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Commission-story 2: The Glutton's Way of the Cross

From a cute little teenage romance and slice of life story, we jump into a completely different territory. More mature. More brutal. Darker.

Let's go to the most fanatical and backward parts of the Middle-Ages. Let's have some non-consensual force-feeding, some brutal gaining, and some painful fattening.

Trigger warning for violence, brutality, torture, all the gruesome side-effects of force-feeding, and other nasty things.

XXX

The monk at the door of the monastery scrutinised the horizon, waiting for the cart to appear at any moment.

“Well, brother Francis?”

Another monk had just joined the first one. Taller, thinner, and definitively scarier.

“I don’t know, brother Gilles… He is late. The bells have rung, but I still can’t see him.”

“Lateness is a symptom of laziness, and laziness is the son of sloth. Sloth is the weapon of the devil.”

“Indeed, brother Gilles. Do you think our food will be poisoned?”

At this moment, a cloud of dust arose from the road as the cart filled with the weekly food delivery approached.

“He is driving faster than usual.” Brother Francis noted.

“Well, he knows he did wrong. At least he shows signs of repentance.”

“I would say he rather shows signs of fear.”

“One leads to the other, brother.”

The cart finally arrived in front of the two monks.

“Well, my son? What kept you so late?”

“I was attacked, fathers!”

The monks opened wide their eyes.

“Attacked, my son?”

“Yes! A robber pushed me out of the cart and tried to steal it, with all the food inside! I still have a nasty bump from the hit! Thankfully, he got caught: he couldn’t control the horse!”

Brother Gilles looked at the horse. He always disliked horses – he knew a devil could be in them at every moment, spying on his every move.

“Do you hear that, brother Francis? A thief tried to rob us of our food!”

“I heard that, brother Gilles… My son, tell me, what happened to said thief?”

XXX

The small delegation of monks travelled through the streets of the little town. Every one they met on their way saluted them with a deep respect. Much more than simple politeness and respect for the man of the cloth, they rather acted out of the fear of what they considered dangerous and disturbing.

The monastery at the edge of the town wasn’t really liked around here. Not that the people hated them, they had too much respect for the religion for that. And these monks weren’t the kind that would revel in money and power to drink, eat, and lay with women like so many others did. But they also weren’t the kind to preach kindness and generosity like they were supposed to. You certainly weren’t going to see these ones begging, preaching, teaching or helping those in distress. Oh no.

The monks came rarely in town. They liked loneliness and to be secluded, working on the constant repentance of their own souls, for they knew the rest of the world had fallen ill beyond cure. They were so strict, so devoted and so pious that it became sickening and grim; and it was all the more frightening because they didn’t seem to remember what virtues and goods their own religion revolved around.

They were pale of skin, for they fled the hard work in the sun and buried themselves under stone roofs. They were thin, almost skeletal, for it seemed they only gathered food in their home just to not eat it. Their eyes were small and squint for spending their time in darkness and reading too much. But the worst of it were the marks of their… very specific devotions. Bruises. Scars. Burns. Sometimes a finger missing. One of the monks couldn’t speak, for his tongue wasn’t in his mouth any more – but nobody knew if the muscle was removed before or after he entered the monastery.

As a result, it was understandable that the crowd amassed on the town’s square would part like the sea before the old prophet at the mere sight of them marching towards the gallows.

Today, there was only one man to be hanged. The thief, brother Gilles guessed. He stepped forward and looked at the criminal. A small man near him was shouting at the crowd, explaining the boy’s crimes. But the monk did not listen to him – for he knew the crimes of the mortals and the sins of God were completely different things. The thief was young, barely a man, and he looked terrified. His hands were behind him, probably with rope around them, and the noose was around his neck – nicely tight. His eyes were wide open, jumping everywhere like wild rabbits, searching for a bit of help or mercy. He was sweating a lot, and his face bore the marks of terror – marks the monks knew very well. And they knew that with fear came redemption, repentance and faith.

“Stop!”

Everybody looked at the monks.

“Are you going to simply hang this poor young man like that? Without any form of trial? Without any form of judgement? Without any form of advice from the men of God?”

The small man looked quite embarrassed.

“Father, this man was a thief. Not only is he a thief, he is a sacrilegious thief, for he tried to steal your cart of food as it was leaving our town. The law claims that we should hang him.”

“The law of men, my son, not the law of God. God never said anything about hanging people – hanging other people is pagan, and hanging ourselves is only worth of a Judas, not of a petty thief. Thieves are to be crucified.”

The young man gulped down despite the noose around his neck, and he became even more pale and sweaty. Brother Gilles smirked. That was the reaction he was waiting for.

“But, as you said, he stole our belongings, our property, our food. We should have a word about his punishment.”

