The Insight Role

“No,” I declared as I threw open the door, and carried with me wisps of incense smoke into his chamber. My envelope, opened destructively and re-stuffed with its contents, fell where I dropped it. He didn’t even look at me.

“It’s not a holiday, Miss Roberts, it’s supposed to be enriching. You’ll engage.”

“I will fucking not,” I spat. “A nunnery? What the fuck were you thinking?”

He whipped up and turned to me, freezing the venom in my fangs. My heart stopped for just a moment. Grinning with those sharp white tombstones that possessed the peculiar quality of putting me less at ease, he closed the short distance between us. His arms stretched outwards as if seeking a hug neither of us wanted. “It’s part of being a novitiate, my dear sweet Rey; we all had to do it. Can you honestly see me running a soup kitchen? Or Vyrthur acting as police chief?”

I didn’t look at him. I wondered whether I was doing damage to my teeth.

His smile dropped as if with the flick of a switch, and his attention instead turned to one of the candles that danced near my left shoulder. “It’s an… opportunity, Raven. You’ll harvest the insight and become stronger for it…”

“I can’t be a nun…”

“...Otherwise you’re no more than prey. Get out.”

The car ride was very uncomfortable, in spite of the luxury the coupe offered. I’d been sat alone in the back and the driver, a large man I’d not said a word to, refused to break old habits. They’d taken my clothes and my jewellery, allowed me no makeup, and confiscated my notes, my grimoires, and even my mobile. It was all locked away in a storage unit rented for six months - the full term of my insight role.

By all appearances, the girl knocking on the door of the convent was a frail and meek child seeking a home she didn’t have. My hair hung limp and wild around my shoulders, and the plain clothes I’d been dressed in swamped my figure and hid me. The Mother Superior made me a coffee and ushered me into her office. She was too liberal with the milk and the mug barely classed as a saucer, but I thanked her all the same.

“I don’t have anywhere else to turn,” I said, coldly monotone. I’d been given a script that I’d seethed over in the car, but now that I was here it seemed senseless not to just get on with it. She was a kindly woman that went by the name of Jackie, plump in her features while retaining the firm strictness of authority beneath. We spent longer together than I think she anticipated.

Strictly speaking, I was supposed to go into this pure. Virginal. I was supposed to immerse myself in what it would be like to live this other side, where I feared gods and prayed down on my knees every night to save my soul. Walking in the shoes of someone else gives you a kind of renewed perspective that contextualises your life. It’s why my order placed so much value on these insight roles; it's why hardened criminals and terrorists would join law enforcement, or why the straight-edged would ingratiate themselves with drug cartels. You played your role for your term and, once that time was up, made your excuses and abandoned the life you borrowed.

That was the theory. That was the practice.

But the dogma of organised practice hasn’t ever sat well with me. I’ve done what feels right, even if it isn’t so. Rather than listening intently to what my new mother had to say, I stared into her eyes and drank of her soul.

Only a little. The slick, astral chords that I’d been trained to hone and make my own slipped from the flesh just beneath my shoulder blades, seeping through my shirt as if it were air and slinking invisibly across the short distance between myself and the woman. I made all the noises of a fragile girl, though maintained an intense eye-contact that I could feel unsettled her. It made it easier to track the effect I had, when the tendrils sank beneath her skin as they probed for the blood-centres I’d mapped on so many diagrams, and so many former meals. One for her heart; one for her mind.

The intimate near-hug that occurred between us overwhelmed. This woman of God trembled as I became her entire world for those brief moments, as I gobbled up every conscious thought I found in her head and replaced them with my own lilting whispers. Although I still wasn’t happy about my sentence, being able to puppet the woman who wrote the rules made it feel a little more manageable. I promised myself that from that point onwards, I’d use no magic. I’d be an obedient human girl settled in her new life.

