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The activity in the local mega-mart was probably pretty typical for a weekday evening. The people standing in line with me to buy their groceries or furniture or clothes were pretty much unchanged from the week before, or the week before that. They went about their lives not knowing how much I actually had come to envy them. I myself carried only one thing – the size 54 waist jeans I’d managed to dig out of a clearance display. When it was my turn I lumbered forward and, with a sigh, handed the cashier the last pair of pants I’d ever be buying at a regular store.

I wasn’t always this fat – in fact, just about three months ago I was actually rather trim. At 5’10”, the 156 pounds I weighed marked me as leanly muscled and fit. I was a middle distance runner in college with a full scholarship. To get as good as I was, I needed to really watch my intake, and run. A lot. I usually ran several miles a day, trying to both keep lean and improve my time. Getting better was so important to me, that I lost sight of things that I probably shouldn’t have. One morning, this all came back upon me and my whole life changed.

I would often change my route to keep the runs from getting too boring, and this morning I was off on some country road that was little more than a pair of wheel-ruts. I rounded a huge tree, and nearly ran right on top of an old lady pulling a rickety-looking wagon. I managed to avoid both, but the startled woman swerved and her wagon tipped over. Instead of stopping and helping her like any decent human being, I actually went around and kept going.

“Sorry!” I shouted over my shoulder, “I’ve got to keep my pace up!”

The old woman replied in some sort of Slavic accent, “You won’t need to worry about that much longer.” And then she began to mutter something, but as I ran off I couldn’t hear much of anything. I was pretty full of myself, so I thought nothing more of the incident, went home, and slept like a rock as usual. The next day I went into my routine, and almost completely forgot about that old lady and her wagon.

I didn’t notice anything amiss until a meet three days later. I ran the 1500 meters, and - weirdest thing – I came in several seconds off of my usual time. I didn’t know what was wrong; I thought maybe I was coming down with a cold or something. After a few more days my pace was dropping noticeably even in my training runs. It was on a run the next day that I noticed something more.

It was pretty early in the morning and I was on a new route, this time on a paved pathway. I could see ahead that it turned into a flight of steps going down. I just went on down them reasonably fast, and that’s when I felt it.

My abdomen jiggled.

It was just a tiny bit, and once I was off the stairs it pretty much stopped, but it was there. I lifted my shirt and felt around my midsection, and I could definitely feel some softness that hadn’t been there before.

I had no idea what the problem could be. I had been eating the same healthy protein and carbs in the same proportions; I had done my bit of weight training and of course my runs. I shouldn’t have been gaining any body fat. I started to cut my intake by a couple hundred calories a day, and hit the twice-weekly elliptical for an extra twenty minutes. And I began to weigh myself more regularly.

Of course, all the weighing did was to show me how much of a lost cause this was becoming. Apparently over that week I had gained three pounds. That may not sound like much, but on my body it was enough to make me lose my edge on the track. What didn’t make sense was, after a week on my new regimen, I had gained twice as much weight as the previous week. At this point the increase in weight was starting to show – my six-pack had lost its definition, and was just a single smooth surface.

This was getting ridiculous. I didn’t know what was happening. I cut my intake by another hundred calories, and added twenty minutes to all of my calorie-burning activity. After another week, I had gained another ten pounds – that was almost a pound and a half a day! It was time to see a doctor.

I couldn’t schedule an appointment with the campus doctor earlier than the end of the next week (after gaining another 12 pounds). She took my temperature and blood pressure and all, and put her cold stethoscope on my chest (which was also starting to become soft with fat). In the end she gave me a clean bill of health. I told her I was concerned about my weight gain, and she said, “I wouldn’t worry too much. A lot of students get the ‘freshman fifteen,’ but your blood pressure is on the low side of normal. If you’re concerned, you could try a little exercise a few times a week.”

Freshman fifteen! I didn’t tell her I had gained over twice that in under a month, because I was sure she’d think I was crazy or pranking her. I just put on my shirt and pants, thanked her, and left.

I sighed as I walked back to the dorm. Only 4 weeks before, my size 32 waist jeans were a bit loose on me. Now the 34s I had bought last week were tight, my belly (I never had a ‘belly’ before, my god!) just starting to hang over the waistband. The large size t-shirt was feeling tight where a medium used to fit just fine. I was at a loss for what to do, so I went back to what I knew – fewer calories, higher protein, and more exercise.

But it was no use. It seemed the more I did to try and stop it, I kept getting fatter. In fact, I was getting fat at an increasing rate, gaining more pounds with each week that passed. Three weeks after I saw the doctor I had gained close to 100 pounds from when I’d started weighing myself. While most of the time I wore huge sweatpants, for some reason I bought a new pair of jeans each week, even though I knew I’d probably need a bigger pair the very next week.

But, as weird as my inexplicable weight gain was, even weirder was the fact that my heart and lungs stayed in the shaped they’d been. I could go just as far or for as much time as before, but I couldn’t go nearly as fast with all this extra weight. Anyone would go slower if they had to carry around three or four concrete blocks.

Of course I couldn’t keep telling the coach I was too sick to compete. I wrote a letter telling him that I was quitting the track program and pursuing other interests. I couldn’t face him – the look of disbelief and judgment would be too much to bear. I just let him think I was a quitter instead.

It was the middle of the third month that I realized what must be happening. I was standing naked in front of the mirror like I did every morning. At that point I was gaining about four pounds a day, so I looked to see if I could notice the difference from the day before, and sometimes I actually could. That morning I had just weighed myself at 327 pounds, and the 170 pounds of accumulated fat hung off of my former runner’s frame. My legs and ass were definitely much bigger than before – the arms of one particular chair in the dorm lounge were actually starting to brush against me when I sat down in it. My arms had gotten flabbier, and my pectorals had disappeared under a set of small man-boobs, which actually were starting to rest on my belly. My belly showed the greatest change. Sticking out in front about a foot, it looked like I had swallowed a basketball. It was fairly round and firm right now, probably because of the tension from the expanding skin, but it would no doubt start to sag lower and lower before long at this rate. My face looked fuller, and I was even developing a substantial neck wattle.

That morning I had thought back to just 10 weeks prior, before this crazy business started, longing to be thin again. That’s when my mind put it all together, and realized the timing of running down that old woman just before I began to gain. Could it be? Could that crone have put some sort of curse on me? There was only one way to find out.

Since I was determined to run that day anyway, I decided to take the route that put me on that cart track. Though I ran the entire length of it (at a much slower pace than before), I saw no sight of her or her wagon. After looking around fruitlessly, I gave up and started to run home. As I was leaving I could swear I heard the voice of someone laughing on the wind.

Two weeks later, as I left the store with my size 54 jeans in a bag, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was gaining a little more weight with each week that passed. The size 52 jeans I has bought not seven days ago were already tight; I wore them low in front, letting my constantly larger belly hang over so you couldn’t even see the belt anymore. As I walked/jogged the two miles back to campus, I knew I had to find that old woman and somehow convince her to undo the curse. Even if the weight gain stopped at this point, it would take me nearly two years to safely lose all of what I already had, so my career as a track star was over.

One thing was definitely certain: I had to find that old woman.