with No Entry signs, either genuine or projected their by her vicious, sadistic and cruel self-loathing. There was no way out of this, best to go out with a bang. She had decided to Leaving Las Vegas it, and eat herself to death.

    But this method of suicide was expensive, and she was struggling to afford the means to do it. Even with Skinny meals on tap, since the Skinny meals were on her tab, a resource she had endeavoured to exhaust. In the end, she had borrowed money from her former fuck buddy Leona (capitalising on Leana’s capital like the quomodocunquizing clusterfist she now knew she was) and also extended her overdraft by a further £500, testing the fraying sympathy of the young man in the banking branch that she had visited. So, for a second time flush with cash, she decided to embark on this downward spiral and see if it had a bottom. She doubted it would be bigger than her own.

    That’s why nobody had seen Minnie since Friday, she had closed her bedroom doors with enough food to sink the Potemkin and only opened it to refuel or pee. This was to be it, her grand outro. To shuffle off this mortal coil by eating until she can only move by shuffling. Locked up in her room eating Birthday cakes her heart bails. Drinking until her liver did. Up to 301lbs now, and the only way was further up. Now, time to start on the second Birthday cake of the morning.

 

    Wiktoria was now elbow-deep in stew and crying as she ate. The world was a malicious one, cruel callous and sadistic, and the only thing it left behind was scars. And Wiktoria was feeling scarred, as she scooped up some potato and poured it down her once-supermodel neck. Was she the most alone person in the entire world? Today she felt like it. She had no girlfriend any more, no house friends around to be found, no boyfriend any more, no family any more and she had been shipped off to the arse-end of Britain, a country where people only spoke English and even then they didn’t speak it well. She was deserted. Which reminded her, it was time to get dessert.

    Eating authentic home-made Polish cheesecake, she wondered why Leona wasn’t up. If ever there was a friend she could really do with, it was Leona. The one woman who got her. Who had made an effort to understand her. Who came from the same emotional place that she had come from, and gone from there and to the same place that Wiktoria wanted to be going. Leona was a proto-Wiktoria. A ur-Wiktoria who had lead the way for her to follow. But where was the teacher now?

 

    Truth be told, Leona had only stumbled in twenty minutes before Wicky had gotten up. The term end had meant an unofficial department do, consisting of its youngest female members. So that included Leona and Bitch-face Betty, and just as importantly, didn't involve Lionel Stewart and his wandering hands with dirty fingernails. And would you know it, Leona and Betty were beginning to bond, because you can bond the most broken of buddies.

    Leona almost liked Betty, and there really was no reason not to. Leona had over-stepped boundaries with the girl, and, ethically-speaking, should have been out on her arse as a consequence. But Betty had done the kind thing and been the better woman. But that was the crux of Leona’s issue with her. That she was the better woman. So Leona had poisoned her with the Free Hit philosophy because she hated her, but regretted it because she was a really nice human being. Or, in the parlance of the girl, totes adorbz.

    So, Leona was trying to convince the innocent stick-thin teacher the benefits are worse than benefats. And Betty’s earnest faith and respect for her nominally elder, and for-the-time-being superior, had seen these whispers congeal in her brain. Leona considered the Free Hit philosophy that Shaun had espoused all that time ago, as something like the Babadook or that video from The Ring. A destructive contagion and you could only be spared if you passed it on. The Flabadook, if you will. No, that was awful, Leona realised, really bad. But the idea remained, have her ear and pour verbal poison into it like Iago on Othello, because of her irrational dislike of a good person.

    The party was therefore the perfect opportunity to lead by example and show Betty the ways of the Free Hit. So that meant introducing the teacher to her good friend and proprietor of Kebabland – Ahmed. And his most famous meal – the Skinny meal.

    “So why is called the Skinny meal?” she asked, oh so naively.

    “Haha, because a lady called Skinny is our greatest customer and a very good friend of mine, and we have named it in our honour. You look a bit like her, lighter hair but same shape, back when she was skinny by name and by nature.” he said, eyeing up the curvelessness of the pencil-shaped. “It is for a girl with a big appetite. I’m not sure you can manage it.” He said gently goading her. Betty’s first reaction wasn’t one of rising to the challenge, but of insecurity.

    “Is he right? Will it be too much for me?”

    “Probably, but I’ll help you out with it if necessary, Bets” Honest Honest Leona replied.

    “But I thought you were getting your own?”

    “I am, but I can help finish yours afterwards. I’m not the toothpick I once was Betty, I don’t know if you can tell from looking at me, but I’ve actually have quite the appetite.” Leona said. And of course you could tell from looking at her, in a little purple strappy number that caressed her copious curves, including all that she had going on behind her.

    And it was a good job that she had that newly monstrous appetite too, since Betty didn’t even get halfway with the meal. They then hung out at Betty’s place not far from Leona’s, drinking gin and tonics. And Leona could finally put up her aching feet on Betty’s sofa.

    “I’ll never get anywhere near as big as you. You’re massive, it’s amazing.” Betty said, in awe of the teacher, as Leona lay on the floor cradling her stomach.

    “Patience, young padawan. Patience.” Leona smiled smugly. Was she actually enjoying being her size? Did it lend itself to her innate tendency towards self-superiority? Betty Bitchface being endlessly envious was changing Leona’s perspective. Leona then decided to call it a night, and staggered the short distance back to her flat, with a whole new perspective on her size. Maybe she was beginning to believe the lies she was telling, that bigger truly was better after all.

 

    And that was why Wiktoria was alone. Leona was sleeping off her hangover, Minnie was eating herself beyond anywhere sensible, and Rutherford was crying at her old flat. The musketeers all needed help. Wiktoria certainly did. So we can guess what happens next.

    Go on, you know the rule. If in doubt, you know what to do. And Wiktoria was in doubt, no doubt. Got a question, insecurity or reservation, you know who to speak to. And Wiktoria had so many of these. Have yourself a query, qualm or concern, you know who you need a word with. And every thought Wiktoria had was one of those. If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood (and, Lord knows there was), who ya gonna call…

    Wiktoria dialled the number of the original D’Artegnan himself.

    Who ya gonna call… Shaun.

 

[swahilimonkfish]

So, after this is just the two-part grand finale and then that's it, all done and dusted. We are just about there guys and I hope the finale is worth it

 

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 10

Argghhhh!!!

    Leona’s head pounded from the Sambuca shots and the tequila shots and the flaming Sambuca shots and the flaming tequila shots from the night before. A word of advice if you’re planning on doing shots on a night out… don’t. It’s never worth it, trust me, tomorrow you will thank me for this advice. It was advice that Leona could have done with too. Everything felt like bad news to her delicate state. Light, ugh, that feels like bad news. Sound, nope, that also feels like bad news. Movement, fuck no, that feels like terrible news. This was the hangover from hell, and it was a hangover that had no cure. Except maybe sunglasses? Perhaps? She could ask Minnie if she had a pair.

 

Argghhh!!!!

    Minnie was trying to eat herself to death, why won’t people leave her alone. Knocking on her door when she was committing epicurean hari-kari but with sugar instead of swords. These treacle sponges were so sickly sticky and gooey, that putting her hands down to heave herself up off the bed was going to leave crystallised sugar stains on her bed covers. She had courageously nearly finished them, the sponges that is, just two more to go and then she was back onto savoury, but noooo, someone had to knock on her door and interrupt her gastro flow.

    It was Leona, of course it was. Why wouldn’t it be, when Minnie is stood arse naked and so messy with sugary sweet stuff over her that she might be mistaken for confectionery. The way Leona was looking at her, she might be making that mistake herself, maybe contemplating having a nibble.

    “I was wondering if I could borrow your sunglasses, I’m totes hungover” She said in that Mary Poppins accent of hers.

    “Sure, thing, whatever” and then Minnie turned around to grab them, giving Leona a stunning view of Minnie’s reverse side. And with the exception of the smeared strawberry yoghurt on her back (?????), she liked what she saw.

    Before she knew what she was doing, she devised an alternative solution to her hangover problem, and it was going to involve Minnie and licking.

 

Argghhh!!!!

    Rutherford still hadn’t had a reply to the selfie she had sent Shay. This wasn’t fair.

    What did it mean? Why wasn't she replying? What was she supposed to suppose?

    The only conclusion she could realistically reach was that she had blown it by blowing up, and of course she had continued blowing up on this blow out back at her flat. Shay was in the wind again, because she wasn’t as anchored by fat as Rutherford. And now all was lost, and Rutherford had managed to scare another friend away, this time with a photo of her over-sized and over-fed body. Even thought it was a photo taken over 150lbs ago.

    It was Sunday afternoon now, and she figured she better get back. She was only hiding from her responsibility. Which was not a flawless plan, in the long term. So no, she better get back.

 

 

Arggghhh!!!

    Brilliant! Shaun would be visiting! Brilliant news at last. Wiktoria couldn’t believe it. She got off the phone and did a little jump in the air in celebration. She winded herself in doing it but that was not a problem because the Polish girl who likes to polish off food was about to re-unite with her very good friend Shaun. Oh, how Wiktoria had missed him. His maturity. His sassiness. His indefatigable spirit. He said he would have to take time off work, but he could see them probably in a couple of weeks, maybe a month. Which seemed like a while away but at least she had something to look forward to in hope, not just look back at in sadness. Just when Wiktoria was feeling her most alone, and her most cast adrift, the glue of the musketeers was coming back. She pulled the ladle from the bubbling pan, laden with beef and cabbage stew, and slurped. Thank fuck, she thought. Thank….

 

Fuuuccckkk!!!!

    Rutherford had come into the flat, hoping to keep a low profile, only to see her (ex?)-girlfriend in her nightie, slurping stew. This was not right, this was not like Wicky at all. These days, Wicky would pick a flattering dress just to go to the bog. She would never wander downstairs in her nightie and make stew unless something was wrong.

    But what should she do? Should she ask? Was it her place to intervene, or would she only make things worse? Rutherford worried that she wasn't thinking straight given that Shay had been playing mind games with her. And now the American was confronted with the sexually alluring image of her (yes, definitely, probably, maybe ex?)-girlfriend activating Code Stew. Rutherford sighed, and decided to try to do the kind thing, and be there for her, even though they were no longer together.

    “Hey Wicky, you alright?” Rutherford said with sheepish trepidation. The smiling, grinning face of Wiktoria, elated at the prospect of knowing her friend would be coming around in a couple of weeks, vanished at the sight and sound of Rutherford.

    “Yes” she replied, shortly

    “Umm… sorry I...”

    “No, I’m not okay” Wiktoria then barked.

    “So what’s...”

    “I’m fine, nothing’s wrong, just leave me alone” Wiktoria then started crying into her stew.

    “You normally cry when everything’s good?” Rutherford asked. She may not be on speaking terms with Wiktoria, but she knew how to read certain situational cues with the girl. And bawling whilst saying everything is fine was a red flag, that even Rutherford could identify.

    “It’s Dzień Matki, that’s all” she said, with tears now cascading like someone left the tap on upstairs.

    “Sorry, I… I don’t know what that means. Is it Polish?” Rutherford knew that the language thing was a sore point for Wiktoria, who prided herself on it while Rutherford remained as monolingual as they come. She feared having her head bitten off.