I managed to believe my own lie for around a week. I felt the hunger constantly. There was no preparation for the abysmal shift in lifestyle. Where I would usually satisfy each and every one of my carnal needs immediately - sometimes with as little effort as a flex of my supernumerary limbs - I was hampered in a cult of self-flagellating spiritual masochists. I was in a shared bedroom - we all were - so when Kelsey walked in on me exercising some much-needed frustrations, I was immediately ratted out to the Matron. Jackie ‘technically’ being on my side couldn’t swerve her from the reflexive punishment she administered. Her blood eased the blow, and we spent the afternoon with her going about her paperwork, and myself sat meditating in the corner glutting myself on her like a leech.

Grudges are childish, human things. Unfortunately for my snake of a roommate, I was only playing at being human. That same night I lay there under my plain white bedclothes with my breath low and my face tight against the wall. She made her prayers without me, something she insisted she would tell Jackie about as well, and fell asleep near instantly. Between the work in the garden, and the cleaning, and the constant prostrations, most of these girls passed out the moment they were horizontal. It suited me just fine.

My heart sat in my throat as I lay there. It was naughty. I’d already broken the rules. Killing someone, outright and merciless, would almost definitely bring down the ire of the coven leader. I didn’t want to bear it. But I also didn’t want to bear the injustice Kelsey had dealt me. I could lose a couple of kilos in six months. They never had to find out, surely... A strangled glrrt in my tummy was the decider.

Slinking silently from out under the covers, I dropped my bare toes onto the cool hard tiles like a cat. When she didn’t stir, I padded animalistic and hungry towards her side of the room. My fangs itched all the way to the root. I flexed my jaw and took one preparatory bite of air before brushing the hair from her neck. My insides thrilled, heart racing as a hunger I’d squashed unwillingly for six nights bubbled upwards. Outwards. I exhaled. I lowered, feeling the heat of her throat millimetres away from my lips.

There was a quiet knock at the door that startled me. A shaft of candlelight splintered through the crack as the girl begging entry made herself vulnerable. I’m not even sure which one she was; it happened so fast.

A tendril slashed out through the air, snuffing the flame deliberately before I snaked it rapidly around her throat and mouth. I pulled her inside with it, abandoning my original intentions and closed the door quietly as she kicked and moaned. Hefting her up above my lips, she hanged limp and asphyxiating until the thrashing slowed and she went silent. Alive, but very much out.

I swallowed her feet first, threading her calves and thighs into my body as I released pressure on her windpipe. The nightgown they’d provided me with was this dowdy thing made of cotton that ballooned out far enough to be a bedsheet in its own right. As it turns out, nuns wear the best pyjamas for hiding large meals. There was a little stretching at the neck and I’m sure I heard some quiet tearing, but once she was settled inside me there were zero discomforts. The material rucked up around my stomach, hooking under my bum and revealing my calves a little more to the shadows. I slipped under my covers and lay on my back.

The girl didn’t reawaken. I made great efforts to breathe each belch out silently, though I didn’t need to often. She was a sweet snack that went mushy after around two hours, at which point the loudest growls muffled, and I fell asleep.

As it turns out, sisters vanishing in the night isn’t all that uncommon. In fact, the girl who’d unwittingly volunteered herself for my hunger had left a note saying she was running away, back home to see the children she’d abandoned seven months prior. She’d done all the soul-searching she needed to know that she was in the wrong place. I guess she wanted to say goodbye to her close friends without upsetting Jackie.

Instead, her last words were the unpleasant burbling in my panties that finally woke me up. She was a small woman, a head shorter than me and weighed down more by her hair than the flesh on her bones. Even still; my skin glowed with the small new layer of fat I’d made from her, and her churned-up remains slurped around in my colon as I sat up in my bed. I let her stew a little longer while I went for breakfast.

I couldn’t quite believe my luck. They seemed sad, but it wasn’t an unexpected loss. It certainly wasn’t the ‘oh my God, someone’s been murdered’ I’d hyped myself up for. I ate my toast quietly, listening to how fondly the girls spoke of the dearly departed and wished her all the best with a prayer. It was probably just a coincidence, but I’m sure their ‘amen’ triggered some indigestion. There was also the benefit that, with the mind of every woman elsewhere, I never had to explain to anyone from where my unreasonable potbelly had stemmed. I’d settled on period-bloating, but wasn’t sure if the sheer fat in my gut would render that convincing.

