"The Accident"
a story by ScareGlow

“It sure was nice of you uncle to let us use his cabin for the weekend.”
“Yep. Lot's of fishing, hiking, all that good stuff. Unless this rain never lets up. Then we'd be stuck in the cabin with nothing to do,” said Marc, driving carefully on account of the rain and the darkness.
“Oh, there'll still be plenty to do,” said Esme, as she stroked the three days worth of stubble on his chin. Marc drifted off for a moment, thinking about Esme's gorgeous body. She was pretty and thin enough to be a model, although she was sort of short. Then, he stiffened to attention in order to navigate the winding road.
“Gee, this road sure is twisty. Thank heaven I'm such a good driver. Hey, that pair of headlights is drifting a little close...”
“IT'S HEADED RIGHT FOR US!” Esme yelled. Mark jerked the wheel vigorously to the right, but the car ahead of him, hydroplaning on the surface of the water, slid towards his right. With nowhere to go, he desperately swung back to the left. But the car kept coming. The sharp cry of rent metal split the night sky, and then everything went black.
---
“Oh Esme, you've got to make it out of this, you've just got to.” Marc clutched her hand, but there was no response.
“Marc...” Esme's mother turned to him. “You need to get some rest. Thank you for everything you've done...”
“It's all my fault. If only I hadn't turned to the left...”
“It's not your fault,” Mrs. Pietroforte said, hugging him. “You go on now.” Marc left the room. The doctor came in.
“Mrs. Pietroforte...I...I have some news...I'm not sure whether to say it's good or bad...well, no, it has to be good any time we can save a life, but...” Esme's mother urged him to go on.
“You see, if we leave things as they are, there's no chance of your daughter recovering from her coma. We have to try a dangerous and barely tested new kind of operation. If you daughter survives, she will have to take a certain pill for the rest of her life. Without it, she will certainly die. This pill, which has no replacement, has some known side effects, such as retarding the basal rate of metabolism, stunting of leptin production, variance in the adiposity signal, resulting in rapid enlargement and increase of adipose tissue...”
Mrs. Pietroforte's brows knotted in confusion. “In english, please, doctor.”
“In other words, Mrs. Pietroforte, your daughter may become...extremely fat.”
“Oh dear. Well, my husband will be here soon, and we'll have to talk it over...oh, what am I saying? We'd do anything to have our daughter back. As for Esme, what she would want...well, I know this will be hard for her,” said Mrs. Pietroforte, thinking of her daughter playing sports, preening, dating, maintaining her slim figure so well, when it seemed like all her classmates and friends were gaining weight. “But, Esme loved life, I mean, she loves it, I'm sure she'll take this challenge, and just keep on smiling and working hard. You have to do the operation, doctor, you just have to.”
---
“Mom! Dad! What happened?”
“Oh Esme! You're alright!” said her Mrs. Pietroforte, as she and Mr. Pietroforte hugged her.
“Where's Marc?”
“You were in a terrible car accident. Marc was by your bed day and night, but just left for Europe for his doctoral program. It was his fault, really.”
“And I'm okay? I mean, I feel alright, my legs work,” she said wiggling her toes.
“Yes, thank god, you're fine. It's just...from the operation you know...you have to take this pill everyday.”
“That's it?”
“Well, the doctor said it might make you hungry all the time, that you might gain weight,” said Mrs. Pietroforte, painfully.
“Oh...really. Well, I guess that's not so bad, I'll just have to exercise a lot.”
Mrs. Pietroforte stole a quick glance at her husband. She was about to tell Esme everything, but she just couldn't, not yet, and he shared her feelings.
“Yes...exercise...” she said.
---
Esme woke up with her stomach rumbling. Nothing but hospital food for the last week, she thought. It will be good to have some real food. As an accomplished runner and biker, she was used to eating a lot, despite her petite frame. She walked down to the kitchen table to make breakfast. Cheerios with blueberries and walnuts, eggs, pancakes, a little bit of bacon. She soon cleared her plate. I can't remember ever having been this hungry, she thought. Except maybe the time I did that 50 mile road race. I must not have eaten much, I think I even lost weight in the hospital. She fried up two more eggs, poured another bowl of cereal, and cooked four strips of bacon, which disappeared just as quickly. She sat at the breakfast table, feeling a little bloated. Then she went to her room to read a textbook. May as well prepare for my master's program in the fall while I'm convalescing, she thought.
