chapter 2

The next day, Evelyn awoke in her bed, feeling more or less normal. She picked up her phone and looked to see if there had been any ring notifications since she went to be last night – none popped up.

“Huh.” She exhaled. “I guess this might take a while to happen again.” she thought. She still felt a great deal of pain from the hunger, but continued to suffer and stick to her guns. There was no way she would ever be what she dreaded most – a porker in the eyes of her mother.

Over the next few days and weeks Evelyn continued to stick to her orderly routines, and didn't have any notifications from her ring doorbell. She continued to wake up as expected in her bedroom, but one feeling she hadn't been able to shake was the hunger. It was intensifying dramatically. What was worse, was Evelyn was feeling bloated each morning and was sure she was getting a little bit doughy. She noticed it one day when she sat up in bed, and her stomach made an almost imperceptible pooch under her belly button. She poked at it a bit and it gave way. It was soft and squishy. She wasn't soft and squishy. What the hell was this? Her clothes had seemed to fit, she figured maybe it was some odd bloating before her period. After a few more weeks went by she started to become concerned. The roll was increasing in size, and she noticed that other areas of her body were growing ever so slightly. Her bra was tightening and the straps were very slightly digging into her torso. Her underwear seemed to fit just fine, but then again they had stretchy elastic bands, so that wasn't a good indicator. Her shirts, dresses, skirts all seemed to fit alright. Then she tried on a pair of jeans. They snagged on her hips, clung to her thighs, and were difficult to button. They'd been form fitting before, but now they were downright tight, and she was spilling out of them slightly.

Evelyn lacked an explanation. She hadn't had any further binge eating episodes – she would have caught them on camera. She had stayed steadfast in her dedication to eating right and exercising – it had taken all of the willpower she was capable of exerting, but she had done it. So why did she feel fatter? She pulled out her bathroom scale. The last time she had weighed herself she was a very slender 120 lbs at 6 feet. She turned on the digital scale and stepped on, thinking light and skinny thoughts. She looked down at the reading: 139 pounds.

“AHHHHH!” she shrieked aloud looking at the number. She rushed out of the bathroom and paced back and forth down the hall.

“Ohh no, oh no no no no no....no way, this is not possible. I eat right! I exercise! This isn't possible!

She could just cry. This wasn't fair. She had done everything right. This was like a waking nightmare, how could she be getting chubby? For maybe 30 minutes she plopped down on the couch and stared off into space. She had no answer, but she felt depressed for the first time in ages.

“Jesus, what will my mother think? What will Katie think?” she wondered – remembering the sort of rivalry she had always been pushed into with her sister who was only a year and a half younger than her. “They'll eat me alive for this...” she thought to herself, unsure of how to fix it.

To try and clear her mind, she decided to go to the gym for a LOT longer that evening. It helped distract her from her hunger and killed a lot of time that she didn't know what to do with. When she got home, she again resisted the urge to raid the fridge, took a quick shower – exploring all of the new curves she was beginning to acquire with a frown, and went off to bed around her normal time, about 10:30.

The next morning she awoke to a crinkling sound. As she shifted herself, the crinkling got worse. The same groggy stupor engulfed her. The same brain fog. She looked around. Oh god. It had finally happened again. She was on the couch, and she seemed to be laying on the parchment paper that had once held a large philly cheesesteak. The damage was more profound than the first two times combined. Beside the cheesesteak wrapper was a second one stained with grease. On the coffee table, one empty pizza box and another large pie that was half eaten. To her right, an empty and clumsily discarded 2 liter bottle of pepsi, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper with about a third remaining. There was a styrofoam container which had about 20 bones from chicken wings completely picked clean, and two tubs which looked like they had once been full of blue cheese and ranch. The celery sticks were untouched of course. Sitting on the floor between the couch and the coffee table were two half melted tubs of ice cream – cookie dough and mint chocolate chip. Behind her on the kitchen counter were several boxes and packages of cookies, chips, and candy. One package of double-stuf oreos had been opened, and it looked from her vantage point like one full sleeve of cookies was missing.

As she stirred, he phone buzzed and chimed, catching her motion. She remembered her ring plan. Fumbling for her phone and wiping the grease off of her fingers so she could unlock it, she only saw the one notification. This was not what she expected. If she had been sleepwalking, did she remove the notifications? She looked in the device history. There were several recordings saved from last night. At last, she'd have an answer. She poked her finger at the play symbol on the oldest timestamped video. The playback began. She stared with deep intensity at every grainy pixel captured. Suddenly her bedroom door swung open. She emerged from her room with a grin on her face slapping her belly. She grabbed her phone out of her pocket as it chimed, and swiped away at the notifications. Then the oddest part – she walked towards the door, grabbing her purse and keys, looked straight up at the ring camera, stuck out her tongue and proceeded to flip herself off. The she opened the door and left. The time was 10:45.

