Enter The Sticken

(WARNING: STORY CONTAINS BLOOD, GORE, AND MONSTROUSITY. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED)

Gosh, what a Saturday this is. It was terrible what we did to her. She didn’t deserve the mocking and the harassing. I know that now. Cintheya Bass was her name. She was a BIG girl. I’ve known her all through our middle school and high school career. I didn’t think much of her weight at the time. But now… I think it was all she knew how to maintain in her life. As the years gained momentum I became obsessed with the way I looked. Brushing my hair 6 times a day, three times in the morning and three at night. I went jogging after school regularly throughout my neighborhood to stay slim and keep my stamina up. I even strived to keep up a specific and unique beauty regimen routine to look attractive to all the guys in school. I wanted to be loved and adored. That’s probably what Cintheya wanted too. She just showed it differently, I think.

As I gained sex appeal and popularity throughout my education, she remained the same—at least till as of tonight. Why did worse have to come to shove tonight of all nights? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew all the constant bullying we did to her would come back and bite us in the ass. However, I was illusioned into thinking that the laughter and pranks we did on her were like a prized acceptance award for me maintaining my discipline toward perfection. Shows what I knew. Now here I and 3 other jocks and my best friend Lisa stand around the freshly deceased corpse of Cintheya Bass in the middle of the woods off Riverboone Falls, near the town welcome sign. It’s extremely dark.

Me and Lisa are holding our camera phone lights out in front of us so that the jocks can properly dig a deep enough hole in the earth to unnoticeably discard the body away from anyone hiking or living around the area. We’ve heard several small sounds off in the distance, lots of quick turning and faintly whispered swearing coming from us on our end. Our nervous systems were at a peak high on this night. Either we were all hearing things or another group of people were burying a body not too far away from us... The hole was nearly done, one of the jocks down inside the hole told me and Lisa to get ready to roll Cintheya’s body down there with them. I turned off my camera light and put my phone inside my pocket. So did Lisa. Then the both of us got down on our knees putting both our hands out in front of us onto Cintheya’s cold chunky body. Cintheya’s body had the squishy texture of a grandmother's arm pocket fat. It felt safe and fun to play with. I felt something bubbly on Cintheya's arm, it felt like lettering. I quickly moved back into my pocket to get my camera phone out and shined the light on what I felt. “ENTER THE STRICKEN”? I said. What was this tattoo a statement toward? I thought. Was it a band? was it a place of importance? Could it have been a practical cruelty done to her by other high school bullies? I had to be completely honest with myself at that moment. Neither me, Lisa nor the jocks knew what it meant. We all knew Cintheya growing up and never noticed this mark until tonight. The statement on her arm confused the hell out of us all. “I was such a bitch” I uttered to myself fighting back the urge to cry. All the thoughts of all the cruel pranks that we did to her started swirling up inside me. This stricken branding looked too gnarly to be a simple tattoo... Like someone had sliced it in razor, onto her meaty flesh. The guys were done digging. “All right push her down here”, One of them whispered. I put my phone back into my pocket and obeyed the command. I just want to go home now. We haven’t even buried the body completely and I am already getting cold feet. Fuck I’m a murderer, I thought to myself letting the tears cascade down my cheeks dripping off the rim of my jawline. The jocks helped each other out of the hole. All three of their hands were covered in dirt from underneath their nailbeds down to the bottom of their wrists. Lisa and I got up from the ground and dusted our knees off and stood back as all three of the jocks push the dirt on top of Cintheya’s body.

Watching the jocks fill the hole made me feel kind of wholesome in a weird way. It felt like I was attending a funeral of a close friend. I don’t know what I am thinking. I was too strung up in my emotions to call my thoughts into judgment. After finishing the hole, all of us headed back to the car we parked close enough to the woods so that no one driving on the road would be able to suspect that something was going down in the shadows. We got back inside the car and from there we promised to never speak of this night or tell anyone outside the vehicle what happened this evening. Obviously…, I thought. I mean who the hell wants to rot in a jail cell because of one little mistake? For someone to sit up and let something like this haunt them or let the system hang this over a person’s head for the rest of their life is just too extreme for words. We got back on the main road and drove off into the night passing by the black trees swaying on both sides of us, as if the world was winding up the woods like a coiled toy, storing energy in the forest for it to gradually disperse movement in the leaves as we drove past them. I still couldn’t believe we pulled this off.

