FAT FICTION | Chapter 17 - The Contest (Patreon)

The world stopped somehow.

Cars still passed outside.

The air conditioner still rattled.

Somewhere in the kitchen a plate crashed onto a counter.

But Maggie heard none of it.

Because Rosie was sitting across from her.

She didn’t look a day older than when she’d sold the place. 

A manila folder rested on the table between them.

“Honey, this is difficult to say, but… someone has made me an offer for dinner and I’m too old in the tooth to turn it down.” 

Maggie knew this conversation. She’d had it before. And she’d played it back many times over the last decade. 

She stared down at the folder. 

Rosie patted it.

“I’ve made up my mind.”

Maggie felt tears sting her eyes immediately.

For ten years she’d wanted one thing more than anything else in the world.

One chance.

One do-over.

One opportunity to walk back into the worst day of her life and do something differently.

And somehow, impossibly, she’d gotten it.

Rosie’s smile slowly turned to a look of concern..

“Honey?”

Maggie realised she was crying.

Actual tears.

Running down her cheeks.

Rosie reached across the table.

“Maggie?”

She jumped up and ran for the bathroom. Along the way she noticed the faces of old regulars she hadn’t seen in years. Others who still made up most of the diner’s business, but they looked younger. 

This can’t be real! she thought. 

She burst into the bathroom heading for the sink. She splashed cold water onto her face and tried to calm down. But when she looked up into the mirror, she no longer saw her 32 year old face. The Maggie staring back at her was only 22. She’d done some hard years already. A young mother, a hard worker. 

But somehow, thanks to the watch, youth was back on her side. 

Youth… and time. 

She cleaned herself up. 

Charged back out into the diner and sat across from Rosie. 

“Sorry,” she said, looking at the watch that sat on the table front if her. “I erm… wasn’t expecting this.” 

Her words meant more than Rosie could ever know. 

“What if I bought you out? What if I could get you $20,000?”

Rosie leaned back, surprised. 

“I’m being offered a lot more than that…”

Maggie knew this part of the conversation too. She knew Rosie was thinking it over, trying to make it make sense for her.

This time around, Maggie got the words out first. 

“Consider it a down payment. If I got it, then I could pay you the rest over time. Hell, I’d only want 50% for the same price. You could be my retired partner. Feet up in… wherever you wanna go, money rolling in. I’d make this place work so damn well, Rosie, I promise you.”

Rosie smiled. “I know you would, honey.” 

Her smile faded. “But the guy making this offer says it's only good today. At midnight, it’s off the table. I don’t want to ask this, because I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but do you have $20,000?”

Maggie stood so abruptly the booth rattled.

“I’m going to need the day off.”

Rosie blinked.

“What?”

“I need the day off.”

The words came out before Maggie could stop them.

She could hear how insane she sounded.

Could see it in Rosie’s face.

But none of that mattered.

“Please.”

For a moment neither woman moved.

Then Rosie smiled.

The same warm smile she’d worn a thousand times before.

“Okay.”

Maggie didn’t wait for another word.

She snatched up her purse, nearly knocked over a chair, and sprinted for the door.

“Midnight Maggie, that’s all I can do!” yelled Rosie from her seat. 

The bell above the door jingled wildly behind her.

A second later she burst into bright sunshine.

She jumped into her car, which looked considerably less battered than the one she'd driven that morning, and pulled out onto the highway.

The bank.

That was the obvious answer.

Twenty thousand dollars wasn't an impossible amount of money. Businesses, homeowners, people borrowed more than that every day.. Surely somebody, somewhere, would listen to her.

Then reality caught up.

She was twenty-two years old.

A waitress.

A single mother.

With no assets worth mentioning.

The bank wasn't going to lend her twenty thousand dollars.

Still, she drove. She didn’t understand it. It made no sense. But she carried a feeling deep inside that she’d find an answer if she keep on driving. That someone she could convince the bank manager.

Stranger things have happened, she thought, given reality seemed a tad more flexible than it had this morning… when i was still 32.

No harm in trying.

The miles rolled beneath her tires while she rehearsed increasingly desperate versions of the same conversation.

Please.

I can make this work.

I have a time machine. If i screw up i can change the past!

You don't understand.

I'll pay it back.

Every version ended exactly the same way.

A polite smile.

A sympathetic shake of the head.

By the time she reached the outskirts of town, Maggie was gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make her knuckles ache.

Maybe she should have listened to herself.

Maybe robbing a bank wasn't such a terrible idea after all.

The thought made her laugh despite herself.

A slightly hysterical laugh, but a laugh all the same.

That was when she saw the sign.

She nearly drove past it.

A hand-painted board sat beside the road, half hidden behind a cluster of trees.

COUNTRY FAIR TODAY

GRAND PRIZE

$20,000

ALL WELCOME

Maggie slowed.

Then slowed further.

Then pulled onto the shoulder entirely.

For several seconds she simply stared.

Twenty thousand dollars.

The exact amount.

Not nineteen.

Not twenty-five.

Twenty.

A coincidence so absurd it almost felt deliberate.

The watch on her wrist felt strangely heavy.

Maggie looked down at it. 

The countdown continued silently.

Twenty-three hours and change.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Yet there was the sign.

And somewhere beyond the trees she could hear music.

Laughter.

The distant crackle of a loudspeaker.

The fairgrounds were only a few minutes away.

The sensible thing would have been to ignore it.

The sensible thing would have been to continue driving toward the bank.

Instead Maggie found herself turning the wheel.

