SAMANTHA GARDENER

In which a university lecturer finds herself coming to undersatnd the plight of her failing overweight student a little too intimately.

            "You think you're so smart and beautiful," she spat, "but inside you're as plain and stupid as the rest of us!"

            I took this as something of a compliment, ignoring the second half of her accusation, and brushed a lick of hair back off my face. "If you'll calm down," I said, "you'll realise that my decision is the only correct one."

            Samantha Gardener had tears down her fat cheeks, dying her eyes a vile red, horribly visible, even through her glasses. She ran her stubby hand back through her over-short, shapeless hair and glared at me. "You don't know what life's all about - with your high wage job and beautiful hair, your perfect body!" She came right up to me, fat body obviously causing her trouble. "I wish you were just like me - no prospects - no future. I wish you could lose all that beauty and wallow in fat. I wish you could lose all that pretentious brain of yours and be as thick as everybody else!"

            The other lecturers and students in the common room were barely holding their giggles back in the face of this ridiculous display. I opened my mouth to tell her she'd been justly tested - that any failure was her own, not mine, but it suddenly felt as though I'd been punched in the stomach.

            I couldn't get any breath. My whole face must have been shaped by the shock I was feeling.

            All I could do was watch her as she lumbered off to her life of greasy foods, love bites and working in chip shops.

*  *  *

            It took me several moments to recover from this inexplicable sensation. Andrew Painton, my boss and the head of the English department approached me from behind and put his heavy hand on my shoulder. I felt that first through the silk of my short sleeved blouse. Then recognition hit me with the odor of his cologne.

            "Hello Andrew," I said, turning to face him. He was smiling. I'd made the questionable decision to have a brief fling with him shortly after my interview for the job there at the university and even though I'd escaped from his rather grim love nest as soon as I was able to, he liked to share the memory of it with me from time to time.

            "Tests," he said, "they put everybody in their pigeon holes. Don"t they Sarah?"

            "Mmmm." I particularly despised his philosophical moods. He had a point though. My nocturnal manouvering had made it possible for me to reach the testing part of the application procedure and make my way in to the point beyond which he could sack me when I ditched him. The test results had been my lifeline into that job.

            "The government is pushing for tighter observation of lecturer ability," he said, trying to be casual. I sat down on the arm of one of the chairs near to the window that looked out and down the front lawn of the campus. "Apparently they're afraid of lax professionals letting their knowledge slip over time - offering a sub-standard level of tuition."

            "Mmm hmm."

            "The new lecturer spot tests are beginning tomorrow."

            "What!?" I said, disbelieving, "What's that supposed to mean?"

            "Nothing to the likes of you, Smarty pants," he said, "but plenty to the older generation." He motioned toward the group of middle-aged lecturers who hadn't been awake when the eighties started, let alone the nineties. "Having said that.... if you do happen to fail we might be able to work out some kind of system by which you could stay."

            I shrugged, trying not to notice what he was talking about. "Well if it doesn't affect me then I don't care about it," I said.

*  *  *

            Home.

            I looked at myself in the mirror. Samantha Gardener had been right. I was beautiful. Angular cheek bones, perfect skin; lovely eyes, arcing brows. My dark hair down to my shoulders and turned up at the ends. My nose was narrow and straight.

            I examined my body as well. No fat anywhere on my arms. No sign of a double chin either. I pulled up my short black nightgown.

            "Hmmm." I seemed to have put on a little weight around my middle. Only a slight roundness to what had been completely flat the week before, but a little something to think about. I decided to go without food the next day and go to the gym.

            It was as simple as that.

*  *  *

            Next morning I got out of bed in the dark.

            I reached for the bedside lamp. It didn't come on.

            "Fuck."

            I felt my way to the wardrobe and pulled it open. I had left my blouse and skirt in clear view the night before, that I was going to be wearing today. I laid the hangers out on the bed and started climbing into them.

            My skirt was quite long and narrow and I had more trouble than usual trying to get it on in the dark. Then I couldn't get the zip all the way up.

            "Damn," I said, "it's stuck."

            I pulled on a bra, feeling for it from my top drawer and then slipped my arms into my blouse. I reached to do up the middle button.

            It wouldn't reach.

            I switched on the light, unsure whether I'd set out the wrong clothes the night before.

            It was the right blouse but I gasped when I looked at my stomach.

            There was a couple of little roles of fat around my middle.

            They hadn't been there the night before.

            I went to the mirror in the bathroom and put my hand to my mouth.

            I told myself it was only a minor difference - and it was - but my chin had dropped overnight. I was fatter than I had been when I went to bed. I hadn't put on a lot of weight at all but the difference was fairly startling to me. It was horrible!

