“More dinner, Abby?”

	Abby nodded her head yes, her cherubic features forming what would be an adorable smile, were her mouth not already full of food. Her mother returned the gesture, and heaped another generous helping of shepherd's pie onto Abby's plate.

 	“I'll refill your glass too.”

	Abby maintained her jovial demeanour as she wordlessly continued her feast, setting down her fork only to take customarily large swigs of cola every few bites. The clinking of silverware scarcely filled the Wilson household dining room, and both mother and daughter ate in near silence until a loud burp escaped the ten-year-old's mouth.

	“'Scuse me,” Abby mumbled through her last mouthful of pie. “Can I have some more coke, Mommy?”

	Kristine shot her daughter a wistful glance. More carbonated drink was probably the last thing she needed.

 	“You know, sweetie, that's probably why you've been getting so gassy lately. Maybe we should cut back a little?”

	Abby frowned. “Pleeeease Mommy? I promise I won't have any more tonight.” The young girl fidgeted in her seat, clearly upset at her mother's proposition.

	Kind and compassionate as she was, Kristine had never been a very smart woman. Raising Abby on her own had been financially simple due to sizable child support payments from her ex-husband, but try as she might, she frequently struggled with the more nebulous aspects of parenting, such as authority and control. Fortunately, Abby was not a rambunctious girl, but what she lacked in in anger or petulance, she made up for in greed and sloth. Kristine had never been good at saying no to her daughter, her failures at which were easily identifiable as the cause of Abby's tremendous weight issue.

	“Alright honey, but no more until tomorrow morning, you promise?”

	Abby nodded vigorously, her mood shifting immediately with her mother's acquiescence and Kristine, somewhat hopelessly, filled her daughter's glass for the umpteenth time that night.

	“I'm gonna go watch TV!” Abby exclaimed, before beginning her ungainly trip from the dining room to the Wilson family room. Grunting with discomfort, she rotated ninety degrees from her seated position and tentatively stuck out her feet to meet the floor, a movement to which she was well accustomed but that never seemed to get any easier with time. Freed from under the table, Abby's bloated stomach stuck out nearly a foot in front of the young girl's torso, quivering visibly even under her tank top. It had been some time since Abby had seen her feet while standing, and at an age where her motor skills should have been well along, she found herself struggling with acts of balance, not to mention running or jumping.

	While Kristine had never had the good sense to moderate much of Abby's food intake, she had also likely missed all but the most basic of health notions, and as such had allowed her daughter to indulge as she pleased when it came to sweets and junk food. Anyone her age would have grown wide-eyed at the sight of Abby's snack routine, but the gluttonous girl had taken a particular shining to soda, and had gone from a glass with most meals to several cans or even bottles a day, accompanying nearly everything she put in her eager mouth over the course of the past few years with a swig of coke or root beer.

	Needless to say, such a diet was not unnoticeable on Abby's physique. What had been a chubby if unremarkable eight-year-old had slurped, crunched and chugged her way through the middle bit of grade school into a certifiably obese preteen. Abby's thighs and arms plumped up, testing the seams of her rapidly obsolete clothing, and her chin grew a cute companion. Her doughy middle stretched impressively, youthful skin keeping it from drooping far below the waistline of her pants, and an early onset of puberty, doubtless related to her skyrocketing weight, had given her two perky mounds where most girls in her class had but mosquito bites.

	If Abby's corpulence went in any way unnoticed by her oblivious mother, what was more abnormal (and therefore more evident) was her increasing problem with bloating and flatulence. A steady, massive intake of carbonated beverage and greasy snacks had left Abby not only fat, but also inflated on a near-constant basis. Her burps at dinnertime were no rare occurrence; indeed, it was less common these days for Kristine to enjoy time with her daughter that wasn't punctuated by sharp bursts of gas seeking escape – one way or another – from the girl's swollen gut.

	As Abby waddled ponderously towards her destination on the sofa, she let loose a series of small farts and another thunderous burp, rubbing her uncomfortable belly through her top. They would not be the last of the evening, and Kristine sighed to herself as a chorus of bodily noises joined the sound of cartoons coming from the television. She often wondered how she had become so complacent regarding Abby's health, but all her musings and worries would never supersede her desire to put a smile on her daughter's face. If Abby remained as upbeat and cheerful as she had always been, Kristine supposed, then what reason did she have to change her diet? Surely she would eventually come to a decision on her own terms.

