Chapter 1: Why
The argument started over meatloaf.
“I’m eighteen. I can stay home by myself,” Mikey said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It’s a perfectly logical solution.”
His dad didn’t look up from his phone. “The house is getting the floors refinished. You can’t be here.”
“Then I’ll stay with Derek.”
“Derek’s family is going to Yellowstone,” his mother chimed in, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She had that bright, preoccupied look she got when a plan was finalized. “It’s all set, Michael. Your grandmother is so excited. She’s been… insistent.”
“Insistent how?”
“Calling. Texting. Sending little heart emojis.” His father scrolled with his thumb. “She wants to reconnect. It’s sweet. And your mother and I haven’t had a real vacation in years.”
Mikey stabbed a chunk of meatloaf. He remembered his grandmother from childhood as a soft, gray-haired woman in floral aprons, smelling of mothballs and peanut butter cookies. They’d visited less after his grandpa died five years ago, and then the calls just… tapered off. He’d heard whispers, words like “a difficult phase” and “finding herself” exchanged in hushed tones between his parents. It never sounded urgent. It never sounded like this.
“What’s she even going to do with me?” he muttered.
“Love you,” his mother said, a little too automatically. “Now finish up. Your train leaves early.”
The house looked wrong.
It was the same suburban split-level from his memories, but now it was painted a blinding, pepto-bismol pink. The trim was glossy black. A concrete garden gnome with disproportionately large breasts winked from a bed of crimson mulch.
Mikey’s duffel bag felt heavier. The humid summer air stuck his t-shirt to his back. He reached for the doorbell, a giant faux-crystal thing, but the door flew open before he could press it.
The smell hit him first—a tsunami of vanilla, orchids, and something sharper, like chemical cherries. It overwhelmed the earthy scent of cut grass.
“Mikey-boy! My beautiful grandson! You’re here!”
The voice was a high, sugary trill. The woman attached to it was a monument.
She filled the doorway, a cascade of shimmering honey-blonde hair extensions falling past shoulders that were tanned a deep, uniform bronze. Her face was a tight mask of makeup, contour lines stark under the afternoon sun, her lips a dramatic, glossy pillow of injected collagen that looked like two overstuffed sausages. They were pursed in a perpetual, kissy pout.
But it was her body that short-circuited his brain.
She wore a leopard-print tube dress that strained at every seam. Her breasts were two colossal, spherical orbs. They didn’t sag; they jutted out from her ribcage like polished marble monuments, smooth and implausibly round, their sheer size creating a deep, dark canyon of cleavage. The fabric stretched so tight over them Mikey could see the faint outline of the implant edges near her armpits. They seemed to exist in defiance of physics, of anatomy, of taste.
When she stepped forward to embrace him, her movement had a strange, top-heavy liquidity. Those giant breasts led the way, followed by the equally startling shelf of her buttocks. It was a pronounced, hyperbolic curve, like two giant stuffed crescents stacked one on top of the other, making her walk a slow, deliberate sway. The overall effect was less of a human woman and more of a caricature sculpted in warm, perfumed flesh.
She engulfed him. His face was pressed into the vanilla-scented valley between those impossible breasts, which felt unnervingly firm, like water balloons filled to bursting. Her arms, surprisingly strong, squeezed him tight.
“Oh, let me look at you!” she cried, holding him at arm’s length. Her long, glittery fingernails bit into his shoulders. “So skinny! So handsome! Those big brainy glasses!”
“G-Grandma Beverly?” he stammered. The word felt absurd.
“Just Bev, sweetie! Grandma makes me sound ancient!” She laughed, a sound like tinkling bells. “Don’t just stand there letting the bugs in! Come, come!”
She yanked him inside, her perfume now coating the inside of his nostrils. The living room was a sensory assault. Every surface was either hot pink, leopard print, or mirrored. A plush, velour sectional curved like a magenta tongue. A grand piano in the corner had been painted a high-gloss black with pink keys. The air hummed with the quiet chatter of a home shopping channel from a massive flat-screen.
“I’ve been desperate for you to get here,” she said, leading him by the hand. Her grip was possessive. “It gets so lonely in this big house. A woman has needs, you know? Needs for company. For conversation. For… affection.”
She said the last word slowly, turning to look at him. Her eyes, a bright, chemically enhanced blue, scanned him up and down. Mikey felt himself redden to the roots of his hair.
“I, um, brought my books. On Byzantine naval history,” he blurted out, a pathetic defensive move.
“How thrilling!” she exclaimed, not listening. She reached up and ruffled his messy hair. “We’ll have so much time for… everything. I want to know all about you. All your little thoughts. Your dreams.” Her puffy lips spread into a wide smile. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Mikey. This summer, Bev’s going to take very, very good care of you.”
She leaned in and planted a kiss on his cheek. It left a sticky, glossy imprint. He stood frozen in the kaleidoscope of pink and print, the scent of her embedding itself in his clothes, the overwhelming reality of her new body blocking his exit. The quiet, bookish summer he’d dreaded was gone. In its place was this perfumed, pulsing unknown, and it was just beginning.