Maybe but that’s because I’d burn out after a week or two. I could probably do this for one/two weeks a month without getting sick of it/burned out on eating that much.
However, it has made it WAYYY easier to eat more as it’s helped increase my baseline appetite 🐷❤️
For me was difficult to get used to my double chin... And to the stretch marks 🙈 but now I want some more!
I'm definitely passionate about my belly and booty but the biggest surprise was my thighs that are getting chubby and soft!
Of course I want bigger boobs but also like that with my little lemons, my belly looks bigger!!!
Carl shows up on her doorstep later that day. When she lets him inside, he says a quick hello to her parents, engaging in a minute or two of small talk so that everyone can rest assured there are no weird feelings going around. Then Matilda takes him by the hand and leads him away to her room before they hog him all day long. She shuts the door and opens one of her drawers, pulling out a packet of Starbursts. ‘Want some?’
He makes an unsure hum.
‘Actually, I wasn’t really asking. Have these. The red ones are the best.’
Peering over her shoulder into the open drawer, Carlil’s eyes open into large globes. ‘Hoh-lee shit. I did not know you had so many… so much stock in here! Look at all that! You could stir it like a soup **!’
‘Sshh!’ pressing a finger to her lips.
‘Oh. Sorry. Gotta keep the recipe a secret, so to speak.’
She looks up into his face and flattens her hand upon his sternum, feeling its warmth. ‘Better eat up,’ she says, ‘or I’ll get sad. Or mad. Or both.’ She runs her hand up over his shoulder, then changes course, feeling down his chest, sliding under his ribcage then down the front of his abdomen. It’s all skin until her fingers run into a sudden curve of softness along his midsection. Kind of soft. But not enough. This subtle bend in shape needs to be rounder. Larger.
With a low, pleased hum, Matilda smiles and spreads her fingers all the way out, leaning her weight into him. Their bodily warmths combine. He wraps his arm around her lower back. His other hand touches the inside of her neck. As he begins to massage her, relaxation floods through her body and she moans quietly. Still holding the packet of fattening sweets, she shoves him on the chest in the direction of her bed, which he gently falls back on.
They stretch out across her mattress, and he rolls onto his side, grabbing her thigh and shifting his upper body over hers to plant kisses up and down the softly contoured length of her neck. She breathes faster, distracting herself by opening up the packet, which makes crinkling sounds in their ears. ‘Come on,’ she pleads. ‘Eat.’ He hides his face in her chest, burying his nose down the opening of her shirt in an attempt to locate her parted cleavage.
A light knock on the door. Matilda jolts up, her shoulder cracking into Carlile’s jaw. He stifles a cry.
‘Honey?’ comes her mother’s uncertain voice. ‘Would you two like a serving of dinner a little later?’
They share a glance, then Matilda calls back, ‘No, that’s okay mum, we’re going out tonight.’
‘Okay, honey. Let me know if you need anything.’
Carlile lets his hand glide down her arm, and they lock hands, playing with each other’s fingers.
Matilda cringes. ‘I don’t really feel like being interrupted. I wish my bedroom was hidden under the house like yours.’
‘At least your parents remember you exist.’
Matilda lets out a dark laugh. ‘Wanna get going then? We can continue this later.’ She watches his pupils dilate, and wonders if he ever sees her eyes doing the same for him.
‘Where to?’ he asks.
‘Hmm.’ Her eyes go glassy as she departs to distant lands in her mind. ‘How about a buffet again? I like the idea of a buffet.’ She rubs her stomach, pressing the heel of her wrist into the side of the squishy roundness developing there. ‘All you can eat, for as long as you can eat. I wanna see if I can push the envelope.’
‘Ah. An ancient classic.’
‘Ancient?’
He pushes his tongue up behind his lip. ‘Never mind. Let’s go, go, go.’
‘Yes, chef!’
Carlile gives her a long look.
. . .
Between them, on a bright blue linoleum lined table in a lamp-lit corner of the buffet, four empty plates, three empty saucers and two empty ice cream bowls cluttering the surface. Even with her belly so stuffed that it aches, all winded and throbbing with borderline injury, Matilda finds her mind contemplating the possibility of just one more small piece of food to eat.
Somehow.
‘The fuck is wrong with me?’ she breathes out loud, grabbing a napkin and wiping her lips. She presses her knuckles into her belly, applying so much pressure it crams everything up inside her, and her lips blow a pained grunt as her lungs lift up to make room. The presence of her stomach is alarmingly large for what its proportions ought to be. She feels like a balloon coddled in cotton padding. The under-seam of her bra digs down on her tight upper stomach, limiting what little space is left for her enlarged belly to expand into, and to make matters worse, her stomach organ itself is packed so full that it’s pushing right up under her lungs until the feeling of nausea toys with her oesophagus.
Looking for a way to gain some relief, she slumps further down into her chair with her fly peeled apart beneath the lip of the table, waiting for the fullness to settle enough so that she can either close the wedged-apart zipper, or at least conceal the red triangle of panty-line left exposed, and do something to hide the curve of flesh that will, without a doubt, swell into open air when she finally manages to stand up and waddle out of this place.
‘I’m about to turn into such a fat shit,’ she grumbles, as though she didn’t know that already, and discreetly rubs the undercarriage of her food baby. Carlile hides a smirk. Then, throwing her a sneaky look, he leans all the way over to one side and lowers his head, as far down as he can, bending his entire body until his scalp rests on the seat beside him and he can see beneath the table. He catches Matilda’s fingers in action as they knit a protective web over her stomach. But he’s gained a glimpse, and it’s all he wanted.