    “It’s Polish Mother’s Day”

    “And did she call… because if you wanna talk about it, I have parental issues too” Rutherford asked kindly, as warmly as she could to the girl who had been breaking her heart. A girl who had been slowly stabbing it piecemeal over the weeks, then dicing it and putting it into her pity stew.

    “She didn’t call, because she’s dead” Wiktoria sulked. Did Rutherford not know her mother was dead? Had she never found out, never been told? She couldn’t remember any conversation where she had mentioned it, come to think of it, but surely she should have known given the part it had played in her life.

    “Oh god, I’m so sorry. How did she die?”

    “No, not just died. She died years ago” Wiktoria, like the butter she was such a fan of, clarified.

    “Wait, what the….”

 

“Fuuuccckkk!!!!”

    That’s what Minnie had been doing with her beloved teacher. Fucking her. There is a difference, hidden connotatively, between having sex with someone and fucking someone, and Minnie was definitely doing the latter. It was as if the debauchery empowered her. She took charge, as she liked to, and asserted and dominated and fed and was fed. It was eliciting illicit, explicit feelings of joy and hatred inside the topsy-turvy psyche of the girl in question.

    She knew she should have done that. Not because it was inappropriate, issues of inappropriate faded in the first cubicle of the girls toilets in a Chinese buffet in Crawley. No, but rather because Minnie was virulent and cancerous, and she didn’t want Leona crossing the quarantine threshold to be with her. They needed a buffer not a buffet. The problem was that Minnie’s id was not something that could be turned off and on again as though it was a faucet. No, but Minnie could be turned off and on again at an instant. So, when her magnificently beautiful teacher saw her caked in cake and coated in biscuits, that tingle of electricity crawled up her spine and gave her no choice. She was feeding every other aspect of her id, and she couldn’t turn the valve on this part. So, that was when Minnie knew she wasn’t going to make love with her teacher, no the thing she was going to do was….

 

“Fuuucccckkk!!!”

    How could Leona be so stupid. Why was she doing this? For god sake, could she not go one month without having sex with the capital city of emotional derangement that was Minnie. She was tired of it, of feeding her regret with regretful actions and feeding. She just needed to get away from the poor girl, cruel though it was, so she didn’t run the risk of unleashing her not-so-inner lesbian. Maybe spend more time with Betty from work, where she was safe. Safe from having inappropriate liaisons with friends.

    Or not. Leona’s phone chimed. It was Betty.

    I enjoyed our kiss a lot more this time around B x

    They didn’t kiss again did they? Or, she was so drunk last night and so hungover now, but surely she would remember doing that? No, hang on, they did get up to something, now you mention it. Wait, what else did she do round Betsy’s flat. Did she….

 

“Fuuuccckkk!!!!”

    Rutherford could be so infuriating.

    “What do you not understand? My mum died two years in a fire accident at our house, when I was at school.” Wiktoria seethed.

    “The fact that your mom is dead and you didn’t tell me! You had fucking photos of her lying around and didn’t think to go, oh I don’t know ‘hey Rutherford, did you know that the woman in these photos diedmany years ago’, or something. You know, mention it in like passing, or whatever” Rutherford could not believe it. Yes, Wiktoria was a terrible communicator, but something this sensitive and so important to her. “Your dad’s still alive, right?”

    Wiktoria, crying again, just shook her head.

    “Oh COME ON! Do you just not communicate about anything? Do you love secrets? Do you get off on them?” Suddenly all Rutherford’s pent up rage came spewing out unexpectedly. Swathes of vitriol that she had been previously storing in her brain, just poured from her mouth.

    “Look, I am very sad Ruthers. Why are you being so horrible? Can you not see? I don’t need a lecture. I need a friend!” Wiktoria’s tears were falling faster than she could wipe them. They would drip off her nose like a drainpipe during a downpour.

    “Friends talk to each other! They communicate. Jesus Christ girl, are you incapable of letting people inside that head of yours? You never talk to me! That’s why we broke up!” Rutherford was now just letting go of all the flotsam and jetsam of repressed thoughts and emotions.

    “No! We broke up because YOU changed. Because you stopped trying to be sexy”

    “Wait, what...”

 

“What?”

    Minnie was perplexed for a goodly number of reasons. These reasons included why was Leona using her as an emotional confidante, could she not see that she had intentions of self-destruction, not of amateur therapy? Reason two was why she thought it best to tell the person she just had vigorous and lustful sex with, nay been fucked by, that she may have had drunken sex last night with a colleague? And thirdly, why it was with a colleague she hated? Or finally…

    “Wasn’t it supposed to be Rutherford you fancied?” Minnie asked, sat on her bed, eating a cronut that she had forgotten she had bought. “For a straight girl, you sure seem to have your sexual urges wrapped up in a lot of women.”

    Leona was in tears. Minnie was right. But this was worse, this was not just with a friend, this was with someone she had previously over-stepped the mark with. She didn’t want to be with Betty, but she didn’t want to break her fragile heart like it was a… well, a pencil. Also, if she did, she would be reported and lose her job.

    Oh, what was Leona to do. Thankfully, Minnie was a great listener. Good job Minnie was always there for her, advice at the ready and cronut in hand. But this felt like the weirdest and most convoluted love triangle ever. Then she had a thought. Betty seemed to like it. Did she? The text message indicated so. But why? After last time when she did it. Why? Given the size of Leona, and the fading of her beauty. Why? That was the question on her lips, along with treacle sponge syrup…

 

“Why?”

    “Why do you think I stopped being sexy?” Rutherford asked again, shaken at the comment. She hadn’t seen that coming. With all the thoughts that had gone through her head, she didn’t think it was because of her appearance.

    “Because, you gave away your beret.”

    “Really, that’s it? You broke up because of a hat?” Rutherford exclaimed with incredulity.

    “Not just the hat. The clothes, the make-up, the hair, all of it” Wiktoria continued. Now she was communicating, and now Rutherford was wishing she wasn’t. “Why did you change? I miss the old Rutherford? You never look like a movie star any more”

    Rutherford sighed angrily. “Don’t you get it? This is the real me! THIS is the real me. I am not a movie star. I never was. I was just jealous of them. But, you saw those photos of how I used to look. Did I like a movie star to you?”

    “No” Wiktoria said weakly, like a child caught red-handed.

    “No, this is the real me. And if this isn’t what you like, then, yeah, maybe we should officially break up, if we haven't already” Rutherford said brusquely. She was so annoyed that Wiktoria could be so petty, and so superficial.

    “But in the photos, you were also thin”

    “I’m sorry?”

 

    “I’m sorry”

    Minnie said, wrapping her chunky arm around her chunky shoulder, frustrated at how this was panning out. She was mid-food-suicide here and she was being interrupted to give a pep talk. Do you know how inconvenient that is?

    “Thanks, and I’m sorry. We should really stop having sex, it can’t be good for you. Being pulled and pushed about like that. Made to feel like you’re a bad thing. Everyone treating you like you’re taboo. Someone should love you. Properly. Because you’re a wonderful girl Minnie and you deserve that.” Leona said, and hugged the messy eater close to her unadorned and pleasantly plump chest.

    Minnie sobbed at that. Minnie wasn’t usually a cry-er, more often she was a shout-er, or a sulk-er, or a hide your feelings in food-er. But she was properly sobbing as Leona shared some of her warmth. “But you don’t know the things I’ve done”

    “Nothing is irredeemable” Leona said. And she should now. She sexually harassed a colleague, then consensually did it again, whilst screwing around with a student. And yet, Betty seemed OK with it. Maybe Leona was still worth something. Maybe Leona was still pretty.

    “If I tell you, can you just hug me, even though what I have done is evil?” Minnie sobbed, looking into Leona’s glacier eyes for signs of reassurance. Leona affectionately stroked her hair, like Minnie’s mother used to, and listened to it all. Listened as Minnie emotionally purged after months of emotional bingeing. Stealing money. Fingering Rutherford. Running from her parents. And then food suicide. And Leona just listened non-judgementally. She just listened and hugged.

    “You forget, Minnie, people will love you no matter what.”

 

“You’re supposed to love me no matter what!"

    "How can you be so fickle, so shallow?” Rutherford raged, back on the front foot. And Wiktoria was on the back foot.

    “I know. I don’t know why. But I look at you and you are not a beautiful sexy Hollywood star. You just want to eat and fuck, and now you are very fat. And I don’t find you sexy any more” Wiktoria confessed, ashamed to hear those words come out of her mouth.

    “You fucking hypocrite, have you not seen yourself!” Rutherford pressed. And, to be fair, she had a point, it’s a bit rich of a 338lb girl, who has gained over 200lbs in an academic year, to dump someone for putting on some weight.

    “But that’s your fault too” Wiktoria retorted weakly. But she too had a point. This was the crux of the issue, Rutherford had been feeding herself and feeding her girlfriend, to feed her twisted libido. But she never asked if it was okay. She used every trick in the book, she schemed, she enticed, she coaxed, she encouraged, she sabotaged. Rutherford had been treating her like her own sexual fetish play thing, but hadn’t asked for fetish consent. And Rutherford knew it.

    “Oh god, shit. I’m sorry. It is my fault.” Rutherford said, stung. The epiphany washed over her suddenly as the jigsaw puzzle of her actions came together in her mind. This was all boiling down to Rutherford imposing her fetish on another person without her permission.

    The words were the words Wiktoria needed to hear. She couldn’t bare the burden of all that shame and responsibility of getting so fat, when she knew it went against her mamas wishes. She wasn’t solely culpable for betraying her mother, by leaving sports to get fat. So that’s when she hugged Rutherford.

    And oh, how Rutherford had missed those wide arms wrapped around her. The tightness of Wiktoria’s embrace had been a distant memory until then. She had missed it so much.

    “Do you think we can fix this?” Wiktoria asked. “Our relationship, can it be fixed?”

    “No, I don’t. But, hey, that’s alright. You’ve seen the real me, and it turns out I’m not your type. So lets go back to being friends, and maybe you can keep a lookout for someone who is your type, hmm?” Rutherford said, her voice scratchy from expressing the torrents of emotions that had been bottled up until then. She grabbed Wiktoria’s highly prized sports trophy and put it on the side in the kitchen. “You know what? I think we’ll keep that here. So you can always be proud of it. Now then, let’s go celebrate your mother. And whatever happens, no more secrets, right?”

 

“Whatever happens, keep that a secret”

    Leona said with careful clarity, enunciating as if to a speaker of another first language, to make sure that nothing was lost in translation.

    “What? Shouldn’t I confess?” Minnie asked, confused. Wasn’t lying the wrong thing to do? Always? Wasn’t coming clean the only thing to untarnish her guilty conscience. Hadn't she just been told that people will love her no matter what?

    “No. Definitely not. Some things are best left unknown. Can you imagine the kerfuffle that would cause? No, that is a can of worms, a Pandora's box of horseshit that's best not opening. So let’s not go downstairs to upset people, just so we can feel good about ourselves. That’s not fair. What we can do instead is go downstairs, and hang out with your friends and stop feeling so alone.” Leona said, finally stepping up and into the role of the flat’s responsible adult.

    “Leona, is it okay if I try to get with Rutherford? Like get with Rutherford. Because I really want to, but at the same time I don’t want to hurt your feelings. I know you like her, and I also know you like having sex with me.”