            I sat down on the end of the bed, looking at the roll of fat that gathered there. I was sure my thighs were thicker too. I'd always made jokes about not having childbearing hips "Thank God," and now here they were, arrived at last. I felt terrible. I couldn't understand how I could have put that weight on at all, let alone so fast.

            I washed my hair but it was a bit long now and it was looking greasy. I decided to make a hairdressing appointment before I left for work for later in the day.

            I found a much baggier blouse in the wardrobe and put some tracksuit bottoms on. I couldn't go to work in a skirt that only zipped half way up! I stopped at Laura Ashley in town on the way, and despite the funny looks I got, bought a new skirt that was a better fit. I shrugged and bought a new blouse too. I changed into them in the women's toilets out in the mall.

            In the mirror, with these better fitting clothes, there was very little discernible difference. I smiled, relieved. Then frowned when I looked at my sagging neck.

*  *  *

            I kept a low profile at work, eating sandwiches in my car rather than sit in the staff room or go to the canteen. I hadn't liked the looks of disappointment on the faces of some of my adoring male students when the entered the lecture halls. It wasn't that I got off on the attentions of these post-pube sex machines; but it was a little humbling to notice their attention wavering.

            It was funny. I guessed age was starting to hit me. I just always thought it was more of a gradual process.

            At two o'clock I had to go in for the lecturer competency test. It was raining and my hair flopped even more than it had already as I ran across to the hall where the exams were set to take place.

            Andrew was leaning against the wall in the doorway, smoking. He was smiling as I approached but the smile faltered to half-mast when I got closer.

            "You look crap," he said.

            "Thanks."

*  *  *

            I took a seat, feeling quite uncomfortably like a kid. We were using the same little desks the students used. I didn't remember my belly touching the front of the desk last time I'd been in this kind of situation.

            No time to study. It really pissed me off being put into this situation.

            The examiner started the clock and we got down to it.

            I realised straight away that the first question was the kind they put in knowing nobody could possibly know it. I skipped onto the next one. Caught myself saying, "Hmmm," out loud when I looked it over. I knew I should have remembered it but I couldn't for the life of me.

            The next question was the same. And the next. I did my best to do them anyway but it was as though I had become stupid overnight. I couldn't remember any of the things I was supposed to be able to.

            I came out after the three hours with sweat running down my back.

            Most of the other faculty members were laughing. Andrew came up to me and said, "If the students had tests that easy we could pass them all at the end of the first term."

            "Yeah...." I said.

*  *  *

            I was fifteen minutes late for my hairdressing appointment, feeling stressed and a bit snappy. It turned out my hairdresser felt the same way.

            "You've never been late before," she said, "I had to turn away a girl I could have trimmed in the time it's taken you to arrive."

            "Gee, I'm so sorry!" I snapped and sat down.

            She glared at me as she wrapped the gown around my neck. "What do you want?"

            "Give me something new and stylish will you?"

            "Right," she said sullenly, "You've put on a lot of weight haven't you."

            I said something very rude.

            It didn't much improve the atmosphere in the little shop.

            I closed my eyes and let myself drop off as she got to work.

*  *  *

            She prodded me on the shoulder and I woke up.

            "There," she said, "I hope you like it."

            I looked at myself in the mirror and almost screamed out loud. All my beautiful thick hair was gone. All she'd left was a short featureless style, parted down the middle, making an inverted V across my forehead. I looked terrible. It made my face look fatter. My God, it was difficult to detect any form to my cheeks anymore. My face was almost round.

            "I'm not paying for this!" I snapped, "you've ruined my hair!"

            "Then just leave," she said, simply.

            I did.

*  *  *

            I felt absolutely terrible on the way home. It was still only mid-afternoon but the drizzle was deflating my spirits almost as much as my new style. Back home I went into the bathroom and spent two hours trying to do something stylish with it. No luck. Either it was a completely lost cause or I'd totally lost my touch. It looked exactly the same at the end as when I'd started.

            My face looked even fatter now and I could have sworn my nose wasn't straight any more. It seemed to hook more than it used to. I opened my blouse and gasped. My stomach was even thicker. I was fat. Officially. The new skirt I'd bought that morning felt too tight.

            What the hell was going on?

            I got my scales out and stepped out, waiting impatiently as the numbers span past.

            In the five days since I'd last weighed myself I'd put on forty pounds!

            It was impossible but it was true. There had to have been something wrong with the scales before. Maybe I'd been kidding myself.

