A Bit Appetite

this is an unfinished short story. It had quite good progress, and is hilariously and wittily told, but I can't seem to finish it. I'd LOVE advice on this!!

I fall out of bed with a flump. Tumbling onto the squishy carpet, as squishy as I am. The obnoxious polo uniform I’m wearing makes me look like an amoeba that’s swallowed a rainbow. And the rainbow swelled inside.

A greasy nap in a greasy uniform.

I’d been blessed as a child with smooth, pale skin and a lithe, supple frame. A delicate china doll with shiny auburn hair. My mother, spotting my effortless five-year-young beauty, my peak year, enrolled me in gymnastics, the sport of models. With prepubescent talent oozing from my every unseen pore, I reached the top of my league in a matter of months. Medals from every competition adorned my walls, a blinding rutilant panel of searing sheer perfection. And I was perfect, and I was happy.

But things changed in high school. It seems that self-awareness came creeping up on me on one stupidly monotonous day, and as I observed the pretty skeletons in my shiny magazines, and compared them to the perceived rotundness in my mirror, I became starkly aware of my own repulsive protuberance. But I wasn’t, really; I’ve looked at pictures, I’ve looked at videos, and I was just as fit, just as lissome as I’d always been! Not skeletal, perhaps, but healthy, dewy, bright. My mother was as skeletal as the magazine models, but she was ugly, with the face of a wrinkled orange peel. My body may not have been as good as hers, but my face was certainly more handsome. Still, I was not satisfied. When I told her of my woes, she immediately sympathized, speaking of my “pudgy lovehandles” and “sausage fingers,” and introduced me to the Atkin’s Diet, her simple method of maintaining her healthy, bone-conforming BMI that she’d picked up in her elementary school days.

The low-carbohydrate diet seemed scientifically sound and easily attainable. I cut out pasta and bread and cake and filled my plates with juicy greens and cherry tomatoes and lima beans. And when I forgot to follow the diet, my fingers found their way to my uvula, and I’d hit that dangling punching bag until the smelly liquids would come up and force me to stop. But, oh, the unprecedented horror! My palate didn’t experience anything sweet for up to an entire week, and by the end of it, my vision was colored a dull rust, and my sense of smell disappeared, and I cried daily for this godforsaken world, a waxen, ashy humanity.

So I gave up. On only eating rabbit food, that is. If I wasn’t allowed to have doughnuts or cupcakes or sandwiches, I damn well would have my Twizzlers. I damn well would have my Rolos. My Hershey’s Kisses, my Mars Bars, my darling Juju Bears! An acidic wet dream of Willy Wonka set in my stomach, filled with chocolates and wine gums and licorice and jollies, and, oh, it was delightful, simply delightful! I ate and ate and swelled and swelled and here I am today, a mass thrice as large as what I had perceived myself to be, with a spotted face to match, oozing puss, pathetically slumped on the floor, the fat on my cheeks rising to cover my eye sockets, with naught but a scratchy linen to hide my jiggling, disgusting, throbbing mass.

Needless to say, my mother has forgotten all about me. And my medals are nowhere to be found.

The diner looks like me. The chairs are stuffed and red and shiny, a synthesized cherry, and the walls are chartreuse, the floor pinkly tiled, and it looks like a clown regurgitated Christmas in jolting projectiles, his esophagus a sprinkler. They should really let someone who knows what they’re doing run this dingy shithole. Day in, day out, clocking in to work, squeezing barely past the counter to serve the masses with greasy burgers and salted fries, everyone stuffing their faces and I swear I can see them swelling right before my adipose eyes.

My adipose eyes. They see all, they know all. Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. I may have high cholesterol and I probably will get colon cancer, “a*s cancer,” but my mind is lucid and active, dark and darting between the sad characters that inhabit this musty diner. I don’t know what’s worse�"to be ridiculed outwardly or silently. I suppose it’s silently. At least when someone calls you a whale in a booming voice you have the right to punch the blood out of his pulpy jaw, and everyone thinks he’s the a*s, even if they agree with him.

But with times of silence, of quiet judging, where you can’t retaliate, where you can’t mock them, those are the worst, because they Thank you! and Yes, please! and Have a nice day!, but you know, you hear the acerbic undertones of those dulcet nothings, and it’s disgusting, they’re deplorable and you can’t do anything about it.

