Tipping the Scales

Tipping the Scales, Chapter 12

Wind was riffling through Odelia's short brown hair, the sun was shining brightly, and it was warm, very warm. A huge green sign loomed ahead over the interstate. Exit to Southern Califlorida, one mile ahead.

The mile was stretchy, though; the time it occupied sagged like warm taffy so it could pull and twist and loop the mile, pulling it inside of itself the way pulling taffy mixed air in with the syrup. and why was it the addition of air made syrup change not merely texture but taste? You could take the same ingredients, sugar, water and butter, and transform them into as many different substances as there were different ways to treat them. Amazing, that... Fudge, taffy and frosting were all merely sugar, water, and butter with a little flavoring thrown in: the same mixture, taught to perform different tasks.

This was, she reflected, the same thing that was going on with her poops. When she squeezed a jump drive out of her butt, it was simply a turd with talent, a turd that behaved itself. Schooled in a different way than the run of the mill turd, it had managed against all odds to 'make good.'

Her ass was a training facility, the boot-camp of butt holes, teaching everyday shits how to Be the Best That They Could Be.

Semper Fucking Fi, gentlemen.

The wheels of her taffy-apple red convertible ate the road, sucking it back like a never-ending fruit roll-up. The engine growled and her hands gripped the steering wheel tighter as she pushed the accelerator to the floor mat, because she needed more highway, more and more and more, and as she tightened her grip her fingers sank deeper into the wheel, which was melting into a caramel goo that didn't want to hold its shape and was dripping between her fingers and down onto her stomach.

She awoke with a fistful of sheet-toga clutched in each hand, her stomach rumbling and the smell of chocolate in the air from the ever present mixture by her bedside.

"You're going to have to eat, eventually," Melanie said. She was kneeling, busy replacing the full catheter bag with an empty one. The change in the rhythm of Odelia's breathing must have indicated that she'd awakened.

"You think so?" Odelia croaked, her throat dry as dust. Rolling onto her side, she placed her mouth on the straw protruding not from the pitcher of shake, but from the one beside it, the one that should have held water. Nothing came up, not even a bubbling rattle. The container had gone bone dry during the night.

"If your plan is to give me no liquids other than your butter concoction, I'll die of thirst before I touch it. And then you can explain to the police how and why you let me die of dehydration. Unless you're planning to bury me in the backyard." She laughed at that, a scratchy bark that hurt her dry throat. "Which would be quite a job. You might want to rent a backhoe."

Melanie tightened her lips primly and hefted the bag of urine into the trash can that had replaced Odelia's bedroom dresser.

The room had been stripped. Furniture, knickknacks, keepsakes, books, toiletries, jewelry, every possession that had made the place feel like Odelia's own, had been taken from her, one by one. Every stitch of her clothing, down to the last muumuu, was gone. They had even removed the photographs from her walls.

Besides herself and her mattresses, all that was left in the room were the pitchers, a hairbrush, a long-handled bath brush so she could clean the countless crevices of her overlapping fat rolls, the trash can, a box of catheterization supplies, her TV, and its cable box.

Since her life had never been replete with material comforts, the loss of the few she'd had made very little difference. Oddly enough, what she found herself missing most were her chores, and of those, what she craved above all else was to cook again.