Just as he hadn’t always hated being fat, his parents hadn’t always been obsessed with his weight. The obsession had started around the same time he’d gained those forty-five pounds in just a few months when he was in ninth grade. Before that, he’d just been “chubby” or “a little hefty.” But then his father had been diagnosed with high blood pressure that the doctor told him was caused by his weight, and the floodgates opened. He was now “obese,” at just under six feet tall and 220 pounds, and his parents wouldn’t stand for it. They started hounding him to eat less and exercise more as his father started an aggressive weight loss plan, and decided to have gastric bypass surgery. He’d weighed a bit over 320 when he had it done, and had rapidly shrunk down to a toned 170 pounds, and expected Xander to keep up with his athletic pursuits. But Xander, having always been physically awkward, balked at the prospect of spending his free time jogging and running around after a tennis ball, and quickly found an after school job to keep him away from his father’s demands. So it was that as his father got thinner, Xander got fatter. He had his own money to buy snacks with, and he got as much free food as he wanted at the local fast food place where he worked. With a steady diet of cheeseburgers and French fries, he’d made it to 268 pounds by the end of his senior year. That was when his parents had started hinting that he should have the surgery, too, or at the very least, go on a serious diet. But despite the crap he received from them, and from virtually everyone else, he couldn’t agree to it. And now here he was, 120 pounds later, and they were basically insisting that he get half of his stomach sewn shut.
They’re right, he thought sullenly as he walked down the street, I should get my stomach sewn shut. Or they could go with the less invasive option and just sew my mouth shut so I can never eat ever again. His stomach growled angrily as if in response, and he shook his head as he turned a corner. I weight almost four hundred pounds. What if I really can’t stop getting bigger? he fretted. But what am I supposed to do? I can’t even go an hour without being hungry. And I need to eat so much just to feel full… I don’t think I could handle eating as much as I’m ‘supposed’ to. But if I don’t do something… He couldn’t stop his mind from flying back to August. A perfectly sweet, intelligent, reasonable girl couldn’t look past his size – how could he ever expect anyone else to?
And then there she was, walking towards him in the hard, cold, afternoon light. Not August, but Callisto – Cee, they’d called her – the girl with the red hair. Xander stopped dead and turned around, wishing desperately that he was capable of running without all his fat bouncing and jiggling up and down and basically nullifying his efforts to get away.
She was beside him in a few seconds. “Hi, Pudge,” she said gleefully. “Nice day for a walk, isn’t it?”
He clenched his teeth as he walked as quickly as he could, trying to lose her. He already felt his breath quickening.
“You know, you probably shouldn’t try to go too fast. Wouldn’t want you to get out of breath,” she said, and he could see her grin out of the side of his vision.
“Please…go…away,” he puffed.
“Uh-oh, too late,” she sang. She reached out and grabbed his hand, and he pulled it away as if she were a flame. “Hey…what’s wrong?”
“I don’t…want…to talk…to you.”
“No, seriously, what’s wrong? Did something happen?” She sounded genuinely concerned.
“Leave…me…alone.”
“Xander –“
That was the first time she’d called him by his name. He stopped and turned to look at her. “What…do you…want?” he gasped.
“First, I want you to catch your breath so you don’t die on me. Then I want you to tell me what happened.”
“Nothing…happened.”
“Then why are you out here when it’s like ten degrees, running around like something’s chasing you?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed, wishing he could catch his breath. He hadn’t even been trying to go fast for that long. “Just…my…my parents…”
She bit her lip. “Oh.” She went over to a bench that sat facing away from the road and brushed the snow off with her hand. “Here, sit. It’ll hold you.”
His face turned even more red than it already was, but he obliged. It felt good to get the weight off his feet.
Callisto plopped down on the little bit of space that was left on the bench beside him. “So…have you ever thought about it?” she asked.
“Thought…about what?” he breathed.
“Weight loss surgery.”
He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. She just wanted to make fun of him again, didn’t she? He moved to rise from the bench, but she put her hand on his arm.
“No, no, I’m not making fun of you. I…well, you know how you can smell things that no one else can? Like how August smells like strawberries and sunlight?”
“How did you –“
“I can hear things, like that. I just listen hard, and I can hear how your parents got on your case at lunch, for example. That was pretty shitty of them.”
Xander sagged back onto the bench. “You know all about that?” he asked, feeling sick.
“Yeah. I know a lot about you.”
“Great,” he muttered.
“But I can only hear the things your mind puts into words…like, I can’t just go dig around in your head and find out anything, usually. I only know that that’s the way August smells because you repeat it almost every time you think of her. And I knew about how you had to go up a size because you were thinking it pretty loud. But usually it’s something I have to actively do; I don’t just hear everything all the time.”
He was mortified. “Great,” he repeated.
“So…do you ever think you’d do it? The surgery, I mean.”
“I…” he sighed. “I wish I could. But I can’t.”
She just nodded. After a few moments of silence, she spoke up again, “So have you always been this big?”
