postcard amelie 03
You wake feeling warm, full and slightly used. These are all very pleasant in a morning. You start the day with a lazy smile and roll over, expecting your arm to fall across Clarice.
She’s not there. You raise your head to look around, sleep-crazed black hair falling over your face. Your stomach has lost the definition Gemma first gave it. She spent the night converting herself into chyme and squeezing her way through your intestines, giving you a solid, heavy feeling throughout your entire abdomen. Curt gurgles accompany a mild discomfort that begs to be relieved. Too early for a belly rub?
Ah. She’s having some sort of emotional reaction. Clarice is sitting in the corner of the room by the door, holding her knees. Her eyes, pale green contrasted against her tanned skin, are slightly widened by… something. She looks back at you when you see her.
She’s still here. That’s something. You feel a tension caused by her absence begin to relax, and wonder at it. You haven’t felt this attached this quickly before.
“Are you okay?” you say, by way of beginning.
Clarice shakes her head. She is as naked as last night, hiding behind long legs that are interposed between you and her. When she doesn’t speak again you make another attempt.
“Are you scared?”
“You brought it all back. I haven’t thought about it in years.” The knees draw in tighter behind hugging arms.
“Clarice, it’s going to be okay. Tell me what happened.” You pile together some pillows against the headboard and wriggle to lie back against them. The pressure on your belly increases as you bend at the waist. You notice rolls are developing: the holiday diet is having an effect.
A long pause, then, “It’s not Clarice. It’s Amelie. … I saw one of you feed, when I was a little girl.”
“One of me how?” Gemma, previously very obliging, seems to be mounting a resistance behind your belly button. You surreptitiously begin to massage it yourself.
“Back when I lived in France, my brother’s friend was snatched. They were both ten, maybe eleven? I was younger.” You release a small burp under your breath, trying to relieve your pressure. Your heart goes out to your lover curled up in the corner, but you wish she were together enough to give you some comfort.
She continues. “I found him. Well, the woman who had taken him. I only recognised him by his shoes. She was sitting on a park bench in the shade, pulling those shoes off his feet. His feet that were sticking out of her… like, I could see her throat stretching and straining where he was still kicking, but the rest of him was curled up inside this massive paunch…”
Amelie visibly shudders. “I screamed blue murder and she just looked at me and swallowed him down. Looked like it hurt her, like he was too big.” Her gaze, which had wandered into the middle distance, focuses on you. “You made it look easy.”
“Practice,” you say, with a carefully measured smile. You don’t want to spook her. “Sounds like she was inexperienced. What happened next?”
“She sort of stumbled towards me and I just froze. If she has reached for me I wouldn’t have done anything, and maybe I’d have stewed away in her guts too.”
The mention of guts makes yours speak up, a ~glork, glork, glrrrck~. Amelie looks over your body. Subtle, the signs of relaxation, but she’s gripping her legs less tightly.
“But she just ran off and no one believed me. No matter how much I begged them, no matter that he never came back. For months I would not go outside. I would beg my brother to stay home too, and cry until he came home if he left. I starved myself and became very ill. Eating became… it felt wrong. Ugly.”
Amelie falls silent again. You shift your weight at least in part to draw her attention back to you. Again, she relaxes when she looks at you.
“Amelie, is this why you said what you said? About me being what you want to be? Come over here and sit with me on the bed.”
She stands, one hand holding the opposite elbow, and nods. An encouraging hand motion spurs her to walk to your bedside, and a pat on the mattress makes her sit. Against your weight—yours, the whole of Gemma, the transmuted body of the moonbathing woman—the mattress barely registers Amelie.
“What do you see?”
Amelie blushes like a child, deep crimson beneath the tan of her skin. It brings a smile to your face, which teases her further toward being at ease. “A… there’s a whole person in there, Raven. She’s gone, but her whole body is filling you up. And it feels… like, it couldn’t feel more natural. Living, growing, eating. Everything does it. And you’re this perfect, perfect expression.” She turns to look out the hotel window, where the sun hangs golden in the morning sky. “It’s like you’re a goddess.”
The way she’s looking at you makes you feel warm and tingly. She really means what she’s saying. You pull away the meagre covering of the duvet where it lay over one thigh and flank, giving Amelie an unfettered view of your tummy. From where ribcage ends to where hips begin, Gemma had touched your secret paths, and still causes you to swell. A smooth, round burial mound lies revealed on the bed.
“Touch me,” you say. Amelie thrills as if with electricity and shifts onto her knees. She leans over and lays hands upon your abdomen like a saint with her healing touch.
You can’t help but make a small sound of satisfaction in the back of your throat. Your belly echoes it, reminding you of the tension behind your belly button.
Her hands tremble when you gently grasp and move them to that trouble spot. “Massage my belly as it does its work. Show me you mean what you say.”
Amelie begins gingerly, almost scared to touch it. Your gut roars like a beast and you think she can feel the vibrations as air is squeezed by lazy peristalsis from one stretch of intestine to another. No wonder she starts scared.
But her ministrations cause something to give way pleasantly inside you. The tension resolves with a low moan: ~glooooOOOrkl~, and then all is running smoothly. Your own moan brings goosebumps to Amelie’s arms and moisture to her forehead. Moisture elsewhere, too, if you don’t miss your guess.
Soon she is rubbing you up and down, tensioning and easing the muscles of your flanks and abdomen, tracing swollen intestinal windings. She breathes deeper, sometimes cooing with satisfaction as a joyous gurgle is marshalled by her hands. You lie back and enjoy it.
The first little kiss tickles and surprises you. Placed on the very peak of the dome Gemma gave you, it comes followed by many others, falling as fast and soft as warm rain. It’s like Amelie, not knowing how to express with her hands her love for your shape, had to find another way. She continues to massage throughout, bringing a wonderful feeling of tenderness and digestive ease.
An ominous growl echoes from further up your digestive tract. Your feel Amelie freeze, an animal reaction.
“It’s breakfast time,” you say softly.
Amelie starts bodily shaking. “No, no, please don’t do this Raven, I can’t— I won’t—”
You put a finger to her lips to still them. The sight of her so petrified and small breaks your heart. It also elicits another rumble of your empty stomach. She somehow evokes your protection and your hunger simultaneously.
“Shush, silly, you’re safe today. But it’s breakfast time. If I can’t have you, you’d better get me something else, hadn’t you?”
Amelie grins past the tears that sprang up and rains adoring kisses over your belly all over again. In between, she asks, “What do you want?”
“No eggs,” you say, basking in her affection. “Pancakes are nice. But other than that, what I mainly want is lots. And you’re going to feed me.”
One final kiss is planted, firm and intentional: a promissory kiss nestled on the cusp of your sleepily rousing womanhood. “I’ll give you everything you want.” Then she’s up, seeking discarded clothes and getting ready to fetch you food.
No you won’t, you think to yourself. Amelie is not yet ready to give you what you want. You would have to take it.