Campus Pigs: Chapter 14

Coach Morgan continued to stare Lindsey down in silence after Courtney's quick retreat, the intense woman's left brow cocked and a bemused half smirk serving as a thin veneer for the more difficultly read emotions harbored beneath. Lindsey hadn't known Coach Morgan for long; long enough to know that she wasn't one to be angered, but not yet long enough to see that anger in effect. She’d seen her coach frustrated, sure, she’d heard her coach yell, but the semi-pleasant, typically almost nonchalant attitude of her former soccer team's leader didn't provide much insight as to what level of fury Lindsey would be facing nor how it would manifest. 

A deep flush of crimson marched its way steadily across Lindsey's cheeks as the silence in the room intensified, becoming almost overwhelming. She wanted to adjust her t-shirt, to pull it away from her body in an effort to conceal more of the rounded swell of her now perpetually bloated stomach, but she knew that any gesture towards her lower stomach would simply bring further attention to the area, especially with coach Morgan eyeing her the way she was. Lindsey's mouth and hands were sticky with syrup and she knew that beyond her puffier face and vaguely softer body, the verocity with which she’d been eating made her look like a long-time glutton well acquainted with shoving down her calorie-heavy meals sans utensils.

Coach Morgan held her stare, her expression unchanging, and Lindsey, unable to take the silence for another humiliating instant, opened her mouth to speak. To her horror, a loud burp forced its way from between her lips instead. The flush coloring her face and neck darkened as her hand flew to cover her mouth, the humiliation of the moment compounding to such a degree that Lindsey truly hoped she’d cease to exist, but to her further chagrin, Coach Morgan began to laugh heartily, the expression of unreadably begot amusement never leaving her face. 

“Well, that's one way to start this conversation,” Coach Morgan teased, taking a step closer. “Quite the spread you got there, huh Lindsey?” she remarked almost casually, her eyes traversing the mostly demolished spread of fattening fare Lindsey had been scarfing down before she entered. “By the looks of you, I assume you're winning?”

Lindsey cringed as her gaze dropped, her embarrassment too overpowering to maintain eye contact. Coach thought she looked so fat she must be winning. There was no question in her mind, it was an automatic assumption. Whether or not Coach Morgan was aware that Phi Lambda always won wasn't a factor in Lindsey's considerations, and instead she looked down at her protruding middle while she bit her lip, trying desperately to see her own growing body from Coach Morgan’s perspective. Coach Morgan knew Lindsey as fit, as focused, and now Lindsey couldn't even speak without letting out more evidence of the way she’d been stuffing herself. It was the opposite of who she’d been just 7 days before, the opposite of what she wanted to be. 

When she’d started the year she wanted to achieve, to make Coach Morgan proud, and was only just begging to accept that instead, she would have to waddle around campus in the hopes that the two of them never cross paths again, an expectation not entirely unreasonable considering that Lindsey certainly wouldn’t be spending much of her time at the university's athletic center. Even if she had run into Coach Morgan at some point, she’d hoped this particular confrontation would never occur. She hoped she’d be able to avoid the face-to-face judgment, the prying, desperately embarrassing conversation in which they discussed all the ways her body would begin to bulge over her clothing, all the ways she’d pork with deposits of extra fat. The attempts to change her mind, the reminders of what she’d become. It would just make this whole thing more difficult, and Lindsey was facing plenty of difficulties with her selection as house pig as it stood. 

“I have to quit,” Lindsey rushed out, still looking down. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to quit,” Coach Morgan corrected. “You want to quit so you can blimp yourself up into a waddling lump of blubber. C’mon kid, don’t sugar coat it.”

Coach Morgan paused and grinned. 

“No pun intended, of course.”

“I don't want-,” Lindsey began in a voice teeming with the previously repressed emotions rising at the first words of reason she’d heard that week, the first sense of normalcy she’d felt since drawing that short straw. She caught herself and her eyes darted towards the kitchen's entrance, certain that Courtney had informed Abagail of Lindsey's surprise visitor and wondering if Abigail would feel the need to return in order to spy for herself. Regardless, Courtney would serve as her second set of eyes whether Abagail could make it in time or not, and every word that was said would likely reach Abigail's ears verbatim in some way or another. 

“I was chosen by my house, ok?” she finished more quietly. “I didn't choose this.”

“It doesn't matter if you chose it or not Lindsey,” Coach Morgan retorted, a tonal boning of steel now adding an unmistakable hard edge to her words. “You’re allowing them to do this to you, it's the same as doing it to yourself.”

Lindsey bit her lip harder, her attempts to ground and distract herself as unsuccessful as her attempts to turn back time and grab a different straw.

