Party Leftovers

By Joshua Pierce

Shawn was so glad when everyone left. He rubbed his tired, grey eyes in exhaustion. Sure, he loved his friends, but parties were not his cup tea. He hated the preparation and clean up that. The only benefit was all the leftovers he got from them, but that wasn’t enough to make him want to host dozens of parties. If the party hadn’t been for the birthday of his best friend from high school, Nathan, who he only got to see once a year anymore. Nathan was the only one of their old friends from high school who had moved away, which was a good thing or else he wouldn’t have had enough people to invite to make a party.

Looking around, the heavyset man sighed and started working on cleaning up. Fortunately, many of their friends not being as young as they once were and having families to take care of, had left much sooner than they would have years ago. Shawn had to agree, he wasn’t as young as he once was. As his watch beeped 9 P.M., he started picking up the trash from his living room.

Shawn sat down on the couch to rest after he finished tying his second bag of trash. He was getting so tired after gathering all that trash and he wanted to rest before going in to deal with the leftovers. He had only been resting for a moment when his stomach growled. At 275 pounds, most of that recently grown gut thanks to his promotion he had received six months ago that now saw him working a desk job full time, he had been getting hungrier more often.

Pushing himself up off his couch and smoothing his light green polo shirt out, Shawn walked into the kitchen where the leftover food was still waiting to be put away. Grabbing a plate, he loaded it up with potato salad, mac and cheese bake, pizza, and regular potato chips. Taking the plate of food back to the couch, he turned on the TV to find something to watch. Not much was on, and not having cable limited his options even more, so he turned it to the local old movie channel which was showing Abbott and Costello Go To Mars.

Shawn mindlessly snacked on his food as he watched the old comedy duo and by the second commercial break, he had finished off the plate. Despite the plate having been rather full, his stomach was still growling with hunger. Weird, he thought, with that much food, I should be rather full. Oh well. Not like I don’t have plenty of food to get rid of.

Not wanting to miss any more of the movie than he had to, he practically ran back to the kitchen and loaded his plate up again, mainly with the last of the mac and cheese, but adding some coleslaw this time.

Sitting down just as the commercial break ended, he started munching again. His stomach felt full and tight, but he was still hungry, so he kept eating pushing himself to eat more than he normally would. By the next break when he went to take another bite only to get a mouthful of nothing but plastic fork.

Shawn groaned as he got up. His stomach was so stuffed that it was sticking out an extra couple inches and was making it hard for him to move. Despite being stuffed, his stomach was still growling.

Belly so full he was forced to waddle, Shawn headed back to the kitchen. Too bad I can’t take all the food out with me so I don’t have to keep coming back.

Shawn walked into the kitchen and stopped dead in his tracks. There in the center of the kitchen, was a cart with all the leftover food on it. Had that been there the last he came in?

Shawn’s thoughts were interrupted as the commercials ended and the movie came back on. Without another thought, he started pushing the cart back into the living room where he positioned it within easy reaching distance from the couch.

As the Venetian women rounded up Orville on the movie, Shawn grabbed the potato salad off the cart and started eating that straight out of the bowl. Soon, that bowl was empty too, its contents now in his taunt belly that was nearing the size of a beach ball.

Stomach still growling, he started shoving in meatballs, sauce getting all over his stubble covered face. Finishing those, he grabbed a napkin from the corner of the cart not even noticing that they weren’t there before, to wipe the sauce from his face.

Shawn tried to lean forward to grab the next dish but his gut now reaching the size of an exercise ball and made it impossible to get up. Instead, he wiggled himself so he was on his side and then turned the cart to access it again. Shawn groaned as he changed positions. His gut was so stuffed, it was starting to hurt. He started massaging his gut through his shirt and it wasn’t long before the pressure eased, though for some reason, his arms started to feel like they were being weighted down and his gut stopped being so solid, though it didn’t seem to get any smaller.

Feeling more comfortable, Shawn grabbed an unopened bag of chips. Wait, hadn’t all the chips been opened? He shrugged his shoulders and pulled open the bag before shoving handfuls of chips into his mouth.

Shawn munched on the chips, refilling his gut, as the movie progressed. It didn’t take long to finish the bag of chips and move on to the next bag. Three bags later and his gut was back to being bloated again.

After tossing the last chip bag onto the floor, Shawn’s hand started searching over the cart for his next bit of food. It took him a minute, and reaching to the far end of the upper part of the cart, to find the last main dish: chili! Not much chili had been eaten because his friends all said it was too spicy. Oh well! More for me!

The chili was made in a huge cast iron pot, enough to feed at least a two dozen people, though only four people, Shawn included, had had any during the party.

Shawn placed the pot on the couch in front of, carefully holding it steady with one hand because there wasn’t much room left for it beside him. Little by little, the chili disappeared into his growing belly.

A groaning sound came from the couch as he finished the last of the chili, causing Shawn to shift to try to see where it came from but after nearly squirming himself off the couch, he instead reached for the remainder of the birthday cake that covered most of the bottom rack on the cart. Since the cake had already been cut into individual slices, he didn’t even bother with utensils and instead ate each slice by hand. As more of the cake disappeared, the groaning from the couch also increased. Every move he made increased the groaning even more.

The movie came to a close as the last of the cake disappeared. Trying to get up, Shawn found himself pinned again by his packed gut again. His gut was stretched to capacity and hurt from everything in it. Reaching as much as he could, he started massaging it again, though he couldn’t even reach halfway around the diameter of his exercise ball sized gut. Rubbing as much as he could, the fullness slowly started to ease. The longer he massaged himself though, the harder it became to reach most of his gut. His arms also seemed to be getting heavier.

A loud Crack! sounded from the couch bringing Shawn back to his senses. Looking down, his view was entirely locked by his huge gut that had to closing in on 100 inches around and was now hanging several inches off the couch. His new double chin thickened his neck enough that he couldn’t really see his arms. He tried moving his arm into view and was rewarded with a plump hand with five sausage like fingers. Looking down as much as he could was confronted by a pair of new moobs which, although large, looked small in comparison to his humongous gut, all of which still oddly had clothes on that fit him. Well, that would explain why I can’t move my arms! Shawn thought in shock.

Another loud crack sounded from the couch. Shawn’s eyes widened as he realized what was going on: his weight was crushing the couch under him! Shawn desperately tried to get up before it was too late. His body wobbled wildly throwing him off balance and slowing him down. Finally, with one heave, greater than any he had ever done in his life before, he managed to get up. Unfortunately, not being used to his new mass, He took one step and immediately crashed back onto the couch smashing it and causing him to jerk awake.

Shawn quickly started feeling his body, checking it. Thank God! It was all a dream! A growl from his stomach ended his sudden checkup of his body. Well, that explains my weird dream. With that, he got up to get something to eat for real.