I woke myself up at around two o'clock on Friday when I let out the longest, loudest fart of my life. It continued coming out of me, echoing around the storeroom for what seemed like min-utes, probably sending geologists in China into a frenzy as they tried to explain the seismographic anomaly coming from central New York state. It left me in gales of laughter, holding onto my belly, still huge, but comparatively smaller than it had been the night before. "I can't believe it," I said to myself sarcastically, "I don't understand what I could have possibly eaten that would have affected me like that." There were a couple of more really big farts that escaped me over the next few min-utes, but nothing like the first one. I wondered if the store had a detector for natural gas leaks and whether my fart had been enough to set it off.

Once I'd stopped amusing myself with my bodily functions, I realized that my first order of business for the day was peeling the sweat-dampened, dough-like accretions of bread from where they'd molded themselves to my skin overnight. It took a while, but when I'd finally finished remov-ing the big stuff, I realized that I was still covered in a thin doughy coating which, to remove it, would require a better washing than I was likely to get in the produce section. Besides, I thought, with all the food in me, it's only fitting that I be wrapped in a crust like some big overstuffed pastry. Of course, pastry made me think of the bakery department, so after brushing my teeth, I motored over there for another go at that sheet cake. I took it out of the refrigerator and started shovelling handfuls of it into my waiting mouth, getting the blackberry filling allover my cheeks and the icing on my chin and my shirt. I was a mess, but I kept at it, like some maniacal groom trying to shove the last gigantic slice of an entire three-tiered wedding cake into his new wife's face. Wouldn't that be a hoot, I thought, imagining the bride, as stuffed as I was, her enormous belly suddenly ripping through the tight satin gown as everyone in the room stands and applauds.

When I'd gotten through another significant chunk of the cake, I decided that it was time for breakfast, so I continued my rampage through the store by heading down to the dairy depart-ment. When I'd first gotten on my motor-cart that morning, I'd realized that my busy digestive system had worked through the night, converting a good portion of the glut I'd consumed into ex-cess blubber on my body. My tummy, although still pretty full, still distended and still supported by my make-shift belly bra, had felt much softer and even allowed me to bend at the waist to sit on the cart's seat. My thighs were spreading out much further against the cushion and the stretchmarks which had only been hinted at last night were now a definite part of the landscape of my skin. My boobs, too, had benefited from the new distribution of weight and I could feel the way they were hanging lower on my chest behind the nylon pantyhose legs which separated them on the way to tying around the back of my neck. I hadn't planned this whole thing, so I hadn't counted on having to by an entire new wardrobe, but I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to stuff my bloated body into any of my current clothes. I thought of the struggle I'd have just dragging a pair of my tight jeans over my thickened thighs, and -- should I accomplish that -- the superhuman strength I'd need to yank my zipper up and button the waist; then, I'd be forced to go barefoot be-cause the pants would make bending over and tying my boots impossible.

The whole thing sounded way too painful, except when I thought of the possibility of bust-ing a seam somewhere in public. For some reason, this really got my juices flowing. I imagined the scene as if I were a bystander: Rachel is in the line at the Bob's Big Guy All-You-Can-Eat buffet ta-ble. It's lunch time and the place is packed, but not nearly as packed as Rachel's ass is inside her ri-diculously tight jeans. The stitching on the back seam and the thigh seams is easily visible and it's obvious that this girl should be out shopping for looser clothes rather than overloading her TWO plates with gigantic portions of all the fattening foods. She's such a pig that she can't even wait to get back to her table before she starts digging in, eating with two hands and not even pausing for a breath. Moments later, she's sliding out of the booth again, patting the enormous bulge of her belly, then filling up another couple of plates and heading back to her table. There's no way her restrictive clothing will let her sit down, but that doesn't stop her -- she stands at her table and gorges herself on these two plates, then turns around to get some more. By this time, everyone in the restaurant is watching her; it's obvious that her stomach is even more monstrous this time than the last and that something is going to have to give. Still, she fills up another two plates, her fork moving like light-ning, shovelling some fatty delicacy into her open mouth as she heads back to the table again. Sud-denly, one of the buttermilk biscuits rolls off of her overladen plate and onto the floor. Rachel squats down to get it, and her jeans finally give up the ghost, exploding at every seam and rivet, and expos-ing yards and yards of loose and jiggling white blubber to all of the shocked onlookers. Noncha-lantly, she strips off her remaining clothes, then stands there totally naked and calmly finishes the last of her two plates-worth, before waddling out the door in a symphony a wobbling flesh.

My hand had been busy in my pussy through that whole scene, so that by the time I was picturing my big butt disappearing through the closing restaurant door, I had built myself up into a terrific orgasm, and was balancing precariously on the edge of the cat's seat. Still shaking and shiv-ering, I thought about how Joellen had taught me that a good orgasm deserves a good meal, so I headed over to the dairy aisle for the breakfast I'd started out to get.

