The Ice King's Chubby Fixation

POV: Elowen Hart

The Champagne glass sweated in my hand, I remember that small detail very well. The way the drink made my fingers cold, the bubbles in the champagne had died long ago. The drink sat flat and warm like water left under the sun. I held it for about one hour, too scared to take more. If I drank too much, someone would talk about the fat girl who eats and drinks too much.

The hall smelled of too many things, old flowers that were dying in their pots. Fish dip that had stayed too long over the fire. The smell was turning bad, sweet and sour in the hot air. My mother was the one who chose this place. She said, "It is cheap, Elowen. You should be happy we are helping you at all."

She chose everything for me, the flowers, the food even the people who came, I only chose my dress.

Yes, only my dress.

I saved money for six months to buy it. Six good months of not eating lunch, six months of walking instead of taking the bus. I told myself that when Julian saw me in the dress, he would look at me the way he did before, way before Livia. Before his eyes started to look past me every time we talked and everytime we were out in public.

The dress was green. Soft green like a leaf, it sat on my body and showed all my curves. The woman at the shop said I looked beautiful in it and I was foolish to believed her.

Now the dress was pulling too tight at my hips. The wire in my bra was biting my skin as I stood beside Julian, the man I was to marry, and he did not look at me at all for three hours we were here. I felt too big, so ugly, so lonely and not love at all. I felt like i was just too much and in the way to happiness.

"Elowen."

My mother's voice cut like a sharp knife and I turned to know why she called. She sat at her table with her glass already empty, her mouth was tight in that way I knew too well.

"You are not standing straight," she said. "It makes your back look wide and broad."

I stood straight immediately and the dress pulled tighter. She looked at me and nodded once then she turned away to resume her chat and drinking.

Beside me, Julian was obviously restless. He moved from one foot to the other. His hand held mine but it was cold, his fingers were thin and long... so beautiful. I used to tell him he had the hands of a pianist, though he never touched a piano in his life.

"Julian," I said my voice low. "You have not looked at me all night."

He did not answer.

"Just wait small," he said. His voice was not the voice i was familiar with. It was harsh and rough. Like me talking to him was a dent in his life. Like he was waiting for something to sweeten his life.

The music changed to a slow song. A song about love that lasts forever. Julian's hand held mine tight then he it let go almost immediately.

He took his glass and hit it with a fork. The sound rang across the room.

People stopped talking... one by one, the tables went quiet. I looked at Julian and something cold entered my stomach.

He was smiling but not at me, he was smiling at the door.

"I want to thank all of you for coming," he said. His voice was loud now, like he had been waiting to speak. "It means a lot to have the people we love here tonight."

Some people clapped, my mother lifted her glass and my father had his phone in his hand, his finger moving on the screen.

Julian's smile grew wide.

"I have been thinking," he said. "About love, about what it means to really commit to someone for the rest of your life."

"And I know for a certain that I cannot do this," Julian said. "I am sorry, I cannot marry a woman I do not love not when the woman I truly love just walked through that door."

He dropped my hand, his fingers left mine one by one, slowly and my arm fell to my side. My champagne glass tilted slightly, sloshing warm liquid over my knuckles.

The big doors opened and Livia Monroe stood there.

She looked like something from a magazine. Her dress was blood-red silk. It clung to her body and showed her fine figure eight. She was thin in the way that made people stare with hunger and lust. The kind of thin my mother always told me to work hard for. Her hair fell down her back like water. Her lips, painted red, curved into a smile that was more like a mockery.

She walked into the room, and the people made way for her like she was royalty.

"Poor thing," Livia said as she cane closer to where i was standing. Her voice carried across the quiet room like soft music. "You really thought a pretty dress could hide all of... this?"

She looked at my body. She let her eyes move from my face down to my waist, my hips, my arms. Then she smiled again.

"Julian has been unhappy for years," she said. "He was just too kind to tell you but I told him he must be brave tonight, so everyone will know the truth and understand how he truly feels."

She stopped in front of Julian. She put her thin hands on his face and kissed him. A long kiss, slow french kiss in front of everyone and me. When she pulled back, her red lipstick was on his mouth.

