How did I meet Irene Donahue? Honestly, I'm not quite sure anymore. I guess she's just always been there, or maybe someone like her; she's just so familiar to me that I never bothered to think about it.

But I remember what felt like the first time I met her.

It was probably around a year ago, maybe ten months. I'd been lying on my couch, trying to fathom how Massachusetts could get so hot, when I heard the phone start ringing. I really just didn't feel like answering it; the 100-plus degree weather had sapped all of my energy, and as I wore less and less clothes and turned the fans up more and more, it just seemed to get hotter and hotter. I almost suspected that the sun had exploded.

The phone rang four times, each "BRRRRRING!" getting more annoying. I was relieved when the machine finally got it, but my mood whiplashed when I heard the message.

A sob.

A few deep breaths.

My sister's voice.

"Mom died."

And, suddenly, my energy returned to me. I sprung to my feet, seeing the imprint of sweat my naked body left on the fabric covering the couch.

"The funeral's next week, so you'll have to fly back down to Tallahassee. Just... call me back. Bye," the voice choked, hanging up.

I stood there, frozen, for what seemed like hours, days, months, years. I would have stood there until Armageddon if the night didn't drop from 100 to 45 degrees in the matter of half an hour and I practically froze to death. I threw on a t-shirt and some sweatpants, drifting around in a dream-state until the day before the funeral.

I'd gotten the story by calling my sister on the way to the train station because there were no available flights. Turns out, Dad had gone out to get his car fixed or something stupid like that while my rather accident-prone mom was getting out of the shower. Our bathroom is at the top of the stairs.

I did the math for myself; a frail old woman taking a fall down what my childhood friends used to call "the steepest stairs ever" couldn't have ended very well.

So, I went to the funeral. I gave a eulogy. I cried.

The usual.

What had snapped me out of my drifting state? Well, that happened on the train ride home. I'd had a compartment to myself on the way down. On my way back to New England, I'd gotten something far more interesting.

I was sitting across the compartment from a woman who could really only be described as massive and looked pretty proud of it. Well, either proud or ignorant of what a girl her size looked like in denim short shorts and a red bikini top. Frankly, I was surprised that she was allowed to walk around without an actual shirt; Things must be different here, I thought, I guess they're a bit more liberal than up where I live.

Her brown hair hung to her elbows, her white, freckled face smeared with chocolate and vanilla frosting. Her green eyes stared off into space, almost as if she was lost in the meal she was stuffing herself with.

She had a fair-sized purse sitting beside her in the very little space that her substantial booty left on the seat. It certainly answered the question of where the hell one would get a cupcake on a train, let alone the entire packet of them that she was munching on happily.

I tried not to stare, but invariably my gaze would shift up from my book to her, even if just for a split-second. It wasn't like I was attracted to her, she was just... odd. I'd never seen anyone with less modesty or shame, and, for some reason, it wasn't repulsive, or disgusting... it was nothing more than quite strange.

I didn't even initiate the conversation. When the huge woman stuffed the rigid plastic container that had once held a dozen fully sized cupcakes into her pink pocketbook with a loud crinkling noise, her emerald eyes settled on me, or, rather, the novel I held clutched in my hands.

"That's a good book," she said, seeming almost desperate to be doing something with her mouth at all times, whether it be eating or talking.

"Yeah," I agreed nonchalantly, trying to drown her out lest I accidentally say something about her exposed, massively obese frame. While my vocal chords projected bored agreements and answers to her questions and remarks, all I could really hear was in my head. The freezer's open an inch when Marla peers over my shoulder and says, "What's for dinner?" The space monkey looks at himself squatting in the hand mirror. "I am the shit and infectious human waste of creation." Full circle. About a month ago, I was afraid to

"I'm Irene," the blob says pleasantly, and as much as I want to avoid a conversation, her sweet tone makes me respond.

I tell her my name.

"Hey, that's my cousin's name! Well, my step-cousin. Maybe she's my second or third cousin. She might've been removed once or twice or something, but I don't even know what that means. I mean, how does your cousin get removed, right? Is it, like," she stopped, thankfully, grabbing her stomach. "Again, really?" She sighed, reaching into her purse and pulling out a packet of Double Stuf Oreos, popping one into her mouth.

