The Wandering Island Factory Read Online Free PDF

model. Yet, he had always found a little extra weight made a woman just that much more attractive. It made her real. Tangible. Solid. Comfortable.
    Gina would disagree. She hated the extra weight. They even argued about it once, briefly. Since then, he simply made an effort to tell her she was beautiful more often. She was a long way from anyone's definition of fat.
    Actually, telling her she was beautiful took no effort at all.
    He smiled as he faced the back of her head.
    He wanted very badly to kiss her over every inch of her body. But that would destroy the fragile physical relationship they had. Besides, he could wait. A year without sex sounded like a torturous impossibility, but it wasn't that difficult. He survived it in high school twice and at least once since then.
    He remembered reading somewhere that the average man gets six to twelve erections a day, between sixty and a hundred or so a week. Most for no real reason at all. Yet the average man doesn't have sex even a tiny fraction of that many times a week. They all survive each one without dieing, crippling over in pain, or pieces and cherished parts falling off.
    A year seemed like much to do about nothing, especially with as many months as he had already put in.
    She adjusted herself slightly, her hand resting together with his on her stomach as she settled in for more slumber.
    She had put the hurting on the vodka bottle. She could drink him under the table, if she chose. She drank almost every day. A stiff glass or two after work. Another before bed. It all added up to a bottle or two a week. When she felt like 'letting loose', she could drink most of a bottle on her own, like she did last night.
    He partied hard when he was a teenager. Then woke up one morning in his car, buried in bark and branches back in the woods, with a tree growing where the passenger seat should be. The back half of the car was gone.
    It was a miracle he wasn't killed. Even more miraculously, the police never discovered the accident, and what would have been a DWI that could have destroyed his life forever, left him completely unscathed. That was the last time he drank everything that was put in front of him. He measured and calculated every drink after that, like a professional player counts cards at a casino.
    He tried to cut her back, but failed.
    She got angry when she was drunk, and it was best not to provoke.
    He understood the drinking anyway. Tonight's binge was the aftermath of inviting him to dinner with her family.

    "Jason," Gina said, "This is my little sister, Ava, and my little brother, Nathan."
    He shook the appropriate hands.
    "And, of course, the woman cussing as she comes from the kitchen is my mom, Makayla."
    "What the hell did I say about your damned cussing in my house?" Makayla said, punctuated with two hands on her hips and a huff for added comedic effect.
    "I'm F-ing sorry, mom," Gina yelled with rolled eyes, staring down at her feet.
    "So, Jason," Makayla said, "you don't look like your profile."
    "Yeah, well, it's the size of a thumbnail."
    A timer went off in the kitchen to lure the woman back, "We're having fish and rice with some mixed vegetables on the side," she yelled over the squeaking oven door and the sounds of steamy pots being moved around.
    "Sounds great," Jason said.
    "Really?" the mother said, sticking her head back out of the kitchen, "I didn't really make enough for five. Hmm. . . I don't know, maybe we can squeeze you in." She returned to the kitchen.
    Jason lightly put his arm around Gina, "I like your mom."
    Gina quietly joined in with her siblings as they whispered, "She's crazy, you know."

    The fish wasn't restaurant caliber, but it was way better than anything he could do, and was quite enjoyable. The conversations took a turn to the strange when Gina's mom started talking about how a family of sasquatchs used to bring her fresh fish when she was an army brat, living in Colorado. It ended in a trip in a UFO when she was 'abducted' at