chapter 3

It was approaching midnight on Halloween. Mandy found herself wandering around on the quadrangle in front of Haynesworth Hall. She had no idea how she had gotten there or why. Her mind was a jumbled mess. It was though fog had seeped into her brain, making everything fuzzy and hazy. She vaguely recalled that she had been in the library in Haynesworth Hall but for the life of her couldn't figure out why. Maybe it was to get a book. But then where was the book? All she knew for sure was that she was hungry.

She followed the sound of loud music playing and found the remnants of a Halloween party. There was plenty of food left over so Mandy started to "nibble", if you call eating three hot dogs, six donuts, and drinking nearly a quart of beer nibbling. Satisfied at last, she wandered off back to her dorm where she got into bed and fell into a profoundly deep sleep.

She awoke the next day feeling "different". Somehow she wasn't quite the same girl she had been. For one thing, she found an appetite. It wasn't that she didn't LIKE food, it's just that she saw food as fuel, something to keep her body going. But now the sight and smell of some delicious dish got her to salivating in anticipation, and she ATE! She wasn't a glutton or anything like it, but she didn't pick at food the way she used to do.

Apart from this fixation on food, Mandy developed a strong aversion to physical exertion. Before that strange night she was always active. She walked everywhere and participated in sports. She had been on the women's soccer team and was always up for a game of volleyball. Now? Now exercise made her hot, and when she got hot she would sweat. Not just ordinary sweat, but the "pouring off you in buckets" kind of sweat. And for some reason she came to HATE being sweaty. She found herself reading more than ever before. She loved curling up in a big overstuffed chair reading some romance novel, unconsciously eating something, usually something sweet and gooey.

Needless to say, all these changes had a telling effect on her once birdlike physique. By Thanksgiving she weighed 98 pounds. By Christmas she was up to 105. Her mother assured her she wasn't getting fat, just filling out.
Well that might have been her mother's story at Christmas, but when Mandy came home for summer vacation weighing 136 pounds, even her mother had to concede that perhaps her daughter was filling out a bit too much.

Mandy usually took off a lot of weight during the summer. She'd hike and swim and play softball. Some days she was just too busy to eat. But not this summer. This summer she spent most of her time at the public library. For one thing, it was air conditioned. And what better place was there to read but in a library? Every morning right at nine o'clock, there'd be Mandy, books slung under one arm and a picnic basket slung under the other. She'd read all day until the library closed, unconsciously gobbling up the contents of her basket. Then she'd go home and have a big supper, after which she go up to her room and read some more. By 9 P.M. she'd be in bed and asleep, feeling nice and full from the huge supper she had consumed.

By September the once stick like Mandy now weighed 157 pounds. She had eaten her way into two new wardrobes. The strange thing was that she didn't seem to notice how fat she was getting, which was hard to understand. After all, last year at this time Mandy barely filled out a size 30 A brassiere. Now she had a hard time fitting her oversized breasts into her mother's 40 D bra. But Mandy seemed oblivious to the changes that all that extra fat was having on her.

For some reason, being at school only seemed to increase her appetite. She took full advantage of her dining hall privileges, eating three decidedly large meals each and every day. But even that didn't seem to be enough. She was always hungry and always snacking. Rare was the time that you saw Mandy Michaels without SOME kind of food in her hands.

It was late October. Mandy was reduced to borrowing clothes from her decidedly overweight roommate because she could no longer squeeze her big fat butt into her size 14 pants anymore. She had gained another 27 pounds, checking in at a way beyond chubby one hundred and eighty four pounds.

And then a strange thing happened. She woke up on the morning of the 30th of October 1991 and she realized that she had something she HAD to do that evening. Suddenly it was all clear in her mind again. She had to go back to the library at Haynesworth Hall that very night. She had to crawl into that passageway and inch her way back to that strange room. She HAD to meet Auntie Melba once again.

Alas she was still oblivious as to just how fat she had gotten in just one year. In her mind, she had the vague idea that somehow she had put on "a few pounds here and there". She had no idea that she was now TWICE the girl she used to be. She was absolutely convinced that she could easily get into that tiny tunnel and once again make her way back to see Auntie Melba.

And thus it was that shortly before midnight on the 30th of October, on the cusp of Halloween that Mandy Michaels once again made her way back to the library of Haynesworth Hall, completely unaware of the shock that would befall her that very night!