“Comfy?” he said.
“The edges poke.”
“I’ll have to fix that. Can you manage for now? It won’t be long.”
“I guess.”
Charles put the fingers of his right hand in his mouth to wet them but also to warm them. He wanted this to be a pleasant experience for her.
“All right now, you’re going to feel my fingers.” He focused the flashlight with his left hand and reached up to begin his examination. As he touched Aurora, she jumped.
“What?” he said.
“It tickles.” She settled back down. “I’m okay.”
Charles started again and this time she held still. He began at her anus, even though that area was not subject to change, and worked his way forward, spreading and prodding, committing every centimeter to memory. And as he worked he hummed a happy, tuneless little song.
Charles Needs a Change
Aurora waited with her ear pressed to the bedroom door. Mrs. Johns’ uniform was far too small. It only zipped halfway up the back, and the short sleeves cut off the circulation in her arms. Luckily the shoes fit. Aurora could hear him moving. It sounded like he was dragging furniture around the room. He stopped and it was quiet. Then she heard the crying sound. He imitated an infant’s wail and that was her cue. She opened the door and stepped into his room. Charles had cleared the top of his dresser, moved it into the middle of the room, and covered it with a clean white towel. He lay on top of it, dressed only in a cloth diaper fastened with a large safety pin capped in baby-blue plastic. He looked ridiculous but Aurora knew it would be disastrous if she laughed.
“Is Sweet Boy hungry?” Aurora hurried to his side. “Are you wet?” For one awful moment Aurora thought she smelled shit. It made her gag but she kept smiling. She made her voice cheery. “Poopie diaper?”
Charles stopped his crying and cooed. He kept his lips pulled down over his teeth in an apparent effort to look toothless.
Aurora forced herself to breath through her mouth as she pulled Charles’ leg up over his head and pulled the edge of the diaper open. It had been only gas.
“You’re just wet,” she said joyfully.
Charles started to cry again, this time kicking his legs in tantrum. Aurora opened the top drawer of the dresser and took out the extra-large Binky pacifier. Charles cried harder and paddled his arms in rhythm with his legs. Aurora ran the rubber bulb across his lower lip and he quickly latched on to the Binky, sucking furiously. She considered giving him a spanking but Charles generally disapproved of her improvisations.
“Let’s get you changed.” Aurora unhooked the pin and, with just the tips of her thumb and index fingers, pulled open the urine-drenched cotton diaper. She was surprised to see that Charles had completely shaved his pubic hair. He looked very white except the base of his penis, which was pink and irritated, probably from the razor. She dropped the wet diaper into the diaper pail.
“Diaper rash. No wonder you were crying.” Aurora took out the Destine. She had always hated the smell. It was too concentrated, too connected with rashes and the hideous lingering smell of the diaper pail. She’d never used it on Amy. “This will make it better.” She smeared a thick glob over the irritated skin and Charles responded by getting hard. He was making happy little grunting noises through his sucking.
“Time to take your temperature.” She looked in the drawer and saw that Charles had indeed made his own thermometer. It was a turkey baster, a long thin pointed cylinder topped with a large brown rubber bulb. Charles had carefully written all the temperatures on the side, highlighting 98.6.
“This?” she said to Charles, not quite believing he wanted her to use it. He stopped sucking and nodded.
Aurora took a big scoop of Vaseline out of the oversized container that sat next to Charles on the changing table, and coated the end of the baster. Then she took Charles’ legs back over his head and smeared the Vaseline around his brown, puckered anus. Slowly she worked the baster up into his ass, surprised by how easily and how far it went in without resistance.
“Okay?” She held the thermometer in place.
“More,” he said with the pacifier clenched in his teeth. He grabbed his penis with his right hand.
Aurora pushed the baster farther into his body. She had to twist it a little now and then to get past the tough spots. When she had it more than halfway in she stopped again. He hadn’t instructed her beforehand and she didn’t want to hurt him.
“This good?”
He moaned and nodded. He pulled his penis with both hands now and it looked like they were covered with Vaseline and Destine. “Squeeze the bulb,” he demanded.
