Chapter 1

“Karina, you’re not serious,” Lindsey threatened, her tone as stony as her gaze.” I know you’re not being serious.”

“Linds,” Karina whined, throwing her hands up. “Linds I’m sorry, you know I’m sorry, but Abby will kill me if you don’t eat it all. There's nowhere to hide it.”

“We can take it to the dumpsters behind the bio building, she’d never check there. Are you kidding me? There’s a million places we could get rid of it, you’re not trying to help me,” Lindsey shot back.

“But,” Karina stuttered, clearly at a loss. “But you can’t walk over there. You’re not supposed to walk anywhere.”

“You could take it,” Lindsey spat back accusatorily then sighed as tears filled the sweet, sensitive girl's eyes.

“I- I can’t,” Karina whimpered, the welling of emotion making her eyes look wider and even more innocent. “Lindsey, don’t be mad at me, I’m sorry I just…”

She dissolved into tears and Lindsey sighed more loudly, Karina's instinctual and nonpurposeful defense mechanism immediately making her longtime friend soften despite its frequent occurrence.

“Karina,” Lindsey intoned, trying to settle the sweet girl's soundless breakdown. “Karina, it’s ok. Stop.”

Karina gulped, swiped at her face, and looked at Lindsey, her lip quivering hard enough for Lindsey to recognize that the tears were only monetarily stemmed, not stopped.

“It's fine,” Lindsey repeated, trying to ease the aggression out of her tone. “It's fine. I just thought that of everyone here you’d be the one to help me-”

She stopped herself short as Karina succumbed to a fresh round of tears, weeping with an intensity the situation hardly required as was typical of Lindsey’s best friend.

“Karina stop,” it was Lindsey's turn to whine, drawing out the word. “Stop, ok? Stop. I’m the one that's actually going through this, I should be crying.”

The sentence only increased the shake in Karina's shoulders and she covered her face with her hands, clearly making an ineffectual attempt to calm herself.

“I just feel so bad for you,” she wailed. “And you hate it so much, and I don’t wanna be one guard duty, I hate this, and-”

“What did you say?” Lindsey interjected, grabbing Karina's wrist despite the fact that both hands were still affixed firmly to her face.

“I, I said I feel bad for you,” Karina answered with a hint of confusion, lifting her tear-streaked face up to Lindsey in order to assess the origin of the sudden urgency in her voice.

“No, about guard duty,” Lindsey demanded. “Why did you say that, who told you it was guard duty?”

“Abby,” Karina answered, her tears slowed by her confusion. “She made a schedule on the Google calendar and that's what she called it, guard duty.”

Lindsey twisted her face in anger. Since the conversation and unexpected force-feeding she’d had with her Abigail just two days ago, the aggressively competitive sorority president had been true to her promise to ensure that a member of Phi Lambda sat with Lindsey as she ate every one of her obscenely oversized meals, Courtney usually being the one to both deliver the meals and take away the trash to ensure that Lindsey was sticking to her prescribed diet.

The diet in question, the same diet that had helped last year's campus pigs winner pack on 63 pounds in 2 months, was so outlandishly calorie-dense that Lindsey hadn't had time for anything but food for the past 48 hours. The classes she’d skipped on Monday had turned into excuses created for Tuesday as well, and she typed her contrived apologetic emails to her professors with mortification, knowing there was a chance that they, being faculty members who’d watched the campus pigs contest occur over and over, were aware that she’d been selected by her sudden lack of adherence to their attendance policies. She’d heard that in the past professors were a bit easier on the students selected to compete, particularly the girls. They’d likely seen many a campus pig miserably bloat up into an unrecognizable blob, and they were lenient in their due dates, more generous in their grading.

Lindsey didn't care about that, although her grades were important to her, because she hadn’t had a free moment to care about anything since she started binging to pack on the pounds. She began the day with a heavy cream based shake delivered by Courtney or Ellie, and breakfast took place immediately afterward, so far different variations of the calorie-dense diner breakfast that Abigail had quite literally forced down her throat as they went over their game plan.

Abigail had many a trick to add to the calorie count of those breakfasts, her favorite being slathering the food in half a stick of melted butter before mixing the other half into the maple syrup (and making Lindsey drink the rest when she was finishing with the pancakes). Her breakfasts were also sprinkled with the bodybuilder bulking powder that she was drinking 2 servings of in her breakfast shakes, and the orders were just as outlandishly large as they’d been the first day, Lindsey slowly making her way through them as her stomach bloated and ached, never receiving a respite from the onslaught of greasy calories.

Her breakfast was immediately followed by a snack, and while the snack had a bit more flexibility (“You can have whatever you want, your morning snack is your choice entirely”, Courtney had promised chipperly), it still had a 700 calorie minimum, which meant downing a pint of ice cream or indulging in the famously rich pastries that Abigail had instructed Ellie to keep well stocked meant less chewing for Lindsey, who had never realized that her jaw could be so overworked and exhausted. Three pastries or 3/4s of a pint of Ben and Jerry's took her to 700 calories, and she had to admit that the pricey, boutique bakery did great work.

