Romance:From Fat To Fatale(15)
It'll be our little secret. Just between us friends. Because right up to the awful moment when I was subjected to the ordeal of Miclav's poorly camouflaged porn obsession, I'd never have thought such things might ever be possible. Now we know they are, don't we, my dear? Does it ever make you pause in an intense moment of passionate delight and ask yourself honestly where the world is heading? No? Really? Me neither.
I was heading to the wilderness about fifteen miles outside of town in the lady nutritionist's pick-up truck, aiming for the remote spot where her trailer was parked up, bumping along a dusty trail with what looked like a ton of vegetables piled up in the rear. Now you are one worldly-wise individual and I totally respect your views and opinions but would you have volunteered to drive off into the middle of nowhere with a complete stranger who might easily turn out to be a well-disguised cannibal who's just added you to the top of her weekend meal plan? Body my size and she wouldn't have to think about grocery shopping for a month or more.
But I didn't hesitate. Not for a second. Does that sound completely nuts to you?
I know it sounds weird but I just felt totally at ease with her.
She told me the cell phone reception out there would be mostly zero but there was a pay phone up the road at a gas station some eight miles away. In case of emergency. Still no worries. Not a hint of panic. No phone? No problem. She stated very clearly that she was a registered nurse. She knew what she was doing. That's why she could take care of me during the so-called retreat. Any problems - and she wasn't expecting any - and she'd be right there to do whatever was necessary.
And I found it all completely reassuring. I asked if any of her victims had ever made it back to civilisation. She didn't bat an eyelid. Just said that with a full moon and the right prayers I might just be the first. Then she turned those deep blue eyes on me and I could see the wicked humour, matching my dumb question with an equally dumb answer. This might turn out to be more fun than I expected. I began to wonder if she knew how to bake.
Chapter 11:
Out of the frying pan
Baking was not the best word to use on that particular day because the heat in the old trailer was too much for the ancient air-conditioning unit that was bolted onto the mobile home's rear panel. It wheezed and hummed and it felt like it was coughing out streams of super-heated asthmatic air right into my face. It'll take a little while to settle down, said the lady nutritionist as she tapped the side of the ventilator with a small hammer. Soon be working fine, Honey. I hoped to God she was right. I was already sweating like my brother after three hours on full-throttle, pervomatic PC
over-drive and I didn't really want to lose this much weight by drowning in my own perspiration.
Let's get you some cool water, she said. Before we have to put you to bed with a bucket and a mop.
Why don't they tell you about this stuff in Biology 101? Why don't we learn this in kindergarten? Why doesn't anyone drop a few hints about the real effects of sweet, innocuous sugar on the human metabolism? Why wasn't there a clearer warning on the waiver I'd happily signed that I was about to go through seventeen shades of Purgatory as my body slammed into the effects of total sugar withdrawal for three tortuous days? I suspect that if I'd really known what I'd signed up for, I probably wouldn't have gone along for the ride without a shotgun aimed directly at my head. And there were plenty of moments when I'd have pleaded with my abductor to pull the trigger and put me out of my misery. It would've been a Christian act of mercy.
We ate vegetables and, at first, everything was pretty much like my dress sense - completely tasteless. But hey! Hold on a second. You agreed a little too quickly with me back there about my dress sense. I'd really like you to try finding one of those fabulously flashy, high-class, designer labels sometime and tell me you got something nice and chic that's actually available in double-plus, triple-width, extra-stretch, super-size! Yeah. That's right. Give me a break. It ain't easy finding anything that fits and still qualifies as remotely elegant outside of the circus tent department.
But enough about the foibles and failures of fashion for the super-sized lady-about-town. Back in the wilderness, things in the trailer were not going so well. All those supposedly delicious, freshly cooked vegetables with their natural supply of high-octane super-nutrients all tasted pretty much like freshly boiled cardboard. Without the exotic flavour. My taste buds, I was reliably informed by my smiling host, were all shot and pretty useless, dead to the subtleties of fine cooking and inert to the celebration of Nature's pure-grown bounty.
Right. Very helpful as I chewed a desiccated mouthful of shredded cardboard.
Felt like I'd been in the trailer for a full day but only two hours into the gig and the clockwork airco still wasn't working. Or so it felt. I was melting in the heat. The lady nutritionist sat there calmly, eating her veggies, chatting about the programme, not a bead of perspiration to be seen. How come I was over-heating? Apparently the airco was working just fine. It was me that was in meltdown. A natural reaction to the programme, she said. Was it my imagination or was I getting cranky? I felt seriously irritated. By everything. I was annoyed at the colour of the bedspread on my cot, fractious about the food, petulant about the texture of the toilet paper, homicidally inclined towards my host.
She said it was OK. In some ways it was a very positive sign that my body was reacting so quickly. I guessed she must have hidden all the sharp instruments. I could've bludgeoned her to death with one of her own precious damn zucchinis and laughed at the vision of smothering her with a healthy slice of pure organic pumpkin. Your body's reacting, that's all, she said calmly. Drink plenty of water and I'll get a cool compress for the back of your neck. I went to lie down, my head sending out a hammering warning in Morse Code that I was about to get the mother of all migraines. Except I didn't get the migraine. I got something worse - a gnawing, pulsating ache that lanced through the back of my head and threatened to fry my eyeballs in waves of molten lava. I think I wanted to die and the programme was only just beginning.