The monk got up on the gallows’ platform, and close to the young man. He was without a doubt a peasant – shirt, pants, small vest, a strong lace instead of a belt. His clothes were still dirtied with the dust and the mud from his failed crime attempt. He was young, as the monk had already noticed – young but stocky and bulky. Broad shoulders, thick chest, strong legs. He definitely looked like a worker, a hard worker, a farmer probably, certainly not a blacksmith. However, some elements of his morphology clearly showed a propensity towards sloth and gluttony. A soft flesh. A big belly, not round but slightly more prominent than the chest (never a good sign, for it meant the man’s heart was in his belly). A baby-like face, with fat cheeks and a double chin.

“How many years have you seen pass, my son?”

The boy gulped down once more.

“I will soon be sixteen years old, father.”

“You stole our food.”

“I was hungry!” the man cried out. “My father is dead, the taxes are heavy, my crops all withered and died! I don’t have enough money to buy bread, I would have died, only God could help me, and I had to do it, I succumbed to the temptation, for I was weak, and my belly ached, but…”

The monk put a hand on his mouth.

“Your head is shaved.”

“Huh?”

The monk took his hand and touched the top of his head.

“Your head is shaved, like those of our orders. Why so?”

“Keeps… keeps the little biting bugs away.”

“I see… Clean. Do you regret what you did?”

“Yes! Yes, so much, father, I repent father, please, I don’t want to be hanged, I’m not a criminal, I’m a faithful good…”

The monk made a sign to make him stop his pleas. Then he got near the small man that was shouting the boy’s crimes earlier on. He took him by the shoulder, leaned towards him and whispered in his ear:

“What do you know about the young man? Is he gluttonous? Slothful?”

“He certainly is both, father, everyone knows it around here! His father kept complaining that he was a good-for-nothing, a big belly with legs and without a heart! And when his father died, he inherited his farm with his field, but he never managed to get anything to grow there! I think he never really put any real effort in it, he just wanted to eat his own crops and had no patience to take care of it as he grew! Just a big gullet with legs, as his father said! Good for nothing.”

The monk nodded and turned back towards the young man, speaking loudly for everyone to hear:

“Hanging a man is not a dignified or Christian way to make him die. You are young, terrified and repentant. You are a sinner, yes, but if God executed all of the sinners on this Earth, only the pope would be left! We, as men of god, offer you a way to be punished for your crime while staying alive. A way that would purify your soul, make you repent and become a better person! We offer to punish you, not with a vulgar execution, but with a penitence! We will punish you like God Himself would!”

The crowd started to whisper.

“You shall be punished by where you sinned. Your mouth, your throat, your gullet.”

He got closer to the boy, his cold icy eyes straight into his. The young thief shivered in fear of the dreadful punishment that was awaiting him.

“Do you know what they do in Hell to gluttons?”

The young man shook his head.

“They are fed for all eternity. And so you shall be.”

The boy looked at him strangely. Was it… a joke? He never heard of a monk making a joke, even in in-jokes.

Brother Gilles turned towards the crowd.

“We will punish him by feeding him! He wanted to eat, well he will eat, until he realises his mistakes and his sins! He devoted his soul to the false god Gluttony, but we will show him the truth behind the lies, we will make him realise that food isn’t sustaining the soul, that what evil can offer is nothing but sickness and death! We will show him that eating isn’t a proper way to honour God!”

The small man, uneasy, looked at the executioner, who simply shrugged.

“Father… You want to feed him? That’s not…”

The look the monk gave him silenced him in the minute. Brother Gilles’ eyes were gleaming with a spark of pure madness, of insane cruelty, of the twisted fanaticism the townspeople had learned to fear since decades now.

“We offer him a chance to redeem himself! Isn’t that good? If he wants to follow our path, we will prepare his punishment. We will give the orders and the food, for we have plenty to spare – all we would borrow from the town are guards to carry on our orders, and your stocks, to keep him locked. But it is not your choice or mine.”

Brother Gilles turned towards the boy.

“It is yours. You can choose to redeem yourself and follow us. But if you would rather die as a sinner take the rope then, be my guest.”

“No, no! I don’t want the rope! I want to live! I want… I want to repent!”

“Good.”

Of course, the boy was afraid. He knew the reputation of these monks. He knew they liked the whips and the blades as much as the crosses and the rosaries. But what was the worst they could do by feeding him? They said it themselves, they would give him their own food. So nothing rotten or disgusting. They will offer him on a plate what he wanted to steal since the very beginning. They were so nuts in the head they didn’t even realise that their punishment was a reward more than anything.

Anyway, nothing could be worse than the gallows.

XXX

Of course, the stocks were pretty uncomfortable – forcing Yvan to stay on his knees, preventing his hands from moving – but it was better than the rope. At least, here, he had enough space around his neck to move his head.

The monks insisted on using the stocks of the marketplace. They refused to use those on the outskirts of the town. As they said themselves: “Like this, not only will his humiliation be greater, but he will also become an example, a lesson, a living book for the people of this town. Every day they will come and see him being punished, and mock him for having fallen so low – but at the same time, they will shiver for the sake of their own soul.”

