chapter 1

Cookies, brownies, eclairs, chocolates, croissants; a veritable smorgasbord of confections surrounded her. A sweet tooth to her core, she felt not joy – but terror. They were angry. Tiny hands grasped at her, pinching and poking her soft reclined form as they climbed up to her mouth. She didn’t know why they were angry. Maybe because she ate so many of their friends? She was powerless to stop them, as one by one they filled her up. She could see her belly, usually hidden by her bust, rising like dough. Inflating like a balloon. She wanted to tell them to stop, that she couldn’t take anymore. She could not speak, but as if they understood they began to laugh at her. They were mocking her – every pinch and poke as her belly swelled fatter and fatter. They wanted her to explode. It was their revenge.

Finally, she reached her absolute limit. She could not take a single crumb more. One final pastry made the climb. Standing atop her collarbone, it did not push itself into her mouth as the others had. Instead it presented to her the cargo it had carefully carried up with it. The bane of all overblown balloons – a pin. With a mischievous giggle, it turned and hopped down, using her breast as a springboard, and launched itself pin first at her all too vulnerable belly.

Sarah awoke with a start. It was still dark. It was not the first time she’d had dreams like that, but the first time it had been quite so macabre. Although it had been distressing when she was asleep, now she felt a curious thrill from its fading memory. Maybe because Sarah had always been picked on and teased for her pudgy middle. The transgressive nature of the bizarre dream had targeted her deepest most personal vulnerability, and it had excited her. Not that she understood it, or was mature enough to embrace this new feeling – pushing it away instead.

It wasn’t that bad, she wasn’t even really fat or anything, she thought to herself, she was just kind of soft, and naturally curvy. Reflexively her hand drifted to what she imagined as her primary problem area - her belly. To her shock there was much more than she remembered. Nothing like in her dream, no, but her fingers pinched at least another unexpected inch of thickness all the way around her middle. Sitting up, her gut and her love handles formed one contiguous spare tire of smooth jiggly flab. Her thighs, squished beneath her, spread out to touch each other in the middle and widened thicker than her hips where they met her round and wobbly bottom.

A bottom which now sat on a narrow mattress, surrounded by pillows and blankets, in a totally unfamiliar room. The room was still very dark. It was a narrow space, just wide enough for the single mattress, with a solid wall on her left and a row of wooden beams, spaced about a foot apart, running from floor to ceiling on her right. At the far end was a high window. She could see nothing outside, but the glow of faint starlight revealed the porcelain sheen of a sink and toilet on that side of the room. Suddenly the previous day’s events came back to her – though seeming much more distant and hazy than the dream she just had. Getting lost in the woods, being force fed pastries till she passed out.
As her eyes adjusted, she realized she was in a basement – she couldn’t see anything out the window because it opened to a narrow vertical shaft. More alarmingly, the wooden beams ran all the way across the room, with no break for a doorway – effectively a cage. How did she even get in there? How was she supposed to get out? Was she being held captive? A sense of panic set in, but there was nothing she could do now.

Perhaps the light of morning would show her something different she thought and lay back down on her side. This position had always been more comfortable for her, not having to fight the weight of her bosoms to breathe. But now she couldn’t help but feel hyper-aware of how her belly swelled outward as it pressed against the mattress like it was trying to escape from her. At least her belly had not yet caught up to her boobs she thought as she ran a hand over them to make sure. She curled her knees up, squeezing her thighs together tightly, once again feeling a naughty energy she could not explain and her hand drifted lower.

As she stared vacantly out into the darkness beyond her cage, however, she suddenly recognized one of the shadows as the silhouette of a person! How long had they been standing there in the dark, keeping perfectly still? I went well beyond creepy. Sarah propped herself up on her elbow, leaning forward to peer into the darkness.

“Who … who’s there?” she meant to shout but all that came out was a whisper.

“Aww, does that mean the show’s over?” said the shadow as it crept closer, in a voice that was somehow both sweet and dripping with malice at the same time. It sounded vaguely familiar, but Sarah struggled to place it with her still foggy memory. “It seems you are adjusting well to your new situation. Usually there is more … screaming, begging, crying.” The shadow crouched down next to Sarah, placing its hands on the bars as it leaned forward, bringing its face into the faint light from the window.

“I imagined you as more of a cry baby,” said the face, which Sarah suddenly remembered belonged to the proprietor of the bakery shop in town, who she had met just the day before. “Not sad to be wrong about that.” She grinned wickedly, darting a hand to Sarah’s pot belly and pinching a handful of flab. “Who’s a good piggy-wiggy,” she cooed.

Sarah yelped and scooted back, or tried to, pressing herself against the wall of pillows on her left. The narrow space didn't permit her to go far. The offending hand merely sliding from her belly down to the top of her thigh, and pinching the softness there.

"Why are you doing this?" Sarah whined.

"Why? Because I'm a witch my dear. Its what we do." Sarah stared at her incredulously. "Haven't you heard the old fairy tales? We take greedy little piggies like you and fatten them up and cook them," said the witch gleefully, "and you're just about fat enough."

"W ... Witches aren't real!" Sarah spat back at her, unable to think up a better comeback.

"Keep telling yourself that piglet." The witch chuckled as she stood and made to walk away.

"Let me go! If you don't ... I won't eat anything. I'll starve myself." It had sounded better in her head Sarah decided, belatedly. The Witch just laughed.

"We both know you don't quite have the, er, stomach for that, now do you. But perhaps I should save you some trouble and explain how this works." The witch drew closer again, putting her face up to the cage.

The shadows seemed to wrap around her - the whole room seemed to darken. Sarah could feel the temperature drop and her hairs began to stand on end. In the afternoon light at the bakery Sarah had thought her pretty, but now the illusion dropped. What stared back at her from the darkness beyond the cage, though still vaguely humanoid, was clearly something else, something monstrous: glowing red eyes, jagged pointy teeth, weathered green skin, and long gnarled fingers tipped with pointy fingernails that almost resembled claws.

"Fat or thin, you will be sacrificed to the darkness on the night of the next new moon." The witch growled. "I will eat your well marbled little muscles like tender veal, and make soup from the marrow in you bones. But your cursed blubber will be mixed into the lard in our recipes, ensuring all who partake of you deliciousness become hopelessly addicted. Just a pinch..." the witch grasped at Sarah again, but she managed to squirm away - "...is all it takes. And you've got so much to pinch. Why that thigh alone would supply us for months!" the witch cackled.

"A well fed piggy like you starving herself for but a few days will change nothing. Take my advice and savor the wonderful treats we give you. It would be foolish to deny yourself what you so obviously enjoy in your final days." The witch then melted back into the darkness as Sarah sat there stunned.

Perhaps she should cry, she thought, but it all just felt so unreal. Laying down, part of her wondered if it wasn't just another bad dream. Maybe when she woke up she'd be back home in her bed, and all of this would just fade away as dreams tend to do.