Xander just looked at her. She gazed back at him, her face innocent. He shook his head. “What do you really want?”
“I want to get to know you. You’re going to be joining our little group, and I think that we should be friends.”
“Uh…what?”
“We need you, Xander. Someone with your talents will be invaluable to us. We need your help.”
“What on earth could I possibly help you with? Do you need a lit tutor? Because I’m not very good at, y’know, people, but I know a guy at the learning center…”
“No, no, no. Xander, we hunt demons.”
“Um, excuse me?”
“Demons,” she said. “Y’know, those nasty, scary things? Come from Hell? Hell’s actually a different dimension, y’know, it’s not underground.”
“…right.”
Callisto shook her head. “Look, I know how it sounds, believe me. But you’ve already seen one. The Fuom? The thing that scratched your leg? That’s a type of demon. One of the lesser ones, but a mean little thing nonetheless. And you don’t really have a choice but to join us, because it’s been following you. That’s how we found you: we were tracking activity at the school, and we detected that little bitch.”
“So what if it’s following me? What does it want?”
“What every demon wants…your soul.”
“My soul? I don’t even know if I believe in that.”
“Well, believe what you want, but that demon wants it. Remember how you felt when you got scratched?”
Xander’s face turned red again. “You know about that, too?”
“Well, some of it, but you were pretty incoherent. I know you were terrified of getting on a scale and having everyone see how much you weigh.”
He reached up and rubbed his eyes with his fingers, trying to stop the pounding headache he was developing.
“Anyway, that’s how the Fuom takes your soul. Well, a part of it, because it’s only a lesser demon, blah blah blah, but it pumps you full of as much venom as it can until you’re so scared you can’t even breathe, and then it climbs inside you and takes a piece of your soul.”
“And this one wants a piece of my soul. It must be the runt of the pack.”
“No, this is a pretty strong one, as far as Fuoms go. It’s a malicious little sucker. Left a big scar on my arm.”
“It scratched you?”
“Nah, bit me. I was doing recon and it surprised me in the bushes. I can’t see them as well as you and Darshan can, unless I do the enhancement ritual, and, frankly, that’s boring as hell.”
“What do you mean, you can’t see them as well as Darshan and me?”
“You guys have the natural ability to see,” she explained. “That’s Darshan’s main talent, and it’s your secondary one. Your main talent’s your nose,” she told him, playfully tweaking his nose. “And your taste buds, I’d imagine,” she added thoughtfully.
He ignored her last comment. “I still don’t understand. You mean that other people can’t see these things?”
“Well, some people can sort of see them out of the corner of their eye, y’know? That’s probably how you’ve seen them most of your life. Weird little black things moving just out of your field of vision. But now that you know about them, you’ll see them better and better. Darshan’s better at explaining it,” she told him.
“So…you hunt them. Why?”
“Because they’re demons. Duh. They want to steal people’s souls and stuff,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “I’ve seen what they do to people. It’s not pretty, watching someone get his soul stolen.”
“What happens after their soul is stolen?”
Callisto rubbed her hands together a bit. For the first time, Xander noticed that she wasn’t wearing gloves, and only had a light jacket on. “Geez, you must be freezing,” he said, unzipping his coat. “Here, take my coat.”
“Thanks, Pudge, but I’m like a super-heater. It feels positively balmy out here. You should probably take it off anyway, though. You’re sweating.”
Xander sighed. She notices everything, he thought, irritated.
“Pretty much,” she replied to his unspoken comment with a grin. “It’s kinda cute that you’re all sweaty and red just from walking fast for, like, not even two minutes.”
His face flushed further as he stared down at the snowy sidewalk, avoiding her stare and gritting his teeth. “Y’know,” he started, “I already know what I look like…”
“Well, duh,” she interrupted.
“…and I don’t need you reminding me of it.”
“Why not?” she asked.
He looked at her. The expression on her face contained no pretense; she was genuinely confused as to why he wouldn’t want her pointing out what a big fat blimp he was. “It’s not polite to point out someone’s faults,” was all he said.
“Uh, okay,” she replied. “So, anyway, you’re going to be a demon hunter now, too. You’ll be our bloodhound. With your super-nose, we’ll be able to track them better. So what do you say – are you in?”
Xander shook his head. “What’s in it for me?”
“You’ll get to spend more time with me,” she told him, batting her eyes mischievously.
“…right.”
“Seriously, though, you need a hobby. You need to get out of your dorm and away from your roommate and his girlfriend going at it like rabbits.”
Xander cringed, grimacing slightly as he looked around the crowded street. People were bustling by with shopping bags, caught up in the Christmas rush. He knew that Callisto was right: he might have the room to himself for a few weeks, but come mid-January Adrian and August would be having frequent naked time in his room again.
“You can sleep at the house sometimes, if you need to,” she interrupted his thoughts.
He sighed again. “I must be nuts. Alright, I’m in.”
"Sweet!" she exclaimed. "Now let's go get something to eat; you're starving."
This story is amazing
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