Mark Estes flaunted his money, abused his power, cheated on his wife, and most of all loved to eat.

Warned that a dozen sugar cookies would kill him, he ate them anyway.

So how would Mark Estes deal with the ultimate diet challenge?

A story that answers the simple question: Do diets come from hell?

 

 

 

BEST EATEN ON A SLOW TUESDAY

 

 

Mark Estes stared at the sugar cookies in Heaven’s Bakery window. The grains of white sugar seemed to catch the light of the sunny, spring day at just the perfect angle, making the cookies almost twinkle in happiness.

Cookies could be happy, couldn’t they? They made him happy just looking at them.

The sidewalk in front of the bakery smelled like fresh bread, drawing unsuspecting passersby like him to the evil trap of sugar cookies and a promise of how they would melt in his mouth with their joyous sweetness.

He knew he would be transported to his own heaven if he could just bite into one or two of them.

No, maybe in the end a half dozen or so.

No. No. He would need a dozen.

A baker’s dozen.

Thirteen of the little bastards would give their lives to his taste sensations and they would die happy doing so. He wouldn’t even share them with his mistress, Candy. He would eat them before he got to his secret penthouse apartment for their normal Tuesday lunch romp on the Posture Perfect Mattress. Neither Candy nor his annoying diet-master of a wife, Beth, would ever know.

Secret cookies were a lot better than flaunted cookies.

Both Candy and his wife stayed with him because of his money. And his power. He had no doubt they were both afraid to leave him. And they should be. He hadn’t gotten to where he was at in the world without a few broken bones and bodies in his wake.

So if he wanted to spend some money on sugar cookies, screw Candy and his wife and his stupid doctors.

Cookies were worth it.

Good food of all types was worth it.

He just loved to eat, almost more than anything else in the world.

He hitched up his silk pants and checked his suspenders to make sure neither had come loose under his silk jacket. He seemed to be gaining a little weight, so he was going to need to get new suits this week. As long as he kept his suits fitting his 400 plus pounds, no one would notice he was still gaining weight.

He glanced around, feeling slightly guilty, but not enough to turn away from the wonderful bakery smell. Then, as he started for the front door, his phone rang.

He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at it. Only three or four people on the planet had his private number. Shit, it was Brenda, his secretary. She had strict orders to never call him on Tuesday and Friday lunch breaks unless it was an extreme emergency.

He answered, “Yeah. Better be good.”

“Sir,” she said. “I have really bad news.”

“Go ahead.”

She took a deep breath. “A dozen sugar cookies will kill you this afternoon at 3:15 p.m. exactly.”

“What?” he asked.

“Don’t have the sugar cookies, sir,” Brenda said. “Just go have sex with Candy and come back to the office. I beg of you.”

He actually sputtered.

Mark Estes, one of the most powerful men in all the city prided himself in not being caught unaware or surprised.

And he never sputtered.

Never.

He clicked off the phone without another word, then made sure the tracking on the GPS was switched off, then he turned the entire phone off and stuck it in his pocket.

Then slowly, he stood in front of the window with the plate of sugar cookies and studied the neighborhood around him, looking for anyone suspicious, or anyone watching him.

Third Street was wide, with cars parked on both sides and two lanes of traffic headed east in the middle. As was normal for midday, the traffic was heavy, mostly cabs, and the sidewalks had a fair share of people focused on getting somewhere and ignoring everyone else.

A number of office buildings towered over the street, with storefronts, delis, and restaurants lining the sidewalk on both sides. His office was on the top floor of a building two blocks from here. His company owned the entire thirty-story building. His secret penthouse apartment was still another three blocks away.

On bad weather days he had his limo driver take him the five blocks, but today because the weather was nice, not too hot, not too nasty, he had decided to walk.

His business was the importing of condiments for half the country. He was rich beyond his imagination and had seldom cared what anyone thought or said about him. Or his massive weight.

At five-eight, four hundred pounds made him look round and more powerful than he already was.

All he cared about was getting more power, bossing around other people, eating great food, and having sex like a whale of a bunny.

So how did Brenda know he was going to buy cookies and what was all this scare crap about the cookies killing him at a specific time?

He liked Brenda, he trusted Brenda. Maybe it hadn’t been Brenda who had made that call.

In this modern world, anything was possible, especially with the Democrats in charge. He had sure donated his fair share to some questionable Republican candidates. Maybe that was what this was all about.

He shook his head. No one scared the condiment king off his cookies.

He took out his phone, clicked it on, and called his office.

Brenda answered.

“How did you know about the cookies?” he asked.

“What cookies?” she asked.

“Did you just call me a minute ago?”

“No, sir,” she said. “I respect your orders to not be disturbed.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I will be back by 3 p.m.”

“Very good, sir,” Brenda said.

