The Dastardly Decadence of Crime Brulee

Chapter 1 - Prologue; Scene 1 thru 3

Well hello there, you at home.

Or on the subway, at the park, in the bathroom of the public library with your business down one well-worn sock, or wherever you go to get your rocks off.

If you’ve landed here, it’s probably because you’ve an interest in the ongoing exploits of a one Crime Brulee, the renowned and reviled dastardly villain and fat-enthusiast extraordinaire. More straightforwardly, it no doubt means you, yourself, share the turn-of-the-century icon’s proclivity for plush, overfed bodies–either your own, or your lovers’. It matters more to some than others which it is.

You must already know the story of our intrepid antiheroine’s greatest heist. You know, with the island, and the auction, and the destruction of Marge Maas and her entire shady company? And Rob Way’s daughter? You know, Rob Way, the golfer? And who could forget all that food, and all that flab?

But what if I told you there was another world, where it all happened differently?

In clicking forward, you agree to witness glimpses into this alternate reality, all curated by yours truly, and made possible with the marvels of modern timespace-travel technology and a bit of well-concealed spy equipment. Prepare to learn the answers to questions you might never have thought to ask, like, what if it had been Moira Way who headed up the mission that would take down CorpQuest International?

What if it had been Connie Conway who went undercover as a banquet waitress amongst the ranks of Abundance Catering’s experts in service and discretion?

These answers may surprise and enlighten you, but at the very least, I hope they delight more than they disgust.

As for who I am? I could tell you, but that would come with the risk of altering your timeline…and perhaps even your waistline.

And we wouldn’t want that…

Or would we?

Like I said, it matters more to some than others.

***

1. THE UNLIKELY DUO PREPARES TO DEPART

***

All in all, Kurt Kaufskey would tell you he’d had better days.

He’d certainly had worse ones. Like the two years he’d spent in captivity in the basement chemistry lab of his old gig at the US Heroics Division, drugged barely conscious and wrung dry for his secretions of truth serum. That hadn’t completely derailed his life, though. Sure, he’d gained two hundred and someodd pounds while hooked up to Uncle Sam’s feeding machine to keep him at the caloric surplus that activated the full potential of his power set, but eventually, rescue arrived in the form of Crime Brulee and her coterie of thieves, whose friendship had given him a whole new perspective on life. After joining forces with them, he found he actually really liked being a professional burglar. Until recently, he’d had no complaints about his time habitating in the bunker under a casino that served as their base. He still had his mobility, and Connie had tons of literature saved to the hard drive of her laptop to reassure him that unless anything started hurting or not working right, his health was likely in no immediate danger from the weight gain. And that was the thing: forcibly fattened though he may have been, he found, after some contemplation, that he didn’t mind the extra weight. Enjoyed it, actually. In fact, the idea of putting on even more gave him this spicy forbidden thrill.

Which would have been fine, if not for his new budding relationship with a fellow VA rookie.

Shadow Puppet was once the Division’s most promising recruit of the year in the greater Blackwater City area, until she was captured by Crime Brulee and company after a fight that broke out during Connie’s theft of a priceless artifact. Under the influence of truth serum, she’d confessed a good deal of Division secrets, but even more interestingly, admitted to being in lust at first sight with Kurt. Which was lucky, because the serum was his semen. Like, it was semen. He really didn’t feel great about that, and he got nothing out of knowing what the people the VA interrogated were forced to drink, but he supposed it was better than letting Whirlpool punch information out of them with her fists encased in blocks of solid ice.

It had taken quite some nudging, both from Moira, the shadowmancer who’d joined up for protection knowing that the Division wouldn’t take her back after her capture, and Connie, who’d been encouraging Kurt to go after what he wanted with reckless abandon ever since he’d hopped on her payroll, for them to start dating. He’d been nervous. Spritely, gym-bunny blondes with impressive heroic records in the newspaper didn’t date fat nerds recovering from extended hostage situations. Except when they did.

