chapter 5 - breakfast

“Where are my clothes?”, Mia asked.

Charlie just stood there in the door, “Did you moisturize after showering?”

“What did you do with my clothes?”

Charlie ignored her question again, “You are to always moisturize after showering.”

Mia stood by the bed staring at him, “I want a phone call.”

Charlie, “No service, I got to feed you now. Come on, this is part of Mount Isley Corrections, you best comply.”

He held the door open until Mia stepped through the door and into the hallway. Charlie opened the door next to the bedroom and motioned for her walk in. The room had a counter, a blender, and cannisters of some kind of shake stacked in shelves. In the middle of the room were two wooded high back chairs with leather straps at the arms and feet.

Charlie pointed to a chair, “If you will just sit down there, I won’t have to strap you in.”

“Why do I have to sit down? she asked.

“I got to feed you, sit down.”, and he pointed to the chair.

Mia slowly walked to one of the chairs and sat down. Charlie walked to the shelf, “You like chocolate, cheesecake, vanilla, strawberry or what?”

“I don’t care.”

“Cheesecake it is then.”, he picked up a canister and carried it to the counter. He scooped out 3 large scoops of powder from the canister and put them into the blender. “You would be amazed at what you can find on the internet. This stuff was developed by a bunch of fuckin eggheads down at NASA. They wanted something that had a shit ton of calories in it for the astronauts to take on a mission to Mars with them. So, I was looking and the protein shakes that they had us on in high school football had about 200 calories per scoop. The mass gainer they would put boys on the line on had about 450 calories a scoop. Believe it or not, but this shit has 2300 calories a scoop in it.”

Mia thought to herself, holy fuck why did he use 3 scoops then?

Charlie continued, “They had some problems with it, for one it takes a liquid and liquids are heavy, which you know is a problem for launching shit into space you know? But also, when they tried it on people, they thought it tasted good, but folks were hungry again in just a couple of hours after they had a shake and come to find out it was fattening as fuck which is no good for astronauts. They said it give them hellacious cravings for sweets too. Anyway, I bought all they had made for pennies on the dollar.” He filled the blender with milk and turned it on. A minute later he filled a large shake cup with a straw in it and handed it to Mia.

“You are going to drink it one way or another, so you may as well drink it on your own.”

Mia took it from him, “How do I even know this is safe?”

“If I have to make you drink it, you will drink a lot more than that.”

Mia slowly brought the straw to her lips. The taste was good, in fact it was really good and she really was hungry, having not had anything to eat since midday that day before. She quickly chugged down about a third of it, then went to hand it back to Charlie, “I have had enough.”

“You aint had near enough, drink it all. One way or the other, you are drinking it.”

She brought the straw to her lips, drinking more, then another gulp and another. Soon she was down to the to the last couple of inches. “I am really full.”

“You aint full yet, drink it.”

She brought the straw back to her lips and slowly finished the shake.

“Let’s get you back to your room.”, Charlie turned motioned for her to follow him. He pushed her back into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. Mia could hear the shower running.