Voices Part 3 (Patreon)

There was a loose awareness that followed Pruitt had about something being wrong with her new home but for the most part she put it from her mind. It followed her everywhere she went while she was at home; stopping at the front door but growing more intense the closer she got to her walk in closet. She generally avoided going in there if she didn’t have to as it tended to end in an anxiety attack or some weird episode that she could rarely remember without conscious effort to do so. Sometimes the prospect of some malevolent spirit inhabiting her bedroom and whispering dark thoughts into her ear was a terrifying notion, but other times the single mom couldn’t convince herself to really do anything about it.

The thought would blindside her at the most odd hours of the day, often times when she was alone after spending some mother/daughter bonding time with Callie and would whip her up into a frenzy of worry and fear. Then, as quickly as it came on it would dull and become more of a agonizing concern than an immediate problem. By then it felt more like the dread of an upcoming test that Pruitt hadn’t studied for or the deadline for a bill that she knew she wasn’t going to make without some seriously devoted hustling. After a while of catastrophizing it, Pruitt would simply relax again as if she either accepted that whatever was going to happen was going to happen and she would deal with it when it did. Then finally the feeling would sit in the back of her mind, always there but not really an immediate concern at all. She would simply go on about her day without giving it more than a brief passing thought until the next day when she awoke and the cycle started all over again.

The chubby woman huffed slightly as her morning cardio worked her into a light sweat. Even though she didn’t really have much experience nor the money for a personal trainer, Pruitt found that youtube was a fantastic source of guided exercise videos. Sure, they weren’t as in-depth as some of the more extreme programs out there but they definitely got her blood pumping and she figured that that had to count for something. Pruitt followed along at a lighter pace for the warm up, moving from high knees to jumping jacks with only a little trouble. Back at her old place she had almost never exercised so even the easy stuff was enough to be challenging in the early stages. Plus, she wasn’t trying to go crazy with it either. Despite the woman leading the video being a thin, athletic blonde with an influencer type attitude and glamorous look, she was soft and sweet and encouraged her viewers to adjust and modify the movements to fit their fitness level and to take breaks when needed. 

(Faster, tubby)

Pruitt picked up the pace a bit, knowing full well that she was able to handle more than she was doing. It was one thing to take it easy but it was completely another to slack off. She’d gone to a trendy fashion store the week prior and was convinced by an extravagantly busty but charmingly sweet sales clerk to splurge a bit on clothing that she wouldn’t normally buy for both her and her daughter. 

Calliope’s wardrobe had been updated more to help her hit the high school scene in style while Pruitt’s new wardrobe items were intentionally a couple sizes too small. The saleswoman had suggested the idea after the two of them chattered on about their respective weight loss efforts as single mothers, citing her own financial woes as a cautionary tale for slimming out of all of one’s clothes and having nothing to wear. It was a nice idea that dieting and breezing through some light exercise would get her pants to fit better in the coming months but Pruitt knew full well that if she really wanted to change, she was going to have to work.

Her thoughts drifted back to Calliope as she put her hands behind her head and began throwing her knee up as high as she could, twisting through the motion before uncoiling back down. 

(Don’t you fucking dare stop, lardass)

Even as a cramp began to form in her lower abdomen, Pruitt continued to power through the exercise and refocus her mind on something else as she breathed the pain away.

She wondered if Calliope was having fun at her new school. They were trying to start a new life in a new place, but that was no good if it turned out just like the last one. They may have gotten new clothes at a fancy California store, but that didn’t mean that their country roots weren’t still going to come through. Calliope had never really taken to crowds well and had been a bit of a loner in Wisconsin and had a hard time making any friends due to her low self esteem. She was kind, but shy, and her interests were more based in fictional worlds of magic and mystical creatures than in the traditional hobbies like sports or in the case of most girls her age, gossiping about boys.

(Yeah, she’s a fucking dork)

It was true, Pruitt realized, that Callie’s hobbies and mannerisms may not have helped her too much in making friends at her old school. Many of the kids there were raised to look down on nerdier pursuits like reading for fun or writing poetry. That and she had a tendency to infodump about anything that she was interested at a moment’s notice which tended to instantly repulse anyone who wasn’t already interested in what the strawberry blonde was saying. It usually went poorly.

