Big - Flash Fiction Story by Cheryl Snell

 

Big

Flash Fiction Story

by Cheryl Snell

The wife looks at her beefy husband. “I’m putting you on a diet.”

“Then I’m putting you on one too.” He’s the competitive sort, a tit-for-tat kind of guy.

Fair enough. It might be fun to recover our younger figures, she thinks, to see what’s left of what we once had. So they push away from the table together. They apportion their rations in plastic measuring spoons and cups. They listen to one another’s bellies rumble. They fill their fridge with clear containers of bright vegetables. They stick to their curfew of calories and neither lets the other cheat.

Through their picture window, they watch the wheel of seasons, the leaves fattening and thinning. She doesn’t lose many pounds but he does. “Men always drop weight faster. It’s normal,” he says. “Don’t you worry, I’ll be your diet buddy even after I make weight.”

She hasn’t heard him utter the phrase “make weight” since his wrestling days. The memory of him on the floor wound around some opponent after crash dieting for the humiliating weigh-in makes her want to feed him.

He’s not interested in that, and loses even more. He can fit into his wedding suit. His rib cage begins to rise out of his torso. His stomach flattens nearly to his spine. His clavicles show what he is made of, and the bony gears in his shoulders grind dangerously close to the skin. He takes up intermittent fasting and gets down to one meal a day. The kitchen counter fills up with vitamin bottles, turmeric powder and coconut oil. He writes down everything he puts in his mouth. He takes up running again.

She catches him watching a women’s weight-lifting competition one day. She appraises the sinewy, oiled bodies, built muscle by muscle as if from stone, and is slapped by the beauty he sees in them. “Maybe I’ll start weight-lifting,” she tells him. She pretends not to notice the fear that darkens his eyes for a moment before he says, “That’s a bad choice for someone with such a weak back.” She sighs. Her back has been fine for years, but this is where she gives up. She reaches into the cupboard for her emergency stash of peanut butter crackers. He doesn’t say a word.

She had hoped to catch up to him, progress-wise, but now she sees it’s no use. She eats whatever, whenever, in secret, in front of him. She eats while she worries that he is erasing himself, shrinking more and more. The smaller he gets the bigger she becomes. It’s the only way to protect him and keep him with her. She goes to the gym, lifts some weights, and then refuels with chocolate chip muffins from Starbuck’s. She gains weight faster than ever before. It’s as if her cells were baby birds waiting with open mouths to be fed.

Soon a layer of muscle encases her fat and hardens her arms and legs. When she hugs her husband, he almost disappears in the vastness of her arms. “You make me feel big,” she whispers. Can he tell she’s beginning to like that? 

“It’s cozy in here,” he howls.

She carries him to bed. He is light as a butterfly ready to be pinned, and she knows that she has him right where she wants him.

 

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her latest title is a series called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries. Most recently her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Impspired, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.