The chocolate croissants melted in her mouth, the cheese danishes were bursting with toe-curlingly sweet cream, and the Bavarian donuts were likely Lindsey's favorite, despite her hatred for the entire ordeal. She never looked forward to this snack as breakfast was the meal of the day that took her the longest, meaning the snack had to follow immediately after if she wanted to stay on schedule. She’d always assumed that the best part of being a campus pig was the fact that you get to laze around, that your responsibilities were reduced 5 fold, but eating this much was actually an insane amount of work, and Lindsey was exhausted.

Following her snack she got to take a little nap, rubbing her aching gut in an effort to ease her pain and speed the digestion process, but she was always awoken in what felt like no time at all, her lunch delivered and the next Phi Lambda girl to watch over her shaking her to wakefulness to tackle it. Lunch was always fast food, and it was always from at least two locations, per Abigail's orders. Lindsey had almost cried the first time she’d seen the array of greasy brown paper bags, their aromas as intoxicating as it was infuriating.

Her first day, she’d been unable to stomach more than a single combo for the first hour of the meal, complaining endlessly and on the verge of tears until Ellie finally went to fetch Abigail, who’d ripped her a new one and then sat still as a statue watching her force down the impossibly large meal bite by bite, the entire ordeal taking over three hours. Lindsey had been burping non-stop by the end, the two large sodas she’d chugged forcing burp out of raucous burp from her pouting lips, and Abigail had only nodded once and left her to her bloat and pain, leaving Lindsey’s hard work almost entirely unacknowledged. She’d needed a nap immediately after lunch that day, delaying her post-lunch snack, which meant when she woke up it was added to her dinner; a homemade feast prepared by Courtney.

Courtney preferred to prepare dinners herself because, as Ellie meekly pointed out to a moaning, stuffed Lindsey, she could eat less overall volume when Courtney was able to ensure that there were more calories in her meals than in ones from a restaurant, which meant the lavishly heavy, rich concoctions she dreamed up could be better enjoyed while still having the same impact on the chosen pigs waistline. Courtney had an entire recipe book of favorites from past pigs, and so far had made a heavy cream alfredo sauce with so much butter Lindsey swore she could feel it coming through her pores and birra tacos triple wrapped in homemade tortillas, the consume swimming in oil and the cheese oozing off with each bite. Her dinners were the most enjoyable part of her day because Courtney was actually quite an adept chef, and because Lindsey got the longest break between her lunch and her dinner, she wasn't still painfully full when she began the meal, which made things go down a bit easier.

Regardless of how she felt about her capacity at the onset of her dinners, by the end she was fighting sleep with each bite, the tremendous amount of calories she’d taken in for the day wearing her out like her soccer workouts used to do. She still hadn’t spoken to her coach and made the team aware of the unfortunate new position that had befallen her, and it was a call she was terrified to make, her avoidance only worsening her anxiety.

After dinner she took another nap, falling asleep in front of whatever trashy reality show was on E in her new, single, downstairs bedroom with an attached private bathroom, one of the only true perks of the situation in her eyes, and was awoken a few hours later for her final intake of the day, another midnight shake to finish things off. The last shake of the day was always a fight, and so far Abigail had been called in every time it was presented to her as Lindsey refused to drink it, moaning and arguing until Abigail took matters into her own hands.

She’d know that Abigail was domineering, that she was commanding and rude and so singularly focused that she’d take whatever action she needed to to get her way regardless of how it impacted anyone around her, but Lindsey had never expected that she could be so inhuman, so cold and unresponsive to Lindsey’s pain and misery. Abigail was acting as if this was something she was doing for Lindsey and not the other way around, and Lindsey was so constantly exhausted, so constantly stuffed too full to think, that she almost felt herself slowly succumbing to Abigail's viewpoints in her lowest moments.


Her third official day as pig was halfway through and she’d eaten her breakfast with less complaining than usual, a feeling of terror joining the mountain of pancakes in the pit of her stomach as she realized that maybe Abigail was right. Maybe her capacity was much larger than she thought. Abigail kept referring to the night of drunken pizza consumption as her basis for how much Lindsey could consume, and despite the fact that Lindsey constantly argued that she’d only been able to intake that much pizza because she was drunk out of her mind, Abigail held steady.

“If you could eat and drink that much without throwing up then, you can do it now”, she’d repeat over and over like a mantra, and it was beginning to creep into Lindsey’s logic as well, in part for good reason.

Every time a new meal was set in front of Lindsey she was sure that there was no possibility of her consuming even half the amount, yet every time, with much pleading and antagonistic comments from her side and coercion and threats from the rest of the girls, the food slowly but steadily disappeared. Eating that much was a full-time job, and Lindsey was far less than pleased with the benefits, the hours, and most importantly, her new boss. She was beginning to loathe the sight of Abigail's face, and although Courtney was as kind and helpful as ever, Lindsey found herself hardening towards the phi lambda secretary as well. Ellie was almost too inconsequential personality-wise to hate, but Lindsey was still doing her best despite the fact that she felt bad for the mousey, subservient girl.

