Like There’s No Tomorrow (Patreon)

(Private commission featuring extreme age progression, weight gain, and reality change.)

Caleb nibbled on a breakfast sandwich as he perused the most recent batch of photos uploaded to his laptop. He wondered if any of them were good enough to show to his professor. The images of a local retirement home were mildly interesting, he supposed, at least by dint of the subject matter. But did they say anything? What was his point of view? He wasn’t sure he had one. The facility had been nice enough to allow him to visit and take pictures. It would have been rude of him to make the place look depressing on purpose. But it wasn’t exactly a fun place to be. All those senile, broken-down souls shuffling around, doing meaningless “fun” activities while they ran out the clocks on their own lives… and those were the ones who were mobile. Behind privacy screens and locked doors, there were people confined to beds, gasping out their last breaths, gurgling their final words, their bones rattling as life fled their ruined bodies. As he was about to leave, two men wheeled a stretcher past him bearing a body covered in a white sheet. The image had haunted him. But he hadn’t recorded it.

What he’d captured looked bland to him. It might as well have been taken for a brochure. Swearing, he shut the laptop and sat back in his chair. The Student Union was bustling this afternoon. It was a good opportunity to check out hot guys. Sometimes, it felt like that was all he could think about. It made him self-conscious; he knew he was acting like a hormonal eight grader. But he had a good excuse. Although he was nineteen, he had only accepted his sexuality the year before. That made him a late bloomer these days. Every other gay man he’d met was already jaded, already into all sorts of complicated kinks and positions, and they wanted nothing to do with his vanilla ass. It wasn’t fair. He had grown up in a small Kansas town. Places like that weren’t exactly known for their cultural sophistication. It was no wonder he had struggled. Still, college should have been a golden opportunity for getting out there and getting it on. Should have been.

He knew it was a bad case of FOMO. He was a go-getter by nature. He tried to live his life like there was no tomorrow. But when it came to sex and dating, it was starting to feel like there wasn’t even a today.

It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t bad looking. He was tall, broad shouldered, and he had a strong chin – it was almost too prominent, really, but that was better than being chinless. He had a decent bulge and a bubble butt, and he wore tight clothes to emphasize them. He worked out religiously. Maybe his clothes didn’t come from a runway in Milan but were quality. Banana Republic and Eddie Bauer were nothing to sneeze at. He kept his thick honey-blonde hair buzzed short to make himself look a little more worldly and mature. Was his personality the problem? Was he not cool enough? It didn’t make sense. He had some anxiety and depression, sure, but who didn’t, these days?

His number-one crush strutted past him just then. Taryn. “With a ‘Y,’” the hunk had pointlessly explained, his smile as breezy and carefree as his attitude. Taryn was a major babe. He was shorter than Caleb but much beefier, with a barely-there wardrobe, movie star looks, and long, curly locks like Timothy Chalamet, black as night. His chiseled face was adorned by dense stubble and bold brows, and his gorgeous amber eyes were surrounded by plentiful lashes. Taryn had been so charming, so engaging, that Caleb had assumed there was a spark between them. But Taryn had been slow to return his text messages. And then Caleb had spotted him at a beer bust. Unsure of how to approach his dream man, he had kept to the periphery and watched. That was when he discovered that Taryn talked to everyone with the same high energy, the same winning smile, and the same sparkling eyes. He was a walking charisma machine, the end, and it had nothing to do with attraction. Deflated, Caleb had fled the party and tried not to cry as he walked back to his dorm.

The photo essay was due in three days. He didn’t feel like he could return to the nursing home and demand to take more photos. Anyway, he was a little creeped out by the place. He remembered a remark made by one resident. He had finished taking photos and was wending his way through the sunroom to the lobby. He’d been obliged to make room for two EMTs who were wheeling a stretcher in the same direction. There was a body on it, covered by a sheet. As he watched the corpse glide past, he had heard a voice behind him say, “Always room for more.” Startled, he had spun around and discovered he had been standing directly in front of a short, scrawny old man with a bushy gray mustache and rheumy eyes, sprawled limply on a sofa. The man seemed to be looking through him, so Caleb couldn’t be sure he’d been addressing him. For that matter, he hadn’t been able to tell if “always room for more” referred to the nursing home, the sofa, or the morgue.

