cautionary tale part 01
The next day you suggest we go to the park: The same park we went to ages ago when you were down and I thought you needed a break. There’s no sign of Lucy or Shaun yet but it’s a lovely weekend day. Maybe you want to walk them both off, work them both out. I don’t know, and honestly I’m drained from the pace of your appetite.
I should have got suspicious when you wore a long skirt. You kiss my cheek as we park up. “Get me an ice cream?”
Eyes are on you when you step out of the car. You’re… simply massive. Already large by yourself, both Lucy and Shaun are now various stages of slop inside the hemisphere engulfing the waistband of your skirt. Children stare. Mothers comment. Dads stare at your shape, especially your breasts which hang like the teardrops of a god, shapely but weighed down by the sheer weight of their fat.
You stride beside me, your rounded hips lending your gait a seductive sway. Society says women should be thin. The raw confidence and sensuality of your walk spreads body positivity more effectively than any ad campaign.
The line is long for the ice cream van. I’m a little dazed with sleep so I don’t notice you scanning the dense crowd speculatively. When it’s our turn I step forward—“99 three-scoop with two flakes, and a cider lolly, please”. Somewhere behind me I hear you giggle. Too distant. I turn my head to find you’ve slipped away.
I pay for the ice creams and take stock. More heads than average are looking towards the playground. Perhaps that’s there you’ve gone. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach that is curiously paired with butterflies. Something terrible and wonderful is about to happen. Adrenaline banishes my tiredness: I even remember to pick up tissues for the ice cream that will inevitably melt on my fingers as I track you down.
Families mill around the main promenade and litter the cricket ground. Children play and tantrum, weaving amongst groups in a way that makes it hard to keep track.
You’re not by the playground after all. Vanilla drips onto my fingers and I get a few strange looks, being a single man holding ice creams near a child’s play area. If only they knew.
I’m scanning the crowd again looking for a clue as to where you might have gone when I hear a woman’s increasingly frantic voice. “Miles? Miles!”
He doesn’t appear after a few moments. My heart pounds in my chest. Ah, you’ve been this way.
You can’t have gone far. In fact there’s only one place that isn’t thoroughfare or carpark or cafe seating: a drift of trees that opens onto forest and a rhododendron collection.
As inconspicuously as I can I step off the path and among the trees.
You’re actually among the rhododendrons, reaching up to bring a luscious flower to your nose. An innocent onlooker might believe you were enjoying the scent but I know that’s not what’s causing your eyes to close in bliss.
“Raven,” I say, quietly but urgently. “This place is crawling with people. Where is he.”
“Where’s who, sweet?” you say innocently. Your lips curl up in a slight smile. I want to kiss then and to bite your nipples, hurt you for being so smug.
“The kid. Did you at least eat him already?” I look around to check no one heard. For now we’re alone amongst wide, mature ornamental bushes.
“Oh no. He’s still very much visible. Can’t you see him?”
You turn to look at me straight on. Your figure is breathtaking. Only growing anxiousness prevents me from getting lost in an exploration of the curve of your stomach, the swell of your hips.
Your hips. The fabric twitched.
Ah, of course. The bloody skirt.
I pull up your hemline. A pair of lanky legs kick frantically. Two thirds of Miles is still in fresh air: the other third is swaddled in slick, musky muscle. If he’s screaming his five-year-old scream we can’t hear a thing.
“Raven!”
“He was a little shit,” you say, leaving the obvious joke implied by a knowing smile.
“His family’s looking!” I hand you the ice creams then kneel and grip the legs, pulling to free him.
You grimace and shake your head before he’s gone half a foot. A dangerous cannonfire gurgle from your tummy warns of consequences. “Right now he’s the only thing holding in Shaun and Lucy.”
Kneeling so close to your business end I imagine the mess that would make, the likelihood of being caught. Not good. Close to your skirt I catch the strong, slightly metallic scent of your lower bowel. A glance at the tide mark around the kid’s yellow T-shirt convinces me that no, there’s only one direction this can go.
You must be packed, I think to myself as I grab the little thighs and line them up to push. Yards and yards of soft tunnels packed with shit that was once human. And he’s face-first in it, disoriented and terrified in the suffocating, stinking, thickly oozing darkness.
“Why not sit on him?” I ask as I bend his back straight. Little fighter that he is he bent at the waist to make it harder to push him.
“I wanted to… Ah~” You bend your knees and brace against the pressure. “I wanted to see if you’d shove a kid up my bum in public.”
We find out together while you lick your ice cream.
Miles is hard going. He ploughs a path through a turgid river of excrement, crushed intermittently by the strong muscles of your colon. He tries to kick free but there is no hope for him. You feel his little frantic fingers tickle the inside of your anus then they’re gone, exploring walls coated with your light anal slime. The rest of him follows suit, crushed into obedience by your bowels and wrapped up in your shit.
Unbeknownst to us, tiny, fragments of Shaun’s bones cut his skin. The wounds are irretrievably polluted but, on the plus side, the chances of his contracting an infection are low.
You shudder as your pucker squeezes shut around small, besocked feet. I fling the shoes into the nearest bush. Miles squeezes deeper into his new home. You can feel him still wriggling. Your colon, which crushed the life out of Shaun on the first bend, is a much kinder home to the smaller and more pliable bodies of children. You feel him transit beneath your bellybutton, trailed like a comet by viscous-sounding glorps and borgles. He begins to squeeze down your ascending colon before plain oxygen debt murders him for you.
I straighten and let your skirt fall back down around your legs. “I can smell how turned on you are.”
“I want another.”
“You cannot be ser—”
“Get me a girl. My stomach is empty.”
I stare into your eyes. You look back, defiant, domineering, somehow childish in the directness of your demand. I see the reckless hunger on your face and long to satisfy it. I know I never will.
After a long pause I speak. “Kids run off in the long grass at the bottom of the roly-poly hill. Come with me.”
You beam a bright smile at me. Maintaining perfect eye contact you take a long, luxurious lick of your 99, then slap your belly to set it rippling. “Let’s go be a cautionary tale.”