Gaining Confidence
By Charissa
Part Four Jenny had eaten more food today than ever in her life before - and enjoyed every bite of it. A very large breakfast, with bacon and buttery scrambled eggs, home fries, pancakes and syrup, then her McDonalds lunch, her three-pastry Starbucks extravaganza and her big spaghetti dinner. More than twice what she'd have eaten on a normal day, she guessed. Going by calories alone, she was wrong: at just over 6000 calories, her consumption had been over three times the usual, since most of the food had been very fatty or sugary. How could she possibly be hungry? Jenny glanced down at her plumpening stomach and imagined all the food she had eaten turning silently and efficiently into soft, buttery fat. By now the spaghetti had definitely started to go down and she wondered how much else she could eat that evening. It was only about 8pm and it was Sunday tomorrow, so even if she couldn't sleep after her binge or felt ill tomorrow, it wouldn't much matter.
Jenny did not normally keep snack foods in her apartment (ohh, but that's gonna change, she thought). It was not dark yet outside, and there was an all-night grocery about four blocks away. She put on a skirt and sweater and headed out, telling herself that a brisk walk would give her an appetite.
Jenny had really only bought bread and milk at the grocery before, but this evening she headed round the shelves with a basket and picked off whatever looked good. Packs of cookies, mostly the creamy sandwich kind. Coca-Cola (diet? No!) and chocolate milk. A family pack of Milky Ways… mmmm. Caramel sauce. 16 mini-muffins. From the chill cabinet, 4 individual tiramisu (her mouth began to water at the thought). A lemon cheesecake. Two pints of Ben and Jerry's, and finally six creme-filled doughnuts. That was (more or less) a representative sampling of all the sweet delights in this small store. She was aware that she wouldn't be able to eat all of this tonight, but she was going to give it a real good go.
“You throwing a party?” asked the middle-aged clerk in a friendly tone.
“Nah,” grinned Jenny. “I'm gonna eat it all myself.” She could tell the clerk didn't believe her as he rambled on into some anecdote about his kids' birthday parties when they were little and what a mess it made. Looking at the food, she realised it was indeed mostly the kind of “treat” food that only came out at birthdays when she was a kid (except maybe the tiramisu). This didn't seem inappropriate. She'd now become a woman, in more than one way, and now she could have whatever she wanted whenever she felt the urge, even if it wasn't anyone's birthday. She wasn't a kid anymore.
When Jenny got back to her building, her arms were feeling the weight of the groceries. She wondered how much they weighed. She put the two brown bags on to her bathroom scale, and was quite surprised - there were sixteen and a half pounds of food. Of course, thought Jenny, that doesn't translate to sixteen and a half pounds of fat - a lot of it is the soda and chocolate milk, and most of that is just water. With this thought, she weighed herself. She was up half a pound from this afternoon, though that was probably all the pasta a couple of hours ago - still not quite at 143 yet. (Jenny thought to herself that she might as well start weighing herself on a full belly as she never remembered to do so when it was empty - maybe because that was an increasingly rare state of affairs.) If she managed to eat every bit of the food in front of her, she would - at least temporarily - weigh 159 pounds. Was that possible? The spaghetti seemed to have gone down completely now, she thought, patting her stomach, which rippled just a little. She felt ready to give it a try. “How much fatter can I get tonight?” she asked her reflection.
She changed back into her pink shorts, which still fitted - just - though it took more effort to do them up, and there was beginning to be a nice little bulge over the low waistband, which pushed Jenny's lower tummy in a little so that the chub over her ribs was forced to stick out more than usual. She grinned at her reflection in the mirror. She might not be as “well-rounded” as the girl in the park, but nobody could call her skinny now - with these tight shorts on, plump was beginning to be the word. She knew you still couldn't see much difference in her baggy work clothes, and she was glad… this could be her secret a little bit longer. The shorts' new tightness pleased her - she really wanted to feel herself getting fuller and fatter with every bite tonight. She peeled off her T-shirt and saw to her surprise that her breasts were larger also - the difference wasn't nearly as marked as with her belly, but they were filling her bra better than they had done. She unzipped her shorts, anointed her squashy stomach and, for good measure, her breasts with lotion, zipped herself up again and headed to the kitchen with her feast. It was 8.40pm.
