Shelly the Belly: A Short Story
#6 in The Scary Songbook Collection
Inspired by “Hungry Women” by Eddie Cantor
“...and a crimping iron. Oh, pleasepleasepleaseplease! Mom! I really need it, you know how frizzy my hair gets.”
“Melinda, I’m done shopping for you. You’ll get what you get.”
“But I really-”
“Enough. Keep it up and your birthday presents will go to your sister.”
Melinda’s little sister April happened to be standing right there at the kitchen counter when their mother said that and she squealed with delight, bouncing on her toes and saying “Yes, give them to me!” Melinda knew better than to push her mother when she got like this. There had been too many earrings and clothes lost to April because Melinda kept arguing.
She walked down the hallway to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. This left her with her posters of Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins for company, which was fine. She liked her room. She’d done all the decorating, painting and choosing new furniture. It had been cool until the night her bedside lamp got too hot and the gauzy scarf draped across it had burst into flames. Melinda had stood there screaming til her dad ran in. Slapping the burning fabric off the lampshade, he’d stomped the fire out. That had been the end of ambiance. She’d asked for track lighting for her 16th birthday.
She spent a lot of time here since she’d lost her friends a few months ago. She’d jokingly told Cindy that her new haircut made her look like He-Man. It was a bad move. Cindy and Monica had already been shutting her out recently, spending time together and not inviting Melinda, so she should have just said something nice. Both Cindy and Monica gasped at her joke.
“Go to hell,” Cindy snapped.
“Her hair looks good,” Monica said, “You’re so mean.”
“No, it was just a joke,” Melinda sputtered. “Your hair looks great!”
“Your hair looks like it came from a monkey’s ass!” Cindy spit out as she and Monica stomped away in such perfect unison that they looked choreographed. Melinda had experienced that sinking dread of knowing she had gotten too comfortable, spoken that one little thing that was like throwing a bomb into the fragile friendship of teenage girls. She had done it before and should have remembered to tread carefully.
In eighth grade she had told Pam Tollson that her father might be an alcoholic. Melinda had said it as a show of understanding, thinking Pam would admit that she already knew this was true, but instead she had reared back like a furious cat and screamed, “My father isn’t an alcoholic, you bitch! I’m going to tell him what you said!”
Pam did tell her father, who then called Melinda’s mother and the two parents agreed the girls shouldn’t be friends anymore. Pam’s rage had gone into overdrive and she told everyone at school about Melinda “diagnosing my father like she’s a goddamn doctor!” Melinda was ostracized for over a week until Mr. Tollson drove into a light pole and got arrested for drunk driving. Pam changed schools.
But this would be different. It was unlikely that Cindy’s haircut would get arrested and prove Melinda right. The three girls were sophomores, which meant that unless someone moved away, she was going to be friendless for a long time. Maybe forever. The anxiety made her stomach gurgle.
She got her bag lunch from her locker the next day and went to sit alone on the backside of the library. She’d found this quiet place two months ago, when she started having lunch period alone. Things were bad. Cindy and Monica let it be known that Melinda had been kicked out of their group.
“Anybody who hangs out with her is an even bigger loser than she is,” Cindy had declared. Nobody wanted loser stink on them, and so Melinda spent lunch breaks hiding and eating her cheese sandwiches and grapes alone. Today she was ravenous. In fact, her belly had been making gurgling noises all through Science, roiling loudly enough that the boy who shared her table, Ray something, had been covering his mouth as he giggled. Melinda had laughed too, even though she wasn’t sure if he was laughing with her or at her.
She finished everything in her bag and wished she’d packed a candy bar too. Her stomach had quieted as she ate, but balling up the empty paper bag, she was surprised to hear her stomach let out a groan that sounded like “mooore”. Great. She had English Composition next period and that class was always as silent as the grave.
At dinner that night, the whole family heard Melinda’s stomach roiling as if she had a microphone to her belly. She was shoveling in spaghetti so fast she barely chewed when there came a loud “ahhh!” from her stomach. Her parents and April all jerked up straight and looked at Melinda. She stopped chewing for a moment, appalled, then everyone laughed.
“My belly will not be silenced!” Melinda laughed. “Shelly the Belly will speak!”
“Maybe you should have a third helping,” her father laughed, but her mother answered with “Keep eating like that and you won’t fit into your pants.”
“Ah, Rhonda, she’s having a growth spurt,” her dad said, “let her eat if she’s hungry.”
Her mother continued to shoot glances with each mouthful that Melinda took, while April made up conversations with Melinda’s stomach that always ended with “Hungry!” growled out like a caveman.
