Haunted House Weight Gain Part 1

Haunted House – BHM Weight Gain

Part One: The House

                   Bruce crept cautiously into the abandoned house.  It was only six o'clock but little light made its way in.  He turned on his flashlight and closed the door behind him. A thick dusty smell filled the air.  The livingroom was full of antique furniture covered in old sheets turned gray with dust.  Bruce smiled.  Halloween was just around the corner and the old house would be the perfect haunted mansion. 
                   There was no electricity as he tried the lights.  As he wandered around the livingroom he was surprised that there was no television.  After a moment of consideration he realized that the furniture was arranged around an antique radio.  The realization that the last tenants had left before the age of television troubled him.  He crept around, afraid to make the floor creak too loudly.  Little plumes of dust surrounded his feet.  There were no other sounds.
                   Bruce moved past the open door to the kitchen toward the back of the house.  He was moving toward the stairs at the far end of the room when he saw a person to his left.  Bruce yelped and was blinded by the reflection of his flashlight in the mirror.  After a confused moment his eyes adjusted and he recognized his own Mario T-shirt on his thin body and the elfin features of his face.  The reflection and the boy shared a moment of amused chagrin before Bruce moved on.  He decided to double back to check out the kitchen. 
                   To his left was a dining room area.  An enormous oak lion-paw dining table was surrounded by matching chairs with faded green cushions.  Big ugly sheets of particle-board were nailed over four large windows which must have once filled the room with wonderful light.  To his right was the actual kitchen.  Even at his young age he recognized that the antique kitchen appliances, not to mention the other relics in the house, must have been worth a fortune to garage-sale hunters but was too nervous to touch anything let alone remove anything from that house.  A big yellowed stove that was once white sat there with pots and pans stacked on top of it. A magnetic recepie-timer in the shape of a rooster was stuck on the metal vent above the oven.  He had the urge to test it out and see if it still worked but was afraid of the noise it would make.  But when he found himself before the enormous baby blue icebox he couldn't resist pulling open the door to see what was inside.  He was disappointed to find nothing but steel shelves.  A memory came to him on its own, a vague warning his mother once gave him, warning him not to play in old stoves or fridges because kids had gotten stuck that way and suffocated before anyone could find them.  Bruce carefully shut the door and quickly headed back into the livingroom.  The sounds of the floor creaking obscured the sound of the pilot light inside the oven igniting. 
                   There was a locked door under the stairs.  After trying the knob Bruce decided he didn't want anything to do with a locked basement in an abandoned house. There was not much to see in the upper rooms.  These were mostly bedrooms.  The master bedroom was overloaded with extra furniture and ornaments like a storage shed so that the bed itself was almost invisible.  The only other room to catch his attention was a little bedroom on the opposite end of the house from the master bedroom.  It wasn't until he peaked in a chest at the foot of the bed and found a teddybear and toys that he realized that it was a little boy's room.  Something about that unsettled him.  Why would they move out and not take all this stuff? The fact that he was starting to get hungry didn't help quiet that feeling. 
                   The growing fear convinced him that his curiosity had been satisfied and he began stalking toward the livingroom with what speed he dared. He got that feeling in the back of his neck; that feeling we all get when we're sure that we're not alone in a room when we are alone in a room.  It's that feeling we have to fight to keep from running and screaming like crazy.  Bruce power-walked past the mirror, past the kitchen, and was reaching out for the doorknob when he heard the loud Ping! of the rooster timer in the kitchen.
                   “Hello?”
                   Bruce's heart was pounding.  He had his hand on the doorknob of the front door.  Timidly he took short breaths through his nose.  In spite of the years of dust he could smell fresh delicious food.  Bruce's face was wrinkled with apprehension as he threaded his way through the furniture to the kitchen door.  To his right he could feel the subtle heat of the cooling oven but couldn't see anything unusual.  But the big oak table was set with a beautiful little spread.  Once Bruce was closer he could see it was a chicken dinner.  Fried chicken tenders piled up on a big plate sat beside a bowl of creamy mashed potatoes.  A gravy boat, like a genie's lamp, was filled with rich brown gravy steaming into the cold air.  Five fresh baked little rolls were oozing butter in a tiny pyramid behind the gravy.  A verdant Cesar salad was next to the chicken.  A pitcher of lemonade with fresh ice stood next to a full glass.  Here and there were little deserts: cupcakes, cookies, and brownies.  There was plenty to eat, not an insane amount, but more than enough.