Her reading was soon interrupted by another craving for food. Oh no, she thought. This must be what they meant about the pill she had to take, about the hunger and the weight gain. Instantly, she went back to her book, deciding not to eat anything til lunchtime. But it was difficult to focus on the words on the page. She could taste orange juice and milk in her mouth, and she felt her stomach rumble. Almost as if against her will, her two legs brought her back to the kitchen, to make a large snack.
---
“Mom! You have to help me. I can't stop eating. Look, call the doctor or something. I'm not going to take this pill anymore.”
“Esme!” Mrs. Pietroforte became suddenly stern. “Esme, if you stop taking that pill, you'll...” Her eyes began to well up with tears. “You'll die.”
“Grrr...I know. I have to figure something out. Look,” she fingered her belly nervously as she pulled up her shirt. Sure enough, there was a tiny change to her belly, and it was very slightly round as opposed to its usual flat. “I've only been home for three days, and I'm already fat.”
“Esme. You are not fat. You are a beautiful girl, and even if you do become fat, it's not the end of the world. And it's not worth dying over,” she said, hugging her tight. “Why don't you go for a run or something?”
So Esme went out for a long, long run, up hills and down hills, all the way past the next town over and back. As she thought about all the calories she had burned, she found herself absentmindedly sitting in the kitchen, making a sandwich...
“STOP!” she thought to herself. “I can't eat anymore, I've got to running again.” But it was hopeless. She only got a mile away from her house, then turned back, made her way straight to kitchen, and made a huge sandwich, bursting with swiss cheese, roast beef, and tomatoes. She continued making sandwiches until all the ingredients were gone. Finally, she stumbled back towards her room, her belly feeling like it was about to burst, and took a nap.
---
It took two weeks for Esme to realize, without a doubt, that she had no choice but to become fat. She would wake up every morning starving, go to bed starving, dreaming about food. In between, she would eat, and eat, and eat, finishing off family size containers peanut butter or cookies from Costco, eating foods she had given up because of their unhealthiness, frying up giant batches of bacon and sausages and eggs, thick with grease, and cramming them into her face as fast as possible.
In the mornings, as she pulled her jeans on, she would notice how her belly pushed out the waistband, pushed it further and further until finally, her belly decided to hang over the edge instead. Then it would be a quick trip to the department store with her mother, as she desperately looked for slimming, flattering clothes.
“Mom, that sweater looks as big as a picnic blanket,” she snapped.
“Hush, dear. Besides, black is slimming, right?”
But there was little hope in hiding her ever-burgeoning figure. Her growing belly would peek out from under her shirt, love handles would emerge from her sides as she leaned over, her formerly petite breasts now large and threatening to burst from their cotton or silk confines. The most embarrassing days were visits with friends, some of whom had heard less of her accident than others.
“So I guess you and Marc will have to get married,” said a friend. Esme nodded, not really listening. She was sort of hungry. “Is it a boy or a girl? Hm, I can feel it kicking,” she said, placing her hand on Esme's belly. Esme was horrified. She broke into tears, and it took some minutes and some hugging until she could finally choke back her sobs enough to tell her friend the story.
---
“Esme? It's me, Marc. I know you needed some time to yourself. And I know, it's all my fault.” Esme paused for a moment, thinking that it wasn't Marc's fault. It was just bad luck. Terrible luck.
“Anyway, I really want to see you. I'm gonna take a flight home this weekend to see you.”
“No, Marc.” Esme still hadn't told him about the pill, or her weight gain. She needed to get out of this, but she couldn't blame Marc for something beyond his control. She couldn't think of a good excuse, though. “I...I can't see you again. I can't see you ever.” She hung up, crying.
Marc was terribly frustrated. She probably blames me for the accident, he thought. I'll just call her next week. Still, it wasn't like she got injured or anything, he thought. Guess she's still shook up...
Esme was hopeless. She woke up ever morning, with hardly anything to do but eat. Her friends meant well, but they were all shocked at how large she had become. She had quickly surpassed the fattest of her friends. She sat on the couch, her ass gradually shaping and molding the cushion with each long period of watching tv, eating chips and popcorn, until it became permanently deformed, contoured to the exact shape of her butt. She would rush to the phone, then walk back to the couch in dismay when the caller id showed that it was Marc. Or she'd walk to the kitchen, to get more snacks.