There’s this particular quality of what he can only describe to himself as a kind of “moreness” to the shape of her waist. Not in size, really, at least not in a way he can compare to the mental image of observing dough accumulating in girth as it rises in an oven – but rather a plain, straight-forward increase in presence. As if it is there to be seen more, not less. It’s abstract.
What her laced fingers fail to hide, though, is that the back of her shirt hasn’t done a very good job at staying down, now risen up about an inch newly-developed lovehandles which swell weakly over the flanks of her waistband. Feeling his pants tighten, he sits back up and gives her a deeply heated look with pupils that have dilated to the size of marbles with stunned lust.
‘Oh, piss off.’ She scowls, feeling dark as she lets her embarrassment show as if it were some ginormous, blubberous gut that had been spilled beneath the table, its obesity pouring out to be witnessed by all.
Carlile shrugs with a wry, sideways smirk, then wonders whether she really has been able to acknowledge the cumulative effect of what microscopic day-to-day changes leave you with, before, and then after. Every time he sees her, there’s some small, almost invisible difference which you could treat like an illusion, until a few days later you realise there’s maybe a half inch more flesh than you remember there being on her.
But it’s hard to tell where she’s at, in her mind – whether she knows it, doesn’t know it, or if she knows but pretends not to, or if she pretends to know when in fact she has no clue…
She’s been inconsistent in her attitude, these last weeks. One day she will act as if she’s the heaviest, most humiliatingly obese girl in the world – the next day, she’s “only bloated”. Carlile knows the cognitive dissonance can’t go on forever. It’s a journey he’s been through before. One day you just… hit a point. A psychologically painful point. A summit from which you suddenly see the entire length of track which you have crossed to get here, and from which you must commit with full, marriage-firm trust to one side of the emotional story you tell yourself, cutting off the other story before it fuses to your arms and legs, then draws and quarters you into separate, inconsistent pieces that no longer synchronise with each other properly.
But on the other hand, Carlile knows, she is so driven about walking the path she has chosen for herself – and if he has learned anything about her by now, it is that when Matilda commits to something, there will be no stopping. He wonders which side of the fence she will come down on: acceptance, or denial.
. . .
At the club a few days later, Matilda starts getting changed into her training kit as per routine in the locker room, when with a clap of thunderous realisation, she notices that she’d forgotten some of the food she’d bought on her last visit to the supermarket and failed to remove them from her bag – every last item of fattening snacks as incriminating as a blood-soaked knife. She quickly shoves a yellow packet of chocolates, a giant vanilla wafer bar, and one half-eaten donut deep down into the bottom corner of her bag, right out of sight, cringing as the packaging audibly crinkles. With a careful glance up from under her eyebrows, she decides that it doesn’t seem like anyone else heard it.
As she turns away to continue changing, the momentary vision of that chocolate lingers in her mind’s eye, dripping imaginary flavours on her tongue.
It continues to linger, like a sunblot on her eye, and her appetite pays close attention. As she trots out onto the pitch, her stomach turns inwards to locate this uncomfortable, cold feeling of yearning, and lets out a grumble as deep as a subterranean volcano. She massages her stomach with one hand, disguising the gross action by grabbing her shirt and pretending to adjust its folds. She feels the residual weight of her breakfast in her stomach lunging about like mud in a bag as she jogs a lap or two of the field to warm up. For some reason, unable to keep her train of thought from swooning into curiosity, she lets her hand brush across her belly for a moment – just a moment – in order to find out what she might discover there. What she discovers, is that every time her belly bumps into her fingers, in her footfalls’ rhythm, there is a concise little vibration that meets her fingers along with it.
But she might be imagining it.
She has to stop herself from pinching the flesh of her belly in plain sight of the others, aching to feel how much flab is actually there, how much of it is causing this strange pseudo-jiggling sensation which she can’t even tell is real or not.
With a nervous, self-pitying groan, she pulls her hand back down to her side and peels away to join the girls doing warm-up stretches.
.
Two hours later, she drags herself off the pitch, winded, thirsty, and beastly with hunger. She’s still breathing heavily by the time the others have gotten their lungs under control. When being at odds with her teammates becomes obvious to her, she promptly shuts her mouth and pants as silently as she can through her nose instead – but this just results in a higher, and more obnoxiously-pitched sound emitting from her flushed face, so she switches back to taking lungfuls through her mouth. Then back to nose-breathing. Back again. Nothing feels right.
Coach Karen Coaxeford comes through the door moments later in mid-conversation with Elisha, who throws Matilda an unwarranted foul glance as she passes.
Trying to slow her breathing, Matilda opens her locker and closes her eyes, pulling slow, meaningful intakes of air into lungs that feel a little rigid. Any other day, she would have driven home in total silence, locked her door behind her, shoved her face into her pillow and screamed her heart inside out before descending into a mental spiral of ashamed tears. But the present moment calls her to duty. As perverse and fucked up as this situation is, making herself fat and unfit as possible with honest deliberation, this is for the long-term good of her club.