And then it all fell apart.

‘So Connie says you’re getting fatter on purpose–?’

‘I mean, that’s a way oversimplified–’

‘So it’s true? How can you do this? Think about your health, think about us! Our future! Do you want to have a heart attack?’

‘Connie says heart attacks are like shark attacks, you hear about them way more often then they actually–’

‘CONNIE’S NOT A DOCTOR!’

Her words still echoed in his head.

At the end of the argument, she had dealt him an ultimatum: either ‘stop this nonsense at once,’ or lose her.

So now they were those two coworkers who dated and broke up and still had to see each other awkwardly at the workplace.

He was at his desk, in his room, reading Voltaire with the shot of whiskey Connie had asked him to opine upon as a possible new staple for the safehouse (though he suspected she just thought he needed a drink), when Moira came knocking at his open doorway. Catching her silhouette in his periphery, he turned in his reinforced swivel-chair to face her.

“Kurt, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“You’re rescinding your ultimatum?” he ventured, as slim as those odds were.

She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t, the timbre of her insincerity tripped his lie detecting powers like the bang of a gong.

“I get it. You think I’m a nutcase. What can I do you for?”

“The problem is Connie,” she went on. “You know that company that’s absorbing all that embezzled money from all over the world that her sister tipped us off about? They’re holding a retreat on some uncharted island and this idiot found my research on the staffing company that’ll service it. She got herself hired and plans to go in alone, masquerading as a banquet waitress, and try to steal what she can steal.”

Kurt’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Just her, against a whole island full of–”

“Aristocrats, world leaders…it’s a suicide mission,” Moira nodded. “So I’m going in after her.”

“And you’re telling me because…”

“I made a few phone calls, did a little hacking, and it turns out this whole vacation package is aimed at feedees and feeders. I bought two tickets out of the VA account; if I don’t want to get hit on by a bunch of unhinged fa–”

“You need me as a prop.”

“That’s not–!” she began to protest.

“But it kind of is, though, isn't it?”

“Yeah, but you make it sound so ugly.”

Kurt sighed. “Can I just say something?”

“What?”

“You broke my heart.”

She scuffed her foot against the ground.

“But I’ll do it for Connie.”

***

2. CONNIE’S NEW GIG

***

"First time, huh?"

As Connie tied up her mess of black curls and followed the procession of servers being corralled to the kitchen for the first breakfast service of the retreat, she was approached by a woman with mousy brown hair, a gleam in her eyes, and chipped nail polish that hinted at a certain apathy, or perhaps disdain, toward her work. "I'm Dolly, I'm here every year."

"Connie…and how did you know?" Surely even if she was here every year, she couldn't have the faces of all of her colleagues memorized? There were so many of them!

"Look at you, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed…you either have no idea what goes on here, or you're a sicko, and you're not reading 'ax-murderer' to me."

"Um…thanks?" Connie shrugged. If only her new colleague knew she was none other than the legendary Crime Brulee–wait, did people know about her outside of America? They had to! She'd been robbing people blind for about a decade now; that was a longer reign of terror than any other supervillain in recent international memory! “So, what goes on here?” Other than what Connie didn’t otherwise know from Moira’s research.

“If you don’t know, then I don’t know how I can explain it,” said Dolly. “These ‘feeders’ and ‘feedees’,” she explained, making air quotes, “really are some of the most disgusting folks you’ll ever meet in your life.”

“I’m sure they’re not all so bad,” said Connie, shrugging.

“God, you sound like Bernard.”

“Who?”

“He’ll be signing us out at the end of breakfast service. Do you work lunch?”

“No, but I’m trying to pick up,” said Connie. It would be in her advantage, she figured, to see as much of the premises as she could see, as soon as possible.

“Hey, I mean, if that’s really what you want, I’m sure a slot will open up on the lunch shift. Some poor sucker’s going to realize they’re in way over their head with all this. By the end of the retreat, half of them are giving up every shift, hiding in their service quarters and waiting for it all to be over.”