“Lindsey, c’mon,” Coach Morgan insisted. “Look at yourself. You're bloated and miserable stuffing yourself with thousands of calories in one sitting just to appease shallow girls that care more about their blowouts than they care about you. Have any of your sisters come to a scrimmage? Even a single one? You’re doing this because you think you owe them something, you think you owe them loyalty and support, meanwhile if you don’t do what they say they’ll kick your ass out. Does that sound like sisterhood to you? Hell, even friendship? Lindsey, c’mon. I’ve seen this happen time and time again, I've seen it happen to girls on the team! Promising, driven athletes who bloat themselves up so fat they're wheezing from their third trip to the dining hall buffet just because they're campus pig contestants. 

Lindsey sat shamed into another uncomfortable silence, the coach’s tirade more personal and emotionally centered than Lindsey had realized it would be. She assumed Coach Morgan would be furious about losing a strong player, not about Lindsey's potential exploitation at the hands of her sisters. 

“I had this kid once,” Coach Morgan went on, all bemusement drained from her visage. “A player like you, strong center. She was in one of these fucking sororities, I don't know which. She got chosen as house pig, she agreed to compete, but she promised me she’d be back the next season. That she’d take a year off to gain the weight, go through months of intense conditioning and a crazy diet, and lose the weight before we started pre-season workouts. She promised. I knew she wouldn’t but the kid was determined, you know? So when she wanted to stay in touch while she was on hiatus, I said yea, whatever. She blew up like a tubby little balloon, I'd never seen anything like it. All that intensity that she usually reserved for the field went right into gorging herself and she got huge so fast, it was a goddamn tragedy. Strong quads replaced with cellulite and lard, 6 pack replaced with this enormous gut, and she just went right along with it. Gained almost 60 pounds of pure blubber but it looked like 70, maybe 75. She let herself go so badly that she turned into this jiggling, wheezing mess. She was big, yea, but she was probably less fit than someone twice her size. She‘d always smile at me when she saw me, always send me little emails asking about the season and promising she’d be back, but after she lost the contest to your house,” Coach accused with a point. “Her own house abandoned her. Kicked her out when she couldn't drop all the piggish eating habits they’d been forcing on her because she couldn't manage to get back down to size. It wasn't just that she never played again Lindsey. She dropped out entirely. This contest ruins girls like you, you don’t recover. You can't get that fat without picking up the kinds of habits that are gonna keep you that way. 

Coach Morgan paused again, giving her a long once-over that made Lindsey shrink back in embarrassment. 

“Look at yourself,” she repeated more quietly. “It’s a slippery fucking slopeLlindsey, and you’re letting these girls push you down it just so you can sleep in a house instead of a dorm, just so you can go frat parties and little weekend events. It's not worth it. You won't be able to lose the weight. You won't be able to lose anything, I need you to know that. No matter what they told you, no matter what you’ve told yourself, you just won't have the willpower. You’ll eat it away.”

Lindsey took a deep breath, her eyes still lowered as if in deference, and Coach Morgan sighed.

“I know I can't talk you out of it. I know all about the social probation, I know. You think this is the only way you can have an actual life around her, you’d be an outcast if you quit, I get it. But you're sitting here covered in syrup forcing down food you don’t even want to please girls you probably don’t even like. 

“I like them,” Lindsey countered meekly, a half-truth at absolute best. 

“Well, then they don’t like you,” Coach Morgan informed her decidedly. “They don’t like you if they're willing to do this to you. Nobody that has your best interest in mind would let you do something this reckless and unhealthy for a goddamn tradition, it's ridiculous Lindsey. You’re gonna ruin your body.”

Coach Morgan frowned, gesturing broadly to Lindsey's bloated form. 

“You already have. Just looking at your face I can tell how much you’ve been putting away, it would take at least a month just to undo the damage you’ve already done. And that's just the physical damage. Have you even thought about what this is gonna do to your mentality? Constantly stuffing yourself into obesity like this is gonna turn you into a mindless food addict, is that what you want? You won’t be able to feel full unless you’ve eaten so much you can hardly breathe, and that's only gonna make you fatter and fatter. Lindsey, it's a cycle. Getting fat is not a one-off thing, this is gonna impact the rest of your life.”

Lindsey shifted uncomfortably, the truth of Coach Morgan's words as disquieting as they were undeniable. She knew all this. She’d worried about it all, spent endless time since becoming pig worrying about exactly what her former coach had just laid out all too clearly. She was already starting to feel the beginnings of the instinct-like desire for constant pressure in her middle and she'd barely made it through the first week, meaning that the more time went on, the more accustomed she would grow to her increasingly ravenous nature. 

“C’mon,” Coach Morgan urged a bit more gently. “You know you don't wanna do this. You’re washing down thousands of calories for breakfast with a two-liter Coke, is that really how you want to be living your life?”

Lindsey shook her head, eyes still glued to the protrusion pushing out the front of her shirt that she was far too full to suck in.