"So, what's up?" She said, "What brings you to the train?"

"My mom died," I said with surprising frankness.

Irene's smile, perpetual since we got on the train, faltered for just a second. "Oh, sorry. How'd it..."

"She fell," I muttered coldly, not liking where the conversation was going.

Then Irene said something I never expected: "Until she's 450 pounds and trying to get out of a bean bag chair, your mom has no idea how much of a bitch gravity is."

The silence for that millionth of a second was deafening. Then, suddenly, I laughed. I laughed at a joke about a fat girl sitting feet away from me and I laughed at a joke about my mother falling down a flight of stairs and being forcibly shaken loose of the mortal coil.

But Irene Donahue made it seem okay.

We were fast friends after that. Even I'm not sure how it had happened, but I found myself inviting her to stay with me back at my place; I had a guest room and at one point she'd mentioned her boyfriend dumping her, leaving her with nowhere to stay. The thought of the friend I'd made in those endless hours on the train sitting alone in the streets of Boston was heartbreaking, and before I knew it, Irene Donahue was stuffing her fat ass through my front door, dragging two suitcases behind her.

"Just go unpack your stuff and I can show you around the city," I told her.

She refused to change her clothes, saying that covering her belly always made her feel uncomfortable. "My flab has its own little case of claustrophobia," she would joke. I told her that someone would tell her to put on some clothes, but she was adamant. I eventually stopped trying.

Soon enough, we were sitting across from each other at a table in some fancy Italian restaurant.

"Where'd you used to live?" I asked Irene after we'd gotten our meals, the difference in sizes astounding.

Gulping down her large mouthful of spaghetti, she replied, "Eh, Jake used to move us around a lot because he managed some fifth-rate band. Then, out of nowhere, while we were living in Florida for a while, he just dumped me out of absolutely nowhere. Said I was way too fat for him now, but who, exactly, had been buying me all that food, right?"

"Man, that must've sucked," I sympathized, "Some guy dumped me because of my weight once, too, I was just never... well, your size."

"What, you? Your belly's flatter than a soda that's been left on the table! Who would call you fat?"

"I was a pretty big teenager," I replied, gesturing toward my meager meal. Pretty fat was an understatement. Most girls get cars for their sixteenth birthdays. I got a new bed because I'd broken it. When other girls got a birthday cake for their entire party, I would have a cake for my guests then a triple-layer fudge cake with enough frosting to drown in for myself. By the time I graduated high school, I'd ballooned to 330 pounds, and by the end of the summer I'd grown to 350.

All it took was getting turned away from a buffet and mocked mercilessly by an outspoken employee to break me completely. At college, while other students were gaining the freshman fifteen, I was shrinking so fast that I was buying new clothes weekly. Halfway through the summer after freshman year, most people at home didn't even recognize me. I hadn't had a bite of cake in a year and a half.

"You know what?" Irene said, "I don't think you've got enough pleasure in your life. Me, I live for pleasure."

I almost choked on my lasagna. "You don't even know how wrong that came out in my mind."

My friend raised an eyebrow. "Oh, don't I? Yeah, I've met some of the people who love pleasure who manifest it as nymphomania."

"You're saying that there are a whole bunch of people who do nothing but live for pleasure?" I said with a thick layer of disbelief; people who disregarded what everyone else thought and lived for themselves? In modern America, that was almost unheard of.

"Yeah, I'd say there's as many of them as there are what you might call 'normal' peop-" she stopped and spluttered for a second, pounding her belly with the side of her fist and spitting a whole meatball onto her napkin.

"Got a little overexcited," she blushed, cutting said meatball in half and chowing down on the pieces. "Like I said, for everybody who lives by society's rules, there's someone who lives to be happy. Some drink too much. Some have too much sex."

I laughed. "Some eat too much."

And, with perfect timing, Irene shoved more spaghetti into her mouth than she could handle, resulting in an amusing facial expression that was almost cartoony in nature, her cheeks struggling to hold in all of that food. She almost resembled a Loony Toon. She chewed heartily and belched quietly when she got it all down.

"Way too much," she agreed.

