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GluttonyChristopher Morrow
Howard squirmed in the chair he'd been told to sit in. It was a normal sized chair, and it was a long while since Howard had tried to sit in one of those. He was not the least bit comfortable. Stupid, thought Howard, idiotic government. Obviously people who came here were going to be large, weren't they? Why did they not provide adequate seating? Typical bureaucratic simpletons. His mind mumblings were interrupted when the door opened and the man Howard had come to see walked in. “Hello, Howard, I’m Doctor Margelis." He smiled punctiliously, his thin face barely creasing into a wrinkle at each eye. "I'm glad you could make your appointment.” Taking a seat in a chair on the opposite side of the desk in front of Howard, the doctor opened a folder. “Now lets start, shall we. As you may know obes…” Howard held up one hand. “Er… yes. Firstly, Doctor, this chair is far too small and is making me very uncomfortable, can you change it, please?” Dr. Margelis looked up from the papers in the folder to stare at Howard for a moment. Closing his eyes, he removed his spectacles and placed them on the papers. Rubbing his forehead as though it hurt somewhere behind it, he stared down at the surface of his desk. Finally he looked up he said, “Howard that is a regular sized chair, erring on the large actually, and I am not going to change it out.” “Well this’s a bit much, I must say. Discourteous even. It really is uncomfortable for me, and I think you should have given more forethought to the type of person you're seeing here on this program.” “What type of person would that be, Howard?”
Dr. Margelis' eyebrows rose halfway up his forehead. “The larger person?” “Yes, those of us that are larger than the norm.” The doctor leaned forward. “You are larger than the norm because you are fat, Howard. Fat.” If Howard had been slapped across the face with a wet fish he would not have felt more stunned. The doctor had had the sheer damned nerve to call him fat! And to his face at that. He felt his own eyes bulging in their sockets. Evidently deciding to use Howard’s goggle-eyed silence as a springboard, Dr Margelis put his glasses back into place on his thin blade of a nose and launched into a continuation his opening speech. “Now obesity…" he looked over the top of his glasses at Howard, "that's being fat, Howard… is the number one killer of Americans today. It's one of the seven deadly sins. It cripples the Health Service and costs the Government billions of taxpayers' dollars in benefits. And it is going to stop. You have heard of the War on Drugs? The War on Terrorism? Well, today we have a new one: The War on Being Fat. And for you-- no, no--" He held up one hand, forestalling Howard's nearly spluttered objection, "…be quiet and let me finish. For you, it starts today. From today, you are going to get a personal dietician and a personal trainer provided for you. The dietician has already looked at your stats and has produced this.” Dr. Margelis handed Howard a slim folder from a stack of such sitting in a plastic tray on his desk and continued, “The personal trainer will call on you at home tomorrow morning to begin your fitness program. In one week's time you will return here to be weighed. If you have done as directed by the dietician and the trainer, you will have lost weight and the program will continue. Is this all clear?” Still flabbergasted, all Howard could do was nod acquiescence. “And Howard if you think this is like all those other diets and weight loss clubs you may have used or been to, then you are wrong. This is a Government controlled program to stop America eating itself to death. This is very serious," he said sternly. "Dead serious. No three strikes, no warnings. You will lose weight or you are off the program. Do you understand? One chance is all you get, no whining, no bleating. You are fat and if you have not lost weight in a week's time, we will not help you anymore. Also, you will turn up here in a week's time. This is mandatory. You will be committing a Federal Offence if you do not. That is all I have to say to you. You may leave, and I will see you back here in a week.” Howard used all his self-control to contain himself. Clutching his diet folder to his chest, he rose clumsily to his feet. He wished he could think of something scathing to say, but not one coherent thought entered his head that wouldn't sound silly and maudlin. He turned and left without a word, but with as much haughty dignity as he could muster. What outrageous cheek," he thought, "Disgusting and disgracefully rude. How dare he talk to me like that? Fat? Fat? I'm not