Lalia's Dream Job: A Craving Control Story, Pt.2

"Lalia I can' afford all this!" Francesco despaired, looking in horror at the printout of his credit card bill as he clutched his telephone between his cheek and shoulder, "You've spent over $4500 counting last night... on starters!"
He had called Lalia as soon as he had checked his balance online, and was now storming around the floor of the restaurant in mid-morning he feared would be bankrupt by that afternoon,
"'Cesco, 'Cesco, chill out, man," Lalia assured him, "You will be able to afford all this, your main competitor is outta business 'round there, they won't be back open for months, if ever!"
Francesco looked around his empty restaurant confusedly, gesturing to nobody with his cordless phone clamped to his ear,
"Lalia I know you think you shut this place down, but they can order in more food, they'll be back open tomorrow, they'll have made money on this!"
The self-confident tone to Lalia's voice made the restaurateur know he was missing something,
"I'll take it you didn't watch the local news last night, 'Cesco?" she smirked,
"No... I had ahh... an early night," he shrugged,
"That's my boy, I'm surprised they didn't report on an earthquake in the vicinity of your bedroom!" Lalia teased the now-blushing Italian, "Can you get online on your computer a moment, I got somethin' to show you,"
At this, Francesco stopped in his tracks, and immediately forgot his embarrassment as his eyes narrowed,
"Lalia?" he hesitated, "Wha' you mean?"
"Just... get online. All will be revealed," Lalia mysteriously replied. With no small amount of trepidation, Francesco climbed the narrow wooden stairs to his office, beyond the dark door to the back of his restaurant marked 'Private'. He tried to coax more details from Lalia on en route, but all his unconventional employee would say was that he should get online to see. Once in front of his computer, he was directed by the voice in his ear to the local news website,
"Now..." Lalia said, evidently whilst smiling on the other end of the telephone, "Which link do you think we should click on, 'Cesco?"
The greying Italian picked up thin-rimmed spectacles he kept next to his computer for reading and scanned across the website's homepage. Nothing stood out immediately; the weather, the times of the next live report, news in pictures and so on... until he glanced at the 'News in Video' highlights. Far and away the most-watched clip featured the tagline,
'INFLATABLE DINER WREAKS RESTAURANT HAVOC'
Francesco looked to this section of the screen, a grin spreading across his face as he told Lalia,
"I think I found it,"
"Play it!" Lalia encouraged, and Francesco clicked the link, which after a few seconds loading and a few more buffering, began,
"I'm live at Antonelli's Pasta and Pizzeria, in the centre of Pinebridge where the restaurant's 'all you can eat' challenge has gone horribly wrong," the familiar face of local news' chief reporter Carmen Morgan spoke to camera,
"Lalia, what is this?" Francesco asked,
"'Cesco, I'm an ambitious girl, I set myself high standards. I wasn't happy that I only managed to run the first two places dry, I wanted to take this place off the map. The best way I could think of doing that was eating till my belly split through the walls. I didn't quite manage that, but they had to pretty much demolish one of them so I consider it a victory on my part,"
Francesco gulped as his mouth dried at Lalia's words and the images which flashed onscreen to accompany them. The camera panned across the restaurant's abandoned interior, diners having clearly fled hastily just moments before, leaving their meals half-eaten or barely touched. Suddenly the shot alighted upon a mountainous flesh-toned mass in the middle of the room, bumping and barging nearby tables aside where it met resistance. The firm, smooth mass jiggling distractingly, at times trembling and shuddering as Francesco squinted at the slightly pixellated video and suddenly noticed a belly button adorning the organic prominence's front,
"There's my girl, look how all grown up she is!" Lalia cooed on the phoneline, as the camera cut to a close-up shot of a table resting on Lalia's sprawling tummy, lifted up onto two legs by her staggering growth. Francesco gasped, nearly falling off his seat as the shot revealed a profile view of Lalia's towering belly,
"Lalia! That's you!" he spluttered,
"Well, duh, sweetie, who did you expect it to be?" Lalia joked,
"No I mean, all of that is you!"