I don’t think of myself as a bad person. Nor do I want to. I just want to sit back and ride, letting this night slip away from me like the tiny shooting stars through space… I made it back to my house. I hugged Lisa and held her for quite a while. “Don’t worry, we’ll get over this, we have to”. She tells me in my ear. “Are you sure”? I asked with a timid quiver in my voice. “There’s no other way.” She replied as if it was the only appropriate answer. I let her go and got out of the car. Closing the door—I watched as the car drove down the street, as the red tail lights fizzled out in the distance. I turned and faced the front of my house. My parent’s cars were in the driveway and all the lights were off. They must be sleeping, good… I thought thankfully. I walked up the driveway and up the brick stairs to the front door. I got my key out of my other pocket and gently and quietly unlocked the locks on the key master. I go inside and close the door behind me.“What a ridiculous Saturday night this was”, I say to myself walking up the steps toward the closest bathroom I could get to. I flip on the light and start taking my clothes off. I needed a shower to wash the mud and gunk off me from the woods. “Criminal!” I felt like the dirt and sweat on my body and clothes shouted at me with a sinister growl from inside my subconscious mind. I ignored it.

The voice sounded too small for me to care. As I stood up from pulling my pants down, I looked in the mirror and saw something peculiar on my skin in my reflection. It looked like lettering. Lettering similar to what Cintheya had on her arm, but it was on my abdomen. Whatever the letters were I could not read them. Honestly, it looked like a hive rash rather than words. I never ever liked tattoos or branding of any kind. My body was a temple after all and I intended to keep it that way. So where did this marking come from? I asked myself. I am losing my mind, It’s a cliche thing to think but regardless I thought it anyway. I turned the shower faucet on and stepped into the downpour. I washed away some of the crumb and muck from my body. That’s what I believed was on me from being out in the woods. I didn’t even part take in digging the hole, all I did was just lower the body into the ground. The thought of being an accomplice to this crime weighed on me greatly that I barely washed any part of my body. I stood there in the middle of the tub—stationary. As if the water had some kind of magic hypnotic vibration over me, making me unable to move or flinch my body an inch. I stare down at the drain watching water rotations like a crazy person, knowing well that someone is going to figure us out. Someone was going to turn us into the police. I turned the water off and stepped out of the tub. After brushing my hair three times, I finished up in the bathroom and went down the hall to my room. I put on my pajamas and got ready for bed. “Criminal!” The same voice in my head from the bathroom followed me into my room.

I had half a mind to correct it, Unfortunately, I’d be correcting it from the same place the voice is coming from. I felt so delirious. I just want to fall asleep and have things go back to normal. The next mourning is not too far away from me. I can still get some shut-eye and sleep off this nightmare. I get into bed and under my covers. I’m sleeping with the light on, I’m too shaken up to be doused in darkness. As I lay there on my mattress on my back. I felt a sensation inside my stomach. I was… hungry? But why?.... I mean how could I be hungry after the night I just had?! I say to myself in puzzled curiosity. My stomach acids thrashed and crashed against the lining of my stomach wall and let out loud growls. Oh, I was hungry all right. The more my stomach growled the more I started feeling primal. Not primal in rage, but in deserving. You see, I DESERVED to eat. I DESERVED to feed myself. I couldn’t just lie down here and act as if I was not famished. I got out of my bed, opened my bedroom door, and poked my head out into the hallway. Everything was clear to go. I snuck back down the steps and into the kitchen. My stomach was seriously rumbling now. It was my parents’ payday and they always stocked up on a ton of food from the pantry to inside the fridge.