When it came time to ease my bowel, I was a little stuck. They weren’t the industrial affair that the coven had so graciously plumbed in for me; they were tailored to the light-weight diets and sensibilities of their users. I’m exaggerating. The toilet just wasn’t up to scratch. I didn’t want to become a total pariah, nor explain why fifty pounds worth of filth was funnelling out of my bottom, so I pinched her off after around twenty seconds and let my rectum slurp back the rest. It was a painful experience, but it did mean that I was absorbing so much more of my food while also keeping up those oh-so-important human appearances. I think it must have taken a few full days for her to flush all the way through, plus a few more for my gut to properly balance back out. But I’d convinced myself that the woman would be my only good meal in half a year, so making the most of it felt worth the agony.

My day-to-day wasn’t all that different than it was with the vampires. I’d sit in the cloister or - preferably - my bedroom and meditate for as many hours at a time as I could justify. Of course sometimes the other nuns would join me and we’d collectively reflect on our relationship with God in silence. We never discussed openly. They didn’t like me very much, and they’d like me less if I told them that my gods would eat their God for breakfast. I wonder if a prude like Yahweh even has a flavour…

The seeming rivalry with my roommate was an ongoing and constant source of stress for me. I was trying to be good and ‘engage ‘ with my insight role, but it makes it increasingly difficult to do what you know you should when some yappy child is constantly at your heels seeking a reaction. I had intrusive thoughts all the time, sitting across from her in the refectory or on the occasions when we tended the garden together. I felt my left hand tingle with hate all the way up to the elbow, felt it stretching and sharpening with claws of scarlet energy contained - barely - upon the astral plane. If she was anywhere near as enlightened as she claimed, she’d see my spiritual avatar barely keeping from tearing a hole in her chest and feasting on the blood.

But I was playing my part. I had a blip. She digested. She passed. I was good again. So the fact that Jackie pulled me into her chamber almost three times a week was insufferable. I was accused of everything from blasphemy to idleness, vanity and gluttony and all the rest. Each and every time, I would extend the visit with a small bite in her mind that she would forget about almost as soon as my tendrils departed her soul. On the outside, it gave all the appearance of favouritism. I would hide away in her office while the others cooked, or weeded, or spent time biting me in the back.

But although I had power enough to manipulate her thoughts and get my way, it never stemmed the tide of displeasure I’d have to endure and the myriad complaints. Mother Superior was an angry bulldog. My bulldog, but a bulldog all the same.

“I like you, Raven, I think you’re a pleasure to have around. But you need to get on with the girls. This is a family and, right now, you’re making it difficult for all of us to cohabit.”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“Precisely the point, Madam; we need you to pick up the slack left by that other good-for-nothing runaway and, if I’m wanting to be blunt, you just don’t contribute what is expected of you.”

The outbursts were constant and regular, grating against my fragile psyche like constantly constant rain in a dam. At some point, something was going to give.

This one, I take no ownership over. I was an animal backed into a corner; if they kicked me out, the covenant likely would as well. I had no choice, and the demonic core I wrapped my soul around felt it. It burst in black, silky cords that seized up around her, tangling like the rampant vines of an ivy plant. I hadn’t manifested the blades. Instead, the tips merged into one snaking shade tethered and probed. The end opened up and came down around her head, and I shivered with intense gushes of pleasure as her size rubbed against the inner lining of my vampiric organ.

It was an aching experience, feeling her sink alive and struggling down the length of undulating darkness. I collapsed to my knees. Overwhelmed and panting, I watched the swell as she carried over my head, towards the space in the middle of my back where I’d blossomed like a demonic flower. Her head sunk directly into my stomach and I fell forward, cheek taking root in the carpet.

There was the slow-burning realisation that what I was doing was a terrible idea. It was around the point that her shoulders hunched together to squeeze into my digestive system, and the muscles spasmed with little bubbles at the meal that came entirely unannounced; I had no way of explaining Jackie’s disappearance, what had happened or, especially, how I’d gotten so well fed. But at a certain point you have to just accept it and make do. I’d cross all those bridges as they arrived.