“Good,” Coach Morgan exhaled, relief evident in her tone. “Come back to practice today, I know you’ll be embarrassed but I’ll talk to admin and find you somewhere else to live. And we’ll start on your reconditioning, it’ll be a lot of work but at least you stopped yourself before-”

“I can’t,” Lindsey interjected in a voice barely breaking a whisper. “I’m sorry.” 

“You’re serious Lindsey?” Coach Morgan asked, no true inquiry in her uninviting and newly hardened tone. “You’re gonna choose a group of people who are about to spend the next 6 months fattening you up like a prize pig instead of your team? The people that you’ve worked hard with, the people who you actually get along with?”

Lindsey only bit her lip harder, no longer caring if she drew blood. She needed a distraction, a pressing and painful one, and her own teeth were the best she could scrounge up in the moment. 

“Are you proud of yourself? Coach Morgan pushed, the layer of disgust coating her words too thick to drip. “Are you proud of what you’re gonna turn into? How you’re choosing to spend your days? You can't even look me in the eye, Lindsey, you know this isn't what you should be doing. Look at me,” Coach Morgan instructed, and Lindsey, her automatic propensity to defer to authority honed by years of intense coaches and captains, looked up without thinking, meeting Coach Morgan’s eye before she realized what she’d done. 

“You’ve been ducking my calls,” Coach Morgan reminded her, holding Lindsey’s eye contact so intently that the overfed student didn't dare avert her gaze. “You’ve been avoiding me like it somehow wasn't gonna get back to me what you’ve decided to do.”

“I didn’t decide-,” Lindsey began, but Coach Morgan cut her off with a single lifted finger. 

“What you’ve decided to do,” Coach Morgan reemphasized. “And the reason you haven't been able to face me is cause you’re ashamed. Am I wrong?”

Lindsey stared at Coach Morgan unblinking, the feeling of fullness finally setting upon her from her frantic stuffing moments before. She was realizing that she felt particularly full with this meal, as if the bacon grease-soaked pancakes were swelling in her gut and filling up every centimeter of free space in her already overfilled middle. She stifled a burp, feeling the shame coach Morgan had just mentioned rise within her at the aftertaste of pure bacon lard. 

“Well, that shame you feel about getting caught with a piece of bacon in your hand?” Coach Morgan declared with a gesture. “Yea, multiply that by 10 when it's 50 extra pounds you’re lugging around.”

Lindsey nearly jumped, realizing with a start she was still clutching the syrup-soaked piece of bacon she’d been preparing to devour when she was frozen by Coach Morgan's sudden presence. Despite being caught mid pig-out, that forgotten piece of bacon seemed to multiply her humiliation tenfold and Lindsey dropped it quickly as if it had burned her, caught. 

“That’s the thing kid,” Coach Morgan acknowledged with an uncharacteristically somber look. “You can drop the bacon all you want, but soon you won’t be able to waddle outside without someone knowing you overeat greasy junk like it's your job. Soon you won’t be embarrassed about what you’re eating, you’ll be embarrassed about the evidence of what you’re eating piling up all over your body. You’ll be the bacon. All on your own.”

A dark mirth returned to Coach Morgan's eyes as she chuckled, seemingly in part at Lindsey's stock still, stunned reaction to Coach Morgan's more than likely accurate prophecy of her future. 

“That’s what you want, right? That’s what's important? To win? Well, I'm sure you’ll win Lindsey. And lose everything.”

She stepped back, giving Lindsey one more long once over as if attempting to memorize her as she was. 

“You had so much potential,” Coach Morgan remarked with a shake of her head. “Enjoy your breakfast, Lindsey.”

Coach Morgan made her way to the door, shooting Courtney a booming, “Thanks kid” and was gone as suddenly as she arrived, Lindsey sitting at the kitchen island with the salt-swollen fingers of both hands still coated in syrup and bacon grease. 

“Linds?” Courtney asked, peering around the corner into the kitchen as if checking if the room was safe. “You ok?”

Lindsey found herself unable to answer, unable to even acknowledge that Courtney had spoken. The confrontation she’d dreaded the most and it had gone worse than she’d ever expected. On top of that, Coach Morgan had no idea the plans Abigail and Courtney had for her, no idea that her prediction of Lindsey gaining 50 pounds was less than half of what they’d really planned for her. 

“I’m sorry you had to quit,” Courtney comforted quietly after several beats of silence. “I know that must've sucked.”

Lindsey’s face remained unchanged, her thoughts so overloaded she was nearly expressionless, and after another lengthy pause, Courtney tried again. 