(That’s what happens when you’re weird as shit)

Pruitt sighed through her lack of breath and continued onto toe-touches. She felt ragged and exhausted and would usually have stopped by now but was too in her head about her daughter’s plight and her concern for her to even think to sit down and relax. Instead she boiled internally, using the exercise as a means of releasing the pent up energy she’d built up by stressing.

Calliope was definitely not everyone’s cup of tea and while she loved her daughter to death and back, sometimes she just couldn’t understand her. She was the one who started the household weight loss kick, but refused to do any exercise. She was 15 but still played pretend with her dolls for hours and saw nothing strange about it. Lately, she had even begun randomly spacing out like she was in some kind of trance, sometimes even in public. 

When the two had gone clothes shopping the previous week, Calliope spent most of the time wandering around the store without saying anything. Periodically she would pull an especially slutty looking shirt off the rack or hold a pair of tight jeans up to herself in the mirror, but would then look disgusted and set it wherever was convenient, leaving the workers to put it back for her. Then when they were finally about to leave, she was nowhere in sight. Pruitt and the saleswoman had to stalk through the store just to find Calliope standing in an aisle with her eyes closed, looking like she was about to be abducted by aliens. It was concerning…..and if Pruitt was being honest with herself, a little embarrassing as well.

The thought saddened her enough to pull her out of her frustrated mania. Her thighs and hips burned and she was both drenched in sweat and horribly out of breath. Panting, she looked around the room and found that her workout video had ended and had gone 12 minutes into a guided yoga session without her even realizing. Pruitt wiped her face with a towel and almost dizzily made her way to the kitchen where she filled a glass with tap water and chugged it thirstily. She felt lightheaded, but suddenly more alert, noting for the first time the almost metallic taste of the tap water after years of drinking it that way at home. She nauseously reasoned that it must have tasted different here and that’s why it suddenly stood out to her…. Even if it took her a week to notice.

Slogging her way up the stairs and into the bedroom, the sweaty woman tiredly stripped down without ever stopping her walk to the shower and got in. As the water began to heat up, Pruitt took the time to assess her naked figure in the mirror while she still had the time.

(Looking a little better tubs. Lose some weight?) The voice from the closet said, nearly causing Pruitt to jump out of her skin. 

(1)

The walk in closet didn’t have a door, and despite experimenting with it she couldn’t decide whether it was more unnerving to have the light inside on or off. The voice was a quiet but audible vocalization now as opposed to the soft, bitchy whisper from before. It actually sounded like there was some blonde teenager sitting in her closet and speaking to her, and Pruitt often found herself eyeing the doorway, just waiting for someone to walk out of it. No one ever did, but that didn’t make the situation less terrifying. Despite subconsciously knowing that the voice was there, Pruitt was taken by surprise every time it spoke as if she had just conveniently forgotten about it every time she left her room. Ignoring it made it angry and therefor worse, but listening to it wasn’t especially pleasant either. Most of it was insults and deprecation but lately it had graduated to backhanded compliments about her figure while trying to tear down Calliope.

(What do you wanna bet she’s got the tubby gene too, huh? Wouldn’t that be funny?) It asked maliciously.

“Why would that be funny?” Pruitt asked back, steeling herself with defiant, motherly protection.

(Because, then if you actually stick to your diet and exercise, you’ll end up the skinny one while she gets fat. That’d be a funny dynamic, lawl.) 

Pruitt made mental notes about the voice’s speaking habits over time. It had a habit of actually speaking or spelling out text acronyms by saying things like “lol” or “O-M-G” out loud. It made her wonder if this was some kind of millennial ghost that was cut down in her teen years back in 2004 or something and was now trapped in the house for some reason. She kept thinking that one day she’d go into the attic and find the rotted corpse of a young girl in there.

“Well she’s on a diet too, so that’s not really going to happen, now is it?” Pruitt said, washing her hair as she stared warily at the closet, standing straight as the Queen’s Guard even as the water poured over her.

(Pfft. You know better. That bitch doesn’t even work out. I give it a week before she’s back to pigging out on ding dongs and nutty bars and shit. Then it’s just a matter of time before Tubby-Two is ready to dock)

“That’s not going to happen.” Pruitt stated firmly.

(Ooh, why? Mommy dearest gonna keep an eye on it? That’ll go over well. Next thing you know she’ll be at school crying about how her mom calls her fat and makes her lose weight. That’ll be fun to watch. Hope it happens, lawl)

“I’m not going to do that to my daughter. I’m better than that. I’m not my mother.” Pruitt said, almost shaking with fear and anger and wanting very badly to be ready to get out of the shower.

