Buster

Chapter 1

Another night, another late-night snack.

It's like I can't help myself. After a long day at the office, all I want to do when I get home is plop myself down on the couch and binge watch some television while I binge on takeout.

My name is Michael, I'm thirty-two, and I work for a software development company. I spend lots of time sitting on my big butt in front of a computer, and that sedentary lifestyle along with my apparently insatiable appetite has led to me becoming quite fat over the last few years.

I wasn't always this much of a glutton. To think, at one time I actually had limits. I would only order takeout one or two nights a week, but after a while I was ordering three times, then four times-and eventually, it came down to ordering the greasiest and most fattening takeout food every night of the week.

After a while, even that wasn't enough. Now I order two or three takeout meals at once, and pack it all away like it's my job. I stuff myself until my belly is so big and bloated that I feel like I'm just going to float away.

Of course, this is after spending the entire day sitting at my desk, munching on donuts and fast food and sugary drinks.

Every morning on my way to work, I would stop off at the same local donut shop. I don't know what exactly it was that they put in their donuts that made them so irresistible-aside from lots of sugar and lard-but I just couldn't get enough of them in my belly.

I was completely hooked.

I would always get two dozen donuts: the first dozen was just for me to eat in the car on my way to work, and the second to munch on at my desk at work. I was greedy as hell, but I didn't feel the least bit guilty about it. I have always liked being kind of greedy, of seeing how much food I could pack away inside of me and carry around with me wherever I went.

There was something oddly comforting about it, about being so full, so big, so soft and round.

There were days, though, as I would be leaving the coffee shop alone with my two big donut boxes in hand, balancing my large coffee loaded up with lots of sugar and cream, I couldn't help but sigh a bit-wishing that, maybe one day, I might find someone special that I could share all of my yummy treats with, someone who could appreciate this gluttonous lifestyle as much as I did.

But "sharing" has never been one of my strong suits. I guess you could say that I am a junk food junkie.

The morning donut runs notwithstanding, it was the late-night snacks that ultimately caused me to really pack on the extra pounds.

I always seem to wake up around the same time every night, and no matter how much food I've stuffed myself with over the course of the day, my stomach is growling and begging me to stuff myself even more.

Getting out of bed, I stumble my way into the kitchen. It always amazes me how much my belly has grown, how much it sticks way out in front of me now, and the way that it bounces up and down as I waddle around the house.

I can't even close my robe anymore; my belly is just way too big and round. So I just leave it hanging open, my huge gut hanging out over my waistline and pushing out a good eighteen inches or so, always entering the kitchen before the rest of me does.

Then the fridge raid begins. I rifle through the shelves and grab indiscriminately for anything I can get my hands on. I make myself big crazy sandwiches, grab a couple of the cold rotisserie chickens I keep in there for "emergencies." Maybe I'll make myself a frozen pizza, grab a pint of ice cream, and polish off any of the takeout food that I hadn't already managed to put away earlier in the evening.

Parking my ass back down on the sofa, I'll put on the tube again, and I'll gorge myself like a pig until I can't keep my eyes open anymore.

Then I wake up the next day and I do the whole thing all over again.

Now, I'd always been told that it's a bad thing to eat too much right before bed, that it can not only put more weight around your waistline, but that it could also potentially lead to nightmares. Of course, I never really heeded any of this advice. I've always figured that it's my right to eat whatever I want, whenever I want.

Why should I settle for anything less?