The first thing I came across was the cheese display, and I started to do some damage. There were bries and camemberts and goat cheeses and goudas and havartis and mozzarellas and fontinas and parmesans and emmertals and cheddars and cheshires and gloucesters and erins and fetas and jarlsbergs and jacks. I tried them all -- a bite here, a nibble there, and pretty soon, I'd managed to eat a cheese tour all over Europe and North America. My mouth was coated in a thick layer of cheese-fat and I knew I needed something to wash it away, so I grabbed a big container of OJ and started drinking it down. After draining most of a quart of juice and letting out a satisfied belch, I spied the yogurt -- not the artificially-sweetened, low-cal stuff, but the real full-fat, highly-sweetened attrac-tive-to-kids containers. There were brands with sprinkles and crunchies and chocolate chips; they were sweet and creamy and more like pudding than anything else. Next to the yogurt was the sour cream and then the cream cheese, but I knew that there wasn't a bagel in the store, except for the dinky little frozen ones and -- food orgy or no food orgy -- creamcheese demands a bagel and those were NOT real bagels. A girl's got to have some standards, I thought.

The refrigerated cookie dough and biscuit dough display was next on my itinerary, and I thought about my mother making cookies and me, snitching little pieces of the uncooked dough from her mixing bowl, while my mother would scold me, saying, "You're going to eat too much and get yourself sick!" If only she could see me now, I thought, as I took a bite from one of the big raw sugar cookie rolls. I nibbled on a bunch of them in all different flavors before moving on to the rolls of biscuits, chewing a piece of the raw and sticky dough while rapping another one against the edge of the case to pop it open. While chewing and popping, I started thinking about cookies in the oven: the warm red glow of the hot stove, the rich aroma of melting sugar, the cookies rising in the heat, growing taller and plumping up. Imagine if they cooked inside me, I thought. Imagine if I were to lay down under the heat lamps in the deli department, pointing the bulbs at my belly and falling asleep. Would the cookies bake? Would the little pieces of biscuits in my stomach rise up and ex-pand? Would my belly swell like a loaf of bread, growing taller and rounder and fatter with every moment? My hands began moving over the taught surface of my swollen tummy, pressing in with my palms and feeling the resistance of the enormous amounts of food I had stuffed myself with. The skin was hot and felt very dry -- whether that was a result of the incredible stress I'd forced my skin to undergo or whether it was just the remnants of the way I'd breaded myself the night before, I realized that I needed to moisturize my skin some more. And what better way to do that than to douse my belly in butter.

I started with the squeeze bottles of liquid butter, flinching as the cold stream of yellow semi-liquid hit my burning skin, then massaging it in with my warm hands. But, the liquid stuff was too greasy and turned to water in seconds, so I went for the real stuff, taking a one-pound brick of unsalted butter and running its end all over my skin like I was lathering up with some soap. It glided over the dry flesh like an ice cube over a frozen pond, leaving a trail of grease to mark its passing. I massaged that in, too, then took a big bite of the stick, chewing it thoroughly and feeling it coating my throat on its way down. I took another bite and then one more and then I knew I was done.

I had eaten my way from one end of the store to the other, and as I took a ride around on my motorized cart, I got a good look at the damage I'd done. Whether it was from my gorging or from my vandalism, I knew that I had devastated the stock of the grocery store more than even the fierc-est storm thrown up by mother nature; the aisles were littered with opened cans and boxes, refrig-erator doors were left open, food was on every surface including all over my body. I went up front to the cash registers and took out the hundred dollars that we normally left in the open drawers over-night as a deterrent to would-be thieves who might otherwise wreck the place -- kind of like I'd done, I thought and smiled. There was no way it would be possible, but I wished I could contrive to be there when Scott walked in and saw the smashed remnants of his business.

It was nearly six o'clock by then, and although I hadn't planned on leaving that early, I really needed to get in a shower and in a proper bed. So, I started in on the final steps of my plan. The first thing I did was to use the master alarm code to program in a couple of new authorized codes for additional users. Then I got out the final items I'd picked up at the thrift store and the novelty shop: an ill-fitting man's polyester slacks and shirt, clip-on tie and sport-coat, fake mustache and beard, wig and glasses and baseball cap. I had originally thought I'd need some padding for my belly, but that was before I'd eaten non-stop for two-and-a-half days and discovered that my insides had all the elasticity of a sheet of rubber; my own padding and the contents of my stomach were enough to strain the buttons on the jacket. It wasn't a very convincing disguise, but it was dark outside and I didn't plan on running into anyone; all I needed the disguise for was to confuse someone who got a glance at me, and make them remember the obvious details I'd provided: "Big guy -- very fat -- in a really bad suit, with a light-brown ponytail, round glasses and a bushy beard." I looked at myself in the mirror, fussed with the facial hair a bit, and when I was satisfied with my appearance, I went over to the alarm, disabled it using one of the new dummy codes and opened the back door of the store very cautiously, looking around to see if anyone was there.

