The Lorelai

"Gather ye round,
And hear thee a tale
'Bout bodies of women
Crossed with fluke from a whale
Tongues of the serpents
And eyes black as graves
Rise up from the darkness
And out from the waves…"

It is a warning to all sailors that they should not look too long into the seas on which they sail. A man can go mad staring into the inky blackness, never knowing if it is he regarding it, or it regarding him. Legends spread quickly among such superstitious and suggestible types, quick to put a name and a face to that which they fear the most. The legend of the Lorelei has permeated many cultures, often calling them mermaids, but the story remains the same. It's said the ocean can swallow a man whole.

It is not the ocean you should concern yourself with.

*****

In the dead of night, they came. First there was nothing to suggest anything about that night would be anything out of the ordinary. The harbour lay still, silent for the night, boats shackled while fishermen slumbered, dreaming of prizes from the abyssal deep. Tonight the abyss dreamed of them.

In the centre of the harbour, sheltered from the ebb and flow of the ocean, the water lay glassy still, clear to the moon, not a cloud in the sky.

A bubble broke the surface with a fat wet plop.

Soon it had company.

The men and women of the town slept on, blissfully unaware of all of this. They didn't see the nomad bubble become a tribe, a herd, a swarm of bubbles. They didn't see the water ripple and break. They didn't see the figures rise from the depths.

The Lorelei.

They rise up from the water, cutting through it like the prow of a ship, they leave little wake and make no noise. All around the silence of the grave permeates. They dip their heads, and drink deeply of the waters of their home, for with this they can accomplish something never thought possible. This is their night.

They make their way ashore.

Moving cumbersomely but quietly on their piscine flukes, six watery maidens emerged upon dry land. There are six, aqua skinned, for all intents and purposes they appear rather un-extraordinary. Each stands taller than a man on a great tale, emerald green scales adorning the muscular shaft in place of their legs. From the waist up, they are like women, their breasts large and pert, exposed to the cold night air. They wear no clothing except delicate belts of woven weed to accommodate their weapons and trinkets. Their mouths, delicate and full lipped, belie their savage nature, inside their teeth are long and pointed like those of the angler fish, needle like teeth crowding their mouths. Long flowing hair sweeps from their heads in a variety of colours. One has hair green as kelp, long strands hang in braids from her delicate head, she sniffs the air to catch hint of her prey. Another has locks of midnight blue, she brings with her a weapon of the deep, the metal band of a shipwrecks mast beaten flat and straight it makes a fearsome sword. One has hair as pure white as the meniscus of the horizon; she is smaller than the others but bears a face of ruthless cunning. One bears hair the colour of salt blasted timber, deep rich brown dotted with pearls snatched from oysters from deep beneath the waves. The fifth's head plays host to locks as black as the night in which they creep, she wears a determination to horrific misdeeds, an aura of misery clings to her. The final of the assembled has hair as red as the most exotic of coral, her head appears aflame such is its vivacious colour, vivid and luxuriant viewed against her companions. She is the leader of this murderous band.

Their names are recorded in the annals of their people's histories, these six. Respectively, they are Marissa, Kendra, Troya, Kaita, Kalliste and Odessa. They have long been a scourge of all who know them, snatching up whole fleets of boats in their time, devouring hapless sailors, trampling the gentle traditions of their people. They are the reason the myth lingers, refuses to sink from common memory. They have been seen.

And that is why they are there that night.

On their last excursion, they came across a lone crab fishing vessel. They rose from the depths and slaughtered the deck hands. But they neglected to check the cabins. A lone boy, not more than ten winters, watched in mute horror as the six murdered and devoured the crew and their haul, slipping back from whence they came once the gluttonous deed was done. The child managed to row a life raft back to shore, gibbering in terror and fear from what he had witnessed.

They were there to make sure he talked no more.

The port was small, a fledgling community of sailors and their families, numbering maybe no more than twenty heads.

Odessa spoke, her voice high and lilting, pleasant to the ear.

"Leave no-one alive. The boy may have talked. No one must remain."

They drew long cruel looking knives made of chiselled shells from leviathan molluscs and made their way into the first houses. The occupants made no sounds, their throats slit as they slept, the Lorelei disposed of them quickly.  Kalliste was the first to feed. She takes the heels of a large, portly man, dead not two minutes, and with a smooth eel like motion slides him past her lips, her body distorting and stretching horribly to accommodate him, her throat swells outward as he passes, her ribs creak as they begin to separate, allowing him to move through her to his intended destination. She swallows him whole. Coming to rest, her stomach swells outwards to accommodate the man, large a round as if with ungodly brood, she strokes it and coos with malevolent pleasure.

"The first of many, I hope…"

She draws a wineskin from her belt; a stolen artefact of the land bound, and drains it of its contents. Salt water. She sighs heavily; she has been on land and requires it to breathe when not in the ocean.

She quickly consumes the man's wife. There is much work to be done here tonight.

