Chapter 1 - the shack reuploaded

This story's 'chapters' are actually pages. Real chapter transitions will be marked by capitalized 'CHAPTER XYZ' banners, so forth.

Enjoy :)


CHAPTER ONE

Here's the thing. If Mia had one desire, it was to grow fat. She was unhealthily fixated on the idea of her clothes tightening around her body as if they sought to contain her expansion. So deeply did she fantasize about the possibility that one day she might glance down and see a roundness in her waist that wasn't there before, a soft thickness hanging heavier and heavier on her frame as she over-ate, on and on.

And if Noah Jefferman had one wish, it was that Mia could be his. Mia had always held Noah in good company, and vice-versa. But it never extended further than good company. And nor should it have, honestly. Noah's attention had been on Julia. The girl had devoured him, and he had devoured her. She was the love of his early life, his buoy in the frightening vast ocean of his approaching adult life. The two of them had grown together for the most part of their puberty, for every bit they grew upwards in height. So too did their emotional bind with each other. They were thoroughly knotted into each other's lives.

For this reason, Noah shouldn't have found his eyes on Mia so often. But since Julia died in the car crash three years ago, it didn't matter anymore. Time and gradual psychological learning had finally pried him loose his neurotic grip on his memory of her, allowing him in gradual degrees to move on. Julia had been the one for him, but she wasn't here anymore, so it had to be. so it was.

Noah was standard as far as the male appearance goes. Approachable, unassuming, handsome without being intimidating. His hair was modest in length, dark, with waves and curls. His face was nicely structured, and he'd been told so. He never really felt inferior in his appearance, but if there was one thing he was insecure about, it was the way his eyebrows made him look dismayed all the time, like some sad puppy or something -- they were constantly slightly upturned. But that was only an irrational self image problem. He knew that, at some subtle, mental level. Just not quite enough to articulate it in verbal admission to anyone, or himself. Inter-subjectively, his eyebrows were actually fine. They were what gave him his friendly appearance, and the way they framed his innocent, dreamy silver eyes. It was what made Mia forget how to walk whenever they accidentally locked eyes.

Mia was just under the average height for a girl. That said, it was such a slight difference that it wasn't something to even take note of -- yet despite her best efforts at overt self confidence, it was her deep character-defining insecurity. Perhaps her psychologically-exaggerated shortness was what caused her to desire to gain weight, to grow, to expand, be bigger than she thought herself to be.

But psychoanalysis isn't the point of this story. Mia caught plenty of eyes and unwary hearts. Slim torso, child-birthing hips, smooth thighs you could almost give the commonly used slang-term flung around these days, "thicc". Her boobs were modest, but she found she didn't mind it. Black hair flowed down to her chest. She had a babyish yet elegant facial structure, but sported a stunningly strong rear jaw bone that gave her a weird vibe of premature maturity. Her lips were a gentle butterfly crowning her feminine chin. A small nose, straight, delicate, between two dark and seductive green eyes. Prominent, circular cheekbones. Eyebrows shaped handsomely for a woman. They pressed together in a cute crease when she thought deeply enough.

Mia and Noah knew each other through mutual friend circles in grade 12 of their high school year, but they never really made the effort to connect. Mia as to Noah, and Noah as to Mia were just someone the other knew and had sat with in lessons and lunch breaks but never really talked, except to fling a smiley "hi" as they went past each other in the locker halls.

Year 12 recebtly had ended, everyone having happily graduated but for those few inevitable deviants who will always rebel against the way everyone else goes about life. And in short the time after graduation, everyone had started down their own lifepaths, but Mia and Noah's similar friend groups had kept in tight contact. An achievement, given the time elapsed. In the off social event when the friend groups would catch up, Noah and Mia decided to get to know each other. They came to hold each other in good company pretty fast. Not quite great friends or anything. Yet. But not just mere acquaintances either. That stale limbo in-between.