"Oohhhhhh I know!" Lalia groaned, "There was soooo much of me, it was awesome!"
The insatiable eater's tiny body was utterly dwarfed by her supermassive belly, which bulged from seemingly every available inch of her front; her miniscule body was seated on the far right of the frame, the rest of which was entirely dominated by belly. Taller than Lalia and at least ten feet in length, her tummy's width was probably comparable of a similar size and her girth totally incalculable,
"Lalia, what have you done to yourself?" Francesco questioned, aghast and concerned at Lalia's appearance on his desktop,
"Took the brakes off, baby!" Lalia whooped, "Went full throttle! You can go hard or you can go hungry, and man I went at that place hard!"
Francesco was so taken aback at the sheer size of Lalia's onscreen avatar he didn't listen to the news report's narration, the shot again cutting to zoom in on Lalia. Closer to her burgeoning body, her masses of flesh filled the camera lens, and her diminutive form appeared to just be a small protrusion from her gigantic belly. The front of her formerly long, flowing green dress was bunched up around her considerable tits, barely covering any of her stretching belly skin. The dilapidated dress' rear was pressed tightly between Lalia and the back of the chair and covered her bottom, whilst her hosiery-clad thighs poked out and clung softly to the sides of her spreading belly. Lalia's left hand clutched the flank of her titanic tummy, gently kneading its supple, malleable flesh whilst her right hand was out of sight,
"I had to slow down my eating once the newshounds showed, otherwise the game would've been up," Lalia confided to Francesco, clearly watching the video simultaneously to provide her own commentary to her employer, "I've still got plenty of goodies to my right there though,"
Francesco simply stared in amazement as Carmen Morgan ended her preamble and approached the enormous Lalia onscreen. Carmen crept up looking distinctly warily at the overgrown eater as Lalia's distended belly moaned and gurgled faintly,
"Oooooohh listen to me puuuuurrr," Lalia gushed in comment,
"Young lady, may I ask your name?" the reporter began meanwhile,
"Sure! It's, uh... 'Layla'," Lalia smiled sweetly, a plucky if not entirely convincing smallscreen actress,
"Can you explain what's happened here?"
"Well I'm the size of a house, lady! And still growing!" Lalia tried to suppress her cheer into an irritable huff, evidently trying to keep her joy to herself as her bloated belly provided a soundtrack *Guuuuuuurrrrbbbllllle!*
"And what is the cause?" the news reporter pressed,
"Mmmmmfff... I guesh it's some kinda allergic reaction!" Lalia fibbed between furtive chews of the unseen food she still snacked upon, "Never happened to me before! *UUUULLLPP!*"
"Hmmm," the journalist nodded, barely registering Lalia's blatant fabrications as she continued loading food into her wallowing gut, "And how long have you been this way?"
"Not long!" Lalia stated, as if for the record, "It's not like I've been here for days and days... which I would have to have been to get this size, right?" she looked questioningly down the camera lens, "Just an hour or two,"
The reporter nodded earnestly as Lalia answered, swinging the channel-branded microphone away from Lalia's as if she feared a bite would be taken out of it should the foam-covered bulb be left in front of the eater's face too long,
"I understand then that you believe the cause to be dining at this particular restaurant?" Carmen pushed, seeming to take Lalia's intended bait laying culpability upon Antonelli's,
"Mmmmmfff!" Lalia nodded an affirmative with another mouthful of food already piled between her lips, "They must have added something to this food, 'cos I still want more of it! *BWUUURRP!* Is that bad?"
"Miss Layla..." the journalist began,
"Just call me Layla, sweetie!" Lalia grinned at the sound of her alter-ego's title and flashed the camera a cheeky wink,
"Layla..." she rejoined, attempting to inject an element of human interest into the bizarre story unfolding in front of her, "This must be a terrifying experience for you; how are you feeling?"
"I'm feeling... pretty darn... squishy!" Lalia began, groping handfuls of belly flesh, "I mean, pretty darned annoyed! I wasn't expecting this from such a reputable establishment!"
