This choice: 1 year on, and Claire is back up to 500 pounds, the rest are on their way up. • Go Back... Lunch time came about again in Fat Alley as ponderous feet assailed the floor.
Hannah's step had grown a good bit heftier as her form began to grow once more - her reduced thighs and hips had once again resumed their outward march. For much of the year, she had been able to ignore it as the fat had gone to her rump, but as the year drew to a close, her belly began to strain her favorite mauve blouse. She could feel her renewed dedication to good habits slipping away, and she could only feel a mild annoyance after years of hard work and dietary discipline.
She sighed as she tucked it back into her skirt concurrently with opening a bag of chips. She paused, turning to Dana as she entered with some breathiness, "First I have to go up two damn skirt sizes, and now this shirt's gonna go. You guys are a bad influence."
Dana's already-blubbery form had only increased over the past year - held somewhat in check by her extant size and the caloric demands of it, but it became apparent as she withdrew the cheesy, carb-laden lunch from the fridge and began to warm it up. She could almost never find her size in anything but beige and white, which only accentuated the gains in her torso - her arms had grown fatter and chafed in the tightness of her sleeve, jiggling with every little motion. Her belly had strained her shirt that extra little bit as any slack now gave way to tiny little divots in the cloth as the cotton strained to contain Dana's increase.
She turned to Hannah with a mild smirk, "Hey, think of it as the price of friendship." Hannah griped as she bit into a pre-packed fried chicken sandwich, "I don't think the store takes that for payment for 2XL pants."
Claire's voice huskily rumbled around the corner, full of breath, "Just 2XL? You tiny little thing," her lard-filled legs trundling her into view of the doorway. Her gains over the past twelve months made Hannah look like a fitness model, and Dana like the emblem of self-restraint. Her already elephantine gut had only grown fatter, infinitely too fat for her already-overtaxed floral blouse. The most stylish that Claire was allowed to get now was a light blue-and-yellow blouse that could easily restrain Haley, if not Hannah. She took labored breaths as she took the arduous sixteen steps from her office to the break-room table.
Hannah chuckled as she spoke, "Yeah, I guess I shouldn't be complaining. What're you up to now, Claire?" The mammoth of a woman managed a chuckle through her struggling lungs - it was one thing for this to come from the mean-spiritedness of Haley, but Hannah at least gave it a humorous air. "Oh, a slim 7X." She jokingly tried to pose like a supermodel, but only managed to accentuate her double-chin which now rolled out lightly onto her collarbones.
Hannah and Dana began to crack up, as Dana eked out after swallowing a gulp of food, "Tell us your diet secrets!" Claire pulled out a bag of fast-food, stored in the fridge to avoid the sagging lunch regulations. "Oh, my personal trainer is a king. A king of burgers, if you will," as she withdrew the burger and fries, beginning to light into her large fries and her double-bacon cheeseburger. A nutritionist would die of fright at Claire's meal, especially as she interspersed her fries with bites of Mozzarella Sticks.
Of course, Claire's 2000+ calorie meal could easily be matched by the best efforts of Dana. Her loaded potato bake plus the accompanying "side" of pre-baked garlic bread clocked it at somewhere north of 1500, and Hannah's reached at least 1000. Of course, none of them were measuring such an academic unit as a calorie - if they were, Hannah wouldn't be putting weight back on, Dana wouldn't be creeping back towards the higher half of 300, and Claire wouldn't be 500 pounds again.
It wasn't totally lost on Claire that she was right back to square one. For months, years, she had thought she would be far more depressed at such a milestone. She thought she would be more shocked that she had to pause after her meal to take a dose of thirty units of insulin. She thought she would be more shocked to have to take high blood pressure medication again. She thought she would be more terrified that her doctor was seriously recommending a cholesterol statin, as, in Hedy's words, her heart was "in serious danger within the next five years."
She even recommended an X-ray for heart disease - in a woman approaching her mid-thirties.
Of course, Claire refused the statin. Claire refused to schedule the X-ray. She just kept eating her burger. It was exactly this sort of behavior that got her back to 500 pounds. It was exactly this sort of behavior that kept her so out of breath, that kept her periodically worrying about the fluttering in her chest every time she did any kind of slightly strenuous activity. It was exactly this sort of thing that should have shocked her back into action.
But at this point, it was as if a little Haley had come to live in her head. She had that chance - to maintain a healthy, normal body. She had the opportunity to keep her heart healthy. She'd thrown it away for beer, pizza, and nights out with her friends. She appreciated their company, and it kept her sane in the face of the nearly oppressive presence of Haley in the office. Yet it didn't shake that little voice in her head that told her that she had lost the right to worry about her health. She ate herself into a corner, and she had become too much of a hog to do anything else.
That little voice seemed to continue driving her through 2000+calorie lunches. The little Haley in Claire's head seemed to continue to taunt her.
"You really have no shame or willpower. This one meal is as much as you should eat in a day."
And all Claire could think was, "Yeah, it is," as she ate it, swallowing more fatty food. Her fat body managed to blow up once more past the 500 mark before even her gluttony couldn't propel her weight past a slow creep.
Yet the damage had been done. She could scarcely fit through doorways anymore, for though the chairs were upgraded to fit the obese hind-ends of Fat Alley, the doorways were not built for someone as massively obese as Claire.
Haley, in the meantime, wasn't content to be a mere voice in Claire's head. The company was making record profits, and higher management was becoming lazy, more complacent. Just like Claire, the company's wallet, and everyone's paychecks, were getting fatter.
As the year had rolled on, however, Haley had seen Claire balloon back up to 500 pounds - the woman was the size of a manatee, and could scarcely navigate any normal spaces. She seemed to be eternally winded, never able to catch her breath outside of fat alley, and the only fitting clothes she could ever wear were massive, gigantic Mumuus.
All the blonde could do was plan more ways to torment Claire. She had given the globular woman a chance to slim down, but she had eaten her way into a defiant refusal to do so.
Had the company been more pressed for money, Haley wouldn't have nearly the same leeway with Claire as she had. Yet as long as the company's profits continued, she could do whatever she wanted. And she resolved to a new way to torment her personal victim - beyond not letting her get delivery into the office, beyond the failed weight-loss competition, and beyond breaking up Fat Alley.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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