Night School: Part 4 (Patreon)

As Makoto warily stepped into the reception area of the school building, she saw that it had changed since the first time she had been there. Shaking from fear and the cold, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. With a couple swiped of her finger, a bright light began to shoot out of they device, revealing dusty, broken furniture and a filthy floor littered with old papers she was too afraid to try and read for fear that she might find something about herself written on them. Every trepid footfall resulted in a swirling of dust or a loud freak from the floorboards, nullifying her attempts to proceed stealthily and giving her a very certain feeling that no matter how she try to hide it, the building or whatever may dwell in it knew full well that she was there.

The light flashed slowly from one end of the room to the other as she forced herself forward, egged on by the biting cold. Even when the floor didn’t creak beneath her feet, her shoes thudded and clacked noisily. She had been attempting to move slowly and with more grace than she was, but her rampant shaking and shivering coupled with the fear and premature exhaustion building in her legs was making it too hard to sneak. Makoto closed her eyes and took a breath. She had intended to take a moment and steel herself to face what lie before her with strength and determination, but the deep inhalation of dust and frigid air only shocked her lungs and made her cough. Dread and terror set in and before she knew it, her eyes were open again, desperately trying to discern shapes from shadows and catalog every flicker of movement in the dark. Makoto advanced, but not with stalwart courage and the will to rescue her friend. She moved meekly, forced against her will by the oppressive environment that seemed to be doing everything it could to make her feel small.

The floor squealed in wooden agony as she stepped into the corridor that had previously led to the classrooms that she and Maya had been guided to the night before, but instead of a lit room lined with mysterious locked doors, there was an ominously long hall dotted on either side with open, lightless rooms. She expected some terrible, manic monster or shrieking, disfigured girl to come barreling out of one of them at her at any second. With every fleeting ounce of willpower, the trembling waif presses down the hall, making sure to walk extra quickly past any of the open rooms without even so much as a wary glance inside.

As she reached the end of the corridor, her gleaming phone light revealed a turn at the end of the hall, hidden by some sort of optical illusion or effect that had prevented her from seeing it until she was near enough. It hadn’t surprised her in the least that it existed. In fact, Makoto had taken it ad proof that she was actually getting somewhere and felt momentarily invigorated before she realized that she most likely didn’t actually want to be wherever it was that she was going. Even so, she felt an equal measure of fear and relief at the sight of warm light filtering out of a room at the end of a shorter hallway. Makoto knew that there was nothing she wanted in there. She knew that this was the very thing she’d wanted to help Maya avoid when she warned her to stay away from the school that morning. Despite this, she pressed on with defeated resignation. The terrified asian girl knew that that room with the flickering orange light was where she was destined to end up lest she die of hypothermia in a dusty, dark, and terrifyingly lonely office building.

“Took you long enough.” Said a stunning woman with ebony skin and silky raven hair that flowed down past a pair of plump, hanging breasts.

(1)

The woman appeared to have been reading at a podium when Makoto had entered the candlelit room, only looking up after the timid girl had warily approached. She pulled up a second book and began thumbing through it like a banker would a ledger.

“Makoto Suzuki. Figure Appreciation 101.” The black bimbo said, gazing up at Makoto with big, accusatory doe-eyes.

“You’re late for class.”

Makoto grabbed the bottom of her shirt and began twisting it without even realizing she was doing it. She nervously took a bracing breath and spoke up, feeling suddenly that the curvaceous black woman seemed to tower over her from behind the looming podium.

“I’m…Um…I’m looking for my friend. Maya Katz? She said she was going to be here.. and she needed my help…” Makoto said, her own voice betraying her attempt at projecting confidence.

“Miss Katz is receiving a lesson right now. As should you be.” The woman said succinctly.

“Please report to room 412 immediately.”

Makoto wanted to speak up again. To plead for her friend, or guiltily, for her own life. But before she could say any more, a splitting migraine completely incapacitated her. Her vision began to shake and darken as her body grew weak and tired. With every ounce of willpower available to her, Makoto struggled to stay on her feet, clenching her eyes shut and wheezing through gritted teeth until the pain and nauseating quaking subsided.