Aurora hesitated.
“Squeeze it,” he insisted.
Aurora squeezed the brown rubber bulb and heard the air explode into his intestines. Then she saw that Charles had come all over his hands.
Aurora wasn’t sure what to do next so she waited until his breathing calmed.
“I don’t have a temperature. I’m just hungry,” Charles whispered to her.
“You don’t have a temperature, Sweet Boy.” Aurora pulled the thermometer out and lay it on the towel. There were streaks of shit on the sides. “Let’s put on a dry diaper and feed you.” She cleaned his hands and penis with the Johnson’s baby wipes and folded a fresh diaper around his body. Then she picked him up, ripping one of the cuffs on the sleeve of Mrs. Johns’ uniform, and carried him over to the chair by the window. She settled into the chair, supporting his head in the crook of her arm and pulled her uniform down, exposing her breasts. Charles started acting fussy again. Aurora held his head with her right hand and with her left she worked her left nipple back and forth across his lips until he latched on and started sucking.
Twenty-one Weeks and Counting
The sun hadn’t come up yet but Aurora was forced awake by an urgent need to use the bathroom. Not a painful, stomach flu or food poisoning type need, just the body’s insistence on imminent evacuation. She sat on the toilet and emptied herself but was immediately struck by the unnaturally strong fish odor, and when she wiped she found the tissue coated with a foul-smelling orange oil that smeared itself around and resisted cleaning. Aurora tried not to breathe as she wiped at herself in a frantic effort to get clean. She finally stood and looked into the bowl, horrified by the reeking orange oil slick that coated the toilet. She flushed, washed her hands and called Charles.
“There’s something wrong with me,” she said when he picked up the phone. “This orange stuff is coming out. It stinks.”
“Fishy?” he said.
“What is it?” Aurora kept her voice even. She wanted to scream.
“Nothing. It’s from the orange roughy. Happens to some people, some kind of prehistoric oil humans can’t digest, builds up in the intestines and then comes shooting out. Lucky you weren’t training.” Charles laughed.
“This happens? You knew?” Aurora couldn’t believe Charles would laugh.
“I was at the gym once when it happened to a guy named Vance Milton. He was squatting. Shot out all over his pants. Stunk to high heaven.” Charles laughed again. “Was there a lot?”
“Covered the whole surface of the bowl.”
“So that was probably all of it. Switch to sole. I’ll see you after you train.” Charles hung up the phone.
Aurora walked back into the bathroom. It stank like deeply rotten fish and shit. She sprayed the floral room deodorant until the tile floor was damp from the fragrant mist and still she could smell the smell. What if it was her? What if she leaked at the gym? She took a shower and scrubbed her rear with soap. She washed and then washed again, but the smell was in her nose. It was in her body. Finally she turned off the water, got out, and brushed her teeth three times.
The sun still wasn’t up yet and the lighting in the bathroom was harsh and unforgiving. Aurora stood naked in front of the mirror and forced herself to look. How had this happened? Five days ago she’d still been able to see her abs, even three days ago, but now they were gone.
Now she looked like a normal fat girl with sausage arms and an extra chin. Smooth and watery. She blew out all her air and tensed her stomach muscles in every way she could but the skin just looked thick and loose. No sign of a cut. No definition.
She took a hand mirror from the drawer and with a flash of masochistic pleasure turned to study her ass. The glutes were still high but underneath was a bunch of cheesy-looking crap that she’d never in her life had before. Bumpy, ugly, stored fat. She turned to the side and rose up on her hip, then tapped the fatty area with her hand and watched in horror as it jiggled and shook. She turned again, held the mirror up by her shoulder, and jumped. The legs and ass shook. She jumped again and again, setting her whole backside in motion, then she turned forward, continued to jump and watched as her belly and inner thighs joined the shaking mess that was now her body. Normal people look like this. Disgusted, she put the mirror back and went to get dressed.
