A Feast at the Manor

Outside the Manorhouse Hotel, Rob Heying and his big, beautiful wife tried to catch their breath in the desert air. He felt like his lungs were melting into so much taffy, while Melinda simply moaned with each exhalation. The airport taxi motored off, pushing hot air onto them with a foul whiff of exhaust, a cruel imitation of a breeze.

The driver of the taxi hadn’t stopped yammering on and on about the Barringer Meteorite Crater—"It’s only ten miles from here!" he’d shouted back at them over the blasting radio—and how they had to visit it before they left. Rob just hoped his heart wouldn’t give out and leave his body floundering on the hot sidewalk of the hotel next to his wheezing wife. There wouldn’t be time for sightseeing on this trip.

He looked up at the bright white Manorhouse stretching out in front of him. The ten-story hotel stood in harsh contrast to the flat expanse of desert that surrounded it. Row upon row of double-paned windows looked down at him and his wife, each rectangle of glass boasting its own windowbox filled with cactus and purplish blue desert flowers. Double doors awaited them at the top of ten curved steps.

"You’d think there’d at least be someone here to greet us," Melinda said, a whine growing in her voice. Rob made himself turn to her with a smile, but she stepped away from him. "There better be AC. We pay all this money, and they can’t even treat us like we matter."

Rob bent for his bags, filled to bursting with two new pairs of cross-trainers, snacks, workout clothes, and books. He watched his wife make her way up the front stairs of the Manor. His dark-haired love since the day they met at South Dakota State, he still found Melinda and her curves arousing, despite the padding that had been added after ten years and three children. When they’d married, she’d been a size six. Now she cried every time they left Lane Bryant or the plus sections of regular clothing stores.

As the years passed, Rob had thought he was helping—in a misery-loves-company kind of way—by gobbling up his meals and clamoring for seconds. He’d let his own weight slip from two-thirty to five pounds shy of the big three double zero.

The thing was, unlike his wife, Rob didn’t mind being big. Big, not fat. He hated that word. As long as there were pants with elastic waists and adjustable seatbelts and floppy shirts that didn’t need to be tucked in, Rob Heying was okay with being big.

Continued...

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What the critics said about "A Feast at the Manor":

"Rob Heying and his wife Melinda are overweight. They go to a fat farm, an unusual one that charges a lot of money but promises results. The place seems odd and just gets odder, and Rob likes Melinda just fine as she is, but she really hates herself, and insisted on their trying it out. Her insistence, and his resistance, at first keep them from communicating as things get increasingly strange and then creepy. I really liked this story; Jasper handles the subjects of food, friendship, attraction, and marriage with grace, compassion, and a touch of humor, leading us unexpected places. "
— Sherwood Smith, SF Site

"When the would-be dieters in 'A Feast at the Manor' go on a two-week vacation/make-over in a sinister Arizona hotel where even the garden cacti make the hero feel 'like a balloon in a room full of needles,' nastiness and silliness are joined at the hip."
— Faren Miller, Locus

"'A Feast at the Manor' is lovely. Rob and Melinda go to a weight-loss facility, where they are tortured by horrible exercise and deprivation. The writing is so vivid, I could taste the chalky shakes they were given instead of meals. Is it any wonder that the inmates rebel and order pizza? As a consequence, they discover a sinister secret behind the facility's success. While I wasn't crazy about the sinister secret itself, the rest of the story more than made up for it. Jasper's skill of sympathetic observation shines in this tale—it is impossible not to love his overweight protagonists, far as they may be from the current ideal of a human body."
— E. Sedia, Tangent Online