I was surprised nobody had commented on her huge, barely-covered self yet. "Alright, you ready to go?" I asked, as I had cleaned my plate and she had cleaned all seven of hers.

"Yeah, let's go," she said as I slipped our payment into the check and got the hell outta there.

On the car ride home, Irene (who had been relegated to backseat status, mostly because just one of her ass-cheeks took up my entire passenger seat) talked to me some more about her love of pleasure.

"I mean, if you could make yourself happy all the time, how would you do it?" She asked quizzically.

That one question broke through all the diets, all the exercise, all the self-loathing. "I'd probably stuff myself," I admitted, suddenly veering off course.

I could see Irene smile from the rear view mirror. "We aren't going home, are we?"

I smirked. "Nope. First, we're going to get a few burgers. I figure that I deserve a little bit of pleasure myself."

As I pulled into the McDonalds drive-thru, I calculated how much I would eat and how much Irene could pack away and ordered for the both of us. "We'll have eleven Big Macs and seven large fries."

Suddenly, I heard Irene pipe up, "I'll have eleven Big Macs and seven large fries too!"

I laughed under my breath. "Not quite what I meant, but alright."

And, that night, Irene Donahue allowed me to consume more calories in an hour than I usually did in a week. I was stuffed after my binge, but Irene saw it necessary to wash down her fast food with a gallon of milk, some ice cream, and a packet of cookies, all of which she'd brought with her.

I watched her with awe; I was entirely sure she hadn't stopped eating since I met her on the train. I had to ask.

"Irene, do you ever get full?"

She shrugged, swallowing a large spoonful of vanilla ice cream. "Sort of."

"Isn't that some genetic disorder? You know, when your body never tells you you're full?"

Irene looked puzzled. "Oh, no, my body tells me I'm full. It's been telling me I was full since before we met on the train."

I couldn't believe her; when I get too full, sometimes I can't eat for days. If I remember correctly, after Irene had gotten full, she'd managed to "choke down" a dozen large cupcakes, several packets of Double Stuf Oreos, what equated to about half of a cake, seven heaping platefuls of food from that Italian place, eleven Big Mac burgers, seven orders of large fries, a few cans of Mountain Dew, a large chocolate milkshake, two gallons of ice cream, an entire canister of whipped cream, and as I counted all of that in my head she was finishing off a gallon of milk.

It was a wonder she hadn't exploded entirely yet.

"Yeah, my body tells me to stop eating, but I ignore it. Like I said, I don't like things getting in the way of pleasure."

"Even your own body? Really?"

"Really," she insisted, licking her bowl of ice cream clean.

Having no idea how to follow up on this news and, noticing that it was about eleven P.M., I resigned myself to bed.

"Alright, night. I'll go to bed in a few minutes, I've just gotta clean up," she promised.

"Night," I responded groggily, heading up the stairs, changing into my PJs, and drifting off to sleep with a strange feeling of bliss.

It was high school all over again. No matter how much I insisted that those years were behind me, I was dreaming about that fateful day in the summer between graduation and college.

My parents had gone away for a trip somewhere, leaving me in charge of my little sister, Emily. As was the custom, we used this time to cram everything we weren't allowed to do into two days.

That summer, I was determined to go to a buffet.

No matter how hard it was to believe, my fat ass had never been to an all-you-can-eat buffet; I just treated my house like one when everyone else was asleep. So, when Mom and Dad went away and I learned that the biggest buffet in the state was only four miles from my house, I jumped at the chance.

Since I was shaking with excitement at the opportunity to be able to stuff myself and being entirely unable to drive in this overexcited state, my friend Mary was more than happy to volunteer.

But don't get me wrong; I wasn't a gainer or a feedee or anything like that. I just really, really liked food and never really paid attention to my growing weight. The doctor would always tell me I needed to go on a diet, but my will wasn't exactly what most people would call "strong." I figured that, until I started getting made fun of regularly, I didn't need to drop an ounce. My parents were worried, sure, and I felt bad, but I would keep telling myself that I wasn't too unhealthy. Of course, I would be telling myself that between bites of whatever greasy food item was entering my gut at the time, but it was the thought that counted.

