Chapter Eleven

The fun ended abruptly. Cinderella was tossed out into the street by a grumpy driver who said that the time was up, he had an eighteenth birthday party to get to in Ipswich and called her a mini cab. He drove away, removing his hat and muttering something about bloody punters not tipping as a lightly confused Natasha stood by the edge of the road.


When the cab turned up it eventually dropped her outside a large-ish, vaguely run-down ex council house in Essex.


"That'll be eight fifty" said the driver.


There was no such thing as a free limo.


A front door crept open and a male voice beckoned her inside in a strangely high pitch.


"Quick! Before the paps see me!"

Fantastic, thought Natasha, another nutter.


……………………………………………………..


The interior was crème and bookless. The style copied out of a magazine, the magazine stolen from a dental surgery. People who were struggling to prove their normality lived in crème houses. Serial killers probably lived in crème houses, (with the possible exception of Ed Gein). Natasha lived in filth and peeling woodchip, like normal people. She mentally kicked herself. Of course she'd willingly got in a car to a serial killer's house. She was a ginormous helmet.


"Excuse the décor" said the man who had gushingly introduced himself as Bob with a firm, unsarcastic, handshake "I inherited the place from my folks."


Did that mean his parents were serial killers? He ushered her through to the back of the house.

She was trying to devise an escape strategy involving windows and a can of mace that she didn't have when she walked into the Taj Mahal of kitchens.


She gasped a little as light bounced off chrome, glistening like a roller disco. He had one of those giant fridges that offered you ice cubes; he had a range oven with specific little bits for making specific little foods; he had an array of knives that she was far too nervous to focus on and one wall was loaded from top to bottom with cookery books. Every cake, every curry, every anything you might want to wrap your gums around, the secret to unlocking them was on the shelf in front of her. Holy shit this serial killer was obsessed with food.


"I've made some treats!" he sighed shyly. "It's not much" he blushed, taking a seat opposite her at a huge rustic looking kitchen table, which was partially obscured by a cake stand loaded with eight different types of glistening picture book cake in a variety of colours.


"Holy fuck" exclaimed Natasha, prompting a visible wave of panic in her host.


"I'm not crazy!" he chipped in far too quickly for a sane person. "It's just that I love your campaign and I really wanted to impress you."


Honestly no one had tried to impress Natasha in a long time. There was an ex boyfriend who had romantically tried to burp her name but had ended up throwing up on her shoes, but she hoped she didn't have to count that.


"Why?"


Bob smiled a little bit. "You don't recognise me at all do you?"


Truth be told Natasha heard that statement with frightening regularity. 50p tequila, low morals and a propensity for making bad decisions had dictated her life choices for nigh on a decade. Tequila Tuesdays tended to morph into Wake With a Wanker Wednesdays. She had forgotten more people who had seen her naked than most life models.


"Did we sleep together?" He shook his head. Then it began to dawn on her. The house in Essex, the cooking obsession, the name. Bob was famous - she'd seen him on TV numerous times.


In trying not to scream and point Natasha merely clamped her hand over her mouth and yelped.


"Have some cake" said Bob "lord knows I can't have any."


…………………………………………………………

It had been the usual fare, dead mum, absentee dad, insane sister, doughnuts for love. Cut to the advert break. A quick re-cap and bam - welcome to balloons of lard covering his body, a mars bar habit that was costing thousands a week, washing in bed and a humiliating documentary series. Next ad break, whizzy re-cap and an opinion column in the Daily something or other by a deeply embittered columnist naming and shaming the Fattest Man in Britain ™ - and other horrible drains on our precious resources. Follow up with paint on windows, starers and paps looking in and a generous donation of cash from a stranger towards a gastric band.


Bob hadn't eaten properly in two years, he could only manage a few mouthfuls before being full to the brim. Before then he had eaten enough every day for five people. And even though the lard had gone away and the skin had been removed, even though the paps no longer followed him and he wasn't stared at in the supermarket, he was by no means cured.

Food had always been his lifeline. It hugged him when he was lonely, it celebrated with him when he was happy; it filled him up when all he wanted to do was cry. Nothing had changed, it was just that his anaesthetic had gone.

"So what do you do now?" asked Natasha.


"Nothing" responded Bob, "At least it was going to be nothing, until today."


He smiled mysteriously, Natasha began to feel nervous again.


"I've decided to do what you're doing." He explained. "I'm going out for revenge."

As ever, Natasha hadn't been aware that this was what she'd been doing.

"I love your organisation!" beamed Bob. "Giving fat laden foods to all those smug skinny people to even things out, using cake to choke your enemies."

"It's exactly how the fat people can hit back at the world which mocks and undermines us, which forces us to subscribe to its twisted beliefs of what health and beauty are."


He was really going for it now.

"This is for every chubby school kid, every anorexic teen kicking back at every relative and evil skinny columnist who dared to laugh at us. This is our revenge Natasha - we will flood the streets with cake, we can change normal forever."

He leant back in his chair triumphantly whilst Natasha tried to discretely wipe a glob of spittle from her lapel.


"So let me get this straight. You want to force feed everyone cake to make them fat so they don't laugh at fat people any more. Especially the columnist who humiliated you."


"It wasn't just me she humiliated Natasha" he growled.

Suddenly there emerged a thunderous banging from below the floor. Then silence, then another fevered banging session. Then another eery silence.

"What the hell is that?" asked Natasha. Bob smiled the smile of a snake.