Dream Forge Demo 1995 February/df9502r.zip/DFC

Text File | 1995-02-01 | 20KB | 449 lines

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TUMMY BUDDIESr
  by Brian Pomeroy
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  "It's the hottest health craze since aerobics!"

  "No more starvation diets! No more strenuous exercise!"

  "Now YOU TOO can get in on this fitness phenomenon at a price
that will NEVER be offered again!"

  "TUMMY BUDDIESr is a revolutionary weight loss system that takes
the hassle out of losing those unwanted pounds. With your set of
TUMMY BUDDIESr, you'll be able to eat all you want, relax all you
want . . . and still lose all the weight you want! Say `goodbye' to
torture diets and exercises-say `hello' to looking great! Sound like
a miracle? It isn't! Put tomorrow's weight loss technology to work
today . . . all for only $129.95. That's right . . . . ONLY! One-
twenty-NINE-ninety-five! This offer ends at midnight tonight, and
WILL NOT BE REPEATED! Here's how to order . . . ."

  Cheryl ran to get her note pad the moment the ordering address
flashed on the screen. She dug through piles of papers and books in
her bookcase as the announcer repeated the address and 1-800 number
once, twice, three times. Finally, beneath a year-old issue of
COSMOPOLITAN, she found it -- a no-frills writing pad with barely a
clean sheet left.

  The ad had gone off, but she had at least remembered the
toll-free number. Her eyes scoured the bookcase for a pen or other
such instrument. A stubby pencil with a worn-down tip rested on the
top shelf. She grabbed it and jotted down the number on the first
sheet of the note pad she turned to; a cold shiver ran down her arm
as she wrote with the worn point.

  Cheryl then threw down the pad and jogged to the other side of
her partment. Her purse rested on an end table by the front door.
Grabbing the purse like a vicious puppy, she flipped it over and
shook it, letting its guts spill to the floor. Cosmetics . . . dollar
bills . . . coins . . . keys . . . broken earrings . . . two small
bottles of Tylenol . . . everything fell out. But where the hell was
her MasterCard?

  In the bedroom! Bureau drawer! She put it there so she
wouldn't use it impulsively. Was this impulsive? Hardly! This was
the opportunity of a lifetime . . . .

  As she scurried to the bedroom, she passed by a full-length
mirror in the hallway. She stopped to look, but only for a second.
Her sandy hair was perfectly in place. Her sky-blue eyes gleamed.

  You're fat. So damned fat. Everybody thinks you're disgusting!

  She moved on. Midnight tonight, she thought to herself. That isn't
much time. Only a few hours, when you think about it. And what time
zone are these people in, anyway? They could close at any minute!

  In the bedroom, she threw open the top drawer, where she kept
her underwear and small items that, in any other place, would find
their way to that never-never-land of lost miscellany. She stirred
through the junk in that drawer until a silver gleam struck her eye.

  The MasterCard! With her name inscribed upon it! Praise be to God!

  Cheryl grabbed her MasterCard, pinching it between her fingers
as tightly as she could, for fear it would take flight. She dove on
her bed and grabbed the phone. The pad bearing the phone number was
in the other room, but it didn't matter. The number was burned into
her mind; she would dream about that number thirty years from today.
Punching out the phone number on the keypad, her heart did a dance
inside her chest. This is it, she thought. My moment, the one I've
been living for all my life!

                               *  *  *

  Naomi stood by the microwave patiently, waiting for the rotary
dial to complete its journey to zero. She tapped her fingers on the
formica counter top as she peered inside the oven to check on her
chicken casserole. As a microwave gourmet, she knew the value of
precise timing just as much as a Nobel scientist did. Five seconds
too short, and the meal would be cold and clammy on the inside. Five
seconds too long, and the meal would scorch.

  This particular casserole left no margin for error. The recipe
was intended not for microwavers, however careful; its path was paved
with near misses and dishes that were pretty good-edible, but still
demanding the after-dinner Maalox.

  The microwave dinged, and Naomi opened the door carefully. She
took a whiff of the casserole's aroma. Not bad, she thought. Not
bad at all for lunchtime leftovers.

  With paper towels in hand, she lifted the dish from the microwave
to the lunch table. Another woman sat at the table, giving Naomi and
her casserole a grim stare. "Bring that stuff here again and I'm
gonna shoot you," the woman said to Naomi.

