Chapter 9: Conversation

From diary of Raddy Sashman, Film Director, dated 08/09/2011.

“I knew Beach only a short time, but the longer I knew her, the more convinced that we could be happy together I became. I am also convinced that she is the first truly insatiable person I have ever met. She only stopped eating when she had exhausted all the available food in her vicinity; she only stopped drinking in the applause from her fans when she realised it would be rude to stand there taking it in indefinitely; she only stopped expending the fortune the film had made her on jewels, exorbitantly priced clothes and fine, rare alcohols when her appetite took over and demanded she spend it on food instead. For some reason that I cannot bring myself to dislike this quality in her, and in her presence, I found myself encouraging it...”



***

Jaff was in bed, unable to sleep and feeling decidedly uneasy. For that matter, he was also feeling a little vexed. From the weeks since Sashman had met Beach, he had felt less and less involved in the work of making the film. It was not that he was really doing any less than usual- editing the script, helping with casting, advising on special effects- these were the roles he had always fulfilled, and he had come back to them for ‘The Woman Who Ate the World’. The problem was that a lot less communication seemed to have taken place between himself and Sashman than was usual on this film, to the extent that he had become certain in his own mind that the film itself was not the point: it was just a vehicle for Beach’s increasingly huge appetite. The scenes in which she indulged had been, he felt, something in which he was not invited to take part. They were between Beach and Sashman, and it made him deeply uncomfortable. Here he was, staying in the same hotel as the two of them, and he hadn’t had a conversation lasting more than five minutes with either of them all the previous day...

“Something wrong, Jaff?”

Jaff let out a startled cry and looked up to see the object of his concerns filling the room. Her belly stretched from one side of the room to the other and flowed out ahead of, filling up the vast majority of the available space. Her thighs, slightly wider than her belly (seemingly just to give it something to rest on) had created a matrix of tiny cracks in the walls as she attempted to fit herself into the room. Below her face, her breast ballooned outward, huge, sensual- a visual exclamation mark for the rest of her enormous body.

“Oh... hey Beach,” Jaff said doubtfully. “I don’t mean to sound rude but... look, what are you doing in my room this late at night?”

Beach gave him her usual smile. In the moonlight streaming through the window, its usual warmth seemed to be replaced by something a little... creepy.

“I was wondering if you had anything to eat,” she said. “I’ve used up everything room service have to offer and none of the takeout places in the area answer their phones after ten PM.”

“Not much, I’m afraid to say, but I could put a pizza in the oven...” Jaff said before he could stop himself. The offer had just seemed like the appropriate thing to do when confronted with the insatiability of Beach.

“So, tell me what’s on your mind,” Beach offered, as he put the pizza in the oven.

“Look, I’m probably just being stupid, and you won’t thank me for telling you...” he began, but Beach interrupted.

“If it’s something to do with me Jaff, I want to know.”

“Look, it’s just... you and Sashman seemed to have gotten together really, alarmingly quickly- then there’s your appetite... I mean, being able to gain hundreds of pounds a day is a little... disturbing...”

“You don’t have to be so hesitant,” Beach said, still smiling that smile. “I don’t know how I can do it, either. All my personal memories start with waking up in the ocean off a beach with no idea who I was. But I don’t much care, if I’m honest. I just can’t get enough.”

“But where does it stop? You have to stop expanding at some point!”

“I don’t know,” admitted Egress, then gave that laugh of hers. It normally sounded bright and carefree- in the moonlight, it seemed eerie. “Maybe my weight’ll plateau when I’m actually the size of a house, not just a hotel room. Maybe I’ll just keep packin’ on the pounds until I cover a city or several. Maybe I will become the woman who ate the world... then the solar system, then the galaxy, then every galaxy.” She smiled again. “Like I said, though, I just don’t know! For what its worth, I don’t think I really want to eat the entire planet. It probably tastes awful!”

“ Right... Pizzas ready,” Jaff sighed, feeling even more uneasy than when the whole situation had started. Beach downed it in a single bite.

“Nope!” she slapped her stomach. “Didn’t even make a dent!”

“You could see if there are any late night supermarkets open, I suppose...”

“Thanks, hon- you’re full of good ideas!” Beach grinned and squashed out the door to the little room, one round, jiggling cascade of flesh after another until she was through. Jaff called after her.

“Please tell me you were joking about really eating the planet!?”

“Mostly,” replied Beach, which was small comfort.

***

At precisely 1:30am the following morning- am hour so early it was still last night, a team of trained soldiers, police officers and special agents booted in the door to Sashman’s apartment and demanded to know where Beach was. At 1:34am, a comprehensive search of the hotel was concluded and showed no trace of any woman with the power to devour everything on the surface of the planet. At 2:20am, after the team had had time to make themselves appear to be MI5 and general obfuscate the issue of their identity, the retreated to the streets. At 2:25am they rounded a corner to where their transport was supposed to be surreptitiously parked and found their way blocked.

“Looking for me?” asked Beach. The team sent to capture her, marvelled in astonishment at her.

“I know,” she said. “What a difference a few supermarkets worth of food can make!” She ran a hand over her girth. She filled the street, pressing into the buildings on either side equally, as her expanded midriff continued to jiggle with the lighthearted laugh she gave looking down at her would-be captors. For there was another change in her: she had not merely gotten fatter- though there was no denying that she had done that- she had become taller, her body scaling it proportions up to cope with the flood of adipose tissue her eating had added to it. Even as a giantess, her gut dominated her body, hanging down almost to the ground, obscuring all but the thickest, widest parts of her legs. Her breasts looked even more well-padded than if they’d just been scaled up to, with plenty of the extra-weight making them compete with her belly for the eye’s attention.

“I think I may have overdone it tonight,” she laughed, hauling herself onto a deserted shop on one side of the street and causing several million pounds worth of property damage. “Then again, a woman’s got to eat,” she smiled, and then stepped over the crew who had been sent for her, leaving them totally clueless as to where to go from there. One of them, however, did have enough wit to ask her:

“Where are you going?!”

“To get something else to eat- I’m ravenous,” was the inevitable reply from Beach.