Melinda’s stomach was roiling the next morning, waking her up from a deep sleep at six am. She could hear the noise it made from under the covers and threw them off just as her stomach moaned “eeeat.” It was a clear word, no mistaking it. Melinda actually looked around her room, then under her bed to see if April was there.
“Who said that?” Melinda called out. This time the word was repeated with a stabbing pain in her stomach. “Eeeeeeat!” She winced and got up. Her stomach was talking. Was that normal?
And how could she possibly be this hungry after eating enough spaghetti for three people last night? Yet here she was trying to figure out how she could get double the breakfast past her mother’s watchful eye. Actually, she couldn’t wait that long. Another stab to her stomach and a low moaning, “eeeat” told her that she needed to go now. She went quietly down the hall and entered the kitchen, spotting the fruitbowl first. There were unripe bananas, the stems and top quarter still bright green. Melinda didn’t like bananas but her stomach let out a plaintive “eeeat!” so Melinda peeled the first one and ate it in three bites, then peeled another and shoved it in as fast as she could chew. They were bitter. She went to the bread box on the counter and ate four slices of soft white bread that went down like clouds of nothingness. She opened the fridge and grabbed the orange juice carton, more than half full. She was tipping the last drops into her mouth as her mother walked in.
“Melinda! What on earth are you doing?”
Banging the empty carton down on the counter, Melinda didn’t care if her mother was upset.
“Are you making breakfast?”
This earned her a glare. Mom leaned against the counter and crossed her arms.
“You know,” she began, and Melinda knew something bitchy was coming. “Women can’t just shovel down everything they want. You’re old enough to start displaying some restraint.”
“Whatever.”
“Have you ever seen a beautiful woman eating like a starving dog? Being feminine means having some self-control, not trying to set a speed record for making a bag of cookies disappear.”
Melinda’s insides churned loudly right at the moment she wanted to promise that she would starve to death if that would finally make her mother happy, but her stomach felt like it actually flopped inside out from hunger and let out a loud, “Eeeat!”
Mom actually gave a little jump backwards, her wide-open eyes looking from Melinda’s face, to her stomach, then back. Melinda was sure her mother would tell her that ladies don’t have stomachs that yell, but Mom looked frightened instead and said, “Go shower. I’ll make breakfast.”
Not only did she make eggs and bacon, she also had a stack of pancakes waiting and made sure April only took one. The rest were for Melinda, and Mom packed a lunch with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a full baggy of carrot sticks.
All that food almost held her for the day, but as Melinda left school she spotted an apple with just one single bite out of it on the quad by the flagpole. It was bruised and dirty, looking like it had been kicked to the spot where it sat rotting in the sun. Kids were everywhere, standing around talking in groups. No. It’s disgusting, don’t do it. Yet her stomach rumbled at the sight of the dirty apple, sounding so much like, “Eeeat!” and before she knew what she was doing she was picking up the apple and biting into it, the soft crunch of the mealy fruit still sounding like she had a microphone next to her mouth. When she looked up, the other kids were turning to watch in cringing disgust as she took another big bite and chewed.
“Holy shit, look at Melinda eating garbage! “
“Hey, look at Melinda Williams! She’s eating that apple that’s been there since yesterday!”
They crowded around to laugh, but she couldn’t stop herself. She bit and chewed as fast as she could.
“How’s the trash taste, Williams?”
“Why would you do that?”
“She must be preggers. Chicks get weird cravings when they got a bun in the oven.”
She stopped herself from eating the core. She wanted to, but she pushed her way through the crowd of laughing kids and dropped it in a garbage can, then ran home. She locked herself in her room until dinner and argued with her complaining stomach. She counted the minutes until she could eat again.
“Did you eat a handful of tuna salad out of a trash can today?” April crowed as Melinda joined them at the table.
“What?!” Mom asked. Even Dad was looking around the table in bewilderment. Melinda tightened her mouth, wanting to cuss April out, but she just yelled “Of course not!”
“Well, that’s what Lisa Turner’s sister said when she picked us up. She saw you.”
“No, she didn’t. Terri’s a liar.”
“She’s not, she’s a churchy. They don’t lie because they’re afraid of going to hell, so I know you ate out of a trash can.”
“I wouldn’t eat out of a trash can, you ass wipe.”
Mom barked, “Language!”
“Was it something really good? Like a brownie?”
“I didn’t eat anything out of a trash can!”
Dad looked at her and used his reasonable voice, the one that tells her he’s treating her like an adult. “Well, now. A story like that, about you specifically, doesn’t just get started. What would make Terri say that? Something happened.”