After all, judging by the general vibe coming from the girls who she has spent so many years growing attuned to; something in the air has definitely changed in recent days – or at least been stalled…
For the better part of a week and a bit, now, she’s noticed Margery and the coaches throwing less and less piercing looks at the girls. Unless she is developing a layer of insulating paranoia along with the fat, then not only have there been more sour looks thrown her way, but the quality of them has changed as well. At least it feels that way. Developing shackles of self-consciousness with every millimetre this belly of hers ventures out into the world isn’t an unheard of phenomenon. Time will tell where perception meets reality.
Time will also tell where her figure will end up on the scale of weight and size… Even now, as she stands up on the tips of her toes to reach into the back of her locker where she left a chapstick last week, she does so hoping the backs of her thighs aren’t telling any tales. She can feel the hem of her shorts tickling them. Has she always felt that? Is this simply what it feels like to be disproportionately self-conscious? Or is this awareness due to actual changes?
She’s lucky this isn’t a gymnastics team; in the skin-tight lycra shorts those tiny girls have to wear, her own slightly fleshy, already muscle-thickened thighs would test the fabric’s tensile strength. If she could be alone, she would already be craning her neck back over her shoulder to inspect her ass. But here she is instead, in a locker room full of fit, athletic, toned women – one of whom she is on the teetering threshold of being, and not being. Less than a month ago, she’d been well on the safe side of toned. Soon, though, she knows she’ll watch in horror as the drawstring of her shorts begins to lose slackness to the developing girth of the circumference it is being asked to encompass.
And then what? What happens if her thighs touch, then rub, and then fight for space? What happens if her lovehandles swell over the sides of her waistband, and her belly grows into a round, attention-grabbing paunch of awful, wobbling lard that sticks out so far and wide that her team jersey makes it look more exaggerated than if she’d simply chosen to wear nothing at all? What emotional terror awaits her, there? How much girth? How much heavy, jiggling flesh? How much burdensome weight? Will Margery kick her out, or not? If she turns out to be evil enough, she could just keep Matilda locked into the club like a prison cell and simulate hell on earth for the belligerent player Matilda knows she is.
Later on, when she gets in her car and embarks on the drive back home, she almost stops herself from opening another packet of chips. But the doubt that swirls between her thoughts like an inhibitive plaque is not strong enough for her self-inflicted cravings. Or for her twisted sense of purpose.
One hand on the steering wheel, she breaks open the packet with the other hand, which is a skill she’s only discovered and begun to refine over the last couple of months.
. . .
By week’s end, all the junk food being crammed down her oesophagus, every day, on a twenty-four-seven basis, every week, all month long, has been leaving a whisper of sickness in her stomach like a buildup of residue. Now it’s becoming noticeable. It is persistent. It distracts her. It instils uncertainty in the thoughts that precede her hunger, which precedes her binges, and causes her to enjoy the taste of her food less than she otherwise would.
When she brings this up with Carl, he seems understanding. After a blank look of inward, thoughtful silence, he admits, ‘It’s true. Eating so many empty-calorie foods day after day will tend to do that to you.’
‘Who the fuck would think ice cream, chocolate and soft drinks could ever taste bland?’
‘You want some help?’
‘Depends what kind of help you mean.’
To which Carlile grants her an okay-you-got-me grin, and leans with his elbow on the corner of a promo box at the edge of an aisle in the supermarket they’re standing in. ‘If you want real food… I could arrange that.’ He tries on a French accent. ‘Any requests, mon Matildee?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the chef-man.’
‘Sooth, or Nort Francois cuisine, mi amour?'
‘Oh my god you are terrible.’
‘Well then get a whiff of these herbs: I know a way better place than this to get food. It’s an open market in the middle of the city. Let’s ditch this place and call it a date.’
So they fabricate a long list of ingredients consisting of both the basics and of items she’s never heard of in her life. Ready to begin a new culinary journey, she gets back into the driver’s seat of her car and feels the lower strap of her seatbelt glide like a blunt blade under her stomach as she pulls it across her waist. The lines of her horizontally striped shirt bend outwards, her oval-shaped food baby hogging more space than she feels it deserves. The lower seat belt sort of bends out and underneath the bulge. Her bottom lip curls as she sucks in and swears. ‘Fuck sake,’ she mumbles, turning on the ignition, ‘I’m just bloated all the time now.’
‘Real food won’t fix that, if you’re still planning on eating enough to… you know. But it will stop you from feeling sick.’
But it’s not all bloating. As she tugs the transmission into reverse and drops the handbrake, the way she twists her torso to look out the rear window squeezes the side of her belly into a lopsided little muffintop, pushing an equal combination of bloat and chub so that it rolls over the tied-off drawstring of her sweatpants. She sits forward again, but the left hand side of her shirt, having been pulled from twisting around, has ridden up and failed to reset. Stuck above her hip, a bite of her pinchable lovehandle smiles in the open, along with a thin triangle of the side of her belly completely erased of its old muscular contours. Carlile is helpless to stare at the almost naked space, constantly side-glancing at it, as she drives the entire way without thinking to check once.
Stepping out the car once they arrive, the rest of her shirt equalises by sliding up a little on the other side, and an unexpectedly chill wind touches her thin slice of midriff, bringing goosebumps to stiff attention. With that, she decides to rug up against the coming chill, and opens the rear door to look for something warm.