I started at the pantry first and opened the doors. It was FULL of snacks. I didn’t even waste time properly opening the food packaging, I just started tearing away plastic and cardboard boxes with my teeth to get into the delicious desserts inside. I stuffed and stuffed my face, feeling the taste of every chew and the sensation as it traveled down my esophagus. My body was STARVING and I was done denying what it wanted. I felt my stomach muscles stretching, my belly gaining fat and protruding outward. I was eating so fast that I didn’t have time to choke or throw up. It all tasted so good. My love handles doubled at first, then quadrupled in size. My legs and buttocks thickened up at a crazy fast pace. I laughed maniacally at myself, smiling ear to ear like a crazy person would as chunks of food went down my throat easily. It was safe to say that I was no longer in control of my body and the thing inside me knew it. It was trying to take over me with every bite I took and I don’t know why. Strangely enough, I did not care to know why.

I was only focused on the craving and nothing else. I felt the sinister anger that the entity had toward my body. But it lavished in my suffering, just as much as it lavished the marshmallows it vacuumed down my throat with no effort.” Criminal”! The voice hollard establishing dominance in the forefront of my psyche. My pajama shirt began to tighten around my growing belly, retracting upward like blinds on a window, with the elastic band stitched inside my pajama pants giving in to my bulbous stomach I tore right through the front of them. My clothes started to rip apart exposing my new chunky figure as I continued to finish the pantry. What was I turning into? I wondered as I grew bigger and bigger. As I moaned and growled craving more and more food it felt like I was powering up to become my true primal form. It felt blissful—sensational and I didn't know why. It was like I was finally breaking out of my cheap good-girl cacoon. I had curves now. But not the kind the boys would find sexy. I didn’t care about being sexy anymore, I was transforming into an obese powerhouse of some sort right before my own eyes and I didn’t want to stop it. We didn’t want to stop it. Was I going to die? I thought. Was this how I was going to die, being unable to resist my extreme glut temptations? How much food can one person eat in one sitting before their stomach bursts open like a water balloon and their stomach acids leak into their body causing gastrointestinal perforation? I wondered from where I was. I’ve heard of some medical cases like that in the past and It looked like I was going to be one of them.

I finished the pantry and turned my sights on the fridge next. I walked over to it carrying and shifting my almost completely bloated body over to the door. I wanted to be FULL and I wasn’t going to stop eating until I was. I opened the fridge door, and it revealed a wide array of cold colorful drinks and leftover foods. I helped myself. I started popping open bottles and taking them to the head and down the hatch. The more I drank, the more I felt free, and yet guilty all the same. I felt the entity's powerful embrace inside me like no one could stop it from finishing what was right on its radar for consumption. It was pure and utter violent consumption from the pantry to the refrigerator. I gained some control over my body in between bites and tried and stop myself but the entity kept wanting more and I couldn’t take it anymore. I started tearing up and crying all over again for the second time tonight... With my face switching back and forth between uncomfortable expressions and hunger-lust-filled ones.

I screamed in torture as my body uncontrollably forced-fed itself. Yet they were muffled and drowned out by all the bottles of water and juice jugs I was pouring down my throat. This was hell— and I was living every second of it. I started tremoring every time I wanted to stop drinking and eating—but I kept going. I was as big as our living room couch sofa now. I even grew a bit taller I noticed. The entity was in full control now and it kept me chained to the passenger side of my conscious as I watched it make me take down massive portions of food. I wasn’t a girl guys adored anymore, I was like an uncontrollable monster straight out of a videogame. As distracted as I was, I didn’t even notice my parents staring at me in great horrific shock at the sight of their newly shaped daughter. The light from inside the fridge shined bright upon me and showed just how grotesque I looked face planted down into last night's ham roast. I lifted my face out of the roast and looked back at them. I saw my mother crying in my father's arms out of terror, holding the home phone in her hand. I heard a lady on the line say “Stay on line ma’am, dispatch will be to your address as soon as possible.” I was confused, did my parents not know it was their beautiful and perfect daughter standing before them? Surely, they made a mistake and didn’t mean to call the cops on me. Regardless, I was still hungry… and the fridge was empty… and my parents looked REALLY tasty. It was just something about their outward fear and confusion that made them look like hotdogs on a stick rotating under a heated lamp at a quick-stop gas station.

