"Buffet Buddies": An Exclusive Cut

Here's a little late night snack, and by late night snack I mean a story that is a little over 2,000 words long. Honestly, this was a story suggestion that excited me for a number of reasons: I found the conceit to be absolutely bonkers and needed to give it a try. I also loved the idea of having at least one piece in the collection with the classic fat guy gets thin and thin girl gets fat since all of the other stories are just women.

Then I kept putting this one off because something about it just felt daunting, I think because it is so straight forward and not calling for quick transformation which is typically my bread and butter. But when I finally sat down to write it today, it just flew from my fingers, and I'm pretty happy with it. I hope you like it, and I especially hope you like the little twist I threw in at the end.

Enjoy!

-----------------------------------------------

Dinah and Shane were an unlikely pair of best friends. Ever since their moms met, the two of them had likewise become inseparable. They liked all of the same things. They never got tired of hanging out with each other. They even had a tendency to finish each other's sentences.

There were many people who speculated as to why Dinah and Shane never seemed to get together. Were they homosexuals? No. Did they think of each other like brother and sister? Dinah might be tempted to say something like that if she were ever confronted by the issue. But the real answer was as simple as it was big.

Shane was fat.

Shane had been fat his entire life, just like his mom- just like Dinah’s mom. Dinah had grown up surrounded by obesity just like Shane, and whereas Shane embraced his mom’s dietary habits, Dinah spent her whole life running away from it. Becoming as fat as her mom was Dinah’s absolute nightmare, and Shane, while lovely in every other way imaginable, was physically repulsive to her, and the vain Dinah was not afraid to let him know that on occasion. Shane was a lot of fun to hang around with, and she would defend his fat ass to plenty of her equally vain friends, but the idea of being romantically involved with him was never on her mind except when people would taunt her about it. Those people would usually get a swift punch to the nose in return or an incredibly cutting comment paired with an icy stare.

To his credit, Shane knew all of this and never really tried anything. While deep down he had to admit that there were feelings for Dinah beyond friendship, he was never very forward about them. And he didn’t complain about being friendzoned either. Shane wasn’t one of those guys who pined after a woman he couldn’t have while acting like she somehow owed him something purely because he was nice to her. He watched Dinah date a variety of people, some of whom were far nicer than others- and a handful that he genuinely liked. Likewise, Shane also had his fair share of romantic partners, though not as many as the much more traditionally attractive Dinah.

Still, Shane would find himself over the years in times where both he and Dinah were single at the same time, and he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he and Dinah would be happier if they ended up together. He just wished that she would change her perspective on things, and secretly he even wondered how things might be if she was a fatty as well.

He would eventually find out.

Shane had a dream. It wasn’t dating Dinah. That was only at times a passing fancy. His real dream was to own his own restaurant. It wasn’t just that Shane loved eating food. He loved cooking it for himself and for others. It was his truest passion in life. And as he went from job to job in the restaurant industry, Shane’s dream of owning his own place grew. The problem that he kept running into was the same thing over and over again.

He needed the money.

In order to get the money, Shane turned to the other thing he was good at, eating. Shane entered eating contest after eating contest, racking up prizes as he worked his way toward the big one, the All Valley Eating Championship. Shane was an unstoppable eater. He looked like a shoe-in to win the All Valley Eating Championship and take home the grand prize money, enough to open his own restaurant. Things were growing great until Shane ran into a devastating setback.

That devastating setback came in the form of a car accident.

While Shane could have been far worse off than he was, and he did make a full recovery, the results of the initial collision were still bad. Shane broke both his left arm and leg, and either of those he could have handled (though he certainly would have been hindered by going down to one arm for competitions) but what really doomed Shane was the fact that the car accident had broken his jaw in such a way that it needed to be wired shut. It would need to stay that way for at least eight weeks according to his doctor, and with only three months until the All Valley competition, Shane knew he would never be able to get healed and work himself back into competitive shape in time. It was hopeless. There was only one option left that he could think of.

Dinah.

Dinah had a secret, one even Shane wasn’t sure Dinah was aware of. On rare occasions, when she got the right amount of drunk and or stoned, Dinah displayed an incredible appetite. It was the one she was born with finally unleashed. If Dinah could be convinced to let it go and tap into her genetic predisposition for incredible gluttony, she could out eat Shane even without any training. With three months till All Valley? Dinah could be unstoppable.

She wouldn’t do it though. Would she? Could she?

For anyone else it would have been a hard and obvious no.

But this was for Shane, for his dream.

Dinah had spent so much of her life getting whatever she wanted because of her looks, skill and charisma. Everything came easy. Every door was open. For Shane… He was so close to achieving his dream just to see everything crumble right before the finish line. With his jaw in the shape that it was, he might not be able to eat competitively again. She had to do it, for him, for their years of friendship. Deep down she knew she could sacrifice three months for him. She could go whole hog just this once, win the championship and the money for Shane’s restaurant and then get herself back under control. If she ended up packing on a few pounds onto her perfect in the meantime, so be it. She would diet later and be slim and trim in no time. 