A lot of the girls didn’t seem embarrassed by the fat. Off season they’d blow up but still wear their skimpy outfits and strut around the gym like goddesses on a catwalk, as if everyone could see the perfect sculpture of their bodies beneath the mold of fat. But Aurora wouldn’t dream of letting anyone see her in this kind of shape. She grabbed an oversized sweatshirt and baggy workout pants. Anyway, she’d only gained ten pounds. That wasn’t too bad. And what did it matter anyway? If it took a hundred pounds to win, then she’d gain it. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and went downstairs to prepare her and Amy’s food for the day.
Aurora opened the refrigerator and took out twelve hard-boiled eggs and a raw, bloody, three-pound flank steak that would take care of today’s and tomorrow’s meat requirement. There were still two chicken breasts left from yesterday and a half a head of cold steamed cabbage that she would eat for her third meal. She put the steak on a broiler pan, stuck it the oven, started the water for her rice, then sat at the table and peeled eggs. Aurora hated eggs. She’d found that it was easiest to peel all twelve eggs, throw out the yolks, then eat the rubbery whites as fast as she could. She thought of them as her medicine. At first she had microwaved them with a lot of Equal and cinnamon, and it was good, kind of a dessert, but it was hard to cook them evenly and she’d heard that Cory Everson got salmonella from raw egg whites, so now she boiled. Aurora finished peeling, threw out the shells and yolks, turned the steak, got out Amy’s Special K with some honey, then went to wake her daughter for school.
When Aurora leaned over and kissed Amy’s forehead it seemed to her that Amy pulled back into the pillow and maybe twitched her nose.
“Good morning, Angel.” Aurora straightened up, self-conscious about her odor. “Do you smell anything weird?”
“Huh?” Amy didn’t seem to be paying attention. She looked sleepy and bored.
“A smell. Kinda fishy?”
“Eww. No.” Amy sat up, her voice getting shrill. “I swear I haven’t been eating in my room, Mom. Check.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Aurora sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the covers. “Me. Do I smell weird?”
Amy screwed her face up into a look of real disgust and leaned over to sniff her mother. “I don’t smell anything,” she said, and pulled away fast.
Aurora stood. “Get up, love. Breakfast’s ready.”
Day at the Gym
Rico was standing outside the gym when Aurora pulled up. She knew he was watching her, waiting, while she stowed her sunglasses, put on lip gloss, checked her hair and teeth in the mirror, grabbed her gym bag and got out of the car. She felt the heat of his eyes on her sloppy ass as she locked the door. She wanted him to go away. She didn’t want to be studied.
“Hi, Rico,” she said, trying to get past him without stopping.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her in for a hug, his arms imprisoning her like a straightjacket. His strength and size made it impossible for her to get away. Aurora played dead and waited until he was finished with his little joke.
“Fat chicks turn me on. Can you feel it?” He squeezed her tightly.
She didn’t breathe.
“I like you like this, baby,” he said. “Big.”
“Rico, it’s not funny. Let me go, you fuck.” Aurora pushed herself away, angry, and he released her.
“Hey, I’m just kidding.”
Aurora started into the gym but he grabbed her arm again.
“Stop.” His voice was kind now, serious. “What’s up?”
“I’m not fat. I’m getting ready for something, okay?”
“No shit.” He let go of her. “What show?”
“North American.”
“How many weeks?”
“Twenty-one.”
“What’re you taking?”
“Nothing.”
He rolled his eyes. “Please.”
“I upped my protein.”
“You hang with Charles, you train with the master chemist, you’ve gained what, fifteen pounds in a couple weeks?”
“Ten.”
“Let’s see, you must be spending your entire day eating steak. Surprised you have time to train between meals.”
Aurora laughed.
“They’re gonna take you way up?”
“About twenty pounds.”
Rico shook his head. “You ever done this before?” He wasn’t flirting now.
“Not like this.”
“See, I don’t think it’s necessary to blow up like that. There’s other ways.”
Aurora noticed Hendrik’s car pull into the parking lot. Rico saw it too. “Your head’s gonna play tricks on you. Lotta changes. You should call me.” Rico walked away quickly just as Hendrik got out of the car.
Hendrik wore a snug black-and-white-striped tennis shirt tucked into yellow nylon tennis shorts. His kneesocks had two black stripes at the top and matched his black leather sneakers. He smelled strongly of Old Spice.