Every part of her was bigger. Her thighs, widening, it seemed, every moment, her arms, little folds developing at her elbows. Her gut, now large enough to hold in both hands, to pull up and let it slap down onto her.
“Come on, Esme. You have a nice womanly figure. What do my students call it, po...podunk...donkey something or other.”
“”Badonkadonk! Mom! How can you say that?”
“Esme, a lot of the young men might find you attractive, very attractive. I know this is very difficult for you, but you shouldn't be so caught up in the way things were. Like, take Alaina for instance. What did you think of her when you were growing up?”
“That she was so fat, and she was always eating, and I thought if she just stopped eating so much, she wouldn't have to complain all the time about how fat she was.”
“And how do you feel now?”
“Jealous! Alaina looks skinny compared to me! I'm like a great big cow!”
Mrs. Pietroforte was momentarily caught off guard by her daughter's answer. “Well, she dates a nice boy, and seems to have an enjoyable life. I was hoping that you'd see that she's pretty in her own way, and that you're pretty to. You can still live your life. You don't have to be a prisoner.”
But her words were to no avail. Esme was more depressed than ever, thinking about all her friends having fun, while she was trapped. Trapped by her own body, growing thicker and thicker, crushing the real Esme and pinning her inside a gross exterior of fatness. How could she go to the club, ass crack hanging out, pink thong showing. How could she dance? It would be laughable, her giant belly swaying from side to side, her huge hips gyrating, knocking over anyone next to her. Esme was resigned to her fate.
Soon, the constant cycle of buying clothes, outgrowing them, and buying new ones became to much to bear. Esme took to wearing clothes that were clearly to small, then to abstaining from clothes altogether, save for a pair of a huge pair of panties and a bra. Her parents were distressed, but tried to be understanding and tolerant. They were dismayed when Esme stopped leaving the house. Their attempts to get her to talk to someone, a psychiatrist, a weight loss or overeating group, all ended in failure. After all, there was no one exactly like her, cursed in the same way. A weight loss group couldn't help, since their was admittedly no chance that she could lose weight. September had come and gone, but Esme was too depressed to even think about going back to school, so she didn't even go to her program.
So she would sit, in front of the computer or the television, in her sweaty panties, covered in a light dust of crumbs from baked goods, with her huge gut laying in her lap, her giant thighs smooshed out to the sides, thinking hopelessly about the day when she would fill the entire couch. When her belly would be so big that she could barely move, just enough to struggle to the bathroom or to the kitchen to get more food. Or when she couldn't move at all, when she would just have to sit there and have her parents feed her.
Finally, her loneliness was overwhelming. In searching the web for information about her condition, anything to help her, she had come across a strange website. Apparently, there were men who wanted to meet women like her, women who were overweight, even outrageously overweight. They called them BBWs, the larger, SSBBWs. Some men liked them the best. What type am I? she wondered. She looked at her body in the mirror. Her belly was a giant, flabby apron hanging over her front. It was divided neatly in two at her belly button, which was hidden in a cavernous hole. Her butt was huge, with a fold so big that it threatened to suck up her panties. There were hundreds of unwanted pounds, hanging around all over her body. She typed the letters, painfully: “I am a 23 year old S...S...” she wanted to stop, to call the whole thing off, but she knew that she had to accept who she was, now and forever...“B...B...W. ” Then finished her message, and went to get a snack.
The next day, her gmail was overflowing with messages. “Send pics” they said. “You sound beautiful. Love to know more.” Some guys even sent their pics. Some of them were middle aged, but a surprising number were in their twenties, or teens. Esme picked out one guy who looked so handsome, she wondered whether she would have been able to attract him when she was thin. And now she was fatter than Alaina Goldman, probably as fat as Alaina and her fat sister put together, and this incredibly handsome man wanted to meet her. He didn't even care how far away, though luckily he was only about an hour away. So Esme reluctantly, but with some glimmer of hope, arranged a date with “Clint.”