When I got the door open enough to see outside, I realized that the place was really hop-ping. The Guests, it seemed, had returned to their familiar spot, and although they were locked out of their camp, they seemed content to gather around the chain-link fence, light small fires and go about their business. The new arrivals had quickly found the old-timers, so their seemed to be al-most thirty or forty men and women, gathered together against the suddenly cold weather. Closing the door again noiselessly, I tried to figure out what to do. There was no way I could sneak by them, and I wouldn't want to anyway. Wasn't I here, after all, on their behalf? Although I'd used the oppor-tunity for my own gain, it had all started because I was furious at Scott for causing what I thought was the irreversible destruction of a community and of a vision; I'd set out to destroy him and his future by hitting him where he'd notice -- in his bank account.

But the community hadn't been destroyed, merely displaced. that didn't lessen my desire to see Scott come to ruin, but it did bring me back to my concern for these people. Where had they been? What had they been doing? Where had they slept? Had they eaten at all since Tuesday? I spent a couple of minutes, leaning against the inside of the door and formulating a plan. Finally, I made my decision, turned on the storeroom lights so I'd be silhouetted in the doorway, then swung the door open. "Hello!" I said. "There's nothing to worry about. I know it's been tough for you for a couple of days, but Mr. W is back and he's sent me down here to apologize to all of you for the ter-rible way you've been treated recently. When he found out that you'd spent the past couple of days and Thanksgiving without a scrap of food, and that no one knew where all of you had gone, he went crazy with anger and started ripping apart the store. But, someone told u that you were all back here where you belong so... We want you all to come inside. It's warm in there and -- since you're Mr. W's Guests, he wants you all to make yourselves at home. Eat if you're hungry, sleep where you want to. For tonight, this place is yours." They hesitated, but I just stood there, holding the door wide open. After a couple of seconds, there was some rustling, and an tiny older woman came in, mumbling to herself, clutching her pitiful belongings and walking right past me without looking at me. I touched her shoulder and handed her a couple of dollars. Slowly, but surely others got up, too and started filing in the store, taking the money I proffered and disappearing inside. When most of them had entered, I shut the stock room light to cut down on the possibility of someone noticing and I stepped out of the store for the first time in a couple of days. There were still a couple of Guests out-side who were too far gone or too mistrustful to go inside, but I knew that if they got hungry enough, they'd dash in and dash out very quickly. I walked past them, handing each of them a cou-ple of dollars, then cut through a backyard and out onto one of the backstreets.

It was pretty cold outside, but I was still feeling pretty warm from the furious metabolic processes occurring inside me. I walked down the hill into town, feeling the great mass of food in my stomach bouncing with every step, feeling the new and loose blubber on my thighs and butt jiggling in rhythm with my gait. The streets were pretty empty and it felt much later than it was. In-side the houses I passed, I could see the blue glow of television sets and I imagined families gath-ered on their couches, hands resting on stomachs that were still full of last night's dinner and to-night's leftovers, vowing silently to go on a diet, but knowing the futility of it with the rest of the holidays around the corner. I patted my own massive belly, dismissing the thought of a diet for now and forever. When I got to the car, I heaved myself in, then had to quickly adjust the tilt steering wheel to accommodate my swollen abdomen. The drive was uneventful and the shower was refresh-ing and the bed was cozy and I spent most of the next two days sleeping on my back, kept inside by the need to stay out of sight and pinned to the mattress by the weight of my monstrous stomach.

I got out of bed a couple of times and managed to put a good dent into the groceries I'd purchased at the local store, but my jaws and my entire body were so tired from my marathon binge session, that I just didn't have the strength for the massive consumption that was called for. I hadn't planned on going anywhere until I left for home on Monday morning, but it was clear to me on Sunday afternoon that I was going to need some clothes because the outfits I'd brought were practi-cally laughing at me when I tried to pull them on my bloated self. I put on my loosest jeans, com-pletely ignoring the zipper and tying the waist button to the button hole with a piece of twine, leaving a good three inches of belly flesh exposed; a big flannel shirt which came down to mid-thigh did a good job of hiding my secret from the rest of the world. I found an open shop in the small town and bought some clothes which were two sizes bigger than anything I'd ever bought before, marvelling at how well they fit my newly expanded body. When I got back to the cabin, I stuffed the twenty-pound turkey and cooked it, then stuffed myself with a good portion of it before walking out into the woods and leaving it to be found by some of the local wildlife. Some raccoon would wind up with a belly like mine, I thought and laughed contentedly. Then, I stood at the edge of the lake, took the store key off of my keychain and threw it as far as I could, watching the moonlight disturbed by the pattern of ripples on the lake's surface.

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