Homebound

chapter 1

Delia leaned back on the couch, absentmindedly snacking from a bowl of nuts and half-watching the Golden Girls rerun playing on the TV. If she had known that this was what pregnancy would be like, she would've asked Frank to wear a condom.

She knew that the third trimester would be hard. She knew they had maternity leave for a reason, but she thought it would mean lounging around and snacking on chocolate-covered strawberries guilt-free while waiting for the baby to come. Instead, she felt like she was in a sauna, she'd outgrown everything but her sweatpants, her bladder was the size of a grape, and she was having the weirdest cravings ever.

*grrrrrggggrrrlll*

She sighed and pulled herself off the couch and trudged to the kitchen for one of her new signature snacks. Out of the fridge came the jar of pickles, as well as the can of cheez-whiz. She wasn't even sure why she liked it; she hadn't even touched that stuff since she was ten years old, yet she shouldn't get another one. With a *kk-ssshhhhkkk*, a line of neon orange spray cheese ran along the length of the pickle like mustard on a hot dog. She took only a brief moment to admire her handiwork before eagerly biting in.

Even though the flavors had no earthly right to go together, for some reason they tasted like Heaven in her mouth. Delia gobbled down her culinary monstrosity, then quickly whipped up another one. She ate that one with the same gusto, then made another. And another. And another. In the span of a few minutes, she had devoured the entire jar's worth of pickles, easily more than a dozen, and topped it off by spraying the rest of the cheese can's contents in her mouth. The pleasant sense of fullness contrasted heavily with the visceral feeling of disgust her mind felt towards her body.

Her cravings abated, Delia returned to the living room and flopped back down on the couch, which jostled a burp from her stuffed gut. She flipped the TV back on, getting sucked into the world of daytime sitcom reruns once more. But if she thought that her binge-watching would continue uninterrupted until dinner time, she was sorely mistaken.

It started off with a soft *grrrggglll*, one that she had heard many times before whenever her stomach was a little too full or empty. She didn't even remove her eyes from the television, assuming that it was just the sounds of her digestive system going to work. But it was soon joined by another, more aggressive *grrrooowwwlll*.

She glanced down at her swollen belly and raised an eyebrow. She couldn't be hungry again, could she? After all, she just ate. Hell, she felt even fuller than before!

But the noise did not abate—nay, it intensified. Her stomach was now constantly groaning and gurgling, like a chorus of frogs was living in her gut. She nervously placed a hand on her belly, shocked that she could feel the churning through her skin. The baby kicked, no doubt discomforted by the commotion.

The sensations in her stomach now joined by a dull, gradually building pain, like she had overeaten and her stomach was filled beyond capacity. With a loud *GURGLE*, it suddenly shifted downwards, and Delia's mind was briefly filled with thoughts of contractions and calling the hospital. But this pain wasn't so much in her womb as it was behind it, spreading down from her stomach to her intestines. She gripped her belly again, this time with more urgency, hoping that her pain would end before it became too great for her to tolerate.

The painful pressure continued to build in her lower intestine, growing strong and stronger, until...

*fffrrrrrrttt*

With that out of her system, Delia relaxed. However, she had unwittingly also stopped clenching her sphincter so tightly, and all hell broke loose.

*FFFFRRRRRRRLLLLPPPPPPTTTTTT*

It wasn't a super-forceful fart, the kind that fluttered skirts and scattered papers, but it was worse in every other way. For starters, it was hot, to the point where Delia felt like she'd just used her asshole to unscrew a bottle of Tabasco sauce. She was glad that Frank wasn't around to see the tears start to well up in her eyes, as well as hear the long, droning trumpeting of her anus.

*BRRRAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPP*

An other jolt of pain ran through her gut with the next onslaught of gas, and she shifted to the side, clutching her gravid belly with pain. Not only did it allow the sound to reverberate more loudly in the apartment, but it also exposed her to the smell. Oh god, the smell. It was disgustingly pungent, like someone had thrown a used diaper in a microwave and mixed it with sulfur before grinding it up and scattering it in the air.

*FLRAAAPPPPPPPPPPPTTTTTTTTT*

De lia desperately tried to clench her anus and stop the flow, but it was like trying to halt the course of a river; there was simply too much pressure for it to close again, so she was forced to ride it out. She ended up slumping onto the ground before gradually pulling herself into something between a downward dog and an Olympic swimmer on the platform just before diving in. With tears streaming down her face, she desperately tried to focus on how ridiculous she looked to take her mind off the pain. Unfortunately, it failed.

*FRRRPPPPPP-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-P-p-p-p-p -t*

At long last, the trumpeting began to lose steam, before sputtering and finally dying out. Delia climbed off the floor and collapsed onto the couch, red in the face and soaked with sweat. Although it was no more than thirty seconds of gas, it had felt like a short eternity of suffering. Her asshole was still sore, and her insides felt like a deflated balloon. To make matters worse, the apartment positively reeked of her farts, and Frank was going to be home in a couple hours.

Realizing that she had to do something about the smell, Delia pulled herself upright and wiped her brow, lumbering off in search of air freshener. But after a few steps, she noticed a particularly wet squelching sensation between the cheeks of her still-tender ass. This couldn't just be sweat. Fearing the worst, she looked behind herself and pulled back the waistband of her sweats to reveal that her cheeks and the backside of her sweatpants were covered with a slimy brown film. The wave of nose-rankling stink that assaulted her nostrils swept away any doubts about what was sprayed down there.

"Oh shi-"