THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

10_tubby_

i make my excuses and leave but when i look back I see tubby there, so big he barely fits beneath the table, his obese body squatting on two fat, folded legs, like a toad, his bald, sausage-greased head resting on a cushion of chins. only his arms are thin, as thin as broomsticks. tubby never wears clothes but he's so fat his skin hangs down like a skirt. his eyes are just holes in the doughy flesh of his face and he is still grinning at me. my parents feet are touching him, his back fat folded around their legs, but they don't feel him. i know that tubby could dance around in front of them, could jump up and down on their spines, and they would not know he was there.

only I see tubby, and he sees only me.

i can't even remember when he was first there, or maybe he's always been there. but he never used to take everything, he would only ever help himself to a slice of ham, or some apple peel. but the more he took the hungrier I got, and the hungrer I got the more he would take. now he's always there. he sits beneath the tables at school, he stands in the shadows behind the candy machines, he waits for me at night, when i'm so hungry I can't sleep and I come downstairs for a snack. he was there at the hospital when mother and father took me. when the doctor handed me a lollipop it was tubby's hand that took it, and it was tubby that sat quietly in the corner crunching it into dust, all while the doctor and my parents stared at me and smiled and nodded and told me how well I was doing to eat.

tubby is here right now, he's sitting in the bath even though the bath isn't big rnough for him. his flesh hangs over the edge and touches the floor. he's bigger than ever and he's grinning at me and grunting and i know what I am going to fedd him, it's right here in my hands, a skull on the label and the words 'bleach' written on the side of the bottle. i don't even care any more if he drinks it or if he lets me, I'm so hungry I don't want to live. my legs look like his arms, they're almost too weak to hold me. i'm made of twigs and sticks, not even real any more.

tubby grunts, the bath squeaking as he jiggles impatiently. i lift the bottle to my lips and tubby pulls it from me, puts it to his mouth, and drinks, drinks, drinks, until the bottle is empty. then he tosses it to the floor, still grinning, still grunting.

he won't even let me have this, I think. he won't even let me go.

god I'm so hungry, let me eat.

let me eat

tubby climbs out of the bath, he waddles to me on those emormous legs. they're so toadbent beneath his weight that he's the same height as me. he holds out his hand and I think he wants something more to eat, but I don't have anything, and anyway he's just wanting to hold my hand because he does, his long fingers cracking as they close around mine, just gently.

he's leading me out the bathroom, through the kitchen that smells like food because mom is always cooking now, out through the front door, out onto the street. i'm almost too weak to move but tubby is there, a dreadnought that pushes down the sidewalk. people must see him because they skitter out of his way, but they also can't see him because nobody looks at him, they just stare at me, at the scarecrow thin shape of me, bent legged and bow-backed, my arm outstretched before me.

i don't know where we are. a tall building that reaches the clouds that is drenched in shadow. tubby knows, because he pulls me through the door, up the stairs, up and up and up and up and up and up and up past screams and laughter and shouts and cries until i just can't walk any farther.

there's a door, it's open, and I can smell food. tubby goes first, and I wonder if it is his apartment, but i know it is not because there's somebody else here, somebody I can't see even though I can feel them watching me, but it doesn't matter because there's a table in front of me and its' covered in food, so much that it looks like it might break, and tubby just grins at me and the other thing I can't see grins at me and I know I can eat as much as I like here, I know I can.

so I do.

i dig my hands into the red of it, that glorious stickiness, and I eat.

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