And they arrived with a sharp knock and one of the girls I’d not yet spoken to asking whether or not the Mother Superior would like a cup of tea.

“Oh, hi Raven… is-”

“No,” I said quickly. I felt sweat glaze my forehead as I poked out from the half-opened door. “She’s, uhm… we’re just in the middle of something.” My belly rumbled as it continued expanding. I twisted my hips to help hide behind the frame, but the unnatural point of entry still forced an empty-sounding “HuuUUurph,” up my gullet. “She’s not feeling great right now, it’s fine, I’m sure she’ll have one later.”

I’d parted her hair with my belch, and she now reorganised it with a disgusted look on her face. “Right,” she said, tottering off back down the corridor.

I slammed shut the door, barricading it with a statue of the Virgin Mary before collapsing belly-down once more. My bum tilted higher and higher into the air as meat pumped into my gut, until my knees lifted off the ground and I worried about permanent damage to my neck. Jackie’s feet - or the bulge that carried them, at least - disappeared back into my body with a slurp, and the incriminating tendril followed.

Now safely nestled within a web of constructed privacy, I let my fingers stray across the plump pillow of my backside, brushing my tight arsehole as I stretched for my pussy. The meal made me horny. Very horny. And as I broke down the soft edges inside my caustic guts, massaged by shallow bounces from my thighs, I fucked myself until the squirming cut of superior meat slushed from her bones and melted into a waxy soup that my intestines could absorb.

I think I slept there on the floor right around until morning, and when I awoke I was quite dismayed to find I’d split out of my garments almost entirely with gratuitous deposits of dough. With a groan, I rolled onto my bottom and psyched myself up to stand. There was no excusing the gross bulge in my guts this time - Jackie was a big woman - and although I was certain that a good dump would reduce a lot of the swelling, I’d inherited a lot of fat.

Pouring myself a glass of water from her carafe, I sat in her chair with my heels propped up on her desk. A quiet belch into my fist eased my stomach a little, but there was a very real sense of dread cloying in my belly. A nun disappearing out of the blue is explainable, sure, but the Head Matron? I spent at least an hour wracking my brain, trying to come up with something - anything - that would get me out of the mess my appetite had presented. It didn’t help that my mind kept wandering. I’d gotten gratuitously chubby. There was no way the vampire cult would let it stand.

It wasn’t perfect by any means, and I’m not even sure it was particularly convincing. Silence as thick as smog seethed through the refectory as I eased my way through the door. I rested with my hands on the table and, much to my embarrassment, my stomach ballooned large enough to dock there too.

“Mother Superior called me into her office last night,” I began, speaking slowly. A few of them were already scowling. “She’s been called away on a dire emergency and has decided to leave me in charg-”

“Of course!” spat the girl who slept in my room. “Why would she let any but the shiny new slut know where she was going? We have a right to know, Raven; where has she gone?”

My midriff grumbled wetly, somewhere deep down in my intestinal tract. The woman closest to my right glanced at it with a certain restrained terror in her eyes. She looked like she might actually faint when I moved my hand towards her, and plucked a slice of toast from her plate.

“If she wanted you to know where she was going she would have told you, Kelsey.” I swallowed my mouthful. “This doesn’t change anything, we all have our day jobs-”

“Which you never do properly!”

“-so we carry on like normal until she reappears. Cool? Cool.” I snatched up the last slice as I went to leave, ignoring the muttering. “I’ll be meditating if you need me.”

“Of course you will, fatass…” I heard someone whisper before the door swung properly closed behind me.

“Jesus wept,” I hissed, “fucking Jesus fuck…” Clenching my fingers into the veil I never wore, I felt my eyes watering as I deposited Mother Jackie in her own private commode. It was the one place I could be sure no one would look, and it was far away enough inside its own walls that I could let my guts drop without worrying about people hearing.

She flushed eventually, and I went about making myself look somewhat presentable. “Shit,” I mumbled to myself as I sat back against her desk, digging my fingers into my eyes. The situation was dire. Nuns don’t have body counts. In that regard, the insight role was already a bust. I could find a phone, reach out to my coven leader - and I did very much consider it; but I didn’t know whether I could stomach what he would say.