*****

They cleared the village. Not a single soul was left alive, no one remained to spread the tale of the boy. He resided in the last house, the furthest from the sea, and the farthest from the watery depths any of them has ever ventured. They assemble with great difficulty. Odessa has over done things somewhat.

While each of the Lorelei sports a stomach of grossly distended dimensions, she has outdone all of them. Her breasts press up almost to her chin atop the dome of her gravid belly. Her gut is a vast churning sphere of writhing digestion, she had insisted on eating the child and his entire family herself, a feat far outstripping the efforts of the others, and is regretting her decision. The skin over her colossal tummy was so overstretched it had gone almost white, in stark contrast to the aqua skin of the rest of her body; it rolled and rocked with its own infernal rhythm. Her delicate fingers trace troubling arcs over her over taxed stomach, she moans and curses under her breath at her own gluttony, she has grown too vast and over fed to move under her own volition. It takes the efforts of Kendra, Troya and Marissa to drag her bodily from the house, the four collapsing in the yard outside, their energies utterly spent. As she landed, with very little grace, the belt encircling Odessa's waist tore with a loud rip, her immense midriff sloshing and wobbling, her hands stroking she cooed, trying to settle the digesting behemoth. Kalliste and Kaita attempt feebly to drag their swollen mistress closer to the sea, but soon succumb to their exertions and collapse next to their compatriots. They lay there, panting and groaning, each sporting a belly a whale would find cumbersome.

Time passes.

The girls rest, recovering their strength. Their stomachs heave and churn as if supporting an ocean, sloshing and gurgling with pressure, they ripple and churn menacingly. They lie, smiling to themselves as they doze, stroking their fecund waists, enjoying the sensation.

Kendra is the first to try and raise herself.

As ungainly as she is on land, the added weight and massive bulk of her midriff pins her to the ground.

She cannot get up.

She collapses back, breathless. Her stomach moans forlornly.

"I think we may have overdone things…"

Her sisters try likewise, with the same result. Marissa pushes until she is crimson faced, but to no avail. They are stuck.

Over in the east, the sky begins to brighten.

Odessa does not notice. Her crimson locks spill out round her like a halo, she flaps her tail languidly. Her hands encircle the stupendous bloated circumference of her stomach, easily leaving several feet between her fingertips and the lonely navel atop her engorged gut. She has a faraway look on her face, her eyes closed, and a faint smile on her lips.

The dawn broke.

The sun climbed higher and higher, ascending to the heavens, looking down on all things, seeing all and knowing everything.

The Lorelei looked back, and saw and knew only fear.

The coolness of the night gave way to the heat of the day. Troya looked across at Kalliste, sweat standing out in thick droplets on her body, unused to the rigours of life on land. Unprepared for the assault of the sun.

The heat beat down on them incessantly. Unbearably.

Troya feels the touch of the sun upon her. Her immense gravid belly gurgles and moans beneath her tender embrace. She feels the heat begin to penetrate the swell of her midriff. She felt it creep insidiously through the fleshy orb pining her ungraciously to the ground. Slowly she became aware of another feeling. Deep inside her, something was heating up. Slower than everything around. Her guts writhed and moaned dramatically, but this was somehow more sinister. Then she felt it. A bubbling feeling.

The seawater inside her was beginning to boil.

Her eyes widened as she felt the oven like interior of her grossly overburdened digestive tract heat up. Her hands pressed worriedly into the heaving flesh of her tummy, fingers searching for something to bring her relief and quell her fears. She found nothing but that which she knew already. Her hands clutched the flanks of the aching sphere, the skin stretched out painfully tight over the mass of bodies within. She at once regretted eating the shopkeeper's dog. It was too much.

The water within her was boiling fiercely, sloshing around inside her, turning steadily to vaporous steam. This of course takes up more space than water…

Troya's eyes opened wide as she felt the distance between her hands pressed either side of her flanks grow. She looked around in panic, only to see similar expressions on the faces of the other girls.

The harsh temperature was having an effect on more than just the water inside Troya's fecund belly. Her skin, accustomed to more aqueous climates, was losing it's moisture at an alarming rate, and she could feel it, drying out. With this, not only did it lose its moisture content, but it's elasticity too.

Troya let out a gasp as a tremor passed through her massive midriff, the light blue ocean of flesh began to creak like the hull of a ship in a storm. She ran her hands over the surface, as much of it as she could reach, before she felt it. A searing pain passed through her gut, starting at the apex formed by her deep navel and spreading vertically in line down the centre of her engorged abdomen. She saw it too. A deep red mark ran the length of her stomach, the very pinnacle of the pressure, and she knew at once she was done for. She sobbed, turning her eyes toward the sky, her fingers clutching on for dear life to the waxen surface of her over bloated stomach. Tears fell, she knew the skin could not hold out for long. She looked to her right at Kalliste, seeing her sister weep openly as she held the fecund ball of her girth. Over the top of her breasts, the pointing buds of her nipples, she could just see the monstrous swell of Kalliste's stomach, perhaps even bigger than her own, and she knew she would suffer the same fate. Then, out of the corner of her eye, just at the very edge of the trembling circumference of her own stomach, she saw a great white sphere creep into view, growing and growing, sounds issuing forth from it like an unholy kraken awoken. She had no time to wonder what it was, the searing pain of her own predicament brought her back to her own body. Her hands clutched feebly at the sides of her stomach, her nails denting the skin, she cried with anger as she felt the pain within her build.