On the stocks, was nailed a parchment upon which had been written only one word: “Glutton”. And indeed, his punishment seemed like a demonstration of what gluttony was.

Just like the monks had said, Yvan was being fed and that was the only thing they seemed to do to him. No whipping, no bone-breaking, no flesh-burning. Just… meals.

They served him three meals, three enormous meals – at sunrise, midday and sunset. Yvan never felt so happy and satisfied in his entire life! He was treated like a king, had his belly full, and could taste better food than he could have ever grown out of his own field! There were fruits of all sorts, apples, peaches, berries, nuts, olives, pears, oranges, along with a rich meal, good bread, and tasty wine. And there was meat! Real, juicy meat, cooked, roasted! He gulped down everything with glee and smiles, for he wasn’t even bothering with feeding himself: the guards were feeding him! Like a king, like a pope, like a god!

People soon gathered around him to see how the monks had planned to torture him – some even had rotten fruits ready to be thrown – but they all stood wide-eyed and still upon seeing the young, brutish, gluttonous, lazy man they all knew being pampered like the child of some nobleman. Were the monks completely mad?

Outside of the stocks, the only thing that seemed close to a humiliation was after his last meal – as the evening left place to the night and everybody was going home. Yvan had to relieve himself and the guards lowered his pants and made him defecate and urinate without taking him off the stocks. But, while it was humiliating for Yvan to know that all the women, men and children of the neighbourhood could take look his parts and dejections, and while it hurt him to hear the people’s laughs and mockeries, he quickly forgot everything about it, for the taste of the exquisite foods was still lingering on his tongue, and that was enough to make him happy.

As new guards arrived at night to watch over the stocks, Yvan liked his lips (still covered in juice and milk) and let out a small burp. His belly was full and heavy – the first time since… Oh, since his birth, probably.

Someone up there must be looking after him, he thought as he felt sleepy. Someone who whispered to the ear of the crazy monks.

This night, Yvan dreamed of huge feasts and banquets.

XXX

“Hey! I already had my meal at sunrise!” Yvan shouted to the guards as they approached with more food.

It was the middle of the morning. The market was taking place all around the young man, and the people nearby, merchants or clients, turned their heads towards the stocks.

“The monks said you’ll have five meals a day!” answered the guards.

“But I only had three yesterday!”

The other did not answer. Not that Yvan was complaining. Eating so much yesterday had woken up his appetite – he had felt hungry ever since sunrise and his breakfast, while big, certainly wasn’t enough to make him full.

Yvan salivated upon seeing the guards drop in front of him beautiful, greasy pieces of meat, firm and plump pomegranates, brilliant and sugary grapes, delicious buttery bread!

“That’s a lot of food!” he snickered merrily, still chipped up from the morning wine.

The guards looked at each other with a smirk.

“It is, indeed. Now open your mouth.”

XXX

They came back at midday, then in the middle of the afternoon, and at sunset. They helped him to do what he had to do, and the guards shifted for the night.

While still smiling as the idiot that he was, Yvan burped, not without a slight feeling of unease. The guards weren’t bothering with cleaning his mouth, so all the grease and fat of the meat was still dribbling down his chin, mixing itself with the milk and the wine in a pool on the ground. He felt light-headed, due to having much more wine than usual – which made him quite red in the face – but all the alcohol in his blood couldn’t erase the heaviness in his belly. His stomach felt so tight, in fact, it was nearly uncomfortable.

It’s nonsense, he thought to himself. No one can grow uncomfortable from eating too much. It’s hungriness that makes you suffer. Famine is the true pain. Not eating like a king.

Yet, his bowels still hanged dully from his guts, still feeling puffed up despite being emptied of their content not so long ago, and his stomach kept gurgling and bloating itself with gases and bubbles.

You couldn’t get sick from eating too much food… could you?

XXX

“Hey, could you… could you… just…”

One of the guards shoved a juicy and greasy chicken leg in Yvan’s mouth.

“What did’ya say?”

The young man munched and gulped down. “Could you slow down a bit? I’m starting to get…” An apple was put between his teeth. He had to bite. “… feeling really full now.” he said while munching.

“Don’t care.” the guard answered as he took a watermelon and cut it in big slices.

“I’m really…” Yvan let out a small burp. “If you go too fast, I might… choke you know?”

“The monks said nothing about you choking, or about us feeding you fast ofrslow. We just feed ya, and that’s all. The monks said: Feed him. And if he doesn’t want to eat…” The guard gave a violent kick to Yvan’s leg. The young man screamed, a bit of apple falling on the ground. “… then make him eat.”

Yvan ate the rest of the watermelon, but not without a slight nausea.

His stomach was so full he felt it could burst at any moment. Not that the food was bad – it was so delicious – and now he was getting kind of used to eating so much, even though it was really uncomfortable by the end of the day. It was the guards, they forced him to eat too much too quickly. He feared getting a stomach ache. He had one when he was little, after eating all of the apples of the neighbour's tree. But it quickly went away. He hoped this one will too.