There are people staring at my body, she thought as she sat on two chairs at the restaurant. And not for the reason that they used to. But Clint was great. He was so interested in the way she ate, the clothes she wore, all the parts of her body. It was difficult to get used to thinking of her body positively, though. On their second date, when things had heated up, she wanted to do it with the lights out, but Clint insisted, saying that her body was more beautiful in the light, that he wanted to savor every fold and roll, all of her body in its massive glory. So she let him do what he wanted, playing with her belly, digging his hands deep into her luscious rolls of back fat. When he finished, he fell asleep promptly, nuzzled into her giant bosom. They had more dates, but it was always the same. Clint watching her eat, taking her to bed, falling asleep when he was done. He was obsessed with her belly, her ass, her breasts, everything about her, except her. Though reluctant to do so, since he was her first intimate relationship since Marc, she brought it to his attention.
“No, that's not it. You know I love you for who you are.” But his obsession with sex continued. Finally, Clint became angry. “It's not my fault you don't do anything, you just sit in your skimpy panties and eat all day. There are a million fat chicks like you, and I can lay any of them. I don't need this shit.” So she and Clint broke up. But she had learned a valuable lesson. Though Clint was wrong, in some ways he was right, too.
---
“Yes, I know I missed the first semester. But I had a valid medical emergency...I know, I should have called, but it was serious...really?...oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou!” She hung up the phone. Her program was willing to let her start at the beginning of the second semester in January. She was no longer scared. Well, just a little. Esme had regained her life. She went out every day, to the library, to run errands, ignoring everyone who stared at her, except the FAs. Well, sometimes she ignored them too, if they just stared at her ass. She was wearing nice, tight jeans, and a floral top, sexy enough to reveal her beauty but still classy. They showed the world that she was confident, secure in her size , ready to live her life. She bought the Louis Vuitton Speedy bag that she had always wanted. She split the bill with her mom, as it was a sort of back-to-school present. At least handbags always fit, no matter what size you were, she thought. Though she was fat enough that no one would blame her for sitting on the couch all day, she exercised as best she could, walking or even swimming as best as she could, in order to maintain her health and her cheery disposition. She continued taking her pill diligently, but her rate of weight gain started to tail off, suggesting that there were biological limits to the pill's effects. Maybe the terrible vision she'd had, of being a giant blob, unable to move anything except her mouth to eat more food, might never come true. She had regained everything in her life, it seemed. Everything that is, except...
“Marc? Marc it's me, Esme.”
“Esme? I've been trying to get in contact with you for months. Phone, email, letters...Oh, I'm so glad to hear from you.”
“I know, I'm sorry I was sort of a bitch, it's just that I was having a really hard time. Anyway, I want to see you again, it's just...”
“I know, you're still mad about that car accident. I'm really sorry, I've had months and months to think it over.”
“Marc...I'm not mad at you. It's just that, I never told you, after the operation, I have to take this pill everyday, it makes me gain weight...”
“Oh, that's nothing for a champion athlete like you. I'm sure you'll just burn it all off.”
“No Marc, it's too strong for me. I've gained...”
He cut her off. “So what, you've gained a few pounds. Our love is too strong for me to care about something like that. I'm not shallow, you know me. Besides, maybe you look good a few pounds heavier. What do the black guys call it, badonka...”
“MARC! Listen to me, I'm not a few pounds heavier. Look, I've gained hundreds of pounds. I am incredibly fat. You know, like obese. Morbidly obese. I've come to terms with my body. I don't expect you to. I just want to talk to you, you know, to sort of catch up, be friends...”
“Esme...oh Esme...the love we had, it was so real and so strong...it IS so real and so strong, every moment I was holding your hand in that hospital room, while you were unconscious...I knew right then and there that you were the woman for me. If you think I'm going to let something like you gaining hundreds of pounds get in the way of our love, then you don't know Marc Cloudsmith. I'm taking the first flight home I can get, I can't wait to see you. And you'll always be beautiful to me, no matter what you weigh.”
“Marc! I can't wait either.”
---
Though he'd had the whole plane ride from Germany to think about exactly what she'd look like, even Marc was initially shocked at just how fat Esme was. He was looking down, down at the huge crescent-shaped area of fat tucked into her jeans. Then up to her colossal gut, her massive hips, giant bloated breasts...but then his eyes locked into those eyes that he'd known for so long, that old smile of hers, and he was powerless to resists. He hugged Esme, his body sinking into her fatness while she closed her huge arms around him, knowing that, now that they were back together, nothing could keep them apart.