He clicked off his phone again.

So he had been right, it hadn’t been Brenda who called him. He would get his security people on it when he got back to the office. He had some top-notch people working in his tech department. They would be able to tell who had hacked his phone.

He glanced at the plate of sugar cookies once again. The little bastards called to him even more. He needed to buy two dozen, keep a dozen for snacking in his office.

He again started for the door of the bakery and his cell phone rang again.

But it couldn’t ring. It had been turned off.

He pulled it out of his pocket.

It wasn’t turned on, but it was ringing anyway.

Now that was some fancy hacking skills.

“What do you want?” he said to the phone without putting it up against the side of his head.

Text instantly appeared on the screen. “Don’t eat the cookies. They will kill you at 3:15 p.m.”

“Fuck you,” he said to the phone, walked three steps and tossed the phone as hard as he could at the pavement in the gutter. Then he stepped on it with his polished new shoes, smashing the damaged phone into bits.

A couple walking past gave him a wide berth and muttered something about anger management courses loud enough for him to hear.

He stood on the edge of the street between a parked Ford Taurus and an old pickup truck with most of its paint missing. He was panting and he could feel his heart racing.

When he got back to his office, he would have a team of tech experts track through that private phone account. No one hacked him like that. No one.

Suddenly, at that moment his stomach rumbled.

He glanced back at the bakery and the cookies in the window. The fresh bread smell seemed to have gotten stronger.

He needed cookies, then sex.

In that order.

And that’s what he got.

In that order.

He made it back to his office with the second dozen cookies in a white bag just five minutes after three. Candy had been her own wonderful and energetic sex partner, letting him mostly just lay there while she did all the moving around his bulk.

He liked that.

And he had flat loved the cookies. They had delivered on their promise of life-altering sweetness and melt-in-your-mouth death.

He had savored them, eating the last one while on the elevator to his apartment.

Although, after the cookies, the sex, and the walk back to his office, he was feeling a little washed out. Luckily his afternoon was pretty light on appointments.

Brenda nodded to him as she handed him his messages as he walked past and into his office.

He had dropped into his chair before he realized someone was sitting across the desk from him.

It took him a moment to recognize the large bulk of his best friend Benny Nieto. The two of them had come up through school together, both built businesses, and remained fast friends through it all right up until the day Benny had died two years before of complications from diabetes. He had only been fifty-two.

Benny’s death had caused Mark to cut back eating for a short time, start walking more, and get a physical. It was during that physical that Mark had learned that he was also diabetic.

Beth, on hearing that news, had become a tyrant around food, as she said, trying to keep him alive.

After a few months of food hell, he had just decided to play along, but not bother.

“You’re not here,” Mark said to Benny.

“Yeah, I know, I’m dead.” Benny said, biting into what looked like a huge peanut butter cookie.

“So I know you’re dead and you know your dead, how come I can see you?”

Benny shrugged letting the flesh on his massive shoulders jiggle like he was experiencing an earthquake. “I’m just waiting for 3:15 so we can get the hell out of here and go have dinner.”

“Ghosts eat?” Mark asked, ignoring that time thing again.

“The restaurants on the other side are to die for,” Benny said, then realized the bad pun and laughed, again sending waves of flesh bouncing around his body.

Mark had no doubt that Benny had gained some weight since dying. A lot of weight, actually. Hundreds of pounds, maybe.

“So it was you that tried to get me to not eat the cookies?” Mark asked.

“Sure was,” Benny said. “If you hadn’t eaten those cookies, you could have gone on banging good old Candy for another six years before the heart attack finally got you.”

“But how?” Mark asked.

“The overload from the cookies to your system is going to shut you down in about three minutes. You die almost instantly.”

Mark felt a bolt of terror surge through his body. “Any way out of this?”

“Nope, not after you ate those cookies,” Benny said. “Suicide by sugar. But I bet they were good, huh?”

Mark ignored him.

“Sorry old friend,” Benny said. “We both picked this path through the world and out the door. We knew what we were doing. And you enjoyed those cookies, as much as all the other meals and desserts you have eaten. We both traded off years of life for food. Sometimes I think it was worth it.”

“Only sometimes?” Mark asked, glancing at his watch.

“The food is great on the other side,” Benny said. “You’ll see in just a minute.”

“But it has its problems?” Mark asked.

“Oh, sure,” Benny said, finishing off the peanut butter cookie. “No hookers and no money, so no woman on the other side is interested in anyone our size except the really creepy ones with some really sick stuff going on.”

“Okay,” Mark said. “So what’s the downside?”

Benny held up his hand. “Say goodbye to that living body.”

Mark suddenly felt a sharp pain run through his entire body and the next thing he knew he went face-first into the expensive cherry wood of his desk.

Then, he stood up and moved to one side, feeling almost exactly the same.