Anyway, alcohol helped him soothe the pain. The wine they kept making him drink gurgled in his belly.

Another watermelon down, and Yvan burped again, but this time quite faintly, with a bit of saliva dripping from his lips.

He looked at what was left. Breads, several big pieces of bread. Anointed with oil and butter. To see them shine in the sun made his stomach turn and churn.

He could certainly do this. He wasn’t going to refuse eating some pieces of bread. Yvan, refusing food? That would be ridiculous.

XXX

“And that’s the last of it.”

Yvan gulped down what was left of the cheese. He burped and spat.

“I’m not feeling… good. Not at all…”

“You’re supposed to be punished, scum. You’re not supposed to feel good.”

Yvan looked at the guard. It was hard to look precisely at someone’s face while being drunk.

“I’m being fed. I’m eating. How is that a punishment? You can make me… hic! You can make me ache and sick and drunk, but… hic! It can’t be worse than the gallows, or starving in the street! Hic!”

The guard simply shook his head and went away, leaving the young man with his bloated belly and food-smeared mouth at the good hands of his colleagues.

If only this thief knew of the monk’s plan…

XXX

“Rise and shine! Time to eat!”

Yvan woke up. His stomach felt hard and heavy.

“What?”

He looked at the sky. It was dark blue, with barely a thin line of pink at the horizon.

“The sun’s not raising yet…”

“It’s the matins, my boy. Your first meal.”

“What?”

“Monks order. Make him eat at the matins. Bread, wine and fruit. Won’t hurt ya, right? Plus some nice cow milk! Fresh from the udder!”

Yvan didn’t feel like eating but… well, he had no other choice.

XXX

“Here’s the food!”

Yvan looked at the young guard that was bringing with him huge pieces of muttons, big apples and large pears.

“I just ate!” he said. “The matins are done!”

“Yeah, but the sky is all pink and the sun is rising, no? It’s the lauds.”

“The lauds?”

“Monks order. Give him food at the lauds. Come on, open up.”

XXX

“Food for ya, glutton!”

Another guard was coming, his arms filled with bread, quinces, plums and milk.

“I just ate… bwarp! Twice!” Yvan belched. “I’m full, really! I’m stuffed and not hungry any more!”

“But the sky is bright blue and the bells are ringing! It’s the prime, boy! The monks said you had to eat at the prime!”

“I’m full, I can’t eat any more!”

The guards gave him a kick in the butt.

“Come on, don’t squeal too much, you pig! You’re supposed to be a prisoner here. Don’t make me shove this food down your big throat. Come on, make some room, I’m sure you can.”

XXX

“I feel like… it’s so tight… I’m gonna burst.”

Yvan huffed and puffed. The young guard was back. He kneeled and looked at Yvan’s belly, opening a bit his vest and shirt.

“Indeed, I’ve never seen a gullet so round! Like a melon! The skin’s so tight I could play drum on it!”

“Please… don’t…” Yvan whispered.

“Well, I hope you’re hungry.” the young guard answered. “There’s lamb, and figs, and…”

“More… food?” Yvan cried.

“Yes. It’s the terce. The market is opening. Don’t you see?”

Indeed, the merchants had gathered on the market-place, preparing their stalls and stands.

“I… can’t eat. I… won’t eat. I don’t want… to eat. Stop.”

The young guard laughed.

“You know you can’t just ask that, right? If you don’t want to eat, you’ll be forced to. Please, show some courage. It’s not so bad, it’s just a big meal. Come on, open up.”

XXX

It was noon, now. The market was coming to an end, but a small crowd had gathered around the stocks to look at poor Yvan. He was as pale as his shirt, with a belly big and swollen. It kept gurgling, moaning and making strange noises. Sauces, juice, grease and saliva kept flowing from his half-opened mouth, staining his clothes and chins.

A guard appeared.

“It’s sext, my boy! Time to eat!”

“No… urg… no more…”

The gurgles were now coming from the back of his throat.

“Oh, you’ll eat, glutton. Open up, come on. Open… open. Open!”

The guard opened himself the boy’s mouth, forcing a piece of bread past his teeth. The entire bread finally went down, followed by some fruits. That’s when Yvan suddenly rejected the food he just ate, the fruits smashing on the guard’s chest. The guard recoiled with disgust.

“Can’t… I’m… urg…” Yvan whispered.

He vomited again, this time all the content of his previous meal. The guard looked at the slimy puddle of half-digested food.

“Oh, lad, you don’t know what you’re in for, do you? No matter how full you are, you’ll have to eat. Eat ‘til you burst. Monks orders.”

XXX

“Well, how is our little glutton?”

The head of the guards had walked all the way to the monastery. It was the smallest of the monks that had welcomed him – a weird one, with a sly smile, a dead eye and a missing finger.

“We did as you asked. Fed him at every service. Matins and lauds, prime and terce, sext and nones, vespers and compline.”

