It was just after the Easter bank holiday when the strangers came.

They were there when he got home, the trace of too many crème eggs still thick on his lips. A man and woman, Abe and Rhiannon, permanent smilers as they had lots to grin about. The type that had their clothes painted onto their body to save cash.

They introduced themselves as husband and wife, and promptly made him strip to his pants in the living room. A poor, pale plump boy, as vulnerable as a scab at Mardy colliery.

The curtains were left wide open for all the neighbourhood to gawp and giggle, as the strangers took their time to point out the bulges of flesh around his tummy that rippled to their touch. They even marked him with a blue Berol!

Hywel began the ordeal wanting to punch them all in the face, but in time, he pacified and just took it, like he always did. He faded into a deep, dark pit, lost in his own thoughts about beautiful things that they couldn’t sully, until they stopped, shook hands with his parents and left.

There was not one exact point where the label had been hung around his neck, but it seemed like this was now his truth. A new costume, a new identity, to be worn.

He’d always known he was big, but this was his official stamp, as if the Thatcher government now recognised him as being officially vast for his age. To the old, he may as well have been just another scab returning to the mines, and to the young he was the lost Mr. Men book.

Mr. Enormous…

To read more, please check out my short story, Hywel, the headline story in Volume 4 of my YA Fantasy anthology series, Dark Matter.