The Girl in the Paintings

         "Really, I should have seen this coming," He thought, "A dark and stormy night, it's pouring rain outside, and my car breaks down? A nearby house's gate just happens to be open? This was probably the only outcome and I should have expected it." He shook his head and began to talk to himself. "Really, Glen? You've seen enough horror movies." He turned around to inspect where the entrance used to be. He ran his hand along the bare wall, hoping that there would be some sort of door hidden behind the wallpaper. No such luck. "Okay," he said, "An old Victorian house has just sealed me inside... What do I do now?" He looked down the gaudily decorated hallway. The hallway was appropriately long for such a large mansion, and had many rooms coming off of it, some doors closed, others open. One room seemed to be an art gallery. "Well, might as well appreciate some art." He thought.

         He walked into the gallery and sat down on the wooden bench in the center of the room. The walls had the same dark red wallpaper, rotting floorboards, and cobwebs at the rest of the house. He panned his eyes around the paintings on the walls. They were several different artistic styles, ranging from impressionist to classical. "Huh." Glen said. "Varied tastes in style, I guess." He began to notice something. "Not so varied tastes in subject..." almost all of the paintings were of the same girl in different styles, poses, times of day, and showing various important points in her life. Glen traced a time line between the paintings. He watched her grow from just a baby into a young woman. There were many paintings of her as a young woman, he noticed. She was small and beautiful; her long brown hair was always tied in complicated braids that accented her pale, defined face perfectly. He tried to piece together what was going on in each of the paintings so he could assemble a decent picture of her life. There were paintings of her dancing, paintings of her cooking, paintings of her lying in the sun, and even a painting of her trying her best to paint.. In one picture, she was painted sitting up in a tree, in what seemed to be her favorite grand dress, and in another she was painted as falling out of the tree. Glen chuckled. In the next painting, she had a scar on her cheek. Glen noticed another thing. Over the girl's time as a young woman, her favorite dress became noticeably tighter, her stomach pressing more and more on the front of her now much too small dress. It all lead up to a painting of her sitting in her underwear on her large, red bed. Her eyes were red as well, as if she had just finished crying. Next to her, was her favorite dress, seams torn wide open. In every painting she tried to look her best, to always show the painter her best side. In this one, she was vulnerable. Even at her weakest point, she was still elegant. Her creamy skin almost seemed to glow against the dark crimson background, and accented her body's form. Two pale rolls of fat sat just above her hips, just enough to be considered a muffin top by today's standards. Her hips, though, were her defining feature. In all of the other paintings, she was wearing large ball gowns and dresses that obscured her hips. Glen wondered why. It was obvious from this picture that the girl was much heavier in all of the other paintings than Glen thought, as almost all of her weight was centered around her hips. They bloomed out generously from her waist, becoming thick, doughy thighs that pressed up against each other even though she had her legs slightly spread. Glen turned his attention to the rest of the paintings. None of them showed her so completely like this one did.

         Glen continued his tracing of the girl's history with some delay. She no longer had a favorite dress from that point on, in fact, she never seemed to wear the same dress twice. It was tough to see because of her affinity for figure-obscuring ballgowns, but Glen was sure she gained quite a bit more weight over time. He eventually found himself at the largest painting in the room. It was the girl standing with two other people in a grand, foyer-like room. They both had their hands on her shoulders. One was a beautiful, busty woman in a low cut dress. She had a paintbrush in the hand not on the girl's shoulder. "Well, here's our painter," Glen thought. "Good job." The other person was a tall man with a large, brown mustache. He had a grin like the happiest man on the face of the planet. A girl and her family. Glen turned his attention to the girl herself. He chuckled a little. The girl had obviously made a significant jump in weight since the last painting was made. She had the beginnings of a double chin in the making, and it was apparent that she had not had the time to acquire a new dress for the occasion. Her belly fat struggled against the laces of her bodice, and, for the first time in the paintings, her breasts were slightly overflowing. Glen could also make out what could either have been paint flecks, or a purposeful rendering of crumbs on the girls face, right next to the scar from where she fell. She also had the biggest, most cheerful smile Glen had ever seen. She was happier here than in any other painting. It made the next painting all the more distressing. It was an impressionist style, using dots of paint. It was a simple painting. Two things, a bottle of medicine, and one single flower. A poppy. The flower that symbolizes death. Glen stared at that painting for a long time. "She... died," He said aloud, "Her life was so short... I don't..." and he couldn't bring himself to say anything more.

