chapter 1

Liara arrived for class little late as usual, a little out of breath as usual. The evidence of another gluttonous breakfast at the doughnut shop still made apparent by the shiny sugar glaze on her plump lips  and the light dusting of crumbs on her blazer.

She glanced nervously at the headmistress, Miss LaFey, who was writing on the chalkboard with her back to the class. The headmistress did not turn but Liara could tell from the way her shoulders subtly tensed that she was aware of her presence. But then she felt like she had memorised every inch of Miss LaFey and studied every one of her mannerisms from turn of her heels as she paced the class while teaching to the stray strands of dark hair that would sometimes come loose from her tight French twist that she would blow impatiently out of her face.

And yet despite the close attention she paid to her teacher, when she tried to work on her assignments at night she would struggle to recall a single word that had been said in class. But then everything felt like a struggle these days. She felt like control of her entire life was slipping out of her grasp. It wasn't just that it was barely half way through the school year and she had already lost track of how many essays and assignments she was behind on. She had always been heavy set, a little thicker than other girls but her stress eating was really starting to take its toll on her waistline. Nothing soothed her when she was feeling stressed and overwhelmed like indulging in comforting calorie laden foods but the occasional binge had quickly turned into nightly pig outs and now she could barely make it through class without cramming her mouth full of her favourite fattening snacks. Yes, she had always been plump, always struggled with weight but now she was becoming simply enormous.

The classroom was silent save for the faint rasp of the chalk against the board and the swishing of Liara's chunky thighs as they chafed together with every waddling step as she tromped towards her seat. She had chosen a desk near the back corner of the room at the start of term thinking it would be inconspicuous but now she had to squeeze her bulk through the narrow rows of desks. She was ballooning up so fast that she was barely able to keep up with her swelling dimensions, hardly able to fathom just how fat she was. She shifted side ways to accommodate her corpulent form but she was mortified to find her flabby belly and backside still bouncing into the personal space of her classmates.

"Watch where you're going, fat ass." One of the other students hissed as Liara's massive ass brushed against her desk and knocked her pen onto the floor.

She finally eased her substantial bulk into her chair. Her cushy backside squished against the snug seat that hugged her plump, juicy thighs while the arm rests pressed against her soft love handles. She tried to ignore the whispers and cruel snickers around her as best she could but she could feel the hot flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck.

She had few friends at the school and no one that she would consider particularly close. She knew she should make more effort to fit in but some part of her had always felt as if she didn't belong, as if she was supposed to be... elsewhere. She knew it was a childish fantasy that she should have grown out of by now but she couldn't shake the feeling that there was another life waiting for her somewhere, just out of her reach.  Her mother would kindly tell her that she just hadn't found her tribe yet, that she struggled to find like-minded people until she went to university and met her truest friends. Her father would look up briefly from his laptop to roll his eyes and wonder for the hundredth time if it was really worth spending all this money on an elite private school.

"Liara, as I am feeling uncharacteristically generous this morning, I will assume that you are late because you were in the library and were so engrossed in your studies that you lost track of time." Miss LaFey said

Liara gave the headmistress a grateful smile and nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry, Miss."

They both knew it was a blatant lie. The headmistress only taught one class per year: an advanced English literature class that the other girls claimed was "more difficult than first year at Oxford". Liara couldn't remember now why she had been so desperate to take the course. So desperate that she had begged Miss LaFey for a place even after the class was full. The headmistress had been impressed by her eagerness but warned her that she didn't have the grades and would have to work twice as hard as the other girls if she wanted to keep up.

She knew that she had done nothing but disappoint Miss LaFey since then. Even now she felt the headmistress' disapproval as she regarded her over her wire framed glasses with her critical eye. Liara knew exactly what she was looking at. Miss LaFey had called her into her office to warn her that her skirt no longer complied with the school's strict uniform standards... that was 20lbs ago. Now it was verging on indecent. It was humiliating but not as humiliating as discovering she was already wearing the largest uniform size they carried and would have to wait to have one custom made. Her skirt was so short it revealed an obscene amount of blubbery flesh, her thighs poking out like two fat pink hams. Her shirt too struggled to contain her obese body. When she sat her round belly poured forward, splitting into soft jelly rolls that caused the buttons to strain and gape at her breast and belly.

"If you are quite finished disrupting my class, open your poetry anthology at page 560. We are discussing Christina Rossetti's late Romantic masterpiece Goblin Market."

Liara saw the words "Goblin Market" in the middle of the chalkboard in Miss LaFey's looping, elegant script with the major themes of the poem branching off from it. Somehow her handwriting looked so different on the chalkboard from the jagged, red lettering that marked her assignments, mercilessly tearing to shreds every sloppy grammatical error, every lazy analysis. Red ink like bloody claw marks across the page.

The headmistress picked up a wooden pointer from her desk and rolled it between her palms. "Rossetti uses gluttony as an allegory for sexual transgression. Forbidden fruit is hardly a novel metaphor but Rossetti brings new life to the story of original sin through her daring poetic form and an exotic and sensual fairytale world full of mystery and temptation."

The headmistress punctuated her speech by tapping the words "sin", "temptation", "gluttony" and "sex" on the chalkboard for emphasis. Each time she struck the board it sent a little puff of chalk dust into the air. Miss LaFey did not take her eyes of Liara as she spoke. Every word felt like an accusation that made the girl squirm uncomfortably. Every word made her heart hammer harder in her chest.

The headmistress was staring so intently at her that the other girls began to notice, turning in their seats to look at her. There was a knock at the classroom door by another teacher that seemed to startle Miss LaFey almost as much as Liara, breaking their gaze as if waking from a trance.

There was a fleeting frown of irritation at the interruption on the headmistress' brow before she collected herself and regained her usual composure. "Read the final six stanzas until I return - and might I remind you all that this is a silent reading exercise."

As the classroom door slammed behind the headmistress, Liara looked down at her book, her mind swimming with confused and troubling thoughts.

"She cried, “Laura,” up the garden,
“Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.”"

She tried to focus on the words on the page but it had been so long since she had taken an interest in anything other than eating that she just didn't have the mental energy. She was soon distracted by the sound of rustling and giggling in front of her as she looked up to see the other girls passing around a piece of paper. When the note finally reached the girl infront of her, she hesitated for a moment before smirking and slipping Liara the piece of paper.

She unfolded the paper to find a drawing scrawled on the page. Though the picture was crude, Liara grasped the meaning immediately. The page was dominated by the enormous round balloon of her belly while her head looked tiny by comparison but she could still make out the pig snout and the spiral tail that curled out behind her. Biting back tears, she crushed the paper in her pudgy hands.