A few pounds. That’s what she told herself. She could handle a few pounds.

A few pounds ended up being thirty-five which was quite a large amount to gain in such a relatively short period of time. It was a testament to how hard Dinah had trained. (It was also a testament to her genetic predisposition to obesity, but she pushed that worry out of her head.) By the time Dinah showed up at the All Valley Eating Championship, she had a respectable pot belly and a few small prizes from some local competitions.

Her belly and her prizes were dwarfed by her competition of course, but Dinah wasn’t going to let that scare her. They didn’t have her will, her reason for being here, or her family pedigree. She was made to eat. She was made for All Valley. She had never thought about it before, but it was like her whole life was designed for this moment.

And then she stumbled right out of the gate. 

When it came to eating, Dinah was like a distance runner. She could out eat almost anyone, but she wasn’t built for sprints. In just three months of training she wasn’t able to get her hotdog eating form down the way her much more seasoned competition was, and that meant the timed competition was an absolute disaster.

Luckily for Dinah, the All Valley Eating Championship was not one mere hotdog eating contest. It took place over Memorial Day Weekend and was a three day decathlon of eating events with points scored for each one. The hotdog eating contest put her down but certainly not out. There were plenty of events left, chili, pies, others. The penultimate event was her personal best.

The Buffet.

It was simple. Ninety minutes to eat as much food as possible by weight. It was enough time that she didn’t have to worry about speed. That was a suckers game. Most people ate too much too quickly and got themselves sick and disqualified. Others didn’t pick the right things to focus on. But Dinah was a natural at this. Even when she made mistakes she could make up for it with the sheer amount that she could eat without needing to break.

Plate after plate went down, and a bloated Dinah looked thirteen months pregnant. Her face was covered in the remnants of her feast and she was fading. But she had won. And that put her in second place, close enough in points to take first and the championship purse. All the had to do was win the last competition.

The Midnight Snack.

It was an ice cream sundae eating competition, and the rules were simple. Eat till you give in or give out. Most ice cream consumed wins.

It was a daunting task drowned in whipped cream and syrup.

And she persisted.

Bowl after bowl, scoop after scoop. It was a war of attrition, a contest of wills. At a certain point it became more of a mental game than a physical one to keep herself going with an eye on the prize. With ice cream dripping down her chin, glops of whipped cream in her cleavage and chocolate syrup staining her lips, Dinah pushed herself forward with one thought in mind.

For Shane.

Suddenly the spoon dropped with a clattering, and Dinah looked over to see her last opponent fall from their chair clutching his head from the brain freeze and his massive stomach from the nausea. Dinah couldn’t bare to look down and see just how swollen her own stomach was, but it didn’t matter. It was over. She had won. 

She took a victory drag from a canister of whipped cream as Shane raised her arm in celebration.

Nothing was the same after that.

For one thing, physical therapy led to Shane developing a deep love for working out in the gym, and after a crash diet due to only being able to drink foods for eight weeks, Shane lost a lot of weight and then a lot more (in a more healthy manner) and he managed to keep it off while becoming quite muscular in the meantime. His passion for business also kept him far too busy for snacking, and he ended up with a far better taste tester than himself.

Dinah was done with diets after the All Valley Eating Championship. The competition unlocked her inner gluttony and there was no turning back. She became what she was always meant to be in the end, a massively obese woman just like her mother, in fact far larger. Her vanity was gone, covered in layers and layers of fat and stuffed down by all the food that she feasted on on a regular basis.

With her gloriously gluttonous gut leading the way, Dinah absolutely ballooned in size becoming a blob with rolls upon rolls of fat. Gone was the skinny girl buried beneath flabby flesh with thunder thighs each thicker than her waist had ever been and bulbous beanbag buttcheeks. She was spectacularly fat with three proud chins wobbling as she ate and ate and ate. She was truly an unstoppable force in the competitive eating community, especially once she perfect her hotdog eating form. For five years in a row, Dinah won the All Valley Eating Championship before finally retiring undefeated and untied. By then it was time to focus on other things.

Those other things were her relationship with Shane and the restaurant. After the All Valley Eating Championship, Shane and Dinah finally got together just like everyone had always helped. It did amuse Shane that he had become the toned, traditionally hot one while Dinah had turned into a blimp far larger than he had ever been, and he sometimes teased her about that. But he was madly in love with her no matter her size. And it seemed to him that she seemed to grow as his business did.

The restaurant quickly took off, and Dinah went from being just the accountant who handled the books to being the CFO of a major corporation. Hell, she even named it.

Shane thought the name she came up with was a little on the nose for a burger place that specialized in especially big and juicy patties with lots of toppings. But how could he not indulge her?

Fat and happy wife, happy life.

Right?