Gluttony (Draft)

Horace was fat. Fantastically fat. So fat, his parents had given up with belts long ago, just in case they tightened one too much and turned him into an immense pair of sausages. His belly sagged in revolting lumps over the top of his spacious trousers, the buttons of his shirts strained against the thread, threatening to burst with every deep breath he took, and his cheeks hung limp and flabby, like an over-sized bloodhound. Now, dear Reader, Horace was not fat for no reason. There was one thing that was important to him, and one thing alone.

Sweeties.

Horace adored sweets. Toffees, caramels, sherberts, lollies of all flavours and varieties, the hundreds of different brands of chocolate dissappeared down his throat daily, in qantities beyond belief! He guzzled, gorged, gulped and guzzled, slurped, sucked and swallowed, pouring them down his neck day in and day out. Now, a child cannot consume candies at the rate Horace did without undergoing some rather… disturbing changes.  The first clear sign came at the age of eight, when he had become so wide, that he jammed in the door of the corner shop from which he purchased his delicacies. It took the fire brigade and several tubs of butter to ease him back out again, but still, he kept on eating. At age nine, he became incapable of walking across the road to school, forcing his indulgent parents to drive him in each morning and back each night. But still they bought him sweets, and still he kept eating. Finally, at age ten, Horace woke up one morning to find that he could not leave his bed. His gigantic gut was simply too heavy for him to lift. He could not sit up, nor even roll to the side, he was quite simply too fat. But still, as though under some spell, he chewed and chomped his way through packet after packet of chocolates, fizzy sweets and crisps, pouring them into his open mouth. His skin began to draw more and more tightly around his body, as his shirts had before. He was eating so much and so fast, that his skin couldn’t stretch to accommodate the massive lumps of fat swimming beneath it.

One day, as Horace crammed a jumbo-sized snickers between his teeth, he felt an odd tearing sensation at his belly button, accompanied by a sound not unlike two strips of velcro being pulled apart. Too fat by now to even see the edge of his stomach, he could only listen as a small split formed, the two sides of his belly straining against the store of goodies inside.

By the time his parents found him, it was too late. Chocolate, sweets, caramels and lollies, toffees, humbugs, mints and jellies lay strewn around the bed, mixed with chunks of Horace’s stomach and intestines. You see, dear Reader his body simply could not handle his disgusting appetite, the build up of sugar and fat was too great, and he burst, like an overfilled water balloon.

You could almost say his eyes were too big for his stomach.