When she leans in to fish out parka from the opposite side, she feels the limits of the tied drawstring in her sweatpants. A fistful of belly pudge, below her level of awareness, ventures beyond the confines of the drawstring by almost an inch, and does not entirely recede to flatness when she stands straight to shut the door. It isn’t until she turns around that she catches the faint, blurry, and yet still painfully honest reflection of her body in the neighbouring car’s window. She lifts her arms into the jacket sleeves, finally halts, and notices the asymmetric wedge of exposed flesh painted back at her. She hovers a little closer to the car’s window, the picture of her reflection gaining clarity. Her eyes glaze over. Is that her body? Her vision locks onto the skin-coloured shape, a faint gradient of shadow describing its newfound curvature.
She looks away, embarrassed.
Slipping her arms into the parka, she zips it up with all the calmness of someone who’d seen nothing, then links hands with Carlile, and walks across the parking lot into the city to look for his special ingredients.
. . .
A fortnight goes by, as do two matches, and as many losses for the girls. Matilda pretty much runs out of the change rooms on both occasions before any of the coaches can find her.
Now it’s midnight on Sunday, and she’s sitting with Carlile perched upon the rear boot of his car, at the edge of a lookout in the hills, each with a box of Thai curry takeout in their laps. They watch a milkyway of honey-gold lights shimmer in an expanse of gridwork, spilling out upon an almost pitch black landscape below. Looking like a toy set, the city sends its skyscrapers up with pride against the night. A few construction cranes hold up their own tiny red lights on feeble arms. Far away, a distant jet blinks lazily, inbound.
‘Look, I just…’ Carlile’s lips are tight. When he gets like this, he can barely let himself speak.
‘Babe. Just spit it out. I’m listening.’
During the past few weeks, something has been bothering Carlile. She can tell, and she’s been getting better at detecting this idiosyncratic mood. He keeps caving into the pull of some irresistible silence. He almost brings “it” up, now and again – whatever “it” is – but time and again he throws it aside at the last minute, abandoning the mysterious topic.
And it’s been getting worse. She has to stop herself from reciting the standard sport-psychologist’s pep talk every time she wants to get it out of him. But tonight, she feels his hesitant postponing has gone on long enough. Swallowing a mouthful of rice, she rubs the stretched out circumference of her belly and says, with her lips pressed together, and a sigh through her nose, ‘Please, Carl. Come on, babe. Do you not trust me, or something?’
Agitated, Carlile rolls his head around in broad circles. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you.’ His hands search for the right words as his mouth opens and closes silently around them. She finds it amusing, and almost feels like mimicking his obscene movements only to poke harmless fun at him.
‘I don’t know if it matters,’ he forfeits.
‘Carl…’
A pang of irritation pokes her chest. She puts her food down in her lap and twists around so her face is at an angle in front of his, unavoidable within his field of view.
‘Are you serious?’ she demands. ‘What do you even mean “matters”? Of course it matters. Everything about you matters.’
She searches his eyes. Then looks away suddenly.
‘I’m sorry.’ He puts his food down beside him and leans forwards on his knees. ‘Bloody hell. I guess I just don’t… I don’t wanna overburden you.’
Matilda raises her eyebrows and juts her jaw out in a show of bewilderment.
Carlile analyses her expression, then throws his hands in the air. ‘You’ve got a lot going on, okay? Why shouldn’t I give you space?’
‘What makes you think I need space?’ she frowns, not liking where this is going.
‘Well?’ He shrugs incredulously. ‘You’ve got…’ gesturing with outspread hands, juggling the air, ‘I dunno? All your club stuff? All that mess. It’s not easy, trying to, you know… Change your body… I’ve been there.’
‘Trying to what?’ She watches his face closely, laughing internally as he struggles to come clean with whatever is going on inside him.
‘You know. Get, like…’
She gives him a dead stare. ‘What. Fat? Trying to get fat? Is that what you've been tryna say?’
He stares at her with eyes that have lost focus. Then sniffs and shrugs.
‘It’s not a curse word, you know. You can say it,’ she urges. ‘Fat. I'm making myself fat. But that’s my problem to deal with–’
‘But I don’t want you to feel shit about it,’ raising his voice. ‘Okay? I feel fucking awful about it. I almost feel responsible.’
‘What the fuck? Why?’
‘I just do.’
She leans back from him a little, taken by surprise.
A short silence.
Then she says, quietly, ‘What makes you say that?’
He takes a deep breath and slumps as he expels it from his chest. He gently runs his hand through his hair and sucks his lips between his teeth. ‘Because I’m part of your situation. Because I'm helping you. It’s a big old conundrum for you. A big mess. So if I sit here, and complain about shit, I’ll feel like I’m treading on your problems.’
‘What? Are you serious? We share problems. Don’t we? I thought that’s what we were doing… You know, as a couple…? Sharing each other— with each other?’
A chord of sympathy rings through her, seeing him slouched under the weight of self-dejection. She glances down. A bulge in his abdomen is present. Her emotions collide in a smashing of elements.
Scooting a little closer until her hip and thigh presses into his, she puts a hand over his shoulder and squeezes it. ‘You aren’t treading on my problems.’ Unable to help herself, she brings her other hand around to wrap across the front of his waist, stopping briefly to feel his belly. She bites her lip hard, killing a grin before it can form when her fingers detect an undeniable layer of softness. She feels his stomach instinctively tense beneath that softness as it pulls back. Letting go before she does anything stupid, she rubs his shoulders and lifts her face up so her chin rests on his shoulder.
