Chapter 6

The band left early, without breakfast. The dwarves were very opposed to this, but as the Huntress rightly pointed out, Snow had grown so big that if she had to travel on a full stomach, she would likely not make it. Snow understood this logic. She agreed with this logic. But logic did nothing to relieve the cramped, carnal misery of a stomach that had grown used to constant feeding.

“Nearly there now, your highness,” the Huntress said, giving Snow a gentle shove to keep her from tipping sideways.

“Thank… thank…” Snow White huffed and puffed, her head spinning with effort.

“You’re welcome,” the Huntress said, smiling fondly at her exhausted princess. She and the dwarves surrounded Snow White, supporting her bulk at all angles. Lardbelly had even volunteered to carry her massive, rumbling stomach, to show his respect for a worthy opponent. Between the eight of them, it took just enough pressure off her legs for Snow to be able to wobble along of her own volition.

“Is this it?” Shatterbench asked as the castle loomed into view.

“Of course it is!” Platebuster said, batting away the mosquitos buzzing around in the late morning heat. “How many big bloody castles do you know within walking distance?”

“It never hurts to double-check,” Shatterbench grumbled.

∻∻∻

Snow gasped when she saw the effects of her stepmother’s unfettered rule. Guards wheezed at their posts, armour clattering as their knees wobbled under their bulk. Servants waddled here and there, jiggling flesh overflowing their strained seams. They moved with fresh fear. Perhaps the Queen was no longer as beloved as she once was.

“Excuse… me…” Snow white huffed at a passing servant girl. “Where is… the Queen?”

The servant girl burst into tears. “Don’t make me eat, please! Jacob won’t even look at me anymore!” The girl fled, her round rear bobbing like mad.

Snow White shuddered. Apparently, in her absence, the Queen had moved on to other victims. “Take me… inside. We have to find… my stepmother.” The Huntress nodded, leading the dwarves out the sunny courtyard.

As they entered the cool shade of the castle, Snow sagged in relief, legs buckling under her. “I don’t think you can go any farther,” the Huntress said, unwrapping Snow’s weighty arm from around her neck.

There were no chairs in the entry strong enough to hold her, so they gently lowered the princess to the cool, stone floor. The dwarves pulled out a big bottle of blackberry cider, tipping it into Snow’s mouth to calm her rumbling belly. The Huntress brushed Snow’s hair away from her sweating face, lingering for a moment on her soft cheek. “You rest here. We’ll find the Queen.”

Snow did not want to be left behind, but as she struggled for breath, her view blocked by mounds of billowing flesh, she realised she did not have much choice. Snow caught the Huntress’s hand. “Stay safe,” she said, her grey eyes serious.

The Huntress squeezed her hand in return, nodding. “Don’t worry about me, Snow. I’ll be fine.” She squeezed past Snow’s bulk towards the rest of the castle. Unsheathing her sword, she nodded to the dwarves. “Alright men. Fan out!”

Snow White closed her eyes as they disappeared in various directions. A warm shaft of sunlight from a high, narrow window played over her bulk, making her soft and snoozy, despite the dire situation. She knew she should stay alert, should be watching out for the Queen, but she was so hungry... She ran her hands over her blubbery belly, dreams of stewed chicken and salmon pie swimming through her mind. Her stomach rumbled with desire.

“Oh, poor dear…”

Snow’s eyes snapped wide in alarm as a familiar hand cupped her chins.

“I can’t let my darling stepdaughter go hungry, can I?”

∻∻∻

The Huntress closed the armoury door. She’d had little hope that the fastidious Queen would deign to enter a place so smelly and manly, but she and the dwarves had already scoured the entire castle and found nothing.

Heavy footsteps creaked over the wooden floor boards as a lady-in-waiting waddled past with armloads of food. Her eyes widened when she saw the Huntress. She turned to scurry away, but the Huntress, unburdened by so much flesh, easily cut her off. “Where is the Queen?” she demanded.

The lady-in-waiting puffed up to her full height and girth, bulging buttocks quivering with indigence. “How dare you speak to me in such a way!” she said. “I am lady Millicent Borograve III, of the ancient and honourable Medici bloodline, Baroness of the Duchy-on-”

The Huntress drew her sword. She had no intention of using it, but she also had no time for chivalric games. Lady Millicent squealed, backing her broad frame against the stone wall. “She’s with the princess, in the Great Hall!”

The Huntress turned and charged down the hallway, blade glinting in her hand.

∻∻∻

“Come now, surely you’re not full yet?” The Queen sneered, red lipstick glinting like blood as she towered over Snow White.

Snow groaned in agony. She sat upon the raised dais before the overloaded table, a hedonistic banquet, all for one. The stately thrones had been shoved aside to make room for her prodigious bulk.

