“All men are pigs.”

She was late for Girls’ Night. She was so depressed though, that she did not care; standing at the counter listlessly, a family of giggling brats to her right, three judgmental old ladies to her left, and a pair of man-eating divas behind her.

‘Girls’ Night at Darlene’s?’

What would she even be doing there, sitting next to Ellen—tall sexy Ellen—married to the football player, a mansion under her narrow ass. Across the table would lounge voluptuous Megan, sleeping with the Mayor, and the Mayor’s husband, beating men off with a stick at every turn. She would be like a hamster, nestled among ermine, in the house of The Queen, Darlene, the six foot temptress who dined like some 1950’s gold-digger on a steady diet of successful men.

‘Why do they even include me?’

‘They must feel sorry for me—I’m the charity case. They’ll be feeding me carrots and celery and coconut water, coaching me on landing a husband, maybe even having sex for the first time since, since Bill—that bastard!’

The man’s voice was husky yet lethargic as the boxes slapped down on the counter, “A large double-stuffed special—hold—damn, even the anchovies. Go girl. Breadsticks with extra marinara. Forty naked wings with blue cheese and ranch dip. That will be fifty-two ninety-eight miss.”

The room had grown silent as he recited her gluttonous order to the surrounding judges. She looked down at her shoes in embarrassment, but they weren’t there. Obscuring her line of sight was not a pooch, a baby bump, or a belly—but a gut!

‘To hell with it!’

She placed sixty on the counter and slid out of there as fast as she could, “Keep the change.”

It seemed forever until she got to her car on the lot. This car was the one thing in her life, given to her by the one real man in her life, that she had going for her; Daddy’s 79 Dodge Charger; candy apple red, fast, sexy, powerful, all of the things that she was not. She plopped down in the driver’s seat and set her dinner on the seat that was forever empty, unless of course she wanted to drive the girls around so that men could completely ignore her!

‘Bastards!’

She reached for the breadsticks. They would be fresh and crispy, would not ejaculate prematurely, would not roll over and begin snoring after three minutes of frustration—would not watch the goddamn football games all day long!

‘No, not here. Have some self-respect. The divas will be strutting out with their salads any minute.’

She looked longingly at the three steamy boxes: Forget, Regret and Fuckit as she strapped in. ‘Don’t worry guys. We’ll have a steamy roadside date in minutes.’

She fired Daddy’s Girl up, sank into the soothing machine as the rumble of the reconditioned four-barrel calmed her nerves, and then pulled out, blowing the eyelashes off of the Tweetie Bird divas as they stepped back in haste.

She loved weaving in and out of rush hour traffic, loved it when people challenged her on the road, where she had the power! Just as she was easing into the right lane a jerk in a John Deere cap banked his huge oversized pickup truck with monster truck wheels and extended mirrors out into that lane—her lane—and cut her off. She seethed behind the wheel as her wheels were stuck behind his. Then she saw the bumper stickers, on the chrome bumper between the bimbo mud flaps. There were two stickers for local strip clubs. She looked down at her own breasts in anger, sagging already at thirty-five even though she had never had a baby.

‘Oh no he didn’t!’

She spotted the jerk looking at her and laughing in his extended side view mirror. She did not want him to know that she knew so looked back at the bumper, at the middle sticker, which was huge, covering half the bumper, and read, ‘Jack it up’ ‘fat girls can’t climb’.

‘Oh you skinny creep!’

She gunned it and swerved around him, nearly taking it in the ass by a trash truck which honked its air horn. Traffic was beginning to speed up and separate, and she was able to slide back in front of him.

‘Oh yeah. Eat my dust bitch. Jeff Gordon you are not! No way does that tank blow by Daddy’s Girl.’

She had to get her eyes back on the road so she could stay in front of him in the turn—and then came humiliation washing over her like an icy torrent, as his engine roared and he took it over the sidewalk and cut her off so sharply that she had to swerve. She almost skidded against the median as her tires lost rubber sliding across the left lane. She came to a stop with a sloshing jerk as he roared off down the boulevard in his monster jerk truck. She scanned the cockpit to make a damage assessment and saw her wings, and breadsticks tipped over, marinara and blue cheese dripping off her leather upholstery—her world turned red!

“It’s on bitch!”

She peeled rubber and thrilled to the feeling of the tires taking a grip after a brief fishtail, and mentally patted herself on the back for having latter bars installed, just in case this came to a high speed chase.

She followed him for miles, out of the city, into the suburbs, and finally on to some winding country roads; roads she wasn’t all that familiar with. She kept her distance, used her subtle female senses to keep a third vehicle between them at all times. A few times she panicked after losing sight of the big black Ford truck. She was a physical therapist on a mission. It did strike her as ironic that helping patients recover from auto accidents was her specialty. After about fifteen minutes the beast mobile finally pulled in to some rural gas station.

She seethed.

‘Easy girl, let him gas up and then challenge him to a race, out here on these country roads. Wrap his ass around a tree!’

She watched as he gassed the thing up. Then he returned to the store. She took her opportunity to lay down the challenge by pulling up between the mart and the gas pump. He emerged with a Mountain Dew in one hand and two snacks in the other. When he stepped out in front of her he looked down with his narrow patchy-bearded face and laughed. She lowered her window and stuck her head out, “Wanna race asshole?”

He blinked at her and regarded the two stick-like snacks in his hand with a wry grin. He took one, looked at it, and said, “Slim Jim don’t race girls, specially not plumper gear heads." He then placed the meat stick in the pocket of his flannel shirt.

Then with a broadening grin he said, “I apologize for cutting you off hon. Here, I got this for you.” He then threw the other snack onto her windshield, where it rolled to rest above her windshield wiper blade. It was a cow tail snack.

‘Oh no he didn’t!’

The man was standing, belly laughing before her, apparently paralyzed by the hilarity of his own joke.

Without thinking she punched it.

She had really not known what to expect; had not actually considered the impact. She took him at the knees but he did not go down, kind of flew up instead. One of the dangling flopping feet that hit her windshield as the body rolled off the roof on the passenger side, did not have a boot on it, just a sock.

“Wow!”

She heard him slap down and brought Daddy’s Girl to a stop just beyond the pump. She looked in her rearview mirror to see if he was moving. Not only was he moving, he was sitting up with one leg—the one without the boot—sticking out behind him, and he was cursing her, “You fat whore! I’ve got your tag number! You’re going down!”

She did not make a decision. It was just one of those things that happens automatically, as if by instinct. She slammed Daddy’s Girl into reverse. She would never be able to forget the slack-jawed bug-eyed look on his face as he sat there crookedly propping himself up with his wiry arms showing through his torn flannel shirt.

She lost sight of his face as the red trunk of Daddy’s Girl raced to meet it. She heard a sickening pop, and then a smack like a watermelon dropping on the supermarket floor. Then, again, as if on instinct, she punched it and was off like a rock star. As she banked onto the quiet country road she could see, in her pink tasseled rearview mirror, the bloody mess that had been Slim Jim sprawled before the gas pump.

She felt proud, powerful, and free.

“Suuweet! Best not be messing with Daddy’s Girl!”

It did not even occur to Martha May Wilson to grab a breadstick, warm though they still were. Her famished soul had just acquired a more rarified taste.

Fat Girl is the first chapter of Dancing on The Edge, a novelette I plan on writing whenever the spirit of Martha May Wilson moves me.