            I went into the kitchen to make some dinner, determined to diet immediately; but I felt so bad I found myself making a mixed grill. I had four each of beefburgers and bacon and two eggs in with my chips. I actually felt terrible but the food made me feel better. My appetite was huge.

            The evening went quickly. I rented a couple of videos and stayed in, ordering out for pizza when I got peckish again at about nine. I was glad I had a couple of weeks off now. I couldn't face going back in for a while and it would give me a chance to work off some of my weight.

            There was something wrong with the TV’s picture. It was unfocused. I struggled with the tuning and got it right. Then I sat down again. It was out of focus. I got up and walked closer to the screen and as I did so it came into focus. My eyes were playing up.

            I decided to go to bed early.

*  *  *

            I woke up quite late the next day feeling ravenous to knocking on my door. I struggled to pull some tracksuit bottoms up onto my legs to keep me decent. The baggy white t-shirt I wore in bed wasn't enough.

            Andrew was waiting in the hall when I opened up. The doorman downstairs would have recognised him and let him in. When he saw me his face fell about ten feet.

            "Sarah? You look terrible! How did you manage to put on so much weight? And what have you done to your hair?"

            I scowled and slammed the door after him. There was a little white-framed mirror in my hall and I peered at my reflection. My skin looked washed out, my eyes puffy. I couldn't tell if it was the curtains being closed or not but I found it hard to focus my eyes.

            Andrew was waiting for me in the sitting room. "Well? Are you going to fill me in? What's happened to you?"

            "I dunno. I'm just a bit outta sorts lately."

            "A bit? You're bloody out of sorts. It's like the exam."

            "Wha?"

            "The exam. Were you making a joke or something? You did terribly! It's like you became stupid overnight."

            "What ya talking about?"

            "You failed the exam Sarah."

            "I wha?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "That ain't possible." I put my hand to my forehead. I felt so hot suddenly.

            "They're going to have to get rid of you Sarah. With the new stipulations---"

            "Can't you do sumfin'?"

            "I don't know. I--"

            "Please Andrew! Maybe we could work sumfin out like before." I touched his cheek, my finger looking preposterously stubby. I could see the damnation of my looks in the sneer he returned to me.

            "I'm sorry Sarah. That's not going to happen."

            "Wha? But, come on Andrew. Remember before?"

            He pushed me away. "That was before you let yourself go. You'd better take a look in the mirror before you try prostitution as a means of keeping your job."

            "What!” I was so angry; filled with a total rage suddenly. I slapped him hard across the face and for a second he just stared at me.

            Then he slowly shook his head. “Don’t cry,” he said.

            “Wanker,” I said.

            “Fat cow,” he replied. He went toward the door.

            “You can’t talk to me like tha,” I stammered, finding it hard to focus on his face.

            “I can talk to you anyway I want,” he said, “you fat bitch.”

            “You can take yer job and stuff it,” I snapped, “I don’t care!”

            “You’d have lost it anyway,” he said, opening the door, “this way you save us the bother of giving you severance pay.” He turned to leave. “Goodbye Sarah.”

*  *  *

            I couldn't stop crying. I sat on the toilet seat in bra and knickers, my bulging reflection weeping back at me. I'd grown even bigger in the night. There was no longer any sign of the curve of my chin. The skin ran down, faintly curving outwards from my cheeks down to the base of my neck. My breasts were huge. The bra didn't fit anymore and I had to take it off.

            I couldn't understand it. It was impossible there was no way I could have grown this fast. It was like magic. It was like a horrible curse.

            I put my head in my hands, elbows on my knees.

            I couldn't understand it.

            And my eyesight. It was harder and harder for me to focus. It looked like I was going to need glasses. I moaned. Before I knew it I was going to look exactly like that horrible girl I'd had to dismiss from her course. Samantha Gardener.

            Samantha Gardener.

            I stopped crying instantly, looking up at myself in the mirror.

            And I remembered her words.

            "I wish you were just like me - no prospects - no future. I wish you could lose all that beauty and wallow in fat. I wish you could lose all that pretentious brain of yours and be as thick as everybody else!"

            And I suddenly knew what had happened.

            I didn't believe in magic or curses or witchcraft or anything like that. But there was no denying what was happening. I'd lost my job and with the new legislation I had no means of getting another one at the same level. I had no prospects. It was painfully clear in the mirror - my shapeless hair, my bulk and skin - that my beauty was disappearing. And the test. I hadn't been able to do it while everyone else had thought it was easy.

            I went up to the mirror, pressing my hands against the glass, peering into my own eyes.

            Was it also true that I was losing my intelligence?

            "I don't fuckin' believe it," I said.