"You know," I said to Mary as we were about halfway there, "I'm surprised that you're actually letting me do this. If I asked my parents or any of our other friends to bring me to a buffet of all places, they'd tell me to get on a treadmill and run for a decade."

Mary shrugged. "I guess I just think that you should be able to do what you want. It's your body."

I half-smiled. "Thanks, Mary."

Soon enough, we were there and my belly let out a well-timed rumble.

We got inside and the greeter immediately eyed me with a mix of fascination, anticipation, and disgust. He was probably fascinated by my size, waiting for me to make him rich single-handedly, and disgusted by the fact that a girl my age could get so enormously obese.

Nonetheless, he let me and Mary in after we paid.

I tried to be modest, I really did. I filled my plate slowly with some chicken and a slice of pizza, resisting the urge to head straight for the dessert. I got to the table and dug in as Mary chewed absentmindedly on some salad. In the span of a minute, the piece of pizza was nowhere to be found and chicken bones littered my plate.

"I'll be right back," I told her, blushing as I quickly got up and waddled to the food trays. This time I just got a bit more food; two slices of pizza and a burger. This took a little bit longer to devour, but I was clearly putting it away with deft speed, as the burger and pizza were all gone before my healthy best friend had consumed a quarter of her salad.

This process continued. I would waddle up to the buffet tables, get a bit more food, sit down stuff myself, get up, fill my plate with a bit more food than last time...

It went on for a while. By the time Mary had finished her salad, I was returning with my fifteenth plate, this one heaping and overflowing with food. As I sat down, I felt a bit taller while sitting than I had when we arrived. It vaguely registered as a sign that my already ample rump was growing even bigger, but that didn't really matter much to me.

Mary was only then returning with a second salad. She'd eaten some lettuce. I'd eaten what must have equated to four whole chickens, three cows, several gallons of soda, and eight pizzas.

At the time, I really wasn't counting how much food I was packing away; all that mattered was that I made my time there worthwhile, as I would only be able to go to the buffet and satisfy myself fully once a year. I was feeling slightly full, but I told my belly to stop whining; opportunities like this need to be taken advantage of.

I unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans as I stood up. I'd already eaten enough real food; I felt as though I'd more than earned my dessert.

By the time I reached the dessert buffet, a majority of the modesty I'd arrived with had gone out the window. I heaped what equaled half of a cake onto my plate, topping it off with as many scoops of ice cream I could fit onto the plate and the covering all of that in a thick layer of whipped cream. On the way back, I figured a few cupcakes couldn't hurt as well and I brought my overflowing plate back to the table, Mary sitting down seconds afterward with what must have been her third salad.

I was stuffed, but that didn't matter to me. I had to take full advantage of this limited chance to eat as much as I wanted, something that I could never do at home without a lecture from my parents. The ice cream was giving me brainfreeze. The whipped cream was getting everywhere. My cleavage was stuffed with crumbs of cake.

And I didn't care. I just waddled up and repeated this process several times. As I returned to the table with my fifth cake-ice cream-whipped cream-cupcake platter, Mary was pushing away half of a salad and rubbing her belly as if she was stuffed.

It was then that I realized that maybe I was just a little bit overweight. Mary was normal-sized and gave up after two and a half salads. I was stuffing myself with enough food to feed a small town and I wasn't even hungry.

What made me stop feeling overweight and start feeling truly obese came when I waddled over to the dessert buffet table after my seventh combination of sweets. The table was growing empty, but I just figured that everyone else had had their fair share as well. I looked at the door. The greeter wasn't looking at me, and the last few people were leaving...

I figured that it would be okay to help myself to the triple-layer chocolate fudge cake slathered in whipped cream and drowning in chocolate and vanilla frosting; after all, nobody was left, and it had been out all day without anyone even touching it. Besides, it was an all-you-can-eat buffet. I was entitled to anything I could finish off.

I picked its tray up with both hands and plopped it down on the table as Mary looked at it, wide-eyed.

"Are you going to eat that whole thing?" She asked, shocked.

"Just because you get indigestion from three plates of lettuce and croutons doesn't mean other people don't like to eat," I snarled back.