Something about this version of her past didn’t quite add up. It was oddly dreamlike. But instinct drove her on. 

Deeper down the rabbit hole i go, she told herself.

Five minutes later she was pulling into a field full of parked cars.

The fair wasn't particularly large. A handful of rides. Food stalls. Livestock pens. Local businesses advertising things nobody really needed.

The sort of event she normally wouldn't have given a second glance.

Today it felt like destiny. Like she was finally the main character in her own life story. She couldn’t go around the fair. She had to go through it.

She followed signs toward the competition tent.

The crowd thickened with every step.

By the time she reached the registration booth, she could hear an announcer somewhere ahead working the audience into a frenzy.

A man in a cowboy hat looked up from a clipboard.

"Entering?"

"Looks that way."

He gave her a quick once-over.

The smile that followed wasn't cruel.

Just amused.

"You sure?"

Maggie frowned.

"Sure about what?"

"The competition."

His grin widened.

"You don't exactly look like the type."

Maggie glanced past him.

For the first time she noticed the competitors.

Most were enormous.

Not just overweight.

Huge men and women carrying hundreds of extra pounds between them. Some wore competition shirts. Others stretched beneath suspenders and overalls. One woman was calmly eating a funnel cake while waiting to enter the contest.

Maggie blinked.

"What exactly is the competition?"

The man pointed to the banner hanging above the entrance.

PIE EATING CHAMPIONSHIP

GRAND PRIZE - $20,000

Maggie stared at it.

Then laughed.

Of course.

Of all the ridiculous things.

Of course.

The man looked uncertain.

"You okay?"

"Never better."

"You got experience?"

"Eating pie?"

"Competitive eating."

Maggie looked at the banner again.

Then at the watch.

Then back at the banner.

"No."

The man shrugged.

"Well, everybody starts somewhere."

Twenty minutes later Maggie sat at a long wooden table surrounded by strangers.

Each place setting held a fresh cherry pie.

The smell alone was enough to make her teeth ache.

An announcer paced the stage nearby, introducing contestants and explaining rules.

Maggie barely listened.

Her eyes remained fixed on the prize board.

Twenty thousand dollars.

Everything she wanted sat on the other side of those pies.

The bell rang.

The contest began.

At first it felt absurd.

The first pie vanished surprisingly quickly.

The second was harder.

By the third Maggie was beginning to understand why most people didn't spend their weekends doing this.

Cherry filling covered her mouth.

Thick crust pastry flakes coated the table.

The sweetness became almost overwhelming.

Still she continued.

Today, twenty thousand dollars tasted a lot like cherries.

Contestants began dropping out before the first hour was over.

Some surrendered with loud burps.

Others simply stopped, backing away from their seat, sick of the sight and the taste.

But Maggie kept going.

Not because she enjoyed it or because she was particularly good at it.

Because every pie represented another step toward the life she'd lost and the one she wanted.

Whenever her stomach protested, she thought about Darren. She would not spend another day working for that arsehole.

Whenever exhaustion crept in, she thought about Rosie. She thought about how the dinner was her legacy and deserved to be treated so.

Whenever she felt like quitting, she thought about the last ten years.

The years she'd spent wondering what might have happened if she'd found a way.

Eventually she became aware of noise.

The crowd.

People were cheering.

At first she assumed they were cheering for somebody else.

Then she heard her name.

Maggie.

Maggie.

Maggie.

She looked up.

The audience wasn't laughing anymore.

They weren't watching the bigger competitors either.

They were watching her.

The underdog.

The waitress.

The woman who had absolutely no business still being there.

Something unexpected stirred inside her chest.

It wasn’t pride exactly. It was something warmer. Hope. She’d almost forgotten it existed.

The crowd wanted her to win.

When had that happened?

When was the last time a crowd had wanted anything for her?

The realisation hit harder than any amount of pie.

Maggie lowered her head and kept eating.

One competitor dropped out.

Then another.

The cheers grew louder.

Hours passed.

Eventually she found herself sitting on the main stage beneath the afternoon sun.

Only four contestants remained.

Then three.

Then two.

The man sitting beside her outweighed her by at least two hundred pounds and looked as though he'd been preparing for this competition his entire life.

Maggie should have been intimidated.

Instead she found herself laughing.

The situation had become too ridiculous to fear.

The announcer rang the bell again.

Another pie landed in front of her.

Then another.

Then another.

At some point she stopped tasting them.

The crowd blurred into a wall of sound.

All that remained was the next bite.

And the next pie.

By the time her final opponent surrendered, Maggie barely registered it.

The announcer seized her arm and raised it triumphantly into the air.

The crowd erupted.

Only then did she finally stop.

Breathing hard, Maggie looked around as though waking from a dream.

Cherry filling stained her uniform.

Her hands.

Even her hair.

The scoreboard behind the stage displayed a number she would have sworn was impossible.

Yet there it was.

Proof.

37 pies! 

The announcer thrust a giant cheque into her hands.

The crowd cheered again.

"What are you going to do now?" he shouted.

Maggie looked down at the cheque.

Twenty thousand dollars.

For a moment she thought she might cry.

Then she laughed instead.

"I'm going to buy a diner."

The crowd loved that answer.

The cheers rolled across the fairgrounds like thunder.

“And it’ll serve the best damn cherry pie there is!”

More cheers!

And standing there beneath the applause, holding the future she'd spent ten years wishing for, Maggie felt something she hadn't felt in a very long time.

Like her life was finally beginning.

Smiling, she left the stage and found a quiet spot behind a tent.

She looked down at the watch and pressed the button.