He shuddered at the memory and stuffed the laptop into his computer bag. As he traversed the campus, he was struck by an idea that could salvage his photo essay. The residents’ rooms at the old folks’ home had looked very much like the rooms at his dorm in terms of size and layout. He could take photos of the dorm rooms so he could compare them to the retirement home pictures. It would make a statement on institutional living. Or something. Yes, that could work.

In the lobby of his dorm, he saw his floor’s R.A., Marisol, pulling a shift at the front desk. She was a busty, powerfully built young woman with a preference for floral jumpers. She smiled and waved him over. “My cousin, Ramon, he just broke up with his boyfriend,” she said in a hushed voice, like it was a matter of national security. “So, he’s available, if you want to, y’know…”

“I’ll think about it,” Caleb quickly answered. He didn’t know why the idea made him uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because he didn’t like thinking that he needed to be set up with someone, or maybe he was still stuck on Taryn. He thanked Marisol and scrambled to the stairwell.

As he made his ascent to the fourth floor, another student rushed past him. He was a lanky fucker with a curly brown beard and a devious cast to his features. His roommate, Gryphon, of course. He moved with great, leaping strides, taking three steps at a time. “Get moving, fat boy,” the jokester yelled at him over his shoulder. “You’re too damn slow!”

Caleb blushed as he laughed. He did that whenever he couldn’t think of a clever comeback. Well, he’d give the guy hell when he got to their room. He had plenty of time to think of a retort on the way. As he climbed, his legs began to ache. That was strange. He jogged up and down the stairs nearly every day just for a cardio warmup. It was stress, he decided. It made his fingers tingle sometimes. This was probably something like that.

The common area between hallways had couches, a television, a foosball table, and a multi-game arcade cabinet. This morning, the foosball table and arcade game were gone. He wondered why they’d been removed. Certainly, they couldn’t both be broken. On the other hand, the dudes on his floor could be rowdy and inconsiderate at times. Maybe the items had been damaged after all.

When he got to his room, he was immediately struck by the sense of something being wrong. The blinds were drawn, and it was dark, but even at that, he could tell that nobody was there. Maybe Gryphon had gone to hang out with his buddy Carlos, he thought. He felt around for the cheap floor lamp with its five colorful plastic shades and turned it on.

His first thought was, “This isn’t my room.”

It didn’t look right. He could see his bed and desk and dresser, his museum exhibit posters, and his Xbox. But Gryphon’s things were gone. Was it a prank? When would Gryphon have had time to move it all? Why would he have moved it all? The furnishings belonged to the school. Even if he had moved out, he wouldn’t have taken those things. And other things had been added. There was a recliner with a deep indentation in its cushion and a wall-mounted shelf bearing a set of shaving tools, like a straight razor, a white ceramic mug, a shaving brush, and a tin of mustache wax. A wooden rack sat on his desk, loaded with tobacco pipes, and next to this was a ceramic jar decorated by the figure of a 17th century Dutchman smoking a pipe as long as his arm. The closet door was ajar and revealed fuzzy cardigans and voluminous plaid shirts hanging alongside his youthful attire. A medical-grade metal cane leaned against the wall next to the door. And someone had hung a dry erase board on the nearest wall.

He suddenly felt very cold. Because he’d seen it before. The board was made of tempered white glass, and it was very large. It was divided into several sections. There were spaces to fill in a person’s “preferred name,” whatever that meant, as well as the room number, telephone number, day of the week, and the date. There were spaces for indicating the members of a resident’s “care team” – doctors, nurses, and so on. Other parts were reserved for recording a person’s pain level, fall risk, and degree of ambulation. Finally, there was a place for family contact information.

They had these kinds of boards at the retirement home. Was it supposed to be a joke? Gryphon was a chronic wiseass, but Caleb didn’t think he went in for large-scale pranks. He wondered, briefly, if he was being filmed. Maybe that was it – some goofy reality show was in town, fucking with people. He still felt unsettled, though. While he stared at the floor, lost in thought, he heard the sound of a squeaking marker. When he looked again at the chart, he saw the “preferred name” space filled in. In a handwriting he didn’t recognize, it read, “Marvin.” A classic “old man” name.

Marvin tried to recall if there had been anyone with that name at the old folks’ home. Lord knows, the name made more sense for a retiree than a college student. Could he help it if he had old-fashioned parents? Still, the sight of his own name was somehow startling. And he could have sworn he heard someone writing it.

