Renée gets paid to eat. When she worked as a receptionist in an accounting firm, she never imagined that was a possibility. Some people fall into the job of their dreams. Renée’s dreams were always filled with cakes, pies, and slices of pizza dripping with cheese. When she saw the opportunity, she hurled herself into a life full of sticky, gooey satisfaction.
It started as a hobby after she watched a new segment about a group of people in a faraway country that earned thousands of dollars eating as much as they could on camera. The idea made her skin tingle. Salvia pooled in the back of her mouth, and she hurried to her computer to search for someone to watch eat.
She sat mesmerized in front of her computer watching people eat piles of food while talking about their lives. There were so many of them. Her favorite was a small man with a round face, his black hair slicked back with too much gel. He ordered Chinese takeout and sat with the containers of food spread out on the table. He ate so much that Renee marveled. Stuffing his face with lo mein and General Tso’s Chicken, as he told jokes to his audience. Renee would watch his performance every evening after work. He chased away her loneliness and made the meals she ate alone in her apartment that much more bearable.
Renée remembers it like it was yesterday, she came home from work changed into a pair of comfortable exercise clothes and decided to set up her camera. If he could do it, there was no reason she couldn’t. The first time she sat in front of a heaping bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce looking at the red blinking light on her camera, she was so nervous she could hardly eat. She spilled spaghetti sauce all over her shirt and knocked over a glass of lemonade sending a cascading over the edge of the table onto her light gray carpet. When she finished, she lay on the sofa and swollen with food.
She uploaded the video the following day, and before she knew it, she had one hundred views. The next day it was one thousand, and Renee knew that this was what she was meant to do.
She quit her job at the accounting firm a little too soon. It was fun to turn in her resignation letter. The owner of the firm was confused by her sudden departure, and Renee wondered if he finally realized that how much she did there. In the past, he hardly acknowledged her. When he asked her how he would replace her, Renee smirked and said, “I’m sure you’ll find someone.” She knew he wouldn’t because he paid too little and expected too much, but that was his problem.
Food was Renee’s friend, and now it became her coworker. She’d spend her days scarfing down large pizzas and plates of doughnuts. Food consumed her. When she wasn’t eating in front of the camera, she was trying to figure out what she should eat next.
In the beginning, Renee’s clothes got a little tight. A little soon became a lot. The flesh on her arms wobbled like Jello. Her stomach grew and grew and grew. Her face swelled. Her entire body seemed to inflate like a balloon.
One day she awoke to find that she filled her entire studio apartment. The walls pressed in on her lumpy cellulite. Her ample stomach spilled over her legs as if trying to make a break for the door. She lost control of her body, but still she ate because Renee was a professional eater and this was her dream.