‘You aren’t treading on my problems, okay?’ she tries to make him understand. ‘Your problems are mine, too. Okay? You tell me you’re listening. And you do. Okay? Now, you tell me what yours are.’
It takes a while, but eventually he gathers his thoughts into words. ‘I guess I just feel like… I’m an inferior product.’
Matilda closes her eyes as she continues to massage his back. Chin resting on his shoulder, she feels his voice resonate through her. One of her hands begins to wander back down to where she knows it should not be going right now.
‘I’m just the boring younger brother, you know? I always have been.’
‘No you’re not! You’re talented.’
‘Not compared to Brad. Once upon a time he actually pretended he was humble about things. But ever since he had his first gig, his ego’s come to a full boil. He started acting like a real piece of shit. We barely talk anymore. Look, truth be told; I used to play drums, you know? And the keyboard. Pretty well, too. I made all these tunes. But I couldn’t make it go anywhere. So I gave up. Nobody wanted to hear it. Then he just started jamming with his mates, like he just got the idea one day, and the next thing you know he’s making money from it not even six months out the **. He fast-tracked it. It’s like he went and skipped the whole recipe instructions right to the end and just pulled the whole dish out of thin air. It kills me. I know I never told you the extent of my culinary knowledge and all— but that was for a reason. It sounds really fucking silly, but I’d given up on that, too, until I met you.’
‘What? When? Why? You cook like an expert. Like a European master or something.’
‘Do I, though?’
‘Oh shut up. Don’t be like that.’
‘No, really. You could just be saying it to make me feel better.’
She gives him a dead-eyed look. ‘Carl. I literally just asked you, a few weeks ago, to help me out by cooking for me. If I didn’t like your food, then I wouldn’t be eating so much of it all the time, would I? Think about it. Like, I’m not gonna ask Suri to put in a cross from the midfield if I don’t think she can put in a good cross that I can, A, rely on landing at my feet, and B, I can trust her to time perfectly. I’m not gonna ask Evangeline to run into the box if I don’t think she’s any good at being a striker, now, am I? Do you get my point?’
He gives her a strange look, his breath held still. Then he turns away, staring out at the city.
‘What’s up?’ she prompts.
‘Nothing. I was just trying to say how I gave up on cooking once, too.’
‘But why? I could literally eat anything you cooked until I got fat as fuck from it, and it would still be worth eating every last lick of it.’
Carlile becomes tense again in that strange way, then continues. ‘It was a general anxiety kind of thing. I’m afraid to do something and give it one hundred percent because it hurts too much if I fail. I think. So I stopped cooking just in case it wasn't as good as I thought.’
‘You do know that’s the first thing coaches will want to drill out of your stupid little head if you joined a team, right?’
He shrugs. ‘Being moved into the kitchen at work was good for me. I always wished I could be in the kitchen instead of the bar. I hated bartending.’
‘So why don’t you try and find a super kitchen somewhere? Work in a fancy restaurant.’
‘You have to go to culinary university for that. And anyway, I have to prove it to myself. Like, sure, I can cook most dishes— but if I ever put my heart and soul into cooking in a work setting, they would get ripped out of me.’
‘Carl. What did I just tell you?’
‘I know,’ he says softly. The city lights flitter with distant melancholy.
Matilda heaves a great big sigh and lays her forehead against his arm. It is warm, and solidly soft all at once. Love throbs in radiant waves, and she feels it now in her core. ‘Silly boy,’ she mutters. ‘You silly stupid boy. I love you so much.’
She feels his arm curl slowly around her back. They lean into one another.
For a while it’s all just a dreamy chapter of silence, swaddled in the warmth of each other’s embrace. The city twinkles. Microscopic car headlights make their way up and down arterial roads, looking almost stationary from this far away. She adjusts her head and presses her cheek into his shoulder. ‘Now that I think about it, I don’t believe it.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think that’s really it. Why you stopped cooking, I mean. Why did you really stop eating?– I mean cooking?’ Her voice catches in her throat as she stops herself from making even more foolish choices of words.
Carlile stews on the question for a while. Then he sighs and says in a low, resigned voice. ‘You know I used to be quite big. You know that. But it wasn’t all mudcake and pizza that made me get that big. I quit cooking because I began to lose all that weight as well.’
Matilda almost laughs, new emotions twisting through her body, making her toes tingle. ‘So, you admit that your cooking can make you fat?’
‘Sort of…’
‘Hmm.’ Matilda swings her foot side to side. ‘Maybe you really can help me, then. Until I get kicked out of the club, anyway. After that, I’ll have to lose it. Maybe you can help there, too. I just can’t keep feeling sick with this all-sugar diet. I’m gonna need your help.’
‘Maybe,’ he says with a hollow voice.
‘Maybe what?’ Matilda asks, squirming, masking her excitement with a chuckle. ‘Maybe you got fat off your own cooking? Ya little fatty? Chub-boy?’
‘…Yeah, sure.’
They share a small silence, Matilda chewing her smiling lips in the darkness.
‘Also,’ he adds after a moment, ‘just so you know– good ingredients are fucking expensive.’
‘True that. True.’ Fantasising about all the ways to make her man grow bigger, she leans into his body and shuts her eyes, imagining what she feels is all pillowy softness.
.