         Glen was about to leave the gallery when he realized that there were more paintings he hadn't looked at. "Strange," he thought, "I've been around the whole room..." He looked at the paintings. Still lives, bowls of fruit, plates of food, full glasses and other things. "It's all food..." he said. He followed the wall around the room, looking curiously at the paintings. They had stopped being so carefully rendered; lines were becoming sloppier and colors more hazy. It seemed to Glen like someone had taken it upon themselves to paint every food in existence. And there was a lot of it. Plates piled high with food, tables set to serve hundreds, kitchens with banks of ovens and all available space used to prepare something, and massive pantries with packed shelves. Then, there was a painting of a woman Glen had never seen before. She was blonde and plain-looking. The only thing really noticeable about her was her weight. It was a portrait, so Glen could only get a vague sense of her true size, but she looked to be several times heavier than the girl in the other paintings. She had chins upon chins, and her fat face was dirty like she had just been feasting at one of the plates of food in the other paintings with wild abandon. She was crying. Glen looked at the next painting. It looked virtually the same, until he looked a bit closer. There was one crucial difference. "She's thinner in this painting..." He said. The paintings kept going, and the woman got thinner and thinner. Eventually, she was only a little fatter than the girl. The paintings kept going, and the woman became positively gaunt. Then came the final painting. A skeleton swimming within a sundress designed to fit the massive woman that was wearing it only a couple paintings ago. It began to dawn on Glen that he had followed the wall in a circle at least five times by now. He slowly turned to look at the other walls. Where the other paintings had been, there was only the painting of the skeleton. Hundreds of empty eye sockets stared down at Glen, and he ran from the gallery as fast as he could.

          As he reached the hallway, he felt a rush of cold wind from behind him. He slowly turned to look back into the gallery to see what had happened. The walls were bare now, except for one painting, one he'd never seen before. Tempted by it's sight, he walked back into the room. He inspected the room he found himself in. Not a gallery, but a bedroom. A large, elaborate crimson bed was in the corner. The girl's bed. Glen laughed. The room was sparsely decorated, but what had been worked on was very tasteful. All accept one giant painting that was on the wall. It was the girl again, simply standing there. There was no background. She was in her underwear again, this time, and, as Glen noticed, just a bit heavier than in the picture with her family. Her hips had gone from large to truly massive since Glen had seen them. She obviously didn't size up her underwear as obsessively as she did her dresses, her girth flooded around every edge of fabric and pressed against all of the seams. "This must be the biggest she got before she..." Glen said. The more he looked at this painting, the less he liked it. Her body was a masterpiece of nature, the problem was with her face. She was clutching her doughy stomach, and had the most horrible look of pain on her face. Like she was being tortured from the inside. It made Glen sick to look at, so he turned away. The first thing he saw was a closet. "Ah," He thought, "This must be where you kept your famous dresses, girl." He opened the closet, and indeed, he was right. The first one he pulled was her old favorite dress. It was made of soft and delicate fabrics. He turned the dress to the side. Sure enough, the seams were torn right open, just like in the painting. He re-racked the dress and began to leaf through the rest of them. Each one was just a bit bigger, or had just a bit of a different fit, and each one's seams were torn right open. After he got through all the dresses, the last thing on the rack was a long, form-fitting, black evening gown in a very modern style. "But...," Glen said, "Who's is this? The girl is dead... but..." He looked at the dress. It was tailored to accommodate very wide hips, thick legs, and a generous belly. "This definitely looks like something that would belong to her." He compared it to the last dress in the set. The new gown was even bigger. "At her fattest this would still be big on her..." He said. There was a thump from behind him. He turned around as quickly as he could, horrified that there was someone else in this house he previously thought abandoned. The room was empty. Glen sighed in relief, and turned back around to be greeted by an empty wall. No closet. No dresses. even the gown in his hand was gone without a trace. Glen's breathing began to get heavy. All of this nonsense was getting to him. The changing paintings, the changing rooms, the haunted house. Glen wanted none of it. But he was determined to find out more about this girl he had become so enraptured by.