	“Mommy, can I have some ice cream?”

	Hopefully, that point would come sooner than later.

-------------

/pft...

pft...pffft/

hic-uurrrPFFTrrp/

Abby's precociously large tits wobbled to either side of her bloated stomach, the young girl barely kept decent in a too-small t-shirt as she huffed and panted her way down the hall to the living room, passing gas from one end or the other every few steps. It was in moments like these that Kristine was forced to admit that maybe - just maybe - she was a bit too permissive with her daughter's eating habits. Any sensible parent would have been horrified to see their child tottering toward the sofa as Abby was, red in the face and leaning slightly backwards to offset the tremendous weight of her midsection. Any sensible parent would also have balked at the idea of acquiescing to their gluttonous child's every dietary whim with little more than a tut, but Kristine was no expert when it came to making sensible decisions.

It wasn't uncommon, in their part of the country, for kids her age to be overweight or even obese, and Abby was no exception. Her puffy arms and round, bobbing stomach gave her a lollipop-esque shape that weighed in against all but the most reality tv-worthy blobs around. Already a big fan of anything either greasy or sweet, she found her mother even more pliable than usual as the prior year had gone on, and what was perhaps too frequent a habit became a diet in itself. By her eleventh birthday in June, Abby was eating fast food on her way to school and fast food on the way back, with a mix of cafeteria food and snacks from home for lunch. Later, it was fast food for dinner and, more and more frequently, a "pre-bedtime treat" of the type that comes by delivery in a stained paper bag. Kristine had moments, indeed, such as when she first noticed the effects of near-daily UberEats on her credit card bill, or when her daughter burst the button on a two month old pair of jean shorts (it was elastic waists from then on), where alarm bells would sound somewhere in the distant fog of her conscience, but those moments were fleeting and easily buried in service of Abby's increasing demands. "Anything for my girl," Kristine inevitably rationalized.

Unquestionably among the fattest in her cohort of middle school freshmen, Abby won no awards for popularity in her first months of grade six. She was friendly enough, but shy and not a little prickly if put on the defensive, and so her time spent in class became at best a bore, and at worst, torture to endure between meals. She trudged through the monotony until an all too welcome Christmas holiday offered her two weeks of respite - not to mention the opportunity to prevail upon Kristine's goodwill several more times a day - and returned to school with a sigh on her lips and more than a few newly-straining seams. From then, it was only three months until the pandemic struck in full. Kristine had been fretting over the media for some time, and was plenty eager to keep her daughter at home during the initial quarantine, while Abby herself was ecstatic at her school year being interrupted once again, and so soon. What's more, takeout and delivery became eminently justified, and what little resistance Kristine occasionally offered to Abby's constant pestering wore down within days. The greedy tween had her mother wrapped around her finger and took full advantage, replacing the final months of her grade with a clinic on sloth and gluttony and ringing in her twelfth birthday swaddled in at least 30 more pounds of wobbling lard. Summer passed in a daze of stress and uncertainty, and with the spectre of education lingering above their household, Abby expressed a convenient interest in home-schooling, to which Kristine found herself (conveniently) amenable.

Few initially predicted that the more cautious among society would still be in isolation come Christmas, but that was indeed the case, and Kristine, at least, counted as cautious, in contrast to the contented indifference of her expanding daughter. Home school was intermittent, Kristine's resolve being paper thin, and Abby preferred to just watch anime and eat; McDonald's and pizza now formed the backbone of her diet, supplemented by endless chips, ice cream, and soda - the latter of which was especially responsible for her increasingly gassy tendencies. The more Kristine put in front of her, the more she drank, it seemed, and just recently there had come an evening when Abby reached for a can from her 12-pack of Dr. Pepper only to find that she had emptied the carton since that morning. Puberty had made her even more ravenous than usual, and just about every shirt she owned had given up trying to cover her giant, jiggling belly, content with their still-valiant efforts to contain her burgeoning chest. In the months since her birthday, Abby had gone from simply fat-chested to outright busty, her puffy lumps blowing through bra sizes faster than Kristine could replace them, not that the young girl had much interest in wearing one anyway. Bereft of support, her plumped-up E cups bounced and swayed inside what little remained of her top as she returned to the living room, awkwardly carrying another carton of drinks in her chubby arms, and collapsed momentously on the soda with a great huff and a rumbling fart. She was a sight to behold, slouched backwards under the mass of her gut, loosing a startlingly loud belch as she opened her thirteenth can and took a deep swig. Kristine sighed, on some level conscious of her daughter's dire condition, but far too dedicated to her constant coddling to change her approach to parenting: if Abby got what she wanted, anything else could wait. Speaking of which...

