Symphony of Gluttony

Chapter 1 - A Bakery After Hours

From outside the darkened windows and doors of the bakery you would hear only the hum of nearby traffic and the buzz of a street light that would soon burn out. Nothing amiss. Nothing untoward at all.

If the door happened to be unlocked and you chose to wander inside you would immediately be confronted with a unique combination of sounds.

First, the mechanical sound of an air conditioner churning as hard as it can to keep the place at a very cool 68 degrees. It’s a summer night and the single occupant of the place wants it cold. Firstly because it helps keep the tasty confections fresh longer and secondly… for other reasons.

As you move deeper into the dark bakery you might become aware of a scraping sound. It could indicate any number of things. The sound could indicate a metal structure like a table or chair being dragged slowly across a tile floor. It could be a metal container being pulled across a surface. Whatever it is, the metal is heavy. That’s undeniable.

If you were to continue your journey past the counter towards the kitchen, you might start hearing a voice groaning. Even this sound is complex. It could indicate that the one making the sound is in immense pain. There’s certainly an edge to the sound indicating extreme discomfort. But, there’s a neediness to it. Almost a whimper. Like a child in desperate need of a toy they cannot reach. Beyond that there’s an unmistakable sexual component to the sound. It could almost be used in a foley for a raunchy adult movie scene. There’s no doubt the one making the sound is also enjoying themselves.

Should your curiosity not be satisfied by this point, or maybe you’re a bit of a deviant voyeur, and you get closer to the private display, you could hear the subtle gurgling and sloshing coming from the individuals stomach. All around the noisy individual is a host of wrappings and pans and Tupperware and crumbs. Each motion causes their thick body to jiggle and their clearly engorged gut to wobble, the contents of the latter mixing and churning and shifting to make room for the next morsel to be swallowed or slurped.

Combined with these more biological sounds are also the sounds of eating themselves. Biting. Gnawing. Chewing. Gulping. Chugging. Despite the litter of debris surrounding the individual, the metal table in front of them contains more of the same and they’re ingesting it at a rate that would scare even the most competitive eaters.

Should you wade through the waste and approach within inches of the spectacle, you might be able to identify one last set of sounds. A stretching, straining, popping sound. These sounds undoubtably emanate from the persons midsection. Their apron tossed aside they’re now wearing only a pair of pants and a shirt. Both of which are strained by their stomach being forced to contain all this food the trash had once contained. Do the sounds come from the clothes? Or from their very skin? Each swallow causes the bloated orb of their stomach to distend further. Causing the slowing slurry to quicken and increase in volume.

This too is the distance you would need to be to determine the precise source of the metal scraping you’d have heard earlier. Be it the chair the person is sitting on, the table their swollen stomach is pressing into and pushing away, the pots and pans containing more food being hastily pulled toward their hungry maw, or all of the above.

It’s clear they’ve been here for a while. That the air conditioner is blasting to keep their overstimulated body cool, they’re feeling immense internal pressure and an inescapable desire to satisfy their carnal desires by eating themselves into oblivion, and neither their clothes nor their very skin can handle much more.

Such are the sounds you might hear if you were in the bakery of a hedonistic glutton after hours.