Connie shook her head and scoffed. “I bet you’re full of shit. If it’s so bad, then why are you back every year?”

“Are you kidding me? Watching these ***es and their nasty pervert keepers is prime-time entertainment to me! It’s even better than hanging out and taking phone pictures of the slobs that shop at MegaMart, and best of all, here, I can’t be removed by the cops!” Her smirk was downright conspiratory as she turned to look at Connie, her eyes holding a maniacal gleam.

“Well, that’s…not a very nice thing to do,” she murmured. Then again, did she have much room to speak? She robbed banks.

***

3. “HERE’S YOUR WINE…"

***

Kurt and Moira walked into the dining hall on day 1 of the retreat, Kurt trailing behind and struggling to keep up. Even with her shorter stature and smaller strides, and even in her designer heels, Moira left him in the dust, so accustomed was she to the bite and height of strappy heels thanks to her nouveau-riche upbringing. He didn’t catch up to her until they reached a table, at which point he collapsed into a sturdy wooden chair, panting. “Do you have to walk so fast?” he asked.

“It wouldn’t be a problem if–”

A lot of things happened at once. Servers scrambled to set plates before each new arrival. Someone obviously important at CorpQuest took the microphone on a stage at the front of the room to make some announcements, but Kurt wasn’t listening, he was looking for–

“Moira! There she is!”

Over in the next aisle, Connie approached a table to serve a svelte woman and her heavyset gentleman companion their drinks. Her hip bumped the corner of the table, but she didn’t seem to mind, or even notice, so busy was she staring steady at the gentleman whose wine she’d almost spilled off her tray. Setting glasses down before both of her guests, she babbled, distracted, “Here’s your wine, it’s drink!”

“Connie! Connie, over here!” Kurt hissed, but Connie didn’t hear him, just pirouetted her clumsy way back into service, stumbling and fumbling as her head spun to take in the sight of so much pudge in one room. She took a step backward and collided with another server, who gave her a rough shove.

“Say ‘behind’, you idiot!” snapped her colleague. She just laughed. It was as if she was drunk on the sights around her.

“Oh yeah. It’s a good thing we showed up. She’s doomed,” muttered Moira.

***

When Moira next turned her attention to the stage, some sort of eating contest had commenced onstage. A very small part of her was fascinated, but the greater part was horrified: there were ten contestants, each so immense they were immobile, lined up at a long table shoving hot dogs down their throats, but clearly not relishing the experience. The ones that didn’t look drugged out of their minds glanced intermittently over their shoulders out of what might have been fear of an ever-present threat, and…

“Oh, Kurt, I don’t like this. Why are their ankles tied to the chair legs?”

“I don’t like it either,” said Kurt.

“Really? I thought this whole feederism thing was your jam, or whatever.”

“I thought it was, okay? But neither Connie nor the Internet warned me about anything like this!” he hissed. “There’s clearly some sort of power imbalance at work here between the feeders and feedees. And why were we forced to surrender our phones at the door? Why are there armed guards posted at every exit?”

“There are WHAT?” She whipped around in her seat toward the nearest doorway to find he was right.

The hall fell silent as three dings of a fork tapping against a champagne flute called for attention. A thin, nondescript man with balding brown hair in pinstripes and very shiny shoes stood upon the stage. Addressing the crowd, he said, with a thick English accent, "I see a lot of familiar faces. I'm glad you've all decided to come back for another summer with us." He didn't introduce himself, as if everyone was just supposed to know who he was. "I also see a few feeders returning unaccompanied…whether that's a shame or a triumph, I have no doubt that we'll be able to set you up with your next feedee."

"A shame or a triumph? What does he mean by that?" whispered Kurt.

“What, indeed?” asked a woman seated at a nearby table, stifling a low chuckle into her fist and seeming not to have realized, in her drunken daze, that anyone else had heard her.