chapter 13

After a year of this regime, I was over twenty stones. Wendy remained svelte as ever. Meanwhile, Dixon had grown bigger, greedier and lazier.
I had not given him any more encouragement. He had done most of this himself.
In the morning, he would get up late and hungover to head straight for the kitchen before even getting dressed. He would throw any leftovers or random food into a pan with a large knob of butter and fry it. He'd end up with a dinner plate heaped high with greasy food that he would tuck into hungrily. Stacks of pancakes with bacon, strawberries and ice cream covered in lashings of butter and syrup. He could consume a dozen Danish pastries in one sitting and still have room for a giant chocolate shake and a fry up.
He'd get dressed after consuming it all, moaning and rubbing his expanded stomach. Half an hour later, he would be back downstairs. He'd settle himself down in front if the television and play some video games. He would tuck into a large bowl of savoury snacks next to him and another bowl of sweet things. He would tuck in hardly knowing he was consuming them.
A giant two course lunch would follow, supplemented with plenty of butter and cream. Then more snacks before he would head out for the evening. Maybe he would eat at one of the many restaurants. Maybe he would eat at the pub, it I was sure he did not go without for long.
On a weekday, he would come home about eleven or half past, drunk, but still standing. He would tuck into whatever snacks he could find in the fridge and then maybe play a few video games before heading off to bed.
At the weekend, he'd come home, hardly able to stand, sometimes with a barefoot girl, carrying her shoes who was just an enebriated as he was.
Wendy assured me he was greedily getting through over 10,000 calories a day! He did it all himself, sometimes ordering food deliveries via his mobile tele device, or on his electronic lap computer thingy.
I, myself had no idea how the computer thingy worked. How could typing a few buttons on a machine not attached to anything send messages to a restaurant and tell them to deliver food that was already cooked and still hot?
I did not understand how it could possibly work. It hurt my head just trying to think about it. It scared me.
Wendy told me that there were computers everywhere. They gave out money at the bank. They controlled the central heating, there was one in the televisual unit and the radio. There was one in dixon's video games console, his 'laptop' and his telephone. Wendy had a telephone quite similar.
But then she started to really scare me when she tried to explain how they could all communicate with each other through 't'internet' as she called it. If they were communicating through invisible airwaves or whatever, what would it do to my brain? What unseen damage was occurring within our bodies?
Wendy said there were cameras everywhere too. They were in the shops making sure you did not steal anything you shouldn't. They were in the streets to make sure you did not get up to anything naughty. They were in the telephones and in the computers. They were at petrol stations, shopping malls, motorways, banks and supermarkets. As soon as I stepped out of my front door, someone somewhere would be watching me. They could keep track of my movements. They could see exactly where I went and what I got up to. Nowhere in town was free from them. She assured me they were there for my own protection and my own safety. If I did nothing wrong I had nothing to worry about.
But I did worry. What if I decided to go for a stroll one evening and felt hungry. What if I saw some plump flesh wobble it's way up the steps and along the crescent? I could not afford to be arrested and sent to jail. I could afford to spend five or six years in jail, but what if I went too far? What if I murdered someone. I might be able to keep my secret hidden in court, but after ten years in prison, questions would be asked regarding my unaging visage. They would start to ponder about my nocturnal habits. They were soon wonder why I never appeared to eat solid food, but I would have several plump friends coming to my cell on a regular basis so that I could feast on their flesh.
If I were to be discovered, what would happen to me then? Would I be declared a freak and be paraded around the streets for everyone to gawp and laugh at or would I be sent to the scientists to be tested and experimented upon? Neither scenario was a welcome one.
I determined that I could afford to linger no longer than twenty years in my beloved town, before the cameras and curiosity would be too much for certain people to bear.
I would have to find somewhere else to live. Out in the country, where there were no cameras and preferably no electricity either. I worried about what unseen damage it could all be causing. I yearned for a simple life. The life I had before my ailment. A life with no central heating or hot running water. There was nothing wrong with pissing in a bucket at night, then emptying it outside in the morning. I wanted to ride nothing faster than a horse. I would lead a life of total isolation, if I could... I knew I could not. I had to find sustenance from somewhere. Animal fat was simply not enough to satisfy me. It had to be human. I could not even obtain a reliable source of putrified flesh. In these so called modern times, burials were a rarity. The scarcity and expense of a burial plot had increased the popularity of cremations. A bowl of dry ash was of no use to me. The thought of having to return to eating half putrified, rotting flesh churned my stomach. I hated the smell, the taste. Being out in public after eating it I was aware that it kept repeating on me and every belch, every hiccup, brought the stench back into my mouth. Could other people smell it too? Did it leach out of my pores and onto my skin? Did I have the smell of death upon me?