Soylent KirstieConcepcion cut the engine and shifted into neutral as she pulled into the driveway, but it was no matter: Kirstie had heard. In the same way a person's other sensory abilitlies heighten when deprived of sight, Kirstie's hearing had become disturbingly acute as her hunger had grown to its present ravenous proportions. The door to the mansion flew open, and Kirstie burst forth, hair waving in the wind, like a double-sized Birth of Venus, but wearing stained Juicy Couture sweatpants and flip flops. "Did you get them?" Kirstie squawked to Concepcion. In a flash, Kirstie's features became eerily evil and doglike, her slavering jowls dripping with saliva, her canines visibily lengthening until they stuck out of her gaping maw, and as she galloped out of the doorway she morphed into a werewolf, running full tilt towards the driver's side of the Escalade in which Concecpion sat cowering holding a thick stack of People magazines. Concepcion was returning from her daily run to Kirstie's P.O. Box in downtown Burbank, where she had picked up what scant fan mail Kirstie got these days, a residuals check from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Kirstie's magazine subscriptions. Concepcion was quite a sight in full daylight. After all these years of working for Kirstie, she resembled nothing more than a Podling from Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal, only even more potato-like, if that was even possible. She had a body shaped like an apple, a skull like a yam, and a face like a mocassin. But strikingly, above all this old, starchy dried-up womanhood sprouted the most luscious mane of jet-black wavy hair, the one small source of joy in Concepcion's tortured life with Kirstie. She had arranged her hair, as she did every day when she went to the post office, in a remarkable set of beribboned double braids in an exact recreation of the cover photograph her most favorite record album of all time, Linda Ronstandt's Mas Canciones. It was also this selfsame CD that she blared on endless repeat as she made the daily journey to the Post Office, remembering, of course, to turn down the volume well away from Alley Mansion, in order to avoid...well, in order to avoid what was happening to her right now. As the werewolf that used to be Kirstie reached the window of the Escalade, Concepcion shut her eyes tightly and began reciting the rosary in heavily-accented English, awaiting the moment when the werewolf would, most assuredly, smash its paw through the driver's side window and rip her still-beating heart from her chest with its razor sharp claws and devour it whole. But this did not happen. Concepcion opened her eyes to see Kirstie, perfectly normal, smiling brightly outside the window of the vehicle. Of course, it was ridiculous! Concepcion had imagined it all. She'd been under a lot of stress these last 20- or has it been 50? - years with Kirstie, and clearly, she must have cracked. At least, that's what she told herself. There was no way Miss Kirstie could have turned herself into a werewolf. Absurd! "Yays, Mees Kirstie. I have them for jew, " she said, swiftly recovering. "Here, you have just one for now." Concepcion peeled a copy of People off the top of the stack and Kirstie pounced on it hungrily. Concepcion shuddered and ran into the mansion without a backward glance, not seeing if Kirstie even realized it was she herself on the cover, and made her way to the kitchen to prepare Kirstie's lunch. If only Kirstie hadn't gone on Oprah, she wouldn't have promised to lose 70 pounds by November, but she had. Kirstie, you see, couldn't control what came out of her mouth much better than she could control what went into it, and, having been eager to distract viewers from looking at the extra weight she'd come onto the show on the Oprah show to display, she had unfortunately just as eagerly promised to lose it in a staggeringly short period of time using a new, secret weight-loss method that she had just researched herself. It was, Concepcion reflected, almost entirely true, but that didn't mean she approved of it. She grapped another copy of People from the mail stack, and, ripping each leaf out one by one, shredded it in the crosscut shredder that now occupied the center island of the food prep area of the kitchen. She then arranged the shreads in an artful haystack on a large chilled salad plate, and drizzled it with balsamic vineger. "DINNER, MEESES KIRSTIE!" she yelled out. Kirstie swished into the room a short while later in a floor length washed cotton skirt with an elastic waist, picking a staple out of her teeth. Due to her current large size and skittishness around the paparazzi, Kirstie had been having difficulty making her way into the real world to shop for clothing, and so had fallen into the frequent habit of subsisting around the house in outifts sewn by Concepcion. Naturally, Concecpcion simply made larger- and larger-sized clothing of the one simple pattern that she knew how to make: an colofully embroidered top and full-length washed cotton skirt in recreation of the cover photograph her second most favorite record album of all time, Linda Ronstandt's Canciones De Mi Padre. "Mmmmm! Looks yummmy" Kirstie enthused throatily, looking up from the balsamic-soaked magazine shreds at Concepcion with a frightenly insane stare. "Mees Kirstie, you know this is no good for jew. Why you do this to jew? Hyou must eat food, Meeses Kirstie. " "Concepcion, I told Oprah I'd lose 70 pounds, and if I want to get back on there, I'd better lose 70 pounds." "Oh, Mees Kirstie, let me call Jenny for Jew. She is so nice, the Jenny! She give you the good foods!" "Shut up, Concepcion," Kirstie snapped, flicking a staple at Concepcion's eye and narrowly missing it. "I rode that horse and now it's dead." "Whores, Mees Kirstie? I no understan'." "Never mind, Concepcion - I've got it all figured out! Balsamic vinegar has 15 calories a tablespoon and a copy of People is just one gram of carbs; the rest is fiber and minerals. I'm going to lose ninety pounds by October!" Kirstie boasted. She picked up her fork and picked up a massive forkful of shredded paper dripping with vinegar, and shoved it into her mouth. Concepcion looked at Kirstie in shock. With the thick patch of shredded magazine paper in her mouth, the grayish fibers stuck out in a mound that looked not nearly as dissimilar to Kirstie's own graying pubic hair as one might hope. With a pubic thatch where her mouth should be, Kirstie resemsbled nothing more than a eye-nippled, living tableau of Magritte'sThe Rape, but even more rapey. At least, that's what Concepcion most assuredly would have thought, had she been given the opportunity to go to art school, and she had not. Raised in a convent by Spanish nuns, she'd been purchased by Kirstie after her first menses and thenceforth had subsisted on whatever education she could gather from television programs during what brief downtime Kirstie allowed her, none of which had thus far contained even the briefest mention of Magritte. Kirstie gulped the paper down and stabbed another forkful. "I'm going to lose so much, I can start eating ice cream on Hallowe'en, and even if I gain 20 pounds back I'll still be down 70 pounds by the time I on Oprah's Thanksgivinging Eve Special!" Kirstie swiped a lock of hair behind her ear, adding, "Hey, maybe instead of a bikini, this time I should do my 'reveal' totally nude!" Concepcion shook her head sadly. "Oh no, Mees Kirstie - not again!" | 
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