         Just then, Glen heard a horrible noise. It sounded as though it were right next to him. The groan of some sort of horrible otherworldly monster - Low, and drawn long. The entire house seemed to shake. Wallpaper began to peel and walls began to crack. Glen darted from the room in a panic, and back out into the hallway. He looked down it's length and saw it twist into a spiral as it went. The noise got even louder, and Glen began to scream as well. He ran into the next room he saw. It was a sitting room with a fireplace. As he ran into the room, the chairs buckled and cracked as if an elephant had sat on them, and a horrible yellow liquid began to pour from the fireplace. Glen closes his eyes and covered his ears. "This isn't happening, this isn't happening..." he repeated. As he stood there nearly having a breakdown, the noise stopped just as suddenly as it began. Glen opened his eyes and uncovered his ears. No liquid, the chairs were intact. He walked back into the hallway. It looked absolutely normal. He put his back against a wall and slid down to the floor. His breathing was labored. "Jesus..." He mumbled. "I have to get out of here. Not even the Girl is worth this..." He said that to himself, but he didn't believe it. He closed his eyes and focused on her. Her wide smile, her beautiful hair, her cute scar, her now-chubby cheeks, her thick rolls of belly fat, and her fantastically huge hips. As he was imagining this, he heard something. A girl was crying. It was little more than a quiet sniffling, but he heard it. The crying became a scream, not of fear, but of frustration. As he listened to this scream, Glen saw the house decay around him. He didn't panic. He was beginning to understand. Then came the horrible noise that sent him running before. This time, he listened. Something familiar. "I get it!" He yelled into the house. It wasn't the growling of a creature, Glen realized, it was the growling of a stomach. "You're hungry!" The noise continued. He yelled again. "You're the girl from the painting and you're hungry!" He thought about the paintings of her cooking. "You loved to cook... but you loved to eat even more! But you're dead, you can't do anything anymore..." He thought of the girl he watched get fatter and fatter as time went on. "Maybe you liked eating a little too much..." He thought of the paintings of the food. "But you don't care! You miss it." He thought of the large evening gown hidden away in the closet, tailored to show off every roll and pound. "And you miss gaining weight, too, a little." He thought of the paintings of the fat woman wasting away. "You resent that you can't eat like you used to anymore. I get it...I'm not afraid. I just want to talk." Suddenly, and without warning, there was a door in the wall next to him. It was a simple oak door, not intricately carved like all the rest of the doors in the house. He reached for the knob and grabbed it. It was ice cold. He endured, turned it, and walked through the door.

         It was the kitchen. It was a large kitchen, three ovens, lots of counter space, and a large walk in pantry. Glen recognized it as kitchen and pantry from the paintings, although the girl had exaggerated how much food they'd be able to prepare. Glen chuckled. "Understandable," He thought, "When you haven't eaten in a hundred years." There was quite a bit of food still around, on the counters here and there, all had become rotten shadows of food many, many years ago.

Glen heard a voice, weak and faltering. "So, uh, you liked the p...paintings, did you?"

Glen focused as best he could on the room. She was faint, but he could see her. There, up on the counter with the rotten food, was a translucent ghost girl. The girl from the paintings, long hair in a braid, scar on her cheek, as fat as she'd ever been. Glen faltered. "Uh, yeah.. I...I did, they were wonderful." The girl was wearing a ghostly version of the evening gown. Glen was right, it was a little big on her.

She chuckled weakly. "Oh, good. My mother worked very hard on those... Which was your favorite?" She averted her eyes from Glen and blushed.

Glen paused. He didn't want to admit his favorite was the one of her crying in her underwear, he realized it was a bit creepy now that he was in the room with her. "The one of you and your parents. I liked that one."

She chuckled again. "You don't have to be modest, you know..." She blushed even harder, but she smiled even wider. "I think I... know which one you liked..."

"Well, I liked all of them..." Glen said, "But the one where you ripped your dress was absolutely beautiful."

She covered her face with her hand so that Glen couldn't see how much she was grinning. "I thought so, too... not at first, obviously... but now..." She said, "But I was so small, then... so I tried to make another. It... didn't turn out well." Glen remembered the distressing picture of her crying out in pain. "I was too hungry to do it right. It was supposed to be... well, uh," she faltered a bit, trying to find a word that would be less embarrassing than the one she was thinking of. She couldn't do it. "Supposed to be... sexier." she said. Her stomach growled again, normally this time, and she grimaced in pain. She began to weep. "Oh no, oh no, oh no..." Tears streamed down her face and she grabbed her stomach by her thick love handles. "Stop, please, stop..." She said. Glen had to wipe a tear from his eyes as well. It hurt him to see the girl suffer like this, so close to the only thing she wants out of her missing life. Soon, the hunger pains subsided and she regained her composure. She turned to Glen with a look, not of weakness, but of determination. "Help me down." She said, and held out her ghostly hand. Glen took it. It was cold and damp, like holding an hand sculpted of ice. She used Glen's hand as support as she gracefully lowered herself from the counter. She curtsied, making her belly jiggle and her hips shake. "Lucretia." She said

It took Glen a second to realize what just happened. "Oh!" He said, "Glen." He got down on one knee and kissed her icy hand.