Makoto had no idea how long she’d been standing in that same spot, but it felt like ages. In truth, she could have opened her eyes much earlier than she did, but behind the safety of her eyelids she finally felt a twinge of peace and safety. She reasoned with herself, one part of her telling her that she needed to be awake and alert lest something dangerous come to get her while another saying that she was helpless no matter where she went, so taking the moment of peace wasn’t going to change things much outside of making her slightly more comfortable before she died. When she finally did open her eyes, she found herself standing in a bleak, dark facsimile of her family home growing up. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, her heart began to pound as she gazed, horrified at *something* moving on the couch.

For a moment she chided herself internally for not moving as a human form lifted itself up into a sitting position, a curtain of long, raven black hair falling away to reveal the face of a young woman. She stared, stupefied as the thin figure propped her elbow up on the edge of the couch and leaned onto it before flicking a pair of dark eyes in her direction.

Makoto’s eyes grew wide as her breath froze at the very top of her chest, causing her to cough and sputter at the sight. The girl staring back at her was a darkened image of Makoto herself, but with some small, subtle difference that she couldn’t quite capture on her tongue. Her skin was the same as Makoto’s, but with a silky, smooth looking quality to it. Her hair was the same too, but longer, fuller, and immaculate. Their faces were the same, but the doppelganger appeared the way Makoto saw her very best days without even using any makeup. Or rather, if she did, it was so natural looking and flawlessly applied that it had very nearly convinced it’s counterpart that her lips really were a naturally blood red hue. Makoto realized what the difference was after studying the girl on the couch just as the girl on the couch studied her. The word had finally come to her. The apparition that sat before her looked exactly like Makoto Suzuki, only…….better.

(2)

“You look like me.” The girl said. “Who are you? How’d you get in?”

Makoto didn’t know what to say. For all she could tell, this was *her* childhood home. The assertion that SHE was the intruder left her stumbling over her words.

“I…Uh. I used to live here, I think.” She half-mumbled, rolling the bottom of her shirt around her fingers and squeezing.

“You think?” The girl said, quirking an eyebrow skeptically.

“I…um…I don’t…know…” Makoto trembled. “I was brought here. I don’t know how.”

The girl stared at her for a moment, then sighed gently. Her shoulders dropped and she casually slunk down onto the couch. Then, reaching into a bag on the end table, she fished out a pack of cigarettes. In one smooth motion, the girl slipped a slender white stick between her ruby red lips and flicked a lighter to life and lit it. Makoto watched in absolute horror as her mirror image pulled hard on the cigarette, watching the orange light of the cherry travel down the paper before a plume of thick smoke flew gracefully out of the girl’s mouth.

“No…That’s…not right.” She said.

“Hm?” The girl asked, languid in repose as she cast her eyes over to Makoto once more.

“I don’t… Smoke.”

The girl’s sultry lips twisted upward into a grin as she stifled a chuckle.

“Yeah, well you should. It feels good.” The dark girl cooed seductively. “I think I know who you are.”

Makoto fidgeted in place, inhaling sharply through her nose at the promise of information.

“You’re me from before.” She said.

The trembling, timid Makoto answered meekly. “Before? Before what?”

“Before college. Before…school.” The girl happily bit her lip and slipped a slender hand down her pants before taking another drag on her cigarette, her back arching with visible pleasure as she inhaled. “Before this.” She said, holding up her cigarette before blissfully exhaling another ghostly gray torrent of smoke.

“Wha- No! No, that’s not me. I don’t do…any of that.” Makoto stammered.

“What, you don’t smoke? Yeah, I know you don’t. Not yet. You still think it’s nasty because you haven’t tried it yet. But let’s not pretend you don’t masturbate. We both know you do.” The girl said, her hips gyrating slightly as her hand continued to move in her skirt.