Utensils were useless at this point; I just reached out and grabbed handful after handful of chocolate and stuffed it down my mighty gullet. It was almost orgasmic. While Mary watched in disbelief, I stuffed my face at a steady pace. Every few bites, I'd take a deep breath from my nose.

Halfway through the cake, I started to make noises. Strange noises. They were like a cross between gulps, belches, and moans.  I sped up the pace, sweet dessert entering my mouth almost faster than I could swallow it. Mary looked like she was trapped in a haunted house. I almost suspected that she was afraid I would eat her, and from how gluttonous I was being and how big my belly was growing, that fear was perfectly justified.

My stomach only started hurting when I finished the cake. Frankly, I was surprised that the pain didn't come earlier; I'd gotten full on my fourth plate of real food, let alone the endless dessert. I felt as though I was going to pop.

May looked relieved and worried at the same time. "Finally done?" She asked.

I mumbled a "Yeah," as I heaved to my feet, holding my swollen tummy. As we walked out, the greeter who had given me the evil eye on the way in snorted.

"Pig," he mumbled, and I turned around, one hand on my belly and the other on my back to help me stand upright.

"What did you say?" I hissed through the searing pain my tummy was in.

"You heard me, filthy blob. You've been in here for two hours and you haven't stopped eating since you stepped in here."

"It's an all-you-can-eat buffet, that's the point!" I retorted as he came out from behind his podium and advanced toward me.

"Yes, but most of our clients don't stuff themselves to the point of popping!" It was then that he placed his right hand on my belly and pushed, putting me in excruciating pain.

"I'm not that fat, I'm just a little bit overw-" He pushed his hand farther in, releasing the immense amount of gas stored within. As much as I didn't want to, I burped.

It was so embarrassing, yet so, so satisfying. I let out the mightiest belch of all into his face, feeling the pressure in my belly lessen and lessen and my belly growing less and less tense until the man was speechless and my stomach was jiggling all over the place as I waddled quickly to the car, sobbing hysterically as Mary revved up the car.

"Are you okay?" She asked me, worried.

I sobbed. "Drive me to a gym." She did so, seeming pained, and dropped me off. Before she drove off, she told me:

"Just know that a lot of people love you the way you are. Some of them in a way... more than you would think." Then she rolled up her window and drove off as I waddled inside and got on a treadmill. It would be an hour or so before I realized what she meant.

I tried to get back in touch with her when I got back from the gym, but she didn't pick up her phone.

I never got to see her again.

I awoke from my dream with a start as I heard noises downstairs. I rose from my bed and descended the stairs slowly. The only light downstairs was coming from the kitchen. I followed the light and the noise to find that the light was coming from the refrigerator.

Said fridge was empty.

A totally naked Irene was sitting on the floor, all manners of containers and foods around her. She was licking a pudding cup clean, moaning all the while as if she was getting sexually aroused by the whole ordeal. Luckily, her gargantuan belly rolls and lard-stuffed thighs were covering her vagina.

"Irene? Are you okay?"

My voice seemed to snap her out of it.

"Irene, did you..." I couldn't believe I was asking this, "Did you ever even go to sleep?"

"No," she said in a meek voice that almost sounded ashamed. Nonsense. I was fairly confident that Irene Donahue had never been ashamed of anything in her life.

"Well, now that there's no food in the house, are you finally going to stop eating?" I asked tentatively; she didn't really seem to love clothes very much as evidenced by her previous outfit, and I was genuinely worried that she would be so desperate for pleasure in food that she'd go out meal-hunting in her bare ass.

She smirked. "Nope. I'll go put on some clothes, then I guess I'll just go out and find some place that's still open. I hear Burger King and KFC stay open all night now. You wanna come?"

I couldn't even believe what I was hearing. "No, just... go."

"Don't wait up," she said, waddling into the guest room and coming out a minute later in nothing but a red bra that was tight on her huge tits and equally tight red panties.

"Can you go out like that?!" I asked her as she made it to the door, which seemed even smaller in comparison to her new self; after all, she'd been stuffing herself ever since she arrived at my house.

"It's late at night," she smirked, "Who's gonna see me?"

I shook my head and went back up to bed. "She's so unreal," I said to myself, trying to comprehend the bottomless pit who had become my best friend.