(Yeah, I bet. Hey, think she’ll have big tits? Some chicks kinda get away with being fat for a while because their tits get big, but even then they’re not like actually popular material.)

There was a shameful amount of time that Pruitt spent wondering what her daughter would look like later on in life, imagining her as both a busty but fat girl as well as growing into the boxy body type that she herself ended up having. It was an innocuous and natural enough thing to imagine in private, but she felt hideous for doing it after the voice from the closet prompted her to.

(Nah. She’ll probably be stick legs and a fat gut like you , huh? Oh well. At least you’re *trying* to do something about it. Not all of us can be pretty~) 

The voice was arrogant and evil, but never did anything more than speak. Pruitt turned off the water and toweled herself off in the mirror while glancing over to the closet every few seconds.

(Whatcha lookin for?) The voice teased.

(Do you….seeeeeeeeeeee something?) 

Pruitt was becoming worried and anxious with the taunting from the closet whipping her up into a terrified frenzy. Even so, she knew better than to close her eyes or try to block it out. She clutched her hairbrush like a weapon and tried her very best to control her breathing as the feeling of intensity swelled to record levels of intensity before suddenly stopping.

Just……nothing.

The feeling of paranoid dread simply vanished as if it were never there. Hairbrush still in hand, Pruitt centered herself and cautiously relaxed enough for one soothing exhale.

(Hey) It said again in a low whisper.

(Watch out....)

(…………It’s right….)

The woman’s heart began to race in anticipation of what came next as she strained to hear it.

(….b e h i n d  y o u..) 

Pruitt shrieked and tore out of the room completely naked as the voice cackled loudly from the closet.


It took Pruitt a whole two hours of sitting outside of her bedroom door to muster the courage to go back in. She’d heard the front door open and hastily scrambled to get out of view and put on clothes before her daughter saw her sitting hunched against the door in the nude. Her initial inspection hadn’t yielded any terrifying results. In fact, what surprised her more was the fact that she was still worried about it. Normally by now the voice had vanished from her mind along with any fear she’d had in regards to it. But while she did feel more confident in her own space, she still dared not look around the corner and through the closet doorway at the end of the bathroom. Instead, she simply dressed herself in a casual gray tee, and went back out to spend time with her daughter.

She found Callie outside and riding her scooter with the extra thick wheels around the neighborhood all alone. She looked cute, Pruitt noted, in her fancy new brand name clothes. But even with the flashy shirt with the cutoff sleeves showing off her slim figure and long blonde hair, she wasn’t smiling at all. She simply waved and kept riding around in circles all by herself. Eventually she came over and gave her mom a great big hug and Pruitt felt a little embarrassed at how much the girl’s arms were digging into her fat.

(2)

“Hey little, you doing alright?” Pruitt asked consolingly, worried for her daughter’s happiness.

“Yeah….” Calliope answered somberly. “I just love you is all.”

Pruitt almost cried from the sentiment as she definitely missed her little girl and needed some affection from her. 

“OHHHHH….I love you too littleface! You’re my most favoritest person in the whole world. I hope you know that always and forever so many muchly.” She gushed softly, rocking her daughter back and forth until the embrace was broken.

“You sure you doing okay? Did something happen at school?” Pruitt asked.

“School’s fine. I just miss our old house.” Calliope said, shrugging as she did.

“Aww, well…I know things are new here, but hopefully you can make some friends and this place won’t feel so bad, right? What do you think?” Pruitt asked, trying her best to cheer up her dismal teenager.

“Well…I have some friends. They’re nice. I just…..I dunno. There’s just stuff on my mind.” Calliope admitted while pointedly not making eye contact.
Pruitt remained concerned, but smiled at the notion that Callie was already making friends. She trailed off slightly as her eye caught something small. A tiny detail that she would have never known or even remotely cared about before and felt a little bad about noticing. There was the tiniest hint of plumpness to Calliope’s arms. It had been there before along with the slim but obvious softness of her waist, but today it seemed just the tiniest bit more noticeable. She tried to ignore it, but found herself compelled to stare even as she prompted her daughter to talk about her new friends. She chatted about Tina and Laney for some time, but Pruitt found herself only half listening as she wondered nervously why this was bothering her so much and what had happened to Callie’s diet. Was she off of it already? Did she just completely fail and was now gaining instead of losing weight? Was it all just her imagination, or did Calliope actually have the same predisposition to gain weight like she did? The thought of Calliope being stricken with the “tubby gene” bothered Pruitt far more than she cared to let on, and before she realized, she’d offered to walk down to the corner store and pick up some snacks for a movie night  She was almost annoyed when Callie smiled for the first time since they’d began talking.

