The Planet Sized Man by William Brody

I

There is a room; not a very significant room. Just an ordinary room – could do with a bit of maintenance now that I think about it; the plaster on the ceiling is spawning mould and starting to flake so the floor looks like it could do with some dandruff shampoo. In fact, the original plasterer did a terrible job in the first place; it looks like he plastered it with a scrotum. I would have made him pay me, for work that bad. Sorry, I digress. In this room that was constructed by a blind, scrotum-wielding artisan - is a bed.

On the bed was a prone form. Closer inspection found it to be the form of a very large man. If being fat and ugly was a sport, he was definitely a scratch handicap. Closer inspection than this would be tricky, because people don’t tend to examine bodies that are rotting - especially when they were not yet dead. Such was the task, and such was the case, however. The closer I moved towards the bed, the closer the stench of human decay came to tearing the contents of my stomach out through my throat. I put my nose into the crook of my arm and did my best to blink away the tears that were forming in my eyes. God, this was terrible! What kind of atrocity had to befall a man to render him this way?


II

The grass tickled Rupert’s ear as he lay there in the shade. He didn’t even notice it – so advanced was state of his relaxation. A few times in his life, if he is lucky, a man feels completely and unequivocally in charge of his own destiny. He finds that at the instant an obstacle is set before him he sees every possible solution and the best one underlined in red. Not only does he have the examination paper of life ahead of time, but it is the examiners copy with the answers included. Rupert was so much the master of his domain that he pitied those people. The wind and grass persisted in conspiring to tickle his ear but continued to go unnoticed.


III

Rupert was just finishing off his beer in a virtually empty pub when a brunette walked in. She came in behind him, so he didn’t notice her at first. When she came up to the bar and stood next to him, he certainly did; she smelled incredible. It was one of those perfumes that just arouse a man instantly, no matter what the person wearing it looked like. This particular wearer, however, would have done quite a good job of arousing Rupert without any pheromones’ assistance. She was the perfect mix of homeliness and sultriness. Rupert immediately pictured her in an apron. Only an apron. - And holding a utensil of some description. She was saying something to the barman about a broken car and knowing nothing about them (giggle; giggle; bat eye-lids; play with hair). Rupert dispatched the remnants of his beer and used this moment to become an expert on all things mechanical.

“I know a little about cars,” he volunteered. The barman just shook his head and mumbled something.
“Oh I wouldn’t want to…”
“Don’t worry about it. I was just about to leave.” Too easy, he thought to himself.
They left the barman shaking his head and muttering.

It is a well documented fact that walking through the doors of a pub on entry instantly improves someone’s beauty, but upon exiting, that added beauty is mysteriously annulled. Much to Rupert’s astonishment, this girl seemed to have found a way to negate the effects of the Universal Principle of Desperate Men in Pubs. Somehow her flawless skin had not transformed into a finger-width layer of base; her Barbie Doll figure appeared not to have been a trick of the light[1] after all. She was truly exquisite.
Rupert knew that he would never forgive himself if he did not at least try with this magnificent creature, so he got her to open the bonnet and had a look inside. He spent about 15 minutes rooting around, pretending he knew what he was doing and muttering to himself things like, “hmmm…fan-belt…aligned…not that…camshaft…receiving power…damn…thought it might be that” [2] and “oooh shit…hope that nut wasn’t important”[3]. He emerged covered in grime, no closer to the problem and announced that he thought he knew what it was, but unfortunately couldn’t do much without his blowtorch and jackhammer. Then, he suggested that she might like to join him for a bite to eat while they waited for a tow-truck to arrive.

“Oh you poor baby,” she laughed, “but you’re all covered in dirt.”

Rupert looked despondently at it shirt; he felt like a puppy that had just been kicked.

“My house is right around the corner, why don’t you come get cleaned up first?!”

If he hadn’t been leaning on the car, Rupert would definitely have fallen over.
He tried to say, suavely with a twinkle in his eye: “Oh right, good idea. I was just about to suggest that I oil-wrestle you to see who pays” [4] but the words bottlenecked in his mouth, sending a little bit of spittle slowly down his chin onto his shirt and he seemed to develop a nervous spasm around his eye[5]; thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice.


IV

Rupert was happy. He had recently been promoted to partner. Several days later, his company had been listed and he had become a very wealthy man. Very. He wasn’t entirely sure how it had all happened; one moment he had been a recent university graduate, the next he was probably the most phenomenally successful person his age he knew. He tried to trace it back in his mind.

