The munchies: part 3 (finale)

chapter 5

5.


At the end of May I had to go on placement for my uni degree. Along with a classmate, I was send to a not too far away rural town to assist in a hospital ward. I was away for three weeks, so I told Sarah she could stay in my flat whenever she wanted while I was gone. We skyped every night before bed, sometimes in the morning, updating each other on what was the latest, if anything ever was the latest to begin with.


My placement eventually wrapped up, albeit slowly. Three weeks gone by had landed me in the middle of June. On the last night we skyped each other and she told me she was getting her belly button pierced after her friends had been egging her on about it. I asked if she thought maybe they were egging her on because she had a belly now. She said maybe but who cares. I told her that would be fantastic. I wanted to see it. So I gave her the time I would probably be back, and she said that was exactly when she'd be at the clinic, and I said I'd meet her there. She told me the address.


When the mini-bus dropped me back home, I quickly put my luggage inside, checked everything was in order, ignored the home-sickness, got in my car and drove to meet her at the clinic.


The body shop was in the suburb's central plaza, jammed between a private florist and a JettySurf outlet. It looked terrible from the outside, but inside it was clean and hospitable, even though a little dim of light, and people with tattoos and piercing nodded at me and asked what I was here for. I said to meet my girlfriend. They said she was probably that way, and pointed to the back of the room were were were rooms with curtains over them.


I went to them and checked each one until I saw Sarah on one of the beds, two of her friends sitting on chairs waiting, chatting, and a body artist facing away from us arranging tools.


Sarah was lying back propped up on her elbows, her head turned to chat with her friends. She looked the same. So pretty. Blue eyes smiling, even when her mouth wasn't. Face slender, even though her body wasn't. Black jeans and a baggy sweater.


When I came in through the curtain, she saw me, and she lit into a grin. 'Oh it's you!' I went over to her and kissed her and held her hand. She would not stop grinning. 'Allie, Mary, you know John.'


I turned and smiled at them, and they smiled at me.


We all talked while we waited for the body artist to get things ready, and I stood beside Sarah's head, holding her hand all the time, our fingers stroking each other's gently.


Mary was telling us something about her own placement experience when she stopped suddenly, distracted by the body artist, tattooed and professional, who'd turned around and wheeled a tray to the side of the bed. Sarah looked at us with a nervous grin. 'This is it,' she said.


We watched as the body artist took a seat by the side of the bed level with her stomach. On the tray he opened a tub of brown gel and dipped a white cloth in, and said, 'Can I get you to lift your jumper up?'


I cringed a little in sympathy for her, to be so exposed. I think I remember her friends giggling.


Sarah knew I was watching; she pulled her sweater up and deliberately got it snagged under her belly. I couldn't look away. As she pulled, her stomach bunched a little. Then it gave. The fabric slipped up and my heart skipped a beat as her gut wobbled up and down. She'd grown. Her hips had inflated, soft tire of love handles wrapping around her waist to connect in a ball of blubber punctured by a deep navel. I swallowed and wondered how to hide my growing stiffness. I sat down.


'Woah,' said Mary, seeing Sarah.


Allie was laughing at it, and so was Sarah, somehow. The body artist had been dabbing the cloth with the gel. Now he turned to her, and without missing a beat, began priming her navel, dabbing it with the cloth. Every time he swiped at it, it jiggled.


I sat awkwardly, watching as the body artist drew on her navel in two places with a marker and applied more antiseptic priming gel with cotton buds. They sank into her stomach with every dab.


I never would have noticed without seeing it - her face was the same. She must have put on another five kilos (11 pounds) at least, while I was on placement. All in her thighs and waist.


The body artist took up the clamp in one hand and pinched the upper fold of her navel, and pulled it out taught, set the tip of the needle in the eyehole of the clamp, lined it up, and pushed it through.


Sarah took a sharp breath, stomach sucked in. When the pain never really came, she sighed in relief, stomach coming back out. She grinned, looking over at the body artist. 'So that's it?' she asked.


'Nearly,' he said, turning back to her with the belly button ring she'd selected before having the operation. He put it on the end of a fresh needle and pushed it through the new puncture in her navel. Screwing the lower end on, he stood up and wheeled the tray to the wall. 'That's it,' he said. He closed jars and packed items away.


Sarah grinned and sat forward. Her stomach pressed into a muffin top spilling over the front of her jeans. The ring was a pretty standard steel silver curved barbell, a tiny bead on each end. You could see the top one above her navel, but the lower bead was swallowed up in her fat. She looked down at her piercing and put her fingers to her navel and spread it, angling the fold up so she could get a look at it. When she saw the ring, she smiled and said thank you, and pulled her sweater back down, and paid for it all, and then we left.


Later that evening when I asked if she knew she'd gotten bigger, she said she knew. She didn't know how much. We weighed her. The scale read 73.6 kilos (162.3 pounds) - a gain of 6.65 kilos, nearly 15 pounds.


She stepped off. 'Fuck I'm fat.'


'How the hell did that happen?' I asked, my eyes going up and down her.


She looked at herself in the mirror, hands tracing the length of her waist. 'Comfort eating, I guess. Comfort smoking. And the munchies, lots.' She turned to me, looked me in the eye. 'I got so damned lonely, even skyping.'


'I'm sorry,' I said.


'Don't be.'


'But I am. Three weeks is a long time.'


'Yeah. It was a long time.'


'I'm here now.'


'Do you like the belly button ring?' she asked suddenly, looking down at herself.


'Show me.'


She tugged her sweater up, her fatness exposed, pale, unblemished under the hard white light of the bathroom. I half examined the ring itself, half distracted by her softness. I was growing hard already.


'You drive me mad,' I said.


She snorted. 'So that means you like it?'


I took her hand. 'Love me.'


She breathed, tilted her head a little. 'I do.'


I pulled her in towards me and places my hands on her sides. I pressed in. She was getting deep. 'Let's make love.'


She leaned up on her toes and angled her face up to mine and we kissed deeply. For the next two hours we made love in the bathroom with her against the sink, trying to sit up on it, but giving up from getting out of breath. It'd been three whole weeks.