"Mom, is th-/urrRRPP/- any pizza left?"

"Oh, honey, no, I think we finished it all earlier!"

"We," while not exactly incorrect, misrepresented the allocation of pizza by a significant margin. Kristine had helped herself to a relatively modest four slices, which left a large pie and a half for her "growing girl," and Abby was all too happy to oblige, stuffing the remaining pounds of cheese and greasy dough down her gullet over the following hour. That in itself wasn't surprising these days; that she was asking for more so soon (and with two more cans of Dr. Pepper to her name) was a bit more of an eyebrow-raiser.

"Oh... /pfffft/ ...can I -/urp/- have some ice cream then?"

Eyebrows or no, Kristine smiled. "Someone's hungry tonight! Chocolate or peanut butter, sweetheart?"

"Both! With -/hic-urp/- ca-/urrRRRPPPPP/ caramel sauce?"

"Of course, honeybean."

Halfway through her four-scoop bowl of thoroughly-sauced sundae, Abby paused, swallowed, and grimaced as her distended belly let out a sickly gurgle. She inhaled sharply as if to burp, but paused again, her face blushing a light red and her mouth hanging open between her chubby cheeks.

"Everything okay, sweetie?"

huff... /PFFFRRRRRRRRRRTT/-haaaaahhhhhhh

Abby groaned as she loosed a long, deep fart, the blush withdrawing from her complexion. "Yeah... /haahhh/ ...mom."

The rest of dessert was without incident, and Abby eventually committed to heaving herself from the sofa and slowly waddling to the bathroom to prepare for bed.

/pffrrtt...pfft...pfftt-urrrRRP...pffRAP/

Kristine chuckled and smiled wistfully as her daughter's flatulence faded down the hall. "She's such a good girl," she thought to herself, "always heading to bed on time." The toilet flushed, and the sound of the bathroom door gave way to a slow, heavy thumping and creaking; Abby took her time with the stairs these days, especially on a full stomach. Some hours later, as Kristine turned in for the night, she peeked through the crack in her daughter's door, any sound she made masked by the AC unit (left blasting as usual). Abby's bed was tucked in the corner of her room, and the fat young girl slept on an incline, a pile of pillows and stuffed animals supporting her back as her head reclined and her legs spread out in either direction from under her bloated middle, clearly visible beneath her single sheet.

"Sleep tight, my love," Kristine whispered, and turned off the hall light.

-----------------

It was nearly ten the next morning when Abby first stirred with a grunt and a toot. She eventually shuffled to the edge of her bed, yawned, burped, and reached her chubby feet unsteadily towards the floor. Groggily, she stomped her way to the washroom and plopped down on the toilet with a loud thud, all of which was clearly audible to Kristine who used this advance warning of her daughter's consciousness to fill the waffle maker with batter. Abby had never been much of a breakfast person, but as her appetite flourished, she nevertheless began to find herself peckish when she woke up (her expanded stomach inevitably less packed than when she had gone to sleep), and a meal which started as a small bowl of sugary cereal now consisted of a pair of Belgian waffles, several scoops of ice cream and a pint or three of syrupy-thick chocolate milk. Kristine didn't mind the work in the least; she was long up at this hour anyway, and working from home was lax, not to mention that she really didn't do all that much cooking these days. Independently wealthy and still receiving child support from Abby's father, she was all too happy to acquiesce to her daughter's incessant requests for fast food. The shock of the expense had long worn off, and she found herself becoming perfectly comfortable with the idea of ordering in if the clock had passed noon. There was still, however, no substitute for a good, home-cooked breakfast, and Kristine smiled as she stirred a copious amount of chocolate sauce into a large glass of whole milk.

Abby was rather longer in the washroom than usual, but after twenty-five minutes (and two flushes), her plodding footsteps sounded once again from the upstairs hall and into the stairwell; another minute later, she was licking her lips as she huffed into the kitchen clad in a once-baggy shirt and a rapidly-disappearing pair of boy shorts.

"Ready for breakfast, sweetie?"