    “Hey, you’re welcome to Rutherford. Just leave Wiktoria for me” Leona surprised herself when she said it, almost hearing it for the first time as it came out of her mouth. But it made sense once the words came into view. Sure, this heterosexual woman had fucked two different women in the past 24 hours in Minnie and Betty, and had always fancied a third in Rutherford, but it was the fourth, Wiktoria, that she felt true kinship with. She was the only woman who she felt like she wouldn’t be unhealthy for her. She was tall and strong and the greatest hugger. She was kind and clever and a great linguist. But best of all, she was beautiful. And better still, Wiktoria made Leona feel special by looking up to her. Figuratively, that is. Because, Wiktoria being 5 inches taller, she well and truly looked down on Leona physically.

    The two girls walked down the stairs together, newly resolved. Maybe the equilibrium could be restored, as long as there was nothing left to upset the apple-cart. Leona was only surrounded by people who liked her and looked up to her. But when they got downstairs, Wiktoria told all three the news. In four weeks time, Shaun was coming

 

“What!” said Rutherford. She missed Shaun.

 

“What!” said Minnie. She loved Shaun.

 

“Fuck!” said Leona. She hated Shaun.

 

[swahilimonkfish]

Last two installments coming up and this is the first. Lots of fun descriptions in this one, but mainly setting up the grand finale which I'll post tomorrow

A Free Hit - Season 2 Chapter 11A (1st part of a two-part finale)

BS – Before Shaun

Shaun is due today at 4pm

Monday June 20^th

6:00am (Shaun due in 10 hours, or 10 hours BS)

    Leona was the first to wake, and first to rise. She normally was in this household. Even with Wiktoria being the early bird that she was, even with Leona not having classes to teach until next October, Leona still was the earliest riser. She begrudged it, frankly, having never been a morning person as a student, but teaching had beaten those leisurely time-keeping tendencies out of her and caused her to rise at the crack of dawn. To rouse when the birds started tweeting.

    Leona was also the only one not looking forward to today. The girls were all buzzing at seeing their musketeering friend after such a long time apart, but Leona had reservations about this. Namely her reservations were that Shaun still hated Leona’s guts and that he was acid-tongued enough to express it. He hated her guts because he considered her a bully. He hated her guts because he thought she was irresponsible when she should be the resident adult. He hated her guts because she had sex with an emotionally precarious student.

    And, worst of all, Shaun was able to hate Leona’s guts, because Leona now possessed guts. Two guts. A top gut and a bottom gut with a fold in between that separated them. And they were only a symptom of a larger problem, the problem of her getting larger.

    It hadn’t been a colossal surprise that her weight gain was accelerating now that she had broken up for end of term. Wandering around from lecture theatre to lecture theatre had been the only exercise she'd been getting, and now even that had melted away in the early summer sun. This left her spending on the sofa with her laptop on her knee, pushed away from the rest of her by the expanse of stomach betwixt the two. She wasn’t idling on her laptop – one of the things she had done was find a third sofa on Ebay that could pass as matching the two she already had, another thing had been arranging to spend the rest of her summer in France and Spain teaching English as a foreign language to students readying themselves to travel to the UK for University. She kept planning on asking Wiktoria if she fancied going with her, juts as a friend and not anything else, honest, but she hadn’t built up the nerve to ask her yet. So she had been busy, just not active.

    Another contributing factor to her further fattening was the continued deterioration of her eating habits. This might have come as something of a surprise since her unhealthy Minnie habit had well and truly been chucked, and it was Minnie who had previously been the main enticer of edibles. But this did, however, leave everybody else. Rutherford, for example, was officially single again, and she had her lustful eyes on anybody with a pulse. And say what you like about Leona’s eating habits impacting her health, she still had a pulse. So, as a result, Rutherford was diversifying her feeder tendencies to Minnie and Leona. And Leona couldn’t look at the American’s wide and grinning face and turn her down as she offered her US style donuts, with their glazes and their sprinkles, or her UK style doughnuts with the sugary shell and jammy centre. It was an incessant bombardment given that neither of them had cause to leave the flat much post-term, there was nowhere for Leona to hide from Rutherford’s feeding hand, just as there was nowhere for that food to hide on Leona. But Rutherford wasn’t alone in her complicity, Wiktoria was playing her part too. Leona may have been trying to avoid Rutherford for fear of being fed, she had no intention of swerving Wicky. She was trying to spend more and more time with the tall lass from the South of Poland, engaging her across her many tongues and flirting with her using her cynical wit. But hanging around with Wiktoria meant hanging around with a chef who had no timetabled plans of her own and could spend her day whirring away in the kitchen and expanding her culinary repertoire just as she was expanded the teacher who fancied her. Every day, Wiktoria would set herself a theme by which to cook – sometimes Caribbean, sometimes vegetarian, sometimes the theme was just potatoes. But all those themed dishes were being pointed directly at the gullet of the growing girl of Leona. So, that was that, the entire household was out to get her. But alas, even that was not all. There was a final issue, her newest friend – Blossoming Betty. Betty had signed up to put on a bit of weight to quell and quash the queasy claw of disgustingly creepy Lionel, and she had enlisted on Leona to help. At first Leona had been offended at the implication that she was somehow the doyen of digging in, a muhatma of munching, a sage of stuffing. But she was also pleasantly flattered by it; or rather by the idea that Betty looked up to her and was aspiring to be more like her. So, Leona would help her by going over to her place and having friendly meals with her in an effort to encourage greater consumption from the pencil-shaped girl in a pencil skirt. This took some considerable effort because Betty was, simply put, not an eater. So Leona ended up gorging gratuitously while her good friend opposite had yet to show barely a pound of benefit on her minuscule frame. She would order a skinny meal each, but ending up eating 1 3/4’s while Betty claimed she was stuffed after barely a quarter. Of course, the elephant in the room wasn’t just Leona, it was also the fact that these two had kissed, and possibly had sex though neither could remember for certain. But it was testament to Betty’s friendly and earnest demeanour that it never became awkward, she was just that fucking pleasant a human being, and Leona was slowly being won over by her supernaturally kind and friendly manner. And it was perhaps the final cause in the teacher’s massive escalation over such an improbably short time. In just four weeks, she had piled on another 47lbs, bringing her up to a stratospheric figure of 294lbs. As a mean average, it meant that she had been gaining approximately a pound a day for nearly half a year, and that is a devastating rate of growth for a human being to accrue accidentally and reluctantly.

    The evidence wasn’t just found on the aforesaid partitioned gut, broad, deep and voluminous. Leona had maintained her traditional bottom heavy build with a very heavy bottom. It was no hyperbole to say that each arsecheek was as wide as the whole of her used to be, and comfortably too. What wasn’t so comfortable was sitting in chairs, because she just didn’t fit in them any more. Good job she didn’t have to and wouldn’t have to until October. Her legs were now so gelatinous that they wobbled when she walked, the skin padded away from the bone with fat. And her face, those famed facial features now furnished with fatty folds so that she could hide her chin in her neck and it could disappear.

    All in all, Leona was slowly becoming accustomed to thinking of herself as a larger lady. She was a linguist, a professor, an academic, a comic and a feminist. That she was no longer a Botticelli painting wasn’t as devastating as it could have been. That being said, there was still a considerable disconnect between where she considered herself and where she was in reality. She saw herself pushing the upper limit of chubby, perhaps even comfortably emplumpened, whereas, in truth, even downright fat was a descriptor she had surpassed some while ago. And realistically, even Leona realised she couldn't lose the weight in the coming 4 month holiday, even in her state of heightened idealism, but she had at least hoped to stop gaining and that she was now at her peak weight. Because the alternative of her gaining at the same speed of a pound a day for 120 more days would take her to daunting places.

    So, she would have to hope her weight would plateau from here on in. And that’s what she thought about when she began rustling up some breakfast for herself, a full English breakfast for a full English teacher.

 

6.45am (9hrs and 15mins BS)

    Wiktoria was the next to wake, predictably. Partly because she was an early chicken. But partly because Shaun was coming today and she was on cooking duty, and this was something that she took very seriously. She had been planning this food-fest for days, with meals she could cook in advance and freeze, and things she would have to cook on the day. She had been absolutely in her element as she planned and prepped for this, keen to wow Shaun and everyone else with her kitchen prowess. The theme was going to be pub grub, and nod and a wink to the pub meals that they all had when they met for the very first time. The menu was going to be simple but delicious: pies and fries and burgers and steaks and even a moussaka for Shaun because that was what he had eaten that very first time. She was doing cheesecakes and apple pies and custards and ice creams for desserts, just as another acknowledgement of that fabled meal. She was doing Starbucks nibbles as aperitifs, with salted caramel bites and cookies and cinnamon whirls. She was throwing caution into the wind and going the whole hog.

    And we’ll take that whole hog comment as a subtle segue to discuss Wiktoria’s inability to keep the weight off of her. Her kitchen based exploits had taken yet further toll on the Pole, and pushed her further into scary number territory. The kitchen had been her home for 4 weeks and the scales would have backed that up, had they gone that high. She was now 382lbs. It didn’t matter that she was 5ft11, that would be a skyscraper of a number to see on the scales she didn’t have, she could be 6ft11 and still morbidly obese at that weight. But at 5ft11 her stomach fanned sideways beneath the breast. At 382 pounds, her ankles seemed insufficiently sized for the rest of her, despite her feet now looking fat. At this weight, her stomach rested on counters as she cooked. She was colossal on every axis and in every direction now. She, of course, hadn’t weighed herself for 132lbs so really had no idea. She had known she was fatter than that 250, but she hadn’t cottoned on to the extent of it. It was kinda hard to, in all honesty. In her mind of wishful thinking and wilful ignorance, she was still 270-ish, and that she was still not too big, when you factor in her height. Bigger than she was, but nothing alarming. Of course, that conclusion can be reached when you give yourself a 112lb margin for error. No skinny girl has ever under-estimated their weight by 110lbs before.

    The increased fitness problems were not a clue that she had surpassed that earlier weight, or at least it was one she wilfully overlooked. Bending over was now considerably more difficult than it had been previously, there was more Wiktoria bunched up in front of her than before in the way. Showering was more getting more difficult because there was more of her to clean, and more folds under which to look, and less space in which to do it. And bathing was just un-fittable, she didn't want to come down with a case of the William Tafts. Fashion was getting more challenging, and shopping for it the same. And most painfully of all, moving was getting draining. Even in her domain, in the kitchen. The past few days she had started cooking the things you could make in advance, and each time she needed a breather at different intervals to catch her breath (and maybe have a snack or two for energy). Her passion was cooking but even that was getting harder. But it didn’t stop her.

    And it didn’t stop her this morning. Seeing Leona plonking her fat arse on the new sofa working hard on her laptop and headphones in, learning yet more Hungarian, in just her maxi-sized nightie, she couldn’t help but get the cooking urge again.

    “Do you want breakfast, my good friend?” she asked with skiddingly giddish excitement, she was energised because she was going to see Shaun and it had been soooo long. She missed him.

    “No, I’m going to struggle to get into the dress I want to wear for today as it is, but thanks honey” Leona smiled, and then swore at herself under her breath. Honey? Since when has she ever called anyone a ‘honey’? At least she turned down more breakfast, she had only just finished and put away the cooked one she had made earlier.

    “You should eat breakfast. It is a very important meal of the day.” Wiktoria chastised lightly

    “No, I already...”