The seam running the length of her stomach let out a horrific tearing sound.

She screamed, her eyes wide, her back arched.

Her stomach, finally too big for its own dimensions, exploded.

*****
Odessa lay contentedly on her back, dozing in the sun. Her hands, acting seemingly of their own initiative ran hither and thither across the immense surface of her stomach. Her left hand reached up to tweak her nipple, her large, full breast aching for the same attention as the gravid orb that had forced itself into its space. She moaned and shivered in delight, her belly wonderfully stuffed and warm. That little boy had been the perfect finale to her feasting; she had never felt full like this, almost as if she had swallowed a ship, her tummy bloated to dimensions inhuman in their scope. She felt majestic, wonderful, awe inspiring, unstoppable. She would have to try this again some time.

She felt a strange tingling sensation, deep within her stomach. She felt for her wineskin, she had drunk far more seawater than the other girls, she needed it to support her own gargantuan tummy. She gulped down the last of the water.

The tingling feeling did not go away.

She slowly opened one eye. Cautiously, she surveyed the vast plane of stomach flesh presented to her. It was ivory white, stretched to its very limit, rumbling and gurgling and moaning and groaning. Ripples and bumps rose and fell over its distended surface as the content of her meal shifted and heaved its way around her guts, her hands tracing the migration from one side to the other, leaving a large area in the middle unexplored as her arms could not stretch that far.

She heard a sob.

She looked over to her left. Kendra lay next to her, sobbing to herself loudly.

Odessa's eyes widened.

Kendra appeared almost as if in labour. The immensity of her midriff suggested the presence of an untold number of young residing within, but she knew this not to be true. Still, she was sweating and sobbing, her hands clutching ineffectively at the surface of her belly. Odessa looked for a moment; she hadn't remembered Kendra eating as much.

Suddenly, Kendra arched her back and let out a high cry of agony and sorrow. Her hands pressed hard into the surface of her stomach.

Odessa watched mouth agape.

Kendra's belly ruptured.

The sound was ear splitting. The ground shook with the blast. Odessa's ears rang as she blinked in incredulity and horror. She had watched as the skin of her sister's stomach had split open like an over ripe fruit, the massive pressure of her gluttonous content forced it's way out in a great explosion like a thousand cannons. There was little left of her, her ruined stomach left a smouldering crater where she had lain. Odessa heard another loud crack, then another, and another. They had burst. The tears sprang up in her eyes, she wept for their loss. And for her own.

She felt a bubbling deep within her monstrous belly. A cautious hand crept from her breast to her belly, feeling the ebb and flow within. It shook violently. Her hands jerked from the surface in surprise, before a long low moan escaped from deep in the heart of the ivory ocean before her. Her hands returned, she could feel tremors and murmurs from inside herself. Her skin was hot to the touch.

She felt an itch spread over the surface of her majestic tummy.

Her eyes cast about for the source. She watched, horror stricken, as tiny red fingers grew and spread over the surface of her stomach. Her breath came ragged in her chest with fear, her stomach rising and falling as she breathed, each time the skin feeling tighter and tighter, giving less and less. She watched as the stretch marks spread to encompass the entirety of her stomach, crimson and malevolent.

A huge shudder ran through her stomach. She cried out in pain. She didn't know how much more of this she could take.

A voice.

"O..O..Odessa? Is that you?"

The voice was ripe with fear and pain, but unmistakable. It was Kalliste.

"Odessa… I'm going to burst, my tummy, it hurts!"

Odessa had problems of her own. Her stomach was growing frighteningly, larger and larger as the steam within her expanded it to terrifying new dimensions. She writhed in pain.

Suddenly, as soon as it had come, it ceased.

She ran her hands over the surface. The calm belied the storm within. Just enough. Just enough to contain it. She cautiously prodded her over swollen stomach. A loud, angry groan escaped the tortured flesh and she withdrew it quickly.

If I can just hold on long enough…

She became aware of another sound. An hideous organic creaking sound. A loud sob echoed out.

Kalliste!

Kalliste's stomach, unbeknown to Odessa, had not the elasticity of her sister's.

With an earth rending roar, Kalliste exploded.

Odessa watched as the shockwave passed rippling through her own stomach. A chorus of roaring groans and a terrible tearing sound echoed out from within. She felt her heart beat once, twice, perfect silence.

Her belly heaved.

She sobbed. A needle of pain stabbed out from deep in the heart of the monster. It had been too much. Her Olympian stomach roared like a beast, shook like an earthquake and rippled like the ocean. The pain built to a crescendo. She felt her skin separate beneath her fingertips.

Her belly exploded.