A town taken by its stomach

Chapter XI – Something isn’t right...

That same day, in a different part of the city, a family was going to feel just as they had woken up from a long sleepless dream.

Amelie was hating her life. At first she had acted rebellious, trying to force her parents to come to an agreement with her, which hadn’t been the greatest plan but, her current situation was much worse.

As the culture of Healthy and Unhealthy had taken roots within the city, she had seen her parents leaving her behind. Her dad had been the first to leave her, as he focused only on her mom, Laetitia. Changing himself from being the strict but loving dad he was, into a stranger who barely greeted her and which had eyes only for his wife.

At first, although it had hurt, she consoled herself with her mother, asking her advices, enjoying the tasty recipes that she seemed to be continually experimenting with, sharing time with her as she explained her that her father was just probably busy with his work.

Yet, her mother too, at a certain point had started to change.

At first it had been barely noticeable, as they began to share their time together mainly at mealtimes, as she seemed to be passing the rest of her time glued to the television. Then, Amelie had seen her starting to pass her time sitting on that sofa, greedily snacking all day long, gorging herself as her mom aligned herself to the new culture spreading all over town. And then, turning from the cheerful and always available woman she had always been, into a greedy behemoth which only desire seemed to gorge at all times.

Hurt and resentful, Amelie then turned her attention to her friends, and to food.

Spending the majority of her time outside of her own home, eating all day long, as if she could fill the void she felt in her heart, only with food. Unfortunately for her, her friends could be around only for so long and, sooner or later she had to return to her home. Although, she didn’t felt it as her home.

It was just a house, with a couple of strangers within.

Her dad, oblivious to her presence, most often than not barely seemed aware of her presence. One time, in spite, she had taken a knife and, in front of her father, she had threatened to cut her own veins.

Tetsuo quickly intervened, and Amelie had felt so happy but, her happiness crashed into utter despair as she realized why the person impersonating her father had intervened. For as soon as Tetsuo had taken the blade from her hands, he had started using it to prepare a massive sandwich, quickly providing a different one to her.

As if he didn’t care about her, at all.

In tears, she had tried to go to her mother, trying valiantly to have her snap out of her gorging frenzy, as she kept munching on whatever snack and junk food was around, as a stream of those were brought by Tetsuo, and guzzling the shake provided by the latest creation of Scram Corporation. The same sofa upon which Laetitia was seated, which contained a shake dispenser, within its structure.

But that had revealed to be a grave mistake for Amelie.

As soon as she managed to get her mother to snap out of her gorging, the woman had turned on her screeching like a banshee. Barely mobile, the massive 800 pounds behemoth that had been Laetitia had then tried, time and time again, to lift herself from the couch to grab Amelie.

The girl, scared shitless by the reaction, quickly moved away, as Tetsuo entered the room, bellowing in anger toward her. Only to then focusing on the sobbing behemoth on the sofa, swiftly moving around her to have her resume her feeding.

After that event, Amelie had focused only on herself, arriving to the point that she barely said anything to those people that, for her were nothing more than strangers living in same house as her.

For a while that had worked, although the pain and the anger within the young teen had kept rising, along with her weight until she found herself in the kitchen, literally eating and crying at the same time, as she couldn’t manage to keep living like that.

In his studio, Tetsuo reviewed the feed from the hidden cameras he had placed in the lounging room where Laetitia was now living.

He had started recording her just to see how long would have taken for her to fall prey of the delicious food that Scram made. After all, as his counsellor had said to him once “A massive woman is a happy woman. Let her gorge, Tetsuo, and she’ll be at her happiest.”

And she really had seemed happier as she gorged all day long, not even stopping when she had to go, thanks to the automatic sofa that Scram had gifted him with. Thanks to that marvelous piece of furniture, Laetitia was able to feed herself on Scram patented shake, while relieving herself whenever she needed thanks to the built in W.C.

But as he kept recording his wife, he then began to gain a morbid fascination about her fattening up, as he watched her from behind the screen, despite the fact that he could easily walk in her room and watch it live. Yet, he found it much more exciting to just sit there in the dark, watching as countless hours of Laetitia gorging on all kinds of junk food.

That day, though, a sound broke his concentration. A sound that he knew to be a distinctive request from support. For a moment he stood there, feeling himself torn from his need to sit down and watch, and the need of go and check that sound out. Then, inside of him something snapped.

Suddenly he was very aware of what that sound was.

It was Amelie. And she was crying.

