Chapter 2 & 3

Chapter 2

Every government has always had a crisis with the NHS, with obesity. There are too many fat people putting too much pressure on health services. They’ve tried healthy eating and exercise campaigns in the past, but they never work. People like eating food and people like being fat. But the institutionalised hatred runs deep and with the gradual erosion of the human rights of marginalised groups, a plan was hatched, and a facility was built.

They started by encouraging everyone to attend a health check at their GP, everyone should have a ‘body MOT’ they said. Those with an obese BMI who weren’t registered with official sporting bodies were given the ultimatum, ‘loose sufficient weight by the next session or further action would be taken’. The weight loss goals were unachievable, bills in parliament were passed and new ‘social care’ policies and organisations were put in place. Other news stories distracted the public from what was really happening, nobody cared about their fat friends and neighbours, but the societal hatred grew, and the wheels of the capitalist machine started to turn.

Abby hadn’t been able to lose the weight, she didn’t think it was a big deal and anyway, all the gyms were oversubscribed, and the GP had only given her a couple of weeks. It was completely unattainable, and she thought what they were saying on the news was just scaremongering. She didn’t believe that BMI meant anything, even when she’d been her thinnest and at the peak of her dieting, she’d still been classed as ‘overweight’, now she was ‘obese’, but she couldn’t be that fat, she still had a flat stomach.

Chapter 3

They came in the night. The two men, dressed all in black hammered on her door, briefly checked her identity against a list and then asked her to go with them. Abby was terrified and dressed only in her night dress. Before she could protest the two men each grabbed her each by an arm and dragged her to the lorry, they were strong, and her arms hurt. In the back of the lorry were rows of what looked like metal bunkbeds filling the lorry, on these beds laid naked women. Abby recognised some from her local area, some were struggling, others crying. Abby was taken to one of the beds, stripped and strapped to a bed. The lorry door was closed, and the women were plunged into darkness. More stops were made to pick up more women and each time the door opened Abby tried to look around to see what was happening, by the last stop only the new additions were still crying out, everyone else was quiet.

The lorry drove for a long time, no-one knew what was happening. With women stacked up on the bunkbeds and everyone in darkness it was difficult to talk, and everyone was tired. Strapped naked to the bed and unable to move, Abby was hyper aware of every bump in the road. Unable to get comfortable or sleep all she could do was lie awake and notice every jiggle and wobble of her hips and breasts as the lorry moved along. As Abby’s eye’s adjusted to the gloom and dawn broke, light began to seep through gaps in the lorry door. When she was able to make out her bunkmates she remembered where she’d seen some of them before, the doctor’s surgery! And then the penny dropped, the thing all the women had in common was that they were all fat. As the lorry turned to drive up a bumpy track the thin streams of light caught the wobbling bellies, breasts and thighs of those around her, a sea of gentle jiggles.