His heart spasmed within its cage of bone. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t just his room. But getting out of there would make him feel a little better. He took his aching legs back into the hall and walked back down to the common area. A small, hunched figure with a bushy gray mustache sat in one of the chairs, staring into space with rheumy eyes. Marvin made a U-turn and returned to the hallway.

He wasn’t sure where he was going. Not back to his room, if he could help it. He needed to get his bearings. Things couldn’t really be changing. The problem was with his perception. Was he hallucinating? Maybe. Had he had eaten something contaminated by germs or drugs? Or was he having a stroke? That was a chilling prospect. A medical calamity on that scale required years of physical therapy, and he still might not get back to one hundred percent. And in the meantime, he might be stuck in a hospital bed while he relearned how to walk and talk and feed himself…

Grasping at a vague plan of calling for an ambulance, he reached into his pocket for his phone. It wasn’t there. Worse, he couldn’t remember where he had left it or even what make it was. Or his own phone number. His stride devolved into a nervous, indecisive shuffle, made worse by the mounting pain in his limbs. He told himself he was being ridiculous. There were guys all around him. Any one of them could call 911 on his behalf. But he had trouble recognizing any of them. He was lost in a mob of strangers. He searched their faces for something for his memory to grab onto, but they all seemed anonymously, blandly attractive. A few turned and stared at him, their expressions dead. Well, he was used to rejection. Bitterly, he gnawed on his lower lip and kept walking. As he passed the bathroom, a ginger twink with a beach towel around his waist bustled out and bumped into him. Marvin excused himself, but the kid responded by pursing his lips and muttering, “Gross.”

It wasn’t just his memory failing him. He felt strange all over. Besides the aches in his bones, he felt cold and heavy and short of breath, there was a strange taste on his tongue, and his face itched like crazy. The pain in his legs was ratcheting up, feeling now like flames licking at his muscles, scorching them. His clothes felt tight, especially in his posterior. Were his legs swelling? With reluctance, he hobbled to his room and opened the door. Averting his eyes from the weirdly altered interior, he blindly reached for the cane.

It helped. He limped to the common area, where the little old man still waited. An old woman in a housecoat sat nearby, mindlessly fingering a rosary. Another old woman, this one so obese that his body looked like a candle that had melted into a squat, conical shape, occupied an entire couch, breathing fitfully with the aid of an oxygen tank. She waved weakly at Marvin, making her pendulous arm flab sway. Marvin tried to smile but could only manage to produce a grimace. He regarded the elevator with confusion. It was getting difficult to make decisions. But he knew he could go down to the lobby and ask Marisol for help. He pressed the down button.

When the doors opened, they revealed a squad of beautiful, muscular young men in workout togs. They cast withering glances at Marvin, a few even going as far as pursing their lips and shaking their heads. When Marvin hesitantly took a step forward, one of them dismissively flipped his hand upward in a shooing gesture while pressing the “close doors” button with his other hand. Humiliated, Marvin took the stairs.

He made it down one flight of steps before having to rest on a landing, leaning on his cane with both hands and waiting for his legs to stop burning. Panting, he clutched at his gut, which had definitely swollen, causing the hem of his shirt to ride up over his navel. Reminding himself that he would be safe once he got to a hospital, he dragged himself to the next flight of steps. His journey downward was accomplished in brief, debilitating jaunts. He couldn’t be sure of his progress. There were supposed to be numbers by the doors, but they had vanished. Just like a lot of other things had done that day.

At last, he had to admit he couldn’t keep going. Idly, he glanced upward, to get a sense of how far close he was to the main floor. But all he saw was a flat, smooth ceiling. There were no steps going up or going down. Instead, he seemed to be in a plain, dusty room cluttered with bags of fertilizer, buckets of chlorine, and loose fence boards. A single uncovered light bulb flickered in a plain white ceramic socket. Mustering what was left of his strength, he pulled the bulky metal door open and stumbled out into a grassy courtyard. There were winding sidewalks, benches, shrubbery, and small fountains. All around this was a single-story brick building dotted by windows. Pale, sullen faces pressed against the glass, watching him. A few senior citizens sat by themselves on the benches, staring at nothing.