  Naomi smiled. "Want some?" She held the dish forward.

  The woman shook her head and laughed. "Oh, God! No way!" The woman
held up her thin ham sandwich. "I feel guilty enough eating this as
it is. But thank you."

  Naomi sat down and began eating her casserole. "Jackie . . ."
she said to the woman as she began eating, "you need to lose weight
the way Mick Jagger needs a lip enlargement."

  Jackie said nothing, but kept on eating her thin sandwich. The
klonk-klonk-klonk of hard heels hitting the wood floor made the
two women look up.

  "Hi, folks," Cheryl chirped as she walked toward the small
refrigerator.

  "Boy, you're cheery today," Naomi said to Cheryl. "What 'appen?
They fire Mr. Dontelli?"

  "Oh, please! Nothing that mundane!"

  "You won the lottery, and now every gorgeous single guy in the
tri-state area's killing to be able to ask you out," Jackie said
in a monotone voice.

  "Ah . . . that's old news!" Cheryl made a snooty face, then
her eyes bulged.

  "I've finally found a sure-fire way to lose weight!" Her grin
was big enough to hold Alaska and Texas, with room to spare.

  "What's it this time?" Jackie asked. "Lock yourself in a vault?"

  "Cute." Cheryl paused. "It's Tummy Buddies!"

  Naomi made a scowl. "What the hell are Tummy Buddies?"

  "It's this new fool-proof way to diet! All you do is take a
pill, and you can eat all you want and never gain an ounce.
Incredible, or what?"

  "My girlfriend's sister used Tummy Buddies. Lost nearly 150
pounds." It was Tom, the office messenger.

  "No kidding," Naomi said. "One hundred and fifty pounds! Wow."

  "She must look great," Jackie said. Cheryl smiled in self-triumph.

  "Dunno," Tom said. "Haven't seen her in months." With that he
passed through and was gone.

  That evening, Naomi drove home in her red Ford Festiva, as
usual. She had a twenty-minute ride south along the interstate, but
unless there was an ccident or construction, the drive rarely
bothered her. The drive meant time to herself, to listen to the radio
or a new tape, or just to think uietly. On this night, she thought
and thought. Work, though, was the last thing on her mind. What was
on her mind were Cheryl and these Tummy Buddies.

  A smile came to Naomi's face as she recalled the first thing
that every visitor to Cheryl's office noticed the eight-by-ten
photo of Cheryl holding a bouquet of red roses, grinning exuberantly,
waving at an unseen crowd, and wearing a small crown and a sash that
read MISS MID-ATLANTIC U.S.A. The photo, heavily faded and showing
Cheryl, with her outmoded dress and hairstyle, sporting the crown of
a now-discontinued pageant, must have been at least twenty years old.
And it seemed so silly that Cheryl, with her education and career,
should find it necessary to display such a relic. Such a frivolous,
insignificant relic at that.

  But Naomi realized all too well why that picture was there.
Even the most unobservant people could tell that the Cheryl in that
photograph was no different -- absolutely no different -- from the
Cheryl seated before them. Not one wrinkle, not one pimple, not one
fat cell had appeared on that beauty-queen body since the day it
glided down the runway of another era.

  And yet, that body would never be good enough for its occupant.

  Naomi had known Cheryl for a long time. Men came and went,
laying gifts at her feet as though she were the baby Jesus. Male
bosses made sure she was pampered and promoted over more senior and
better qualified employees -- all in the hope that, one day -- they
might get lucky. One story had it that Cheryl first started working
at the company as a receptionist, but had been "bumped upstairs"
because her boss was threatened with cruel and unusual divorce.

  His wife, it seems, had gotten an eyeful of Cheryl in one of
her miniskirt-and-tight-sweater outfits. If the wife had seen what
Cheryl wore during the last company beach trip, Naomi thought, she
would have had a stroke.

  Tummy Buddies was only the latest of Cheryl's weight-loss
obsessions. And although nothing was needed, nothing worked well
enough. She was always too fat, too ugly, not sexy enough, whatever.

  Perhaps that was the work of the Devil, exacting his due for
the gift of physical perfection. He tortured those beauties, telling
them that no matter how they dressed, how they made themselves up,
how religiously they took care of themselves, they would forever be
worthless slime.