    “You will fit in your dress, you are like curvy movie star” Wiktoria then followed, unaware that she was using the language once applied to Rutherford. And then she got away to cooking, not taking no for an answer. Fry-ups all round. And in Leona’s case, again.

 

7.20am (8hours 40minutes BS)

    Minnie came down the stairs next in a groggy stupor. This was unusually early for the girl, but she figured she ought to help out with the preparations for the grand return of their friend Shaun, and besides, she could smell bacon.

    “Are you cooking breakfast, love?” she asked presumptuously to Wiktoria putting away the washed plates for Leona.

    “I have made breakfast for me and my good friend Leona, and we have eaten it. But I will also make breakfast for you.” Wiktoria said, catching her breath a little as she finished putting the cutlery away.

    “No, you don’t have to make me some, you’ve clearly worked plenty hard in the kitchen already.” Minnie said, spying the slight out-of-breathness and not wanting to put the girl out. And then a devilish thought popped into her head. “Unless, of course you make some for yourself and Leona, while you’re at it. I wouldn’t feel so guilty then.”

    Minnie had been trying to take control of her spiraling life by pushing her gluttonous habits on to other people instead of on herself, just as she used to with Leona. And it wasn’t hard with these girls, they rarely took much persuading to indulge, and Minnie got her loss of control sensation treated vicariously, whilst getting off on the domination feel of it. Her impish malevolent streak hadn’t been quelled, but she was at least re-directing it a little better now.

    And maybe her alarming weight gain had turned down a notch. Granted, it was still climbing upwards, and climbing faster than any human could possibly consider reasonable frankly, but some of the exclamation marks that would have been previously necessary had been put away now when describing her more modest food orgies. More modest food orgies being a phrase that fully expresses just how out of hand things had previously been going.

    The net result was a 24lb gain, and this was comparatively modest for the girl over a five week period, taking her up to a measly 325lb. By medical standards, this was alarming, disturbing and distressing as she kept pushing on to higher and higher weights, but by Minnie’s slightly skewed standards, this felt like her first real breakthrough in getting her eating under some semblance of control. In fact, given her spectacular size as it was, the 24lbs managed to get lost on her fatty frame. If she had told the other girls she had not gained any weight over the past month, none of them would have had a keen enough eye to notice otherwise. For the first time since October, she looked like the same girl from the month before. Hell, Leona was catching her up, despite her late entry into the race to excess.

    “If it makes you happy, I will do that” Wiktoria said, showcasing both her kindness and her command of conditionals in English. Two enviable attributes.

    And with all that said, Wiktoria exhaled heavily and got to work again emptying the kitchen of all fry-up related items. Fortunately, Minnie texted Rutherford to bring replacements with her when she came in from her flat in town.

    “And maybe croissants, or waffles?” Wiktoria asked as the eggs and sausages were frying.

    “Yes please, but only if you’re doing it for everyone”

 

7.35am (8hours 25minutes BS)

    All three girls were eating fried breakfast, and in the case of two of them, again. And in the case of one of them, again again. Poor Leona didn’t know what had hit her, besides calories that is.

    Minnie kept messaging on her phone to someone, the tell-tale vibrating and green flashing light told us that much. The other two girls had no idea, however, that it was Rutherford that she was messaging or the conspiratorial stuff she was sending. The other two girls didn’t know Rutherford was unofficially in on Minnie’s quest to offload her weight gain to any poor suspecting soul in her radius. The other two girls didn’t know that they were the poor suspecting souls in question.

 

7.45am (8hours 15minutes BS)

    “Hey, I’m here guys” Rutherford said, bringing bag after bag of food into the house. The American had continued staying at her old flat, given the shortage of beds and the fact that she was no longer sharing one with anyone any more.

    She had taken an Uber to the flat, as she often did, to save her legs from the trek. She was no paragon of fitness, and the warming weather was taking its toll on the girl without her having to traipse down to a bus-stop burdened with shopping bags. So, as ever, Uber it was.

    Once she got into to the kitchen/living area, she was presented with three stuffed-to-the-gills gals who were suffering the aftermath of one (or in Leona’s case – two) too many breakfasts. It wasn’t normal to be over your Recommended Daily Allowance of calories before 8 in the morning. However, this didn’t stop Rutherford from waltzing into the kitchen with a big old grin on her face and offer to make breakfast. These were not normal times.

    “Hey guys, I know you’ve like, already eaten or whatever, but since I’m doing myself a fry-up, I thought I’d do you guys one as well. Because I’m nice like that.” And off Rutherford went in the kitchen beaverishly busying without letting the girls have the opportunity to protest. Their faces were a picture.

    The first picture was that of Minnie grinning devilishly, since this had been what she had messaged Rutherford to suggest, collaborating with her American pal to justify stuffing the girls to the gills with more and more food. Next was Wiktoria, glowering and sullen, fully aware of Rutherford’s food-centric tendencies even if she didn’t know the fetishism behind it, and fully aware she was being cajoled into eating beyond her capacity despite only having been up a short time, and despite having such a high capacity to eat beyond. Finally was Leona, who at this point was too stuffed to pull a facial expression beyond cheeks puffed out and bloated, and cradling her stomach in distress.

    Rutherford’s face was a beacon of light, grinning gregariously at the feederistic fulfilment that she was continually capable of contriving. And now that she had an ally and co-conspirator in Minnie, she was getting more and more joy from her feederism, and more and more joy from the consequences. Liberated from a relationship that had been slowly dragging Rutherford down, the ambidirectional pushing of food onto the plates of people was making her so very happy.

    And so very fat. Because, at the centre of this house's concentric circles of gluttony was Rutherford. She lay at the cholesterol-strained heart of it all, brandishing calories freely and frivolously, with no longer a care in the world beyond fattening the various (toffee) apples of her eye. And being in middle of this gourmandising was wreaking havoc on her middle. The way that her gut tore downwards meant that resting her stomach over her waistband of her trousers would just push the trousers down. So, she had to come to the ignominious conclusion to bury her stomach’s lower roll into the trousers themselves, below the straining button. The massive expansion’s consequences meant she was officially too fat to hug herself.since it also meant that reaching the entirety of her stomach was more of a challenge as it now pushed so far away from her, presenting sub-rolls and crevices that could only be presented in the mirror.  And here lay another issue, the slender mirror, in the narrowing by the door of the living area, was now insufficiently wide for Rutherford to see her whole reflection. It was a narrow mirror, bought specifically for the narrow bit of wall showing by the door, and there wasn’t much room to back away from the mirror to catch the whole reflected image, due to the wall opposite not being far away. Still, that being said, being too fat for mirrors should have been a call to halt things, but Rutherford was in her twisted libidinous element and continuing to grow with abandon, as she abandoned any pretence of doing anything other than growing.

    And this disregard for anything in her life that didn’t feed her feeder/feedee fetish and been made readily clear when she got her exam results for the year and discovered she would have to do re-takes. The former prodigiously smart student had fallen from the way-side academically and hanging onto a place in academia by the skin of her teeth. But, still this wasn’t warning enough and still she continued to prioritise on pies and fries, on thighs and size.

    And her size was massive, and the numbers backed it up. Her weight was accelerating exponentially now, and hurtling towards an obese oblivion. She had no idea of the numbers still, but if she did, she would know that she weighed 417lb. The 57lb climb was taking terrible toll on her toiling body, but still she pursued it with voracious hunger, since voracious hunger was now her only state. The billows on her arm chafed, the way the fattiness of her neck made looking in certain directions difficult, how small her hands seemed on her too large body made her look comical, these were all things that would be warning signs to most, but sexual stimulus to Rutherford. And you couldn’t see a shadow of doubt on the girl as she strained to reach the red and brown sauce from the edge of the work surface, because her bulk was in the way meaning she couldn’t get as close as before.

    And the growth of the four girls had created another problem, even though there were now three two-seater sofas, there was still not enough room for one of them to sit down, since no pair was no thin enough to accommodate one, and given that Rutherford was last, she would be the one to plant her tush on the floor. Given the size of it, she would still seem well propped up by her surfeit of ass padding. And it would only be a problem when it came to getting up again.

 

8.20am (7hrs 40mins BS)

    The girls now fully breakfasted, begun to tidy the flat up. It wasn’t an absolute pig-sty to begin with, since these were girls living together and not boys, and so had a modest sense of decorum and hygiene. But still, they wanted to clean the place up ready for the full-on Musketeering reunion. Wiktoria was on kitchen duty, prepping the vegetables for the meals later, whilst defrosting the meals that had been cooked and frozen yesterday. Leona volunteered to help in terms of pot-washing and dishwasher loading, but also mopping the kitchen floor and wiping down the surfaces. In the main living area, Minnie was dusting and then hoovering, while Rutherford was wiping down the windows because, well, there were pizza stains on the inside of them. It wasn’t easy work for the fatty femmes fatales, since wielding both, say a hoover, and their own weight made the cleaning more exerting than they had ever previously found. Rutherford in particular was finding the work of wiping down the windows enough to break into a sweat. It was a good job they had started early, because they were not as spry and sprightly as the girls who started the year.

    And Leona was thinking about this as she went around the kitchen floor with her mop and bucket. The changes that she had undergone over the past year. Her first instinct was that things had changed for the worse; after all she had lost her boyfriend of nearly a decade, she had effectively been demoted at work and she was now double her highest ever weight. She had suffered mini-breakdowns and launched vendettas against friends (Rutherford) and snogged colleagues (Betty) and fucked students (Minnie). These were surely the hallmarks of a bad year.

    But then she thought about herself when the year started, and where she was. And I mean really thought about it, truly, and not just some half-assed rose-tinted vague recollection of how she presumed she must have felt. She felt… what was the word? Stymied, perhaps? Thwarted by an unambitious boyfriend and a lecherous department head. No, that wasn’t it. Disengaged, maybe? Just going through the motions and living life from muscle-memory. Nope, that neither. No, got it, the word she felt at the beginning of the year was… heavier. Emotionally heavier. Burdened by the cumulative mass of all that she had since razed to the ground. Her relationship with Roman had been weighing on her, as she subconsciously sensed they were now drifting into a place where neither was making the other happy, and then blaming the other person for that fact. Now, she felt liberated of that, she could kiss colleagues and fuck students and, hopefully, ask out another student, all free from the chains of monogamy. Her work had been weighing on her too, stressing her out as her workload continued to grow to beyond manageable levels, but also stressing against her own expectations as she whipped herself into a frenzy of ambition, always pushing and striving for more, measuring herself against her own arbitrarily set and impossible to meet standards of what she should achieve. That weight had been lifted too. She no longer felt the pressure of positioning herself as the obvious choice for department head when Lionel Stewart slithered off to retirement as surely he was soon due, and now the workload would be drifting back into manageability without overseeing the Masters course, and juggling two to three academic conferences around the world. Now she could re-prioritise and re-focus, really knuckle down and get the hang of this bastard Hungarian language she had been dabbling at for two years now. She could allocate more time to the stand-up scene that gave her a thrill academia couldn’t hope to replace. And the stand-up comedy was starting to look up. She’d had a couple more gigs, one familiar and one somewhere new. And she had another one booked for next week. It wasn’t enough to go full-time or anything, but it gave her something to get excited about, instead of just plodding through life and marching to the grave, these spikes that served as thrills against the mundanity of existence.