The pretty boys from the elevator stood about thirty feet away, near a glass door on a concrete pad. For some reason, they were dressed like the orderlies from the retirement home. They gossiped and slapped one another on the arms while they smoked and vaped. Feeling so bloated and sore that he feared he was going to rip through his clothes, Marvin clung desperately to his plan of getting someone to call an ambulance for him. He didn’t care if he had to talk to the gym bro assholes from the elevator. It was better than nothing. As he shuffled over to them, panting and sweating, he heard one of them say to his companion, “See? I told you; he’d find his way out of there eventually.” They all laughed at this.

To Marvin, one of them said, “Anything for a smoke, huh, Pops? You should be safe here. We haven’t seen a nurse or a doctor around in a long-ass time.”

Marvin blushed and chuckled nervously. “I, um, actually need a doctor.” His own voice sounded odd. It was husky and weak, and much deeper than he recalled.

The orderly guffawed. “Sure, sure, Pops. Only, give yourself a chance to smoke that bad boy, first. You went to all the trouble of hiding out.” He motioned to something in Marvin’s hand.

Baffled, Marvin examined the object. It was a pipe. A hefty one, too. A full-bent Oom-Paul with a very deep bowl. How he knew the style, he couldn’t say. It was already loaded with fragrant tobacco. And there were other items in his hand as well. A small, tarnished thing that looked like a nail – his tamper, of course. And his pipe lighter, with the opening on the side instead of the top, so he could easily blast the flame into the bowl. As his mind was making sense of these things, his hands went to work, clamping the pipe between his teeth and firing it up. A rush of hot, delicious smoke filled his mouth, invigorating him. It felt oddly familiar. He liked it.

Another orderly asked, “What’s with the drip, Pops? Some kind of disguise?”

“Holy shit,” another exclaimed. “Those are his grand-nephew’s clothes. Remember, the one who’s gonna get drafted by the NFL? The dude had bought shit for himself and for Pops before he visited, and he left the wrong bag behind. I guess the clothes were large enough for the old-timer.”

“Not in the right places,” another smirked. To Marvin, he said, “C’mon, big guy…! You’re not fooling anybody in that outfit. And taking off your glasses doesn’t do jack shit to make you look different. You ain’t Clark Kent, y’know.”

At the mention of glasses, Marvin’s vision went blurry. He rubbed them with plump, stiff hands and startled himself when his wrists encountered thick hair on his cheeks. He felt his own face, feeling like he was lost in a dream. A thick growth of beard had appeared there, including what seemed to be an impressive handlebar mustache. It was impossible. Someone had glued a fake beard on his face… maybe the same people from the reality show who had stolen things from his room, the ones who had lured him into a trick stairwell that led to… wherever this was. He tried to explain this to the gym bros, but all he got for his trouble was silent bemusement. Only one of them seemed to be taking him seriously. This same young man had stayed silent while the rest of them were cracking jokes at Marvin’s expense. Finally, this holdout said to his buddies, “We need to get Marvin back to his room. And one of y’all should go fetch a nurse.”

A nurse. That was something. At least now he’d have someone to give him medical care. An “orderly” vanished momentarily and returned with a wheelchair. He allowed them to help him sit down. He tried to lay the cane across his lap, but he didn’t have a lap anymore. For the first time, he realized how fat he’d gotten. Not “swollen” or “bloated” or “inflamed.” His body was obese. As the men pushed the chair through blurry, unfamiliar environs that looked like a hybrid of the retirement home and his dorm, Marvin grappled with the flab spilling out from beneath his shirt. He could see thin, jagged white vertical lines on his belly. They were stretch marks.

His room had changed still further. His beloved museum posters were gone, replaced by photographs of people and places he didn’t recognize. His Xbox had vanished as well. But obscure medical equipment had taken its place, including an adjustable bed. His private quarters were taking on the look of a hospital room. The orderly handed him a pair of spectacles with comically thick lenses, and then helped him out of the chair and into an attached bathroom. In better circumstances, Marvin would have been thrilled by the prospect of his own bath. For now, all he could do was don the glasses that supposedly belonged to him, and wince at all the things he saw that suggested advanced age – the raised toilet seat, the bath chair, and the outdated grooming products that cluttered the sink top. And then he caught his own reflection.

