Chapter 1 - a dark place

You thought you were lucky when she told you that she wanted to make you fatter. Just a little bit, she promised. You agreed. It's what you always wanted.

She cooks, and you eat. Every meal drips with butter and oil. She wants more, and you agree. You quit your job. She tells you that she's prepared the basement with everything you need. It's struggle getting down there, but you rejoice - no more stairs, at least not today. She brings you meal after meal, day after day. Every morning you get up to shower, and every morning it is a little harder to hold yourself up. She watches as you spend ten minutes shuffling yourself out of bed, and back in.

You're sure the days are becoming shorter, but you only have her word to go by - there's no window down here - and you've not yet needed to go upstairs. She keeps bringing you food, and you struggle to raise your arm to your face to eat it. She sighs, and takes over. Your arms stay by your side. You try to get up to shower and feel your legs quivering, sharp pains shooting up your legs and your spine. You sit. She tells you it's okay. You look wistfully towards the stairs and know that you will never again see them from the top. She tells you to get back into bed.

It's only been a few months, she says. You know that's not true but you say nothing. She stopped hand-feeding you and now each meal is liquid, entering you with a tube, bypassing your mouth and pouring directly down your throat. You don't recall the last time you chewed. You wonder what your family thinks. She assures you they don't mind. Every day seems a little shorter and she has started injecting you with something to help you sleep. You suspect the world thinks you're dead. You suspect it might soon be right.

The fatty sludge keeps coming - it stopped tasting of food long ago - and she insists it's always been like that. For once you say no. You've had enough, this has gone too far, she's lied and manipulated you for too long. She says you're just moody. She injects you with something, says it will calm you down. You lose focus. Your vision becomes blurry. You agree. You keep sucking down the sludge. She puts you to sleep a little sooner every day and in the morning you consume. She keeps the drugs topped up. You are not aware of how much time is passing.

There's the occasional moment of horrifying lucidity, when the drugs wear off and you're able to look down and recognise what you've become. You are sweat and flesh, a haulk of fat that spreads over what used to be the bed. You are decorated by dark patches, every fold is highlighted with irritated red skin, and she's put bandages where the skin has split down the sides of your lumpy legs that have long since turned grey. Sometimes you're lucid when she rolls you over onto your side, and you suffocate as your weight crushes your lungs and windpipe, physically unable to complain as she rubs some liquid into the folds on your back that stings like sweet hell before she drops you and you fall back onto the bed, raising a cloud of damp dust that fills your lungs as you try to catch a breath that always eludes you. You try to say something, but you can't - your mouth is rusty, the muscles have atrophied from never needing to chew or speak. But she notices your feeble attempts and, with no change in expression, she presses a syringe into you somewhere that you can't feel it and your mind recedes back to that blurry place.

You have become her plaything, nothing more than a mouth to feed and a body to grow. You try to raise your hands to your face - it's instinctive - and can't, your arms locked to your sides in the sticky embrace of your fat and gravity. You cannot call for help, your vocal chords have long since withered. You cannot remove the tube from your mouth. You desperately want to quit her game but you cannot. She has checkmated you. The only way out is to keep playing until she wins.