“What?! No! I mean, like…That’s…Not what I mean! Smoking is gross! And it’s-“

“-Bad for you? I know. That’s what I just said you’d say.” Dark Makoto interrupted.

“It is!” Makoto half-yelled, almost forgetting her fear for a moment.

“Mom smokes. All the time. We never said anything to *her* about it.” Dark Makoto shrugged, taking yet another drag as her head hung back onto the arm of the couch.

“Mom is an adult. She’s allowed to make her own decisions. But that doesn’t mean I have to turn out like her!” Makoto snapped, stomping her foot childishly.

“But I didn’t turn out like mom. I turned out like me.” The girl responded, beginning to pant slightly from her own attentions. “I started smoking to keep the weight off. Now it turns me on that I can’t stop. You’ll wanna start too once you gain the freshman 40 like I did. Too much sugar. Too many coffee dates. Too many snacks. It adds up you know.”

Makoto was startled out of her anger. She had been trying to cut back on the very same indulgences her dark counterpart had described after noticing that she had indeed gained a small amount of pudge around her waist. A trip to the bathroom scale had revealed that she’d managed to gain 4 pounds only a month after starting college. It was a negligible amount, but with Makoto’s lack of physical activity, she knew that the only way to lose it was by dieting. If what this dreamlike reflection said was true, she could easily gain upwards of 40 pounds by the end of the year.

“These make me feel sexy. I like feeling hooked on them. It turns me on to need more of something I used to hate.” The girl said. “But more importantly, they keep me skinny. And I’m still losing weight. Fuck, I’m getting so hot..”

She was clearly, softly moaning between statements now, hips bucking rhythmically as she fingered herself in front of Makoto. Every few lungfuls of clean air was punctuated by another smoky inhale.

“…I…. No. This is a distraction. I need to save Maya.” Makoto said, once again finding her determination.

“Maya doesn’t *need* to be saved.” Dark Makoto said with a mischievous purr.

“Maya came here of her own free will because she knew what she wanted to happen. *You’re* the one who needs a lesson. Just come here and let me help you. Tell you what…”

The girl expertly shimmied out of her skirt with one hand and slid her panties to the side, revealing a perfectly smooth and hairless, glistening wet pussy.

“You don’t even have to start smoking yet. Just come over here and let’s enjoy my *hot*, *sexy*, *SKINNY* body together. And if you eat me out, I’ll make sure to return the favor for every time you make me cum.”

“Wha- EW!!” Makoto shrieked.

Unable to handle the creepy advances of her own self image, the timid girl bolted out of the room to the sound of her doppelganger cackling maliciously behind her. She tore through her childhood home looking for the front door. As she ran, the hallways seemed to stretch and the rooms were familiar, but out of order. She ran from the living room to the kitchen, then from the kitchen into the laundry room. Makoto felt tears and panic well up in her eyes and chest at the same time as an inescapable feeling of being chased grew in intensity. With nowhere left to go and the laughter of her evil counterpart echoing after her like a witch chasing after a fleeing child, Makoto threw open a closet door and found a long hall in the place of a closet. At the end of the hall was what stood out to her as the old front door of her mother’s house, complete with the autumn wreath that decorated the exit. With one final dash, the young woman blazed down the hall as it stretched to allow whatever was clawing it’s way through the house after her it catch up. At long last, she reached the knob and ran through the door, slamming it behind her.

What awaited Makoto on the other side however wasn’t the cool open air of her front yard or the exit to the school building, but a brightly lit room with beige, speckled wallpaper. Despite the crashing of her heart against her ribcage and the shaking of her hands and tires legs, Makoto slumped down against the door, no longer feeling the intuitive sensation that something was chasing her. Whatever it was, she’d lost it for now.

Without the freezing air, flashing images, or slutty demon reflections harassing her, Makoto spent a good deal of time slumped against the door of the beige room in almost complete silence. She felt the minutes pass in muted, sterile fashion, unsure of why or how the terrors of the haunted school were suddenly stopping here. Instead she just sat in silence against the door, grateful that nothing was happening at that moment.