Melinda scraped the last of the casserole from her plate and into her mouth. Watching her father bite into a biscuit as he waited for her answer just made her want a biscuit too, her third. She buttered it as she went over her explanation of the whole thing being a total lie without any basis whatsoever.
“It’s just some of the girls taking Cindy’s side.”
Her parents looked at each other. “Okay,” her father said and took his plate to the kitchen. Mom and April sat there giving each other meaningful looks as they watched Melinda finish the last biscuit in the bread basket. Even the twelve year-old didn’t believe her.
School the next day was just as bad as Melinda expected. Everyone knew. Kids who had been out sick knew, the football coaches knew. Everyone had something to say.
“I’m kicking a banana around for you. Pick it up in the quad later.”
“If I stomp a Twinkie, will you eat it?”
Mr. Redman made it clear that he’d heard by spending Sociology talking about how much food ends up in American landfills each year. Was he trying to help Melinda out by saying she’d done a good thing? All she knew was that when Mr. Redman said that Americans are wasteful with food, Rick Goldman yelled out, “Not if Melinda Williams has anything to do with it!” The class had laughed their stupid heads off while Mr. Redman stood there and smiled until they were done.
When the bell rang she headed towards the teacher’s lounge and leaned against the wall until the next bell rang. She could afford the tardy. When the halls were cleared she slipped in. Empty. All the teachers had fourth period classes. Melinda helped herself to Mr. Redman’s lunch box in the fridge, the blue zippered one that he swung in with every morning. His lunch was a nasty egg salad sandwich that had diced raw onions in it. It was disgusting but she ate it and put the foil it had been wrapped in back in the lunch box. She also ate his blueberries and the four peanut butter cookies that looked homemade. She hoped he’d made them himself. No, she hoped that someone who loved him had packed his lunch and she’d chewed up their love. Shelly was happily burping onions the rest of the day, even after having Melinda’s own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the next period.
On Friday, one of the many things Melinda had dreaded happened. She ran into Cindy in the hallway. Melinda had been changing her routes around school for weeks to make sure she didn’t come face to face with Cindy or Monica, so she was horrified to walk out of Civics and find herself inches from Cindy, who smelled wonderfully like vanilla and sugar. Shelly gurgled.
“Oh. Hi.”
“Yeah,” Cindy replied. She looked Melinda up and down and said, “You’re really fat.”
Some other kids were noticing the run-in, and never willing to pass up some entertainment, they formed a circle. Cindy’s put-down delighted them.
“Okay. You still look like He-Man, though.” Everyone laughed. Cindy narrowed her eyes before leaning towards Melinda.
“Listen, fatty-”
“What’s that smell?”
The kids around them got ready for Melinda’s crushing slam, knowing this question was leading somewhere.
“What?”
“You smell like something. Vanilla, I think.”
“We were making cupcakes in Home EC. You want to shove a bunch in your fat face?”
Their audience laughed and whooped. Cindy was the one with the solid burn. Melinda heard someone say, “She probably does.”
“No, I want horse meat!” Melinda yelled loudly enough to drown out Shelly’s moan of “Eeeat.” She grabbed Cindy’s arm and pulled it to her mouth. She crunched down as Cindy screeched, causing a couple of the boys who had been laughing a moment ago to start yanking Melinda’s hair and shoulders in an attempt to pry Cindy’s bloody forearm from her mouth.
Mom made roast chicken that night. They pretended to care about Dad’s day while everyone’s eyes kept flitting to Melinda, watching as she bent over the heaping mound of food on her plate, shoveling it in like it was disappearing down a mine shaft. Her mother was disgusted. She had pointed out that morning that she was right, Melinda was getting fat around the middle. Even right now the top button of her jeans was undone because it pressed too painfully into her soft flesh.
Mom and Dad were trying to avoid the elephant in the room. The principal had called, and after talking about the incident with Mom he had handed the phone to the school nurse, who talked about disorders and psychiatrists.
“I’m trying out for a solo with the school choir tomorrow,” April was saying. “There are two spots. I’m singing “Gangsta’s Paradise.”
“Good for you, Sweetie,” Mom said. “I’m taking your sister shopping tomorrow, since she’s eaten her way out of her clothes. What d’you say, Melinda, how about some stretch pants and maternity tops?”
Melinda stopped eating and glared across the table at her mother before dropping her fork. She sprang up and slammed her chair into the table before running down the hall to her room.
She heard her father say, “Why did you need to start something?” and her mother replied, “Well, at least she got a little exercise.”