                   Bruce was not in the habit of cursing but blurted: “What the hell?”
                   He looked around the empty room, baffled.  Where did this food come from?  He took a roll.  It was soft and warm.  And it was real.  The whole spread was as solid as the table it sat on.  Bruce brought the roll to his lips and sniffed.  There's no smell like fresh bread.  None of this made any sense but Bruce was getting really hungry and here was all this unguarded food.  Bruce was a good kid in all respects except that he thought with his stomach.  It was a joke known to all his friends and family that, in spite of how skinny he was, you had to watch your food around Bruce as if he were a dog that had learned to hop onto the dinner table. 
                   He sank his teeth into the fresh roll.  It was so fresh that it almost melted in his mouth like cotton candy.  He pulled the nearest of the big, heavy wooden chairs away from the table and scooted himself close to the food.  The table came up almost to his chest and the armrests were almost too far for his elbows to reach.  He guessed that the cushions must have once been much fluffier to lift people high enough to be comfortable.  After arranging the flashlight to shine on the food Bruce filled out the empty plate set before him with a little of everything but hesitated, looked around once more.  Maybe this was an elaborate prank.  There might be some older kids from school hiding in the pantry or in the basement waiting to scare him while he's eating.  Bruce decided to take his chances and the bait.  At least he would be ready for the prank and would smile, nonchalant, munching a brownie instead of getting scared like his imaginary tormentors wanted. 
                   Quietly he started eating a little of everything in turns.  The chicken was just crispy enough to give a contrast to the soft and salty meat.  The deserts were sweet and moist but not the kind of sweet that is so strong it hurts your teeth.  The salad was so crisp and fresh it would have had to come straight out of the garden and onto the table, that is, if it wasn't October and out of season.  The mashed potatoes were sweet and smooth like ice cream while the gravy was an absolute dream.  Overall Bruce's love of food meant that he wasn't particular at any dinner table but he had a strong dislike for mashed potatoes and he had never had a gravy that didn't make his stomach churn.  This gravy was so good he immediately started dumping it over everything but the sweets (the salad included).  His plan was to eat quietly but after that first sample across the board he compulsively started wolfing those victuals down.  He couldn't help it.  That was how he always ate – at least when his parents weren't there to slow him down. 
                   The only sound in the whole house was Bruce eating.  Crunching, slurping, gulping and the occasional unrepresentable burp.  He didn't want to make so much noise but he couldn't think of all that food going to waste in that empty house.  Besides, if there was some joke going on here he wanted to finish eating before it could be pulled off.  Time passed and his attention alternated between putting food on his plate, food in his mouth, and looking around for a hidden prankster.  One after another the dishes were conquered and Bruce's belly filled happily up.  When the last brownie, saved for the finale, sweet and soft and good, went down to balloon his formerly flat belly into a nice hemisphere.
                   Bruce rubbed his hands up and down his round belly.  He felt very pleased with himself.  The entire meal was successfully abducted in his abdomen.  He pushed himself away from the empty dishes with a contented sigh.  There was a metallic clank behind him.  This is it, he thought.  He spun around and saw that the oven door had opened.  Snatching the flashlight he sprang closer.  The warm oven steamed in the cold air.  Bruce saw that there was something on the rack inside.
                   “Apple pie!”
                   Bruce found a pair of oven mitts with pictures of chickens stitched on them in one of the drawers.  By the time the pie had cooled enough to eat Bruce had found enough room to start eating again.  Gooey and not too flaky.  He couldn't help but shovel the pie into his mouth faster than he could chew, enjoying the taste as the pie filled puffed out his cheeks.  When he scraped the last crumbs and filling off the pie tin and gulped it down his belly pressed out hard like a cannon ball.  He burped to relieve some pressure and shuffled out of the kitchen.  He didn't know what to do with the dirty dishes – he didn't know how food even got on them – so he headed to the door.  About an hour had passed since he first came in and when he opened the door he saw that the sun was starting to set.  He clicked off his flashlight and backed out of the house.  Nothing had changed in the strange old house.  The door was almost closed before Bruce thought better of just leaving. 
                   He stuck his head back in and spoke loudly:  “Thank you.”
                   Bruce's voice echoed down through the ancient building but there was no other answer.  He closed the door, put both hands on his middle and pointed his full stomach toward home.  He couldn't figure out what he would do about the dinner his mom was undoubtedly cooking for him there.