It seemed wise to take my own advice. Business as usual. The fact I’d eaten the woman in charge, more or less on a whim, didn’t change anything. I still spent the vast majority of my days in deep meditation. Although physically I was trapped inside a stuffy monastery, my soul was free to journey beyond reality. I revisited the catacombs of Nahemoth and sat in the quiet shadows, watching the souls pass through and between the dark tunnels and plucking out the occasional meal when I felt my spirit hunger. I bathed in lakes of warm blood and drank from shades in a deep orgy that submerged us in heat, and left us washed up and giggling on the shoreline. With no earthly distractions, my adventures came as easily as breath. I think maybe those holiest among us do indeed have a point.

And then every day, I was ripped back into the monastery. I had to weed with mortal hands, cook meals that tasted like dirt in comparison to what I devoured in my dreams. The dichotomy was staggering. Every rotten day felt overwhelming to me, the jeers and the mundanity; even something as simple as washing up after meals was a chore too basic for my attentions.

It came to a real head one night out in the gardens. The rest of the convent were at dinner; at least, that’s what I thought. I’d more or less stopped eating with them at that point, opting usually instead to deal with my needs in private, and sometimes employing Mother Superior’s laptop in attracting food deliveries. The other girls knew about all this, of course, when a pizza box didn’t get buried quite deep enough in the rubbish or when I’d stuffed myself full enough to erupt involuntarily in hearty burps. I laughed quietly to myself as I lay there listening to the wind, wondering at which exact point I’d gone from religious sister to communist leader.

I heard them coming long before opening my eyes, shuffling through the grass with their dresses fluttering and their rosary beads clinking. I smelled something on the air mixing with the moonlight, a scent I was familiar with and enjoyed, but which carried with it a hateful intention.

“We know what you are,” came a trembling voice.

Kelsey.

I sighed, stretching out like a large cat before twisting onto my side, propping up on my elbow and looking down upon them from where I perched on the large, overhanging branch of the ancient oak. My sharp fingers groped trenches into my tummy fat. She thrust the smouldering bundle of incense higher towards me, and I snuffled at the smoke that irritated my nostrils.

“And what am I, pet?” I said through a huff.

The girl with her seemed overwhelmed - terrified. “Y-you were right, weren’t you, she’s…”

“A demon,” Kelsey declared through gritted teeth. “A creature from hell sent to shake us.”

“Then she…?”

I sighed audibly, rolling my eyes. “So I ate a few of you; that’s hardly grounds to call me names.” I managed to get out the words before sneezing twice in hard succession, rocking my branch perilously. “And put that out, it's a waste of good sage.”

“D-do we call an exorcist? A priest?” the smaller girl whined. She looked to Kelsey for guidance, but found nun. “Dear lord, that’s why she gained weight so quickly, isn’t it?”

“Return back from whence you came,” bellowed my roommate, taking a lethal step forwards. In a moment she screamed, tumbling as her ankle whipped out from underneath her and she launched up into the branches. I snuffed Kelsey’s complaints in my mouth and, while she tickled her way down my gullet, my other tendril snaked its way blindly after her fleeing accomplice.

She cried out and fell to the ground, whining as I dragged her back towards the foot of the tree. The black tether coiled around her torso and her arms, entangling her throat and gagging her before hauling her up and past me to hang there like an overripe fruit. I could smell her tears in the air. She had a very, very personal view of what I was doing.

Kelsey folded into my stomach violently, thrashing at every opportunity and scratching at the muscular interior. I worried, seriously, whether she’d damage my insides. The pudgy pillow I had for a belly tightened as she took up the slack. Even over her yelling, we could hear as my internal juices spilled from every cell. Growling, blubbering; with my hands free, I was totally able to massage her into more comfortable positions as I had my meal. My fingers trailed across the surface in little furrows that tested the elasticity of my own fat.

I let the bitch stew for a few minutes. Her struggles deadened slowly in my gut, but they did end quickly and I signalled that fact with a rippling, five-second “BruUuUuuurrrrrrrrhhhp…” In the dark, my eyes met with those of my other soon-to-be victim and I purred, “Now for dessert.” I think she passed out then and there, poor thing.

