I sat at the dinner table, waiting for dinner to be served. We always had to eat as a family, and only didn’t on very rare occasions. It was family dinner or no dinner, and Dad didn’t let us have no dinner. So I sat there in silence with my mother staring between me and her phone while I hoped she didn’t talk to me. Today had gone pretty well, which is to say Mom hadn’t talked to me at all today.

“Alright, dinner’s served,” Dad said, bringing us an assortment of fruit and some meats on a platter. It looked divine.

The moment he placed the plate in front of me, I started digging into my food immediately. I always did love and appreciate food of all kinds, but I knew I was also just a hungry carvatian. Eating was a social activity to me, plus he was giving me my favorite fruit! Sitting next to me at the table was Isa, in front of me was Mom, and beside my mom sat my dad. We all ate while Mom mostly picked at her food, and glanced at us.

“Looks like tadpole sure is hungry tonight,” she commented, making me pause for a second. Mom called me that a lot for my oversized tail I had when I was little, and because I still had a bit of tail I kept hidden away. 

I was already almost halfway through my meal while everyone else was pretty much still just starting. It was always that way, and my mom pointed it out when she was in a particularly bad mood. I tried my best to ignore it and not let it get to me.

“Yeah,” I said with a nervous laugh. “I guess so. I’m a hungry boy…”

“Here then,” she said, pushing her plate in front of me. “Do you want the rest of mine? I’m not hungry.”

She posed it like a question, but I knew if I didn’t accept, she’d get upset. Upset might be a slight understatement though. She would be angry for the rest of the night and go on about how I don’t love or appreciate her. It was easier to just take and eat instead.

“No,” sighed Dad, taking the plate from me and putting it back in front of Mom. “Carol, you need to eat.” This wasn’t an uncommon thing to go on. We were all kind of tired of it being almost daily.

“I did eat,” she said defensively, pointing at the chunk of food missing from her plate. “I’m just full now, and I think it’s giving me heartburn.”

“You just ate it, how can it already be giving you heartburn?”

“It’s too spicy too. I just can’t eat it.”

“Ok, what can I get you then?”

“I’m full,” she whined.

And the two of them started arguing at the table about what Mom was going to eat that night, like what happened too often. I just kept my head down and ate. It was one of the few things I could do without sticking out. At least during dinner nobody really stopped me from eating as much as I could get. Made me feel something other than pain or anger towards my mom or dad. Mostly my mom. She said things all the time to me about myself, my sister, and my dad. I couldn’t cope well, so I just ate.

“Please, just finish the plate,” Dad begged. “You need to eat.”

“Yeah right,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Because y’all think I’m fucking anorexic or some shit, right?”

“Carol, not tonight, please.”

“Whatever,” she growled, taking her fork and putting small bits of food in her mouth.

By the time I finished, everyone else was still about halfway through. Now I just had to wait for them to be done. Another thing about family dinner, the mealtime was only done when everyone was. So I got to leave when we were all done with our meal, including my mother. Dinner lasted a long time some nights. Luckily, it ended relatively without much more conflict. As Dad andIsa took plates away, Mom mumbled to me.

“Can’t believe you really like to eat that shit,” she scoffed.

“Huh?” I asked, acting like I didn’t hear her.

“Tastes fucking disgusting. Probably going to make me a fatass too.”

“I… I like it,” I said hesitantly.

“Yeah, because everything I say is wrong, right?” she asked, voice on edge.

“I didn’t say that-”

“Can’t say anything, can I?” Mom said, voice raising. “Because you all just think I’m some fucking loser right? My own children don’t want to be around me!”

“I didn’t say that!” I repeated.

“You just want me to leave forever, right? Want me out of your life even though I’m your own mother! You just-”

“I’m going to bed!” I blurted, rushing out of the dining room, passing my dad and sister on the way to my room. I threw myself onto my bed and let out a giant sigh. That situation was getting a bit too much for me to handle.

“Hey, Appa,”Isa said, knocking on my door. “You going to bed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, feed the pinkgeon first. You know it’s your responsibility.”

“Fine.”

I walked out of my room and to the kitchen. Mom was already gone, probably quickly shuffled to bed before Dad could ask why or how she had upset me. I navigated to the pantry and got the bird food, putting it in a small bowl. Then I walked over to the open window and the bowl on the edge. I heard a faint chirp, then smirked. I stuck my hands out of the window and caught a giant, round, flightless pink bird as it tumbled down from the roof. I pet it and pulled it inside, letting it eat.