Right now, Lindsey's anger was directed towards Karina, but even at her most furious, her most disheartened, she could never hate poor Karina. It was her best friend's first occasion of watching over her to ensure she ate all she was meant to, and Karina was taking her job far more seriously than Lindsey would like.

“Guard duty”, Lindsey scoffed, dropping the fork. “Do you know how demanding that is?”

Karina burst into a fresh peal of tears and Lindsey held her breath in an effort to compose herself and meter her reaction, wanting to shake the girl and tell her that she was the only one who should be upset, she was the only one who deserved to be crying.

“Karina, please,” she pleaded.

She took a deep breath, knowing her longtime friend well enough to be fully aware that her next sentence was a gamble that would either put an end to her empathic sorority sisters' tears or worsen the meltdown.

“Karina, I'm sad right now. I wanna cry. And you crying is only making things worse.”

Karina sniffed hard, clearly intent on settling herself, and her quick, stuttered breaths were more evidence of her efforts to be strong for her friend.

“I’m ok,” Karina choked out, lying but clearly working to make the lie a reality. “I’m ok. I’m so sorry, Linds.”

“It’s fine,” Lindsey breathed, relieved she wouldn't have to comfort Karina through a longer breakdown. “I just think the guard duty thing is ridiculous, it's so unfair and it pits all of you against me, this whole thing is just…”

She stopped short, unsure of what else to say. She and Karina knew the totality of the situation, they knew the fruitlessness of complaints, of beating the issue to death. It didn't make it any easier for Lindsey to accept, however.

“I’m sorry,” Karina repeated, her tears slowed. “She was like, so serious about it. She said if anyone is found not completing their guard duty they get immediate out-of-house suspension.”

Lindsey's head shot up. Out-of-house suspension? That was one of the worst punishments that a Greek life president could dole out. It meant finding new housing for at least a month, being uninvited to every event, party, and lunch that the girls go to, being placed on maid duty for the totality of the suspension (the only time the suspended member is allowed back into the house), and worst of all, places said member just one infraction away from full expulsion. An out-of-house suspension was reserved for the worst possible Phi Lambda infractions, and the fact that refusing to force-feed Lindsey was added to that list felt like overkill, to say the least.

Lindsey looked down at the meal she was struggling through, the greasiest Chinese takeout that the house was in the delivery radius of. It was once a guilty pleasure of hers, but now pleasure was the last thing she felt. Her double order of orange chicken, double order of beef fried rice, and a family-sized assortment of fried appetizers including chicken eggrolls, shrimp toast, fried wontons, potstickers, deep-fried shrimp spring rolls, and crab rangoons was less than half completed and she was so full she felt she might split, miserably taking tiny nibbles with no expectation that Karina would actually force her to finish the meal like the others girls had.

“I’m just really really full,” she mumbled, realizing that her story to make Karina’s tears cease was closer to the truth than she thought.

She wanted to cry at the thought of putting away the rest of that food.

“I don't think I can have anymore.”

“Oh Lindsey,” Karina comforted, her voice growing cloudy with tears again.

She sniffed hard and recovered, pressing her sleeve into both eyes to dry them.

“I’m so sorry, Linds,” she consoled for a third time.

“Yea, I'm sorry too,” Lindsey murmured in the same low voice, suddenly feeling too tired to talk.

“Is there anything that would help?” Karina asked, pushing aside the textbook she’d been more or less ignoring for the last hour. “What would help, what would help,” she repeated, looking around the kitchen as if she’d find a way to reverse time and tell Lindsey to choose a different straw. “Oh!” she yelped, scrambling to her feet. “What about a drink?”

She grinned, looking pleased with herself for the sudden burst of inspiration.

“When you ate all that pizza it was cause you were drunk, what if a drink makes you hungry again?”

Lindsey sighed, a sound that was coming out of her mouth more and more often these days.

“Karina, I don't know. I appreciate the thought but it might just make my stomach hurt worse, I really don't-”

“But your stomach can’t hurt if you’re drunk!” Karina interrupted, already heading for the pregame party stash. “I’ll just make you one little drink and we’ll see, I mean, worst case scenario at least this’ll all be a little funnier.”

Her eyes widened at Lindsey's sudden dark expression.

“Well, not funnier, but just. Just…whatever, I'm gonna make you a drink.”

Lindsey watched as Karina flew around the kitchen grabbing a glass and ingredients, rubbing her now perpetually bloated midsection and taking tiny nibbles of her chicken with no expectation that the meager bites would make any difference in the amount she had left to go, and frowned as Karina set one of Lindsey’s favorite drinks in front of her: a triple shot tequila sunrise, extra grenadine. Convinced that her circumstances were already as bad as they could possibly be, Lindsey grabbed the glass and took a slug, pleasantly surprised with Karina's mixologist skills as usual.

“Good?” Karina asked, watching her expectantly.

Lindsey nodded and took another sip, then decided that if she was going for another drunken gorging session, she might as well do it up..........






*I hope you enjoyed! This story has been so fun to write, and so far the full story is 17,500+ words. To find more you can check out my profile here on FF! Thanks so much for reading:)*