chapter 1

Today is a very special day for me. It is the day when I'm officially turning into an adult, my eighteenth birthday. The day you turn eighteen is obviously very important for everybody, but I would dare to say that for me it's little more significant day than for most people. But I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Christina Little, but everybody calls me Tiny and the story I'm about to tell you started long four years ago...

I always thought that our family name 'Little' was kinda ironic, because none of the family fitted into the image people would get when they heard it. Well, no one except for me. There was my dad, bear of a man, well over 6 feet with a proper beer gut. My mom was also very tall, just an inch or two short of 6 feet, with a soft padding evenly spread across her body. Even Marty, my little brother, was clearly showing that he would carry on in the family legacy, already almost a full foot taller than me wrapped in a healthy layer of pudge. Me? I wasn't even 4 and half feet of skin and bones. Sure I had couple more years to catch up, but I knew it wasn't very likely. There was no wonder that they started to call me Tiny. Even among my peers I was always the shortest and skinniest and somehow the nickname spread even there, but to be honest it never really bothered me. I was short and skinny, so what? I accepted I'll always be like that and so I embraced the nickname and wore it proudly. One day everything changed.

It was a day like any other and by the time we sat at a family dinner nothing suggested it wouldn't end that way. Meals in my family always reminded me of some sort of a competition. Everybody piled their plates high with a massive amount of food and then started devouring them with an unbelievable gusto. Once again, everybody except for me. For the millionth time in my life I rolled my eyes at the "You'll never grow if you will eat like that" speech. Sure, they were probably right, but why would I want to eat more than my fill? It didn't make sense to me.

After the dinner my parents left to meet with some friends and put me as the older and more responsible in the charge of the house. Like there was something I could do if Marty would decide to misbehave. He would probably blow me away if he wanted to. But he was a good kid and we ended up watching cartoons. It changed my life.

I can't remember what cartoon we were watching. All I remember is the main character, tiny little creature, overlooked, mocked and ridiculed by all the other characters, getting so big and fat throughout the episode that no one else would dare to hurt him anymore. It was a kid's show so he obviously didn't get back at others, but instead taught them that they didn't have to be mean like that, before returning to his original size, but there was something so... right about it. About being so big that no one could touch you. Something clicked in my mind that evening. For the first time in my life I felt as if I was missing something. Later that night I raided the fridge for the first time in my life, eating more food than ever before.

The rest of my family was obviously thrilled when I began to participate on their daily dinner tradition. I never felt closer to them, like I was finally part of the family. It was weird, eating past the feeling of fullness, right into the point where I couldn't possibly eat another bite, leaving the table with taut, distended stomach. Day by day my portions grew bigger and bigger, as did my desire to eat. Each bite seemed to taste just that tiny bit better than the last.

A few months have passed by and nothing much has changed. My bones that used stick out of my body were now nicely hidden under a thin layer of meat and even the tiniest of potbellies decided to grace me with its presence. I can't even describe how excited it made me. Looking back at it now, it was really weird thing to celebrate for girl of my age.
My appetite continued to grow and now, if I had to guess, I got used to eating about the same amounts as my brother did. It probably doesn't seem like that much, but considering he just entered his first years of puberty and was hungry almost constantly, it seemed like awfully big step to me.

The school year has ended and with both of my parents working through summer, it meant that we, me, Marty and our two cousins, were spending a better part of the two months long holiday with our grandma and grandpa. Now before I'll go any further you must understand one thing about my grandmother. You know that stereotype of grandmas that keep on pushing food until you feel like you're going to explode? Well, our granny was worse! She literally never stopped! And there was no way to reason with her. She would push and push until you conceded and took the food. The only way to avoid this was to leave the house and go play outside. That's what the three guys did. I, as usual, had different approach to doing things. This time it meant spending the summer seated in front of TV with an elderly woman practically force feeding me. Even those rare, short breaks when I went to bathroom her eyes pierced through me as if I was some prisoner attempting to escape from her clutches. I don't know if it was because I was the thinnest or because I wasn't running away from 'her love', but with each passing day she was more and more focused on feeding me. Maybe it wasn't on purpose at all, who knows?

This was a big summer for me. Even after those three and something years I love to remember it and I see it as vividly as if it happened today. Long story short I ended up about fifty pounds heavier than I was when our parents dropped us there. To be entirely fair I did manage to grow an inch or two in height as well, putting me on truly gargantuan 4'7'', so it wasn't all just fat. Only most of it. It would have showed even if I was tall as the rest of my family, but on my short stature? It virtually screamed. Besides, there was no way in hell I would get into my miniature doll clothes after that. Well, I could get into some of my pants, since only a slight number of pounds found its way to my buttocks. As I said I could were some of my pants, you know, those pants that didn't need to be buttoned over my middle, in other words, the place where the vast majority of the weight ended up. But as I said earlier my tops were different story entirely. I ended up wearing Marty's t-shirts instead. At that time we must have been about the same weight, yet we distributed it so much differently. He was still almost a foot taller than me, my belly on the other hand was way bigger than his. Even the simple fact that I had a belly would be something unthinkable mere months ago and yet, there we were.
His t-shirts were certainly too long for my short, not-so-thin-anymore body. My gut was compensating for that to the point that the shirts were actually wearable, I even had to pull with some strength to get the bottom of them over my belly.

The last night at grandma's finally came and she truly outdid herself. As I mentioned earlier, granny was determined to feed me more than she was on feeding anybody else. On that last day she went so far that at the dinner she didn't even ask anyone else if they wanted seconds and instead kept pouring more and more food on my plate. And I was dutifully putting it away. My stomach was so stretched from nearly two months of nonstop overeating that it didn't even seemed out of ordinary at the time. I was so so overstuffed, that I honest to god expected my stomach to burst open. It didn't surprise when I heard groaning sounds coming from my overfed gut. Loud rip sounded through the room. To my surprise it wasn't my body that gave up, it was Marty's t-shirt that simply couldn't resist the pressure from my swollen abdomen and the stitches on the side burst open. Marty wasn't very happy about it.