    Plus, she had friends now? That was strangely new. She never really needed to socialise because she had Roman, and sometimes his Jack-the-lad mates would keep the pair company with their Jack-the-lad-type behaviour. But now she had genuine friends to call her own. Her frostier tendencies had now thawed a teensy bit, her propensity for being distant being changed for enjoying having people close to her. Betty was a friend now, a work colleague who she could actually get along with. Lord knows she had tried not to like the girl, with her ghastly pleasantness and relentless approachability, it was enough to put you off your lunch (had anything put Leona off her lunch these days). But now they hung out even outside of work, like functioning adults who have social lives and are aware of the concepts of fun and good times. Then there was her best friends and housemates (and students (and lovers?)). She had experienced the rough and the smooth of having properly close friends, the highs of them turning up and watching her comedy gig and loving it, and the lows of accidentally being caught in a toxic relationship where the main toxicity was food. She was now in a better place with Minnie since they both seemed to have other things to entertain their lustful urges, in Leona’s case, she thrived in the company of Wiktoria. Wiktoria who had that similar streak of no-nonsense-ness that Leona had, but tempered it with more warmth and passion. And finally, her relationship with Rutherford that had started so strong and then got caught in the cross-fire of complicated love triangles. They were now at a place where they could just appreciate each other’s company without having the storm clouds of other relationships hovering on the horizon. The American may have lost her enthusiasm for her studies, and replaced it flat out with food – what was with that, by the way? - but they had rediscovered their bond and made easy company amongst one another.

    And these friendships had come with their own little self-discovery, and perhaps the most important thing to have happened to Leona. Leona discovered that she was a… saying it was difficult, even admitting it in her head was hard. Let’s try again, come on, you can do this, Leona discovered that she was a... lesbian. There, she thought it. She admitted it. Leona liked the ladies. This was a monumental perspective shift in her way of seeing herself. Her heterosexuality was something that she had just taken for granted without a previous second's thought, as she had been bogged down for so long with a bloke with a stubble and a tendency to laugh at rude jokes that she it never crossed her mind to think otherwise. But the idea of being able to love without men seemed the most liberating thing of all. All that feminist theory in her head had always felt compromised as she was tied down with the old two-balls-and-a-chain. But now she lived a manless life, and what could be better than spending the rest of your life with the superior side of the species? A world of clean toilets and less farting and no football. The gender she had spent her life championing was the gender she now spent champing.

    Talk of eating, there was one other change in Leona’s life, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She had doubled. There were now two 140-something pound Leona’s constrained in her one body. What a disorienting thought. Obviously, she had seen fat people over the course of her life and never thought less of them, there was even a part of her that though “good for you”, but that was from the comfort of believing she would never become that big. Arrogantly safe in the knowledge that she was better than them, and could ra-ra these bigger ladies in a faintly patronising kinda way. Did people look at her and do the same, think “good for you” while she was now busy thinking “should I have a second dinner or not?” She couldn’t shake it, the systemic feeling that fat was worse and that she was worse for being it. It was deep rooted and subconscious, but it was there, nibbling away at her brain like she might an éclair. She still had a part of her ego tied around her preconceived perception of Western beauty, and was stung by her fall from grace. The ego was supplemented by the fact that she had committed so much of her time and energy into maintaining her previously enviable shape. To admit that size didn’t matter would be to admit that all that hard work that she had felt so proud about for such a large part of her life counted for diddly-squat, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to stump up to that yet. What she didn’t mind though, was not actually having to do that hard work any more. She didn’t miss the burning thighs of a spin class or the burning lungs of 40 minute stint on the cross-trainer. And she definitely didn’t miss the miserable diets of eating miserly portions. No, eating what she liked, when she like and how much she liked, was the best thing about this newly engorged state.

    So, all in all, she would probably give this year a 7/10. It was not without its problems, its lows and its traumas, and its calories, but it did break up the ennui and bring along with it new, wonderful and liberating experiences. And the food was great too, would recommend.

 

8.50am (7hours 10minutes BS)

    The flat was already looking much better, and the girls were feeling the strain of their hard work, so decided to have a time-out, a rest and maybe a nice cold drink for refreshment. And what kind of refreshment would it be without chocolate?

    “Really Rutherford, we have barely had breakfast, and, in my case, one of many breakfasts” Leona protested weakly as she picked which chocolate bar she would choose to eat with her glass of Pepsi. The Double Decker sounded good, but so did the Lion bar and the Mars bar. Oh, sod this for a game of soldiers, she picked all three. What was the point of being a fat girl if you had to compromise on how much you ate? Minnie was up next and decided that Leona was on to something, and mimicked her choices. Rutherford then asked Wiktoria who appeared scolded.

    “But I made Rocky Road for everyone, as a very special treat?” Wiktoria complained. Of course, Rutherford knew this and had fully intended the girls to have to have both the chocolate bars AND the Rocky Road. Minnie saw what Rutherford had done and smiled. All four girls ended up with a confectioners of chocolate and Rocky Road to last them until elevenses.

    Minnie, for what its worth, was enjoying being dragged into Rutherford’s feeding games of late. Her eyes lit up at the manipulative Machiavellian malevolence of it all, as she saw her issues around control and wanton abandon projected onto her friends. They had, wordlessly almost, started scheming in tandem, working together to thrust food at the other two oblivious house-mates. Was it amoral? Yes, very probably, in fact almost certainly. But was it the better than the alternative, of pointing that fattening gun on herself and firing and firing until she could be fed no more? Undoubtedly. Everybody seemed happy, and everything had been calmer since Minnie had made this lifestyle change to work in cahoots with the sneaky feeder from America. Finally, she could satiate those overwhelming impulses that had driven her to such extremes, and caused her to do such reckless and even horrible things, whilst still slowly gathering measure of her life and actions. She was beginning to feel anchored for the first time since… puberty? And she was feeling anchored every bit as much as she was looking it.

    Minnie knew Rutherford looked at old pictures of the house-mates on her phone and the contrasted them with newer images so as to get off, and she could see the appeal. Especially now how it was increasingly at her own hand, seeing their porkification was particularly pleasant. This felt like her primary driver now, she felt far more comfortable in the driver seat and dictating than in the passenger seat and eating. She was happier than she had ever been.

    But at what cost? Her academic studies hadn’t nose-dived like Rutherford’s but they were hardly gleaming either. She had waited three years longer than everyone else just to get to go to university, and she didn’t want to waste it. But her grades were by now means the biggest consequence of the past year of discovery. No the greatest revelation was when she discovered gender wasn’t important when fucking someone, but rather power and control were. As long as she could over-power and dominate, then the anatomy wasn’t all that interesting to her. Bigger still, was the fact that she was bigger still. She had revamped her identity to the extent that she was no longer Skinny at all, since she was no longer at all skinny. To eschew her childhood name was a giant leap into the unknown and had partly been the thing that left her so untethered over the course of the year. She didn’t have an identity to weigh her down. Of course, her body was weighing her down and this had been the reason she had changed her moniker. From 113lbs to 325lbs, from being a wearer of high-waisted jeans to just wearing trousers wide enough to fit, from being a slim, slender, slinky thing to being the owner of a proud stomach and wide hips, Minnie was perhaps literally unrecognisable from just a year earlier. Had she followed Rutherford’s lead and compared photos from her thinnest to now, she would feel a chilling disconnect between the two. But the photo comparison thing was Rutherford’s game, Minnie was just coming around to accepting her size as she pushed weight onto others.

 

9.20am (6hours 40minutes BS)

    The girls had intended to be cleaning more at this stage, not sitting around and chatting. Wiktoria had some cooking she should be doing and the entrance hall needed hovering, the bins needed emptying and cleaning, the cupboards needed wiping down and the layout of the living area needed re-arranging to make room for their extra guest. It might seem like a lot of work for the arrival of one person, but each girl was quietly nervous about Shaun judging them for their weight gain and didn’t want him to mistake them letting themselves go with them being messy and irresponsible. They didn’t say these thoughts out loud to one another, but the worry was in the back of each girl’s mind.

    And if any girl was going to worry about being judged for their weight gain, it would be the girl from Georgetown, Delaware. Rutherford was properly big now and when he had left she had only been quite big. At Christmas she was sub-200lbs, and now she was over 400lbs. What else is a friend to say when his already obese friend doubles in weight? She didn’t think of herself as a 420lb girl of course, she was possibly just over 310lbs or even 320lbs but surely no more. And this ignorance cushioned her from the amount of cushion she now had. 300lbs was manageable, not ideal by any means, but nothing worthy of stopping the press, 420lbs was a different kettle of fish. 420lbs was headline-worthy in its over-abundance. It would terrify and sexually stimulate the American to find that out in equal measure, leaving her wet and scared. But 300lbs was okay-ish, and Rutherford could happily go about her day with this head-in-the-sands belief.

    She didn’t have her head in the sands in admiring the women around her though. Every libidinous part of her reveled in every wince of effort of a formerly simple task from a former competitive heptathlete, every puff of the cheeks as Leona heaved to sit down or get up, and every absent-minded pull down of the shirt from Minnie as her top continued to ride up and reveal her stomach due to it only being designed for big ladies and not for biiiiiig ladies.

    Rutherford's favourite activity would be to have her phone out whilst chatting to the girls and surreptitiously scroll through photos of them in their prime from Facebook, and then peer over her phone to see their stomachs swell out in their sitting position as the reach for more rocky road. It was a habit she fell into often and it was occupying her thoughts an unhealthy amount. And talking of unhealthy amounts, Rutherford went in for some more Rocky Road herself.

    This was her life now, she decided. This. Eating and fattening. The twisted libido had won and this would be how she would spend the rest of her days. Was she OK with that? Yes, she felt like she was, though it was hard to get a true reading of her own thoughts because that damned libido kept piping up and giving its own opinion, and then pretending it came from her brain. There would be consequences for sure, and she felt them every time she had to get in the shower and go through every roll and fold to keep clean, and from the amount her back ached from the weight of her breasts. It was surely unsustainable and objectively terrible, but Rutherford never felt happy and more alive than when she was surrounded by food and surrounded by women eating it. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.

 

10.15am (5hours 45minutes BS)

    The girls had done a great job with the house. It was looking smart and clean, and even welcoming. They had left Wiktoria’s prized sport’s trophy on the side in proud full view, but everything else was tidied away. And now the girls could put their feet up and rest. Apart from Wiktoria, who still had some cooking to do. Soon… soon everything would be ready and just need to be cooked through, and she would be able to put her feet up also. But, in the meantime she would have to keep her feet moving while all the other girls sat about the sofa and discussed the usual food related gubbins. It’s all they ever talk about, the glue that binds the musketeers together.

    Wiktoria, despite her protestations over the food-centricism of the house, loved food too, and would loved to be in there talking about it, but she had to cook it instead. Her love of takeaway was the main takeaway from this past year, having always eaten carbs and protein and vegetables before she came here, she had thoroughly enjoyed exploring the nation of grease. She had enjoyed having three outlets for her cooking sharing a house with her, and most of all she enjoyed enjoying food. At one point, her confidence dipped, but since she had celebrated Mother’s Day she had been feeling better and better about herself again, thanks to her friends finally rallying around her. She saw the photos of her gangly and sinew body and took pride in the way that she had grown since. She had come from a very dark place and the pounds she had accumulated were a memento of the better place she was in now.

