Chapter 1 - Welcome to the forum

It is easy, in this modern world, to deny the existence of things we do not understand. Those things that can not be categorized, dissected and chronicled are relegated to the realm of fairy tale in the wake of ever improving technology, those advances of great import that mankind has lauded over, which have invaded every moment of our waking world. We have traded in wonder for Wikipedia, speech for swype, and in so many cases, free will for an ever maddening slog through a list-icle. And i dare say we have not only made a trade in which get the short end, but we have made this trade willingly. We believe, wholeheartedly, that we have entered the age of enlightenment, where Gods may be torn from Olympus, and boogiemen must be cleared away along with the cobwebs under our beds.

But things are rarely as simple as we desire them to be and boogiemen are more often than not, rather reluctant to be cleared away. The creatures of cross roads, the wish granter, the smirking djinn, the wordplay of the Genie. These are the shadows that play behind they eyes of men, the words passed around campfires in warning.

But the monkeys paw has faded, and the scraggy merchant no longer appears at the cross roads with the jingle jangle of his ponderous wares. He no longer smiles as the naive traveler twists their first knuckle, ignoring the warnings of the merchant, dismissive of the old man and his uncivilized superstition. These warnings, lacking any contemporary examples or comparisons, have become little more than myth. Simply stated, we no longer believe in the cross roads, in the places where the fabric between our world and the unknown grow thin. The between of twilight, with its fleeting sun, has lost its self evident magic, we have thrown caution to the wind and live in a world without the witching hours.

We do not believe. And among the tricksters, no deception has ever been more effective than that very idea. The greatest Trick The Devil played is making the world believe he didn't exist.

Jess McRamo was a 24 year old college student in the fourth and final year of her higher education. The world was at her fingertips, and college has afforded her life lessons as well as those of scholarly pursuits. She had learned social lessons, lessons about indulgence, in both alcoholic and caloric forms, lessons about slothful behavior and most importantly lessons about her sexuality. Jess was a woman who understood just what it was that excited her in the seemingly endless world of kinks the internet laid at her feet.

She appreciated the anonymity that the internet gave her, as well as the ability to find new people with new interests, and watch how they either did, or did not splice with her own. These lessons were, like all lessons worth learning, not free. Jess had both expanded and shrunk over the years, woken up with throbbing hangovers as many times as she had cradled her over filled belly as she drifted off to sleep. She had been sometimes chubby, sometimes more, but at 24 she had found balance in her life, her habits, and her behavior, and with it came a balance of her body.

She was solidly in the curvy department, and as a short woman, she knew how quickly that could change on her, but keeping things in balance allowed her to keep her hourglass in tact. She had some softness in the middle, but not so much that she hid it as she once felt she had to, pouting as she wrapped herself in hoodies and sweat pants. At 5'1" the saucy tanned brunette was 155 well distributed pounds. She believed her thighs could use some work, and perhaps even her upper arms, but the men did not seem to notice them when confronted with her stunning 44 DD chest, a sizeable distraction on a girl as short as she was, and a slight bubble butt in the back to balance things out. Her hips flared favorably, and her soft tummy was visible in almost every outfit she constructed, but was hardly a sight that took away from her flaunted beauty.

Jess was a member of several online groups that focused on men and women getting softer. For Jess the temptation to soften herself was once a very real possibility, but along with her sexual lessons came the knowledge that while she enjoyed eating a bit more than she should, it was really no more than a normal person was want to over indulge. And getting fat was, for her, out of the question. She plain and simply enjoyed her status and body too much to let feederism pile her under a prison of soft lush chub. She did, however, like to watch, as the temptations of this world, ever present in the life of a young woman, broke down the will of a greedy gal, and began to added inches to her waist. Her favorite site was overfilled cheeks turning beat red as a chubby chipmunk faces lass was caught eating, and yet unable to stop herself even in the moment of confrontation, from having seconds and even thirds.

Yet there was more to it for Jess, a deepening desire that played at memories fostered in old cartoons. She enjoyed the idea that these girls, like a plump spring turkey, were blissfully unaware that they fattened themselves for the tidings of coming thanksgiving. At first, Jess was embarrassed of these thoughts, unaware of where they came from, or what to do with them. But she found that while it was certainly unique, the criss crossing highways of the internet had quite a few people who had similar fetishes. She learned that most people had kinks laid over kinks, and that almost everyone's fantasy was in some way personalized and special to them. And while their were certainly many creeps about, most people were kind about her interests, and most people who shared it, had no desire to see anyone at all ever be hurt. This was true also of Jess, who often wondered if she would ever fatten someone herself, but knew she would never cook another person or even dream of eating one.

This trend of exploration continued for years, and new places appeared on Jess's radar. She would sometimes snap pictures of herself, a bit of tanned white belly exposed and share it with a group and talk about her desires for herself and others. As college continued she became more and more busy, and even as her body was balancing itself out, she was checking these sites less and less. On spring break of her junior year, waiting for the plane in the terminal, she popped open a window and decided to kill some time. She opened up her email account first, the one she used for this sort of thing, and discovered the usual mountain of unwanted advertisements, sexual and otherwise, updates for groups, and from time to time a line dropped from an old friend. Buried among the usual messages was one Jess had never seen before. She dragged the mouse across the words as she read them. "Crossroads: the Place Between." She tried to remember if this was a place she had once joined, what it had to do with, and whether or not it was the sort of place she felt like returning to. At cursory glance to email was for a forum but not one she could remember ever joining. As she skimmed the messages contents she was amazed to see that she had indeed joined a site named Crossroads, that the email desires to confirm her email, and even more surprisingly, it claimed she had joined the site only an hour before. This was a clear impossibility, as she hadn't had the time with finals and preparing for Christmas break, to do any surfing at all. Jess chalked it up to a scam and moved on, closing the message and opening up one of the many sites she frequented.

This is when things began to get a little weird for Jess, she opened up her messages here, slogged through a handful of unwanted advances, replayed to one or two well crafted advances, and sent them off, preparing to move onto the next site. But as she exited the final message she saw that a new one had been delivered in the mean time. Absentmindedly laying her hand over her soft plump tummy and rubbing it in a clockwise circle, Jess stared in disbelief at the message from a member on the site named Crossroads. This person said hello to her, speaking in a way that made it clear that this wasn't a bot, and asked whether or not she had enjoyed her first visit to the site. Having never made one, Jess simply exited the window and moved on, now feeling a bit uncomfortable in the large bustling airport. Clicking away from the site and opening up a few tabs she decided to clear her mind by checking to see if anyone was around to chat on another site. But time and time again these web pages had messages on them for her in the name of a member with the name Crossroads. Often times the message would be dated as arriving only moments before she had logged in. Checking the information of the member profiles revealed that Crossroads was not a new member, but was always on the site for as long as they had existed. She clicked off the final site, beginning to get quite unsettled, not sure whether to simply go to the web site and see what this was all about, or if she should be more concerned. Exiting all the tabs left Jess back at her email page, where she now saw she had received an email just as she popped back on. The content of his message from Crossroads was the same as all the others but the title for this one was new and it shook her to the core. Jess had been surfing these sites for a long time, had made friends, enemies, even people she considered as close as family, but she never ever revealed her name. No one knew her as Jess, Jessy, Jessica, at no time had she ever used her real name. And yet there it was, in mind boggling italics stretched across the page:

Come see us Jessica, we've been waiting for you.