Trish had only been with the coven for two weeks when she experienced her first attack. Usually such a bubbly girl, so full of energy that she could barely keep still, Trish became silent and withdrawn, so much so that the Head Mistress of the League for Psychic Discovery and Inner Knowledge and Other Hippy Stuff called her into her office to discuss the change.
A kindly matron of a woman, the silver-haired Mistress Raven sat behind her desk with her large hands folded in front of her, her face creased in thought. The girl who sat before her was, in many ways, typical of the sort of person who joined up with the League – a spirited, lively young thing, psychically sensitive but open and vulnerable. She didn’t know much about the true nature of psychic power, and had just joined the group because she thought fairies were nifty and that psychic discovery mainly involved wearing bathrobes, diddling around with crystals, and chanting “Kumbaya.” Unlike most other girls, though, Trish was an exceptionally slender girl, almost bow-legged, with smooth creamy skin and short brown hair. In her twenties, she was one of the youngest pseudo-Wiccan-witch-druid-froo-froo-airy-fairy sorts in the coven.
“Now, Trish-“ began Mistress Raven.
“Oh, Mistress, please, my name’s not Trish. I’ve changed it to Esmeralda Firespirit.”
“Yes, of course you have, dearie. Now, Trish, the other students tell me that you’ve been acting very odd lately.”
“Yes,” said Trish, fidgeting a tad and pulling on a strand of chestnut brown hair. “I was a little under the weather. It was just a touch of the flu, nothing to worry about, Mistress.”
“I’m afraid that I don’t believe that for a second, Trish.”
Trish was startled. “W…what do you mean, Mistress?”
“Well, Trish, the other girls in the Institute – your roommate, some of your classmates in the Crystal Awareness Workshop – came to me because they were concerned about you. They said you were fine one day, then suddenly listless and tired all the time. That you started talking in your sleep and complaining that you felt a terrible weight pressing down on you whenever you were in bed. You had headaches and fever, but no other cold symptoms – no coughing or sneezing or anything. And, apparently, you fell into a trance twice in the middle of class.”
“Yes, like I said Mistress, I had a cold.”
“No,” said Mistress Raven, “It sounds to me that you’re the victim of a psychic attack!”
“A psychic attack?!” yelped Trish. A frown crossed her normally smiling face. “What does that mean?”
“Some person must have it in for you, and they’re sending angry thoughts your way through the ether. They’re hurting your etheric double, which, in turn, manifests as physical pain – your sleeplessness, depression, ennui.”
“But what can I do?” asked Trish, wringing her hands.
“There are plenty of ways that you can thwart a psychic attack, Trish. One of the best, though, is a good meal.”
“A what?”
“Think about it, Trish. When you meditate, you always find that you have better luck accessing the higher planes after you’ve fasted. That’s because you’re more psychically receptive on an empty stomach. When you’re full, you’ll find that not only is it harder to send out psychic signals but it’s harder to receive them as well. That’s why I always recommend that a person under psychic attack never go more than two hours without getting something in her belly.”
***
Trish took Madam Raven’s advice to heart immediately. After all, she didn’t want to experience yet another pounding headache like this morning’s attack. She raided the communal fridge, grabbing anything that looked even vaguely edible to put together into a veritable feast.
“What are you doing, Trish?” asked Sarah, another acolyte, as Trish passed her in the hallway, her arms loaded with food.
“I’m fortifying myself for psychic battle,” said Trish.
“Right,” said Sarah, giving her a thumbs up. “Groovy!”
****
In her room, Trish arranged her feast before her on the table. She had a whole lot of random junk- milk, cookies, bread, pickles, frozen pizza, artichokes, soda, tofu, granola bars, even an ice cream cake. Hippie dips really had eclectic tastes, apparently!
Trish didn’t even bother to pour the milk into a glass. She merely raised the carton to her lips, threw her head back, and swigged it straight from the box. A minute passed in silence, broken only by the faint gurgles as Trish greedily slurped down the last of the cool liquid.
“Ahh!” Trish gasped in satisfaction as she finished the milk and threw the empty carton aside. She put a hand against her normally flat tummy and was surprised to find that there was a slight bulge.
“Well, that can’t be helped,” she murmured to herself as she tore open a package of cookies and began popping them into her mouth. Better a little bulge than another painful psychic attack.
By the time Trish had finished the package, she was beginning to feel full. Her bloated stomach pushed against the front of her robe, revealing a slight indentation over the slit of her navel.
I probably should have asked Mistress Raven how much I needed to eat to thwart an attack, thought Trish. I feel kind of full already, so I guess that’s got to be enough. She just said to keep a full stomach, after all, nothing more.
Trish was about to pack up the rest of the food to return it to the fridge when she felt a sudden sharp pain in her temples. “Ow!” she yelped, putting her hand to her head. “It must be another attack! I must not have eaten enough after all.”
She unscrewed the pickle jar and quickly chomped down on a gherkin. “Bleh!” It was sour but she forced herself to swallow it. She pulled out another and did the same. And another and another until she’d finished the whole jar.
