The Straight and (not so) Narrow: Part 4
Added 2025-12-18 00:26:55 +0000 UTCShane lumbered into the sanctuary for church in his fourth month as a small group leader, so obscenely overstuffed he was nearly waddling. He’d gorged himself all morning, woken up early to do so in fact, and the modicum of self-control that prevented him from overfilling himself before attending church seemed to have slipped away entirely. He stifled a burp as he settled himself into a middle pew and was horrified as it creaked beneath him, an entirely new development that was coloring his cheeks pink as he sent up a silent prayer that no one else heard.
Ignoring the consequences of his caloric debauchery over the last several months was easier when he was alone in his home with nothing more pressing than his outgrown sweatpants and the occasional shocking glance in the mirror to shame him for what he was eating himself into. Here, in public, it was more difficult to pretend his weight wasn't snowballing out of control.
He left service that day starving. The interval between his breakfast and his next meal was agonizingly long compared to his typical constant grazing, and he’d stuffed himself silly that morning for that exact reason. He’d become even more confident in his leadership abilities in class, not because of his advanced experience, but because he was beginning to care more about the meal he planned afterwards than he did about stressing himself over potential mistakes.
He made his way to the fellowship hall, stifling another burp as he felt his jostling, swaying belly strain against the lower buttons of his shirt. More than the outgrown clothes, more than the heavy binges sitting on his stomach and weighing him down, Shane was begging to feel so uncomfortable in his own skin. He was in a constant state of holding back. Sucking in his stomach as best as she could to hold back his button, holding back the overfull burps that always pushed their way up his throat whenever he moved. He wanted to place a hand on his tight, aching gut, still sore from his earlier pig out despite the hour that had passed, but he was still able to muster up enough denial to believe no one would notice his new shape if he didn't call attention to it.
He made his way to the refreshment table in the fellowship room, saying his hello’s to the familiar faces, and grabbed a handful of cookies, stuffing one in his mouth before turning around.
“You might wanna lay off the desserts,” he heard Emily chide behind him.
He turned, the color rising in his cheeks once more as he chewed ferociously, his now prominent double chin quivering ever so slightly with the effort.
“Hi Emily,” he finally greeted shamefully.
“First I couldn't get you to come to fellowship, now every time I see you're slamming like, 6 cookies,” she pointed out, grabbing one from the handful clutched in his plump fist. “These cookies are huge Shane, you only need one,” she informed him, staring down at the ball of fat pushing towards her.
Shane just nodded and stuffed another cookie in his mouth, too embarrassed with the confrontation of reality to answer.
“Seriously, Shane,” Emily implored, lowering her voice. “You have to watch what you're eating, you’ve been getting….”
She paused.
“I mean, I don't know if something's going on with you, or if you need emotional support or something, but you're getting really big.”
“Oh, I don't know,” Shane muttered noncomitally through his oversized mouthful after a beat, looking away.
“You don't know?” Emily repeated incredulously. “Shane, those clothes look like they're about to explode off of you, you look like an entirely different person. I mean seriously, your face is so different. Everything is different.”
Shane pressed another cookie into his mouth, unable to form a response and willing the floor to swallow him as quickly as she was swallowing the church's refreshments.
“This can't be healthy,” Emily insisted. “C’mon. Just come to yoga with me or something. It's a super easy class, I'm positive you could still keep up.”
Shane sighed. He knew for a fact he couldn't keep up, knew because the most exercise he got these days was a slow trod from the couch to the fridge, but he also knew that Emily wouldn't drop it.
“Alright,” he muttered, still unable to meet her eye. “I’ll go.”
Emily frowned.
“You’re not gonna go,” she correctly assessed. “Come on Shane. You have to do something, you look… I mean, you look pretty fat.”
Shane nodded again, ears burning.
“No more cookies today, ok?” she said with a poke, sinking her finger into the still squishy top layer of pudge coating Shane's drum tight ball gut and nearly making him groan from the pressure.
Shane broke his promise within minutes, demolishing the rest of the cookies in his hand and going back for second and thirds as he milled about and chatted, exhausted from standing as long as he had. He’d taken to leading his small group seated, and after he walked into his classroom and plopped himself down in the room's office chair, he was horrified to find it creaking as well.
Despite the obvious explanation for his sudden humiliation with multiple pieces of furniture, Shane completely failed to consider that his decision to switch milk for heavy cream entirely had accelerated the pace of his weight gain so quickly it was like he was inflating. He was waking up fatter every morning and worsening the problem by chugging the fattening cream like it was water, leading to a potent cycle of gluttony, hunger, and chubby new rolls popping up in places Shane hadn't even considered.