    It wasn’t just her size that had changed since then, as she transitioned from beanpole Pole to heavy-set and happy, she underwent a number of other less-physical changes. First, she discovered that she now liked women. Maybe she always did like women, certainly the Pawel situation wasn’t really one of mutual attraction but rather of an adult sexually exploiting a grieving child looking for a parent figure. She certainly liked them now. She liked their femininity, their grace, and their subtle strength. She admired women, and what was attraction if not a form of admiration. Another change she had experienced was her first post-Pawel relationship. And yes, admittedly it didn’t work out in the end, and there was certainly a fractious period before then, but with the virtue of hindsight, Wiktoria felt the good outweighed the bad with Rutherford. Just as Rutherford now outweighed Wiktoria.

    Another thing she had enjoyed from the past year was her friendship with Minnie. It wasn’t always perfect, Minnie was a dervish of destruction on herself and others, but there always was a great amount of warmth and affection despite them each going through some heavy shit of their own. But her greatest friendship was with Leona. This year was worth it just to spend time with her. She was unlike any woman she had ever met before, apart from maybe herself. She loved her strength, her no-nonsense nature, her multi-lingualism, her diversity of hobbies, her wit, her ambition, her pride and her intelligence. In fact, there was just so much to admire about her.

    This thought struck a nerve with Wiktoria though. Because what was attraction if not a form of admiration. She admired Leona, but did she fancy her. She certainly loved spending time with her, either in deep conversation (in any number of langauges) or just appreciating each other’s company in silence, but was that comfort an indicator of deeper feelings? And was it okay to have feelings about a woman so much older than she was? Of course, Minnie had gone there first, so it was presumably not a problem; though she did negatively judge Minnie for her part in that tryst. Would she be being hypocritical if she then followed suit? She had also been in a relationship with a much older person before, in fact much older, but that relationship was not to be a guideline or framework to follow for future inter-minglings. But, at the end of the day, there was just so much to like about Leona and wasn’t that enough?

    The other worrying thought was that there just so much Leona to love. Wiktoria had held such deep guilt for holding Rutherford’s weight gain against her, again revealing a hypocritical streak in the obese Pole’s personality that she didn’t realise she had. And anybody with eyes could see that Leona was blowing up at a similar place, albeit from a smaller starting size and from a later starting position. Was Leona attractive still? Yes, absolutely no doubt about it. But would Leona still be attractive if she continued in this gluttonous and gelatinous vein?

    Yes, she decided, she would. Because it was never really the size itself that perturbed Witkoria about Rutherford, it was the laziness and disregard for her own appearance that came with it. She never stopped finding Rutherford sexy in bed, rather having more of her to explore was scintillating. The weight dynamics and shifting forces as the explored each other was exotic erotic stuff, no Wiktoria didn’t object to weight gain per se, rather it was the image that mattered to Wiktoria. Rutherford image of a glamorous icon faded the bigger she got, but Leona never stopped looking like she belonged on the front of magazine covers. The only thing that changed was that the magazine covers would now have to be in A3.

    And this tied in with the final change that Wiktoria had undergone over the course of the year, her image. Her image also wasn’t tied to her growing form but rather to the tender affection with which she treated herself. Her hair was now the longest of all the girls, wavy and rich and deep and textured. Her make-up was striking without being over-powering, giving the previously plain girl the capacity to smoulder. Her clothes went from sports gear to baggy jumpers to trendy accessories and swanky clothing, as she treated herself with the same love and affection that she treated others, and held herself to the same standards too. She loved the way she looked these days, she felt like a plus-size model. And she ate like one too.

    Finally, she wiped the side down and she was done until the early afternoon. Thank god! She could now hang out with her friends in the living area and just chill, and talk about food of course.

 

11.00am (5hours BS)

    Chatting about food had turned into discussing the subject of eating food, as it so often did. And second breakfast was difficult because the kitchen was in such use. Then Rutherford and Minnie began whispering to each other, which often meant trouble.

    “I mean, Dominos pizzas is open, it says so here online, and I can like get a pretty awesome discount using my student ID card, and these vouchers. I don't know, maybe we could get a couple of pizzas?” Rutherford asked.

    “Or, how about we could Deliveroo ourselves some Skinny meals from Kebabland, and get ourselves a meat fix like in the old days” Minnie posed, before the two girls joined in clove-footed unison. “Or, even better, we could just get both!”

    Again, they were using a two-pronged attack to get their poor friends to eat two meals when they really shouldn’t be eating a meal at all. Was it any wonder that the girls were putting on some pounds.

 

11.45am (4hours 15minutes BS)

    Leona groaned in agony, Wiktoria twinged in discomfort, Minnie gasped and breathed heavily, and Rutherford shuddered in excitement. All in all, the option of having both the pizzas and the skinny meals was the right one, or at least the one they enjoyed the most. And as they writhed from over-indulgence, the conversation topic turned to plans over summer.

    “While, I’m staying over here because like I’ve got exams to re-sit or you know, whatever” Rutherford said, plainly, as if her tail-off of performance at university was no biggie.

    “Really, will you be okay with these retakes? You’ve not actually done any revision yet and you didn’t attend a decent chunk of lectures near the end of the year?” Leona was a little concerned at this cliff-edge drop from Rutherford, but the American was not interested in harsh realities.

    “I’m staying here too. I’m just avoiding me parents, and I intend to avoid them forever if I can.” Minnie added, also not batting an eyelid that she would disown her parents so readily when all they were doing was pointing out Minnie needed help, a conclusion that Minnie had since reached herself.

    “Well, for me, I’m heading to Europe, so you’re going to be looking after the house by yourselves. I’m gonna be teaching English over the summer.” Leona said proudly. She loved her summer holidays almost as much as her waist line didn’t. Except this time she had no intention of tempering it. “Of course, I could always do with some company?”

    Wiktoria was never very good at reading social cues. Whether it was down to the subtleties of language, her old social anxieties or her tendency to focus on things at the expense of other things, but things kept passing her by. And this was another occasion.

    “I don’t know what I will do over the summertime” she lamented, oblivious of the offer to travel Europe with her teacher.

 

12.15pm (3hours 45minutes BS)

    The girls were starting to get excited of the return of Shaun. In his absence, his position in their mind had only grown, something he would have appreciated.

    And the best way to kill that time, and the best release for that nervous energy was, predictably, dinner.

    Minnie suggested that they order Chinese in a bold attempt to recreate that buffet experience. It had been a key part of their Shaun experience, and in preparation for his arrival, they thought it would be a suitable way to commemorate his impending arrival.

    The plan was to remember everything that they had eaten on that infamous Christmas buffet, write the list down and then use the various eateries in the local area to acquire the various dishes to replicate that meal. The majority of the traditional Chinese food could be sourced from three different Chinese takeaways in the city centre, but some of the dishes were actually ordered from a Vietnamese takeaway joint that they had somehow never encountered before, and one from a Thai place that they had visited before. Finally, the desserts and famed chocolate cakes meant the needed to pop to the supermarkets and bakeries. It would be quite the operation, but the net result would be, hopefully, Chinese buffet mk III.

    The only possible problem was that it wouldn’t arrive until 1pm, meaning that Wiktoria was going to have to keep nipping into the kitchen to take things out and put things in the oven ready for Shaun’s arrival. And Wiktoria was already feeling over-worked.

 

12.50pm (3hours 10minutes BS)

    Food had all arrived and eating was commencing.

 

1.35pm (2hours 25minutes BS)

    Still eating. There really was that much ordered.

 

2.25pm (1hour 35minutes BS)

    Yup, still eating.

 

3.05pm (55 minutes BS)

    And Rutherford finally pushed the last piece of chocolate cake into her mouth and sighed. It’s a good job dinner wouldn’t be ready for another hour after all that.

 

3.45pm (15 minutes BS)

    And all of a sudden, it was panic stations at the Musketeer’s ranch. The Chinese takeaways had proven to be a disastrous idea. All that consuming was time-consuming and now the girls had gone from on top of everything to well behind on their list of jobs to do. Food was being rammed in the oven or bubbling on the stove, whilst Wiktoria sweated away labouring relentlessly. She hadn’t felt physical exertion like this since her sporting days, and she was sweating accordingly. Everyone else was scarpering to get ready for Shaun's arrival. Rutherford was even going to make an effort today, see if she could conjure some of that old magic. Minnie had showered and washed her jet-black hair, and was now just brushing it before getting around to squeezing into her favourite dress. It showed curves in all the right places – i.e. the gut. And Leona was having clothes problems of her own.

    She knew it was going to be a tight fit when she tried it on a few days ago, but it fit then. It was a salmon pink jacket and skirt with navy shirt, and it made her look like an air hostess in the 60’s. Or at least, it would do if the damn thing fitted. Yes, she had eaten well today, even by musketeering standards, but surely she hadn’t put on enough weight in a couple of days for it to no longer fit? She knew she was in trouble when tying up the girdle that made up the base layer of her attire. A girdle that served a similar purpose on Leona that a water pistol might have on a forest fire. But every little bit helped, as far as Leona was concerned and she stuck at it. This followed by the buttoned shirt. The fact that her arms felt like sausages was neither here nor there given that they would be concealed under her latest purchase – the salmon suit. But her stomach bulges were proving harder to reconcile. She couldn’t get the buttons to close at first, and when she did, the buttons looked strained and the white of the girdle could be seen through the gaps. She had hoped the pink suit itself would offset any issues and distract with its courageous colour, but they too strained to fit. There was no disguising it, her latest clothes – and those her best fitting formalwear – were already too small for her. It would have to suffice, and she just hoped Wiktoria wouldn’t penalise her for it.

 

3.50pm (10 minutes BS)

    Panic stations as Shaun walks up the drive and knocks on the door, ten minutes Before Shaun. He was early and Wiktoria was still in her casual clothes that neither flattered or fitted, and dripping with sweat from overworking.

 

4.40pm (5 minutes PS)

    Shaun then stormed out the house in an almighty fury, leaving the girls shaken and trying to work out what just happened.

 

[swahilimonkfish]

The final ever chapter, all wrapped up now, thanks for reading

A Free Hit Season 2 Chapter 11B (Post-Shaun)

   Minnie sat and cried in the living area, trying to come to terms with what happened. It all started so well; he brought pastries and wine. Then he saw them.

 

    Shaun, for his part, had been really looking to this too. He had so much good news that he wanted to share. So much that he was proud of. He had been wanted for the opportunity to gloat about his promotion and how well it was working out for him. To discuss how much office morale had improved with his motivational enthusiasm and friendliness. How he had overseen projects that had seen his company expand into and beyond Europe. He also wanted to talk about his home life, and how well things were going with his father. The football matches they had seen, included a home 2-2 draw with Liverpool that they had seen together and had left them hoarse from cheering and supporting their team. And perhaps most poignantly, about how his dad had even admitted to his friends at work that his son was gay, and that he was proud of all that he had overcome. He just had so much to say.

    And then he opened the door to see all of Minnie before him. And then his mood soured.

    He had suddenly seemed unusually testy. Not like the Shaun of old, like the Shaun that they so fondly remembered. And the girls sensed it the very moment that he walked into the living area. They sensed that the normally chirpy lad was not behaving quite as chirpily as normal.

    “So you can totally see we have all been using your free hit philosophy haha” Rutherford said whilst rubbing her paunch, hoping to alleviate some of the tension in the room as Shaun put the biscuits and the wine down on the counter.

