Have you ever wondered why some people seem to stay thin no matter what they eat? Meanwhile, you dare to take a passing glance at a donut and you’re already half a stone heavier. Obesity is rising; decade by decade, the number of people who are overweight or obese increases. Currenlty, 38% of the world’s population is carrying too much excess weight on their bodies. We’re told its genetics. Sedentary lifestyles. Excess of food. Poor self control. We spend our time dieting and trying all the new fad weight-loss drugs, exercises and diets, just to keep our heads treading above water…
My family has always seemed to be a bearer of these faulty genetics that makes us prone to obesity. I did manage to keep myself a healthy weight until my 30s, and then the pounds just kept piling on. Now I’m in my late 30’s and my BMI is 34. My husband, who is my polar opposite, tall and lean with narrow features, keeps urging me to lose weight, and I keep trying to. However, it’s not exactly easy when you share a house with a husband and a daughter who never seem to gain weight no matter what they eat. In fact, our daughter is so thin it has actually started to worry us both. My husband especially. The older our daughter gets, growing tall and lean just like her father, the more my husband nags at me about weight loss. And I do understand, I don’t like this either.
XXX
Today my husband came home in a foul mood. He stomped around the flat and wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. Finally after dinner, he pressed a dark green glass bottle into my hand.
“Take this” he said.
“Why, what is this?” I asked and opened the bottle to find small green pills inside, the same colour as the bottle itself.
“It’s a new weight-loss drug. It’s still in trial use, but I managed to get a bottle through my contacts.”
“I don’t…”
“Stop! I know what you’re going to say, but it’s perfectly safe. I wouldn’t give it to you oif it wasn’t.” His face softened.
“Look, I promise you the drug isn’t dangerous. Please, just take it. One pill a day until the bottle is empty. I’m worried about you.” he sighed and rubbed his face.
I looked at the bottle doubtfully. I’d tried a weight-loss drug before, and it hadn’t really done anything. But it was true that I had gained a lot of weight and made no progress in losing it. My blood pressure was starting to look a bit iffy. My hip and knee joints hurt. I was easily out of breath. What harm could trying it out do?
“Alright. But I’m not expecting much, if I’m honest.”
My husband smiled. “That’s fine. I know you need to see things for yourself to believe them. That’s one of your best traits.” He kissed my forehead.
“Take the first one tomorrow morning. You’re supposed to take them on an empty stomach.”
XXX
After waking up the next day, I inspected the bottle as I brushed my teeth. My husband really must have gotten it under the radar, so to speak, because the bottle had no inscriptions of any kind. No name. No ingredient list. No istructions for use. No manufacturer. Just smooth green glass concealing small pills in the exact same shade, making it look like there was nothing inside. I popped the first one with a glass of water, got dressed, saw our daughter off to school and went to work. On the way I ate a bagel and a coffee, despite not really feeling hungry. Lunch time came, and I was still not hungry. I pushed the food around in my lunch box and eventually just put it back in the fridge in the break room. When I got home from work, my husband was already there cooking dinner and chatting with our daughter about her day at school.
“Mm. Something smells nice.” I said. “What’s the special occasion? You never cook.”
My husband laughed. “I just felt like surprising you. Go on, take a seat. It’s almost finished.”
After not eating any lunch, I found my appetite had returned and I enjoyed my meal with my family. We talked about our days, and after eating, I helped our daughter with her homework while my husband spent some time in his study. In the evening we watched some shows and then went to bed. A perfectly average day.
XXX
I woke up and it was dark. My insides were roiling, and I knew it was only a matter of time before they emptied, whether I wanted them to or not. I stumbled throught the darkness into the bathroom, and leaned over the toilet just in time. Green vomit came bursting out, hitting the toilet in a torrent of strange twisting strings. I sobbed and I vomited, time and time again, expelling a foul smelling discharge. I could feel my husband behind me rubbing my back and murmuring comforting words, but I barely registered anything beyond the sensation of burning vomit making it’s way out of me. I must have eventually passed out from exhaustion, because the next thing I knew, it was morning and I woke up on my side of the bed, with my husband snoring away next to me. I flinched, expecting to taste sour stomach acid in my mouth, but to my surprise, there was nothing. It was as if I hadn’t just spent an indefinable time of my night being the most sick I had ever been.
“It’s a normal side effect.” My husband said over breakfast.
“A normal side effect?! My vomit was green! And I swear there were some strange strings in it. I don’t know if I want to take that drug anymore.” I whispered, so our daughter wouldn’t hear. She was fully engrossed in the morning cartoons, and in reality probably wouldn’t have heard me even if I had been shouting, but I wasn’t taking chances.
My husband laid his hand on my arm over the table. “I promised you the drug isn’t dangerous, and it isn’t. It makes people sick for the first few days, but then it passes. Trust me, please?”
I looked at my husband. He had never been the type of person to intentionally harm someone. In fact, if anyone ever so much as hurt mine or our daughter’s feelings, he was ready to go to war against that person.
“Okay. But if it doesn’t stop after a few days, I’m seriously not taking these anymore.”
XXX
The next few days were awful. Every night I woke up to empty my guts at the toilet, and woke up the next morning in bed after passing out from the physical strain. However, I could not deny that the drug seemed to be working. My appetite had reduced, and I had very few cravings. I no longer had to fight against overwhelming urges to indulge in sugary, fatty, carb laden foods, and each meal I had left me satisfied. And just as my husband said, the nightly bouts of vomiting eventually passed. My diet became healthy and balanced. I lost weight at a steady pace, my complexion, mood, and over all well being all improved.
