Upon splitting from her husband and subsequently expanding her dating pool to include both men and women, a theretofore slender woman decided that her greatest desire in life was to slap people and for it feel to them like getting hit in the face with a package of hot dogs. However, since even relatively small hot dogs were much larger than her fingers at the time this decision was taken, the woman knew she would have to gain a great deal of weight in order to reach her goal – so much that some of it would have nowhere else to go but to her furthest extremities.

To accomplish such a feat, the woman began eating substantial quantities of many different things. Some days, she ate up to a half-dozen extra-large Beef Stuft Burritos from Taco Bell, each of which contains a whopping 870 calories and 41 grams of fat, most derived from partially hydrogenated oils. Other days, she focused on guzzling cola and pounding boxes of Honey Smacks, considered by leading experts in the field the least healthy cereal available for purchase on the open market. And then, of course, there were the days dedicated to birthday cake and hunks of chocolate fudge the size of cinder blocks.

After various months had passed in this manner, the woman one morning looked down at her fingers and thought to herself, they are finally as big as hot dogs. To put her theory to the test, she slid the forefinger of her left hand into a hot dog bun and squirted a squiggly line of ketchup on top of it and, beside this squiggly line of ketchup, a squiggly line of mustard. Yes, indeed: were the finger not attached to her hand (and her hand to her wrist, etc.), she could as easily have sold it at the local baseball stadium, and no one would have thought twice before giving it a hearty chomp.

At once, the woman commenced trying to slap whosoever came within reach. Unfortunately, owing to her newfound corpulence she now moved so slowly that everyone she targeted easily dodged the blow and then, while she huffed and puffed from the tremendous effort that had been required for her to lift and swing her great war hammer of an arm, simply chuckled, and said: “Better luck next time, you bisexual porker.”

Discouraged, yet disinclined to let all those months of gorging herself go so easily to waste, the woman decided to take out a classified ad in the city’s weekly alternative newspaper offering readers the opportunity to, as she put it, “willingly suffer being slapped across the chops by a bisexual porker with fingers the size of hot dogs in exchange for fifty dollars cash.” Response to this ad was so overwhelming the woman initially feared she’d go broke; but thanks to a widespread misunderstanding with respect to what was being paid for, and by whom, she ended up becoming quite wealthy instead.


In recent months, Eli S. Evans has published work in several now defunct literary magazines, including Berfrois, The Bear Creek Gazette, Misery Tourism, and (mic)ro(mac). In happier news, a small book of small stories, Obscure & Irregular, was published with Moon Rabbits Books & Ephemera in 2021, and remains available for purchase on the internet, and a larger book of mostly even smaller stories will be forthcoming from the same in 2023, hopefully in time for National No Pants Day on May 1st.