Another lady-in-waiting stepped up, stuffing mushroom pasties down Snow’s throat by the handful. They had her surrounded, force-feeding her under the Queen’s command, their combined weight pinning her to the ground. By now, her belly was dangerously full, streaked with angry red stretch marks, shoving apart her flabby thighs and wobbling past her feet.

“Maybe you just need something to whet your appetite,” the Queen said.

“Please, no!” Snow begged past a mouthful of spinach tart. “Not another one!”

The Queen took another apple from the table, shoving it against Snow’s mouth, pinching her nose to force her to open for another bite of apple. As the juices dripped down her throat, her overstuffed belly roared, quaking with powerful hunger, a desperate need for more. Her heavy arms stretched uselessly towards the mountain of food. But it was all out of reach, separated by her ocean of fat. Waves rolled over her immense body as she hopelessly wiggled and strained.

“Why?” She sobbed. “Why?”

“Why?” The Queen’s pretty mouth twisted in disgust. She jabbed one of her long legs into Snow’s stomach, making her scream. She crammed a loaf of bread in Snow’s mouth, forcing it down until her fat neck bulged with the effort of swallowing. “Why?!!”

Her hands grappled for the magic mirror. “Is the face of the most beloved woman in the land??” She spat out the magic charm. The glass swirled, coalescing into Snow White’s face at the very moment she won the Hell challenge, bloated and dazed and sitting high atop a mountain of lard. The Huntress stood off to the side, her face shining with pride and admiration.

The Queen shoved the mirror in her stepdaughter’s food-covered face. “This should be my face! Mine!” The ladies-in-waiting flinched as the Queen threw the mirror across the room. It shattered to pieces, the scattered shards still showing Snow White’s face.

The Queen grabbed Snow White’s dark hair, yanking her head back. Snow let out a yelp of pain, muffled by food. “I hold the power in this kingdom!” the Queen howled. “My beauty is supreme!”

The sharp tip of a blade pressed against the Queen’s back. “I think she’s had enough to eat, your majesty.”

The Queen’s eyes gleamed, her lips parted in a poisonous smile. “Of course…” she stepped to the side, unconcerned, as if the Huntress was holding a wooden toy instead of a proper blade. “I never would have guessed… You were the one secretly in love with the princess this whole time.”

The Huntress’s ears turned red, but she tightened her grip on the sword.

The Queen laughed, tapping the blade with her sharp nails. “Pathetic. And you still cling to that love? Even when confronted with this monstrosity?” She gestured towards the swollen pile of flesh, hardly recognizable as Snow White.

Snow squeezed her eyes shut, too bloated to even turn her head in shame.

Seeing her distress, The Huntress dropped to her knees, gently wiping a smear of jam off Snow’s cheek. “What are you talking about? She’s even more beautiful now than she’s ever been.”

Snow struggled to curl her fat fingers around the Huntress’s hand. “No one’s ever called me beautiful…”

The Huntress’s eyes shone with love. “You deserve to hear it every day.” She leaned forward to finally kiss those sweet lips-

White hot pain shot through her. “AARRGH!” The Huntress fell forward, her own sword jammed haphazardly in her back.

“Huntress!” Snow White lunged forward, shredding her already strained dress.

The Queen stepped away, wiping her hands with a gossamer lace handkerchief. “A little messy for my taste, but that’s one way to get rid of a pesky admirer.”

The Huntress groaned softly, barely clinging to life. Snow White reached out to help, but her massive behind pinned her in place, too heavy to lift even an inch off the floor. She glared at her stepmother, her gentle heart filled with hatred. “You will pay for hurting her.”

The Queen’s horrible laugh echoed off the walls. She wiped the sweat off Snow White’s brow and flicked it back in her face. “Get a hold of yourself. Can you even lift those blubbery arms of yours anymore?”

Snow swiped at her, but only set herself rocking, flesh jiggling violently.

The Queen laughed. “I thought so.”

The door slammed open and the seven dwarfs barreled in, mouths full.

“Sweet gods below, but there is a lot of food here!”

“That Queen may be a nasty bint, but she sure knows how to keep a castle stocked!”

Their laughter stopped when they saw Snow’s dangerously bloated state and their adopted daughter groaning in a pool of her own blood. They cast their handfuls of food aside, running toward the Queen with blades and hammers out.

The Queen pulled a dagger out of her belt and lept behind Snow. “Not one step closer,” she warned, pressing the blade against the girl’s bulging breast. “Unless you want more blood spilled.”

The dwarves stopped running. They hunched forward, hands gripping the hilts of their weapons. Silence crackled between the two parties as the stalemate settled, both considering their options.

