Funny how much of our lives are made up of things we take completely for granted. Sitting in a chair, getting in a car, holding a pencil. All those things we never even think about for a second – but when you do, there’s so much about being a person we’re completely oblivious to, basically reflex actions; nearly autonomic, like breathing.
I probably can’t explain why I’ve come to think about them constantly without telling you the whole story, so I guess I should try to find a beginning to this mess, the place where I think it began.
Considering the eventual outcome of my situation is going to affect, well… everything, I owe you all that much.
I’ve never been overly concerned about my weight. Being a poor artist has certain challenges you could reframe as underappreciated perks in that regard, like staying trim by skipping meals to afford rent, or pretending you have a unique style because you wear your clothes until they’re threadbare. But there’s been genuine perks, too - I also got to be my own boss, to constantly do what I loved most in the world, and to hang out with people as creatively driven as myself.
I’d never owned a set of human-sized scales, only the baking scales that I used for measuring paints and resins. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve been a slightly waifish fifty-five kilograms for most of my adult life - probably underweight for my height.
But I was generally healthy, so it had never bothered me that much. Sometimes folks would say “Eat a burger” or “you need some pies”, but I don’t think anyone ever thought I was anorexic. I had enough energy to do my job and get through the day, so it wasn’t a problem.
I have a theory that what changed all that came from the art supplies I ordered from Poland, but I can’t be certain. It’s possible it was just bound to happen to me through some quirk of physics. Maybe some quantum string of particles passed through me at random – a one in one trillion trillion trillion chance event that somehow altered my atomic structure. I genuinely hope it was the art supplies, because then perhaps at the end I won’t be as alone as I feel. I might not be the only one.
But enough speculation. I know you want to get to weightier matters - if you’ll excuse the pun. I promise there won’t be any more, because it stopped being funny a long time ago now.
The floorboard near the bathroom sink was the first clue. It had always creaked a little when I stood on it, but on that particular morning, it creaked really loud. I figured it was nothing; just my shitty little apartment starting to really feel its age. So I ignored it.
A few days later, it was the bus seat. I often caught the same bus, which in this small town meant the same vehicle every day. As I sat down on my favourite seat, it squeaked alarmingly – that metal-on-metal sound that sets your teeth on edge.
But again, it’s one of those things you just attribute to wear-and-tear. How many hundreds of people sat on this particular seat in a week? How many juddering rides did it take to weaken metal screws and bolts stressed by the load of some human colossus with a gym bag in his lap?
At this point, I’m now fairly sure that I already weighed about twice what I should have. There just wasn’t any way I could have picked up on it then – because it’s not like I was adding any volume to my person. I still fit the same ripped, skinny jeans. I could still wear all my t-shirts designed for kids, picked mostly because they’re cheaper.
What I’m trying to say here is that until a normal-sized human being starts to become a truly abnormal weight – until you hit the (ironically) skinny bit at the far right of the bell curve - there’s not really any way of telling that something’s gone very wrong.
When the chair at my workbench broke, I was so confused. It was a sturdy wooden stool, but one of the bracing struts between the legs had splintered, which in turn caused a back leg to snap.
There were no holes in the wood, no saw marks or knots – it had been a completely solid chair leg just the previous day. It was hard to pick myself up off the floor, and I realised I was really tired. My back hurt, too, and it had before the fall; my bed had seemed horribly uncomfortable over the last couple of days, like my mattress wasn’t supporting me properly anymore. My shoes also seemed to be wearing thin - I could feel every nuance of the pavement through my feet, every stone, every bump. I thought maybe I was getting sick, that these were the muscle aches signalling a virus.
But for the rest of that day, I noticed everything I walked on made stressed sounds; the floorboards of my bathroom, the boards on the deck of my favourite coffee place, the wooden stairs up to the studio.
And when I ventured out to the park that evening, I couldn’t help but notice the deep footprints I left – not just the yellowing grass smashed flat, a dent in the shape of my shoe in the earth. And it hadn’t rained for days.
It was then that I decided to buy some scales.
The first reading was two hundred and thirty four kilograms. That’s almost the same weight as the wrestler, Andre the Giant. I checked.
I checked the scales, too, of course. I had litre containers of paint that I knew would weigh 1kg when filled with water. There was no question about it after I tested it the third time - the scales were accurate.