But the emotions he felt, in his heart, coming from her were of such utter desperation that he himself couldn’t refrain from feeling himself being torn apart. His daughter, his beautiful little daughter was out there, wailing desperately and he had closed himself in his studio?

Like a hurricane he hurried to the kitchen, and stood still as he saw his daughter, crying and eating, sobbing as she swallowed a massive meal. AS he tried to get closer to her, though, he remained paralyzed.

Amelie had just given him such a hateful glare that he felt himself almost burning on the spot.

“Ame…?”

“What d’you want?”

“Amelie what’s…?”

“Why’re you’re here? Go to her, whoever are you.
I don’t need you. Not anymore.”

Tetsuo first looked aghast at his daughter behavior, but as he began to collect himself to give her an earful, he thought back to the last few months.

To how he had treated her, how he had ignored her.

In a sudden flash he even saw himself taking away a knife from her grasp, as she had threatened to kill herself, and then he saw as he had given her another one as he was in need for the one she had been holding.

It was such a gut wrenching pain to relieve those memories that he collapsed on his knees, as he remembered as if he had been in a fog bank, unable to oppose himself, unable to truly see what was happening to his family.

Slowly, he began sobbing.

Amelie was so filled with hatred that, as the male stranger had appeared on the door, she had greeted him with hate, trying her best to intimidate him to go away. But, as she heard his chocked cries, as she saw him falling on his knees, as she then saw him starting to sob in despair, she began to think that it was strange… for the unnamed person with the face of her dad had never cried.

Then, as a hammer, she realized that the one crying on the floor wasn’t a stranger.

It was her dad.

The same one who she had never seen cry, not even when, as a kid, she had mistakenly misplaced a wooden board with a nail sticking from it. She had been so afraid when she had seen her dad walking on it with only his flip flops on.

And yet, he hadn’t cried, nor shown any trace of the pain he had to be feeling.

Yet, that same man was now crying on the floor under her eyes.

Slowly she rose from the table, slowly approaching him, hoping that it was really her dad, and yet afraid that it was all a ruse to get her while her defenses were lowered. But as she placed her trembling hand on his shoulder, she was suddenly caught within his arms.

At first, she had wanted to scream, to beg for help, but soon, she recognized what was happening.

Her dad was hugging her fiercely, as he kept crying, and kissing her, and asking for her forgiveness.

Tetsuo was feeling more alive than he had felt in months.

By having his daughter there within his arms, as she let herself go, openly crying, punching him weakly in a dwindling rage, and then returning the hug with all the strength she had in herself.

“I’m…I’m so sorry, Amelie…I don’t… I don’t know what happened…
I won’t let you alone, again.
Never again.”

The girl was openly crying now, releasing all of her hurt, all of her anger, as she felt herself filling with joy in having her dad back.

But then, another sound caught the two of them by surprise.






Laetitia was right in the middle of one of her latest soaps.

She wasn’t really focusing on the screen, in truth, it was something that she used to fill the silence of her life as she kept pouring more food down her throat. She barely remembered who she had been, as food had taken the main role in her life. She existed to eat, to grow healthier, to become the woman that she wanted to be. She barely had any recollection of how all had started, how Tetsuo had told her to just have some time for herself, to relax from the stress of being a clothing designer.

And she had accepted, agreeing with him to just take half an hour, each day, to just vegetate in front of a screen, away from all thoughts that were not about herself.

But as days passed, this resting time had grown, moving from half an hour to two hours. Then from two to five, and as this resting time got longer, Tetsuo then began offering her some snack, to help her relax.

To help her taking away her mind from the problems of her stressful life.

But these snacks had only grown in quantities and in size, until she found herself glued to that couch, eating constantly, lost in herself as she gorged for the sake of gorging.

Overeating even if she wasn't hungry, just because she could do it.

And as she lost herself in this practice, everything surrounding her had seemed to fade into nothingness. All that mattered to her was herself and the food that her husband kept offering to her, kept showering her with, until there was nothing else in her world.

She started growing, healthier and healthier, more and more beautiful, as Tetsuo said, and yet, also his figure was slowly vanishing from her mind.
Becoming more like her caretaker, and not the man she had fallen in love with, the man she had married.

She outgrew her clothes, and yet she barely noticed. She just needed food. And her caretaker was willing enough to keep giving it to her, providing her with an almost endless stream of it.

She then felt herself almost complete, repeating to herself that she needed just a bit more, just a few bites more and she would be satisfied. But, nevertheless, she kept gorging, without ever stopping.

Until she heard someone crying from the kitchen.

