Diet Confessions

Author's Note: This item was written for the "Daily Flash Fiction" Contest on 10/5/2009, using these prompts: bread, shout, mistake.
(Word Count: 276)
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Diet Confessions

I’m not really sure how it started.  I just remember Petra, my slim-no-matter-what-she-ate flat mate, shouting for me to bring her a soda (non-diet!) out onto the balcony.  She was leaning against the railing and she noticed when I licked my lips with envy as she took a bite of a powdered-sugar donut.

“You know, Jean, those diet books you read are full of nonsense.  ‘Don’t eat bread.  Don’t eat starches.’  You can eat anything as long as you exercise.”

Ha!  Petra hadn’t seen the inside of a gym in months.  I went every day.

“It’s a mistake for you to believe what you read.”

It wasn’t just a donut, it was an Entenmann’s donut.

“If you just walked around outside, you could lose weight.”

I cringed as she used the donut to motion ‘around.’  Flakes of white deliciousness drifted off the perfect form of the Entenmann’s masterpiece and fell to the ground, six stories down.

“Just look at me,” she indicated her own lithe form. 

I was looking at the donut.  More flakes floated off and sprinkled the ground, wasted.

“I can eat whatever I want.”

Something in me snapped.  I lunged forward and grabbed the donut from her.  Then I pushed her skinny butt off the balcony, and stuffed the heavenly confection into my mouth, nearly crying with pleasure.

At least, that’s how it happened in my mind.

I swore to the judge and jury that I’d only imagined pushing her off the balcony.  It hadn’t really happened.  But it was no use.  They found my powdered-sugar-covered fingerprints on the back of her shirt.

‘The first three letters of diet, spell die.’

Signed,
A Sugar-Ho
on death row.