Snow White’s mountain of fat still wobbled wildly, belly gurgleing. Realising that she was now more of a prop than a threat, an idea began to form. Slowly, slowly, she used her weak muscles to push her rocking further, further… To an inattentive eye, she looked as if she were still merely jiggling, but she was gradually gaining momentum…

The Queen’s harsh smile flashed at the dwarves, confident as ever. “That’s right, she said. Back away. This is my land, my castle, to rule as I see fi- MMPH!”

An avalanche of flesh buried her words as Snow gained enough momentum to push herself back, pinning the Queen to the ground. The Queen struggled to escape, squirming and biting like an animal, but her layers of lard protected Snow from any actual harm. “Get... the apples!” she wheezed, depleted from so much exercise.

The dwarves lept to the table. “So this is how you’ve been using the dwarven gifts,” Heavymane said, tucking a dozen apples into the crook of his arm.

“They are MY gifts now!” The Queen hissed, “My mother stole them fair and- nng!” She gasped for breath, lungs squeezed under Snow White’s mass.

“Then it’s only right you have a taste of them yourself,” Iron-Gut said, shining an apple on his tunic. The dwarves closed in around the Queen, their jolly faces set in grim satisfaction.

“No! No!” The Queen clawed at Snow’s backside, desperate to break free. “No! Stop! Anything but that!”

If she had just once heeded Snow White’s similar pleas, the princess might have spoken up for her. But as it was, she merely watched as the dwarves forced her stepmother to eat one, two, three, seven apples all at once. The Queen howled, first with fury and then with hunger.

“That’s enough,” Snow waved her heavy arms in the air. “Help me up, please.” Lardbelly and Heavymane hauled Snow White back to a sitting position, while the others attended the Huntress, carefully removing the sword and patching her wound.

The Queen, once released, knelt on the ground for a moment, panting for breath, eyes wild. She looked up at the banquet table loaded with food. With a savage roar, she bore down on it like a feral animal, cramming food into her mouth without an ounce of restraint.

Once she could stand, the Huntress stumbled to Snow White. Snow welcomed her with a teary smile and open arms, pulling her exhausted saviour onto her warm, soft body. “Thank you,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to her forehead. The Huntress sighed happily, relaxing into her pillowy embrace.

∻∻∻

The dwarves took over the Queen’s garden, moving all of their brewing equipment out of their little woodland home and into the main hall. Since the apples were of dwarvish origin, they knew how to temper their destructive magic, and soon the kingdom became famous for their hearty apple ale. One sip would fill your belly for hours, and an entire bottle, well…

Since all the nobles and most of the staff had been reduced to wheezing, waddling whales, the dwarves became instrumental in keeping the castle running. Dwarves could be as active as ever after they had grown wider than they were tall, so it surprised them that humans could not. But they found the human helplessness cute, and made sure their new “pets” had all the treats they could ever want. Subsequently, most of the court expanded even further, unable to resist just one more bite of delicious dwarven cooking.

Snow released her father from his apple-fueled prison, where he had grown into a proper mountain. He never walked again, but he had finally returned to himself. He gave the throne to his daughter and spent the rest of his days laughing, eating, and playing cards with the dwarves.

The kingdom prospered, and it was common to see once-starving peasants waddle through their flourishing fields. Queen Snow White, with her faithful Huntress by her side, ascended the throne. Her massive frame could no longer be contained by any ordinary seat, but her room-spanning girth still inspired awe from visiting dignitaries.

Sometimes, when she had an empty afternoon with no court affairs to deal with, Snow would ask the strong dwarves to set her on her wheeled platform and roll her to the back of the castle to check on her stepmother.

Behind closed doors, the former Queen had become little more than an open mouth amidst an ocean of fat. Her arms had vanished, buried beneath piles of flesh, legs trapped and useless under mountainous thighs, her face lost in a jiggling mass of cheeks and chins that continuously wobbled from constant chewing. Only her belly was still recognizable, rising out of the cellulite sea, bulging and red and trembling with fullness.

Gluttony caused her mind to atrophy. Like a greedy little house pet, all she knew how to do any more was open her mouth for the next bite. Though each bite was agony, she begged for more, more, sobbing hysterically if there was ever a pause in the waterfall of food barrelling into her stomach.

A line of servants trooped in and out of the room all day long, carrying dishes stacked high with food for that monstrous belly. It was a coveted position, and even those servants who could barely stand were eager to take their turn cramming food down the throat of the woman who had robbed them of their mobility, eager to oblige her agonised pleas for more.

And of course, each dish was accompanied by a single apple, making sure her hunger would never end.

∻∻∻

SPECIAL THANKS TO:
“Letters and Numbers”, who provided invaluable feedback to this story. Without them, this story wouldn’t have half its depth. Check out their writing on FantasyFeeder.com, where they are currently working on an impressive, novel-length story called “What a Long Sleep You’ve Had”. If you like slow burn romance with lots of wonderful characterization, I highly recommend.