The Fairy’s Punishment, Part 1
A slender fairy, his body as tall as a standing rat, smelled sugar and blueberries on the air and followed the sweet scents to a cottage. He flew through an open window and saw a blueberry pie cooling on the counter.
He wasn’t particularly hungry but he loved pie—especially stolen pie. He pulled back some of the crust and dipped an arm in. It tasted as delicious as it had smelled. He ate blueberries by the armfuls until his stomach began to feel heavy. The pie was too good to stop eating now. Who knew when he would get this chance again?
He continued to stuff his face, trying the lattice-work crust and deciding it was the best crust he had ever tasted. After a little while, a ripple of pain shivered through his now tightly-swollen tummy. He burped and rubbed his grumbling stomach, smearing a circle of blue goo around his bellybutton. His big, overfilled belly throbbed painfully. Rubbing didn’t help at all. In fact, it rather hurt.
“Oohh,” said the fairy. “I have a bad tummy ache.”
He decided he needed to go to his toadstool home and lie down until he felt better. He flapped his wings and barely lifted off the ground. Then he fell right back down, falling in a heap and jarring his belly on the countertop, knocking the wind out of him. He grabbed his aching stomach and hugged it hoping the pain would subside. It didn’t. It only throbbed worse from hitting the counter. A loud moan escaped him.
He didn’t understand why his wings didn’t work. He took a look at his achy belly, and the mystery was solved. It was huge! It jutted out from his lithe frame—a large, swollen mass. He looked like he had swallowed a whole walnut.
He groaned and rubbed his poor tummy. At least no one could see him like this.
The creak of hinges announced someone entering the cottage. The fairy tried to hide behind a large jar of jam, but his stomach was too big. He ran for a potted ivy, but he tripped and landed flat on his heavy, swollen belly. He rolled over, his face squenched up with suffering, hugging his stomach with both arms. A glass, like a round prison, fell over him.
“Ah-ha!” said a man with a long gray beard. “I’ve caught a thief!”
“Please,” said the fairy, “put me out in your garden. I’ll trouble you no more. I promise.” He winced at a particularly bad cramp. “Please, sir, I have a terrible tummy ache.”
The man put his head close to the glass. “That’s certainly a big, fat tummy.” He lifted the glass.
“Thank you. I have quite the tummy ache. If I just go—“
The man plucked the fairy up by his plump belly. The fairy screamed. The man’s big fingers rubbed the fairy’s distended stomach between them, back and forth.
Waves of pain crashed through the fairy’s stomach. Lights dazzled his eyes. “Oohh! My tummy! Stop! Please, stop!”
The man grinned. He pushed the fairy’s back against the wall. He uttered words the fairy recognized as magic but didn’t understand. His arms and legs splayed to the sides. Vines grew from within the wall and lashed around his wrists and ankles. Another wrapped around his throat. It wasn’t as tight as the other bonds, but it kept him posed upright. In the middle of it all, hung his engorged stomach.
Terror overtook the fairy. He squirmed against his bonds, but they held him fast. “Let me go!”
The man, apparently a wizard, chuckled. “I don’t like thieves. Or fairies, for that matter.”
He poked his big pointer finger in the fairy’s bellybutton. It felt like a punch in the gut. “Oof!” Pain rocked through the fairy’s belly. It shook in rippling waves of torture long after the finger disappeared. All he wanted to do was hold his achy stomach, but he couldn’t move.
The man thumped him right in his bellybutton. “Ungh!” The fairy moaned. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. “My tummy,” he managed breathlessly. If only he could curl into a ball and cradle his poor tummy.
“Awww. Do you have a stomach ache?”
The fairy whimpered. “Y-yes.”
“Oh. Well, you know what’s good for that? Blueberry pie!”
The fairy looked at the wizard in horror. “No. I can’t eat anymore.”
“If you eat until I tell you to stop, I’ll let you go. If you don’t, I’ll slap you between my hands and feed you to my hog.”
Tears welled in the fairy’s eyes. “I’ll eat,” he promised.
The wizard spooned a bite of pie into his mouth. The spoon was too big for him, so some of it stuck to his face. He ate as best he could. Forcing it down. Trying not to think about how full he already was.
The wizard whispered a spell—words the fairy didn’t recognize. A hunger took hold of him. He gobbled the pie from the spoon, licking his lips whenever the wizard pulled the spoon away to gather more.
Despite his ferocious hunger, his stomach ached and ached. He could barely stand it. His taut stomach’s skin pulled tighter and tighter as his belly swelled. Tremors of pain roiled through his overburdened guts.
“No,” he managed weakly. “My tummy can’t take anymore.” The pain finally outmatched his hunger.
The wizard pursed his lips. He mashed his pointer finger into the fairy’s hard stomach, denting it slightly. The fairy cried out in pain. The wizard gave a small harumph. “Looks like there’s more room to me.”
The fairy, despite his ravenous hunger, began to cry. His stomach hurt so much. He had never had such a terrible tummy ache in his life.
As he ate more and more, his stomach expanded further. It groaned and strained to digest all of the food. Each bite became more of a struggle. His stomach felt so heavy. His skin stretched tight around his distended belly. It wobbled painfully as he struggled to swallow.
The wizard pulled the spoon away and flicked his belly. A massive explosion of pain pulled a groan from deep inside the fairy. “Ungh.”His full stomach swung back and forth, sloshing. The fairy moaned in agony.
The wizard grinned. “Who knew something so small could get so big.”
When the fairy looked down at his stomach, it was unrecognizable. It looked like he had swallowed a chicken egg. It was bigger than the whole rest of his thin little body. A blueberry circle, like a target, marked the center, but there were also bright bruises where the wizard had picked him up. The dark marks around the blueberry stain were also bruises. A red blush revealed where the wizard had just flicked him. No wonder he hurt so much. His poor stomach was so traumatized.
The wizard cast another spell, and the hunger left the fairy. Now there was nothing left but pain. The wizard grabbed the fairy’s abused belly as if he were plucking a plum and said a spell that made the vines disappear. The fairy’s head swam, dizzy with pain.
The wizard carried the fairy to the counter and plopped him down on it. Immediately, the fairy curled up, as best as he could, around his distended, aching stomach. He held it, his hands unable to meet, unable to rub the throbbing middle of his huge belly. He moaned and rolled from side to side. “My tummy. Oohh. My tummy.”
The wizard laughed. “I think I’ll keep you here a while, maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks. I’m going to give you a bad tummy ache every day. Maybe then you’ll never steal again.” As the fairy whimpered, the wizard jabbed his exposed bellybutton with two fingers. His fingertips not only struck the fairy in his bellybutton, but above and below it, hitting the generous curve of the fairy’s belly.
The blow increased the suffering of that achy tummy, causing the fairy’s eyes to bulge with the intensity of his pain. Air puffed through his rounded lips. Lights flashed before his eyes. Darkness embraced him as he lost consciousness, the grumbling of his abused stomach following him into the dark.












