Fat

The first chapter. An introduction to a character, a place, and a general sensation of an unsatisfactory life.

He was short and he was fat, and this bothered him.  It bothered him because he had not always been this way.  Indeed, when he had first come to the city he had been an out-and-out giant.  But the smoke of the city had settled in his belly, weighing him down and robbing him of his height.  The good food had not helped matters either.

      It was his oppressive fatness that most irritated him at the moment.  His paunch could not be made comfortable no matter how he lay.  On his back?  No.  His gut pressed his blanket up and kept him from seeing his now too-close toes.  On his front?  He found this most uncomfortable.  On his side?  Perhaps more bearable, but he could feel his stomach stretching the skin at his sides, making him feel ever more like a potato.  It was this conundrum, coupled with the sticky heat of the night, that had led to him getting out of his bed to take an evening stroll.  ‘Perhaps,’ thought he, ‘a good brisk walk could reduce my current problem somewhat.’  However, it was unclear even to him whether he was referring to his insomnia or his weight.

      His dull shoes now attached firmly - uncomfortably - to his feet, he set about the small, hot apartment picking up the various skins he regularly adorned.  Though not altogether a creature of habit, clothing was simply not something he could be bothered to vary.  As long as the article had not fallen apart, it would suffice.  He idly stretched his mind backwards in time, trying to pick out when he had stopped caring about his appearance.  In university he had been a scruff, for sure.  He wandered around the campus feeling self-important, carrying books he never intended to read and wearing a smug grin on his furry lips.  After this time his uniform had been dictated by work.  A suit, usually.  A bald face.  A neatly trimmed mane.  But now…  now.  Now was a time when he no longer felt the need to fool people with props nor camouflage himself.  In the city, who would care?

      The lock clicked unpleasantly, echoing his absence down the hallway as if to alert the other residents.  He winced, his mind still in a mode of cringing, hand-wringing politeness.   The city didn’t care, but it still mattered to him.  He had heard people screaming in long syllables during the nights, howling into the dark as though possessed before breaking out into a tinkling human laugh.  He could not understand how some people could be so unabashed in their public displays; for him the simple act of asking a shop clerk for help or raising a hand for service drew too much scrutiny.  Just thinking about these scenarios made the blush rise in his face, the smoke in his stomach dissipating into a red mist which pressed against his fragile and vascular skin.

      Air pushed up against the walls, hugging to them as he stomped past and moving only so slightly in his wake.  Everywhere was the same temperature: his room, the hall, the city outside, sometimes even the cold air in his refrigerator - he was sure -would warm to appease its outside counterpart.  Many’s the day that he would return to the hotbox that was his apartment to find the cold box following suit.  His fresh foods and produce thus spoiled, he would sigh in resignation and make his way out to his regular haunt in another part of the city and eat there.  More often than not he would drink there.  More often than that he would sleep there.  Maybe he would have gone there tonight had it not been past closing time.

      Time.

      This word had taken on some different meaning of late.  In his earliest days he had not even been aware of the concept.  As a child it had simply meant how long his joys and wonder could continue.  As an adult it had meant his wristwatch and his schedule.  Now it simply represented a path along which he trudged, walking - as he was now - towards the gaping maw of…  something. ‘What was that thing?’ he asked himself, lost in his mind and paying little attention to the current against which he fought.  ‘At one time it seemed so important.’  The current paid him even less attention than he paid it; the mass of bodies, sounds and smells tossed him hither and thither as his stick legs propelled him uselessly along the ground.  Giving up on his pursuit of ‘something’ (just as he had everything that had come before), he resigned himself to looking ahead into the thickness of the night air.

      His eyes hurt.  It wasn’t only the pollution and sluggish, heavy movement that assaulted the sensitive lenses, but the neon monstrosities which continued to hum and glow all around him.  It seemed that every dark corner had been filled with these abominable things, almost like all of the heaven’s most garish stars had been given one patch of murky sky in which to sit.  It got dark early here - at least in theory.  The sky certainly seemed to try its best to darken promptly, but these dratted lights simply would not allow it to pull the veil of sleep over the city.  Instead the city wound itself up into a constant state of wakefulness and hyperactivity.

      Ducking down into a subway so as to escape the thickest part of the current, he nonchalantly observed the graffiti’d walls with no great deal of interest.  All of this looked the same to him.  The tags, far from identifying their painters, instead associated nothing with even less.  ‘Such a waste of…’  The thought broke off in his mind, as his legs had brought him into the path of a homeless person and he had to focus his attention once again on cringing and avoiding contact.  The woman in front of him looked old and tired, and the mattress upon which she sat had quite clearly been dragged all across the city.  Her eyes did not move as he passed, she sat as though in a trance and simply nodded with an outstretched paw.  From the wizened mouth some words emerged, but he did not understand them.  They were nothing more than sounds to his ears, but he reasoned that she must be asking for something.

      “Uh…  no.  Sorry.  I - um.  Sorry.”

      The woman nodded calmly, getting precisely the answer she expected from the portly figure.  He marvelled at her (from a distance, of course.  He had quickly strolled past avoiding all and any contact,) and in particular her ability to remain so unfazed in the face of disappointment and possible starvation.

      In the city, you were fat or you weren’t.  You moved or you did not.  You aged or you died.  There was no moving backwards, there was no standing still.  Every element of life pushed on just like that mass of humans shoved and grabbed on the streets each day; just like the stall owner’s stock changed daily.  Miss the trinkets at your peril, tomorrow they will be gone!  A thing of great beauty would flash before the mob before being swallowed up and replaced by something dingy.  A building of triumph would soon turn into a scummy hole for squatters.  The streets that so welcomed outsiders into its midst would just as quickly kick out its own people to make room for the fat wallets stuffed with foreign currency.  Fresh blood must flow!  Fresh fish for the river!  Those who dared to poke their heads above the surface would find themselves quickly cast aside by friends, family, countrymen.

      He was short and he was fat.  He was one of the lucky ones.

Author's Note

I worry that the whole thing is simply incoherent babble. Too much description, not enough action etc. This is the first thing I've written creatively in well over a decade, so it is notably poor. I'm looking for help in making it interesting: should the focus be elsewhere?