“Good. Is he regretting his actions now?”

“Don’t know. But he certainly regretted to eat. He puked it all out.”

The man nodded.

“Brother Gilles thought that it would happen. It means the boy is rejecting his sins. It’s not merely the food he vomits, it’s his crime. He’s expunging the Devil out of his own body. It’s good, very good. I hope you haven’t made him eat up what he vomited?”

“What? No!”

“That was the proposition of brother Francis. I’m glad to see you haven’t listened to him. Well, I’ll tell brother Gilles about our progress. I’m sure he is eager to share with you the next step of the plan.”

“The next step of the plan?”

“Yes, my son. Our little glutton is following his own Way of the Cross. And it means walking step by step. Each one more painful than the previous one.”

The little monk said that with such a childish glee that the head of the guards couldn’t help but shiver.

“My son… did you know we raised geese in the monastery, not so long ago?”

XXX

“Open your mouth.”

Yvan had no time to answer. The guards opened his jaws and put something in it. Something cold, metallic, long, that went down his throat. He wanted to gag, to spit out, to vomit, but he couldn’t. He squinted his eyes, trying to realise what had been put in his mouth.

The realisation hit his alcohol-imbibed brain.

It was a funnel.

Immediately, the food arrived. He couldn’t test it, but he felt it. Something soft, but heavy, that blocked his throat. He gulped down in order to not suffocate. And immediately something else came in, and he gulped it. The thing – food, must have been food – still came down his throat. It felt as something already munched and spit out. Must have been something mashed, grind, crushed. Probably purée or paste. Sometimes it was more jelly-like, other times it was a liquid. And of course, all of it had no taste, for not a single drop touched his tongue – all Yvan could taste was the cold, hard, nearly salty metal of the funnel in his mouth.

And said funnel was so big it blocked most of his view. The guards themselves wondered what kind of goose the monks could possibly feed with a funnel that big. But it was handy: everything slipped in it. The crushed nuts, the mashed fruits, the berries purée. They even pressed the meat, until it became a bloody and greasy pulp. It was still early in the morning, but they had a lot to do. The monks had warned them: more and more food will be added into the young thief’s belly, until food would take up so much space in his body the Devil would be forced to flee. Then, and only then, will the demonic sin drop the mask of pleasure and reveal its true face: that of a hellish torture, based on a ridiculous, base, pointless, unneeded material object. Food.

All day long the food kept coming. Now that the guards had to mash and prepare the food, each meal took twice the usual amount of time, and it had already been a lengthy process beforehand. Yvan felt like he was fed every minute of every hour of every part of the day, without any kind of pause or relief. Soon his belly felt full and round, but the food kept coming, making his stomach tighter and harder. Of course, all the food was pushed down to his lower parts – filling his intestines and gore, bloating the rest of his abdomen, until all of his internal plumber was clogged up. He felt like a sausage: a tight skin filled with stuffing. Half-sick, half-drunk, he daydreamed that if a butcher was to come and poke at him with his knife, his belly would probably slice itself in half, spilling everywhere the fruits and the meat and the bread he had been fed on, perfectly intact, still nice and shiny. But the mere thought of it made him sick again.

The nausea got so violent he tried to puke – but the funnel prevented such rejection. Worse, the small he had been able to get rid of was being forced down his throat once more.

By the end of the day, when they finally took away the metallic torture device, Yvan was crying.

He now understood how, exactly, being fed constantly could be, indeed, a true torture.

XXX

Brother Gilles followed the guard throughout the streets of the little town.

“And was there any other case of regurgitation?”

“It’s hard to tell with the funnel, father. But I don’t think so. I think he got used to it. After all, his stomach is twice as big – he can pack in much more than before.”

“What?”

The monk had stopped right in the middle of the street, staring at the guard with his icy stare.

“Well… yeah. He’s grown big. You’ve fattened him up real well.”

“He… fattened up?”

One of the monk’s eyes was wide open, expressing the most confused bewilderment. The other shone of some sort of dreadful angriness.

“Well… yeah.” the guard repeated, frightened. “Just like, you know… the goose. Like you said, how you’re feeding the goose. It’s fattening them up and… huh… he too.”

The monk ran towards the market place.

People had gathered around Yvan, smiling and quietly laughing at his ridiculous appearance. They talked to each other while pointing their dirty fingers toward him, clearly making fun of his situation – but Yvan had no ears for them. When he was being fed by the funnel, he could only think of gulping and swallowing so that he wouldn’t choke.

“We’ve stopped separating the foods.” the guards explained while catching up with the monk. “Now we mix all of it together. Fruits, bread, wine, meat, milk. It’all makes just one big goo. He takes him pretty easily. It’s just like a goose. And he doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Apparently, he can’t taste anything. He just eats and burps in our faces. The old guards don’t like it – they sometimes smack him in the face – but the others don’t mind.”

Indeed, when the guards took off the funnel, Yvan let out a deep belch that made all the people around laugh out loud.