"Yeah -/hahh/- mom. Smells really good!"

Kristine smiled. "I'm glad you think so darling. Dig in!"

And dig in she did. Pulling herself as close to the table as her girth would allow, Abby wasted no time on further pleasantries, taking a long swig of milk before attacking the mountain of sugar and carbs that lay in front of her. Kristine, meanwhile, busied herself with the dishes, the clinking of pots and pans clashing with the sounds of her daughter's gluttony until there were no more to clean, and she took a seat opposite her still-gorging offspring with a cup of coffee. Despite their shared routine, the two could not have contrasted more in appearance; Kristine's job allowed her to eschew the typically fastidious morning prep of her office-bound contemporaries in favor of pajamas and a loose ponytail, but the young mother nonetheless maintained an overall air both respectable and composed. Abby, on the other hand, was practically elbow deep into her plate without so much as an ounce of grace or dignity. Stray rivulets of milk dribbled from the corners of her mouth and down her double chin, while errant splashes of maple syrup and half-melted ice cream left sticky patches on her shirt. Manners, Kristine sheepishly acknowledged, had seemingly taken as much of a step back as social life during their isolation.

As the clock approached eleven, the last dregs of chocolate sludge flowed from Abby's glass down into her gullet, and her feasting finally slowed to a halt. Wearily, the disheveled young girl pushed her chair away from the table and slouched down the backrest, her now-engorged middle giving her clothes an even greater run for their money than they had an hour prior.

/uuurrRRRRPPP/

"Oh, excuse yo-"

/BRAAAAARRPP/

"Goodness, Abby! Did my little piglet enjoy her breakfast?"

"Hic-mm'not a piglet..." the porcine girl meekly whined in response.

Kristine chuckled at the irony of her daughter's protestations. Abby was a whole mess, her hair still frazzled from sleep (and now sullied with the odd glob of sugary liquid), her eyelids heavy, and her arms hanging weakly to the sides of her body as she recovered from her feast. Rarer now were the times when she would bounce to her feet after a meal, full of youthful energy despite her size; these days, it wasn't uncommon to see her languish in place for up to twenty minutes, her belly bulging up past the table top and her shallow breaths occasionally giving way to a half-snore. When she did finally rouse herself, it was a tedious affair, shimmying slowly to the edge of her seat until gravity and her diminutive height could do most of the work for her.

The whole kitchen shook as Abby's feet hit the floor with a bang, her exposed middle wobbling from the change in posture, and she paused to catch her breath. Having been stuffed with a family's worth of decadent breakfast, her gut had regained its habitual swollen shape, and protruded well beyond both her bustline and the hem of her shirt. Kristine chose to ignore, for the umpteenth time, the bevy of stretchmarks that lined her daughter's hips and belly; all girls her age were growing, weren't they?

/Though perhaps she could do with some new clothes.../

As if to ease any nascent concern in her mother's mind, Abby delayed only briefly before waddling off to her usual spot on the sofa, where Kristine brought her a 12-pack of coke that would be half-gone by lunch. The intervening hours were spent attempting to coerce the lethargic tween into homeschool mode, but Abby wasn't much for learning on a full stomach, and Kristine wasn't much for coercion, so the early afternoon was mostly TV and soda instead of books and equations.

Once lunch started, both women knew, school would inevitably fall by the wayside, but Kristine could only bring herself to apply so much pressure on her sweet little dumpling while she recovered between feasts; nevermind that Abby was /always/ between feasts, or that lunch was as big as breakfast, and dinner nearly twice that size; nevermind that what amounted to skipping school on such a regular basis was leaving Abby significantly behind the curriculum for a girl her age, just as she pulled further ahead of Shefton's already-atypical weight curve. Kristine loved her daughter, she really did.

She really, /really/ did.

So much so that she couldn't bear to see Abby unhappy, not for a moment. If her plump princess wanted to plumb the depths of a third McDonald's takeout bag rather than those of her textbooks, was that really so bad? Was it the end of the world that she was outgrowing her clothes if she so rarely left home anyway? And again, weren't all girls her age in need of new clothes on a regular basis?

/ffrrrRRRTTTT/

/That/ could perhaps stand for improvement, Kristine mused, although Abby herself didn't seem to mind much. Besides, in the comfort of their living room... it followed that if fitting clothes were optional, decorum could be too.

At least for today.