            Then I paused. There was something else strange here that was difficult to put my finger on. "What the fuck's goin' on?" I muttered. Then I realised. My voice. My accent and turn of phrase was totally different. It was common and crass. I was talking as though I had no education at all.

            "Bloody 'ell."

            This was terrible. I said a few more phrases.

            “I can’t believe this is fuckin’ ‘appenin to me.”

            “In ‘artford, ‘ereford and ‘ampshire, ‘urricaines ‘ardly ever ‘appen.”

            “Fuck me!”

            I needed a fag.

            That was something else. I had never smoked in my life and now I was craving it as though I was a forty-a-day slag.

            I put on the tracksuit bottoms again. The elastic cut into my waist. I pulled a sleeveless top on over my head. My arms were massive in the short sleeves. It’s creases showed every bubble of my body as well as a sizable sliver of my bulging stomach. This was horrible. And my eyesight was getting worse. I thought about Samantha and her thick pebble glasses. If this curse were true then that was in my future. There was no escaping from it.

            I had to get out of my flat. This was driving me crazy in here, but I couldn’t go out because of my damn eyes. Everything was blurred and getting less and less clear by the minute. I sat there staring vacantly at the wall for a few moments. Then I remembered the box of my mother’s things in the top of my wardrobe. After she died I had kept a few personal effects in there, including her glasses. Hers were very very thick, far thicker than I would need, but there was a chance they would help a bit.

            I got a chair and set it in front of the open wardrobe then wheezed as I climbed up onto it. I pulled the glasses out of the shoebox then replaced it. I climbed back down and went over to the mirror. The thick glass made them very heavy in my hand. I didn’t know why I’d bothered straining to get them down. They weren’t going to be any good. But I slipped them on anyway. And instantly regretted it.

Because I could see perfectly through them.

Not only that. What I was looking at was my own new chubby reflection and I was really fat now. My cheeks arched out and became a huge fold of skin that distorted my neck. My thick arms and bulging breasts looked horrible on me. I looked horrible.

            And these clothes had to go. Despite the thought of it filling me with absolute terror, I knew that I had to accept these changes for now and at least get covered up. When I was dressed decently I could see about changing things – maybe go to see a doctor, or a witch doctor at least!

*  *  *

            The doorman wasn’t in reception, which filled me with relief. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.

            As soon as I got outside I realised I’d made a mistake. With autumn coming on fast it was too chilly for a sleeveless top. On top of that I’d left my handbag inside. I turned right round, cursing my forgetfulness and banged up against the locked glass front door.

            “Fuck me! What a pile a shit!” I didn’t have my keys to get in. I banged against the glass with the heel of my fist, shouting for attention but nobody came. This was terrible! And I was freezing too.

            I checked the pocket of my tracksuit. The only good thing that had happened to me in the last forty eight hours was that there was some cash in there. Thirty pounds. Without somebody to let me in, the only thing I could do was to go and get the clothes I needed and then come back later.

            I sighed. The shopping needed doing. I had to just go and get it over and done with.

            When I got to my car I remembered the car keys were inside the flat too.

            I kicked the side of the door, making a dent in the panel. This was getting worse by the minute. And it disgusted me that I could have forgotten my bag and coat – that I didn’t remember about the car keys until I’d walked all the way round to my car. I shuddered, thinking about the wording of my curse again. “… lose all that pretentious brain of yours and be as thick as everybody else!" Surely that wasn’t really happening to me.

*  *  *

            I got the bus to Barton, the scummy district of town. It was the only area where the shops were going to be cheap enough to provide me with an entire outfit for the money I had. I hadn’t ridden the bus since I was a student. It was a distasteful reminder of poverty that I thought I had gotten away from for good. I hated the forced intimacy and the stink of all those close bodies. I was above this. I wasn’t one of these people. I resented being reduced, however temporarily, to their level.

            In Barton I shopped round for clothes that would fit my new size. Everything they had seemed to be tawdry and garish. I found myself sighing over and over again, getting more and more disgruntled. The clothes I was wearing were so bad – they made me look even worse – that people were staring everywhere I went. I felt under increasing pressure to just buy anything to cover up. It was really getting to me, this impossible situation. I wanted it to be over. I didn’t want to look terrible. I wanted to look sexy like I always had done.

            In the end I snatched a skirt off a rack that was the right size, grabbed a short sleeved top and bought them both without trying them on in a fury. They looked sexy and that was good enough for me. I picked up some shoes, make-up and a pair of earrings and walked up to the checkout.

            I got changed in the ladies toilets in the main shopping centre. It was a relief to get out of those tight fitting clothes and put on something that fit. But as I put them on I realised how inappropriate they were. I shouldn’t have been so careless picking them out.