Here Lalia, ever the exhibitionist again turned to camera and addressed the audience,
"If this can happen to me it can happen to anybody! What would you do if this were you?" she wailed, footage of the gathering crowd outside suddenly edited into the video,
"Pretty convincing, no?" Lalia's cunning voice crackled down the line to Francesco, who sat in front of his computer in silence, astounded at how easily Lalia seemed to be pulling off the previous night's coup,
"Siiiii..." he agreed, eyes still glued to the unfolding video onscreen, which Lalia still seemed to be playing simultaneously. The familiar voice of the female reporter now narrated the sequence of the evening's events in a voiceover as a hasty montage displayed shots of stunned onlookers, uneasy staff and glimpses of Lalia's expanding skin from outside of the restaurant,
"Look, checkitout!" Lalia jabbered excitedly at an exterior shot, "They had to take the whole of that front window out to get me out! The fire and rescue are such nice boys, they got me out of a little 'tight spot' when I took a snack into the bath with me last year," she giggled, a slapping noise audible over the phone as she continued, "They're well used to the sight of this flesh!"
Soon the narration introduced an interview with the restaurant manager,
"Mr Antonelli, are you guilty of adding artificial ingredients or allergens to your food?" the reporter immediately accused,
"No! No, we would never do such a thing!" the man said, balding in his fifties with grey hair and perspiration clearly present on his brow. His nervous eyes darted about as a light behind the camera glared into his face as he stood outside of his restaurant,
"Ahhhh, Antonelli, you always were a slippery customer," Francesco smiled, "You couldn' look more guilty if you try... Lalia, you a genius, this looks too good to be true!"
"Shhhh, look, he doesn't know what to say, it's great!" Lalia pointed out, as the reporter pressed the owner for details on how long the enormous eater had been in his restaurant that evening,
"I didn't see her come in, I didn't look at the clock! It was a busy time!" he protested in vain, glancing about at the gathering crow outside his restaurant. Blue lights filled the darkened street as the fire service arrived, then the video cut to footage of them taking out the large front window and demolishing the wall at the restaurant's frontage, much to Lalia's amusement, both onscreen and over the phone. The reporter moved back into the interior with another piece to camera outlining the plan to extract 'Layla'; but Francesco was more interested in what was happening in the background, around Lalia's ballooning form,
"Oooooh, can one of you boys just pass me some garlic bread?" Lalia could be heard asking, her face turned away from the camera, before deciding, "Actually, just cram it on in there... yeah, that's it... mmmmm!"
She giggled over the telephone to Francesco as he realised what was going on,
"Lalia, what are you doing there?" he asked, already knowing the answer as her laughter continued down the line, "You're still eating there, aren't you?!"
"I'm afraid I'm not a perfect actress, 'Cesco, there are a few plot-holes from here on in if you're watching carefully," Francesco's blood ran cold as he envisioned their underhand scheme being discovered. Lalia seemed to disregard his concerns however, even as she could clearly be heard chattering in the background as the reporter addressed the camera,
"Hell yeah I think I've got room for that, pile it on the top there!" came her shrill voice over her vast, gurgling tummy's increasingly fierce protests, as Francesco cringed in dread,
"I had a couple of sneaky little feeders back there," Lalia giggled as she described to Francesco what was happening, "Turns out I've got something of a fan club in town! They snuck in and hid behind me once they'd taken the window out to help fatten me up a little more,"
On hearing this, Francesco felt for sure they would be found out, but worse news was to come,
"I've watched this footage a couple of times, 'Cesco," Lalia confessed, "And although you can't really notice as it happens, if you compare the very start of the footage to where the firemen finally get me out, I am so much bigger!"
"You were already the size of a restaurant, Lalia," Francesco cried as Lalia's giant onscreen gut vibrated with satiated gurglings, "Couldn't you have left it there?"
"'Cesco, this was one occasion where size didn't matter!" Lalia proclaimed, "How many times d'you think I've had the opportunity to eat as much as I want?"
There was a pause,
"More times than you'd think, actually," Lalia admitted, "But every time I get it, I've got to make the most of it!"