“Maybe…” she started hesitantly. “Maybe you can be done for breakfast today. You don’t have to finish the last few and you don’t have to drink the shake. Since you had so much last night. Yea?” Courtney prodded, her tone hopeful that the appeasement would snap Lindsey out of her stupor. “Just, don’t tell Abigail. Come on let’s go to the car, I’ll drive you to-”

“It’s fine,” Lindsey interrupted, shocking herself more than she shocked Courtney. “It's fine.” 

“Oh,” Courtney intoned carefully. “Well. I have to drive you to class, I can’t let you-”

“No, the food,” Lindsey corrected. “It's fine. Make the drink, I'll have it.”

“You want it?” Courtney clarified incredulously.

Lindsey sighed. All she really wanted was to forget the conversation she’d just had with a woman whose team she’d fought her whole life for a spot on, and the only way she could think to do that was by stuffing herself till it hurt. Coach Morgan was right. She was right about everything, and this particularly ill-advised coping mechanism that Lindsey hadn't even known she was developing would certainly prove to be a problem. She just wanted to eat until it hurt, eat until she couldn't focus on Coach Morgan's words reverberating around her brain because the pressure of her overfull belly was too all-encompassing. 

She snatched the dropped slice of bacon and crammed it in her mouth, then upended the bottle of syrup on the already-drenched remaining pancakes. She tore into them with a ferocity born of potent humiliation, and she crammed herself even fuller more quickly and messily than she had so far. The bacon grease coating the pancakes was beginning to make its presence very obvious and each bite became more and more laborious as she filled herself with pancakes topped with liquid fat. She burped loudly, took a swig from her neglected two liter, and burped once more, reaching with her free hand to rub comforting semi-circles on her tight middle and covering the bloat of her belly in the sticky, fatty pancake topping. 

Courtney's eyes widened at the unexpected display in front of her, the offer that she’d made out of kindness entirely forgotten. 

“So, should I make the shake, or….” Courtney prompted, her confusion and awe ill-concealed.

Lindsey, her mouth too full of fluffy breakfast confections to speak, nodded with her cheeks bulging out to either side. She was so full it ached, so full she felt herself expanding with each bite, and yet she couldn't stop until the food was all she could think about. Until everything she was facing, everything she was sacrificing, disappeared from her mind to be replaced by groans of fullness. She let loose another burp, making no attempt to cover her mouth, and shoved a piece of bacon into her already full lips, chewing with effort due to the volume with which she’d overstuffed her maw. She was eating like a woman possessed, eating like the pig she was meant to become, and when she finally choked down the last piece of bacon she gasped, pressing both hands lightly into either side of her rounded stomach bloat. 

She swore she could feel her skin stretching, swore she could feel the extra pound of fat that this breakfast was sure to make her gain working its way onto her body in real-time, and she moaned, finally reaching the point of overfullness that the sudden emotional distress had made her seek. She burped, hiccuped, and burped again, even the minimal pressure of her hands almost too much to take, and Courtney finished up her shake, pouring it into an oversized glass and placing it in front of the still-moaning Lindsey with a gentle thud. 

“Do you need-” Courtney stuttered, seemingly hesitant to actually verbalize her offer. 

She lifted both hands, indicating to the tight, rounded swell of Lindsey's middle, and Lindsey nodded, desperate for the relief of one of Courtney's belly rubs. She burped the second the older student's hands came into contact with her painfully bloated stomach, but the relief of Courtney's well-practiced massage quickly followed. Lindsey groaned again as the splitting feeling began to subdue and she sighed, cringing as she remembered the face coach Morgan had made when she asked her if she was proud of herself. 

Without thinking she grabbed the milkshake in front of her, Courtney still rubbing her belly in slow, concentric circles with both hands and began to chug, immediately reversing Courtney's work and making her gut bulge further into the unsuspecting student’s hands.

“Are you sure you…” Courtney began but trailed off as she saw the speed with which Lindsey was chugging the shake down. 

She didn't take a moment to breathe, draining the entire serving in a series of consecutive impassioned gulps, and slammed the cup onto the table, so full her breath was coming in ragged gasps. Even Courtney's gentle hands on her body weren't enough to alleviate the fresh pain and Lindsey moaned even louder, unable to control herself whatsoever. Her body felt like an overinflated balloon, like an overblown bubble, and she was genuinely beginning to believe that she was going to pop. 

All thoughts beyond how much she’d put away fled her mind as if pursued, and she finally found herself unable to consider Coach Morgan's words, unable to truly even recall she’d paid the Phi Lambda pig a little visit. 

“Do you wanna skip class,” Courtney asked as if the answer weren't more than obvious.

Lindsey simply burped in response and continued her low moaning, the occasional hiccup jostling the content of her belly and making her yelp with pain. She was too full to stand, but in the face of what she was attempting to forget, she preferred it that way. Lindsey burped again, pressing her eyes closed, and hiccuped loudly. It seemed she’d be spending her day in the kitchen.