I eased myself down from my perch when the branch - big though it was - made some creaking sounds almost as ominous as my own belly. It was late by that point and I figured anyone sensible would be long asleep, so I heaved the three of us back to my room in relative peace. There were a few scares; you become hypersensitive when walking around at that size, knowing you can’t hide and definitely can’t run. I was also suffering with an acute indigestion that I just knew spawned from wounds my poor tummy had endured. It was nothing some green tea and Gaviscon couldn’t fix, and I’m sure I said I don’t hold grudges. Even still; I made sure that Kelsey’s soul filtered her way into the deepest, blackest hole my astral body could conjure, where she’d writhe with the shit and suffer my labyrinthine coils for my eternity.

Not that I’m petty or anything.

Hunger flared in my left hand as I reached for the door handle to my bedroom. I could smell something wrong, and I pushed inside with the brusqueness of a crocodile sieging a watering hole. Sure enough, perched nervously on Kelsey’s old bed in a nightgown was one of the girls I had taken under my de facto care.

“God in Heaven…”

I squeezed up a thick bubble of air tasting of meat. “Goodie… someone else I have to eat.”

She stumbled back, knocking over the lamp as she pressed towards the window. Shafts of moonlight slashed in white across her dress and made her skin look all the more pale. I can only imagine the sight she was enjoying, stomach gorged several feet out in front of me and sagging with its own weight. I sloshed gratuitously with every step, slowed by my size and rocking with all the mobility of a hippo on dry land.

I thought for a moment that she might jump from the window, take her chances with the fall. Instead, she fell to her knees before me and began a careful massage beginning at the bottom of my gut. It paralysed me. As much as I wanted to continue the feed, having her probing motions work inside me, stimulating my intestines and breaking down the women she’d known for years…

I covered my hand over my mouth and burped wetly. “This doesn’t change anything, you’re still a late-night snack,” I said before easing myself onto my bed. She followed, laying me down on my side until I was just barely overhanging the mattress and rested her head against the fleshy pillow to angle into a full-body hug.

“We’ll see,” she said, softly trembling. “I feel… two?”

“Two.”

Breathlessly, “Such a greedy piggy.”

“I’m going to eat you,” I said bluntly, struggling against my own stomach to look at her. She pushed me back down with surprising force. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“I was forced out by my parents because of my… d-desires.”

“Vorarephilia?”

She giggled. “Girls.” Sitting next to my head, she stroked her fingers through my hair, occasionally shifting gear to probe my fattened skin. “I kept all the rest a secret; had enough to be ashamed of.” The girl sighed absently. “But I’m not stupid. You ate Matron Jackie, and Flora - whether you forced her to write that note or not.”

“Happy coincidence.”

“Whatever you say, piggy. Since you’re treating our home like a buffet… I guess I might as well let my hair down.” Leaning down towards me, features casting heavy shadows across her face and mine, we kissed in flirting brushes. Her attention never left my belly, nor my haul. She held her ears against the taut surface, giddying at the way it revved and churned away in ramping contractions. She loved how it softened, and begged me to swap positions with me so she could feel how marshmallowy I became on top of her. She was a miracle with her hands. .

Together we broke down my prey into a healthy slurry of digestive juices and digested food. The mix squirted loudly into my intestines for processing, where I absorbed the mass and felt myself growing slower, weightier, and more beautiful. I think I dozed at around three in the morning, but the massages lulled me to sleep and soothed me still as I roused. For all I knew, she tended me all night.

“Do you feel that?” she asked quietly, squishing her fingers deep into my fat as I wiped the grit from my eyes. I felt her deep-tissue attention in the blubbery sheet between my pubis and my bellybutton, which had descended into a deep slash aimed at my spine. I closed my eyes and honed in on where she fondled me.

What felt like splintering branches stacked up in my lower midriff crunched their way carefully through the slick, unseen passages wrapped in my lard. Buttery and morish inside me, my stomach had churned away the meat from both women into a slippery spill while their cracking bones leaked marrow into my gut.

