Chapter 1 - the woman at the buffet

The wound in Kim's arm was just transitioning from throbbing soreness to searing pain by the time she arrived at the hospital. She had never thought that she might be rushed to the emergency room for a bite wound, let alone one inflicted by a human being. Did grown adults really bite each other? For god's sake, Kim had heard jokes about the dangers of getting between fat people and their food, but she didn't think she'd ever be the one to prove them true.
The night had started out plainly enough. Kim's boyfriend, Rob had suggested that they eat out that evening. There was a new buffet that he had heard about and he really wanted to check it out. Being a woman who usually tried to keep her eating in check, Kim was never all that fond of buffets. Sure they were great if you planned on eating all you could while over there, but for Kim, the buffet was usually just a way to pay too much money for one plate of food and maybe a small cup of soft serve if she felt like treating herself.
Still, Rob hardly ever asked to go to buffets, so Kim figured she could suck it up for one night. Maybe she would even indulge in that extra cup of soft serve.
How she wished now that she had told Rob to just go by himself. It happened fast. One minute Kim was placing some tomatoes on her salad and the next she heard a crashing of plates and guttural grunting sounds quickly approaching her. By the time she saw her attacker, Kim was unable to react in time to avoid her. An impossibly fat woman dressed in ragged, too-small clothes was making her way through the buffet line and stuffing her face with every bit of food she could grab. When she met up with Kim, she decided the twig of woman was not getting out of her way fast enough and decided to eat her instead.
When the feral woman grabbed her arm, Kim tried to pull away, but the large woman's strength was more than a match for hers. The fat woman bit down hard on Kim's arm and began to gnaw at it like a wolf chewing on a bone. Kim screamed and struggled fruitlessly to wrestle her arm away from the crazed woman. She had almost resigned herself to losing the arm when Rob showed up behind the fat woman and began striking her on the back of the head. After three hits, the woman let go of Kim's arm and turned to face Rob. Rob then changed tactics and sparta-kicked the woman in the face. The woman fell in a gelatinous heap on the floor, her massive body jiggling for a full minute after she hit the ground.
The rest was a blur after that. Perhaps it was shock, but Kim was unable to feel pain in her arm for the first few minutes after the attack and she felt dizzy and sick to her stomach. She nearly fainted right there, but Rob rushed to her side and helped her to her feet. Seeing that she could barely walk on her own, Rob scooped Kim into his arms and carried her to his car so he could rush her to the hospital. After that, everything was a rush of nurses and doctors moving around her as Kim barely held onto consciousness. The pain in her arm was now unbearable, and the pit of her stomach felt about ready to cave in on itself. She wasn't sure if she was nauseous or hungry, all she knew was that her stomach was the only thing she could focus on, despite the fact that her arm had nearly been chewed off.
Kim was dimly aware of a nurse sticking a needle into her arm. The world only got darker and more fuzzy after that. Soon, Kim was in a blissful, dreamless sleep.