“Wait...10:45?” she said to herself. “That was 15 fucking minutes after I went to sleep!” she exclaimed. Now granted Evelyn wasn't an expert at sleep disorders, but she was quite certain that you needed to have been asleep long enough to enter a certain cycle where those things occur, and 15 minutes couldn't have possibly been enough time. Besides, as she watched herself walk out of her room and snag the keys she couldn't help but think that nothing looked in the slightest bit sleepy about her. In fact, she appeared wide awake and as evidenced by her behavior, not only did she seem aware of the camera, but she silenced the notification and then irreverently flipped the camera off. That wasn't something Evelyn would do even if she was drunk. She didn't really have a wild or silly streak to her, and she was mortified at the idea of flipping someone off or cursing somebody out. It was like she wasn't even watching herself.

She wasn't sure what to make of it all. It was confirmed to her that she was the one solely responsible, but it definitely didn't seem like sleepwalking. She was at a complete loss. Then something else dawned on her. She had woken up on the couch, in spite of her late-night self being totally aware of the ring doorbell. Surely, she would have also know that she was being captured, and having silenced the notifications, she would have known that there would be further notifications left by her eating antics. Evelyn moved on to the next couple of videos. She burst in the door with her arms full of the bags of food which were on the counter that contained her grocery binge. She removed the two liter bottles of soda and tossed them in the freezer – presumably to chill them quickly. Alongside those she tossed the two cartons of ice cream she had found half melted. She plopped the rest down on the counter, opening the package of oreos. Taking out a full sleeve of cookies and wandering over to fill a glass with milk, she popped them three at a time into her mouth, gulping some milk to soak them up, chewing quickly and swallowing hard. She was ravenous, she was devouring. It caught her off guard. She didn't even know she was capable of such gluttony, but that was nothing compared to what she was about to witness.

After she was done with the cookies, she quickly rinsed out the glass, dried it out, and replaced it in the cabinet. That was odd – usually she'd just pop the glass in the dishwasher. It looked like she was trying to hide the evidence of having even used a glass. Then back out the door she went – this time smacking her modestly protruding gut twice with her left hand, smiling and flipping off the camera again. Then another entry about 45 minutes later. This time the door swung wide. Two pizzas with a bag containing two giant rolled up subs and a box of chicken wings. Shutting the door and replacing the chain lock, she shuffled over to the couch with the sodas and ice cream and sat down to stuff her face. The next video was a continuation of the motion, she watched herself intently as she quickly and greedily powered her way through the first pizza, then the cheesesteak, then the chicken wings, then a couple more slices of pizza. She stopped and let out a primal sort of groan, clutching her taut over-stuffed belly with both hands. She breathed heavily. A few swigs of her soda, a full liter down, she belched loudly and continued digging into her second cheesesteak. She was slowing down considerably. Another video continued the feast. She managed some slices inter-spliced with cheesesteak bites. Her moaning became louder and more regular. Between some bites she slumped back into the couch, rubbing her belly. She leaned forward, popping open the ice cream and digging into each, swigging Dr. Pepper inbetween.

Evelyn was wearing an expression of pure horror. She could barely believe this was her she was watching. Then, moaning louder, she watched herself lean back into the couch, rub her belly with one hand, and begin rubbing her clit with the other hand. She watched in shock peppered with a twinge of confusing arousal as, gasping for air with her distended belly, she moaned in pain and ecstasy bringing herself to climax. She seemed to attempt to gather the strength to get up from the couch, but after a couple of feeble attempts, she finally just collapsed to the side into a food coma. The last video ended at 3:40 AM. She had watched herself stuff her face in front of the TV over the span of roughly 3 and half hours. She went back to the video history page on her phone. Only those videos remained. She had an idea however, and got up, stumbling to her laptop and logging in to the desktop version of ring. There she almost let out a yelp. While her phone had not shown her notifications, and she didn't have videos saved locally, there were weeks of videos in the cloud storage, a few videos for each night the camera had been installed.

She clicked through a few of them. They followed a pattern. She came out of her room, flipped off the camera, cleared the notifications, and left the apartment. Each night she brought home food. Sometimes groceries, mostly carryout. As she watched the videos she noticed herself covering her tracks. Every night she managed to maintain consciousness after stuffing herself silly. Every night she cleaned up the messes, took trash out of the apartment to the dumpsters, she cleverly hid a lot of the groceries in plain sight. It dawned on her all at once. There was a voracious night time version of her that was intentionally stuffing herself like a pig and trying to erase all evidence. That told her one major thing: the other version of herself was aware of her. She went back and watched the first video from the night she had installed the ring camera. She saw herself walking out of her room, the phone notification went off, and she froze in place at the unfamiliar sound. Reaching for her phone, she looked at the notification and then looked up for a moment, trying to understand what was going on. Then she looked around the room until she locked eyes with the light above the door that was staring at her.

“Hahaha, you little ***!” she heard herself exclaim, strutting slowly towards the camera.

She watched herself look up the videos from earlier that day. Watched as she returned from the gym and avoided indulging in anything. Watched as she went off to bed, and then watched the video of herself emerging. Then she flipped off the camera and hustled out the door.

It was then that Evelyn glanced back at the pizza boxes on the coffee table. Both of them had the same name on them: Tracy.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck....” she whispered under her breath.