All the people around except the monk – who merely screamed.

“Open the stocks! Put him on his feet! Open the stocks, I need to see it!”

The guards, quite surprised to see brother Gilles, obeyed. Yvan could barely stand up: sitting for weeks on his knees had weakened his legs. The sudden shift in position made him nauseous, and green in the face.

The monk rushed towards him and grabbed his belly. His now wide, fat, round belly.

His torso had doubled in size since their last meeting. Fat had bloated up his abdomen, enlarging his waist, padding his behind, rounding his belly – in fact, his midsection was nearly the shape of a perfect globe. His chest had also gotten thicker and larger, his shoulders broader and meatier. This transformation had, of course, an effect on his clothes: the laces that tied his sleeveless vest had all snapped, while the tighter one that he used as a belt was certainly about to do so. His shirt, ill-fitting when he was on the gallows, had now its fabric stretched on his gut.

“The mockery! It’s an outrage! He is mocking our punishment, he is mocking our order, he is mocking our God!”

Brother Gilles turned towards the guards and shouted, eyes injected with blood:

“He grew fat on the food we cursed him with! He turned our punishment of both body and mind into a display of excess and laziness! Look at him! Where’s the suffering in his face? Where’s the vomit of his repentance? Oh, I should have listened to brother Horace! We should have put living rats in his gullet so that they would devour him from the inside!”

The monk ordered the guards to put Yvan back in the stocks, before addressing the crowd around him:

“Look at this glutton! A thief, a glutton, a slothful, a prodigal son that dilapidated his father’s property! He killed his mother at birth, he tried to commit a monstrous sacrilege by depriving men of God of their sustenance! He is in league with the devilish horses! And now, what is he doing? He is being fed all day long, doing nothing but sit there, enjoying it!”

Finally, the nausea had passed and Yvan found the strength to speak.

“I’m not enjoying it!” Yvan cried out. “It’s hell! My belly aches, it makes me sick, I puke and I shit! My limbs are sore, I can barely walk any more! I’m feverish and sweaty and I don’t want to be here any more!”

“I don’t see your tears, liar! Your flesh is fat, glutton, sign of your own sin! You revel in your own evil! You’re bloated up like a vampire! Shut your vile mouth and speak no more!”

Brother Gilles took a lemon from a nearby stand and shoved it into Yvan’s mouth.

“You, people, are faithful! You were baptised, you are part of God’s livestock! You should act on his name, be his voice, be his warrior! You maybe can’t lead a crusade, you maybe can’t kill the heretics, but you can at least punish the sinners on Earth – this sinner on Earth, so that he won’t go to Hell after his death! Be kind to thy neighbour! Help this lost sheep! Push him back into the path of God! Do it!”

“But how?” the crowd asked.

“He’s a pig, treat him as such!”

The monk was now red and sweaty, a big vein pulsing on his bald head.

“This is a punishment! Make him regret! Make him feel what it would be like to be in hell! Don’t let him be complacent, don’t let him! By the authority of the High One, do it!”

The monk ran towards a merchant nearby, stole his knife and cut the tip of his own finger. Then he ran toward Yvan, took the lemon and put his finger instead.

“Drink! Drink my blood, for I am a man of God, and my blood is pure! You are a sinner, not worthy of the blood of the Great Saviour, so for your communion, you shall have the blood of a lesser servant. Drink! Drink! Drink, my son, drink!”

Yvan, terrified, sucked the monk’s finger, the strange taste of blood spreading on his tongue. It was quite similar to the taste of the funnel. The monk finally groaned and took off his finger.

“Perfect. You are absolved of your sins and crimes in the past weeks. Your mockery of our order will be forgotten. But, make sure you repent and suffer. Else… I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to do anything more for you.”

XXX

Yvan punishment went on. Every day, from dawn till dusk, a gruesome mix of liquids and mashed food, once glorious and sumptuous meals reduced to a colourless ugly goo, was forced into the funnel, down Yvan’s throat, and the boy gulped and gulped until his stomach was bloated and ready to burst – which became less and less the frequent, weeks passing by. For indeed, his stomach slowly distended itself, and grew with this new amount of food. Thus, the guards needed more and more to satisfy him, and even more to actually make him sick. It became so bad that Yvan actually ended up feeling a bit peckish after each day of force-feeding. Hopefully, the townsfolk joined their effort to those of the guards.

The monks had ordered them to lash all of their cruelty and mockeries upon the glutton, and so they shall. Not directly of course, only the guards could hit him (even though many common people came to pat his firm and blubbery behind, saying how the pig was fattening up nicely). Plus, mockery wasn’t enough for them any more – they had done all they could, and they grew bored of it, especially since Yvan seemed to ignore them completely.

