chapter i: matt

Matthew Porter’s tummy rumbled. He felt huge, stuffed and inflated to the point his worn old t shirt felt like it had shrunken 3 sizes over the course of a single afternoon. He notice he was sweating slightly as he felt his stomach continue to gurgle hungrily beneath his pale flab. Why? Matt hissed out loud at himself, shifting his heft and lower torso in the too small kitchen chair, as if willing his body to be satisfied with the enormous triple banquet of fried chicken he’d just devoured and cease its pleading for yet more food. The more fattening and satisfying, the better, it told him with an urgent, thunderous rumble. He grunted in annoyance as his efforts to quell the hunger by shifting his bulk had only made him sweatier. It was the middle of spring but the apartment seemed lame an oven, especially after so much exertion. His lower back rolls were getting red from rubbing against each other, moist and tickling, which only made him feel more irate and frustrated at the situation. Well, he guessed they were red. It’s not like Matt had a hope in hell of seeing them.
He took a deep breath. He knew to meditate at times like this, his mother having instilled the importance of mindfulness in him and his sister Jackie from a young age. His sister had always been better at it. Jackie was, unlike her twin brother, fitness mad. She felt lost without her daily 3km dawn run, her evening gym sessions, her protein supplements and her high end workout gear. She was kind to him, but Jackie’s friends found it hilarious that her own twin brother was the campus icon of obesity. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead as he pictured their laughter looking at him now.
Instead of panicking at his mental spiral, he closed his eyes and took three more deep breaths. In his hyper aware silence, his tummy again began to rumble. It was like his stomach couldn’t leave him alone for even a moment, he bitterly thought.
Matt placed his stodgy pink hands atop his belly, trying to soothe himself and immediately he felt himself relax more. After a few moments of stillness, he began to rationalise his predicament to himself. He was listening to his body, as his mother always thought her children to do. For his sister, that was working out and eating healthily. For him, maybe that was gorging himself at his kitchen table until it was difficult to stand. Like in Newton’s law of motion, his physics nerd father had once joked, the Porter twins were at once both equal and opposite from one another.
Matt almost laughed out loud from the preposterousness of his reasoning to continue his feasting. He loved himself. That was the most important thing, right? As long as he wasn’t eating because he felt sorry for himself, he figured he was still possessed a healthy relationship with food. With that, he strained his arm over his belly to reach the table and reached his phone, opening it up excitedly and hit the ‘reorder’ button on. Matt’s tummy howled in anticipation for more tens of thousands of calories and he felt reassured by the happy glowing feeling he got when he gave in to his cravings. The sun was even going down, cooling down the apartment and his formerly jostling, uncomfortable, overheated body into a relaxed, contented, and sedentary one. Well, contended as one can be without food, Matt thought to himself as he felt his eyes close. His phone pinged.
Sean: how’s work going?
Oh yeah, Matt thought as he groaned inwardly. His roommate and best friend thought he was spending the day working on the latest project his boss had told him to work on. Something about reprogramming the company’s system software. He did love the fact his job was an entirely remote position. He couldn’t remember what it was about now, his mind entirely focused on the dozens of fried chicken legs, breasts, and wings that his tongue would soon be tasting. He salivated as he texted back.
Matt: i was too hungry to concentrate. had to order a little bit of chicken #justfatguythings
Matt put the phone down. Sean didn’t need to know how much ‘a little bit’ of food really was to Matt these days. All his roommates had busy day jobs which allowed Matt to have the apartment to himself and eat without shame to his hearts content. But gorge himself around his friends he couldn’t ever bring himself to do. So he used his hours of solitude to make up for the fact he’d be restricting himself to normal portions this evening after everyone was home.
Sean: haha nice. I’ll be home around 7. Save me some chicken!
