Story-a-day #12: Fat Charlie

Once upon a time there was a boy named Charlie Myers. He was, without a doubt, one of the fattest boys you were ever likely to meet. But Charlie had a vivacious appetite.

            His mother and father despaired. So much so that one day his mother turned to her son and said, “Charlie, it’s time you tried to lose some weight. You’re too large for your age ... it’s unhealthy. It’ll be the death of you.”

            Charlie didn’t like that idea very much, not one little bit, and voiced his opinion as best he could to all who happened to agree with his mother. It was unfair, he told them, and cruel. He had been born into a large family – the largest in the village, in fact – and he didn’t think it was right they penalised him, a mere child, because of his inherited size.

            “You were not designed to be so large,” his mother said simply enough. “We’re a fat family, yes, but you ... you are the fattest of them all. Your father and I know how hard it is to be fat ... we simply want to help spare you the cruelty of peoples tongue.”

            “Well I don’t want to diet,” he replied. “I like being far. I like eating. And if people have an issue with me that’s their fault not mine.”

            “Your father and I don’t like it. It’s not right. So, like it or not, Charlie, you’ll be on a diet. Starting very soon.”

But Charlie could not think of anything worse. He didn’t like the idea of eating so many green things and so few tasty treats. And despite his best efforts, Charlie’s mother and father refused to budge.

So the weeks drove on and Charlie did all he could to keep his mother and father happy.

But it didn’t last long. Charlie began to eat in secret; by night, in his room, where nobody could see him.

“Why isn’t it working?” His mother lamented. “Why is our boy not losing any weight? We’ve done everything we should have but nothing’s working.”

“Maybe it’s because he’s still stuffing his fat little face,” his father declared. “Take a look at this little lot.”

“Oh?”

“Come on, take a look. It’s all here.”

So she looked into the draws her husband had opened, and found, half hidden beneath a collection of clothes, a collection of candy bars and boiled sweets and cupcakes with various coloured frostings.

“Right,” she said stiffly. “Throw them all away. Take the drawer out if you have to ... but throw them all away. If Charlie won’t help himself then we’ll have to do a little more to help him.”

“He won’t thank you for it.”

“Who cares?”

So they did what they felt needed to be done. They scoured his room for much of the day, uncovering a wealth of candy bars and sweets wherever they turned, and disposed of each by dropping them into a black sack and then dropping the black sack in turn into the trash can.

“What have you done with them?” Charlie raged. The edges of his eyes burnt bright with tears of both rage and loss. “Where’s all my stuff?”

“In the trash,” his mother declared a matter-of-factly. “Your father and I have decided that if you won’t help yourself then, maybe, we should offer you a little more support the only way we can.”

“It’s for your own good,” father cooed.

But Charlie didn’t see the good in any of it. In fact, the only thing Charlie saw through his loss was the cruelty, and lack of understanding, in his parents. What did it matter if he was fat so long as he was happy? Who were they to decide?

“And it’s because it’s for your own good that we’ll be taking a different approach this time around.” Mother chirped, smiling slightly. “This time you’ll do exactly as we say ... and you’ll follow the plans we have without question. One way or another, Charlie, we will help you lose weight.”

“You can’t force me.”

“I think you’ll find that, yes, we can. And we will.”

They fought dramatically over the following months.

Charlie raged at them by the hour. He cussed and proved his resolve to the revolt, occasionally choosing to lock himself in his room to watch endless hours of TV. But the battle of wills was always fought, and won, by far greater skilled commanders, and for every inch of metaphorical rope they allowed him, fat Charlie steadily began to lose the bitter war he’d vowed so vehemently to rage and win.

And slowly, the weight began to fall off.

Charlie hated how it made him feel. Sure he had a little more energy, his whole body felt so much more alive, but he could seldom tolerate hungers steady grumble roaring in the pit of his stomach. That hollow, unfilled, void he was unaccustomed to.

At first he thought there was precious little he could do to stave off hungers echo. His parents, having done all they could to keep him close at hand, thwarted his every attempt to fill the void. They were relentless in their pursuit of happiness, and just as determined in their resolve. Yet as Charlie’s hunger grew they saw, or thought they saw, a new hunger shining at the back of his eyes.

“He’s ravenous,” father says. “You only have to look at him once to see it. He’s apt to eat anything right now.”

“Anything?” Mother echoed, snorting laughter. “Surely not anything.”

“I’m telling you,” he said in a no nonsense tone of voice. “Sooner or later, that boy will eat anything to stop that grumble in his stomach.”

Right around the time his father began warning his mother of Charlie’s appetite, Charlie himself stumbled upon a bitter, twisted, plan to fill the churning, sometimes uncomfortable, void in the pit of his now starved gut.

He would eat, he decided, whether his parents liked it or not. He realised the plan in no time at all, and felt neither a second guilt nor pain in doing so.

So Charlie waited until the early hours of the morning – until he was sure his parents were asleep and blissfully embroiled in their dreams – and set about realising his vision.

“This will teach them,” he said as much to himself as the empty kitchen. “This will prove a boy cannot live on salads alone.”

Bracken prepared breakfast that morning and laced his mother and father’s cereal bowls with poison.

“You made us breakfast?” Mother said, shocked.

“Sure did,” Charlie said softly. “I figured it was time for a change. I figured I’d done enough.”

“And you made the coffee just how I like it?” His father asked, studying the inside of his mug with an eye of suspicion.

“Exactly how you like it, Dad.”

His mother turned towards his father, smiled once, and reached for his hand. “See, didn’t I tell you he’d come around sooner or later?”

His father nodded, yes.

Charlie watched them eat breakfast, and smiled as they cleared their bowls in good time. Oblivious.

It took minutes for the poison to take effect. His mother was the first to go. Her face twisted briefly, her hands came up to her throat, and as she coughed and spluttered her last, foaming at the mouth a little, she fell face first into the empty cereal bowl in front of her.

His father gawped awkwardly; an off marriage of disbelief and agony criss-crossing his face at the same time. He coughed once, spluttered sickly yellow/brown foam across the breakfast table, and died.

Charlie smiled. He tipped each of his parent’s heads back into a resting position, stared lovingly at their wide eyes, and closed each of their lids in turn.

His stomach churned again. He was ravenous.

Charlie turned towards the knife block on the counter, plucked the largest of the four out of its moorings, and stared at the blade a while before turning on the oven. He didn’t like the reflection staring back at him; he barely recognised himself these days.

“No matter,” he said to the gaunt faced reflection staring back at him. “It’s time to eat.”

He cleared the table quickly, laid out one of the two bodies, and began to cut.

Yes, sir, it was time to eat all right.