The entity wanted them and I couldn’t do anything about it physically. I cried out from inside my mind pleading to the entity not to harm them. To no avail, my cries went unanswered in the dark void abyss of my consciousness. I got a front-row look as I watched the entity lunged toward my parents. Starting with my mother first, the entity started tearing into her flesh with my teeth like a rabid dog. This off-balance knocked my father down, hitting his head on one of the steel shelves inside the kitchen pantry knocking him unconscious. My mother screamed as I tore the skin from her ligaments stretching and popping them and the blood vessels that came with them in the process. I chewed the meat off her bones with ease. She fell into shock and froze as she bled out on the kitchen floor. At that moment, I felt what it was like to be a feral grizzly bear devouring a wounded animal in the woods as I bit into her face eating off her nose, lips, and ears and all the muscle tissue connected as she just lied there and took it.

After finishing up my mother who was later just a remnant of a chewed-up carcass. I turn toward my father. The entity pulled his dead weighted body from out of the pantry and got on top of him and began devouring him till there was nothing left but the torn-apart bloody pajamas on his chewed-up bony corpse. Oh, how I moaned and sobbed in uncontrollable tears sitting in nowhere inside my mind, watching the pools of blood from my parents’ dead bodies drain onto the floor through their hollowed-out ribcages. The entity loved every last second of that meal, and I felt her satisfaction. It licked the blood from my fat fingers, sucking on them like she just finished a chicken wing platter. The entity felt proud of itself, prideful even, from the work it had done on my mom and dad. I thought for a demon, this thing doesn’t shy away from toxic human behavioral traits.

It looked down at my full and engorged belly and squished it sinking my fingers through the plumpey rolls. It was admiring the pudginess of my overgrown gut. Gently rubbing on it in circular rotations and letting out a large monstrous burp. I felt… FULL. Perfect in fact, Like I didn’t need anything or anyone because I have had it all. I found some control to make it to my feet and wobble out of the kitchen and back upstairs. Looking toward the front door, I saw rays of light peeking in through the cracks. The sun was coming up. I had been eating all night long.

I lost track of both sleep and time. I manage to carry my overweight body back upstairs and into the bathroom. My body was so heavy going up the steps that the staircase couldn't even stay together under the immense weight of my chubby feet as I climbed upward. I turned on the light and saw my new self in the reflection. I looked disgusting, I looked like... “CINTHEYA!?!?” I couldn’t believe it, I looked just like Cintheya, forget that, I WAS Cintheya Bass in the flesh. A sinister smirk followed by a seductive belly rub after my mind was blown in disbelief. How could she do this? I thought she was dead. How did she take me over? My mind was filled with questions I was afraid to have answered as Cintheya made disgraceful and ill-seductive poses with my body in my bathroom mirror. The image of Cintheya in my mirror started fading away and so did her grasp over me. I felt her influence leaving my body as I started to return to control.

It was me again. Not really— Just in control. My body was completely blubberfied, my clothes were stretched and ripped apart and my mouth was covered in blood from my lips down to my neck and chest… Even my hair was messed up. Cintheya was gone….. and I was in trouble. I noticed the lettering was more clear on my bloated stomach now. It made out a statement in bold bubbly branded letters: ENTER THE STRICKEN. Yes, it seems too good to be true. Even though Cintheya has left my body. Her cain mark lies with me now. The police pulled into my driveway from all corners outside my house. They busted through the door searching for me. I couldn’t move. I was too afraid and exhausted to hide. A female cop came into the bathroom where I was with two other cops behind her. “SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!!!” they yelled out at me guns pointed. They were studded by my large mass. I was taller than all three of them seeing completely over their heads. That power that I felt I had before completely went away. There stood a scared and guilty overweight little girl. The cops stood with dazed looks on their faces. Staring at me like I was the 11th wonder of the world or something. “Ma’am, tell us your name and we won’t harm you.” the policewoman said with her gun and the other officer's guns pointed and ready to fire. My name?…. I thought with a blank stare. My name was Hannah Prince, I thought to myself. How could I almost have forgotten it, I wondered. I turned toward the officers slowly with my hands down by my side and the only name I could announciate to the officer was the word….. “Criminal.”

THE END