Meredith and the Branch Library
It was a bright, sunny day. Good omens, Meredith hoped, as she locked her bicycle up outside her new workplace, a small branch library in the suburbs of the city. Being the manager there granted her a generous pay increase, it was a little closer to home, and promised a more relaxed atmosphere than what she had become accustomed to in her years at the central library.
It was a role she had happily applied for and, with her excellent employee record, quickly secured.
That first morning was fairly pedestrian. Her new coworkers were nice; the building was a little shabby, but so was every library with how little funding they got. She mostly just needed to learn where everything was; she could handle the rest.
She was in the middle of scanning in some returned books when her colleague—a tigress whose name had already slipped from her mind— joined her behind the service desk.
“Would you like to go out and grab some lunch?” the tigress asked. “We can grab a few drinks, make a little welcoming party out of it?”
Meredith continued scanning books, carefully closing and adding them neatly to the pile she had formed. “We’re not supposed to drink during work hours, or leave the building for that matter,” she stated flatly.
“Oh that’s the fun bit!” Her coworker continued, undeterred. “We actually close for an hour for lunch, so, if you think about it, we’re not in work hours, are we?”
Meredith stopped. “You… close? For lunch?”
The tigress smirked. “We close for lunch. Welcome to the suburbs, Mer. C’mon, first round’s on me!”
Lunch was a decidedly awkward affair. Meredith had kind of expected someone else to be present, but it was just her and the tigress, who turned out to be a relentless gin-and-tonic supping gossip with little actual interest in literature or library science. She diligently accepted the free meal and drinks and made a mental note to never go out with this person by herself again.
It had been a wearisome couple of months.
So it turned out that Alyssa, the tigress, was the only other full-time employee at this branch. There were part-timers and volunteers who came and went, but Alyssa was the only one Meredith had to contend with every hour of every day.
Alyssa’s laissez-faire attitude toward books also extended to many aspects of her work. Things would get done, yes, but not to the standards Meredith had come to expect. Having realised that Meredith didn’t share her penchant for small talk, Alyssa had withdrawn to using her phone most of the time whilst Meredith picked up her slack.
And that made things quiet. Too quiet.
The central library would have visitors from open to close—students looking for somewhere quiet to work, homeless folks looking for shelter from the elements and an internet connection to borrow, or the older generations who still appreciated loaning out a book or two. The branch, however, might only see a dozen or so visitors on any given weekday, if there wasn’t a school trip visiting.
Whilst Meredith had no complaints about being paid to sit around and read books, the slower pace was having troubling effects on her waistline.
Breakfast. A short cycle ride. A few hours of tea, biscuits, and sitting around interspersed with actual work. A whole hour for lunch. A few more hours of sitting around while reading and snacking. A short cycle ride home. Dinner. Lazing around at home for a bit. Bed.
She spent less time than ever on her feet or bike and more time sitting around doing nothing, and the feathers bulging against her blouse made it clear that it was catching up to her.
She was getting… chubby.
“Surprise!” Alyssa cheered as Meredith walked through the library doors. Meredith yelped in surprise, having to catch herself, still huffing and sweating from the bike ride over.
Maybe giving Alyssa the keys had been a bad decision, but it had been taking Meredith so much longer to wake up and get ready lately. They couldn’t risk opening late.
“A little birdie told me that it was your birthday today, so I baked you a cake!” Alyssa explained in a gleeful tone that Meredith had worked hard to drown out over the last ten months.
“Th-thank you?” Meredith grunted, looking down at the sizeable cylinder of sponge and icing that had been presented to her. “That’s a big… Since when did you bake?”
“Oh, I’ve baked things for years. Why’d you think we have so many biscuits and pastries around here, Mer? You haven’t seen my posts on Insta?”
“I, uh…”
“You don’t use Insta. Right, I remember…” Alyssa’s voice tailed off. “Well, just let me snap a few pictures and I’ll leave you to things.”
Meredith stood awkwardly behind the cake, trying to force a natural smile on her beak as her heart was still beating rapidly in her chest. How had she gotten so unhealthy that this once short bike ride was now pushing her limits?!
She already knew the answer. It was sagging out of the bottom of her cardigan. She had gotten fat.
Alyssa’s photoshoot complete, the tigress began to wander over to the service desk.