His knees quivered and threatened to give out. Luckily, the orderly was a sturdy young man, and he caught him before he fell. Marvin’s mouth gaped. A wheezing rasp emerged from his throat, but he couldn’t form words. A tremendously fat old man with wispy, slicked-back hair and a tremendous white beard stared back at him with eyes that goggled behind their high-powered specs. He was a pathetic sight, especially since he was still in his grandson’s – no, damn it, in his own trendy clothes. Before he could say another word, the orderly solemnly tried to help him disrobe. Apologizing profusely, the youngster resorted to using Marvin’s beard trimming scissors to cut him out of the garments. Freed from its constraints, Marvin’s expanding form seemed to balloon outward again. The orderly squeezed past him to get roomier clothes from his closet. That left Marvin to puzzle over his drooping apron gut with its irregular dimples and creases. Then there were the gargantuan, flapping tits that his pecs had devolved into. White curls decorated his fat on his chest, but he was smooth beneath that. He recalled a fat uncle who had joked about all his body hair rubbing off against his clothes when he gained weight. This seemed to be the same situation. The triangular area above his junk had blown up into a second belly, obscuring what felt like a greatly reduced cock. And his ass was out of control. He’d always prided himself on his firm bubble butt. Two great, jiggling masses of cellulite dwelled there now, each cheek the size of a bed pillow. His legs were columns of fat, with his knees and ankles devoid of definition. Even his feet were fat, his toes mere nubs protruding from aching mounds of flesh. Hot tears ran down his hairy cheeks as he poked and prodded himself. This body wasn’t his. It couldn’t be. Not with this gut, with this smooth scalp, these whiskers. He noticed how dark his mustache was compared to the rest of his beard. The color was a nasty brownish yellow – not honey blonde, not his original shade. No, this looked more like discoloration. Sniffing, he detected the stale tobacco smell his mustache gave off. The unpleasant color was a nicotine stain. He gurgled ruefully.

A male nurse arrived and set about dressing him in his new “old man” clothes. Marvin avoided the man’s dispassionate gaze, but he was struck by how mouthwateringly gorgeous he was. He was a bit shorter than himself, but his shoulders were broad, and he had dark, angelic curls framing a face like a movie star. He felt like he’d seen him somewhere before, smiling charmingly and speaking with a warm, nourishing energy. So charismatic, that boy. Maybe… maybe he would be kind. Maybe he would understand his dilemma. As the nurse pulled a pair of boxers the size of a small pup tent up over Marvin’s fat pad, Marvin dared to place his hand on his shoulder.

The nurse’s eyes observed him coldly. “What,” he said. His tone was worse than businesslike. It was flat, with no attempt at friendliness.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Marvin rasped. “I’m nineteen years old.”

“Yeah, I heard,” the nurse grunted. “A doctor will be here soon. You can talk to him about it.” The young man stuffed Marvin’s feet into a pair of knee-length compression socks, and then put him in a baggy short-sleeved shirt in a bilious green shade. Marvin’s pants were next, each leg roomier than a sleeping bag. The trousers were high-waisted, buttoning just below his saggy man-boobs. Elasticized burgundy suspenders were employed to keep them from falling. His bulbous feet were wedged into soft leather slippers. Lastly, a fuzzy taupe cardigan was layered over the shirt.

The nurse stepped back and examined his handiwork. Marvin smiled shyly beneath his handlebar mustache. The nurse looked so familiar. He was sure he had gone to college with him. Maybe.. maybe he could jog the kid’s memory, and he’d finally have a friend.

The nurse did not return his smile. He just pursed his luscious lips and made a clicking noise with his tongue. “It will do, I guess,” he finally said. “At least you don’t smell so much like smoke now. While I’m here, I should probably do something about your breath.”

Marvin clapped his hands over his mouth. “Oh, my stars,” he gasped. He had meant to say “Oh, my God.” Why it had come out sounding so formal and lame, he didn’t know.

The nurse did smile at that remark. A little. He assisted Marvin to the sink and watched him brush, and even handed him a damp washcloth to wipe the foam from his lips and mustache. When Marvin shyly inquired if his breath was improved, the nurse tilted his head and said, “Show me your teeth.” Marvin eagerly complied. “Nope,” the nurse declared. “Those choppers are pretty yellow. How many times have you been sneaking a pipe, Marvin?”

Marvin stood there silently, feeling his fat churning beneath his wrinkled skin, still building up, still making his aging flesh bulge outward, until it was pressing against the billowing clothes that he had been dressed in just a few minutes before.