The year after school ended and everyone had settled into university, or their gap-year jobs, the gang called a unanimous vote to go on a trip for the midsummer holidays. The extremely motivated chaps in the group had already found an affordable holiday shack for rent in the countryside five hours from the city. The shack was more the size of a holiday house, but it was still a wood-house sort of shack. Real logs and all.

Driving in three cars, all thirteen of them that could make it, they reached the shack in the late evening on. The shack sat on the crest of a gentle slope leading down to banksia trees and bush, beyond it thicker woodlands of redgums, and richer riverland even further out. The shack looked out upon this mountainous stretch of nature like a tiny bug sat on a rise to survey the horizon on the back of some vast green giant. A dusty yellow driveway led down the other side of the shack for a one kilometer stretch to join an inactive highway, then the highway proper after that. The convoy parked in the gravel parking bay behind the shack, got out, stretched, chatted, unloaded gear.

There was no life around but them. The perfect place to immerse oneself in limitless serenity. They'd be here for a week and a half.

Rooms had been chosen, and mattresses laid out, and the kitchen stocked to bursting, and people's possessions had already been left about. It had only been an hour into their stay. They had no intentions to maintain a clean shack for the coming days. None at all. Fuck it.

Now, about Mia.

Having recently found a new mental strength, she'd decided to brace people's judgements of her, and had officially started attempting to gain weight. She ate as frequently, and as much as she could. If her family noticed her binging, they hadn't said anything about it. Yet? One of her friends had noticed her change in behaviour, though. Mia just ignored the 'observations' without being rude about it.

Since she could only eat as much as her family stocked the house with every fortnight, it meant there were times when she had to pull back so the groceries weren't disappearing in two days flat.

But as much as she ate and ate, until there was that soon familiar throbbing and aching at the base of her gut which came in waves of nauseating pain, she hadn't put on any weight. She was remaining exactly the same as she was every day before. Slim. She'd eat an entire pizza one night, become so bloated it hurt, go to sleep, and wake up the next day no different, no heavier. She'd gone as far as mixing up a weight gain shake big enough for five people, drink it all, getting a way too huge, wanting to die from cramps, falling asleep and wake up just as slim.

Rinse-and-repeat every day with any fatty food she could get. Mia just wanted to feel softness in her skin, to be able to pinch a part of her that would finally jiggle.

But she'd never change. She was eternally slim.

Now she was at the shack, one day gone by, sitting alone on the balcony, wondering whether it was worth all this effort if she couldn't put on one fukking milligram.

She couldn't hear anyone else inside or outside, so, out of sight, she slid one hand down to rest on her stomach. There it was. Slim and level, firm, just like every other day. She sighed and reclined into the sun chair.

From inside, Noah was sitting on the couch facing the sliding door to the balcony. He was leting himself stare at Mia. It was early morning. He took the beauty into his eyes, felt warmth in his core.

Then he looked away and shook his head. Just a quick twitch to shake himself out of his stupid drooling. He used a finger to scratch the hair behind his ear, then caught himself staring again. He sighed. Everything else around her filtered out until it was her, and only her, that he saw.

Then she looked around in his direction.

Noah looked away and got up off the couch before she caught him staring. Could have been awkward.

Beside the couch was an open doorway leading to a hallway with rooms to either side. Adjacent to the doorway was the entrance to the kitchen. Inside was a fridge, oven, stove, microwave, laminate bench; all the things essential to cooking packed in a pretty tight space. Justin was standing before the wall-mounted cupboard rummaging around inside it. Noah wandered in. Justin spoke without even looking. "Already fukking gone, man. All the food. Gone, man. How the hell?"

"Well I didn't eat it," Noah leaned on the bench top, arms crossed. He suppressed a yawn.

"We brought so much with us though." Justin closed the cupboard and moved to the next one, opened it. There were some scraps left.

"There are thirteen of us," Noah suggested.

"But all that food. Gone already. Something's up."

"Yeah. I guess. Still... thirteen of us?"

Justin shut the cupboard and faced Noah, rubbing his brow. "Thirteen can't demolish that all in one day. That was food for, like, four days at least."

Noah raised his eyebrows and shrugged. Silently, he wasn't that surprised.