Rita, End of the line
3rd Stop


Written by Septia.


A bone fell from the woman's teeth, bumped aside by the bloating mass that was her cheeks budging it out of the way as she continued to chew while they stared each other down. It clattered onto the lid of the trash bin. He recognised the bone from last night's turkey dinner, married to syrup peeking out from the skeletal matter crunched between the woman's flat teeth. He remained, today's food waste bagged in his hand, getting the distinct feeling he had walked in on something he had no business with. “Are you affiliated with the building?” he managed to ask. 
	The woman aggressively chewed in his direction. 
	“Just wondering, seeing how, that's our trash, you are digging through, and…” He really couldn't think of much else to say, it was not his intention to prepare for social interactions while he took out the trash. 
	The woman's cheeks concaved inwards with a pummel of tossing a fat toad into a vat of chocolate -Pplthdduullgh- the pillowy mounds stuffing her cheeks siphoned into her gullet, a broad bulb displacing down her neck in a reverberating swallow, adding to the bulk weighing down her broad stomach, sagging down a tattered shirt in the shape of a portly dew-drop. The repurposed bird dinner slotting into her swaying abdomen, in a sluggish and juicy -Ghhgwwrrhrlllsh-. She inhaled. 
	He waited. “Do you, want to-.” 
	“You have something better for me to eat?” she called out. 
	“I could, invite you in-.” 
	The woman threw her head back and laughed, a hail of her broad, Gouda yellow hair fanned out behind her as she guffawed, the broad pillars of her locks – wide as a fist – a bushel of flailing tendrils in the air, before it settled over her shoulders in a cartoonish waterfall. “Because that always goes so well, doesn't it? A hot, handsome, sunshine gal with a big smile and stars in her eyes invited into a stranger's house? That's always gone well, hasn't it? Sure, it broadens one's horizons to try things you haven't before, I could explore a veritable vista of locals I could never have dreamed of within the walls of your building… If I hadn't already been through that whole song and dance before, and boy you better believe I waltzed like you've never wanted to see before,” she shouted in his face. 
	“To be fair, you aren't smiling.” 
	With her hair cracking back into the bin like whips she heaved herself up and leapt onto the ground in front of him. “I slept on a rock yesterday, and the rain was my blanket. But,” she said, dropping a bag she was holding, “there will always be junk food, regardless of how far I travel,” she mumbled to herself in an orchestra of fading fairy dust.
	“That's kinda poetic.”
	“Is it?” The woman proclaimed with arms slacked to her sides and head tilting to rest on her shoulder. Then, for a moment all was still, you could hear the clonk of a needle drop, or the grind of cogs turning in the woman's head. Her lips burst into a smile. 
	“You know what, it is. I had everything, but all around me was stale, and secure, and people who cared for me, but now instead of all that boring stuff I got…” she said and hoisted herself up on the bin, stomach lagging behind and slapping into her side as she hoped up, one foot on the lid to slam it down in triumph, “adventure in unknown locales.” Her stomach catching up with her in a sluggish heave upturning the untold kilos of mystery trapped within -Shhhgrrruullrgh-. “Scavenging for my own sustenance like what the ol' hunter-gatherers did, a real boost to morale and self-confidence,” she announced and kicked open the bin's other lid, with a clang of reverberating metal and a shower of garbage juices flung from the impact, sparkling into a rainbow in the light making its way through the alley, unveiling a spread of black and transparent – plastic oozing of percolating, marinating stench, though through the cloudy layer of polymer one could spot the odd decent looking load of bread, or surplus restaurant meals looking comparatively fresh. 
	“Discovering myself, and all the wonderful things I am capable of surviving, I'm a real modern age Sama'Quabu aren't I?” she trounced. Turning on a heel and slamming her knuckles on her hips, hair waving behind her in a triumphant pose to mimic paintings and statues of olden accomplishments. “And I'm meeting a ton of new friends,” she said with her mouth clasping into a grating, toothy grin at the last word, “like Mr. Cannot-read-the-room-if-it-was-an-actual-book, the loads of fun people ogling a gal alone on the street, and who could forget about good ol' Tom Hobo the Tummy Stuffer.” 
	A bloat swelled up on the woman's lower abdomen, in the form of a chalice with on the bowl a broad palm and creaking fingers clawing for a grasp. “Mmpohh smmppgh,” a voice wheezed out as the surrounding gut sloshed and whirled of displaced guttural gruel. 
	The woman's countenance dropping as she stared down at the intrusive protrusion. “I was in the middle of something,” she shouted with thick strains of her drooping hair wrapping under her gut, raising up her arms, “Tom,” she cried out and pummelled her palms into the hoisted abdomen, swatting it down so the dome of a gut morphed into an inverted cone of blubber that cracked with the guttural mince of tossing a turtle in a mud clogged wood chipper -Kkrglgwprlglgltr- the conglomeration of cracks and crumbles cascading from the contorting and deflating abdomen, broiling with a rolling bubble and ripple of skin drumming against cloth as the stomach contracted around the mangled clutches of trash, and Tom. “Ohhoooaah,” she wheezed out, and tapped her chest. “Well, I had Tom.” -Bhhpouuuaarllllooorrrp- She let her lips mold along the roil of bubbles plowing through in a gale of mustard brine guttural smog, the woman shifting back upwards as the unleashed belch gave her leverage to stand, with thestomach anchoring her center of gravity. 
	“Thanks for the input, Tom, always great to have people who listen, and know what you need from them, even if that is a whole bushel of calories. You aren't gonna make me fat, Tom, are you?” she asked while sinking her grippers into her stomach, plush cloth coated in clumps of chub collating betwixt her groping digits. She shook the gut and thrashed it up and down like agitating a soda can, screaming at her gut. “I thought we had something, Tom, how can you betray me with all your fatty fats fattening up my fatty folds?” She slumped down on the bin, flopping onto her back, plump yellow hair sprawled free from her head against the blue bin like a crude pictograph of the beams from a setting sun. 
	The man acknowledged her with a nod, wriggling his foot into the cobblestone ground. “You, kinda sound like you could just use a place to crash.” 
	The woman's head shot up and glared at him. 
	“I… Can bring a sleeping bag out in the indoor plaza? It’s a common area, but away from the streets, and I don't even have to bring you into my home-. Ehm, make you, stay, in… There.” 
	Her eyebrows narrowed. “Yeah, yeah, you know what? I'd like that, new Tom.” 
	“Do not come near my apartment.”
	“And I am now discovering new ventures in respecting personal space as well, will my adventures ever stop coming?” she called out as she sloughed off the bin like a liquid, slumping up and strutting along with the man back into the building, a growl rattling her frame with a moist milling of meat and plastics. “If you… if anyone, tries anything, I am busting through the wall and I don’t care what gets in my way.”
	“… if you say so.”
	The door shut behind them -Kk-thhnk-.
	…
	Steps neared. A shadow falling down the alley, caressing the upturned garbage bin, as it sauntered down. For a moment, the shadow glanced down the path, holding its image in memory. But then it was gone, as soon as it had appeared, another dark streak of Umber and Midnight mingled amidst the shadows of the city. The stomach flopped upwards after the force, indents and protrusions dancing and warping the surface of her frame as the surface of the belly collated and tugged backwards into grolwing pudge reserves nestled on the woman's muffin tops: the stomach's contents redistributed rather than gotten rid of. She smacked her stomach, a ripple of chub cressing beneath the surface of the cloth and fading in as the abdomen slimmed.