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Orel finished his second plate of his mother’s meatloaf, humming contently to himself as he washed his last bite down with a drink of water. But despite the two full plates he had, he found himself wanting more.
“You sure do make the best meatloaf, mom,” Orel complimented his mother. “Could I have some more?”
“Now, Orel,” his mother chided. “If you eat all the meatloaf, whatever will your father have for his lunch tomorrow? I think you’ve had enough.”
“But I’m still hungry.”
“Listen to your mother, son,” his father said, glaring at Orel over his own dinner.
Orel hid from his father’s gaze and looked down at his empty plate, the porcelain surface smeared with the remnants of his dinner. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled before taking another drink of water in hopes to subdue the gnawing, seemingly bottomless pit void inside him.
“You keep eating like that, Orel and you’ll eat us out of house and home,” his mother said, a harmless comment that made Orel’s cheeks burn the slightest shade of red. He couldn’t help it.
He’d just been so ravenous lately. Not just physically but emotionally too, like his heart and mind yearned for food. Most of the people around him chalked up his noticeable increase in appetite to the fact that he was a growing boy and needed the extra calories. But to Orel, it was more of an obsession. He spent practically all day distracted by the thought of food. Roast beef that practically melted in your mouth, fluffy, buttered mashed potatoes, sweet apple brown betty with crumbling cinnamon topping and melty vanilla ice cream, tuna noodle casseroles, heart warming stews, and other delicious home cooked meals.
He kept finding himself eating more than what his small stomach could handle. Once he began he lost control of himself, eating until he felt heavy and uncomfortable, unable to do much but lay lethargically, so full that he couldn’t even think. But he liked that, the quiet in his head, the fullness in his stomach like a warm hug. It was the most at peace he ever felt, except for when he was at church.
Orel went to bed unsatisfied that night. He laid awake, unable to sleep with the thought of food swirling around in his head and the more he tried to stop thinking about it the more the thought persisted. The pressure of trying to resist the urge built up inside him until he felt like he was going to explode. Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore.
He waited until the house quieted to slip out of bed. Orel moved silently through the lonely house to the kitchen, avoiding the floorboards he knew would creak under his weight. He had learned to memorize them, as this little nighttime ritual had started becoming a habit.
The light of the refrigerator flicked on and illuminated Orel’s face as he delicately removed the leftover meatloaf from the fridge and helped himself to a serving. He set his plate on the dining room table, slowly, carefully, and began to eat. He ate at a reasonable pace at first, until the small sense of control he had over himself slipped and something else entirely overtook him. Then he began shoveling food into his mouth, so quickly he hardly had time to taste each bite before another was shoved in. He finished his plate quickly and went for another, then another, before abandoning his plate entirely and eating the meatloaf straight off the china tray his mother had served it on.
Before he knew it he had eaten the entire thing.
He moved on to the aluminum pan of his mother’s brown betty, grabbing the leftover mashed potatoes while he was at it. He alternated bites between the brown betty and mashed potatoes, which he ate cold because he couldn’t be bothered to take the time to heat them up first. His stomach began to hurt as he continued eating past fullness. But something inside him was desperate and he continued wolfing down food, unable to stop no matter how much he wanted to.
The kitchen light flicked on.
“Orel?”
Orel froze like a deer in headlights. “Dad?” he asked around a mouth full of food.
His dad stood over him, looking furiously at his son and the smorgasbord before him. Shame filled Orel as he took in the look on his father’s face.
“I think we need to have a talk, young man—” his dad began. “—in my study.”
Orel gulped, swallowing his last bite of food.
“I hope you learned your lesson, Orel,” his father said as Orel pulled his pajama bottoms back up, buttocks and thighs still stinging from the spanking his father gave him.
“I sure did, pop!” Orel said enthusiastically. “It's just…I’m not so sure what I did wrong. I was only having a midnight snack.”
“That wasn’t just “having a midnight snack,” Orel. It’s one thing to eat when you’re hungry, but you already had two full plates at dinner, what you were doing is called gluttony.”
“Gluttony?” Orel repeated, his blood running cold, just the word itself struck fear in the boy’s heart.
“Yes, gluttony. And it’s a sin, a deadly one.”
“Golly, I-I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do! That means it won’t happen again, right, Orel?”
“Right, dad.”
Clay smiled and pet Orel’s head. “Good boy, son, good boy. Go to bed now, and don’t forget the lost 69th commandant,” he said, gesturing to a plaque on the wall. “Thou shalt not eat more than thy fill, even though we previously stated thou shalt always clean thy plate and not waste anything, whether thy stomach is full or not.”
“Yes, sir,” Orel replied, muttering a goodnight to his dad before returning to his bedroom.
Orel stared at his ceiling. He felt the weight of the food he stuffed himself with like a boulder of guilt in his stomach. The regret ate him up inside, so much so that he found himself tearing up at the thought of what he had done. It was always the guilt that came after a lecture that hurt worse than the pain of being spanked. He didn’t even know why he had done it, he certainly hadn’t wanted to.
Orel pushed away his blanket and kneeled next to his bed, drawing his hands into a praying stance. From there he begged for God’s forgiveness, promising to never ever eat more than he needed again.
