Gorge in Gorgeous, The

“How much do you think I can eat?”

The sudden seizing of his mind from sleep caused his breath to seize up in a sharp hiss.

“Um… what?”

“I asked how much you think I could eat?”

He lifted his head from his pillow and shuffled his elbow beneath him for support. His eyes were adjusted enough to the darkness of their bedroom to see the hint of a smile on her face as he gazed down at her. She was beneath the blankets at a slight angle, with her head propped up by all but his two pillows. The covers were billowed out over her form, as if her knees were up and bent.

“Why’re you asking me that?” He attempted to allay his grogginess by rubbing his eyes with his free hand.

She silently answered his inquiry with her smirk.

He sat upright in bed and cleared his throat. “A lot?”

“How much is a lot.”

“I dunno. What’re you getting at?”

“Do you think I could eat a whole box of doughnuts?”

“It depends on how big the box was.”

“A dozen.”

“I guess if you were hungry enough, sure.”

“What if I wasn’t hungry enough? What if I had eaten breakfast, lunch, dinner and several snacks in between and after? Do you think I could do it?”

“I guess. I’m really not sure, honey.” He cocked his head back and sighed when he registered the time. “I am sure that it’s almost 3:30 in the morning.”

“I know.”

“Why’re you still awake? What have you been doing?”

“Eating.”

“Oh, okay. So that’s what this is about, huh?” He patted her head. “Well I’m sure you could eat an entire dozen doughnuts.”

“Even after I ate a half-gallon of ice cream?”

“Did you eat a half-gallon of ice cream?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” In the darkness, he lost doubts that the bulge where his wife lay was bigger because of knees. He gave the bulge an investigative poke. Their comforter yielded, but what lay beneath did not. It growled. “Is this the dog on you?” His tone was incredulous.

“No.”

His voice cracked in alarm. “Is this you on you?”

“Yes.”

“All of this?”

“See for yourself.”

When he pulled back her covers, he was overwhelmed by an electrocution of astonishment. He audibly clapped his hands over his mouth to prevent gibberish from spilling out. His wife, though plump and pear-shaped, certainly did not have such an enormous, round midsection. Yet there it loomed, towering over them both like a leviathan nectarine. Her nude form had an alabaster sheen in the dimness, magnified by the magnitude of her stomach. A pink, rectangular box of doughnuts rested on her chest with both of her arms folded across.

His hands ascended to the top of his head, leaving his gaping mouth uncovered. He attempted to speak, but only managed to make a series of whining clicks. In response, she unfolded her arms, opened the pink, rectangular box, and withdrew a chocolate-frosted doughnut. She gave it a soft glance, consumed it in three bites, and then sucked her fingers noisily. In the gloom, she could see his face contort in further surprise at such a display, and contort even more so when her stupendous dome of a stomach inched outward ever so slightly. With a grin of satisfaction, she dipped her hand into the box for a second confection.

She poised the doughnut above her mouth when he sputtered, “Wait!”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t… I really don’t think you should.”

“Why? You said you were sure I could eat a dozen doughnuts, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes… but this was before I… just… just exactly what all did you eat?”

She devoured the second sweet in a similar fashion to the first and, in between the licking of her fingers, began summarizing the contents of what rested in her tumescent tum.

“Let’s see… first I ate the frozen pizzas.”

“When you say the frozen pizzas, you mean the three big ones?”

“Mm-hmm. You know about the ice cream, which I ate after that. Then the leftover lasagna. Then I ate the lunch meat, the rest of the cheese and bread and then the soup.”

“That was for my lunch this week!”

She nearly swallowed the third doughnut whole. “Then I ate the chips, the salsa and the rest of the cake. The popcorn, um… the cookies your mom brought us – those were really good, by the way – the peanut butter, the jelly, macaroni and cheese, the milk that was left after the macaroni and cheese…” The fourth doughnut never stood a chance.

“Let me ask you this, sweetie. What didn’t you eat?”

Still chewing the fifth doughnut, she patted the pink, rectangular box covering her breasts.

“Why?”

“I was hungry.”

“Why didn’t I hear any of this? You ate all this in a few hours?”

She nodded, the sixth confection wagging from her mouth as she did so.

“I don’t believe it! Is the cat still here?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said in a cordial tone. “He’s outside. I couldn’t catch him anyway.” She giggled between mouthfuls of the seventh doughnut.

“This is too surreal. I must be dreaming.” While he rubbed his face with both hands, she wrapped her sticky fingers around his right wrist and guided his arm to her belly. The sensation of it was all at once normal yet alien. She was warm, but where there was once an expanse of softness there was now firm flesh, bloated out of proportion by an inconceivable appetite. He could feel his wife churning, and when the eighth doughnut was swallowed, he could feel her swell. She used his hand to rub her stomach and cooed in relief.

“See how real it is?” she asked with her mouth crammed full of the ninth sweet. He wrenched his hand away to snatch up the pink, rectangular box, leaving her breasts exposed. Having always found them pleasingly large, they seemed small and dwarfed in comparison to her belly. “What’s wrong,” she asked in high-pitched innocence.

“I can’t let you eat these.”

“You said I could.”

“I… I know I did, but…”

“There’s three left.” Her fingers traced her exaggerated form. “Feed them to me.”

“No…”

She bit her lower lip and grasped at her breasts. “Feed me.”

“I… I don’t know…”

She grasped at him. “Please.”

He gave a stifled moan. “You… I mean…” The tenth doughnut was glazed and coated in sugar, sugar that left sticky granules on his fingers. After the sweet was gone, her tongue lapped his hand clean.

“There’s more room in me, I promise.” When she opened wide her mouth, he could see flecks of the prior sweets on her tongue and bits of chocolate stuck to her teeth. The low rumble from her stomach that petered out into a murmuring gurgle made him hesitate on the eleventh.

“I’m sorry sweetie, I was wrong. I’m sure you can’t eat the rest of these after eating the kitchen.”

“You don’t have faith in me?” She lowered her head to gaze up at him, fluttering her eyelashes as she did so.

“No, it’s not possible. It’s just not possible. You can’t eat the whole kitchen, you’d of exploded before you ever looked at Mom’s cookies.” He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “I have to get up for work in the morning, so I’d like to go back to sleep so I can wake up and go back to sleep again. Did that make sense? It doesn’t matter, good night Dream Wife, I’ll see Real Wife in the morning.”

As he began to turn to nestle back into the covers, she hastily grabbed both of the remaining doughnuts from the pink, rectangular box in his lap. With both hands, she crammed the sweets into her mouth, chewing furiously. “You’ll see,” she said, speckles of frosting spraying from her mouth. “You’ll…”

Her stomach growled, loudly, like thunder. And like a thunderhead, her belly roiled and grew, bulging up like balloon. And like a balloon…

“Oh, no…”

She gulped down the rest of the treats.

The sound was deafening and the force rattled the windows. To watch with naked eyes his wife explode frightened him to the core of his being. All that was left of her peppered the room and his body in grisly droplets and heavy chunks. He was too terrified to scream or move or even blink. He sat on his side of the bed, quietly, realizing too late that he wasn’t going to wake up.