"Glen." She said, "Promise me one thing."

"What is it, Lucretia?"

"You have to help me. No one else has ever cared as much as you do, now. They all got scared and ran. You're the only one who can help." She straightened up and drew a breath. "You need to feed me. Every day. Come here to the mansion every single day and help me eat, okay? I can't do it without your help, and there's nothing else I want in the whole world." She clasped her hands together to plead with Glen. "Please. Help me."

Glen laughed. "I could probably do that." He said. And Lucretia's face lit up. "But..." Lucretia's face fell again. "Can you even eat real food? Won't it pass through you?"

"Ah." Lucretia said, "Normally, yes. Trust me, I've tried." She chuckled a little, and then frowned when she realized that that joke was more sad than it was funny. "Over on the counter, there, there's a book. See if you can open it."

Glen walked over to the book sitting next to the rotting food. It was thick, ancient, and leather-bound. The cover was full of strange letters and symbols he had never seen before. Despite Lucretia's implication that opening the book would be tough, the cover swung open easily. The book was full of similar symbols, but they gradually unraveled themselves in Glen's head to form words, phrases, motions, and pictures. He closed the book again to look at the cover. The book was called The Void Chain Grimoire. "I don't know about this, Lucretia," Glen said, "Anything that has to do with voids or chains I try to avoid."

Lucretia looked up, confused. "You can read the title?" She said.

"Sure," Glen replied, "and the words inside." He paged through the book. The only thing inside were spells and rituals of various types, mostly with names like The Black Tentacles of Goj-Roban and Deathknell Turning and the like. Eventually, though, Glen found some less dangerous spells. "Here we go!" He said, "Spiritual tribute. Used for sacrificing animals, objects, and people in tribute to a spiritual being whose name is known to you. That sounds perfect!" He read through the symbols of the spell, "It says 'The sacrifice will be returned to the spirit in it's most complete form'. What does that mean?"

Lucretia gave a little hop for joy, making her wobble up and down. "Yes! It means we can sacrifice this rotten food, and it will come to me like it was made yesterda- " She suddenly stopped. "Urgh..." She groaned and clutched her stomach again, and tears streamed down her chubby face. "Please..." She mumbled through the tears, "Quickly..."

Glen opened a drawer and pulled a large knife from it. The knife was slightly rusty, but it would have to do. In one smooth move, he made a large cut on his palm. He held his hand over the book, and his red blood dripped into it's pages. "Well, let's get to work." He said. The book glowed softly in response, and the blood dripping from his hand turned to a darker, grey liquid. "One plate of ghost food, coming up."

Lucretia tried her best to laugh through the pain. "Haha...Ugh... Make that two, I'm a hungry girl..."

Glen drew an intricate circle in the black liquid, and he dropped a pile of rotten food on top. He took a deep breath. "Here we go..." He said, and began to speak the words under the heading 'Sating Unearthly Hunger'. "Hungry ghost of the unholy host, accept this offering now laid bare, and do feed, your hunger freed, for you to never again ensnare." As he spoke, the rotten food began to burn up and the circle glowed beneath it. The light became blinding as a loud buzzing filled the air. As the light died down, the pair looked and saw the food was gone. A split second later, there was a small popping sound, and translucent food began to fall onto the floor in front of Lucretia. Glen turned to her and said, "That last line is actually kind of wrong. You've better have brought your appetite."

Lucretia continued to cry, harder than she ever had before. "I'm... I'm so happy..." She said, "Thank you so much, how can I ever repay you?"

Glen was busy drawing another magic circle on the floor. "I'll tell you how," He said. He looked up. "Eat! It would do you well, you're an absolute skeleton."

Lucretia walked over to the pile of food on the ground, and sat in front of it. Glen had to pause a bit and watch her walk, her fat hips swinging back and forth. She leaned in and picked up a slice of cake from the pile. She looked to Glen and smiled a seductive half-smile before slowly taking a bite. "Oh..." she said. She moaned and shuddered a little with joy. "It's... the best thing I've ever tasted..." She tried her best to keep her head. "Stay graceful, stay elegant." She thought. She was shaking as she tried to take another bite.

