Heart of Lard 2 / ?
"Do you know what’s under that blacked-out line on the menu?" I said. My voice was flat, a raspy whisper that barely cut through the background hum of the deep fryer.
She looked up, torn away from her trance. Her mascara was flawless, but her jawline was already a memory melting into her neck. "A burger that bankrupted the place?" she tried to guess, using that sassy, lazy tone of someone who still believes they’re in control.
"Almost." I didn’t smile. I didn't give her the satisfaction. "Lardmaxxer."
She blinked. "Lardmaxxer? What the fuck kind of name is that?"
I leaned back against my chair. I crossed my arms over my chest, letting the silence stretch the moment out. I wanted the anticipation to fill her stomach before the fries even could. "Can you keep a secret?" I asked, lowering my voice even more, turning the conversation into a conspiracy.
She nodded, just once, slowly. Her breath caught in her throat for a split second. She was hooked.
"That heart attack story... the urban legend they tell about when this place was still downtown..." I paused, scanning her expression. "...It’s true."
Her pupils dilated. The shadow of her sassy smirk vanished, replaced by something much darker, much more ravenous. There was no fear in her eyes. There was hunger. A hunger for horror.
"The guy had three of them. Back to back." I resumed talking, excruciatingly slow, carving the words into the grease-heavy air. "I still remember him. Sitting right there, sweating, struggling to breathe, but he wouldn't stop. So we went up to him and said: We'll make you one that equals five, on the house, or you pay for the three. And he, with his eyes practically popping out of his skull from the sheer effort of digestion, just said: Yes."
I leaned forward again, bringing my face closer to hers, invading her personal space, forcing her to inhale the scent of my scent mixed with the cholesterol filling up the air.
"I remember his smile right before he passed out," I whispered. "A look of absolute serenity. Defeated, but happy. Completely annihilated." I looked away, fixing my gaze on an empty spot in the diner, feigning a sick kind of nostalgia. "I wonder what it must have been like to see the world through his eyes in that exact second. The very moment the body surrenders and says:Â Enough, you win, I'm shutting down."
I looked back at her. "Five hundred and fourteen pounds," I stated, as if reading off a clinical chart. "Four hundred and seventy-four pounds is what he weighed."Â
The silence that followed was deafening. She stared at the blacked-out menu. Then, very slowly, she lowered her eyes to her own body.
She still weighed four hundred and twenty-three pounds. At least, that was the official number from her last hospital visit, months ago. The old 400lb scale she kept in her bathroom was still waiting for a replacement, useless and gathering dust.
I watched her chest heave in a deep, labored breath. She felt a strange, internal shift wash over her. A cold shudder that had nothing to do with the diner. She wasn't the fattest person to have ever eaten there. But for the hospital, she always was the fattest in the room. The absolute unit of a hog.
She wasn't the absolute limit. She wasn't the ultimate monster. There was a ghost who weighed she-didnt-know pounds more than her, a ghost who had the nerve to smile in the face of a cardiac collapse over a burger.
Before she even realized it, the emotion morphed. The morbid fascination with the story slipped into a dull, acidic jealousy that burned in her gut. And that jealousy quickly turned to rage. Rage at not being the absolute peak. Rage at being merely the runner-up in the game of destruction.
She had lost control. Her fake detachment had crumbled in a second, incinerated by the number '514'. And the culprit was sitting right across from her.
It was him. Him and his whispered stories. Those damned stories that explained nothing but revealed everything, the ones her body responded to even when unprompted, as if under a spell.
She clenched her fists under the table. Her manicured nails dug into her palms. She felt the stiff hem of her jeans mercilessly digging into her lowest belly roll, and for the first time that night, that pain felt insufficient. Too little. Too weak.
She reached a trembling hand toward the tray. And grabbed the first burger.

