fat. I'm large sized. Many people are large like me. He acts like it's a disease or some such thing to be wiped out. What was the world coming to that the government had a say in the size of your own body? As he walked to his car in the car park, Howard looked around and saw other large people. Everywhere he looked there were more. It made him feel better somehow. He got into his car, built for the larger person. A perfectly normal car. Industry catered for the person of the bigger build. That had to mean it was normal. Damn you and your diet, Dr Margelis, and damn the damned Government for its foolishness. If I don’t lose weight then I’ll be off the program, will I? Suits me fine. I never wanted to on the damned thing anyway. Still ranting internally, he slammed the heavy car door and jammed the key in the ignition. He'd only attended the meeting today because of the Official letter that had dropped on his doormat a week earlier, threatening dire punishment if he did not keep the appointment set up for him. How did they find me? he wondered. Doctors are supposed to keep patients' information privileged, aren't they? Well then, damn my own doctor too, the old quack. They can shove their program right up their asses, is what they can do. *** A week later when Howard walked into Dr. Margelis’s office with a smirk upon his face, he remained standing rather than sit in the uncomfortable chair. Standing wasn't much better, but it was the principle of the thing too. Dr. Margelis looked up from papers in front of him and, without preamble, asked, “Howard, why did you dismiss the personal trainer, and on the first day at that?” Howard inhaled. “Man was a sadist. He had me trying to do far too much, and it was hurting me so I told him to go.” Dr Margelis looked at his papers again. “He was asking you to walk up some stairs, Howard.” Yes, thought Howard, …and torture it had been. The flesh on his inner thighs where they had rubbed together was still chapped and sore. Aloud, he said, “I couldn’t do it. I have a delicate constitution that prevents me from exercising.” “No, Howard. You don’t exercise because you are a gluttonous fat sack of idle blubber.” “HOW DARE YOU?" Howard shouted. "You cannot speak to me that way!” “Luckily, Howard, I don’t have to anymore.
You did not lose weight. In fact, you actually gained. You didn't even
try. So, as of now, you're off the program. You'll not waste any more
government money.” He pressed a button on the surface of his desk. The door of the office opened, startling Howard. A heftily muscled man carrying a long pole walked in. “He‘s off the program, Stan. Zap him,” said Dr. Margelis. The man with the cattle prod stepped smartly forward and touched it to Howard’s forehead. Howard saw a blinding blue flash and felt himself falling. He felt the impact when he landed on his back on the floor, but could do nothing about it. He could do nothing about anything. Dr. Margelis stood looking down at Howard and said, “Usual routine, Stan. His blood is clean so make sure they use it. You know what to do about the rest.” “Ok, Doc. No problem.” Stan walked away to open a door at the end of the doctor's room. Howard saw Stan lean forward and rummage through the contents of what looked to be a closet. Stan returned, carrying a length of chain, which he deftly looped and locked around Howard’s feet. Howard tried to speak but no sound emerged from his mouth. Stan called toward the closet. “OK, start her up, live one coming through.” A machine behind the door sprang into life with a whirring sound. The chain tightened, dragging Howard across the floor and through the doorway. Not a closet then. His mind felt frozen, white noise whistling. His last feeling was of being upside down. He still had thoughts though, and sight and hearing. A man joined Stan to stand in front of Howard. Stan said, "We're going to have to think about requisitioning a chain with larger links, Bobby. This one's straining to hold this one up. And look how it's cutting through his skin, leaking blood all over him and the floor." He grimaced. "Messy." Bobby said, "It's because their skin gets thin. Look there. It's paper thin white skin he has." He stepped closer and said, “Okay, fat boy. We don’t want to waste any more of that good stuff, and you don't want to hear anymore of this anyway, I'm sure,” Bobby said as he stuck the harpoon looking end of a tube into Howard’s jugular. “Okay. He's all hooked up. Start sucking.” He then shouted, “Yo! Meat table, wake up. We got a three hundred pounder for harvesting. Get that nutritious fat right out of this sucker. We gotta save the starving millions.”
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