"You coulda been more... discreet," Francesco sighed, as Lalia's onscreen counterpart congregated with her unseen cohorts,
"But there was a catering tub of ice cream up for grabs!" Lalia boasted, "Oh man I could feel the calories landing in my belly!"
Francesco again protested at her lack of subtlety as the video clearly showed Lalia munching away, her head turned away from camera, in almost every shot,
"Well they took their time to take the window out, a girl gets peckish!" Lalia protested ironically, "I was wasting away!"
"Lalia, I can see what you're doing from here!" Francesco remonstrated, "Look there! You can hear your belly growing!"
"*GUUULLLPP!* *BAAAYYYOOOOOOOUUM!* Oh do pardon me!" Lalia could be heard tittering, "I think it might be fluid retention!"
"Look, look, this bit see?" Lalia jabbered excitedly over the phone, "More and more excuses kept coming to me!"
Although it looked like she was retaining enough fluid to fill up a swimming pool, Francesco had to admit that Lalia was relatively convincing in her explanations,
"I have no hesitation in saying that this is my finest hour, 'Cesco!" said Lalia triumphantly, "But it was absolutely killing me not being able to admit that was allllll food, baby!"
Her employer could readily appreciate this, in his experience as Lalia was usually more than forthcoming when it came to advertising her stuffing 'achievements',
"They just didn't know who to believe, see," she continued, "They couldn't believe for a moment that I'd actually eaten all that, but at the same time I don't think they could think of another explanation,"
"*BWWWUUUUUURRRRPPP!* Oohhhhh, stick a fork in me, I am done!" 'Layla' groaned loudly, stretching her arms out to comfort the most distant parts of her belly she could reach, with the rest spilling out across the restaurant floor metres in front of her,
"Yeah, there really is no other explanation," Francesco grumbled,
"Shh, shh! This is where they start trying to move me!" Lalia interrupted, "If it's any consolation, I had to stop eating at this point,"
"Thank God," Francesco rolled his eyes, before an onscreen commotion arrested his attention, "Lalia now what's going on?"
"You know my friend Jane, right?" Lalia began, as a diminutive black-haired figure picked its way through the rubble of the restaurant's former facade and approached the outsized fleshy bulk in its centre,
"Si,"
"Well she just happened to be passing by, saw a crowd gathering at a restaurant, put two and two together..." Lalia explained matter-of-factly as the tiny female figure approach the hulking onscreen form. The two clearly exchanged some words that the camera failed to detect, with Jane gradually becoming more agitated,
"Lalia I am mortified!" Jane hissed in anger at the culmination of the dialogue,
"Well that's nice, 'cos I'm immobilised!" Lalia retorted, not bothering to hide the enormous grin on her face, causing a seething Jane to turn and storm back out of the gaping hole left by the extraction of the window, clearly enraged at the sheer enormity and brazenness of Lalia's latest stuffing,
"Ok, now they move me," Lalia told Francesco,
"How did they do that?"
"They pulled sheets under my belly and sorta dragged it along that way," Lalia replied as Carmen Morgan was also outlining the fire department's in voiceover, "That thing was beyond carrying, let me tell you! Just walking along behind it felt heavy enough!"
Meanwhile onscreen, Carmen was asking bystanders gathering outside the restaurants' torn-apart frontage for comments. Some faces in the background simply smiled and peered, conscious of Lalia's local celebrity status; others expressed their shock and surprise,
"I've never seen anything like this happen in Pinebridge before," a quiet older woman offered, "I do hope the young lady will be ok,"
Carmen nodded earnestly, thanking the lady and turning to the left, the camera following her,
"And what do you make of this, sir?" she asked a young black teen standing close to the windowless restaurant,
"I think she's gonna blow personally," he replied plainly,
"Hey, that's my friend!" came a shrill voice from just out of shot as Jane tried to interject, clearly still in the crowd despite her argument,
"Hey, I heard that, I'm right here!" Lalia's voice reminded them from the side of her wall-like belly, "Nobody's 'gonna blow', I've just, err... found myself in *BLLUUUURRRBBBLE!* a bit of a situation, here!"