“How’s the little bodybuilder?” He grabbed Aurora in the usual morning hug, smashing her face into his chest, her nose pressing against the large gold barbell that hung around his neck. He shook her up and down, weighing her. When he set her down she studied the necklace and saw that the tiny forty-five-pound plates on the barbell were rimmed in diamonds.
“You like my jewelry,” Hendrik said, pleased. “I design it. There’s matching dumbbell earrings. Maybe I give them to you someday. If you win.”
“You made them?”
“My hobby.” Hendrik handed Aurora his gym bag. “Come. Hamstrings.”
Aurora spread her navy blue hand towel over the face area of the lying hamstring machine. The black vinyl was dark where people had laid their sweaty faces; years of other people’s germs and stink had stained the equipment. She lay on the machine and watched as Hendrik adjusted the weight stack to fifty pounds. Fifty? She usually started with seventy.
“Something different today,” Hendrik said. “We isolate muscle. No more of the cheating with the glutes. Relax.” He put his hands on her butt cheeks and shook them. Aurora tensed to stop the shaking.
“Relax.”
Aurora did. She hated the feeling of her body being moved, loose and toneless. And what about the fish oil? She felt her face flush with embarrassment, then she forced herself to put it out of her mind and obey Hendrik.
“Good,” he said, still shaking. “Like pudding. Now, keep them soft and do exercise.”
She pulled the bolster with her heels, keeping her butt relaxed, and could feel the muscle work separately from the rest of her leg. It felt good. She closed her eyes and saw how that leg would look with extraordinary definition, ropey and split. Hendrik had his fingers dug into the sides of her glutes, testing to make sure she kept them soft. At the sixth repetition the hamstrings started to fatigue and she unintentionally squeezed with her ass. Hendrik spanked her and she concentrated harder to do the exercise right. He put his hands on her again and shook while she struggled through the twelfth rep, the pain in her muscle traveling to her loins, encouraging her to pull harder and Hendrik�
�s hands there on her butt keeping her cheeks slightly open so that she wanted to arch into his hands and make that pain envelop her whole body.
“Good,” he said. His hands were gone. “Stretch.”
She opened her eyes and slowly climbed off the machine, disoriented for a second. She put her leg up and pulled her body over. It felt so good to reverse the process, to open and lengthen the muscle.
Aurora followed Hendrik through the gym toward the exit. Her hamstrings were swollen and hot, filled with blood, exhausted. She loved this feeling, knowing that she’d given everything. There was nothing left of that muscle.
“So, we have some breakfast?” Hendrik said.
Hendrik never ate with Aurora. Usually he went off with one or two of his worshipers to the Firehouse restaurant. Aurora would see him there, sitting in the window holding court, when she drove past on the way to Charles’ house. But today none of Hendrik’s friends were at the gym.
“I’ve got my food in the car,” Aurora said. She was worried about being late to Charles’ house.
“They got steak and rice at Firehouse.” He walked out the front door of the gym and started up the street toward the restaurant, not waiting for her to answer, leaving her to follow carrying both their gym bags.
Aurora checked her watch. She would be late. She raced to catch up. “I can’t. I gotta go.” She put Hendrik’s gym bag in his warm, dry hand. “Tomorrow we can eat. I’ll let Charles know.” Hendrik continued up the street and Aurora watched, thinking he would surely turn and say something. “See you tomorrow,” she yelled. “Thank you.” He ignored her and she was angry with him for making her feel guilty. He knew the arrangement, her obligation. She turned back toward her car and breathed out the last trace of Hendrik’s cologne.
Words of Wisdom
Charles noticed a light sprinkling of acne on Aurora’s shoulders and back as he rubbed the self-tanning cream over her body. They weren’t large pimples yet, not angry whiteheads, just small red bumps scattered like freckles on her traps and delts. He didn’t think she had noticed yet. She looked smoother now, but much tighter than last week and the female disposition toward fat storage on the thighs and triceps was subsiding. Her big body was galloping toward androgyny. Charles felt delighted.
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