  But this Tummy Buddies thing . . . Naomi had read the brochure
that Cheryl had given her on the product, and it did seem like a
dieter's dream. Eat all you want, sit around all you want, and those
pounds will still fall away. Cheryl was elated by it, convinced it
was a gift from God.

  Or another one of the Devil's tricks, Naomi thought. She tried to
repress her smile, but she couldn't.

                               *  *  *

  Cheryl gingerly placed her bare feet on the bathroom scale. The
dial flopped back and forth until a number centered on the stationary
needle.

  One hundred even! Four pounds gone this week!

  Cheryl let out a huge sigh of relief. She had eaten two frozen
ravioli dinners the night before, and they hadn't left an ounce
behind! Smugly she shoved her hands into the deep pockets of her
blue terry cloth bathrobe. She then turned around and headed to her
bedroom.

  Cheryl re-emerged wearing a white sweatsuit. The fact that the
pants hardly stayed up now delighted Cheryl. Two weeks ago, the
pants barely fit.

  The Tummy Buddies show is probably still on, Cheryl thought. She
walked over to the TV set, turned it on, and flopped on her small,
soft couch. If I were doing this the old-fashioned way, Cheryl
thought, I'd be bench-pressing ten thousand pounds right now!

  The TV revealed an announcer with a glowing grin and a long
black microphone. He had a deep tan, and each hair was perfectly on
place. "Let's get some reaction about TUMMY BUDDIESr from our studio
audience, shall we?" he said into the microphone. The camera swung
toward the audience, mostly women but with some men, who were
cheering wildly as if they were at a football game.

  The announcer pointed his microphone at one of the audience
members, who quickly stood up. Her face and neck looked very thin;
the blouse she was wearing looked like it was made for someone three
times her size.

  "What's your name, ma'am?"

  "Ah'm Celia Rhoades," the woman answered in a light Southern
accent.

  "And where are you from, ma'am?" The announcer's grin didn't
falter once.

  "Ah'm from Elk Parkway, Mary-land."

  "And what do you think of TUMMY BUDDIESr, ma'am?"

  "Ah LOVE 'EM!!" Celia Rhoades thrashed around as though two
million volts of electricity had surged through her. The audience
hooted, clapped and hollered.

  "How much weight have you lost with TUMMY BUDDIESr, ma'am?" The
teeth were still in place.

  "Since ah started, ah've lost one hundred pounds. And ah'm
still goin'!" The audience cheered Celia as though she were a wide
receiver who had just caught a "Hail Mary" pass.

  "Besides helping you lose all that weight, ma'am, how have
TUMMY BUDDIESr changed your life?"

  "Well, ah just feel better about mahself, and mah husband says
ah look better than I did when I was eighteen! It's done wonders for
mah love life . . . if ya know what I mean." She winked at the
announcer and grinned.

  The audience, becoming a rally of high school freshmen, let out a
collective, good-natured wolf whistle.

  Cheryl's pulse quickened. She felt as if she, too, were part of
the audience. She wanted to be interviewed by that announcer and tell
the world how well she was doing. Soon she would be perfect. So very,
very perfect.

  So very sexy and beautiful and . . .

  "You're a goddamned fat slob! You're so damn ugly, I don't think
a pig would marry you!"

  That voice! It was back.

  She looked at the TV; in front of it stood her father, a huge,
balding man, who ate crowbars for breakfast.

  "You're a goddamned disgrace," he muttered to her. "I oughta throw
you out to live with the pigs!"

  Cheryl choked on her own breath. She closed her eyes, shutting
her eyelids so tight that her eyes began to water. Then she opened
them. Her father was gone.

  She could feel her heart quaking inside her chest. Her hands
grabbed the one arm of the couch and propelled her body upward. She
ran into the bathroom again and stripped off her sweatsuit as though
it were on fire.

  Finally free of all unnecessary weight, she mounted the scale.

  Yes! One hundred still! It wasn't a dream. It was real. So very,
very real.

  That night, as Cheryl fell asleep, she dreamed about the very
first boy she ever dated. He was polite and handsome. His father was
a Methodist minister, and he wanted to go to seminary. He also
collected unique stones. When he first asked her out, he had given
her his most prized stone, a sapphire, because it was stunningly
beautiful -- like her.

  They had had a wonderful time on their date -- until he brought
Cheryl home.

  There, her father was waiting. He accused the boy of being a
pervert and punched the boy so hard in the face that his left cheek
was purple for weeks.

