Kinktober Day 11: Trapped By Bad Weather

Do I love a guy getting fat in a snowstorm? Apparently, because this is now at least the second story about this exact situation that I've written.

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When he’d driven up to the cabin hoping for some peace and quiet, he hadn’t expected this much peace and quiet.

Daniel was going on two months of being snowed in, and from what little he could make out from spotty radio broadcasts, it would be a long, long while before he would interact with another human again. That hadn’t been the plan, but he was making the most of it.

He was a solitary man, used to his own company. He’d spent time during his weekend visits during the summer and fall making sure the cabin was properly winterized, with plenty of firewood and nonperishable food stored away. He had deep freezers packed with plenty of meat and frozen fruit and veggies, so it wasn’t like he was going to get scurvy. He had power, care of a wind turbine, some solar panels, and a backup generator if all else truly failed.

What he hadn’t planned for was going this long without much to do. He very pointedly had never gotten a satellite put in, so there was no TV to watch and no internet to surf and scroll on. The cabin was supposed to be his place to get away from all that, after all. He had some DVDs and ancient VHS tapes and stacks of books he’d picked up at thrift stores over the years, but he’d seen and read most of them more than once. The storm was so bad that most days, he couldn’t see more than a few feet, and he wouldn’t risk getting lost just because he was bored. (Not yet, anyway.)

He had expected a week or two of snowshoeing through the woods, cross-country skiing, maybe some ice-fishing on the nearby lake, and warming himself by the big-bellied woodstove with a good dinner, some hot tea, and dry wool socks. Instead, he was spinning his wheels trying to fill all the hours in the day.

Before this particular stint in the cabin, the kitchen had gotten only the most minimal use. He didn’t usually like making complicated dishes up here. He had no one to impress, and he liked the simple flavor of a good venison stew. He was a good cook, but at the cabin, he allowed himself to be a lazy one.

After about four days of listening to the howl of the wind, he’d broken out the cookbooks and started making shit just for the hell of it: burgers on homemade buns with home fries on the side; blackberry muffins with wild berries he’d picked and frozen earlier that summer; Japanese coffee curry with pheasant, served over rice; round, thick-crusted bread baked in a Dutch oven on top of the pot-bellied stove.

Not one to waste food, Daniel rarely had anything left to put in the fridge or wrap up for later. He had a big appetite at the best of times, and the boredom had only sharpened it. At mealtimes, he would put on a movie or a DVD box set of a show he hadn’t seen in years, but he found that nothing held his attention quite like his own cooking. He would go back for seconds, then thirds, and sometimes fourths after that. He would lie down on the old, comfy couch in the living room once he was finally done, eyes heavy and belly warm and full, and fall asleep, content enough that the boredom finally stopped gnawing at him.

Whenever he woke up, either from a short nap or a longer sleep (he didn’t have much of a regular schedule anymore), he would look through his cookbooks, searching for something that piqued his interest. He made things he normally wouldn’t have: cream puffs and Scotch eggs, beef Wellington and then pork Wellington with boar tenderloin the day after that. He made savory berry sauces and pasta from scratch, a canned cling peach clafoutis, pork rillettes with fresh-baked bread, roasted whole fish and three different types of souffles. In between all that, he made old, simple favorites: cornbread with spicy pinto beans, oven roasts with lots of root veggies, and hearty stews with homemade dumplings.

He didn’t think much about how much he was eating. He was glad to have something to do besides watch the same old shows for the tenth time. Comforting as they were, hearing characters yelling about losing Glenbogle castle or defeating terrorists one hour at a time wasn’t as fun when he could almost recite the episodes line for line.

He considered slowing down when he had trouble buttoning up his jeans one morning, but shrugged it off as winter weight he would lose as soon as the weather was nice enough for him to get outside again. At a certain point, he’d dispensed with his jeans altogether, not liking how tightly they hugged his thighs, even when he left both the button and zipper undone. With the woodstove roaring most of the day and something constantly cooking in the kitchen, the cabin was so balmy he didn’t really need pants anyway.

Daniel did get a little concerned when he felt his flannel shirts starting to get too tight to wear comfortably. The belly he now sported pushed the buttons apart, especially when he sat down. A lot of his winter gear was sized up significantly so he could layer stuff underneath it, but he hadn’t ever been this big before. But boredom and his rapacious appetite won out. Almost two months in and storms were still crashing through the mountains with no sign of letting up.

Around the two and a half month mark, he could no longer deny that he’d porked up significantly. He didn’t own a scale, and definitely didn’t have one at the cabin, but even his biggest winter gear--the outer layers meant to cover a lot of extra bulk--no longer fit. He spent most of his day in tight boxers, open flannels, and sometimes a white t-shirt underneath, though given the way they rode up his gut these days, he skipped them more often than not.

Strangely, despite how fast he’d fattened himself up, he looked upon his gut as a friend rather than some alien part of himself. They were getting through one hell of a winter together, after all. He found his hands resting on it when they weren’t busy, rubbing it like a pregnant person bonding with their unborn child. He would bounce and jiggle it experimentally, unable to believe how soft it was, even when he’d packed it full of something rich.

The storms began to simmer down, and he could tell they would likely peter out soon. But while he still had the excuse, he continued to cook and feel himself expand, a little thicker every day. The familiar cabin seemed a tad bit smaller all the time, his belly and fattened backside bumping into things he hadn’t realized were so close before. He watched his face get softer in the mirror, a double chin forming, then solidifying. He felt his arms filling out the loose sleeves of his flannel shirts, and then eventually growing large enough that he had to cut the sleeves off completely.

Still, he cooked, and he ate, and he grew. Even as he felt it becoming more difficult to get up off the couch or out of bed in the morning because he was so unused to his new bulk, and even as he felt himself jiggling doing pretty much everything. Even as he had to start to clean beneath the overhang of his belly in the shower, and started to feel his thighs chafe as he walked around the cabin. Even then, he ate his fill and then some, stuffing himself full of good, warm meals every few hours, with snacks in between.

He wondered sometimes what he’d do once it was safe for him to head back down the mountain. Stir-crazy as he was, a big (hungry) part of him never wanted to leave. But spring would come eventually, and he’d have to go back out into the real world, belly-first.

But the storms were still blowing through, and he didn’t have to think about that just yet. He could keep snarfing down muffins and deep-fried fish and risotto to his heart’s content. The storms couldn’t possibly last much longer, and he would be tired of it all by then. For now, he feasted, and slept, and lived to feast another day.