That’s why I’m such a b***h all the time. If someone is annoying, I’ll say, “Goddamn it, you’re f*****g annoying,” and they thank me by shutting right the hell up, because they appreciate my honesty. And the way I do it makes so I don’t have to snarl at them more than once. They appreciate me, my coworkers, my boss, the customers, they really do, even if they act like they hate me.

So I stand around the diner, waddling up to tables, carrying arms carrying plates carrying food, and they hail me like I’m the Messiah. Damn straight. And the humdrum days go by, with whale jokes and black hole spats (this one’s becoming more common; evidence of an educated public), until the rush of 6 PM dinner sweeps through, and the diner is left dirty, trashy, polluted. And I’m the one that has to clean up the s**t.

I’m always cleaning everyone’s s**t.

Today, the sun is slowly setting outside the window, and the sky is pretty, soft, really colorful, not like a clown’s puke or anything, but nice, you know, like God is thanking everyone for a productive day’s work. And my shiny hair and rainbow polo streak across the sky, in dulled brilliance, and it’s nice. It really is nice.

But this picturesque moment is ruined by yet another clang of the rusty bell above the entrance. We really need to change that f*****g bell. My boss tells me, orders me, to scrape myself presentable and ask the man for his order. It is a man, a handsome man, donned in a dark trench and ebony oxfords. He grabs a table near a window and looks out wistfully. It’s cinematic.

And it’s weird, you know, because he’s mysterious and intriguing, but I think something about him is sad and soft, a rich bookworm life full of melancholy, and I feel like he’s waiting for the right person, for a companion, for someone to whisper his hair behind his ears and tuck in his mouth the secrets of the galaxy…

Or he’s simply hungry.

I trudge over to take his order. He smells like cinnamon. I’m reluctant to dispel his reverie, so I stand, speechless, and he breaks the silence first.

“Wow. Pretty sunset outside,” he remarks to the window.

“Sure is.”

I’m blushing madly he’s so handsome, with swampy bedroom eyes and tousled hair, looks like an aspiring philosophy professor, and the pallid diner walls curtain my tomato face, and I’m left to sputters and heart palpitations.

The man gives me his name. Izaak. Is that Yiddish? Russian? Biblical? It sounds like a nerd with greasy black hair and a propensity for furries, or some kind of horrendous Israeli Jew, yet it somehow suits him positively, this swarthy cinnamon man. I like the way it sits on my tongue. Eye sick.

He doesn’t hesitate in ordering a black coffee, a strawberry milkshake, and our signature Bozo Burger, a massive two-pounder with three beef patties, crispy bacon, four slices of cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, and a secret sauce which I’m convinced holds sprinkles of nicotine and cocaine. I was surprised when he ordered this because even I wouldn’t eat that, and I’m more than two hundred pounds, and he’s thin and toned and handsome and I have no idea how that slab of hydrogenated oil will fit in his little belly.

I bring his order to the chef, and he looks at me unusually. I see in my reflection from the metal that I’m grinning cheek to cheek, and it looks like two crabapples have been forcibly thrown  into my mouth, and, to be honest, it’s a horrid image, my face as rubicund as dried blood. I’ve looked a perfect idiot all the way from Izaak’s table to the chef’s kitchen. No wonder he gave me a quizzical look. Shocked, actually, is more like it. Or perhaps it was a sneer of disgust. I really can’t tell with people.

There’s a peephole on the kitchen doors, and it’s conveniently fixated on Izaak’s back. He’s taken off his coat now, and underneath is a dark cotton sweater that shows off a well-cared for physique. I enjoy the view from behind the doors.

The food is ready in five minutes. Food that’s cooked that quickly certainly can’t be any sort of good for the body, but my job is to serve, not to critique.

“Oi! How the hell is this s**t supposed to be food? You can’t cook meat in five minutes and have it be edible. Dear Lord.”

Just kidding.

Anyway so I give the grub to Izaak. Stupid smile still slapped sideways.

Reviews

[Bernice Hein]

clemency- I love this so far! you definetly should finish it. Maybe this guy could come back to the diner every week and order this burger, and she find this is all he eats all week. Or maybe he inspires her somehow to change her weight. or maybe he is mourning for his deceased wife and they grow to have a beautiful friendship. no matter what you should definetly finish this story!