“Chee, how do you even get up there?” I asked, ruffling her feathers as she ate. “You can’t even fly.”

The pinkgeon chirped happily and finished her food. When the bowl was cleaned spotless, she jumped out of the window. I saw her bounce off the ground and roll away like she did every night. Somehow Chee was always back in the morning whenIsa fed her breakfast. I don’t know how she does it. I wish I could live my life that simply without a care in the world besides making it to breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.

*   *   *   *   *

I woke up in the middle of the night again, thinking about all the things that Mom’s been telling me this week. This happened to me a lot. I would wake up, and all I could think about is how Mom’s been and what she’s said, and thinking about what I could’ve said better. I felt there’s just something that I hadn’t said yet. Something that would snap her out of whatever she was going through, and bring back the loving mother I once knew.

“You’re really like this shit?” echoed Mom’s voice through my head.

“Can’t believe you can actually fit all that in there. You must have gotten bigger without me looking, huh?”

“You don’t care about me! You’ve never loved me, your own mother! You just want me gone, don’t you?!”

“I’ll let you eat this. I don’t want to become a fatass like the rest of my family.”

“You all think I’m always the problem! Well, do you ever think about how you’re the problem too?!”

Tonight though, I was angry, but it eventually faded away to a certain numbness that I knew well. I laid in my bed, seething in my own unfeeling and wishing that things could be different. At some point, it got to me, and I wanted to feel some semblance of comfort doing the one thing I know I could do and enjoy.

I gathered what little money for The Living I had, and used my magic to teleport down there. At least I didn’t do much, so I usually had the energy for teleporting to The Living so often, which took up a lot of energy. I just wished I did it for better reasons. I used magic to throw on my human disguise and walked across the street.

In the dead of night, the lit up sign that read “Billy’s All-American Buffet” was flickering, with the “All You Can Eat” sign still promising what I wanted out in the front of the establishment. I walked inside, paid my fee, grabbed a plate, and grabbed some food.

Since it was close to midnight, the place was mostly empty except for a few old men, tired looking college students, and these two women who were making out in the back of the restaurant. So there wasn’t exactly much of a crowd. I just got my plate of food, sat down, and started digging in.

*   *   *   *   *

I don’t know how long I was there, but while I was still eating, I felt someone tap on my shoulder. I glanced over my shoulder with a mean glare. I never liked people interrupting me when I was eating like this. The server looked scared for a second, but quickly replaced it with a fairly ticked off one.

“Sir, you have to leave,” said a staff member angrily. I turned around and gave a blank stare as I put more food in my mouth. He looked offended that I wouldn’t listen to him. “Sir, you can’t keep eating here!”

“Why…?” I mumbled in a daze. I wasn’t quite all there at the moment.

“Because you’ve eaten far more than what I should be letting you have as a proud member of the restaurant industry,” he said before sighing. “And… you’re eating all the food in our establishment.”

I gulped down the rest of the food on my plate, got up with it, and pointed to a sign that was hanging at the front of the restaurant.

“It says ‘all you can eat’, so I’m going to eat all I can,” I said simply.

“Sir, stop-”

I ignored him and went to go get more from the buffet, but my wrist was grabbed by the worker. I could feel my face scrunch up as I forcefully yanked my arm away in a sudden burst of anger. The server’s face was shocked that I could be that strong, and looked like he was about to call the police as I got my ninth serving. 

Carvations had to eat a lot more than a human to sustain themselves, but what I ate when I was upset was still more than that. If you wanna know, take how many calories a human should eat, then add about 1,200 calories to it, and that’s what carvations of the same height and weight should eat. So yeah, overeating took a lot. And human food had a lot less in it than carvation food, so eating the human stuff was better for me if I was going to binge on it like this. It wouldn’t hurt me as bad. Relatively, at least.

Right in the middle of putting some more mashed potatoes in my mouth, I felt my stomach killing me, and decided that maybe this would be my last plate tonight. When I horked down the rest of the food, I left my plate at the table and discreetly went into the bathroom before locking the stall and teleporting out of the restaurant and back home. I flopped down in my bed, and my stomach turned even harder. I opened the window and barfed onto the side yard. Wonderful. I hated it when that happened.

Tired and exhausted, I fell back into bed and sighed. I’ve had a lot of nights like that, and I hated how it was one of my only ways to cope with life’s stress. I only worked temporarily, and I knew it. I just curled up, pulled a blanket over me, and hugged my pillow until I fell asleep in the very early morning darkness.