Jenny poured herself a glass of chocolate milk and started in on the doughnuts. They were sweet with powdered sugar, and the creamy filling reminded her of her Granny's English custard. She ate quite slowly, knowing she would have to pace herself, chewing thoroughly and washing each mouthful down with a sip of chocolate milk. After four doughnuts, she decided she needed a change and opened the first pack of cookies. She prised one half of the sandwich off with her teeth, and allowed it to melt in her mouth (with the help of a little chocolate milk) before scraping out the creamy filling and crunching up the other wafer. Mmm, this was more like it. She paused to rub her stomach appreciatively, then kept going. Within a couple of minutes, the whole package was gone. Taking a spoon, she took the first tiramisu out of the refrigerator, and felt its smooth, cool richness slide down her throat.
By 10.30pm, Jenny, still eating slowly but surely, had worked her way through the two remaining doughnuts, another two packs of cookies and three Milky Ways, and six of the mini-muffins. Her front felt rigid - she couldn't have leant any further forward. She stood up, and staggered slightly, surprised that she could actually feel the extra weight of all the food in her belly. The shorts were really straining now, and she wanted to undo them, but she had promised herself a look in the mirror at 10.30. She unwrapped another Milky Way and took a bite - no point wasting time - and ambled to the bathroom, holding her stomach. The girl in the mirror looked - not to put too fine a point on it - bloated. Noticeably bigger than after dinner, Jenny's belly was sticking out most above the waist. Jenny looked weirdly like one of those actresses or models who get pregnant but don't gain any weight apart from the bump, so that they have a distinct bulge on an otherwise thin body. Jenny's was pushing her shorts down again, so that the waistband had creased deeply along its length and was digging into her back as well as her tummy. The button was really straining. Jenny breathed in with an enormous effort and undid it.
Her gut surged forwards and undid her zipper for her. She breathed out, and it settled forward another inch or so, filling the new space. There was a red crease right across under Jenny's navel from where the shorts had been digging into her, and it just felt so good for that pressure to be released. She had thought that she was probably about done for tonight, but now she felt she could go on after all, after a massage down with the lotion. This time the softness of the layer of fat seemed to be spread thinner over her solidly packed interior, and her belly already looked pretty tight and shiny. She took the lotion back through to the kitchen with her, grinning. How much fatter would she be by the time she was truly too full to eat any more?
By now Jenny had run out of chocolate milk, so she started to use soda to wash down her cookies and mini-muffins. This produced an unforeseen effect. Because the soda was very gassy, it expanded inside Jenny and made her feel fuller more quickly. At first she thought this was a disadvantage, as it was slowing her down, but then she let out her first enormous belch - and realised that she suddenly felt noticeably less full. She ate two more mini-muffins much more quickly, finding that the expansion of the gases had somehow packed things down inside, or stretched her stomach, she didn't know which. Only four muffins left… did I really eat twelve already? Three muffins left… two (chew chew)… one…none! She poured a little lotion into her hand and massaged her belly again, which released another big burp. Jenny quickly filled the space with the last two melting Milky Ways. Maybe she'd give the soda a break for five minutes, she thought, taking the foil off the second tiramisu. It was 11.05.
By midnight, Jenny had slowed right down. She had only eaten that tiramisu and one other, and a few cookies during the last half hour, and her last soda-fuelled belch had left her feeling she really would vomit if she did it again. She lay supine on the couch, massaging her belly again, which was sticking up enough to obscure her view of her feet, and actually seemed to be pressing down on her like a weight. The television was now on, with some stupid old movie to distract Jenny from her bloated and distended state. There was, however, a carton of Ben and Jerry's on the table beside her, softening. She thought (remembering the pizza day… that felt long ago) she might be able to force some spoonfuls down before going to bed. Eventually she managed about half the pint, and had to admit defeat. Switching off the television, she waddled to the bathroom and clambered on to the scale. She could just about bend far enough to see the readout.