Melinda slammed the door. She threw herself across the bed, her stomach moaning loudly until she flipped over on her back.
“Eeeeeeat,” it whined.
“No. You’ve had enough,” Melinda answered.
She felt a painful pinch from inside, like her stomach lining was being twisted by fingers.
“Owww! Stop it!”
“Eeeeeeat!”
“You’re done. No more!”
The response felt like she’d been punched from the inside. She doubled over in pain, clutching her belly until she was able to draw a breath.
“Oh, yeah?” she hissed before balling her fist up and punching her stomach as hard as she could. It hurt badly, but more importantly, Shelly let out a pained, “Aaaah!”
“See?” Melinda laughed, before rocking back on the bed with a grunt. The inside of her torso suddenly felt like a dozen fingernails were scraping up and down. She sucked her breath in, trying to absorb the pain. She began hammering her stomach with blows from each fist, then reached for her boom box from the dresser. She turned it on as loudly as the knob would go and pressed the speaker into her stomach. As Ozzy’s “Flying High Again” vibrated into Shelly, Melinda punched against the side of her torso as she yelled, “How d’you like it?” Through her own pain she was happy to feel Shelly flopping about in misery.
Melinda didn’t notice her parents standing in the doorway watching.
Her parents took turns sitting in her room for the rest of the night. Mom had crushed up two sleeping pills and mixed them into a pudding cup for Melinda, who gladly ate it. Anything to make Shelly shut up.
When her father sat in the chair next to Melinda’s bed, they talked. Shelly was exhausted and silent. Melinda told him about the dirty apple, and about Mr. Redman’s lunch. She also told him about pulling old ham out of the kitchen garbage after her mother threw it away, and worse, devouring the wet cat food from Duchess’s bowl on the Harrison’s porch down the street.
Dad had flinched at that and said, “Jesus, that’s, that’s...I don’t know, Melinda.”
“It was disgusting, if you’re wondering. It was the seafood variety. I think I ate fish eyes.”
“Oh, Jesus. Was it Friday?”
“Dad.”
“Okay. I just want you to know that we’re going to get to the bottom of this. Whatever’s happened, we can deal with it.” He gripped her hand and Melinda believed that her dad would figure out what to do. The bedroom door opened and Mom came in.
“Go sleep, Troy. I’ll stay with her.”
Dad looked at his daughter and gave her hand a squeeze. “See you in the morning, kiddo.”
Mom settled into the chair with her book. Melinda turned towards the wall.
“I heard everything you said. Eating all those disgusting things. Let me tell you, you’d better have some mental problem. It better not be that you’ve done something stupid with a boy.”
Melinda closed her eyes and fell asleep to the sound of her mother’s nervous foot shuffling. When she woke up, she was alone.
Mom got April fed and sent her to wait for the school bus at the sidewalk. Melinda walked out, bleary-eyed and confused. Her parents were already dressed and having coffee on the couch.
“What’s happening?”
“We’re taking you to the doctor,” Mom said.
“Dr. Newell?”
“No. God, that old relic wouldn’t know-”
“We’re going to a gastroenterologist,” Dad said, “someone who specializes in stomach problems. Dr. Newell helped us get an emergency appoint-...well, you’re getting some VIP treatment today, kiddo.”
“What’s he going to do to me?” Melinda felt Shelly awakening and wondered if she was listening.
“He’ll probably press on your stomach. Take x-rays. Usual stuff, nothing to be worried about. The point is, we’ll soon know what’s going on.”
“Gaaaaahhh!” Shelly didn’t like what she was hearing. The exclamation was so aggressive that not only did Mom and Dad hear it, it made Melinda’s insides feel like they had done a backflip and a surge of nausea caused her to slap a hand across her mouth to keep from throwing up.
“Not on the carpet!” Mom yelled.
Melinda ran, slamming the bathroom door. She stood over the toilet waiting for her insides to gush out. In fact, she hoped she’d throw up and maybe Shelly would come with it, but nothing happened and the nausea passed. She washed her face, noticing that her purple under eye circles made her look like a devil worshiper in a movie.
She went to her room and put on a blousy babydoll dress, the only thing that was comfortable over her stomach. She tied up her Doc Martens while Shelly gave her insides gentle little jabs, the kind Melinda recognized to mean, just reminding you that things can get worse if you don’t follow orders.
Last night had been a nightmare. Even though she’d fought back, she really had no leverage. Hurting Shelly meant hurting herself.
Mom told Melinda to get in the car. “We’ll be there in a minute,” Dad said, “we just need to find the cross streets on the map.”