After what felt like at least an hour in real time, Makoto’s back began to ache and her tailbone was sore after sitting so long on the hard wood floor She did have the fleeting thought that her butt was too small to be sitting like that, and the moment she did, scrambled memories of feverishly writing at a desk flashed in her mind. She remembered scribbling something and the words “breast and butt implants” strobed through her conscious mind like a horror movie cutaway. She opened her eyes and shook her head, unwilling to sit with that particular memory.

She stood up and after checking the door to make sure as best she could that it wouldn’t burst open and see her dragged away kicking and screaming into the dark by some horrible monster.

Nothing. Nothing but silence and warm, cozy air the smelled lightly of chai. With a sort of lethargic curiosity, the tired girl began to walk further into the room, inspecting it from her new, standing vantage point. She’d seen the end table from her seated position against the door, but had failed to notice what was on top of it while she attempted to rest from her earlier incident.

Sitting neatly on top of the table were a pack of cigarettes, a beautifully ornate lighter, and a small card with a pink trim around it that read “For when you change your mind”.

Makoto sighed and stared at it for a moment not in fear or anger or even any emotion at all. She simply looked at it tiredly for a minute before walking away, certain that those items were going to have some near-future impact on her.

The building she was in was built in a straightforward manner. One room led to a hallway, the hallway led to an open room. The open room had two openings: one to a bathroom and one to another hallway. Makoto stepped into the bathroom first and found it to be dark and sufficiently creepy, but appearing to be unoccupied. She looked onto the dark wood counter and her eyes immediately locked onto what appeared to be her very own camera that she’d left behind in her room. Hurriedly, she grabbed it and turned it on, bouncing her leg at the familiar, but slow loading screen before she was able to fully access any of it’s functions. It had only taken a few clicks of the navigational buttons to open up the photo album where she was indeed greeted with a wall of badly shot pictures of a dark classroom with an eerily familiar piece of paper sitting on it.

“My name is Mako Suzuki….” Her own voice echoed in her head.

With a sigh and an avoidant swallow, she turned the camera off and set it back down on the counter.

“No.” She said. “You’re not tricking me that easily.” She said, looking wistfully down at it.

She was trying to get herself to leave, but couldn’t fight back the hope that if she could somehow record what she was seeing while inside of the school building’s insane world, the pictures she took might just appear back on her camera in the real, living world.

…Should she ever make it back again.

“God damn it.” She sighed, grabbed the camera, and stormed out of the bathroom.

Even with as light and practically dressed as she was, Makoto was grateful that the wood floor didn’t click as much as the previous one had. There was a gentle thumping sound if she stepped too lightly, but it was simultaneously quiet enough that she didn’t think it would give her away too badly while also allowing the potential to hear someone else coming. With light, treading steps she moved down the unexplored hallway with a feeling of dread. Or rather, not a feeling entirely, but more the *expectation* of a feeling that just never came. The beleaguered girl couldn’t tell if the feeling she had was real anxiety or simply being wanting to be more alarmed than she was, but she pressed on regardless.

The hall, she noticed, was decorated with lit portraits of beautifully dressed women she’d never seen before wearing stunning and often extravagant ballroom gowns. The first was of a tiny slip of an Asian girl that Makoto initially gasped to see, assuming that it was a painting was of her. The more she looked though the more the differences began to stand out. The girl looked Japanese, but had longer hair than Makoto did and a pair of thick glasses that completely differentiated her. Makoto herself had always had 20/20 vision and determined that despite the similarities, this girl couldn’t have been her.

(3)

The next several pictures were of incredibly, massively obese women in various poses and a pantheon of ethnicities. The first was the largest; a wide-hipped black woman with flowing hair and a round, but regal and judging face.

(4)

Following that was an oil painting of an Irish looking woman with thick jowls and a billowing white and red dress.

(5)

The fourth was a similarly sized Polynesian looking woman, though admittedly, the squinty eyes and overly fat features made it difficult to tell what her ethnicity really was. The biggest giveaway her dress, which was a firm teal adorned with Hawaiian style flowers.