Several moments later, the firefighters seemed to ready themselves to extract Lalia from the building,
"Oh, man. This is gonna be a tight squeeze, isn't it?" an obviously nervous Lalia muttered onscreen, pursing her dry lips as she glanced from her cavernous tummy to the makeshift exit, "Can somebody get a tape measure or something, make sure I can actually go through that, 'cos it looks kinda snug from where I'm standing... sitting... whatever,"
A tape measure and step ladder was produced, and Lalia was evidently assured that her astoundingly swollen stomach could be squeezed through the flattened wall as its overfilled rumblings rippled the stretched midriff skin barely containing it,
"They wouldn't tell me how big I was y'know!" Lalia complained to Francesco, "Not even after the cameras had stopped rolling!"
Soon, several firefighters were pulling at the sheets that had been passed under Lalia's crowded, gurgling gut and they inched the fattened form of the gluttonous redhead forwards,
"Oohhhhh can you do your best to kinda not... *BWUURRP!*... jiggle me? It's... *OYUUURRPPP!* ... Uuungh! Unflattering at best!" a windy Lalia moaned. Her cavernous tummy tremored visibly with the movement of her extraction as her mammoth load squirmed around inside her, to her obvious discomfort,
"Man, all my dials were in the red," Lalia admitted over the phone as her onscreen visage grimaced following a particularly lurching movement, which shifted her mammoth cargo and bulged her tummy's walls noticeably outwards momentarily, "I'm not sure where my rafters are, but I was definitely packed to them!"
Upwards of six firemen slowly and arduously hauled the engorged eater across the restaurant floor whilst cameras flashed from the sidewalk, lighting up her mountainous gut like a hot air balloon. Her swaying, wobbling belly reeled forwards uneasily with each heave and Lalia's monumental tum gurgled in protest as her leaden form was shifted towards the vacant window,
"I couldn't actually see where we were going," Lalia commentated, "All I could see in front of me was belly! I could feel when I was going through the window though, I'm sure my belly grazed the top of it once! Y'know, at my fattest point,"
"Uuuuugggghhh, God I gotta drop a few dress sizes!" 'Layla' groaned just at that moment, as her humungous gut was crammed through the gap created in the building. Francesco watched his monitor in silent awe as she was edged into the street, now almost permanently lit with flashbulbs, where a large goods truck was now parked at the curbside,
"Lalia, is that there why I think it's there?" Francesco asked with a smile,
"It's not making deliveries if that's what you're thinking," she giggled, "It's got a heavy load to pick up!"
The pair watched on their separate monitors as the vast eater was conveyed troublesomely over the pavement whilst policemen shoved the rubbernecking crowds backwards down either direction of the street to make way. The truck had now been repositioned at a ninety-degree angle to the curb for the firefighters to awkwardly shuffle the blob-like Lalia onto the vehicle's rear tail gate,
"*FLLLLUUMMMPPHHHH!* OOOOFFF!" puffed Lalia as her staggeringly colossal gut was dragged from the sidewalk onto the cargo lift, "Oohhhhh, easy boys!" she was heard to groan, rubbing her tender belly as it creaked under pressure,
"Man all that food wanted out of me!" Lalia sighed as she fondly recollected the previous night's events, finally being lifted up to the back of the van onscreen after some repositioning, "I guess I'm made of stern, stretchy stuff!"

"What did the fire department have to say about all this?" Francesco questioned, eager to iron out any line of incrimination as the images on screen showed Lalia being hauled into the back of the barely-coping truck and taken away,
"As I said, they are great boys! I was just like, 'Take me home!' and they were all like, 'How you gonna fit into your house, Lalia?'" she explained, adopting a jockish voice to represent a firefighter, "So I was like, 'Good point,' and they said, 'Tell you what, come back to the station for tonight, there's plenty of room for you and you'll have a roof over your head', which was a pretty sweet deal. We had a great time, we ordered a coupla pizzas..."
"You had more to eat?!"
