chapter 4

Sunday rolled around, marking the end of inaugural week. A celebration was held every Sunday of Tjockningfest, each event based loosely on the types of foods. The event calendar pinned to the nation’s fridges, walls and doors read something like;


Week 1: Entree Fest

Week 2: Appetizer Fest

Week 3: Bakery Fest

Week 4: Mains Fest

Week 5: Savoury Fest

Week 6: Sweets Fest

Week 7: Final Fest


These happened across multiple venues; theatres, ballrooms, universities, park lawns– just about any public space big enough to cater for crowds of hungry people. Corporation executives felt their groins warming up over the prospect, just secretly, even to themselves. They sent legions of oversized trucks loaded with the most binge-worthy products you could imagine, selling them at discounts low enough to bring wallets out of pockets, but high enough to generate inequality-boosting amounts of profit. Someone was always sponsoring the event, making massive dollars off the hunched backs of underpaid workers and the expanding bellies of Södrahem’s population.

Not wanting to look like such a loser, Linda agreed to go along with Jaimie and the others to a local Entree Fest. Tonight’s event was more or less on the roam. Since so many venues were going at once, different crowds found themselves bleeding into one another. Wandering around a park venue east of the city center and browsing all the local cuisine, it didn’t take long before Linda and Jaimie became disoriented in the general throng. By the time night fell, they ended up in some dock-side bar with a view over the ocean, the place crammed with loud music, indigo lights, alcohol and calorie-rich “entree” foods, which were more like junk food disguised as entree dishes wrapped in plastic– some of which had shamefully found its way into the sea, later to clog the propeller of some poor old man’s yacht next morning.

Mousy as Jaimie’s hair was, soft and inoffensive, there was no stopping her opportunism for reckless living. Already woozy on food, the moment she strolled in, she was buying up beers and seeing each pint through to the end. Linda could only watch as more drinks were brought to their table, each time feeling more disconnected from herself. She left like she’d woken up all of a sudden, but could not rise from her dream, leaving her mired in a world between worlds

As the night drew deeper beyond midnight, a general humidity gathered along the bayside and instilled a note of serenity. The mobs began to calm, yelled a little softer, slowed their drinking, were more content simply to chat and laugh with each other while they watched the void-black sea twinkle with city light. High in sky fireworks bloomed in the shape of chicken legs, dim sims, quiches, chocolate treats and other confectionery. Linda’s upturned eyes took on a glossy, reflective shine, painting upon the orbs of her bronze eyes what bloomed above her. All this was giving her heavy vacation vibes. You know that feeling you get when you’re far away from home, someplace else– who cares where –except for the one, undeniable fact that you’ve left all the shackles of your consequences behind you. Your actions don’t matter here. You’re just a pair of eyes on legs, going here and there, absorbing experiences like some infinite sponge. Before Linda knew it, she was at the bar, ordering tall beer and a platter of thick black brownies just because she felt so free, her tongue salivating, and an emptiness ballooning in her stomach as if to make space for the treasures it sought.

Returning to their outdoor spot, a table with four stools by the rails looking over the bay, she found a newcomer sitting in a spare chair. She was chatting and laughing with Jaimie, who looked up as Linda took her seat. They saw the beers and brownies. ‘Ho- ho,’ came Jaimie, ‘What you got!’ Then, turning to the newcomer, said, ‘I want you to meet Valeria, my cousin,’ gesturing to a Spanish girl about their age with a reserved air about her, shadowy eyes and even darker hair, half on the plumper side. Linda tried being less overt about looking Valeria up and down, but why as it so hard?– the girl hid inside a green parka and dark leggings. Well fitting, but unable to make her somewhat thick frame appear slender, not by any measure. Judging by the width of her torso, and the set of her legs, her thighs must have been touching, although she was nowhere near so big as to be the size of Sofia, Linda’s roommate. Valeria was only what you’d call moderately porky. Thick boned.

‘She’s half cousin, but still cousin,’ a tipsy Jaimie went on, swaying with pride. ‘She did last year’s Tjockningfest. Guess what, put forty pounds on from it.’

Valeria seemed to find this funny, though she tried to cover her smile and shut her mouth, but only snorted.

‘Well?’ Jaimie provoked. ‘You did, didn’t you?’

With smiling eyes, Valeria gave an aloof sort of shrug. ‘Eh… e-e-eh… *maybe*?’

A memory of faint worry stabbed Linda through the chest. But it didn’t live for long– she killed the worry, because she wasn’t going to let herself become like Valeria. Not that she was making judgements or anything…

The hour turned along on its multi-directional wheels and soon enough, amidst chatting, laughter and sh1t-talking, platters and platters of food were nibbled at. They took turns to bring the food to the table. Each time Linda stood up for hers, she could feel the hug of gravity that little bit more until, returning with a batch of spiced potato fritters, she leaned over the table only to feel the edge barge into the front of her stomach.

‘Last year I watched dad put on, like, twenty,’ Valeria was saying to Jaimie.

Before Linda sat down she hoisted her jeans back up her waist. It came to bite her– she scooched up onto her stool, only to find her belt going for a strangle-hold around her gut. ‘Agh.’

Noticing the way Linda sat back and tugged her belt so suddenly, Valeria and Jaimie stopped to look. Feeling a prickly warmth come into her cheeks, Linda tried to suck in, but she flushed and touched her mouth– a sudden bubble of nausea was threatening to bubble up her throat. We understand that Linda had never been this full. She was getting so little air into her lungs she was beginning to wonder if this is what asthma felt like.

Which was the moment Valeria, broke out into a bit of laughter, having experience with Tjockningfest already. Jaimie caught on too, joining with a chuckle of her own. ‘What were you trying to do that for?’ nodding at Linda’s bloated midsection. ‘Look around. Everybody’s got what you’ve got.’

‘Yeah, look at me,’ added Valeria. Linda watched with an unsure face and an unsettled gut feeling as Jaimie’s cousin leaned back in her stool and rubbed her own tummy– a mound obvious even under all the padding of clothes. Jaimie added her own two cents, or pounds, depending if she’d gained anything already, leaning back with a smirk to massage her own bloated belly. Then, admiring its size, she said, ‘I wonder what the damage is,’ before lifting her shirt to show a small pair of love handles Linda never knew her friend possessed. The sight stunned her. She felt invasive, and invaded at the same time. She didn’t ask to see this. She hated the way her friend’s raw, naked little spills of flesh looked. She wanted to eliminate then, bite them off and discard them. She hated the way she wanted to put her mouth around them in the first place– the way they’d squeeze and slop under her lips and her finger tips. Seeing it made Jaimie and Valeria laugh. The only reason Linda did as well was to camouflage her residual shock, but she did it too late. The recoil had lasted a moment too long.

Then Valeria got the idea to copy Jaimie. Unzipping her parka, they saw a purple sweater full as a billowing sail. Underneath was a white tank top. She lifted this last piece. So this is was what a bloated stomach looked like after already becoming soft. Valeria displayed to them an olive-skinned, chub-coated belly with a gaping navel like an eye, and a fraction of hip-chub that there was likely more of peeking out between the sides of her gut and the limits of her waistband. Linda writhed. She wanted to burn it. There was cold fire, fear or something else, in the pit of her pelvis. Suddenly Linda had to endure a brief, horrible vision of dough-textured fat oozing forth from the center of her body, each lump competing for space until they had to rub against each other in uncontrollable rolls of flesh.