Impatiently, the nurse declared, “Never mind. Just fork them over so I can clean them properly.” After watching Marvin continue to stare at him in bewilderment, the nurse snapped, “Open your mouth, Marvin.”

Marvin complied, and immediately, the nurse’s strong hands were in his mouth, prying the teeth from his gums. Marvin yelped and stared with horror at the nurse, who was holding a set of dingy yellow dentures in his hands.

A scowl twisted the nurse’s handsome face into a wrathful mask. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he hissed. “That didn’t hurt a goddamn bit, and you goddamn know it, Marvin. I just need to dunk these in a cleaner, okay? God…!”

Another nurse suddenly appeared in the doorway of the bathroom. She was a busty, sturdy-looking Latina in a floral print top. She shot the male nurse a dubious look. With an edge in her voice, she asked if everything was okay.

“Everything’s great,” the male nurse answered, with forced gaiety. “Just cleaning up dear old Marvin, here!”

Embarrassed for everyone there, Marvin stared downward. He couldn’t see his feet. Just his ludicrous beach ball gut. His cheeks were hot. It was something about the make nurse… he thought he had known someone as devastatingly attractive as him, maybe even identical in looks, and he had felt his dinky little pecker harden and wriggle impotently beneath the crushing flab of his fat pad. He had experienced a mysterious distress when the nurse had screamed at him. It was like getting yelled at by someone he loved.

The doctor arrived a little later. He was a lanky young man with a curly brown beard and arched eyebrows that gave him a mischievous expression. He had the male nurse take Marvin’s vitals while he peppered him with questions meant to gauge his mental acuity. Marvin felt the same sort of anxiety he’d had while taking a test in college. Which is where I should be, he thought to himself, stubbornly.

“We know your family placed you here on account of your mobility issues,” the doctor told him. “But it’s not unusual for a man your age to have some memory problems, especially when you’re tired. We can address those as well. In the meantime, we’ll keep trying to get some of those pounds off, right?” He patted Marvin’s shoulder. Turning to the nurse, he said, “These can’t be the right clothes for him.”

Marvin didn’t think they were, either. He felt like he was a sausage ready to pop out of its casing. The buttons on his shirt were pushing down into his belly and he couldn’t raise his arms.

The doctor continued, “We’ll have someone get you into more comfortable clothing, don’t worry.” As he turned to leave, he whispered something to the nurse, who followed him out the door. The nurse hurriedly pulled it closed behind him but apparently failed to notice it wasn’t shut.

Marvin was left to stare at the mysterious dry erase board near the door. It was completely filled in now. He grabbed his cane with shaking hands and pried himself up from the recliner where he’d been sitting. He had the bizarre impression of pulling the chair cushion up along with the rest of his body, but then he remembered that it was just his tremendously fat ass. The thing protruded from body, jiggling and bouncing as he walked. But it wasn’t real, he knew. None of this was. Except that he was starting to forget the things he knew were reality. His college friends, the things he’d done in high school, even his family.

The dry erase board… it listed family members. He hobbled over to it as quickly as his broken body would allow, peering at it with his watery, magnified vision. But the closer he got to it, the more the names blurred and smudged, until they were just a faded gray stain on the white glass. Wildly, he swung his head around and looked for the first time at the photos on the wall. There he was, in various states of his supposedly long life, as big as a house and getting fatter with each passing year, always with a pipe in his mouth and a cloud of smoke around his graying head. He looked for a sign of a husband or boyfriend, but nothing in the images suggested that. Maybe the pipe was all this version of him had. In his toothless mouth, his tongue lolled against his pallet, desperately searching for a remnant of the tobacco taste he craved. He recalled nothing captured in these photographs. He had the feeling he was a photographer himself, but it was only intuition, with no memories to back it up.

The unfashionable clothes restricted his movements, strangling his armpits, hunching his back, and bunching at his crotch. He needed to get out of them immediately. He hobbled to the door, which was still open, just slightly. Outside, the doctor and the nurse were having a heated conversation.

“Oh, she just loves to cause drama,” the nurse groaned.

“But you don’t deny it,” the doctor shot back.

After a pause, the nurse admitted, “Fine, yes, I raised my voice to him.”

“And you swore. Several times.”