So, they rather decided to help the guards in their feeding duty. Each day, the scraps and rotten things they usually kept for their pigs or their dogs were given to the guards so they could add it to the repulsive mush they prepared. Sometimes, they even fed Yvan directly, steeping their own mashed leftovers down the funnel. Since Yvan’s stocks were on the market place, the merchants liked to get rid of their withered or ugly products by throwing it down his gullet. At first, it made Yvan quite nauseous to eat all of this bad food, his stomach churning and groaning as it had to digest elements too hard or too rotten, but he soon got used to it – he had eaten worse in his years. Anyway, the townsfolk understood that giving Yvan bad food only resulted in more violent and putrid public defecations, and deciding that their market place already stank enough without this gruesome addition, they decided to only give him scraps and discarded bits.

In a very strange way, Yvan’s punishment became the town’s entire distraction, a sort of communal activity that people watched and participated in like if it was some sort of play or game. When the market was held, people bought food specifically so they could feed it to Yvan, under the guard’s watch. They had invented, without knowing it yet, the concept of feeding animals in zoos, several centuries before any zoo actually existed.

The thief’s force-feeding became such an amusement, satisfying the perverse tastes and desperate craving for distraction of the peasants and common folk, that at night, some people bribed the guards, with either beer or money, so that they could “play” all by themselves with Yvan by feeding him.

The crazy monk had ordered Yvan to stop getting fat in order to show his repentance.

It obviously wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

XXX

“He’s choking!”

“What?”

“Look! He’s choking! He’s getting all red in the face! And his tongue’s all out!”

“Nah, he must be drunk.”

“No! Look, he’s coughing! He’s getting blue!”

“Blue? Get him out of here. We’ll see.”

The guards opened the stocks, freeing Yvan who fell on the floor, hissing and wheezing as he was able to breathe again.

“What, he choked on food?”

“No, I don’t think so… Oh, I think I found it! Look!”

The guard forced Yvan to get back on his knees and to put his head back in the stocks. The guard slowly lowered the top part of the wooden device, until it nearly closed itself on the man’s neck.

“His neck’s too big!”

“How can a man’s neck be too big for the stocks?”

The guards forced Yvan to stand up so that they could have a good look at him – something Yvan could barely do, his wobbly legs having a hard time supporting his enormous weight.

Indeed, Yvan’s neck was now too big for the stocks! If it was even a neck what he had now. A ball of fat had replaced what he had for a neck: between his cheeks that grew and fell over on each sides, and his goitre of a double chin that had blown up, along with the rolls of fat that piled up on his nape, his head seemed to now rest on a pile of lard, an enormous roll of flesh twice as big as his own rotund head, as plump as the full moon.

The guards, so used to seeing this big, round, bloated body kneeling on the ground, like a pig eating in his through or some fat cow munching the grass, understood with a great surprise and an even greater disgust just how big Yvan had gotten.

His torso, that used to be already quite spherical in shape, had now grown so fat, so wide and so vast that the sphere had fallen into a shapeless mount, overflowing from the sides of his over-stretched pants. The lace that he used as a belt had snapped one evening as the guards were feeding him and now was hanging pitifully. His shirt, too tight and too small for his new girth, rose up on the enormous hanging globe that was his belly, grotesquely distended after so many weeks of overeating. Above his belly, his chest had grown fat and soft, his pectorals now hanging like two huge slabs of meat. But it wasn’t just his head and his abdomen – the rest of his body had also changed. His arms, for example, were each so big they looked like two hams put together – they were even bigger and thicker than the arms of the strongest of the guards! And his legs had also gotten larger – his pale, fleshy, jelly-like thighs rubbing against each other like full, sloshing wineskins – and underneath, his calves, also rounder and thicker, tightened the laces around the legs of his pants so much the guards feared they would snap like those of his vest.

The man was now a beast, as heavy as a bear and as grotesque as a pig. Yvan looked at the guards, with his stuffed and round cheeks, his mouth dripping with food and saliva, with the enormous bulges that were now his chins, and with his eyes, his bagged eyes, so tiny inside the puffed-up flesh of his face, eyes haggard and nearly dead due to the town amount of pain, nausea, satisfaction, happiness, pleasure and sickness he had experienced these previous months. And the guards felt disgusted and uneasy by what they had just done.

People gathered around to see the monster Yvan had become, to look at his body that was now roughly the shape of a little mountain, and the guards rushed towards the monastery to warn the monks.

XXX

Brother Gilles, brother Francis and brother Horace arrived soon at the marketplace.

“You’ve freed him? What’s the meaning of this? You…”

The monk stopped speaking upon seeing the enormous young man.

“We can’t take it any more.” one of the guards explained nervously. “This all thing becomes perverted. He was punished enough, don’t ya think? His neck can’t even fit in the stocks! Just look at him! He’s like the old Eglon, I poke my blade in him, he wouldn’t feel a thing! He wouldn’t even bleed!”

Brother Gilles approached the boy. The dead eyes of Yvan were looking at something far away from here, something over the rainbow, that the monks couldn’t possibly see.

“My son? Are you here with us?”

The boy gurgled up something. He opened his mouth, drooling. He let out a half-drowned belch and gurgled some more.