  If the boy's parents had been different people in a different time,
they would have sued her father, and might have even pressed criminal
charges.

  But they didn't. They were gentle, forgiving people-too gentle and
forgiving to deal with her father.

  Cheryl tossed and turned all night, waking up several times in a
warm sweat.

  At one point she rolled over to look at her alarm clock. The
squared-off red numbers said 3:42. She sighed, knowing that the
coming day would most certainly bring fatigue and a migraine headache.

  As she rolled back over, she saw an odd shadow at the foot of the
bed. She sat up to take a closer look.

  "Hello," said the shadow.

  She gasped, then her lungs stopped working. She froze. Not even
her pulse moved. She looked hard at the shadow. It resembled that of
a man, but no one specifically.

  "I'm here to collect my back pay," the shadow said.

  Cheryl couldn't speak. Her whole body tingled with fright.

  "The only thing you ever wanted in life was to be beautiful. And
that's what you are. You are very, very divine..."

  Cheryl let out a high-pitched squeal.

  "Oh, don't be frightened," the shadow said. "At least, not yet."

  "Who . . . who . . . who are you?" squeaked Cheryl.

  "I'm your keeper," the shadow said. "I've taken care of you all
these years. And now you owe me for it. And believe me, you owe me
big!"

  Cheryl lunged at the shadow, but nothing was there. She sat on
the bed for a moment and tried to catch her breath. Shaking, she
crawled back into bed and tried to think happy thoughts. Think how
well your Tummy Buddies are working, she thought. Think of how much
weight you're losing!

  Around 4:30 Cheryl awoke with stomach cramps. Must have been that
ice cream, she thought. I'm lactose-intolerant for sure.

  She swung herself out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. As
quickly as she could, she got herself situated on the toilet and
opened up her bowels.

  It seemed to her that gallons of straight liquid were pouring out.
Her bowels were empty, but she still had cramps. She stood up and,
for a moment, glanced down into the toilet bowl.

  Something moved.

  Her eyes were then riveted to the toilet bowl. She made it a
rule -- never to look into a toilet bowl -- into her own defecation.
But this time she could not resist.

  The water rippled. Something in there was moving.

  Cheryl's heart pounded as she maintained a vigil over her toilet
bowl. The stench of the feces was starting to get to her. A long
white object swam up to the surface, and then disappeared. Maybe the
sewer's backed up, Cheryl thought. Maybe stuff is coming up from
the sewers.

  She felt the urge to go again, so she flushed and got back on
the seat. After she was finished, instead of getting up off the seat,
she remained seated, staring at the ceiling. She was afraid to get
up, afraid of seeing what she never liked looking at to begin with.

  But she did get up. And she did look down into the toilet.
Hundreds of white strings squiggled in the water amongst her
feces. Cheryl felt dizzy, and had the urge to vomit. She could feel
it coming up through her esophagus, so she shut her eyes and leaned
over the toilet. She could hear the worms splashing around as she
vomited.

  For only a moment -- she looked at her vomit. Something. Something
that looked like fresh-boiled spaghetti.

  "You owe me big!" a voice out of the air said. Then laughter . . .
vicious, evil laughter.

  She felt very, very thin -- and frail. Everything went black, and
she fell head-first into the bowl. Scurrying through her mouth and
nose, racing to her bowels and lungs, went dozens of frantic worms --
her BUDDIES -- along with her own vomit and shit.

                               *  *  *

  Several weeks later, the local paper ran a story about the FDA
banning a certain medication called droxhadimine-17. Apparently it
was not a medicine at all, but a tabletized collection of eggs from
a rare South American parasitic worm. Some pharmaceutical companies,
apparently, were using droxhadimine-17 as a weight-loss medicine,
conveniently failing to state on the package how the substance
worked.

  By swallowing the pill, a person unwittingly introduced dozens
of worms into their system with each and every capsule taken. The
weight loss came when the worms ate the food in one's digestive
tract.

  With the article was a sidebar, about a local woman who allegedly
died from internal parasites of that sort. It said nothing about her
other than she took the TUMMY BUDDIESr brand of droxhadimine-17, and
that she had been Miss Mid-Atlantic U.S.A. 1970.

                               {DREAM}

Copyright 1995 Brian Pomeroy, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Brian can be found surfing the net thru [e-mail], and if you
happen to net him, tell him we said, "Hi!"
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