“Are… are you not having any?” Meredith called after her, cake still sitting on the table.
“Oh! Err, no, I’m doing keto at the moment. Feel free to share it with the others, though!”
There would be no others. None of the part-time staff were scheduled to be in today. Great…
Finally her exile was complete. An ultimatum had been handed down some months ago that her many years of hoarded holiday days be used or be lost, and she had begrudgingly accepted the time off. Two months of not working! Two whole months! Those bureaucrats in city hall knew not what terror they had wrought.
Two months of no work. Two months of nothing to do but sit in bed and indulge her every literary vice. Two months of constant, uninterrupted snacking.
She’d become a whale.
The new blouse she’d purchased only a few months ago was already straining at the buttons. Her cardigan barely covered her stomach at all; pushed upward by a great, swollen dome of dark, unkempt feathers that bulged out ahead of her, wobbling precariously with every movement she made. Her skirt pinched uncomfortably at her thighs, forcing them together and making it harder to balance.
The once-lithe raven lumbered through the library’s doorway, panting for breath. She hadn’t even cycled in today; she was exhausted just from waddling from the bus stop.
Meredith’s grand return was turning out much more grand than she had intended.
“Hey Mer! Welcome back!” Alyssa greeted from behind the service desk. “You seem… healthy.”
Ha ha, funny. Meredith grunted an acknowledgement and collapsed into the chair next to Alyssa, the chair squealing in complaint as she did.
“It’s not been the same without you around. Being interim manager is hard, it turns out, but you outta know that—“
Alyssa’s continued monologuing was drowned out by Meredith’s own inner monologue.
She was still wheezing from the short walk. Every time she shifted her weight, the chair wailed in complaint. The arms, once plentifully spaced apart, were pinching uncomfortably into her sides. So was her top, which kept riding up no matter how much she pulled it back down. Thank goodness they got so few visitors here; it meant fewer eyes that could gawk at her bulging gut.
“I baked you some Danishes.” Alyssa’s voice pierced through the veil. “You always seemed to like them before you went on leave.”
Meredith had half a mind to start shouting. Alyssa, you prissy perfect waif, this is at least partially your fault. Your blind optimism, your baked goods, and your fucking keto diet. You’ve physically destroyed my waistline. Fuck you! Fuck youuuuuu!
Meredith, instead, successfully held her tongue. She graciously accepted the pastries with their perfect fucking lamination and stuffed an apple one into her beak before she might say something she would regret.
Meredith grunted as she lunged sideways, falling back unsuccessfully. She tried again, a wing outstretched, trying to snatch one of the several “get well soon” cookies from her bedside table so she could shovel it into her fat, greedy beak.
On that day, after she had nearly snapped at Alyssa, she had excused herself from work, boarded a bus, and gone into the city. She had run to the central library, doused in sweat and on her knees begged for her old job back between shallow, wheezing breaths.
A room full of people watched as this morbidly obese bird cawed desperately to any staff member who would listen, Danish crumbs still stuck to her face and feathers from her recent glutting. She’d take a pay cut, work unpaid overtime, even sacrifice all holiday leave—whatever it would take to come back.
Her plan backfired. Shocked to see her in such a state, the district manager had put her on immediate, indefinite medical leave.
That was three months ago. Since then, she had been informed that they would be reassessing her suitability for employment within the library service. She was confident that they were going to fire her.
She’d stayed cooped up at home ever since, too embarrassed and depressed to step outside.
Meredith still received a manager’s salary for the time being, but every penny that didn’t pay a bill was now going toward stuffing her face with delivery food. She didn’t care what it did to her anymore; she had nowhere she needed to go and no one who needed to see her. Food could, at least, fill one of the gaping holes deep inside of her.
She lunged again, grunting louder than before as she finally snatched a few cookies up from the table and pushed them wholesale into her beak, crunching them up and quickly gulping down the crumbs.
Her unclothed gut ascended well above the surface of the mattress in this position, the top of it rising and falling with her rapid breathing. Mentally, leaving her bed was hard; physically leaving it was becoming harder by the day. Some days she didn’t bother leaving at all.
Her hope now was that becoming truly unemployed, and the drastic reduction in income she’d have as a ward of the state, would finally stymie her binge eating and help her finally lose some of this weight.
As she noticed her bedsprings groan beneath her, Meredith could only hope that day was coming soon.