“My son… have you repented?”

Yvan turned his eyes towards brother Gilles, eyes still dead and blank, without any light or spark in them. He smiled, exposing his crooked yellow teeth, worn out after gritting for so long on the funnel’s metal, his breath smelling of all sorts of foods and rotten things.

Brother Gilles suddenly straightened up his back, as immobile as a statue, and shouted: “He repented!”

The other monks cried in joy and applauded, soon followed by the cheers of the crowd.

Brother Gilles took some of Yvan’s saliva, made a quick cross over his forehead, blessed him, and after hearing more cheering, Yvan lost consciousness.

XXX

Yvan was woken up by a deep feeling of hungriness, and the loud wails of his own stomach.

Yvan was in a cell. His body felt heavy and sore all over, except in the area of his stomach, that felt painful and empty. It was like having a big hole in his belly.

Trying to get up, Yvan suddenly remembered everything. The monk, the stocks, the funnel… He looked down at his body and held back a horrified scream. He was enormous! He couldn’t even see his own feet past his gut! Was he really as big as a boar? That’s what the people said when he was in the stocks. His belly was even sticking out of his clothes!

He touched it, felt his fingers seek deeply into the flesh, and suddenly his stomach roared once more. He was famished.

“Oh, you’re up. Good. I wondered if you were dead.”

A guard was opening the door of the cell.

“What happened?”

“You’ve been there for days. Sleeping, unconscious. We thought all this eating had killed you. You know, something burst inside you. But you’re still kickin’, that’s good. The monks said your punishment was enough. You’re free to leave.”

Yvan, surprised to even be alive but joyful to finally leave all of this torture behind him, followed the guard in the street.

When he got out, the people in the street looked at him, pausing and snickering before returning to their activities.

Another loud groan got out of his belly.

“Still hungry, boy? We can get you the funnel, if you like.” the guard joked.

Yvan looked at him with spite and walked away. Or rather tried to. His feet were not used to lift such a mass, he stomped rather than walked, and with each movement his thighs rubbed against each other, his behind jiggling and trying to fit inside pants now too tight, his belly bouncing in front of him.

A woman looked at him and laughed. Yvan felt embarrassed. He must be a ridiculous sight to look at. He wasn’t even pleasantly plump, or round as a rich merchant. He was so big he looked like a beast, a hideous beast, a wild hog, a freakish animal!

Three kids ran towards him.

“Oh, look! It’s the pig! It’s the goose! It’s the glutton!” they screamed with glee.

They started running around him.

“He’s like a barrel! No, he’s bigger than that! Do you have grains? Feed him grains! Feed him scraps! Don’t forget the funnel!”

“Leave me alone!” Yvan screamed.

He tried to hit them, to smack them on the head or slap them on the cheek, but all this moving around and leaning forward ended up loudly ripping something behind him.

“He split his pants!” the kids laughed. “He split his pants! Look at his bum!”

And the kids smacked his behind. “It jiggles, it ripples!” the kids shouted.

Yvan became red and shouted back at the kids some of the worst insults he knew, but another one had grabbed his chest – or rather what his chest had become, wide rolls of fat hanging on each side of his body.

“Look, he has udders! He’s not a goose, he’s a cow! He’s not a pig, he’s a sow! Drink, boys, drink, I’m sure there’s milk in it, suck it!”

The boy who had grabbed Yvan’s man boob received a violent hit on the head. Yvan always had large and tough hands, and now, with the added weight of the meat that hanged around his arm, his fist was doing much more damage than before.

The kids ran away, but their screams echoed in the streets, and as to answer them, Yvan’s stomach gurgled once more.

XXX

Yvan finally arrived at his farm. His old dad’s farm, now his own.

He was huffing and puffing, red in the face and sweating between his rolls. Moving around was much harder than before. He felt like he was dragging a dead horse with him: he was hot, his heart was beating like a drum, and he had the hardest time breathing.

Passing by his field, he took a gloomy look at it. The few plants that had managed to grow in this weed-infested earth had all withered and died. Sighting, but happy to be back home, Yvan entered the small farm and sat on one of the old wooden chairs.

It cracked and Yvan fell to the ground. It would have been more painful without the extra-padding on his behind.

His stomach protested once more against its emptiness. Now hunger was becoming painful, like if his insides were sucked up and crushed.

Yvan wondered what he could possibly eat to ease the pain, before reminding himself that there was no food left. He had eaten everything already.

Yvan then wondered what he could buy – not at the market, for he couldn’t show up there after all the mockeries and humiliations – in one of the nearby shops, at the butcher or at another farmer’s house. He then remembered he had no money left. He had used all of what he had to buy himself food.

No money. No food. And now no clothes, for he doubted to find anything that would accommodate his gargantuan size.

His stomach roared once more, so loudly it seemed a lion had entered the room. Yvan patted his belly, only to feel how wide, round and fat it was.

The young man understood that his punishment was far from being over.