With marginal contrition, the nurse said, “It was wrong, I know. Maybe I shouldn’t attend to Marvin right now. He’s a little too much like my own grandfather. He refused to take care of his body, just like Marvin. My grandpa was obese, a chain smoker, and an alcoholic on top of that. He just indulged in whatever he wanted and the rest of us were left to deal with the consequences. So, yeah, I guess I don’t have much patience for him. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I am talking to my therapist about all this.”

The doctor’s tone softened. “You’re a good nurse, Taryn, but maybe you should take a break from this unit. Put in a transfer to something less stressful. Hospice care can take a lot out of a person.”

Marvin’s elephantine body froze solid. Hospice care. That meant he didn’t have long to live. But no, he thought, this wasn’t any more real than the rest of it. It couldn’t be.

On the other side of the door, the nurse said in a pained voice, “I don’t know why people do this to themselves. I guess they’re unhappy or whatever, but they don’t think about all the people in their lives that care about them. It’s fucking selfish.”

“Easy,” the doctor cautioned. “I’ll talk to the director about getting you a transfer so you can rest and reset yourself. Maybe you’ll decide hospice isn’t for you. But whatever you end up doing, I know you’ll be great.”

A few more sappy platitudes followed, but Marvin had stopped paying attention by then. He grimly returned to the recliner and lowered himself into it. The fabric of his clothing was beginning to tear. It hurt like hell, but he chose to bear it without comment and without tears. He didn’t want to impose on anyone. The sun was setting, turning the light in his room the color of marigolds. His hands shook. As he watched, liver spots bloomed on the backs of his hands, and the skin turned translucent and papery. He was getting older. With difficulty, he unclipped the suspenders from the waistband of his pants, and then he unzipped the pants and unbuttoned the shirt. It helped a little. He could feel his neck and chin sag into a bullfrog-like sack, and the mounting cellulite on his arms pull his skin down into great, drooping folds. His fingers were stubby, with tiny, pearlescent nails set deeply into fingers so thick they pressed against one another, impeding movement. A cold breeze at his scalp hinted that he had gone utterly bald on top of his head.

The gentle orange light deepened into a rosy red. His breaths came shorter now, accompanied by the feeling of daggers slicing into his lungs. He wasn’t in the recliner anymore. His immense, immobile body occupied a double-wide wheelchair, and his failing garments had changed into a hospital gown the size of a tablecloth. How much did he weigh now? Five hundred pounds? Six hundred? More?

He wondered if this awful delusion would end with his death or if it would keep going, dragging him into a nightmarish afterlife. He was ready for it all to be over. If this was real, then it meant his entire life had been a failure. No boyfriends, no husbands, no love. Just empty, bestial indulgence, trying to fill a hole in his soul that couldn’t be filled. Maybe this was always his destiny, and the universe was merely speeding it along.

Maybe, he thought, he hadn’t been designed for romance. Maybe… maybe he was a quirk of nature. A solitary soul without a soulmate. He sighed, the breath leaving his chest in a long, barely audible exhalation. If that’s how things were meant to be, then it was silly to fight it. There had been more to his life than romance. He could see that in the photos. He’d had fun. And he’d had friends, even if he couldn’t recall them at the moment.

As calm settled over his aged, ruined body, he was put in mind of the feeling he would get when stepping off a ride at the state fair. The feeling of all the atoms in his body slowing down, returning to stillness. Somehow, he knew that time had resumed its steady, reliable pace. However long he had left, he would spend his days not in a white knuckled free fall of terror, but in blissful acceptance of his lot.

The male nurse returned to turn on the lights in the darkening room. After apologizing deeply for his behavior, he retrieved Marvin’s clean white dentures and helped him to paste them back onto his gums. Marvin smiled warmly at the hunky nurse and felt his inchworm dick wriggle merrily under his fat pad. He ate a bland meal from a tray and then he was loaded into his hospital bed. He dozed off swiftly and did not bother to dream.

The black eraser swept over the dry erase board, obliterating the scant details of the old man’s life. “Dear old Marvin,” Taryn said to himself, choking back a sob over the eccentric old fart. Marvin had hung on for nearly three months after the day of his outburst, and he had been a model resident ever since. The two of them would even play cards after Taryn’s shift. And now he was gone. This sort of thing was inevitable in the hospice ward. He just wished it wouldn’t happen so fast.