"I am so happy you chose me," she said to him, loud enough for everyone to hear. "You have done your time with that one and now you can be with a real woman that you deserve."

The room burst into noise and loud cheers.

People were clapping and laughing. Some gasped... some where actually shocked. My cousin clapped his hands like he was at a show. My aunt grabbed her chest and sat forward to see better. No one stood, no one came to me... to my rescue.

I looked at my mother for a little help or assistance but She was shaking her head, her mouth was set in that thin, hard line. She did not look surprised at all. She looked like a woman who had been waiting for this.

"Do not stand up," I heard her tell my aunt. "Do you know who Livia's father is? Do not let them see you near Elowen."

Then she looked at me with disgust written all over her face.

"I told you," she said, her voice was not even low. "I told you that no man stays with a woman who carries this kind of weight."

My father lifted his phone high and he was recording.

"There she is, my people," he said into the phone, like a man talking on a radio show. "My Fat daughter. Watch her face now and see how fat and ugly she looks, she doesn't want to help her life and her body. She did not see this coming. Stay with me people and i will show you everything."

My father was talking to strangers on the internet while my life fell apart and he was smiling and happy.

Julian put his arm around Livia's waist. His fingers held her like they had always belonged there. He did not look at me even once.

I stepped backward and my shoe caught the bottom of my dress and I heard the cloth tear. A long, slow shhh-fzzzzzt sound. The seam opened under my arm, and cold air touched my bare skin. The soft part of my side showed through the torn cloth. The skin I had tried to hide for years.

Livia saw it first, her eyes went to the torn cloth.

"Come on Julian," she said with pity in her voice. "I think we should leave her now. She needs to find a way to put herself together, This is getting a bit too sad."

They walked out without him looking at me. His arm was around her waist and her head was on his shoulder like a newly wedded couples where I was not the bride.

I couldn't bear the shame, pain and heartbreak so i ran... I ran past the table with the big cake, past the pictures of me and Julian that now meant nothing. Past my father who was still recording, still talking to his phone. I hit the back door and ran into the cold lonely night.

The ground was wet, it must have rained while we were inside. I had no shoes on, they fell off when I ran and i was too heartbroken to notice. The stones on the ground cut my feet and the cold climbed up my legs.

I stopped beside the big rubbish bin. It smelled of dead flowers and spoiled food. I put my hand on the cold metal and bent over gasping for air... my body was shaking. The tears came then. I did not make any sound, I just stood there with my torn dress and my bare feet and cried like a child.

This is the bottom, I thought. There is nowhere lower than this.

And then a headlight flashed on me.

A black car came into the car park. It moved slow, like an animal hunting for it's prey. It stopped not far from where I stood and the window came down.

Inside, I saw a mysterious man. Half his face was in the dark, cut by the sharp line of the parking lot's sodium lights. I saw his dark hair and a sharp jaw, he wore a suit that cost more money than my parents have ever seen.

And his eyes?

Oh! Myyy, I am already salivating...

His killer eyes were silver. Like the colour of a well sharpened knife, like the sky before a storm. They looked at me without blinking, without showing any feeling at all.

He looked at my face wet with tears, then we looked from my face to my torn dress, from my torn dress to my bare skin showing through the cloth, from there to my bare feet with no shoes. He looked at me the way you look at something bad on the side of the road. Like you would look at a very bad smelling beggar.

I opened my mouth to talk, I wanted to say something. May be ask him for help, or simply tell him to stop looking at me the way he was or ask who he was but the words did not come out.

The window went up and the car drove away into the rain, and I stood there watching the back lights grow small and till it disappeared.

And I knew, in that cold moment, that the stranger's look hurt more than all of it. More than Julian's words, more than my mother's cold voice and more than Livia's cunny smile.

Because when that man looked at me, He didn't look at me like I was a living thing, he looked at me like i was just a thing to see and forget.

The red light on my father's phone was still on somewhere inside, the video was still going out and strangers were watching my shame on their screens.

But the man in the black car was not done with me...he was only just getting started.