(3)

As the two walked towards the small gas station liquor store, Calliope continued to babble on about the things her new friends talked about in school. Pruitt was happy to hear it, but couldn’t tear her mind away from the mean, guilty test she was about to administer to her own daughter without her even knowing. She convinced herself that she was giving Callie a chance to not disappoint her, but even that thought made her feel all the worse.

“Alright…” She began, sucking up any visible sign of guilt before speaking. “Get whatever you want!” 

Calliope smiled and eagerly wandered towards the candy section as Pruitt eyed her like a hawk. She wandered around for a short while, seemingly reaching for this candy bar or that before rapidly pulling her hand away and returning to her pacing. Pruitt took some grim satisfaction that her daughter had passed the admittedly gross test and avoided temptatious and unnecessary calories, but the moment she’d stepped inside, Callie’s hand reached out and pulled a Twix bar off of the shelf. She held it in her hand and her mouth opened with an almost visible exhale of satisfaction before she stared back at the rack like a drug addict trying to convince herself not to take a hit.

But hit she did. Calliope grabbed a second, then a third candybar, seemingly relishing the very act of holding them in her hands with visible, astonished pleasure painted on her face. She grabbed a bag of chips, then a soda, then another candybar before Pruitt irritatedly walked up to confront her.

“Umm, what are you doing?” She asked accusingly.

Callie looked at her guiltily, a confused and confusing expression on her face that seemed half terrified and half pantingly horny. “…You said…I could get….whatever I wanted..” She said, clearly in an unusual emotional state herself.

As confused as Pruitt was, she found herself more annoyed the longer she stared at her daughter. Callie seemed to be upset by her mother’s scathing glare, and again Pruitt kicked herself for the pleasurable tingle welling in her spine at the reaction to her display of authority.

“You really want ALL of that? I thought you were supposed to be on a diet?” Pruitt interrogated, almost excitedly awaiting her daughter’s reaction and keenly aware that the cashier was watching the drama unfold out of the corner of her eye. 

Callie looked stoned. On one hand, she was shaking and looked like she was about to cry…but no tears came. On the other, she was rocking back and forth at the waist like she was subtly trying to hump the air as her mouth opened against will and she half moaned “I want…mooaar…I want more.”

“Are you fricking serious right now? What is WRONG with you?” Pruitt said, legitimately bothered by what she was seeing in her daughter, but unable to voice her concern any other way.

“You are supposed to be on a DIET, young lady! And I’m not going to let you throw all that hard work away because you wanted to binge on junk! I said ONE thing, you got twenty.” 

Now Pruitt was buzzing too. Her brain was warm and oozing dopamine as a reward for standing her ground and admonishing her daughter who only seemed egged on by the reprimand.

Calliope looked at her mom with pleading eyes that seemed to scream for help, but what lolled out of her mouth was a lazy, half-stifled whine.

“….Mmmmbut. I waant themmm.” She complained, then immediately shut her eyes as hard as she could.
Pruitt didn’t know what was going on or how to end the situation, so she decided to try to fight the urge to give in to the gnawing temptation to bitch her out right there for her behavior.

“Well….There’s uh…If you eat all that…you’re gonna end up too fat for all those nice clothes I bought you, so just pick one thing and we’re leaving!” She said, still coming off more aggressive than she’d intended.
Surprisingly, that seemed to have done the trick. 

As Pruitt’s muscles tensed and relaxed pleasurably and her brain fuzzed over from the buzzing joy in her head and spine, Calliope obediently put all but the Twix bar back and quietly set it on the counter and awaited her mom’s payment. Pruitt bought herself a drink and the two left, awkwardly walking home without a word to each other for several minutes. Both of them were silently aware that something was wrong and that the other knew it, but neither felt that they could say anything about it. So they didn’t.

It was only at the door of their house that Calliope grabbed her mom’s hand.

“Mom?” She asked sincerely.

“Yeah, baby?” Pruitt responded, her hand squeezing just as hard as her daughter’s.

“I really love you. Always and all the time.” Callie said.

“I know little. I love you too. Always and all the time and nothing will ever change that.”

They stepped inside and closed the door.