Chester (Part One)

Hello reader, I hope your holiday went by slowly enough for you to enjoy your family and friends.  We usually have a huge spread of food on Thanksgiving.  Not just turkey and the all the great sides that go with it, but also roasted pork, beef fillets marinated for weeks and many great deserts.  Now, none of us will die from over eating (we’re immortal) so we indulge until we can’t stand it!  Jago is prone to consuming more alcohol than food, so we watch him closely on days where celebrations become a great excuse of becoming blind drunk.  He has a tendency to rip off his clothes and go running about wherever he is drinking. The funny thing about our metabolic rate is that we can become obese and sleep it off.  To put it more clearly, the medicine will shut us down for maintenance if we over indulge and become obese…our body chemistry will always conform to our top genetic makeup …we are always in shape unless we are forced to hibernate via the potion due to obesity.

That brings Chester to mind.  We met him around 80 AD in Rome.  He came from a rich family that over indulged every chance they would get.  In the large cities like Rome there were many obese people because of the abundance of food and drink at their beckoning.  Now, my dear reader, keep in mind that back in that time the number of food and sex orgies going on was grossly exaggerated by historian and record keepers.  These ‘events’ started out as parties that grew into drunken raves by the middle and lower class groups.  The ruling class was much more discreet and would keep such gatherings secret because they didn’t want the lower class people associating with them while they were in such a vulnerable state…the lower class would always try to take advantage if they could ... could you blame them?

Chester, (which is his given name about two thousand years ago), was from a prominent political family in the ruling class.  As a boy he was pampered and fed whatever he desired.  Although Chester was spoiled rotten as a child and young adult, he maintained a compassionate disposition for the poor and downtrodden.  You would almost think he was psychic because he had a keen empathy for everyone around him  -- he would tell us later that he could feel what others felt, sometimes leading him into a false state of depression, which caused him to eat until he felt totally full to the point of nausea.  Food made him feel better and gave him a feeling of control …. most situations were out of his control, so food only gave him a false compensation for lacking the ability to make decisions.

His parents took ill when he was nineteen years old --- they succumbed to a bacterial infection and died.  He had no siblings so he was left alone and unsure what to do with his life and inheritance.  Due to his gift of empathy and his good nature, he began to give away most of his wealth.  People took advantage of him because he was overweight and needing to fit in --- the money allowed him to buy some temporary friends.  When we met him, he had just enough funds to continue to eat heavily and maintain his parents’ villa.  Chester was almost a head taller than me and must have weighed about thirty stone or over 410 pounds.  He was enormous and he waddled when he walked - due to lack of exercise his hip and leg muscles atrophied, making mobility quite a chore for him.

 

We purchased a house in the hills just across the way from where Chester lived.  After a few weeks in our new residence, we heard someone calling in a panic on a peaceful mid-summer’s day.  “Can someone help us?” A woman’s voice pleaded in the distance.  Eve and I ran out to see what the problem was and found an elderly woman running up the road to our home.

“Please master and mistress,” she addressed us, “the young master has fallen and is bleeding and I cannot pick him up because I am too frail and he is too large.”

With our curiosity blazing, we followed the woman to the nearest house.  Upon arriving, she led us to the courtyard and we found Chester bleeding from his forehead, attempting to raise himself to his feet, falling back down each time he tried.

 

(To be continued . . . .)

Visit Joseph Ancient’s real web store at  HTTP://WWW.ANCIENTSCOIN.COM