The heat of passion from their bodies had fogged the windows long ago, and even with the seat laid back, they’re still cramped up against one another’s intimate press. She notices that every time her hands begin to drift towards his stomach, he moves them away. She gets the message and, looking at the misty windows one last time to make sure they’re fogged enough, continues to strip her clothes off. She kisses him deeply as she fights with the sleeves of her turtleneck behind her back. She feels her heavy, full belly at last set free. Its stuffed bulk hangs low and brushes against one of his thighs, then nudges against his stiff groin. Suddenly his fingers wrap around her midsection. The squeeze he gives her waist is strong, deep, soothing, and it releases a fizzing burst of warmth through her abdomen. Then the disgust hits her. The depth with which his fingers massage into her bloated midsection forces her to think about how round and grotesque her belly must be for him to be able to do that, so she pulls away and removes his hands. ‘No, stop, I’m too bloated– keep going up here.’ Taking one of his hands, she brings it to her chest and slips it inside her bra. ‘Take it off for me,’ she says. He obeys. As her bra falls away, her nipples rise firm in the cold as he runs his thumbs over their stiff surface.
Well, she thinks to herself, if I’m going to resemble a human water balloon, at least he can enjoy a larger cup size until the weight has to come off.
But even as they feel each other, something is still missing. She wants to feel his belly – for real, this time. She needs to find out if it’s gotten any bigger… If it feels any softer… If it feels rounder.
Maybe disgusting, gross and sick of her to want this – but so, so undeniably hot that it makes her jaw ache in a way that makes her feel the need to rip it off.
Unfulfilled desire sets fire to the rest of her being, and she takes her frustration out on poor Carlile’s body, biting his lip and ear, sucking on his neck until his skin could come off. All of a sudden something in her stomach shifts. It rolls over itself, then a lump rises up her throat and she accidentally lets a burp squeak out, right over his face.
They freeze.
Neither of them say a word. The only sound to be heard is their deep, heavy breaths lapping over one another like waves. They lock gazes.
Then the corners of his eyes crease, Matilda’s cheeks begin to puff out, and all at once they break out laughing. She falls into him, scrunching her face to contain her giggles, then pushes herself up once more to look at him with a sidelong stare, grinning.
‘Funny, that,’ he says, before leaning forward to plant a kiss on her chest between her cleavage hanging like fruit over his face. ‘For some reason that was kind of hot.’
She lowers herself down on top of him, and once again, they fall back into love making.
. . .
Over the next few weeks, Matilda forms a habit of bringing entire tupperware containers with her to training, each full of leftovers from Carlile’s cooking escapades, and keeping them hidden either in the glovebox compartment of her car or under a hoodie somewhere, so that she can hurry back to her car after packing-up, rarely hanging around to chat with anybody, and then pig out in the safety of a side-street out of sight, putting to death that vacuous, cold sensation of hunger that screams emptily inside her on an almost twenty-four hour basis now.
Technically, it is just past the middle of the league season, meaning the previous week was the slot in which the league's administrators had chosen to give the Purple Vale girls their seven-day break. But the fact that they did not have a match to play that fortnight wasn't at all clear to Margery. She'd simply taken the opportunity to crank the intensity of their training drills right up, layering them on top of what they'd usually be doing in a session – plus a double session on both days of the weekend, along with the words, “Some of you have been becoming a little soft, lately, and not just on the pitch either,’ throwing a glance Matilda’s way as they’d all been standing at military-stiff attention on the grass while a freezing morning wind came raking along the open field, each buffeting gust making Matilda's training shirt wrap around the tell-tale bulge of her stomach, even as she’d sucked it in the precise moment Margery’s eyes spun in her direction.
And who else but Elisha should still be sending those aloof, dirtily-sneered glances at her, all week long? As if the captain's strip on her left arm isn’t enough of an honour, the icey-eyed midfielder has been trying to drift sneakily out to the wing every scrimmage match until Matilda finds herself jostled out of position and left firmly out of her comfort zone.
But even though she sees this, Matilda lets this happen. It goes on for weeks. She doesn’t want to make more than the one enemy in this place. One is enough.
One chilly midday, she isolates herself in the facility restroom after an hour-long session of unending, repetitive tactics-building drills, and looks at herself in the mirror above the basin after catching her breath with a long, weary expression of searching. She’s still feeling shaken after the athletic demands placed on her limbs, whose capabilities seem to have receded just behind the point of being capable of going for the full stretch. So close, yet so far.
Frowning at her reflection in the mirror, she listens out with the careful attention of a mouse in the kitchen at night, focusing through the shuddering gushes of her heavy breaths for anything that resembles the sounds of footsteps. She can't afford to let anybody walk in and see her like this. Not yet, anyway. Or perhaps not ever, depending on how badly out of shape she has to get before things change around here.
Watching her reflection, slowly she turns to one side. Today, something has left her feeling particularly fucked up. Her chest feels thick with exhaustion, her pulse thumps like a subwoofer in her ribcage, and her lungs feel smaller than she knows they really are. Even her neck has got pins and needles in it, a faint dizziness closing in around the edges of her consciousness.
When she looks down the length of her reflection in profile, everything explains itself all at once. It’s her belly.
It is bigger than she has ever seen it. From top to bottom, the folds of her jersey’s nylon are erased by an oval swell that sticks out almost flush with her breasts. It doesn’t help, of course, that she can’t suck her stomach in without further suffocating her already oxygen-starved body. But this is outright embarrassing.