152.
Oh. My. God.
That meant that Jenny had succeeded in eating nine pounds of sugary treats in around four hours. She still had one and a half packs of cookies, one tiramisu, half the soda, some of the caramel sauce, the cheesecake and a pint and a half of ice cream. She was well aware, though, that some of the food, such as the doughnuts, was relatively light in weight but very calorie-laden. She felt pretty calorie-laden herself. Jenny took one last look in the mirror; she looked as though there was an inflated balloon under her upper abdomen. She flicked at her belly with a finger, but it was stretched too tight even to jiggle. It felt greasy with all the lotion she had rubbed in - the bottle was two-thirds empty. Her navel was stretched sideways so that it looked like a slit. She tugged her shorts up around her straining midriff, but they wouldn't close by a good few inches, even if she pulled (and she sure wasn't going to). The tapemeasure was on the floor; she couldn't have bent to pick it up. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and climbed very carefully into bed, propping herself up slightly with pillows as she was sure she would throw up if she rolled on to her stomach in the night.
As she lay in bed, feeling high and dizzy from all the sugar she had consumed, Jenny rubbed her solid belly over and over again. It was absolutely rock-hard, tingling, and she could feel her digestion working as the weight of her supergorged and bulging stomach pressed into the organs all around it! She felt physically ravaged but emotionally triumphant. She had never believed she was going to eat that much. Her hand wandered down between her legs and she wondered what Luke would say if he were there… he couldn't climb on top of her now, that was for sure, or she'd burst!
When Jenny awoke in the morning, her stomach still felt distended and rather sore, and she had a headache. And a desperate need to go to the bathroom; after which she seemed to have lost about two or three pounds, some of which must have been water. She still looked surprisingly… plump round the middle, she thought; once dressed in a loose skirt and T-shirt the difference was less obvious. She added up the calories from the pile of empty packaging, which was still on the kitchen table, and was astounded to discover that around ten thousand calories had gone into her yesterday night. Since she had to go to Granny's that evening, Jenny vowed to eat only if she really felt hungry, and started getting on with work that she had brought home, in the kitchen. The half-packet of cookies was still on the table, however, and Jenny snacked through it almost unconsciously. The sugar, as sugar does, created a craving for more, and basically she was picking at food frequently all morning and afternoon, though she didn't have any regular meals. The cookies and tiramisu were gone, as was quite a bit of cheesecake. It didn't stop her enjoying the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, followed by apple pie, at Granny's that night. She ate less than last week, she thought (by now she didn't feel unusually full at all) and her mother didn't say anything about dieting.
In fact, Jenny continued to snack the following week, and though she didn't deliberately gorge herself, she had naturally increased her stomach's capacity by quite a way that wild night. The portions she now needed to feel full at dinner might even have challenged Luke a little, and of course she now had no reason to stay away from the vending machines. Her workmates noticed that she seemed excited about something, but nobody said anything to her. She started bringing food home from the grocery to nibble on while she was doing the work she'd brought home in the evenings. After her massive binge, about five pounds seemed to have added themselves to her body permanently, and she capped this with another four that week, bringing her five-foot-one body to 151, and getting more rounded every day. The waistbands of her once-loose skirts were now becoming difficult to do up, and she couldn't button her pink shorts any more at all however she sucked herself in, not even under her expanding stomach or by compressing the fat - she had added about 25 pounds from the point at which she first tried them on, and 39 from her “normal” 112! Her waist had expanded to 30 inches from her original 22 or so, and the roll of fat on her stomach was testing the buttons on her work blouses when she sat. She looked more than slightly plump now, she thought. Her breasts were beginning to seriously overflow their bra cups, so she had to buy some new bras, and just as well because the back of the old size was beginning to cut her in half. Chub had now started to build up on her sides and back as well; she had to go from a 32A to a 36B. The cups were a little roomy, but Jenny was sure this wouldn't last; she'd got a push-up with padded inserts, which she could take out when no longer needed. Her arms seemed a little plumper too. She was fitting in to the size-twelve jeans she had bought with not much room over, though they were loose on her legs.
Part Five