(6)

The fifth and sixth were a change from the last few, as both depicted slimmer and less colorful women. One was a confident looking black woman with hard eyes and glittering diamond jewelry while the other was of a homely and depressed looking girl. While one seemed fit and powerful, the other was weak and emaciated, but both wore black dresses as opposed to the brighter schemes the others did.

(7,8)

The final picture that hung on the wall was a strange one, as it was devoid of a female subject in a dress. There was a dark, and greatly more gloomy room of the same Victorian style, with ornate décor and even a single chair by a table where a subject might sit.

(9)

Makoto felt compelled by the painting to continue looking into it. She felt drawn into the dark atmosphere, squinting her eyes to study even the tiniest details of the room. She lifted her camera and clicked the shutter button causing a blast of light to erupt from the bulb. It wasn’t particularly surprising to see that she’d forgotten to turn the flash off, but the sudden photonic assault on her eyesight had broken her from her trance. Makoto took a breath and shook herself out of the sudden drowsiness that had come over her while looking at the painting and doubled back to snap pictures of each one for future reference, then moved as fast as she could out of the hall and into the next room.

A feeling of comfort washed over Makoto as she entered a beige room not unlike the first one in design. She stepped out of the hallway and looked over at a couch and television planted firmly in the back. Once again, Makoto felt suspicious of her own lack of alarm as she gazed towards the couch where a massively fat Asian girl sat, sinking into the cushions before an absolute mountain of fast food. She wore peachy pink button down pajamas that barely contained her girth in certain areas as she greedily noshed on junk, all the while staring dumbly into the television screen.

Makoto moved closer, unsure of what to make of this particular apparition. She was wary, but only with conscious effort in making herself distrust what it was she was looking at. The girl on the couch didn’t *seem* harmless at all, but Makoto knew far better than to just let her guard down, especially if something was prompting her to feel comfortable enough to do so.

“Hello?” Makoto said warily as she slowly moved closer.

“Huh?” The fat girl said, barely looking up from the tv to glance at the new person in the room.

“…Who are you?” The thin girl asked. She barely expected an illuminating answer but figured that if she didn’t at least try to gather some information she would never get out of there.

“Hm?” The girl grunted with a hint of annoyance in her voice. With a rocking motion, the venerable blob of a woman heaved herself forward enough to grab the remote and pause whatever was on the tv before looking over at Makoto.

“Jeez. I can’t believe how skinny you are.” She said. There was a sort of dullness behind her eyes. It reminded her of the girls she would meet in college who ended up acting dumb to appease their idiotic, abusive boyfriends until it just wasn’t an act anymore. This girl had a thick double chin and greasy, shoulder length hair, but her defining feature was the near slack-jawed, hung-open mouth of a stupid animal.

(10)

“Where are we?” Makoto probed. “I need to go home.”

The fat girl put down the remote and shot Makoto a knowing grin before reaching over for a handful of fries.

“Heh. You *are* home.” She said, stuffing the food in her mouth. “Sh’long’z shoo don’t reave.”

The girl chewed noisily as Makoto continued to approach, studying the girl in an almost scholarly manner as she moved towards the couch.

“What do you mean?” The skinny girl asked.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you.” Said the supersized woman, scooting heavily across the couch and out of a massive groove that her weight had pressed into the couch.

Before she knew it, Makoto had sat down next to her. She felt the warmth of the couch radiate through her tired body as she slouched backwards into the armrest despite her own desire to handle the situation carefully.

“I ushed’ta be just rike you.” The woman said, still chewing a mouth full of food. “Skinny. Unhappy. Scared. Then I found my way here. Now I got everything I need.”

The girl unpaused the tv and began laughing raucously as the characters in some trashy tv comedy resumed their idiotic antics.

“You can have some if you want.” The girl said, gesturing to the food.

Makoto looked at the nauseating spread and grimaced slightly, shaking her head. “No thank you. I just want to know how to get home.”