But it did happen again.
The very next night, in fact.
He tried not to. But the effort it took to resist the urge drove him to tears and he found himself right back in the kitchen, gorging himself in the middle of the night again. Initially, he felt relieved, until the realization of what he had down sunk in and he drug himself back to bed, nursing a stomachache, and crying with his hands clasped again, begging for forgiveness and promising to never do it again.
But again, Orel broke that promise.
He felt so ashamed of himself he couldn’t even bring himself to talk to his father about it. So, in desperation, he went to the one person he knew could give him advice.
“Reverend Putty?”
The Reverend looked up from his game of solitaire at the guilty looking boy standing in his doorway. “Come in, Orel,” he said, waving him over.
Orel shuffled into the office, not once taking his eyes off the floor.
“What can I help you with?”
“Reverend,” Orel began. “What do you do when you can’t stop committing a sin, no matter how hard you try?”
Reverend Putty folded his hands over his desk. “Well, that depends. What sin are we talking about?”
“A deadly one.”
“Well, which one? Anger? Pride? Lust?”
“Gluttony,” Orel admitted.
“Gluttony, huh?”
“I-I can’t help it!” Orel said defensively. “Whenever I start thinking about food I can’t make the thought go away, even when I try to distract myself. And once I start eating I can’t stop. I try really hard not to, Reverend, honest. I don’t want to make God unhappy but I don’t know what to do. I need advice.”
“Orel, you do realize gluttony is a cardinal sin? This isn’t any ol’ “pick and choose what rules you follow” type of situation. This is a big deal!
Orel felt his heart begin to pound. “W-what do I do? I don’t want to go to hell, Reverend.”
“There’s only one thing you can do, kid.”
“What’s that?”
“If you can’t control how much you eat, the best thing to do is not eat at all.
“But…don’t you need to eat to live?”
“Well, I don’t mean to stop eating entirely. I mean decrease the time you’re allowed to eat. It’s called fasting.”
“Is that safe?” Orel asked with uncertainty.
“Sure, Jesus did it all the time.”
“Well, if Jesus did it…”
“I’ll tell you what, Orel,” Reverend Putty said, standing up and putting his arm around Orel’s shoulders as he started to guide him out the door. “Give it a shot for a couple of weeks. Fast until supper every night and see how you feel.”
Orel looked up at the Reverend, fully trusting every word the man said. “You really think that’ll work?”
“The verse Philippians 3:19 comes to mind. ‘Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.’ Gluttons follow the order of their stomach, not God. They crave temporary pleasures rather than permanent things like eternal life. When we fast we deny our flesh of its desires, not out of punishment, but as a way to learn to overcome our temptations and form a stronger spiritual bond with God. Now, it won’t be easy by any means, and the devil will try to tempt you. But stay strong, young Puppington, and I promise you’ll be over your little gluttony problem in no time.”
The smile returned to Orel’s face. “Golly, thanks a lot, Reverend Putty!”
Reverend Putty chuckled and patted the boy’s shoulder. “Just doing my job, kid, just doing my job.”
“Orel, breakfast!” his mother called.
“Not today, mom,” Orel replied as he came downstairs. “I’m fasting.”
“Fasting? Whatever for?”
“To get closer to God, of course! When we deny our flesh of its desires we form a stronger spiritual bond with God,” Orel said, repeating Reverend Putty’s words.
“Ah, I see. We did that when I was a girl, however I remember it being called something else…”
Orel grabbed his backpack and his water bottle and headed for the door. “Gotta go, mom!”
“Have a great day, sweetheart.”
“Love you!”
For the first few days, Orel’s fasting went great. He’d go all day sustaining himself on water, politely declining any food that was offered to him. Then at dinner he’d eat a small portion, careful not to eat too much. He felt so proud of himself he hardly had any problems at all—aside from a little lightheadedness—and all the time he would usually spend eating was spent reading the Bible or praying instead. But after those few days of pure, holy bliss, the temptations Reverend Putty warned him about crept in.
Orel was starving. His stomach was cramping and loudly growling with how hungry he was. He gulped down water to try to quiet his body’s pleas but it didn’t seem to be working.
“Gee, Orel, you’re not eating lunch again?” Doughy pointed out.
“No, Doughy,” Orel replied. “I’m fasting.”
“Are you sure you don’t want some of my sandwich? You sure do look hungry.”
“No, thanks. I don’t need to eat as long as I’ve got God by my side!”
But Orel couldn’t, for the life of him, stop staring at Doughy while he ate. He wanted so badly to tell Doughy that he changed his mind, that he did want some, but he fought with everything in him to keep quiet.
He’d never been so glad for lunch to end.
Back in class, food was the only thing on his mind. Roast beef that practically melted in your mouth, fluffy, buttered mashed potatoes, sweet apple brown betty with crumbling cinnamon topping, food, food, food-
“And what should you do in the event you accidentally swallow poison, Orel?”
Orel’s ears perked up at the sound of his name. “Huh?”
Miss Sculptham looked at Orel disapprovingly. “I asked you a question.”
