Agustus Gloop

I'm back in school at what I guess is the local university since I know I'm still in town. At the beginning, I sat in a lecture that was pretty nondescript although the seating was much like an arena rather than a regular classroom. Those lovely desks with the desk part you have to swing up after you sit down were arranged in a circle around a dais.

After that, I walk with a few people who are talking about classes they have and when they're going to exercise. At this point, I realize I'm wearing clothes for cooler weather to disguise how fat I'm getting.

I also realize I don't know my way around this university and the people I've been tagging along with are annoyed I'm there. I drop back as they walk away and wonder to myself how I'm going to get through this year.

Later, I see one of the members of that group I had walked with running in a race through an area with which I'm familiar. I think to myself that I could easily go run out there and not feel so fat any more. Happily, I go to the lecture hall.

At first I sit one desk away from a chick who immediately rolls her eyes and says "oh great ..."

"Fine," I say and move one row back. As I'm sitting there, I unwrap chocolates I have brought with me and eat them. Every time I unwrap one, people nearby turn and throw annoyed looks at me.

The chocolates are soft and I'm licking my fingers in between eating them as I scribble a few notes and generally don't pay attention to the lecture. After a few chocolates, I'm keenly aware of just how fat I am and how much people around me hate me.

Joey and the Fatman

I don't hate fat people. But last night, I killed a poor rotund bastard in my dreams.

The Fatman would loiter by my apartment stairwell, licking his chops as I hovered on the top stairs.

"Top of the morning to ya," he'd say.

"You're not fucking British," I'd tell The Fatman. He wasn't British, and his cockney Westchester accent really pissed me off.

But the little dog-and-pony show and cockney-isms continued, so I eventually I pulled out a handgun. "You're not fucking British," I stammered again waving the handgun at his head.

The Fatman had a splooge of wax encrusted in his puffy brown mane and these big soulful brown eyes, which drooped pathetically as he stared down the barrel of the handgun.

"I'm sorry. You're right. I'm not British," he started.

But I didn't let him finish. I just emptied the chamber into his hunks of lard.

Ka-plunk. Ka-plunk.

The Fatman crumpled up in a ball on the floor. He looked like a beached whale.

But I didn't care. I just stepped over his body and went back into my apartment. Clearly, I had paid my debt to society, ridding the world of one more faux Briton.

All in a day's work.

I lit up a cigarette.