            The skirt was very short. The shoes I had bought were blocky heels. With them and the skirt and the short sleeved top that came down into a deep v at the front to show off my enormous cleavage, I looked like a fat slut. I tried fluffing up my hair but it made me look worse. When I put the make-up and gold hoop earrings on they completed the picture. I looked like nothing more than a fat slag out on the piss on a Saturday night.

            Fuck, I needed a fag so badly.

            The only thing that made me feel any better at all was that my new fatter face and look made me look younger – a lot younger. I didn’t look anything over twenty. I couldn’t explain it.

            Then it hit me.

            “I wish you were just like me.”

            I’d become the same age as Samantha! The more I atared at myself, the more I started to realise that I looked more like her now than I did myself.

            What was I going to do?

*  *  *

            I left the shopping centre and sat on a bench out on the pedestrianised shopping street.

I felt gaudy and exposed in those clothes, though paradoxically I didn’t look out of place among the denizens of Barton. A lot of the women walking by were skimpily dressed. They looked like slags. I fitted right in.

I didn’t know what I was going to do. I had no money and no keys. If I knocked on the door to my building the doorman wouldn’t recognise me. Talking like I did he would never believe who I was. I couldn’t even get access to my bank account.

What could I possibly do?

I didn’t know. I lent forward, resting my face on my fists, my elbows on my exposed knees, pools of fat around my elbows.

“Samantha?”

I looked up.

A middle-aged Italian man with greasy hair and a moustache was standing in front of me, looking directly into my face. I didn’t recognise him but he seemed to recognise me.

He said “I thought you had left town.” He was definitely talking to me. What had he called me?

“Do I know you?”

“You said you were going home to stay with your mother yesterday. You moved out all your stuff. Did you decide not to go?”

I stared at him. He thought I was her. He must have. He thought I was Samantha Gardener. Was he her landlord or something? He said she had gone home. After I threw her off the course she would have.

“We are already missing you at the shop,” he said, “Without a third pair of hands it is very hard.”

“The shop?”

“The chip shop. We’ve been very busy. Very very busy. That’s where I’m going now – to open up.”

My sluggish brain was struggling. I could see this was an opportunity for me but I didn’t want to take it. Surely there was some other way out for me but I didn’t have the imagination to think of it.

But I needed money and I needed somewhere to stay.

“I’m not leavin’ anymore,” I said.

His face broke into a grin. “Then you will need somewhere to stay? I have not let out your room above the shop. Somewhere to work?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’d like to come back.”

“That is great news Samantha! Come with me now! We’ll have you living your old life again in no time.”

Except it wasn’t my old life. It was hers. Samantha Gardener.

And I’d become her.

He took my chubby arm in his hand and led me up the street.

*  *  *

            The chip shop was a grotty little thing on a back street.

            There was a fat Italian woman inside who grinned as her husband led me in. “Samantha! Is that you!”

            “Yeah,” I said, feeling like a traitor to myself, “It’s me.”

“Are you back with us to work here?”

I looked round at the dingy little shop, at the oily vats where they cooked the chips. Was this really my only option? To take on Samantha Gardener’s job? To live in her flat? To sleep in her bed?

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m back.”

The man (whose name was Henry) took me through to the back of the shop. He handed me a blue overhead apron that was little more than two flaps with a whole for the head. “Put this on and you can start cleaning out the chip pans.” He grinned.

I took it from him.

“Can I pop up to my room first?” I said.

“Surely.” He gestured to a black wooden door at the back of the shop.

I went through it and climbed the steep stairs to the tiny studio flat above, carrying the apron. 

It looked like Samantha had left in a hurry. Many of her things had been left behind. I realised with a terrible sinking feeling that they were my things now.

Her life had become my life.

I put the apron over my head and clipped the press-studs at the sides closed. Then I looked at myself in the mirror – at my bare chubby legs and short skirt, the blocky high heels, my wide hips, the folds of flesh of my stomach, my pendulous breasts, my short, formless hair, my chubby arms, my fat face, my thick glasses.

I looked at the chip shop uniform I was wearing.

I had nothing to prove who I was – no way of getting anything. That meant I could never get another job – never find another place to live. The only people who would give me a job were downstairs.

There was no way out of this life.

I felt such profound regret that I’d failed Samantha Gardener on account of her stupidity.

I was stupid now. I could feel the last parts of my intellect clouding over.

This was my life. It was my life forever.

I was Samantha Gardener. A fat stupid tart working to scrape a living in a chip shop for the rest of my days.