XXX
You might be wondering why I’m writing this story in this sub. After all, this isn’t a place for successfull weight-loss stories. No, I’m writing because of what happened last night. I’ve taken the full course of the drugs and I’ve lost so much weight I’m for the first time in my life slim. My husband has been in a fantastic mood and our relationship has improved considerably, in many ways it’s almost as if we’re back in the early days of our dating. Yesterday we hosted some of his colleagues for dinner, while our daughter was staying the weekend at my mother-in-law’s house. Everything was going well, until we were all sitting in the living room, chatting with drinks in hand.
“Well, I must say I’m suprised Eveline.” my husband’s superior, Paul said. “When Michael here said he was marrying you, I was sceptical, but you really are a remarkable woman.”
I looked at him confused, trying to keep my voice level despite feeling offended. “I didn’t know you knew Michael before we married? He’s only worked at your company for a few years. Besides, I certainly didn’t know you then, so what reason would you have to have been sceptical of me.”
Paul raised his hand in a placating gesture. “I meant no offence Eveline, my scepticism had nothing to do with you personally. We just don’t usually marry your kind.”
“My kind?!” I said, now fully unable to keep myself calm, I glared at Paul and then at my husband, and grew only angrier when I noticed the sheepish look on his face.
“Michael, good god man, don’t tell me you haven’t told her?” Paul said and stared at my husband. “The one condition I gave you for getting that drug was that you tell her. If she can’t be trusted…”
“No! No no, it’s fine, I swear. I… I haven’t told her yet, but we can trust her! Right, Eveline?” my husband looked at me and I could see his face had gone pale. “I can trust you, can’t I?”
I grit my teeth. I was still angry, and it wasn’t helping that my husband wasn’t explaining anything, *and* didn’t seem to be taking my side against… whatever this was. However, at the same time… I could feel it. A strange shift in the air that was causing every primal instinct inside me to scream at me to be very, very careful. I looked at the people in the room. I looked at my husband, who seemed to be getting more and more anxious, the longer it took me to answer. I forced out a smile.
“Yes, of course you can.” My husband visibly relaxed, but cast a nervous glance at Paul who was still staring at me.
“It seems we must take care of this now, Michael, since you haven’t. I will judge for myself if we can trust her or not.” Paul stood up, and walked in front of me, he leaned towards me and blinked. His eyes were… an abyss. An endless swirling void of darkness and ancient stars. Of cold, cold space, hungry for warmth and sustenance. I stared, unable to look away, frozen in place and barely able to breathe. And then he smiled, like a snake smiling at a mouse before it gets swallowed whole. He blinked again, and I fell forward like a marionette that just had it’s strings cut.
“What… are… you.” I gasped, trying to push my husband away while he tried to steady me.
Paul had sat back down in his chair and was lighting a cigarette. “We are the ones who have made humanity into what it is. Guided them along a path of civilisation, improving, growing, building you up from animals cowering in caves from the darkness, into the dominant species of the planet. There are billions of you now, and it’s all because of us.” I stared at him. At the others in the room. At my husband avoiding my gaze.
“Why?”
Paul smiled. “As I said, I really am pleased with you Eveline. Look how quickly you recovered from looking at me just now. It does make me wonder if we should take a closer look at humanity. There could be more like you out there. Hm, yes. Indeed.” He glanced at one of Michael’s co-workers who nodded and pulled out his phone before leaving the room.
Paul twirled the cigarette between his fingers. “To answer your question, it’s simple, really.” He looked out of the dark living room windows for awhile before continuing. “You humans, you raise sheep. And cows. Pigs, chickens, goats, fish. What do you grow them for? Hm?”
I stared. I didn’t like where this was going.
Paul smiled, a hint of the same terrible smile as before. “You raise them to eat, Eveline. Don’t you? Well, the animals of your planet are all well and good but… they don’t quite do it for my kind. They keep the hunger… at bay. But never really satisfied. So, we have raised our own food.”
“No…”
“Humans. We have raised humans.”
XXX
I woke up on my side of the bed, with my husband snoring next to me. I lay staring at the ceiling, thinking of what my life had suddenly turned to. Thinking of everything I had suddenly learnt, everything that turned everything I knew about the world suddenly inside out. Why did my husband give me that drug? Because I had been classed as grade A premium. Deliciously full of marbled fat. The drug reversed the genetic alterations intriduced a couple of generations ago, to slowly make people in certain regions grow bigger and bigger. There are enough humans on this planet now, to start cultivating premium grade. Like humans growing kobe cows. Before, when the goal was to increase the number of people, having them lean and healthy was more beneficial. But that’s no longer necessary. There’s already 8.1 billion of us.
I now have an even more special grade. I’m an official human consort. Some of you might wonder why I have accepted all of this, why I’m not running off to spill all my secret to government authorities. Why I’m not doing *something*. The answer is simple. They are the government authorities. They are the celebrities. They are the politicans, the royals, the oil magnates. They are the billionaires and the lawmakers. But most of all, it’s because I’m a mother. Our daughter is a hybrid. It’s the reason for why she’s so thin. The others… they can survive with the food us humans eat, but my daughter… she’s barely hanging on.
So I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. By the time you read this, it’s already too late. The wheels are in motion and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
Soon, it’s going to be dinner time.