“Glad that’s done,” said Trish as she nearly gagged at the acerbic taste in her mouth. “Still, anything that fills me up is good.” She looked at the pickle jar, empty but for the leftover pickle juice. “Oh, what the hell.” She sighed and, steeling herself to the task, raised the jar to her lips. She gulped the juice with a long, drawn out slurp. “SHHHHLLUP!”
“Double bleh!” She tossed aside the empty jar and felt her tummy. It pooched out more than before, now that it was holding the pickles as well. “I’m definitely feeling fuller than before,” she said to herself. She pushed in on her tummy and felt it slosh a bit under her fingers—since she was full of milk and pickle juice instead of solids, she was still soft and squishy. “But I’m not totally filled up.”
***
Now Trish really was totally filled up. And her tummy wasn’t soft anymore; it was rock solid and completely stuffed to bursting.
She felt suddenly sick and had to grab a chair to steady herself. Her gorged gut sloshed and gurgled as she moved and she had to be careful not to jostle it too much. She was starting to regret her feeding frenzy as she dropped heavily into a nearby chair.
She leaned backward and gingerly rubbed her swollen belly. “Ooooh,” she winced as a twinge of pain shot through her rounded, over-stuffed tummy. “I can’t believe I ate everything. Oh, I wish I hadn’t eaten so much. I feel like I’m going to puke.”
Trish looked around. The remnants of her meal—plastic wrapping, empty jars and boxes and cartons—were littered about the room. In the mirror across the room, she could see that her face was smeared with cream from the cake.
Trish heard a loud RIIIIIP, and looked down to see that the side seams of her light robe had finally lost the battle against her bulging abdomen. The stitches had burst all the way down her side, from just under her armpits down to her thigh, allowing the soft creamy flesh to spill out. Through the split, Trish could see her bloated stomach hanging out over the waist of her purple underwear (The sort with pictures of little crystals and unicorns all over it. She was, after all, a hippy sorta druid).
“Guess that’s the end of this,” said Trish, stifling a hiccup. Every hiccup sent a painful tremor through her huge, inflated middle. She pulled the tattered robe over her head, hoping that she could reduce some of the pressure on her middle that way.
Her tubby, bloated belly had grown so huge that it forced the top of her panties to roll over, revealing a few curly, strands of pubic hair. Determined not to make a scene, Trish grabbed hold of her pantywaist and yanked it back up. What a mistake that was! Even the slight pressure of the panties’ elastic waistband against her massive, distended abdomen made her feel sick and queasy. She felt like the slightest pressure might cause her to burst like a balloon. She quickly rolled the waistband back down, allowing her big, bulging paunch to hang over and obscure her panty crotch.
She leaned back in her chair and belched loudly. “Oh, my!” Embarrassed, Trish put her hand to her mouth instinctively before remembering that she was alone. Thank Goodness! I would have been so humiliated if someone had caught me burping like that, she thought. Still, I’ve got bigger problems than that now. She looked down at her giant, gurgling, groaning stomach, which blocked her view of her feet, and realized that even leaning back wasn’t enough to relieve all this pressure. She needed to lie down.
She looked across the room at her bed. How on earth would she ever get over there? Every step sent painful spasms through her globular gut. Worse, with all this food in her belly, she felt like she was about to topple over forwards. If she fell on her stomach, she just knew she’d split open.
And even if she didn’t, it would hurt like hell.
Still she had to try it. Trish lurched to her feet with a grunt. Her full belly sloshed and grumbled as she slowly lifted her new bulk out of the chair and staggered drunkenly to the bed. She nearly flopped right into bed but restrained herself at the last instant.
“I don’t want to injure myself (hic) any more,” she mumbled, petting her belly, and climbing in carefully. She lied down flat on her back and desperately tried to get comfortable. She had never been this full in her life.
A sudden knock at the door startled her out of her thoughts. “Trish, are you in here?” said Mistress Raven’s voice. “Some students are complaining that you stole their food from the refrigerator?”
“I had to!” called Trish. “It was an emergency!”
“I understand that but—Oh!” Mistress Raven’s jaw dropped as she entered the room.
“My Goddess, Trish,” she said, shocked, “What happened to you?” The older woman gawked at the sight before her: Trish, a slim little girl with a grossly swollen belly, lying spread across the bed in nothing but her panties, groaning. Some of the groans came from Trish, but the louder, gurgly ones emanated from her rotund paunch.
“Ohhhh, I just (Belch) did what you told me to. I kept my (Hic) stomach full. But it didn’t work. (Hic) I kept eating and eating but the headache didn’t go away.”
“The headache didn’t go away? I must have misdiagnosed it then. Maybe it was just a sinus headache after all.”
“Just a (hic) sinus headache?” cried Trish. She tried to raise herself up to face Mistress Raven, but was too stuffed and uncomfortable to change her position. With a muffled groan, she flopped back down, sending a brief shudder through her overloaded gut. “My stomach hurts,” said Trish, rubbing her hands over the huge pale dome of her middle.
“Yeah,” said Mistress Raven, “but at least you’re not thinking about your head anymore.”
WA WA WAAAAAAA!!!!!