"Awww..." Glen said, "You're trying to keep your table manners for me. That's adorable." He paused to finish another magic circle. "Really, it's not necessary. Eat! Dig in! I mean, really, dig in."

Lucretia finished the rest of the slice of cake in one bite. She began to eat handful after handful of food, eating as much as she could as fast as she could. She barely even paused except to take a breath and to occasionally moan in pure bliss. She looked up suddenly. "Don't stop!" She said.

"Huh?" Glen said. At some point he had stopped making circles to watch this angel unabashedly gorge herself.

"Keep going!" Lucretia said, "I'm going to need more!" More, more, more!" She began to cry again.

"What's wrong?" Glen said, "Hunger pains again?"

She shook her head and began to talk through a mouthful of food. "I'm just so happy... to be eating again! I've never been happier, not even when I was alive..." She kept eating, almost even faster than before. Glen tried his best to focus on making circles, but he often found himself watching her eat, and watching her dress get tighter and tighter and tighter.

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Eventually, though it may be hard to believe, Lucretia stopped eating. She tried her best to stand up from the floor where she sat, she tried to rock herself onto her feet, she tried to roll over to stand up, she tried everything. Try as she might, she passed the threshold for standing up hours ago, when her dress gave out. She laughed weakly. "I guess..." her breaths were shallow and labored, but she had a content smile on her face. "As problems go... This is a good one to have." She put her arms around her huge, bloated belly. "Help me up?" She said.

"I've got an even better idea." Glen said, and lied down next to her. She was cold, but Glen didn't mind.

Lucretia lied back as well. She looked down at her massive, towering belly. "Wow..." She said, "I'm... I... You said you would feed me... and you really did..." She massaged her belly and moaned. "You don't have to come every day, you know..." She said, with a slight frown, "I know you must have better things to do..."

Glen glanced at her. "More important than this?" He put his hand on her belly, "Than these?" he sank a finger into her fat hips, "Than these? He pinched her love handles. "More important than you? Never."

Lucretia blushed. "I hope you don't mind me saying this." She turned and gave Glen a soft, cold kiss on the cheek. "But I think I love you."

"I think I love you, too, Lucretia." She turned her whole body to Glen and hugged him. "Ah..." he said, "Could you not do that, though?"

Lucretia gave her best puppy dog eyes. "What for?" she said.

Glen made an expansive gesture over his torso. "You're still kind of... you know, you're..."

She looked down at her belly, which was currently busy crushing Glen. "Oh!" She said, "Sorry, I didn't realize..."

"That's fine." Glen said, "I just hadn't realized how heavy ectoplasm is."

Lucretia chuckled and rubbed her belly. "Well, it's about to get a lot heavier..."

They laid there for a long time. A happy time.

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         True to his word, Glen came the next day. He laughed as he read the paper talking about the old victorian house that seemingly fixed itself up overnight. As he drove his van up, he saw that it was true. A new coat of beautiful red paint, the boards were all fixed and in place, and it was looking like new. "She's happy," He thought, "Happy and full." He got out of his van, and began to unpack the groceries. His van was full of groceries. As he carted the first load through the door, he noticed a remarkable change in the inside of the house. The colors were brighter, everything was clean, and the paintings were very different. In all of the paintings from her past, she was in them twice. Once, as painted, and then another time as she appeared now, making it glaringly obvious just how fat she had gotten over the years. He also noticed, with a smile, paintings of him.

Glen came the next day, too. And the next day. And the next. Every day, he brought another load of groceries, and every day, Lucretia ate it all. She didn't talk much, and she spent all of her time either asleep or eating. She made it clear to Glen how happy she was, though, with those few sentences when she was awake and pinned to her bed by the gargantuan belly that weighed her down so often. Over the days, she grew fatter and fatter, her gluttony doing it's work while she slept.

In only a few weeks, her decades of hunger began to wane. But Glen came every day. Even when Lucretia was down to a more normal amount of eating, Glen came every day. He was sure that there would be problems with this relationship, she was a ghost, after all. But in those later days, when Glen would come around to the mansion and see her standing there in her room looking up at the painting on her wall, he knew none of it mattered. The painting was of that first day they met, Lucretia stuffed full to bursting and resting her translucent head on Glen's shoulder. That, Glen knew, is what mattered.