“Can you feel that?” she reiterated with a knowing jiggle. Hard lumps of undigested food shifted with her attentions. “Their skeletons… I can see them.”

“What?” My eyes widened and I flushed instantly.

“There’s a skull… and I think that might be a femur and…” A nasty, gloopy snap as she squished my tummy. “That rib cage might be a little more comfortable for you now.”

It was. With my colon freer around its task, I squeezed out a gross, sputtering fart that diffused some of the discomfort. “Can you actually see their bones?” I asked through a belchy grimace, “that’s so grim.”

“I think it’s cute.” She pecked me on the nose. “And I also think it’s breakfast time for Miss Piggy.” And with a slap of my wobbly liquid-packed belly, she skipped from the room and down the hall.

I struggled upright, but not fast enough to watch her go. With a self-satisfied sigh, I snuggled down and snoozed a little longer. Although I most definitely needed to tend to the aching filth in my rectum, the sheer weight laid upon my bones made me lethargic and lazy. It was at least another hour and a half before I convinced myself to shift, partially to dispose of my feed and partially because I was, in fact, getting hungry again.

The girl who’d slept with me had a seeming sixth sense for it. She arrived back like an excitable puppy as I oozed out of bed and helped me in finding clothes that would actually fit me. I asked her name a few times, but she refused. “Food doesn’t need a name,” she chimed. I rolled my eyes.

“I can walk on my own, you know.”

But she was having none of it. At my direction, she escorted my fat arse to Jackie’s bathroom and left me to it. Palms at my waist, I worked sharp circles into the flab with my fingertips. Within, my intestines growled at the stimulation like huge grumpy pythons and begrudgingly flooded my victims towards the glinting star at the end of the tunnel.

I’d held them inside so long that it hurt. I pushed as if giving birth and crowned a skull that had matched up and congealed with the steaming shit I’d made of its former owner. It clinked the porcelain like fingernails against a teacup. Stinking hard coils gushed and curled and broke, and I took breaks to wipe my eyes and let my abs soften.

I heard the door open beyond, paired with voices. “Shit,” was all I could manage before my puppy made a surprise appearance with one of the lankier girls in tow. “Occupied!” I rasped desperately, but just as the other woman realised what I was doing and began her string of apologies, Puppy coiled their elbow around her throat and forced her to her knees. The struggle was brief and without mess, and all occurred at my feet as if I was sitting upon a foetid throne.

Passed out and without struggle, Puppy hauled up the woman’s limp body towards me. “Breakfast.”

I shook my head, almost apologetically, “I-I can’t, I’m in enough trouble as- no, I… Mmmophhh…”

A rapacious glutton’s biggest weakness lies underneath her ribs, and at that moment mine was empty. Of course I accepted the meal, and I did so while continuing to eject the mulched, greasy waste from my bottom like a machine designed only to eat, and absorb, and shit out what’s left. If the girl woke up inside my belly, I didn’t feel it. All I knew was that she was heavy inside me and, when I turned and presented my bum to my apparent servant for cleaning, she hung hammocked within my fat in a grotesque swell that, at this point, I don’t think anyone would notice without active observation.

The facade was most certainly over. I became not only Matron, but Goddess. It was barely a secret that those sisters who entered my chambers or the office of Mother Superior were never seen again, while I sat at the head of the table billowing fat and licking my chops like a lioness with no equal.

A few tried to flee. They tangled themselves in a spiritual net I’d cast, and I would actively hunt them down the following night, a predator in the dark with gaping jaws and a gut vast enough to smother. Swallow. Hide.

With the only private commode ruined with Kelsey and the other nameless woman’s reeking piles, I had to get creative. I dumped prey after prey in with the compost, vegetable peelings and bits of uneaten meat or bones mixed with soil and my iron-rich faeces. Some commented, but when the flowers and the tomatoes grow even brighter and larger, is anyone really complaining?

