Renée gets paid to eat. When she worked as a receptionist in an accounting firm, she never imagined that was a possibility. Some people fall into the job of their dreams. Renée’s dreams were always filled with cakes, pies, and slices of pizza dripping with cheese. When she saw the opportunity, she hurled herself into a life full of sticky, gooey satisfaction.
It started as a hobby after she watched a new segment about a group of people in a faraway country that earned thousands of dollars eating as much as they could on camera. The idea made her skin tingle. Salvia pooled in the back of her mouth, and she hurried to her computer to search for someone to watch eat.
She sat mesmerized in front of her computer watching people eat piles of food while talking about their lives. There were so many of them. Her favorite was a small man with a round face, his black hair slicked back with too much gel. He ordered Chinese takeout and sat with the containers of food spread out on the table. He ate so much that Renee marveled. Stuffing his face with lo mein and General Tso’s Chicken, as he told jokes to his audience. Renee would watch his performance every evening after work. He chased away her loneliness and made the meals she ate alone in her apartment that much more bearable.
Renée remembers it like it was yesterday, she came home from work changed into a pair of comfortable exercise clothes and decided to set up her camera. If he could do it, there was no reason she couldn’t. The first time she sat in front of a heaping bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce looking at the red blinking light on her camera, she was so nervous she could hardly eat. She spilled spaghetti sauce all over her shirt and knocked over a glass of lemonade sending a cascading over the edge of the table onto her light gray carpet. When she finished, she lay on the sofa and swollen with food. [Read more…] about The Professional Eater (Flash Fiction Challenge)