Her lips tighten in disgusted fascination as she follows with her eyes the curve of her stomach’s softening anatomy.
‘Fuck,’ she mouths to herself, ‘am I really this unfit?’
Extending her head towards the mirror, she shifts her vision from side to side so she can view her body from various angles. Then she runs a hand up the side of her thigh, onto her hip, discovering their soft texture before turning her body to face the mirror again – her hips now showing up as two symmetrical curves. She squeezes one, and ends up holding almost a handful of chub in her palm. She experiments with giving it a gentle squeeze, then a firm one, gauging the differing volumes of flesh she can pinch at each point.
Have people noticed… this?
She gives her jersey a flap as if to air it out, then stands as straight as she can, watching the fabric come down and around her hips. It drapes, just right, that in such a way it hides the bulge of her hips. But all it takes is a slight touch, nothing more than a twist of her waist, before the fabric settles back down upon her emerging lovehandles, betraying their bulge.
What about her face, then? She turns her head to one side, then the other, grabbing her cheeks and pinching the skin under her jaw. There doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about. But what if she can’t tell, and others can? Would she even notice anything, from day to day, if she tried to? Has anyone noticed?
She tucks her jaw into her neck in a purposefully exaggerated manner. A strap of flesh forms underneath. She looks back up. It vanishes. Or has it? She leans in over the basin and pinches the skin under her jaw, her hazel eyes wide with manic paranoia.
Right on time, her stomach groans. She knows there’s probably a meal waiting for her. Then she thinks about how every time she eats a meal, without fail it fills her like a balloon. What a stark combination of features she has become. Her face in all its familiarity sits now atop a body whose curves have increased in volume, as if on a digital slider, beginning to protrude visibly in key zones.
Does her belly permanently look like this, now? Or is she just bloated? Although her heart still races, it’s all emotion now. All of a sudden, she sucks in, hard. The front of her jersey retreats, hanging from her breasts like a limp flag, with no sign of anything behind it. Then she blows her breath back out. Her chest deflates, and her belly fills into the shirt again, imprinting itself upon the violet fabric with its navel-pricked swell.
Okay, then. So it was just bloat.
Putting her breath on hold, she listens into the silence. When she hears nothing, with utmost secrecy, she pulls her jersey up – right up – all the way to her bra line.
Now that she’s seeing her abdomen bare, she isn’t so sure. There’s not much about it that looks contoured, or even taut, with the tensile stretch of bloatedness. The skin of her belly does not have that particular, faint sheen from being inflated to its biggest, roundest size. Instead, it looks… different. The skin of her stomach instead possesses a soft and doughy quality that confuses her eyes.
Her training shirt slips from her fingers, which had gone slack with anxious awe. She pulls the violet fabric back up and fights to keep it out the way, tucking it under her sports bra. With her hands free, she places one on each side of her stomach – only to discover a shallow but all-enveloping layer of adipose beneath the palms of her hands. She lets her splayed fingers sink into the sponge-soft layer until she comes into contact with curved hardness beneath.
So there is a bloat, it’s just… clothed, so to speak.
Her limbs freeze as she hears footsteps approaching in the hallway, her heart unfurling in her throat.
The footsteps fade away in the opposite direction.
Feeling the adrenaline in her veins sigh slowly back into her glands, she looks back at the mirror image of herself. Slack-jawed and animalistically hypnotised by the appearance of her stomach, which had not so long ago been as trim as a surfer, she feels herself begin to lean sideways, dazed. She stamps her heel on the floor to right herself before she falls over. The impact moves up her leg – and her belly button reacts in a way that snaps her attention to it like a magnet. Had it just fucking jiggled?
She turns sideways again, cradling the under-curve of her belly in one hand. She gives it a light squeeze, then tries to lift it. A layer of flesh, that she didn’t even know she had until now, shifts up her abdominal wall, gathering into a crease of chub under her breasts. When she lets it drop, the laws of physics describe each part of her stomach’s soft anatomy with precise, humiliating honesty. It seems her endless binge eating has accumulated in an egg-smooth curve of pudge that carries her belly button in a curt up-and-down jiggle after being dropped, echoed by the flesh coating her once toned obliques as the upper half of her stomach kind of jolts up and down on itself. She does the action again, and then a third time again, fascinated by the way it jiggles as a unitary package of blubber.
She’s not just bloated. Bloated bellies aren’t supposed to bounce. Not like that. Or maybe they can. But how could she even tell? Would Carlile know the answer? All of a sudden, she sees him in her mind’s eye looking at his reflection in the mirror, the same as she is, examining himself with a fat round gut of his own, all his masculine blubber bouncing as she reaches down to grope it, and heft it, as if conveying it to her like a gift. Her legs clamp in a way she has never felt in her life. She stifles a groan.
Footsteps in the hallway again. The door creaks open.
Her heart flips on its head and chokes.
Pulling her shirt down so fast and hard it almost jars her shoulders, she smooths out the creases, then leans over the basin and starts washing her hands for no reason, hoping to look like she’s been doing something – anything – but staring at her body and groping its growing rolls.
The figure causing the footsteps enters the room. Over her shoulder in the mirror, she sees Elisha come into view, pauses in her tracks, as momentary as a glitchy frame-stutter, before continuing inside the room.
‘Hi,’ Elisha says more like a statement than a greeting.