I couldn’t tell you how much I ended up weighing. Even if we did have scales, there’d be no way for me to stand upon them and check past my guts. Moving became exhausting. I didn’t fit in any bed, and had to push two of them together just so my buttcheeks didn’t spill while I slumbered - usually with prey simmering inside me. They all knew what was happening, and could do nothing to stop me. And I, thrilling on the damage I was doing not only to the convent, but to myself, maintained the slaughter until the last pleading morsel threw herself to her knees and prayed. She begged and wept, voice trembling as she called for mercy. But her attention wasn’t on God. She prayed to me. I turned my back to her, and sat.

No one heard her drown in my colon.

When it was all done - when every last nun was either fat padding my belly, or a pile of ownerless clothes, or a rippling sequence of intestine-moulded, cracked brown filth - I laid naked and content in the monastery garden, sun warming my faintly growling stomach. My tits, two huge sacks of fat, flopped into place guided gently by the upper flesh of my belly and the flabby cuts of my shoulders. We gave my greedy midriff all the attention she desired, Puppy and me. She barely shifted, lazily glooping as the last survivor threw all their weight into the massage.

“Is my greedy piggy satisfied?” she chittered, still with the same nervous cadence that was her seeming constant.

I groaned out a thick, dry, “buh-wOoOOuUUuuhhhrp,” between my hiccups. The pleasure of being so rotund and well-fed, swollen with inhuman amounts of food and fattened like some queen of the wilderness made me flush and dizzy. I could have slept there for years, basking in the cool embrace of the surrounding trees, smelling strong pollen on the wind.

Chiefly, I ignored her remarks. When someone identifies themselves as prey, the only important interaction between themselves and their predator is the final bite. “I think it’s time,” I said, lubricating my lips with a small lick.

She changed almost immediately. “You can’t possibly have room,” she whispered, backing up. Her heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s. I could taste her sweat on the air.

Rolling onto my side - not in pursuit of anything more than sight - I shook my head. Kneading my avalanche of a gut with a strong, soothing massage, I said, “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“I… I-I thought…”

“You thought what? If you fed me enough I’d stop looking at you as food?” I laughed softly and, spiking the earth with my tendrils, used them to hoist myself onto my feet. We both looked down at the beautiful mountain of flesh hanging from me, and I patted it with reverent softness. “You know I can make you suffer,” I said huskily, stalking. “You know I’ll catch you, even at this size. Take a moment. Compose yourself.” I sank gently to my knees, letting the grass carry the weight for me. “And then climb into my mouth.”

She cried the entire time. Shaking with the sobs, I almost felt bad for her. Her toes curled against my tongue and she pressed them down my squishy throat. It was no effort to gorge on her thighs and her buttocks, glugging them along the slick passages with all the elegance of a very fat snake devouring something a fraction of her size. I think at about her waist she started fighting, panic rising like the wetness of my maw, but my gullet had her tight. Strong peristaltic waves forced her down into the chasm, emptied recently and perched like a resting cave upon the winding lengths of my intestines. I swallowed as much air as I could down with her, giving her plenty of breathable oxygen. At the very least, she should have been rewarded for her obedience with a long, conscious digestion.

Even if she had lied about wanting it.

She was still screaming inside me, the flesh of her legs mulching with the motions of my stomach muscles and the pooling acids, as I stood there anxiously on the corner. A few people gave me some queer looks as they walked past, but only for my size. None of them would see the struggle beneath my fat. None would hear above the rampant gurgling as my gut feasted upon its living meal.

My heart sank a little deeper when the car turned the corner, taking its sweet time to trundle down the road at just over half the speed limit. My eyes fell to the curb. I hated that now, when I tried to hold in my tummy, I just exhausted myself. There was no way to look any thinner. The damage was done.

I piled myself into the back, an act of gymnastics that took me well over five minutes just to get the door closed. The driver did not shift either of the front seats forwards, nor wait for me to fumble for the seatbelt before taking off. Not that I could manoeuvre it around myself anyway.

My throat was dry. I licked my lips, biting my tongue briefly. “Is he mad?”

He looked at me in the rearview mirror. That was all I needed. I curled my arms up between my stomach and my breasts, and spent the rest of that awful journey finding any excuse to let the earth swallow me up whole.