“You ARE home. You ain’t leaving. Trust me, I know.” The fat woman repeated. “You chose to come here just like I did. Now you’re gonna stay here just like I did cuz you’re just like me.”

Makoto scrunched up her face at the idea, poorly hiding her disgust. “I’m not like *you!*” She spat, glaring over her drink as she sucked on the straw, feeling the cool, thick fluid filling her belly. “You’re so fuckin fat.”

“Well yeah, cuz I didn’t wanna get killed by that skinny bitch outside. It’s better in here.” The girl defended. “Plus, it’s not like I can be expected to not eat while I’m here. You know what I mean.”

As much as Makoto didn’t want to admit it, she did know. She was already halfway through her second cheeseburger and beginning to feel overly full. Still, she couldn’t help the feeling that she needed more.

The two ate in silence for a while and watched tv. At first it seemed like the show was a simple sitcom with a white male protagonist out of his depth around a bunch of sexy women, but it wasn’t long before the nerdy lead was staring wide eyed at a plastic blonde’s big fake tits as she tossed her bra to the ground.

“Ooff…This is getting hot.” The fat girl said, burying her hand in her pants right in front of Makoto.

“Yeah….” Makoto agreed, spellbound by the pornographic scene playing out on the television. She clenched her thighs together in an attempt to discreetly stimulate herself.

The other girl had no such consideration. She bucked and heaved back and forth as tides of belly flab jiggled in thick waves as her hand slopped in and out of her audibly soaked pussy.

“Uurf. Ooh. Mmmmffff.” She groaned.

Makoto could barely take it herself. Her shorts had ridden up and thighs were beginning to grow wet from her own arousal. The urge to eat grew even stronger, and soon Makoto had her hand buried into the front of her shorts as she stuffed handfuls of food into greedy mouth. Growing irritated at the obstruction, Makoto pulled the front to her stretchy shorts open and slid her hand inside, cooing lazily as she slid down into the couch. She was very nearly fully enrapt when her attempt at getting more comfortable saw her accidentally press the shutter button on the camera as it’d started sinking beneath the cushion and causing a bright flash to explode outward from the bulb once again.

In an instant, Makoto had leapt to her feet, terrified that she had once again lost track of herself. She’d felt completely buried in the warm, mushy atmosphere of the comfy room and only became wary enough to pull herself out when the flash had snapped her out of the daze.

“Oh…My…God…No…NO. HOW….WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?!?!” The massive girl cried, looking down at her blobby body as if it was the first time she’d ever seen it.

Makoto stared in horror as the girl’s gaze met hers.

“Please. You have to help me.” She pleaded. “My name is Makoto Suzuki. I came here to help my friend Maya, but I never found her.”

Makoto stood and stared, stunned at the revelation. She could feel now that something in the room screamed of corruption. Of….Wrongness.

“The last thing I remember is being chased here. There was a girl who looked just like me in the other room, but when I talked to her she tried to make me do….things. To her. And to myself. The next thing I knew, I would just wake up here, but…BIGGER. Please. PLEASE. I know you might just be some kind of ghost or phantom here to fuck with me but PLEASE, if you are ANYTHING like how I was when I looked like you, you would help me get away.”

The woman was sobbing now, moving closer and closer slowly, the floor thudding loudly with every footfall.

Makoto didn’t know what to do. Everything about the situation was unnatural. Every course of action screamed “trap” to her. She began to turn and run, but instead called out to yet another corrupted version of herself and called out to her. “Follow me!”

The two began making their way down the hall, though the fat girl was hideously slow and already bent completely over, wheezing for air after only making it halfway across the relatively small room. Makoto looked to the table and felt the pull of the couch, remembering the comfort it offered. She smelled the food and began to salivate against her will, already yearning for another greasy bite of the junky fare. Instead, she ran.