He rested a hand on the crest of his now even tighter gut and finally let out a loud burp, grateful to be alone in the classroom if even for a brief moment. He rubbed his gut in gentle circles, feeling the way his belly fat strained out of the gaps between his lower buttons like tiny diamonds of extra lard. He couldn't hide it, he certainly couldn't suck in, and that meant teaching as he visibly tested the limits of his clothing in front of the entire group.
He turned his head as the door opened and three of the nearby seminary school’s students burst in chatting, so deep in conversation with one another that they failed to notice Shane was already in the room. His hand flew off his gut and he swiveled to greet the girls, only to meet three faces clearly holding back laughter.
Shane smiled the same embarrassed grin that Emily had brought forth in him, mortified as he felt their eyes on the swollen lump of lard pushing its way further into his lap than it ever had.
“Hi,” he finally eked out, and all three girls giggled and headed to the back of the classroom, whispering and stealing glances at Shane beached in the shrinking office chair with every extra pound on display.
No amount of embarrassment, discomfort, or horror at the blob he was becoming was enough to dissuade Shane however, and the more evidence life provided him of the unsustainability of his excessive diet, the more he ate. He was growing at an obscene rate, and he was forced to size up his wardrobe twice more in the next few months, the extra room in his new clothes actually pushing him to eat more in order to feel the familiar tightness of a waistband digging into the fat roll on his hip.
His body had changed even more, bloated further into obesity than he ever thought possible for himself, and he responded to his fears about the permanence of his constant gorging with enough food to dull his senses and ensure he could only think of the pressure in his middle. He had developed a stack of rolls on his widening back that sat atop his exaggeratedly blubbery love handles and made it even more difficult to button his struggling dress shirts, especially considering that his pecs had melted into plump, wobbling man tits that were beginning to sag towards his generous gut ever so slightly.
His upper arms were fattened hams of lard and his fingers were getting so chubby he swore he was losing dexterity. He was literally getting so fat it was growing difficult for him to type. He was also finding his desk chair tighter and tighter, the unforgiving arms pressing into his tubby sides as his ass and hips spread further than the chair’s width and left him spilling out of its gaps. He’d packed on so much extra blubber onto his thighs that he would've been forced to waddle even without the unbalancing weight of his massive belly, and his waddle was only growing more pronounced as he descended further and further into the obesity that had taken over his life.
Although he’d stayed true to his promise to avoid alcohol, Shane was sporting what looked suspiciously like an enormously exaggerated beer gut, and he was packing on new weight so quickly that the firm, thick swell was defining gravity, remaining a solid hunk of lard and refusing to droop into rolls. This made the changes in Shane even more noticeable, and he found himself pink with embarrassment every time he so much as stepped outside of his house. There was no hiding what he’d become and he knew it, even if he now refused to make eye contact with himself in the mirror. Inspecting his fattening form felt like looking in a funhouse mirror, felt like an impossibility that Shane needn't worry himself with, and although he hadn't had a good look at himself in months, he knew he was unrecognizable.
Shane waddled towards his classroom in his 9th month of lessons, panting as he crammed another cookie into his piggish face. He was moving so slowly these days that he was never the first to his classroom after fellowship anymore, and he was forced to go through the embarrassing ordeal of attempting to manipulate himself into the now comically undersized office chair in front of an audience every Sunday.
His eyes widened as he noticed Lydia was walking towards him and he made an ineffectual effort to suck in his gut, the boulder of heavy fat barely budging but the action exhausting Shane almost immediately.
He made an attempt to smile at her as she sped past him, his mouth still full, but she avoided eye contact and increased her pace, typical now that Shane's near-impossibly rapid gain had become impossible to even pretend to ignore. Lydia treated him like she was embarrassed to have known him, and any hope of a future romance with her had been quashed the first time she’d looked down at his bulging middle with disgust.
He entered the classroom still breathing heavily and pushed down the last cookie as he waddled towards his seat, feeling every part of his body sway and vibrate with his awkward, lumbering movements as the class watched. He finally reached the chair and dropped into it in relief, only for the creaking, abused piece of furniture to emit a shriek as if begging for mercy. He grew redder, reaching to grab his notes from where he typically stored them in the lower desk drawer as a distraction, and without warning the buttons burst off the lower half of his shirt and scattered with a gunshot like intensity, the back to back embarrassments eliciting gasps and snickers from the onlooking group.
He felt his now unrestrained middle push even further forward and made an attempt to stand as quickly as he could, a mistake that left him raising his body up a few inches only for him to slam back to the chair's seat as his gut threw off his balance. That last onslaught was too much for the chair to take, and with a loud crunch, it cracked beneath him, pitching him to the floor and leaving his adipose-covered, ball of a body jiggling so aggressively it was almost inappropriate.
He groaned, and to his horror, let out a loud burp as several students rushed forward to help him, the snickers dissolved into worried murmuring as he lay flat on his back with his swollen belly pushing into the air, completely pinned there by the mass of his own body.