    “Yes, I can”

    “How is my good friend Shaun?” Wiktoria asked, as even she could tell from his intonation was darker than she had hoped for. And all of a sudden she felt self-conscious about her aggrandised form in her loosest and least dressy clothes, and she hadn’t even done her make-up or hair since she was so busy labouring in the kitchen.

    “Busy”

    “Well, you can see we’ve been busy haha” Leona then took her turn to try, testing the testy waters. The bitterness that he had been showing her when she first saw him at the door, he was now directing it to the entire household, and Leona didn’t like it.

    “Yes I can”

    Then they just sat around awkwardly while Wiktoria excused herself to get ready.

 

    “So, this is awkward huh?” Rutherford said cheekily.

    Shaun said nothing, and just kept looking at each of the girls as if sizing them up. And of course there was a lot of them to size up, given that they had themselves sized up.

    “Really, nothing Shaun? We’ve literally been busting our asses to get this place ship-shape for you and you’re just gonna sulk in the room? Why, because we’ve all put on some weight?” Rutherford had been looking forward to seeing Shaun for so long and this is how he was going to treat them.

    “Put on a few? Hmm”

    “Yeah, we’ve put on a few. You gonna say something about that? I dunno, you gonna say something we’ve not already heard” Rutherford was getting a bit frustrated at this point. Her weight wasn't recently acquired, but her weight being a source of sensitivity was a recent revelation.

    “You know what, I was wrong”

    “Good, so can we like get to talking like we’re the old friends we are?” Rutherford sighed in relief. Wiktoria had worked so hard today, busting her not inconsiderable ass to rustle up a range of refinery and she didn’t want Shaun throwing a hissy fit while she was still getting ready. She considered it how far the pair of them had come over the past month that she would have Wiktoria’s back like that quite happily, despite no longer being together.

    “No, I was wrong when I said you put on a few. You really haven’t. What the fuck, guys?” Shaun finally spat it out.

    “What the fuck, what? We know we’re bigger, but we’re Ok” Minnie said defensively.

    “Wicky told me about you’re parents, Minnie. She rang me up in tears last month, and she told me everything. I know about you fucking Leona. She told me it all. But it's not you I blame. I blame this bitch” And thatt was when Shaun pointed aggressively towards Leona, who was sitting down looking awkward. And she would normally have bitten back, she didn't take much lying down, but she didn’t want to ruin this for Wiktoria either. So, she just took it on the chins. Minnie, for her part, fell stunned to silence. And the awkwardness in the room just grew.

    And then Wiktoria walked back in.

    “I’m sorry for the dress, my old friend Shaun, but the one I wanted to wear was a bit too tight so I had to wear this one” Wiktoria said, unaware of the conversation had in her absence. The dress she had chosen didn’t exactly look loose on her either. It looked like it restricted the blood flow around the body, so tight was it. It was canary yellow and summery, and it suited the large build and flowing locks of the Pole, but it wrapped around her torso like it had a point to prove.

    “Colour me surprised”

    Leona bristled a little at this comment, but bit her tongue. She was now itching to snap back at him for his muttered sleight against the woman that Leona held in such high regard. She had now regained some of her poise and was waiting for him to say anything that she could attack back with. She wanted him to say something nasty, to give her justification to give him both barrels.

    “Wiktoria, the food smells delish love” Minnie said, in a bid to diffuse the tension and re-direct it from Shaun and his foul mood.

    “Thank you my good friend. It is based on the pub dinner we had when we first met. We have pie and we have steak and we even have moussaka just for Shau...”

    “Oh, for fuck sake! Really! Is that all you think about and do now? Just eat and eat? For fuck sake, you know what, this is on you Leona, this is all on you” Shaun snarled again at the teacher. But before Leona could snarl back…

    “Why are you being horrible to my good friend?” Wiktoria asked curtly.

    “Because she’s let you get to this state, she’s the adult, she should have intervened, it’s irresponsible. You've been ruining your life and she's just sat back and watched like the fucking shit-stain of a wanker that she is” Shaun raged further.

    “No, she is my friend Shaun! She is my very good friend and you should be nice to my friend. I invited you because you were my friend too. So you should be a nicer friend!” Wiktoria launched into a defence of Leona.

    “She is such a bitch! She had never looked out for any of you. Just taken advantage and now look at you! This takes the biscuit, except, oh wait, that's all you guys do now” Shaun was in no mood to compromise. He truly couldn’t believe what he saw before him. He saw three girls in dire straits, diving off the deep end and drowning, and a teacher to busy abusing her responsibilities to intervene. He never liked that woman, and now she had ruined the lives of these girls, of his friends. She was just like that Pamela, and standing up for himself and others there proved to be the right thing to do. His only regret had been not doing it earlier, and he wasn't going to make the same mistake again. Real friends stand up for their best interests and he was being a real friend. Unlike that bitch Leona.

    “Do not call my friend a bitch! Stop being a wanker! You are supposed to be my friend, you are not supposed to be Pawel, stop being a wanker and be my friend!” Wiktoria was starting to get upset as all her hard work felt like it was for nothing. Her feet ached from racing around the kitchen, she had looked forward to this moment so much, and here it was all going wrong.

    Rutherford then backed her up. “Look, you’ve always been a great friend Shaun, but guess what, so has Leona. And you don’t have the right to come waltzing in here talking shit about my friend, not after all these months”

    Then Minnie further “She has been a friend through all manner of dark times, you wouldn't believe the stuff she has had to put up with and the stuff she has endured and stood beside us with, and been here for us all that time and never left. Even you can’t say that!”

    Leona just sat in the corner, speechless. She wanted to be angry, she was ready to be angry. But all she felt was teary. Teary because Shaun had really hurt her feelings with his words, they cut through her armour by focusing on every emotional vulnerability she possessed. But also teary because of the way the girls stood up for her. Like she was worth something.

    “Oh, you can talk Rutherford, have you not seen yourself in the mirror lately. There are free hits and there are free hits. There’s no way back from where you are, you’re huge. She's let you eat yourself to the point of unrecognisability. How could she not intervene when you're clearly struggling? Like I was when I was drinking?” Shaun felt like he was in the Upside Down. Surely this was some madcap dream, nobody could really let themselves go this much. This would be affecting their health.

    “Don’t talk like that about Rutherford. I’m not having that. Not from my parents, not from you. You do not get to speak to my friend like that!” Minnie stepped up again, hurt vicariously, while Rutherford recoiled in shame, once more insecure about how much heavier she was.

    “You’re all embarrassing. I can’t believe I was looking forward to today. I can’t believe it!” Shaun seemed exasperated. “If you don’t sort yourselves out, I will”

    “And how will you do that? How will you sort me out?” Minnie threw back at him.

    “How? Have a look at yourself and your behaviour Skinny. You’re broken. This is insane. You’re insane. I’ll fix this by... by getting you sectioned. Getting you detained under the fucking Mental Health Act. This is some group delusion bullshit, and you need help. I will get you sectioned, and I'll do it because I give a damn about you!” Shaun said, half-irate and half-distraught.

    “What?” Leona finally piped up. “Mentally ill? How fucking dare you!”

    “I...”

    “Shut up Shaun! Just shut up! I have, no we have had it with men telling us what to do! Okay, these aren’t your bodies, they’re ours, okay? So shut the fuck up and get in line! Thinking you can talk to people like that, now who’s the bully? Huh? When women do shit, oh they must be cray-cray, but when men do it, then just let boys be boys! It's a fucking double-standard and we have suffered it all our lives. These are OUR bodies, and you do not get to tell us what we do with them, so I ask you again, now who's the bully?” Leona was not having this. Not from a man. Always from a man. This wasn’t about whether Shaun was their friend, this was him over-stepping the mark as a man telling a woman to be thinner. And that was some sexist, misogynistic bullshit, and she was not going to put up with it any more.

    Shaun felt that. Being called a bully hurt him. After the Pamela incident, he thought that bullies were other people, to be accused of being one stung deeply. Was he, or was he just looking out for these girl’s best interests? No, he was being a responsible adult while she wasn’t.

    “If you gave a fuck about these girls, instead of preying on them, if you thought with something other than your woman-dick, then they wouldn’t be in this state. And yes, you’re all morbidly obese and in a fucking state!” Shaun didn’t want to attack the girls, just Leona. It was all her fault.

    “But wasn’t the free hit you’re idea?” Minnie said calmly pinning this back on him.

    “Oh Skinny...”

    “It’s Minnie now, you utter bell-end. Which you’d know if you hadn’t fucked off and left us” Minnie raged. Only Ahmed was allowed to call her Skinny.

    “Don’t begrudge me getting my shit together, just because you can’t get yours together” Shaun was not giving up. “There is a bit of a difference between a free hit and this fucking shit. You’re all huge. Like, enormous. That’s so fucked up!”

    Wiktoria started crying louder at this point, like her world was being rocked. And while Shaun was adamant that he was in the right, with masculine arrogance, he didn’t realise how he was inflicting such familiar traumas on the girl.

    Wicky saw Pawel the wanker in Shaun's actions, bullying and antagonising and belittling, voicing the same thoughts that she had heard that night she left to England from Poland. Rutherford saw her time in the US after the Shay incident, the absolutism and the cruelty. The imposing of right and wrong on other people, and never putting bullying on the side of wrong. Minnie saw her parents, controlling and imposing and stifling her breath. And Leona saw men, she saw Lionel’s haughtiness and Roman’s ignorance and Shaun’s self-superiority.

    “Go away Shaun! Leave us. You are not a musketeer any more. You are not our friend any more” was all Wicky could say between tears. Shaun didn’t need a second invitation to leave, he flew out the house in an incandescent rage. Leona chased after him.

    “Shaun, you have no idea. You never did. You may have gone through stuff, at work or at home, but you’ve never been a woman. You don’t know what it’s like to be a woman and you never will. So never tell another woman what to do again. Never make another judgement about a woman again” Leona sneered.

    “Or what”

    “Or, with Wiktoria’s sports trophy, this one here symbolising what a bad-ass motherfucker that wonderful woman is, I will bash your fucking skull in. For free. So, then you’ll know what a free hit really is.” Leona said proudly, angrily, hopefully, bitterly, warmly, worriedly, bravely, venomously.

    Shaun stormed out the house, and they hoped for good. They hoped they would never seen him again. And they hoped he wouldn’t follow through with his threat to get Minnie sectioned. I guess if they got a knock on the door in 45 minutes, then he had.

 

    Once the door slammed shut, Leona just sat down in the hall and cried.

 

 

4.45pm (10 minutes PS)

    All the girls were in a right old state, and didn’t know what to do with themselves. Minnie was in floods of tears as memories of Christmas came flooding back, thoughts banging on her chest and reverberating around in her skull. Rutherford sat icily still terrified about her own size, that she was the one he picked out especially, like her dream had spun off the road and transformed into a nightmare. And Wiktoria looked at all the food she had cooked for this reunion, all the blood sweat and tears that she had employed in the kitchen for what was supposed to be a momentous occasion, and just couldn’t stop crying.

 

4.50pm (15 minutes PS)

    “I will throw all the food in the bin” Wiktoria said, trying to wipe the tears from her face but they kept being replaced by new ones with Sisyphean regularity. She didn’t want it to come to this, not after all that effort, but there was no need for all this food now Shaun had left, and gluttony didn’t seem appropriate right now.