Groggily, she tried to focus on those cries, and yet the food was so tantalizing, so inviting that she could barely force herself to focus on those voices.

She had known those voices once, didn’t she?

Weren’t they important to her?


As she kept swallowing the concoction coming from the dispenser within her sofa, she tried to focus on those voices, and yet, she could only see two weak silhouettes, barely visible in her foggy mind.

And as much as she wanted to just be returning to her endless feasting, something deep inside of her told her that those two figures were important for her. She had to remember them.

Unused to think, she felt herself sweating, as she focused on the two shapes, trying to remember who they were, until something flashed in front of her eyes.

She was standing in a bedroom, along the walls there were hand painted stars and comets.

‘I had made them.
It had taken me forever to get them right, but I had managed…why did I do something as tiring as that?’

As the scene evolved under her eyes, she saw herself sitting on a box, almost entirely covered in paint, looking worn out but, satisfied. Near herself, she saw a man. He was leaning on the door frame of the room, looking at her with a grin, with those serious and yet, malicious eyes of his.

‘Who is he? Why’s he looking at me like that?’

Then she followed the stare of her own self, as she looked at the far side of the room, where a crib was laying near an opened window. She saw herself rising tiredly, slowly approaching the crib, as the man followed her, until he hugged her, as they both looked at what laid within the crib.

‘What are they staring at? What is it inside that crib?’

Suddenly fearful, her true self walked trough the memory, passing through the memory of her old self, peering down within the crib, expecting to see something important but, as she looked she saw only a large bucket of fried chicken.

Suddenly afraid, Laetitia moved back, feeling that something was very wrong.

Something was terribly wrong.

Flashes of memories kept coming at her, showing her at various stages of her life, showcasing a past that she didn’t felt her own.

She saw herself in Paris, at one of her fashion shows, except it was her that was being showcased, her vast, almost naked form, moved onward and backward to the stare of hundreds of equally massive people clapping at her.

She then was somewhere else, walking slowly in the park, in her arms an entire roasted ham, as she munched on it while she walked.

More and more of these images flashed right in front of her eyes, and yet she knew that they were wrong.

Something was missing from them. Something…?

Someone…

Then, suddenly, she teared the feeding tube away form her fattened face, breathing freely for the first time in what felt like ages. And as she stood there in the almost darkness of the lounging room, a ghastly glow coming from the television, she found herself once more in a long-forgotten memory.

She was in a bedroom, laying down in a bed, as she slept while hugging someone who was cuddled close to her, someone who had been afraid of the darkness within the room.

Someone, who had come crying to her, earlier that same night, begging for her protection.

Laetitia now remembered who that someone was.

But what was worse, as she now knew who was crying in the kitchen, she remembered how she had reacted when She had come to her begging for her help.

And she, her own mother, had rejected her. Attacking her, even.

Feeling dejected, Laetitia, slowly began to push against the sofa on which she was seated. Tiredly, she kept on trying, focusing all of her energies, of her anger toward herself, of the sorrow she felt for having abandoned her daughter when she had needed her the most.

By pure, sheer, force of will, Laetitia slowly rose from the sofa, although she felt extremely tired, almost on the point of fainting. But she couldn’t afford herself to stop.

Shuffling her legs forward, using the furniture, and even the wall, as support, she slowly moved until she was at the door frame, pushing herself forward, until she was in the kitchen, seeing both her daughter and her husband for the first time in months.

“Am…Ame…Amelie…”


Amelie and Tetsuo, stood silent, mouth agape, as they saw the lumbering figure at the doorframe.

The teen, tearing up once more, left the warm embrace of her dad, as she took a few tentative steps toward her mom. Yet, as much as she wanted to run to her and hug her, she was still afraid of the woman in front of her.

Laetitia could see the fear in her daughter eyes, and that tore her heart in a thousand pieces.

Between the fatigue she was feeling for having her enormous body on her own feet and the pain she felt in her soul, Laetitia gave a last look at her daughter, and tried to say to her that she was sorry but, she felt her energies vanishing. Slowly she began to crumple down, first on her knees, then her entire front began to bend down to the force of gravity.

But, before she could crash against the floor, she felt something blocking her fall. Yet she was way too exhausted to see anything as darkness began to surround her. She thought of hearing a scream but, way too tired, she quickly fell into the darkness.

As Laetitia tiredly opened her eyes, she saw her amazingly beautiful, courageous, daughter watching down at her, tears in her eyes as she tried to push her awake.

“Amelie… My… beautiful…girl…”