“Oh, um.” Orel quickly scanned the chalkboard for something that might tell him what she asked or what she had even been talking about. It had been some kind of health lesson but he’d been too distracted to listen beyond that. “Um, J-Jesus?”
Orel’s face turned beet red as his classmates all began to laugh at his expense.
“Good guess, but no,” Miss Sculptham said, turning to the chalkboard. “In the event where poison is ingested you should induce vomiting by putting your index and middle finger down your throat until your gag reflex is triggered. Did you get that, Orel?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Orel replied, sinking down in his seat in embarrassment.
The pressure building up inside Orel was starting to push him to his limit. It was to the point that he was pacing his bedroom, unable to sit still in anticipation for dinner. He prayed to God to keep him strong in the face of the devil’s temptations but he was already starting to compromise with himself, telling himself that he’d done so good that week that maybe he had earned a snack before dinner, as a reward. When dinner finally rolled around he devoured his small plate of spaghetti so quickly that it didn’t satisfy him at all. It took the last of Orel’s willpower to not get a second plate.
He felt like he was breaking.
Orel went to bed early to keep himself from eating but the hunger wouldn’t let him, it gnawed and clawed at his stomach, pleading for his attention. Obsessive thoughts of all the food in the kitchen invaded his mind, screaming at him with so much intensity that he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t distract himself, couldn’t make it go away. His heart felt like it was going to explode, his mind was betraying him. He wanted to bang his head against the wall, anything just to make it stop.
But once the thought arrived it didn’t go away.
As soon as he got out of bed he knew it was over.
Downstairs, Orel raided the refrigerator and cabinets, desperately shoveling food into his mouth so quickly he was practically choking. He started with the leftover pot of spaghetti from dinner that night, barely bothering to chew before swallowing. When he finished he moved onto devouring anything he could get his hands on, even foods he didn’t like, eating and eating until he was no longer hungry and then eating more. It wasn’t until Orel had choked down his last bite, psychically unable to handle anymore, did he realize what he had done.
He looked at the overturned kitchen with horrifying clarity. Dishes and food wrappers were littered everywhere like some kind of animal had torn through the place. Orel’s face, hands, and pajamas were stained and sticky from the various foods he spilled while he’d been mindlessly stuffing himself. He looked down at himself with shame as his eyes blurred with hot tears. He was disgusting, gluttonous.
Orel choked back sobs and he quickly hid the evidence of what he had done, frantically shoving various wrappers to the bottoms of the trashcan, washing the dishes left behind, and praying his family wouldn’t notice the large amount of food that had gone missing during the night. But he knew it didn’t matter. Even if his family never found out about his sin, God knew. God had witnessed his gluttony and that thought made him feel sick with guilt.
Orel pressed a hand to his mouth to stifle his sobs as he trembled. He wanted to take it back, reach into his stomach and pull out everything he’d eaten along with his shame. He wished God would strike him down right there. He deserved to go to Hell, he deserved worse than Hell, he-
A thought occurred to Orel. A way to reverse what he had done, to make everything better. Orel locked the bathroom door and kneeled in front of the toilet as if it were a cross. Violent cold chills coursed through his body as he looked into the water, heart pounding as he remembered Miss Sculptham’s lesson from class that day.
“In the event where poison is ingested you should induce vomiting by putting your index and middle finger down your throat until your gag reflex is triggered. Did you get that, Orel?”
What he had consumed may have not been poison, but to Orel, it felt like it was. Orel repositioned himself over the toilet and opened his mouth, hesitatingly pushing his index and middle finger into his throat, immediately choking from the unpleasant feeling. But he clenched his eyes shut and persisted. He thrusted his fingers into his gag reflex until he coughed up a thin stream of bile and chunks of half digested food. He pulled his fingers out momentarily to breathe before shoving them back down, coaxing food out of his stomach like a confession until he was puking up thick globs that tore the fragile lining of his throat as it rushed up his esophagus. He could still clearly see the food he had eaten as it floated in the toilet water, whole spaghetti noodles and chewed up, stuck together pieces of food. Hot tears streamed down his face and snot hung from his nose in thick ropes but he held onto the toilet seat in a white knuckled grip until every last bit of food was out of him, until he could taste nothing but his own stomach bile and he felt empty again. Clean, holy.
He ripped his fingers out of his throat, leaving behind trails of stringy saliva, and he heaved and sobbed over the toilet. He pried his fingers off the seat and blindly fumbled for a piece of toilet paper, ripping off a handful and using it to wipe the snot from his face. He blew his nose several times, trying to get everything out. When he pulled away he found whole chunks of food left behind on the tissue.
Orel shakily stood up, knees aching from how long he had kneeled on the hard, linoleum floor. His other hand and arm were slick with vomit and he tried not to touch anything as he stumbled to the bathroom sink and turned on the water. He ran his hand and arm under the faucet, watching his puke wash off his skin and swirl down the drain before looking up at his face in the mirror. Teary, swollen eyes looked back at him and at the dried and crusted vomit around his mouth and all down his chin and front of his throat.
His newly empty stomach growled.
Suddenly, all he could think about was food again.