What I was going to do with this information was a whole different kettle of fish. Of course, I didn’t want to believe it. Who would? How the hell did a woman who could still fit into children’s clothes end up weighing as much as the biggest wrestler in history? And how did that happen almost overnight?
I weighed myself obsessively from that point onward, noting my weight gain during the day. But I knew the scales maxed out at 250kg, so when I hit that limit, I didn’t know how to track the anomaly any further.
What I did know was disturbing. I had gained ten kilograms in less than twelve hours.
Something was desperately wrong with me.
On the walk to the doctor’s office, my shoes gave out. The soles just sort of split and yawned into cracks, like they were in one of those hydraulic press videos. They hurt, so I threw them into the first rubbish bin I found, then walked the rest of the way in my socks, then bare feet when the socks gave up, too.
Sometimes I thought I could feet the pavement cracking under my feet. Tiny pings and pops of stressed stone, little pebbles giving up to dust.
At the doctor’s office I refused to take a seat. I’d figured out by now that nothing intended to rest a human backside was going to support my weight, and I didn’t want to cause a scene by flattening one of their plastic chairs.
When my doctor called my name, I followed him into his small office, leaving a trail of footprints in the carpet where my feet compressed the fibres.
I noted nobody else did.
“Take a seat,” he said, with a quizzical look at my dirty feet.
I shook my head, then began explaining what was happening.
I could tell he didn’t believe me. I don’t blame him - it’s not something that is believable - that a slender five-foot three woman could weigh somewhere over a quarter of a tonne.
“Miss Lourde, I have many other patients to see. Please, don’t waste my time.”
His tone wasn’t altogether unkind, but he was already regarding me with a certain look, that one that precedes a quiet referral to a psychologist.
“I’m truly not!” I protested, trying to keep the rising panic out of my voice, “Here, let me show you.”
His electronic scales were beside his desk. I tapped them carefully with my foot, then stood on them as the LCD screen came alive.
For a moment numbers flashed like a malfunctioning elevator, then I saw it register ‘ERROR’ before the screen went blank. Under my bare feet, the stressed plastic and steel let out a warning creak. I stepped off quickly, grateful the office was on the ground floor, and that it felt like there was solid concrete under the carpet.
The doctor tapped every button on the scale, then sighed as he mentally called time of death on the machine. “It looks like my poor old scales are on the fritz,” he said, “but look. You’re otherwise in perfect health, yes? No respiratory issues, no digestive issues, no loss of appetite?” I nodded, but he continued even as my mouth opened to press the point. “We’ll do a blood panel just to be sure, but I’m going to refer you to a colleague. She deals with certain kinds of… dysmorphic issues. Body image. She sees a lot of young women.”
“But I’m not making this up,” I returned softly, trying to sound calm and authentic, and not at all unhinged.
“I realise this must seem very real to you,” he said, every vowel a study in the art of professionally patronising a person.
I left, then. Just walked out, feeling the carpet close to shredding with every twist of my heels. They would bill me in full, I was sure, but at that moment it didn’t seem to matter. I heard the doctor emerge behind me and say something I didn’t hear, and the receptionist raised her head as I passed. Grimly, I thought that if she tried to chase me, I could simply fall on top of her and crush her.
The farming equipment supply store had a display model cattle scale. The poster next to it said it could weigh any beast up to 3000kg.
I stepped on carefully, making sure nobody in the store was looking, and watched the numbers climb to 833kg, holding my breath as it settled there. While I stared at that ridiculous number, it climbed to 834. And after counting to ten, I watched it tick over to 835.
I was literally gaining weight every second. 100 grams per second, to be exact.
Leaving the store before they noticed my bare feet, I hurried out the door and ran down the street, wondering how long until every step was going to shatter the pavement as I ran.
The thing was, I still felt myself as I ran; small, light, compact. I didn’t feel as heavy as a horse. If it weren’t for the fact that chairs and even shoes couldn’t deal with my weight any more, I wouldn’t have believed it myself, thought the business with the scales was some kind of hallucination, that I was deluded.
Leaning against the concrete façade of a hotel, I tried to figure out what to do next.
I was adding at least 6kg a minute. That meant that in one hour I would gain another 360 kilograms, and I would then weigh over a tonne. Even worse than that, within 24 hours I would weigh nine tonne – roughly equivalent to a medium-to-large sized truck.