Matt smiled at his friends message but then grimaced at the thought of setting aside some of his own food. His growing body complained loudly. It demanded it all! He checked his delivery app and saw that his courier was nearly at the apartment. Matt pulled his t shirt shirt down as far as he could and glanced at his phone screen background. His gang of five friends stared back at him, a photo from last Halloween. They always liked to dress up for it with extra care as it was also the day of Matt’s birthday. The photo showed Sean with his charming smile, making the perfect angel next to his girlfriend Ashley in her devil outfit. She was making bunny ears behind Matt’s chubby head, he looked slimmer here and put effort into his werewolf costume. as he laughed with their friend Tim while the groups jokester Ryan pulled a dumb, exaggeratedly overjoyed face. It was in that moment he remembered what the face had been mimicking, Matt’s own expression when he had seen the cake Ashley had purchased was his favourite Victoria sponge but was a monstrous size, four times the size of a traditional birthday cake, and was all for him. It made Matt feel strange to see Ryan lightheartedly mocking Matt’s appetite and enthusiasm for food when the Matt in the photo was only a XXL. The size this old t shirt is, he noted, as he again tried pull it down over his tummy. It crept back up in a matter of moments with his bloat. Luckily nudity was fine while the apartment was empty. He was free and happy to let his billowing side rolls and super size love handles be fully on show, as long he was the only audience.
The apartment doorbell rang, and Matt’s heart leapt with joy as manoeuvre Ed his heavy body out of the chair and away from the table. He had to think about his mobility so much more these days, his body feeling increasingly wayward and lumbering as it blossomed with more and more fat. His enormous thighs rubbed together even with his legs as far apart as they could go, giving him a slow waddling gait that he had been insecure about before Jackie had said it was barely noticeable. He tried not to wonder if his sister was too kind for her own good.
Matt reached the doorbell and happily embraced his flood of buckets and bags of hot fried food. He reassured himself that there was so much packaging between the two people that the courier probably didn’t even notice the heavy rolls that made up half of Matt’s belly falling out of his t shirt. He tipped the courier, as always, before quickly shutting the door, almost stumbling in his haste to begin his gorge. He glanced at the kitchen, filled with the packaging from his feast a couple of hours prior, and almost groaned. Not because he knew he had to clear up all traces of the feast before the evening began and the apartment was more populated again, but because he needed comfortable grazing space and he needed it now, and his preferred kitchen spot was too cluttered to use.
The problem was that when Matt feasted, he feasted. He knew that settling into the couch was a double edged sword. He would lower his body down slowly and settle his rolls on the soft covering and it would feel like heaven. He would gorge and gorge until something happened that required him to get up again, like realising his need to use the bathroom or to get another few bottles of 2 litre Cokes from the fridge. The couch was so low down it was an ordeal to get up from it; to position and stabilise his body to standing height with only the small coffee table to assist him. He liked the strong kitchen chairs for this reason, they were just the right height. The couch on the other hand was sweaty frustration just waiting to happen.
Before he could stop himself however, he was waddling over to the sofa with its perfect amount of space for all his packets, tubs, buckets, and boxes of the entire menu of his favourite takeaway. His stomach grumbled so loudly that it hurried Matt up a little too much, and he tumbled too quickly onto the couch. Matt’s enormous ass fell with a hard thud onto the seats, taking up the space that usually sat three of his housemates comfortably. His back and muscles ached with the effort of his latest exertion and welcomed the soft support his body was suddenly cushioned with. The soft fabric felt so good and safe, so comforting on the sensitive skin of his innumerable and often tender rolls. Matt once again wished he had somebody to help him rub lotion into his burning stretch marks, especially in those hard to reach places nestled between his flab. He didn’t like to think too much about the help he increasingly needed but felt too ashamed to ask for. Luckily, there was delicious food here to distract himself with, flavours pleasuring his tastebuds and warmth slowly making him full even fuller and more whole. God, did it make him feel good. Matt, weighed down in place by his own body, was halfway through his wondrous and endless second gorging of the afternoon, and starting to really feel as though he may have reached his limit, when he heard laughing voices down the outer hallway, approaching the apartment door. His eyes flew to the time. He still had another 2 hours! 2 hours would have given him enough time to regain an awareness of his gorging debris from his food induced stupor and slowly get to work hiding the evidence before his flat mates arrive home. They were never early, they would have said if they were! But frantically Matt remembered a group conversation from the night before that he had pretended he was paying attention to, when he was really dreaming of firm, strong hands rubbing the entirety of his swollen aching belly, massaging his plush yielding fat. God! He blushed hard at the memory, realising he had completely run out of time to try and even attempt to clean up. Matt desperately tried to heave his bulk upwards but the sofa was too low, he was too heavy, and time was too short. Matt, flailing back down chaotically with all his rolls of fat rippling with motion and with a panicked expression on his face, was what greeted Sean as he opened the front door of the apartment. He couldn’t help but smirk. He knew Matt the Fat so well.