Makoto made good time, but felt slow and sluggish even in her panicked state. Her feet simply didn’t carry her as far as before and took far more effort to move. Once again, it seemed that the halls extended as she ran down them, trying to keep her from reaching the end before her tired legs gave out. She ran past the portraits, now hung in reverse order and position and resonating with a sort of sad, desperation, as if crying out to her for help she couldn’t give. When she reached the end, Makoto’s eye was drawn to the final picture just as it had been before. Unwilling to fall for the same trick again, she raised her camera and took a photo, recording the changed image and clearing the haze once more.

She pushed further, a cramp forming under her ribs as she ran. Makoto pressed her hand under rib to try to relieve the pain, but was snapped awake to the realization that instead of loosely coated bones, her fingers had sunk into a thick roll of pudgy flesh.

“…..W..h..a..t..???” She thought, looking down at her hand. Where once her hands were soft and slender, now it had a sort of plumpness around the fingers, and in her frantic state her eyes shot across the empty room to the bathroom. With a crazed dash, she launched herself into the bathroom only to have the bottom drop out of her world when she locked eyes with the girl in the mirror.

(11)

“….No…..” She gasped, staring at a greasy-skinned and significantly plumper version of herself. At some point during her binge, she realized, she had lost herself to the influence of whatever this place was doing to her and gained a significant amount of weight in mere minutes. Her clothes too had changed from warm pants and a jacket to the same stretchy shorts and midriff baring top she wore when she would bum around her dorm room on free days. Makoto now sported a thick muffintop and a much rounder face, marred by blackheads under an oily sheen that glistened in the light. Either out of fear or a desire to regain focus, she lifted the camera and flashed it once more at her reflection.

When she opened the door and moved back out into the previously empty room, she found the fat Makoto waddling towards a massive table covered in delicious looking junk food. Makoto watched as her obese counterpart looked up at her pleadingly before her eyes glazed over and she heavily thudded over to the table and sat down in one of two vacant chairs.

“Wait!” She tried to call out. “We need to GO!!”

But it was too late. The fat girl was already shoveling treats into her triple-chinned face, moaning in helpless euphoria.

Makoto took off running down the last hallway only to freeze at the sight of the corridor’s end.

The door was gone.

She was certain that this was the only way she could have possibly come in and everything else seemed right, but the doorway that she’d sat in front of for such a long time was just…gone. Her thoughts grew bleary as her stomach rumbled hungrily and the newly chubby girl felt herself turn and stare are the smorgasbord of ghastly trash treats.

“Uhhhhhggghhhh.” The fat girl moaned erotically. “You GOTTA try this…”

Even watching a ridiculously obese version of herself burying her hand in a pillow of a fupa while slurping a cheeseburger down in the other, Makoto couldn’t help but want to plant her fat ass in the chair and eat. She meandered forward, consciously trying to fight every siren-dazzled footfall as she continued to loom closer to the sloppy buffet before her. It was only when she looked over at the end table that she saw the card again, this time flipped over to read “To keep the cravings at bay”.

She knew what it wanted. Memories of the darkened Makoto flashed in front of her eyes as she reached out and grabbed the lighter.

“….They keep me skinny..”

The flashes of thought scrambled her ability to think, but broke through the foggy allure of the feast, allowing her to see what a hideous mess she would become if she allowed herself to indulge as her counterpart had done repeatedly since arriving in that strange place.

She knew she didn’t want to do it, but the fear of becoming the walking, greasy waterbed of a woman with lifeless eyes and a nearly immobilized body pushed her to reach for the tiny box and remove a cigarette from it. Makoto stared, trembling at the tiny white stick for a moment before putting the end in her mouth and grimacing at the already disgusting scent. It only took one last look at the other her, smeared with grease and chocolate, eating with her hands like a crazed hog that she closed her eyes in disgust and flicked the lighter to life.

Then….Nothing.

Makoto sat up in bed, the gentle sun beaming down on her through white curtains.

(12)

She looked around, heart pounding as if she’d just been started awake from some horrible dream and expecting to find a lighter and cigarettes sitting on her nightstand, but there were none. Only her phone placed gently on a charging pad.

….And her camera flashing a “low battery” warning.