By this time next week, I would weigh as much as the space shuttle Endeavour. Yes, I checked.
I walked for maybe two hours. At one point I called my parents, then broke the connection before they could answer. What would I say to them? Oh, hi Mum and Dad, by the way I’m gaining mass nearly exponentially and it’s not stopping any time soon, please come get me – P.S. bring a horse float and a fucking truck?
I was on the outskirts of the city now, if I kept going I’d hit farmland, and if I kept walking down the long, straight roads, eventually I’d hit foothills, then the mountains.
On the mountains, I thought I’d be safe; I wouldn’t sink into the softer earth like some lead statue in quicksand. The old layers of granite and bedrock would surely hold me, no matter how much I weighed.
As I walked, still barefoot, down the highway, cars blared their horns at me, or passengers shouted at me. I was fully that person now, that person who didn’t fit any mould, even though she hadn’t changed shape. I ignored them. I had a distinct feeling that if I wanted to, I could step onto a car’s hood and crush it as I walked across it. Hell, with all this mass concentrated into such a small body, could I even be harmed? Could a knife or bullet even penetrate the molecules of my skin?
I’d realised, too, that I wasn’t hungry or thirsty anymore. I hadn’t actually eaten for a couple of days. Was I just drawing in mass from the very air itself?
It was impossible to tell, and it probably wouldn’t make much difference even if I could figure it out.
I’m in the mountains, and I have no idea how much I weigh now.
I don’t think the gain has been steady. I feel like it’s been increasing – like my gains are approaching an exponential curve. I can crush stone under my heel without trying, and I can knock over hundred-year-old trees just by gently leaning on them. I’ve been conserving power on my phone as much as I can, only turning it on to journal these thoughts, to send them out somewhere when things get unsustainable, but that battery percentage is worryingly low.
When I walk around the mountain ponds I’ve found, I create little tides now, my mass pulling at the fluid. I tried to figure out exactly how heavy that makes me, but the theory is beyond me, and I don’t want to waste precious phone battery figuring out something that won’t help. I’m heading deeper into the mountains now, trying to find the best rock to stay on; those solid seams of old granite that can support almost any weight.
Well, I hope they can support any weight. After all, the mountain supports itself, right?
At least I have some company, now, of a kind - an orbit of small particles. They drag along in my wake, as if I’m a small, mobile moon. I think my own mass is disrupting Earth’s gravity - I’m creating my own gravitational field. If I hold a seed up in front of my face and let go, it falls slowly as a dream, curving in towards my body as the conflicting forces twist its path.
I’m not sure what happens next, but I think I probably weigh more than the mountain I’m standing on. And I’m not getting any lighter.
My feet have started to sink into even the most solid granite.
What my weight is, I don’t even dare think about; a goodly percentage of the moon, something as ridiculous as that. And I’m now certain about that personal gravitational field; dust orbits me, along with leaves and twigs, and other mountain debris. I’m pretty sure there’s even a dead chipmunk, circling gently. I’m a tiny planetary system of my own, existing independent of the Earth.
I can feel that it’s not going to stop; I know this is not the end – that I’m going to continue growing more and more dense until I conflict with the Earth itself, then eventually our own Sun.
And when I surpass the mass of the Sun?
Well, by then you’ll all be dead, wiped out by the massive tsunamis that will roar from the ocean to meet my growing pull. Even your remains will have been crushed by the enormity of my personal gravitational field. But eventually, in a year – maybe even a few months – my mass will be so great that I’ll collapse into a singularity – a black hole – and then I’ll consume everything in our solar system.
You can’t stop this by the normal methods – trust me, I’ve tried. Nothing can penetrate my skin. I can’t asphyxiate myself; I don’t even seem to need to breathe anymore, my body sustains itself regardless of my intentions. If I step off a height, the rock where I land pulverises instantly to soft dust, and I don’t even get a bruise.
If I could stop this, I would have, please know that.
But if you’re reading this, and your floor has started to creak? Maybe you bought some art supplies from Poland, maybe your chair just broke without warning - maybe you’re like me. Maybe we can find each other. Because I think I’m not the only one, and I think we are meant to be together; that I’m only half of this weird, horrific equation.
And when we finally meet, and our impossible event horizons collide?
Oh, we are going to change the whole fucking Universe.