    “No love, don’t chuck it. You worked hard on that, and we should celebrate your cooking if nothing else” Minnie said, noticing the vulnerability in Wicky’s face.

    “But it is too much food for three people. And I... don’t want... to be... fat.” Wiktoria nearly hurled at the use of the ‘f’ word. It all felt too real to say it out loud after what had just come before.

    “Hey, we’ll all eat it between us. Us musketeers have to stick together, ain’t that right Rutherford?” Minnie consoled Wiktoria, resting her hand on her shoulder. Wiktoria returned the favour by hugging Minnie back and smothering the Yorkshire woman with Polish chub.

    “I dunno if I can help, Minnie. I’m feeling pretty fat too, and maybe I’ve taken it too far” Rutherford exposed her bruised ego, and pleaded for validation.

    “Oh my god Rutherford, don’t you ever talk like that again! Not after all we’ve been through. We have to love ourselves. Because I’m not sure anyone else wi...” And then Minnie started crying again. Rutherford heaved herself off the floor and came over to Minnie to offer some emotional support.

    “Hey, fuck Shaun! These sisters gon be doing it for themselves, right? We’ll eat all this and then we’ll go from there, how does that sound?” Rutherford asked Minnie as she felt the pull of self-destruction again. “Wicky, you get Leona and tonight we feast. We’ll decide about tomorrow, tomorrow. But we’re going to enjoy today no matter what, right?”

    And Wiktoria went off into the hall to get Leona, leaving Minnie and Rutherford alone in the living area.

    “I’m worried Ruthers, it keeps getting all dark in me head. Maybe Shaun was right, he’s always right isn’t he?” Minnie was sick of feeling this low. Every time she thought she had pulled away from it, it came flooding back like the night.

    “That guy wasn’t Shaun. I don’t know who he was, but he was not our friend for the entire first semester, that was a different guy, and he was a douche. So don’t listen to him, listen to me. What do you need to feel light again in your head?” Rutherford’s eyes met Minnie’s and they just looked at each other. Then Minnie started crying again.

    “I dunno”

    “Okaaaay, what fixed it last time?” Rutherford asked, probing for solutions with tender concern.

    “I don’t wanna say” Minnie felt guilt and shame and loneliness pouring in like sunlight through the window on a Summer morning.

    “Hey, I told you everything about me, and you told me everything about you. Right? We have no secrets because we have shown each other our darkest most twisted sides. So tell me, what do you need to fix it?” Rutherford began stroking Minnie’s hair caringly.

    “Making other people fat” Minnie whispered shamefully. Rutherford burst into laughter.

    “Oh grrrl, I am so the same, haha, oh my god, why are you embarrassed, that’s literally what I’m all about” Rutherford laughed at the emotionally scarred girl opposite her. It felt good to laugh, a rush of energy bolting through her in the guise of a snap-second of happiness.

    “No, I know, but it’s… it’s not the same. When I get, like, I dunno, like when it gets all black in me head, my first thought is to eat and drink until I die.”

    “Shiiit”

    “And it’s been really helpful to control it by projecting it onto other people. Like, seeing and causing Leona to gain weight makes me feel so in control. And then the darkness fades.” Minnie confessed.

    “Well, it’s not how it works in my brain lol, my brain is just like, ooooo bulges. But, hey, if that’s what you need, that’s what we’ll do.” Rutherford caught her first true glimpse of the apparatus of Minnie’s thought processes and it surprised her how different it was, given that they had been conspiring to fatten up their housemates.

    “How? Leona’s going to Europe, and between you and me, I think she’s gonna ask Wicky to go with her” Minnie said, not realising what a sore subject it was for Rutherford.

    “Oh. Is she? Oh. Umm... good for her. I think. Yeh, no, if they make each other happy, I guess. And, yeah, it’ll just be us two, which will be nice. No, yeah, that’s okay, I think I’m okay with that” Rutherford felt mixed emotions at the news. She knew Wicky wanted to go to Europe, so when Wicky removed the money from the shoe-box, Rutherford concluded she changed her mind. Now Rutherford decided she just didn’t want to go with her, and that stung. But they were no longer together and Rutherford needed to move on. And being alone with Minnie was her idea of moving on.

    “I’m sorry, I forgot about the Europe thing” Minnie of course felt awful since it was actually her that took the money, so she tried to change the subject before her guilt shone through. “But it does mean there’s nobody to fatten.”

    “Apart from me”

    “Yes, apart from you love”

    “No, I mean it. Fatten me” Rutherford ran her hand through Minnie’s hair again, but lingered at the end as she thought thoughts.

    “But, just a minute ago you were saying...”

    “Fatten me” Rutherford’s lingering hand then brushed Minnie’s cheek. “I want you to fatten me”

    “I need to be in control, I need to make you fatter though, that’s how it works” Minnie closed her eyes as Rutherford’s hand went down her check and to her heck.

    “Do whatever you want”

    “But what about your fetish? I can’t handle you trying to fatten me?” Minnie said, faintly resisting.

    “No, we can get off on my gain alone. You don’t think I got this big by accident. I love it, and I want you to take control and push me like you pushed yourself at your lowest. Go to extremes, savage me, wreck me, ruin me” Rutherford’s hand was now sliding the straps of Minnie’s dress down her arms.

    “But can your body take it… I mean, you’re so big already” Minnie meant it sincerely and out of concern but from her lips to Rutherford it just sounded like an aphrodisiac.

    “Imagine how much bigger you can make me” Rutherford cooed, as she pushed her 420lb body towards her. “Feed me until it’s no longer healthy...”

    “I think that ship's already sailed love”

    “Then wreak havoc on me, beyond decency. I can take it. Do whatever it is that you desire to me and I’ll take it...” And the girls locked eyes at each other and just kept staring, thinking what the future was about to contain.


At that point each of their two phones jingled, but the girls ignored it, too busy caught up in what they were doing to notice who it was.

Shay     Hey guess wot grrrl? Guess whos just landed in uk to see u. a clue? shes now only 148lbs and she misses u

 

And another to Minnie’s phone from her old flatmate

            I thnk ur ma + da no where u livin at. they on way now

 

4.50pm (15 minutes PS)

    Wiktoria came to invite Leona back in to the living area with the rest of the girls, but Leona was just crying. She had decided that Shaun was right, she had let them all down. She should have been the responsible one, but she had been too side-tracked with her own thoughts. She had done this to them, it was all her fault. What was it that Shaun said? Too busy thinking with your woman-dick? Maybe it was true, maybe if she hadn’t been fucking Minnie she would have been rescuing her. Maybe if she wasn’t fixated with her own weight, she would have seen Rutherford’s gain. Maybe if she hadn’t been so pre-occupied with her own emotional issues, she could have supported Wiktoria going through all that she had to withstand. Wiktoria only called Shaun because there was nobody else, and Leona hadn’t been there because she was with Betty the night before. Her woman-dick had ruined these girl's lives.

    Wiktoria sidled up to her as she sat on the stairs.

    “My wonderful friend, don’t be sad.” she said, before wrapping her arm around Leona, as she so often did with people. “Come into the main room with everybody else.”

    “Have I ruined everything?” Leona nervously queried, her bottom lip quivering and her eyes welling up as she was trying to come with her actions. Leona wondered if she was the antagonist in the story of their lives, she wondered if she was Roman's antagonist, if she was Betty's antagonist. She'd spent her whole life committed to believing that she was in the right and suddenly that faith was crumpling. Wiktoria looked at her as she started blubbing again and seemed genuinely irritated that Leona could be so hard on herself.

    “Don’t be such a silly woman! You are brilliant and clever and very pretty”

    “You think I’m pretty?” Leona perked up. It seemed shallow, given everything else spinning around her, but the words felt like ointment to her ears. She had to ask this girl to spend the next three months of her life with her, and she had been dreading it. But, after Shaun, it seemed all the more pertinent that she escape with her Pole friend in tow.

    “Of course. Do I not say?”

    “Yes, you say ‘my beautiful friend’” Leona imitated Wiktoria’s clipped Polish accent, with a delicate smile slowly replacing the frown that previously adorned her face. “But I thought that was just a figure of speech, or you just being polite”

    “No” Wiktoria frowned, offended by the insinuation. “You are like a beautiful goddess! You should be very happy with how you look. You are the prettiest girl in the flat”

    “Second prettiest” Leona corrected, and flashed a flirty smile back at the Pole. And it was at that point that they kissed.

    It was a tentative kiss, like each was testing the water with the other and making sure that they weren’t overstepping their mark or mistaking the signs. They both had previous for not reading the social cues of late. But soon it become a full on lip-smothering; liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop. The previous affectionate hug from Wiktoria was now base camp from which she was mounting her ascent on the teacher, drawing her hand down her back with one arm whilst the other furiously tugged at Leona’s dress to get it over her head.

    Suddenly Leona pulled away and asked before it was too late.

    “Please come with me to Europe for 4 months? Please? You’ll love it, the food, the culture, the weather. You'll love it and I’d love it there if you were with me” she said before launching her not small frame back at the Pole, who took her turn to pull away.

    “Yes, it would be amazing. Yes, I will come”

    “Yes, yes you will” Leona giggled at the innuendo as she pulled up Wiktoria’s blouse with the intention of having a bite to eat. And thinking of eating prompted another quick question. “You don’t think we’d get fat over the four months? It’s not like France and Spain are known for their food, or anything” And then she got stuck in, and between hedonistic groans of pleasure causing her fatty thighs to grab Leona’s head in a vice-like lock, she answered.

    “No, we will never get fat!” And then she got back to groaning in ecstasy. "We will stay thin and beautiful forever, like Hollywood movie stars"

    If they hadn’t been so wrapped up in one another – literally – they would have noticed each of their phones pinging.

    Leona's phone lit up to reveal the following message:

 

Roman         Guess what babe! Guess who got a record contract! And to think you said id amount to nothing. Coming round yours with bubbles, thought we could celebrate.

 

While Wiktoria had a very different message, that, when translated, came to:

 

Pawel             I have very important news about your mama! You must hear this news. I am in England and I will be at your house soon.

 

(5.10pm 35minutes PS)

    Back in the kitchen, the girls were eating also, but not each other. Well, Rutherford was eating. Rutherford was actually eating the food as the first seeds of a feedee/feeder relationship were sewn while Minnie was toying with the idea using all of her sexual prowess on Rutherford’s grandiose form. In the meantime, Minnie was feeding her American lover the entirety of the aubergine moussaka as a ‘fuck you’ to Shaun, as Rutherford shovelled layers of creamy pasta with her bare hands into her messy mouth.

    And with that messy mouth, she turned and asked Minnie a question she had been dying to ask her for so so very long.

 

    “Do you want to have sex with me Minnie? Yes or no?”

 

    She did.

    She did want to have sex with her.

    After dinner, of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.25 (45minutes PS)

    And then all four girls jumped as they hear a sharp knock on the door.

 

 

FIN

 

[swahilimonkfish]

And that is that. All done. A Free Hit, all 100,000 words of it, is done.

It's a bit of a cliff-hanger at the end, I have an ending for it but you can kinda add your own. I'd set up all sorts of options of who the knock could be from

Thanks for everybody's support on here, this has been my first ever WG story (or indeed any story) and every comment and 'LIKE' means the world to me.