His human body was solidly encased in his big chair, his face slack-jawed and his eyes open, staring into nothingness.

Mark looked down at his ghost body. He was still wearing his silk jacket and pants, held up by suspenders.

Benny slowly pushed himself out of his chair and stuck out his hand. “Welcome to the other side.”

Mark shook it. “Thanks for coming to meet me.”

They both stood there staring at Mark’s body for a moment. He didn’t feel at all sad about dying. He felt nothing, actually.

Benny handed him a peanut butter cookie and Mark took a bite. The taste was heavenly, even better than the sugar cookies that had killed him.

“Does all food on this side taste this good?” he asked.

“Sure does,” Benny said. “You up for getting some lunch?”

“I am,” Mark said.

Benny shifted his massive bulk toward the office door. “Follow me.”

“We can’t just jump to where we want to go?”

Benny laughed. “Nope, we walk everywhere. And it doesn’t help us lose a pound either.”

“Is that the downside you mentioned?” Mark asked as they made their way past Brenda, who was staring at her computer screen and didn’t notice the two large ghosts.

“Nope,” Benny said. “The downside is that we use no energy, burn no fat or calories when we move around or just exist each day. But we take in calories when we eat.”

Mark shook his head. He wasn’t understanding at all what Benny was getting at.

Benny finally reached the staircase and walked through the door.

“No elevator?” Mark asked.

“Can’t,” Benny said. “Elevators, cars, trains, nothing works for us. We walk. And let me tell you, it took me all morning to climb these stairs to meet you.”

“Thanks,” Mark said.

“Don’t mention it,” Benny said. “That’s what friends are for.”

“So besides the walking and not burning any calories, what’s the downside you mentioned?”

“For a time I thought of it as an upside,” Benny said. “On this side of death, we don’t pee or crap.”

“That’s a downside?” Mark asked. At 400 pounds, both of those bodily functions had become chores.

Benny made the ten steps down to the first landing and stopped, panting and red in the face.

Mark felt the same way. Going down stairs was almost as hard as climbing them.

“Think it through,” Benny said. “All in, nothing out.”

“You mean we are just going to get fatter?”

“Unless you don’t eat anything at all,” Benny said. “But I don’t think I could spend eternity doing that unless I was forced to.”

Mark sat down on the steps and stared at his best friend. What Benny was saying was finally dawning on him.

“We’re going to eat and get so fat we can’t move around anymore because we don’t burn calories and can’t pee or shit,” Mark said. “Is that what you are saying?”

“Yup, spot on the nose,” Benny said.

“And then we spend eternity as giant blobs of flesh only thinking about food, but having no way to get any. Right?”

“That’s how I read it as well,” Benny said.

Mark just put his head down and covered his face with his hands. He could feel he was hungry. He wanted another peanut butter cookie. More sugar cookies. Steaks, seafood, you name it, he wanted it.

He craved it.

And the feeling was very real.

He pushed the feeling away as best he could and tried to think. He had died and now, to keep his ability to even begin to move around as much as he did now, he had to stop eating.

Period.

Or he could eat until he could never move around again and then never eat after that, craving food for all eternity.

This was hell. He had no doubt.

He always sort of knew this was where he might head considering many of the things he had done to get ahead. But he had always kind of hoped there wouldn’t be either a heaven or a hell.

He had been wrong about that.

“Any out you can see on this?” Mark asked.

Benny shook his head. “There are massive piles of human flesh all over the place, existing where they fell and couldn’t get up.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Mark said.

“He doesn’t live in these parts,” Benny said. “But what’s even worse are the poor souls who got sent here on the other side of things.”

Now Mark was confused.

Benny clearly saw that.

“You’ll understand when we get to the street. The people who are in this place who were focused in life only on staying thin with the same passion that we ate don’t get fat here. They burn calories when they move around, but take no calories in no matter how much they eat.”

Benny just shuddered. Exactly the opposite of what was going to happen to them.

“Piles of living human bones litter the street as well,” Benny said, shaking his head in disgust. “Nothing but skin covering bones. They just stay where they fell when some muscle finally got eaten away from starvation.”

“So we are all destined in this hell to go one direction or the other?” Mark asked.

“Got it in one,” Benny said.

Mark felt his stomach rumbling. “So you say the food is great here?”

Benny nodded, smiling. “Memorable.”

“Memorable enough for the memories of the food to last for eternity?” Mark asked.

Benny made a motion to indicate his huge mass of flesh. “I’m betting on it.”

Mark could either go on a strict diet and never eat and retain the right to move around or he could eat and then remember each meal off into eternity.

Short-term gain, long-term loss.

That’s how he had gambled with his life when alive. He could see no reason to change now.

This was hell. Of that there was no doubt.

But at least the food was good.

And the cookies heavenly.