                   “Hey Bruce,” Chad said, “You got any candy left or did you finish it all?”
                   Bruce shook his head with a almost-regretful grin.  “Naw.  All done.”
                   “Lame.  I wanted some Sour Patch Watermellon.”
                   The bus shook them as they bounced their way home from school.  Chad turned back around and sat down in the seat in front of Bruce.  Like Bruce Chad was really thin but he didn't share Bruce's love for food; like a lot of skinny kids he survived on nothing but pop-tarts, candy, and cola.  Bruce was settling back into his daydream when Chad turned back with an afterthought.
                   “Hey, didn't you say there was something cool we were going to do on Halloween?”
                   The memory of that strange dinner in the empty house came back to him and he shook the tastes and images out of his head.  “Nope.  Nothing good.”
                   Chad made a face.  “Meh.  Oh well.”
                   Once he sat back down Bruce resumed laying his plans.

                   It was Friday night.  Dinner had been early, just after school and so it didn't take long for him to get hungry again.  He had finished all the snacks for that week the day before and his mom refused to make him anything else.  It had been two weeks since the first visit when he entered the old house again.  It was a short walk from home but he had to pick the right time to escape the house.  His parents thought he was hanging out with Chad, which happened so often that they didn't even blink.
                   The old house was just as he left it.  He clicked on his flashlight and sneaked into the kitchen.  The oven was closed.  The old dishes were clean again and filled with more wonderful food.  This time it was Italian: pasta, wedges of garlic bread, meatballs, a tall glass of ice-cold milk, and a bowl of steamed shrimp and muscles on the side.  Bruce was almost disappointed when he couldn't find any sweets until he recognized a cute little cheesecake topped with raspberries behind the pasta bowl. 
                   “I love pasta!” he announced to whatever cook had laid the feast out for him.
                   Bruce giggled as quietly as he could as he plunked himself down on the hard seat and scooted himself closer, propped his elbows on the table and started tucking into the food.  This time he he slurped as loudly as he pleased, letting spaghetti whip sauce all over his face as he inhaled it.  After the pasta and seafood were finished he gauged that he wouldn't be as stuffed as he was the first time.  He paused with a mouthful of food and a fork in midair when he heard to oven open.  He slowly turned, not chewing, and saw a tray of cookies lifted out of the oven by the chicken oven mitts and attached to the vague form of a human being.
                   Maybe it was because of the surprise, maybe it was because he was too full for fast action, maybe he really wanted to give the cookies a try in spite of everything, but he just sat there and watched.  The translucent figure pulled a spatula out of the drawer and started piling cookies on a platter.  The cookies looked like they were floating over to the table where they pushed their way past the empty bowl that held the shrimp.  Bruce sat there with his mouth overloaded and his hands tucked in close to his chest as far back in the heavy chair as he could get with his eyes as wide as the big cookies in front of him. 
                   The figure pulled a chair away from the table and sat down facing him.  Every kid hopes to see a ghost someday, and every kid secretly thinks that he'll be the special one in a million people who sees one.  Bruce had countless things he wanted to say, exclaim, and ask but could only mutely munch on his greedy mouthful while nervously hmm, hmm, hmm, humming to the thing watching him eat. 
                   “Pasta's my favorite too,” a boy's voice said in the almost-empty chair facing Bruce.
                   This surprise was too much.  Bruce swallowed and started choking. 
                   The phantom giggled.  “You have to chew it first, silly.”
                   Bruce's eyes were red from choking and from laughing.  He started pointing but the hundred obvious questions one would ask upon meeting a talking spirit but couldn't get the words out.
                   “We can skip that part,” the ghost said.  “I know what I am.  I don't want you to get spooked.  You can ask your dumb questions if it makes you feel better.”
                   Bruce took a big gulp of milk and cleared his throat. 
                   “Ghost,” Bruce finally said.
                   “Boo,” the ghost said.
                   It was getting late.  What little light was streaming into the house began to fade and the ghost became more opaque.  From what Bruce could make out the newcomer was the ghost of a little boy; his hair was curly and light and was dressed in the style of the early 1900's.  He had a round face and a round belly.
                   “My name's Theodore but Teddy's fine.”
                   Bruce told him his name. 
                   “You like my cooking?”
                   The answer was an emphatic yes. 
                   “I love to cook.  You can keep eating if you want to.”
                   Bruce timidly took a warm cookie and took a big bite.  “Were you here before?”
                   “Yup.  I can't do much during the day.  Have some more cookies.  I can make more if you finish these.”
                   Teddy and Bruce chatted.  Most of the talking was done by Teddy while all of the eating was done by Bruce.  Soon enough Bruce had eaten every crumb.  He slouched in the chair and played his stomach like a drum.  Even after there was nothing left to eat they sat and talked, joked, and laughed.  He had almost forgotten that his new friend was not among the living.  He realized it was getting late.  With some difficulty Bruce got himself into a standing position. 
                   “I gotta get going.”
                   “Alright.  Comeback anytime.  There'll be a meal here for you.”
                   “How do you do that, by the way?”
                   The ghost smiled and shook his head.
                   “I could really get used to eating like this.”
                   “Good! I'll make sure you can.”
                   Bruce waved goodbye to his new friend and started toward home trying to rub the soreness away from his swollen belly.