Melinda traipsed to the car knowing that her parents were having a final argument about her and Shelly. She knew what sides they were each taking as well as if she were standing there in the kitchen with them. Dad would be saying that they should just lay it all out for the doctor, all the unbelievable facts, and let him figure it out. Mom would be arguing that they couldn’t do that, they would sound like a family of lunatics. Really, Troy, be reasonable. We’ll just tell him her appetite is that of a walrus and there’s some loud gurgling. He’ll get to the bottom of it and we can pretend we had no idea.
Melinda stood in the driveway at the back of the car, staring at her feet. Shelly had quieted down and Melinda was grateful, but the thought had barely passed through her head when she glanced down the street and saw a tan and white long-haired Chihuahua appeared on the sidewalk two doors down. T-Bone, Mrs. Wasserman’s spoiled dog who sometimes slipped out the front door when his elderly mother went out for the morning paper. As soon as Melinda saw him, Shelly let out a thundering “Eeeeat!” and Melinda was off, running down the sidewalk towards the dog. T-Bone would normally dance at the sight of Melinda coming near, and he did now, for just a moment, until he smelled something odd and frightening in the air and began to bark furiously. Finally, Mrs. Wasserman opened her front door and called out, “T-Bone! Here, boy!”
The yapping little dog spun around in circles, making Shelly furious. His shrill barking said, Away! Awayawayaway! The Chihuahua had always loved Melinda but now he was giving an order, Get away from me!, as if he could smell Shelly and was sounding the alarm. Melinda stopped two feet from the dog, asserting enough control over Shelly to wave jazz hands at him and frantically hiss “Go home!” This didn’t work, and in no time Shelly was the one hissing.
“Eeeeeat!”
“No, I’m not-”
“Eat! Eat! Eat!”
“Noooo. Please don’t make me,” she whimpered.
Melinda buckled to the sidewalk in agony as Shelly grabbed a handful of her stomach and twisted like ringing out a wet towel. Melinda panted from the pain, which kept her curled on her side until she gasped, “Okay.” T-Bone skittered around Melinda’s head, yapping and prancing on his tiny feet until she reached out and caught the dog around the middle, dragging him to her. Mrs. Wasserman stood at the door and called out, “Thank you, Melinda!” as the girl curled both hands around T-Bone and brought him to her mouth, biting down. Mrs. Wasserman gasped out an “Oh!” as she saw Melinda bite into T-Bone’s back. It was like trying to bite through shag carpeting, the long fur acting as a defense for the dog and causing Melinda to splutter as she tried to get the hair out of her mouth. T-Bone swung his head back and bit down on Melinda’s upper lip, puncturing it and releasing a gush of blood. Melinda dropped the dog and he raced to his front door and inside the house. Mrs. Wasserman slammed the door and the sound of a security chain sliding in place was audible.
Melinda’s jaws weren’t strong enough to get through T-Bone’s fur, but the blood dripping from her lip looked like she had taken a chunk from the dog. When she looked up, her horrified parents were standing on the sidewalk. Mom’s mouth was bouncing up and down as she attempted to form something appropriate for the occasion, but she didn’t get the chance because other voices were yelling.
“Did you see that? She took a bite outta the dog?”
“Holy shit, what is wrong with her?”
Melinda and her parents turned towards the voices and saw that on the corner, at the end of the street, stood a group of high school kids waiting for the morning bus.
They got Melinda in the car and went to the doctor. She cried while her father explained what was happening. Her mother sat in the waiting room talking to the receptionist about her accomplished daughter, a twelve year-old rapper named April.
It’s believed that Melinda’s case was the first of its kind. Whether it was handled medically or psychologically, it was done quietly. The Williams family moved away a few weeks later, with Melinda never having returned to her school. She left a legacy, though. Every one of the kids at the bus stop swore that they saw Melinda tear into the dog and devour it entirely. One boy even said she picked her teeth with a rib bone when she was done, then turned towards him, ready to lunge. Her father had lassoed her with his belt, dragged her into the car and took her for a lobotomy. That’s why she didn’t come back to school.
Over the years she went from being known as Melinda, to Amanda, then other names, each succeeding class re-telling the story until the girl herself was known as Shelly the Belly.
O.k., then. That’s my last short story of 2024, and the second to the last post of the year. After next week, I’ll be taking a long Christmas vacation, gathering with my family in Las Vegas. Lord, let this Christmas be vomit-free. I’ll also be putting in some long hours at my seasonal job, ‘cause Krampus doesn’t terrorize all those children on his own, know what I’m sayin’?
