The Hangman's Daughter
By Dave




She wasn't really his daughter. None of them ever really had been. All they were were helpless beautiful young girls lured into his evil lair. The dark castle that sat on the steep craggy hillside in what is now Naples. Infrequently was he seen, the hangman of Balsteri, a small villa which he held in a grip of terror. Only during time of execution, one of his favorite pastimes would he be seen. The hanging of the accused was his job and his alone.

His name was Rolf of Balsteri and the only other time was he to be seen in public was when he was escorting young girls to his castle and practicing ungodly experiments on them. Most of them were never seen from again.

One was, however. She was found at the bottom the hill clutching her abdomen, which had bloated to an unnatural size and rumbled with ominous and unholy noises. She died shortly after from an internal rupture. In the year of 1457 anatomy was not fully understood, and the belly in particular was a subject of curiosity and great interest to scientists of the time. This included sorcerers such as Rolf the Hangman of Balsteri. What exactly went on deep in his castle was a mystery to the good folk of Balsteri, but whatever it was, whenever a young woman was seen traveling in his chariot up the hill, prayers were said for her.

So when a young girl dressed in rags came to town one day, claiming to have a snake in her stomach, it was predicted that Rolf would not be far behind her. The girl's name was Catherina and she had been inviting local men to come feel the snake's movements inside of her stomach, which she claimed had crawlen down her throat while she slept one night in a cornfield. When she showed up on his doorstep, she was famished, for as a wandering vagrant, Catherina had no money for food.

Rolf was summoned by his servant who answered the door and eyed the girl curiously. She stood barely five foot five and couldn't have weighed more than 122 pounds. She had deep green eyes and dark black hair, shockingly beautiful.

"So it goes around the boneyard that ye got a snake squirmin around in that belly of yours. I heard it and I don't believe it for a second. Yeís a fraud." The girl said not a word in reply, only taking Rolf's hand and placing it inside her blouse against her trim stomach.

To his surprise, he could feel powerful undulations and motions somewhere inside of Catherina's belly. He bent at the waist and pressed his ear up against it, but heard nothing but the normal gurgling and churning of the girl's stomach. "Follow me," Rolf commanded her, leading her inside to a dark hallway and down a winding staircase to an underground laboratory.

Odd instruments filled with bubbling liquids of various colors filled the room. In the middle, a table and a chair sat. It was the room in which many a young innocent girl had disappeared into, never to return. "Sit down. I can rid ye of the snake inside if ye follow my own instructions. Does ye agree?"

Her eyes seemed to grow wider and Catherina nodded her head in agreement. "Then drink this,", the hangman said, handing her a small vial filled with a pink viscous fluid.

As she complied, he looked into her eyes and said seriously, "Tis going to be difficult but this potion should give you the power to eat enough for your stomach to go into hyper metabolic mode, digestin the varmint." As evil as he was, Rolf's interest in science had paid off as he was far ahead of his time in scientific discoveries pertaining to the stomach.

He rang a bell and another servant entered the room pushing an huge cart of food. Meats of all variation, fruits and jugs of wine were among the many steaming succulent dishes. A long, loud hollow rumble came from Catherina's belly.

"Arrr, I can hear ye belly growlin. Why dontcha eat?" She began to dig in, eating fast, faster than any Rolf had ever seen before, He grinned knowing she wouldn't possibly able to hold up. Her trim stomach began to swell to great sizes due to the elasticizing effect of the potion made by the evil hang man, who knelt beside Catherina and placed his ear against her expanding tummy.

Her stomach was beginning to make strange noises, loud moans and groans that sounded like a tuba. One could also hear it stretching. In only fifteen minutes, she had finished the entire cart of food. Rolf was amazed. He had never seen one accomplish that feat before, but now she clutched her stomach in agony.

"I'll fetch ye some more of the potion. Twill ease the pain and allow your belly to stretch more." Catherina nodded, holding her aching tummy . As soon as the liquid disappeared down her throat, Catherina's belly let out a long loud rumbling groan and then a series of gurgling growls, so loud it echoed in the small laboratory.

"I'll be, I'm hungry again!", she said as she wrapped her arms around her huge stomach, this time not out of pain, but in an attempt to muffle the deep rumbles coming from it, she was sure everyone in the castle could hear her digestion; for the noises coming from her belly sounded like a dozen bullfrogs croaking in unison.

Another cart of food was brought out and as she dug in, Rolf unbuttoned her blouse, exposing her now very distended abdomen and her deep round belly button, which quivered from time to time from the loud digestion noises gurgling inside of her, making her belly tremble.

As he again placed his ear against her navel so he could listen to her belly's progress through it. Catherina began to chant in a strange language.

"GaustausÖdamballlaÖmutisaciasÖ.". Rolf paid no attention. He couldn't hear her over the deafening rumbles and tummy sounds gurgling through Catherinaís overloaded belly. He did however, notice when he began to feel quite strange and looked up at her.

Wait! Why was he looking up? That's when he realized he was shrinking. In a matter of seconds, her spell had shrunk him to a centimeter in height. She snatched him up, but he was able to squirm free, falling onto her breasts and then bouncing off and rolling down her huge abdomen and landing facedown in the puckered skin at the bottom of Catherina's belly button, which compared to him was near the size of a Volkswagon and moved with a life of it's own as Catherina breathed and her belly continued to gurgle and moan.

"Arrrr!!! What have ye done to me and for what good reason???!!" Rolf was incredulous but also scared out of his wicked mind.

"Shut up. Just shut up you vile pig. I'll tell you why I have come. You can think back. You can remember a girl who came to you for help. A girl with eyes like mine. Her name was Esmeralda. You killed her. Growing up without a mother does things to a child. Like inspiring an interest in witchcraft. You arenít the only sorcerer in this room."

GLOOORRRRGGGGGG!!! Rolf was shaken off his feet as Catherina's belly button shook violently from a deafening gurgle deep inside her stomach. "I know you are able to hear the rumbling of my belly,", she said to him ominously. "It's beckoning you. You sent so many girls to their deaths by overloading and experimenting with their stomachs. It serves you right that you will perish in mine."

As if to punctuate her sentence, Catherina's belly let loose an impossibly loud groan that to Rolf sounded like an ogre gargling with quicksand.

GGGRRRRRGGGGLLLLLMMMMBBBBBBRRRRGGGGEEMMMMMMM!!! The belly groan tore through Catherina's churning belly like an earthquake and threw Rolf onto his face once again. He could feel the insides of her navel, warm and pulsing as her stomach and intestines sloshed around like huge water main pipes somewhere beneath him.

"GET IN MY BELLY!" Catherina cried. In one swift motion she scooped him out of her belly button and swallowed Rolf like a tic tac. He was pushed down a warm, slimy tube until at last he came to rest in Catherina's belly. The gargling and churning inside of her stomach was intolerably loud, but he could still make out her voice from the outside.

"Welcome to my stomach, hangman of Balsteri. Esmeralda was my mother!" Catherina placed her hands on her abdomen so she could feel it tremble as it went to work digesting Rolf.

The last thing the hangman thought as her stomach juices dissolved him was "ARRRR!!! Me wonders if there really be a snake in here after all?" Catherina smiled as she lay back, her stomach alive with churns and sloshing noises. As a long loud explosion of gurgling bubbling sounds gargled out of her gigantic belly, she knew that the hangman would never terrorize the villa of Balsteri again.