‘Hey,’ Matilda answers, watching Elisha closely. Her head feels light. Had she forgotten to breathe, or something?
The midfielder captain slams her purse down on the basin to her right. ‘Had enough.’
Matilda frowns and looks to the side, twisting the tap off. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Fucking Margery,’ Elisha lowers her voice and unzips her purse, taking out an eyedropper. ‘Same old shit, that’s what.’
Matilda’s face tenses. This doesn’t feel right. Elisha has no reason to dislike Margery. ‘Did I miss something?’ Matilda asks.
‘Not much, really. But she did mention you.’
Matilda’s jaw tightens, her eyes suddenly gaining focus as the issue unravels itself in her mind. ‘What do you mean?’ she asks slowly.
‘Ugh… not much. Except she was annoyed how you ran off before the post-training team talk. But fuck it, I don’t blame you!’ sounding all too agreeable. ‘I just don’t get why she’s so weird with you.’ Elisha lifts the dropper to her eyes, tilts her head back and squeezes a few drops under each eyelid.
Matilda sniffs. Something seems wrong here. Suddenly being on the same side as her doesn’t jive, doesn’t make sense.
‘You going out somewhere?’ she asks.
‘Yeah. Going to get lunch with Nysh and Beth. You wanna come?’ Elisha faces her, forcefully blinking until her vision clears of the dropper fluid. Matilda notices Elisha’s eyes take a small, startled jump down to where her waistline sits like an embarrassing blemish, before coming back up, pretending not to have seen anything.
Suddenly self conscious, Matilda allows herself to suck in a little. ‘No, I’m good, thanks– I gotta be somewhere anyway, and I already had lunch, so…’
‘Alrighty, all good.’ Elisha’s eyes narrow, for no more than a flash in time, at Matilda’s waistline, then she turns back to her purse and takes out a tube of eyeliner. ‘What about after next training day?’
‘Uh. Well. Maybe. I’ll see.’ Matilda feels invisible shields come up around her.
‘Hmm… I get it, though.’
‘Get what?’
‘Why you would disappear so quickly.’ Elisha puts her face close up to the mirror and steadily lines one eye. ‘She’s been so harsh. So demeaning. I know she’s been focussing on you, and–’
‘She has?’ Matilda probes, ears pricking up.
‘Um. Yeah? You’re not telling me you haven’t noticed…’
‘I… have, I just…’
‘Well I can assure you I think it’s really unfair,’ Elisha opines. ‘I’ve heard the things she says to your face. It’s… it’s not right. And oh my god, some of the things she says about you, too.’
‘What does she say about me?’
Elisha sucks her lips in, pressing them tight as she dabs the corner of her lined eye, then takes a deep, solemn breath. ‘Just that you’re, like… I dunno… falling off the deep end. Making poor choices. Being… arrogant. Being… lazy. You know, that sort of thing. Least that’s what she says.’
Her eyes wide and alert, Matilda feels the need to dig for further meaning. ‘What “deep end” am I falling off?’ she asks, waiting to see what Elisha does with the question.
Elisha finishes lining her other eye before deciding to respond, packing her items back into her purse. ‘Don’t worry, Matilda. You shouldn’t feel bad about it. It happens to all of us. You’re still as good as ever, and you’ll be back to, like, normal in no time! You’ll be fine. I just feel bad for you. It must be hard having to carry extra baggage…’
If Matilda isn’t being paranoid, then Elisha had just put her hands to her waist as she said that final word.
‘Anyway,’ Elisha pipes up, voice overly enthusiastic, taking her purse into her arms, ‘I think I heard a new doughnut shop just opened up in Broughton the other week– why don’t you try it out and tell me if it’s any good!’
And with that, the captain swings around to face the exit, gives Matilda a haunting smile that sticks with her the rest of the day, and leaves the room.
Dazed, confused, and embarrassed, Matilda leans over to lift her bag off the floor. She takes her leave as slow as a stunned sloth. She creeps through the corridor, trying her best to go undetected. Hurrying out through the fire exit, she makes her way across the parking lot, and with every step, realises it’s going to be hard to arrange her feelings about this into something that makes sense. If her stupid grand plan has any legs at all, then it looks like it’s starting to take form. She has finally managed to force her body to grow, uncovering real-life, visual evidence of the fact today.
And if Elisha’s eyes had been stealthily travelling to the spot she thought they were, then someone else has finally reacted to the sight of it…
So here she is, about to hide away in her car again just so she can shove far too much food into her stomach, which will only make her look even more bloated than she currently does.
What a situation to be in. What a life. If an autobiography were to be written about her, would she even feel proud of her achievements?
I told myself I was going to slow down for a week to try and stay somewhat healthy but just the thought of not being able to stuff my face with junk food made me more greedy. For the past 5 days I went to an ice cream shop and got a large order and then I would get a box of ice cream bars and eat the whole thing. I ate full bags of chips and fast food and seemed to never feel full. I was so bloated my boyfriend had teased me making me a horny bloated mess. He’s making me into such a pig I don’t think I could stop gaining if I wanted to.🐷✨
This shirt is not supposed to be cropped…..
@DarkMoonFlower Your new Elf video is amazing! I can definitely tell you've gained since last Christmas... look at that before and after pic! Keep overeating and drinking those shakes, and may you grow even bigger this next year!
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Muted Decor reacted to HotTamale in I’m HotTamale and I’m new here! (Ex dancer gets soft)