"Yeah, like I said, we ordered a coupla pizzas and played some cards. We got some great photos too; I was all for them climbing on top of the belly but they were kind of uneasy about that," Lalia pondered, "But yeah, like I said, they're more than used to this sight of this flesh! By which I mean, there weren't too distracted by the massive swingers or the frankly behemoth belly!"
There was no interrupting Lalia now as she continued,
"And we've got some killer ideas for the future; they're gonna try and fill me up with their fire hose! Me! Fill me up! I was like, 'Good luck!'" she babbled, "They've got like a compressor pump there too, I was hoping they'd let me have a go, see how far I can strrrrretch the ol' belly!"
"You didn't tell them why you were in the restaurant, Lalia!?" Francesco suddenly panicked, trying to press Lalia back to matters at hand,
"Nooooo 'Cesco, they just thought I was there for a good ol' fashioned blowout!" Lalia assured him, "I wouldn't do that to you!"
Francesco finally felt confident that their unlikely plot to oust the town's culinary competition may just have worked, and set to congratulating his bottomless double agent,
"Lalia, that's gotta be the biggest you ever been, eh?" he cajoled,
"'Cesco," Lalia tutted, "Just 'cos that's the biggest you've ever seen me, doesn't mean it's the biggest I've ever been,"
"You... ah, I mean... really?" the Italian stuttered, stunned,
"Let's just say I know for a fact there was room for dessert," Lalia told him,
"Aha,"
"And a cheeseboard,"
"Ah,"
"And coffee,"
"...ah,"
"And some drinks in town,"
"Lal.."
"And a takeaway,"
"Wh..."
"And a midnight snack,"
"Lalia, what the..."
"And an early breakfast,"
"L..."
"And the same again the next day,"
"Lalia, stop! You serious? You really done that?"
"We've all got some skeletons in our cupboard, 'Cesco," Lalia giggled, "It's just that mine got too fat for the cupboard and came bursting out!"
Francesco smiled as he stood up from his desk,
"So when you be back to ol' 'Cesco's, ah? We celebrate our success!"
"Ah... as soon as, uh... possible!" Lalia somewhat uneasily replied,
"Ha-ha! When your belly, she go down, ah?" he laughed,
"Ha, yeah, sure 'Cesco... still, ah... bustin' a gut over here," she unconvincingly bluffed.

"Jane, you are not gonna believe this," Lalia called from the next room as she heard Jane enter the kitchen some ten minutes after having spoken to Francesco,
"Lalia, I'm honestly so angry with you after last night I can't even speak to you," Jane snarled,
"No really Jane, you've got to see this to believe it," Lalia persisted,
"I did see it last night, Lalia, and you're right, I don't believe it! I don't believe how self-centred you are to land me in that!"
"Janey I'm sorry but you honestly should see this!"
"No Lalia, no! I'm through with this, I'm through with all of your stuffing!" Jane snapped, slamming down the cup she was carrying to the tap, "It's out of control! It's impacting on the lives of the people you care about, and if you do care about me then you'll just let me forgive you in my own time!"
The ensuing pause seemed to last hours to Jane,
"Ja-a-a-a-nnne!" came Lalia's singsong voice, "Please come here, I'm really sorry!"
"Lalia just leave me alone!" Jane bellowed, "I don't want to speak to you and I definitely don't want to see you in the same state as last night,"
"Yeah well about that," said Lalia, as Jane's eyebrows furrowed in curiosity, "You know how I always snap back into shape the next day like some sorta cartoon character?"
Jane wavered in the hallway debating whether to round the corner or not,
"Jane?" came Lalia's plaintive tone. Jane didn't respond,
"Jane?"
"What?"
"You know how..."
"Yeah I heard that part," Jane told her angrily as she paced outside the room,
"Well you're right, I'm not immune, I've put on weight this time,"
A smile cracked Jane's elfin features as she imagined the cellulite forming around her stunning housemate's ass and thighs, and she couldn't resist walking in on Lalia to gloat,
"You know you deserve this," Jane almost giggled as she rounded the corner, her mood lightening already,
"It's just all kinda gone..."
"HO-LY CRAP!"
"...to my boobs."