At some point he had just become acutely aware of his own potential. No, it went beyond that; he had grown an awareness of exactly what he was capable, and then surpassed it entirely. It had felt that for months he had just mentally broken down every barrier that had ever presented itself to him. It had started subtly. First, he had just felt a little more confident. That confidence had produced from situations a result that he might otherwise not have obtained. Who was to say? Maybe it wasn’t the confidence at all; maybe it was just a coincidence. The positive happenings in his life, however, had definitely made him a far more confident man. He had begun to exude confidence; and confidence begat confidence. The more confident he had become, the more his universe submitted itself to his dominance over it.

He asked himself: Where did that original confidence come from? It must have been there all along, he mused; a dormant trait just waiting to emerge.

He thought back to how he had been before the rise and rise. He felt like the person he was just wasn’t him; like he was a body-snatcher that had come and sucked some poor sap out of mediocrity and into the sublime. True, he had had a small, tight group of friends and been happy enough. – But then he hadn’t known what it was like to be like this, had he? - And it wasn’t like he had lost his friends was it? They just respected him more now; it was a fantastic feeling.

Rupert lay down on the grass in the shade.


V

He often reflected on that moment in the sun. He had been at his absolute peak. No one could ever take that away from him. It was difficult where to say that it had begun. One moment he had been there, lying on the grass, on top of his world; the next, somewhere else. He didn’t even know if he was part of his own world still, let alone where he was on its food chain. What the hell had happened? He tried to trace it back. It had been subtle at first. At some point that confidence that had become such a staple of his success, just deserted him. He had begun to doubt himself; making some stupid mistakes in business at first; then some bad investments had eroded his confidence a bit more. He recalled questioning some of his decisions; the confident Rupert had simply explained to the person why his decision was the correct one and it was accepted; he had become shorter and shorter; every time someone questioned him, he had begun to see it as them challenging him; not believing in his ability. The confidence had slowly dissipated; the same snowballing effect that had built it up - tore it down. It had taken its toll on his friendships; as much as his friends tried to help him out of his slump, he just became a complete misery to be around. Without being aware of it, he had finally quite simply driven them all away. He had blamed them at the time; where were they in his hour of need? Then, as if it had never been, everything was gone.

As he lay on the bed, he wondered at how happy he had been, and where he was now. He used to look almost condescendingly at his mediocre life, but now he recalled it with fondness. Sure, he had been nothing exceptional, but was that so bad? He had had friends; who had surrounded him with the feeling of belonging – something that had eluded him when he was the master of it all. He would have sobbed but his soul had dried of tears long ago.

The question surged to the front of his mind, as it had done innumerable times before; what was it that that had initiated such an enormous decline? Lying there in his barely human state: fat, bloated and rotting from the inside, he turned his head on the pillow; just a fraction; all he could manage. Had the power of proper emotion long ago not been removed from his soul, he would have started. There she was. As he looked upon her through rheumy eyes, it all fell into place.


VI

As he lay there dying, I knew he knew. I saw it in his face as he pieced it together; the two defining moments in his life. The moment where I granted him his confidence, and the moment I took it back; the moment I took him back to my apartment and the moment I came up to him on the grass and ended it. How could I do such a thing? Why would I do such a thing? Because I am a woman and I can. It wasn’t something I did specifically to destroy the man. There were points in our relationship where I really loved him. But with that success he came to believe that he had done it all on his own. At the moment I realized he believed that he didn’t need me any more; that I was just another acquisition in the achievement that was Rupert, I resolved to show reveal to him the truth. It was an act for all of womankind. No matter how successful the man; no matter how chauvinist the world; no matter the circumstances, a woman can crush a man in a way that is – and will forever be – completely beyond the scope of men.

[1] This is one of those cases where the English language is a bit misleading. The trick of the light in the case of a pub is that it is dark.
[2] Just loudly enough for her to hear.
[3] Just softly enough for her not to hear.
[4] It’s the trait of men trying to speak to beautiful women everywhere to say these sorts of things; in what they believe is good humour and with a twinkle in their eye.
[5] What men trying to speak to beautiful women everywhere don’t know is that they look better doing this than trying to bridge the gap between what the sexes define as ‘in good humour’.