The Pumpkin Paunch 🎃

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you're all having a spooktacular day! 👻🍬

I haven't quite managed to finish my promised Halloween stories, but below is a little preview. And as you'll have seen, I did manage to finish this pic of our poll-winner, Gemma as Harley Quinn.

It's about time I did a pic of Gemma, and I'm happy with how this turned out (it looks better full size than in the preview), though I'd have liked to get the pumpkin's eyes glowing a little more with sweets. I wish I could say it was by design that the pumpkin seems to be grinning at Gemma's belly, but that was pure chance!

This was also one of those times where making a picture helped a lot with a story, a little preview of which is below. There's another part of this that I'll have tidied up during the week, and there'll also be short Halloween vignettes and pics featuring Abby and Holly.

Update 10/11/21: Tweaked Gemma's tummy button to make it look a little softer. Tiny change but had been bothering me, haha.

Hope you enjoy it!

The Pumpkin Paunch - Preview

‘I said, go away!’ Gemma buried her face deeper into the pillow as she heard the door open and then click shut. Moments later, the bed sank slightly beside her, and a hand came to rest on her shoulder.

‘Gemma… He’ll be so disappointed.’

The voice was as gentle as the hand, but Gemma lifted her face with indignance. ‘That’s emotional blackmail!’ she sniffed. But all she got in response was a chuckle.

‘You know, you really do look quite like her.’

Gemma sniffed again, but this time a little thoughtfully. ‘People do say I look like her.’ The thought brightened her tearful face, but only for a moment. ‘I can’t do it, Graham,’ she said, re-burying herself in the pillows. ‘I’m too… I’m sorry, okay?’

Graham rubbed her shoulder encouragingly. ‘C’mon. I bet it’s not even that bad.’

‘Not that bad?!’ With a scornful huff, Gemma pushed herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, grunting a little as she rose to her feet. For a few seconds she stood in the middle of the room, pouting at the floor and clutching the two sides of her winter coat tightly shut like a very bashful stripper. 

Then, sighing with resignation, she let them fall apart.

‘See!’ Gemma snapped, feeling triumphant at being proved right by Graham’s reaction, but also quite put out by just how wide his eyes had bulged. Shucking the coat off completely, she slouched back and turned her palms up either side of her naked midriff. ‘I can’t go out looking like this!’ Gemma hissed, punctuating the last word by slapping both hands to her bulging sides and hefting up her paunch. ‘It’s indecent!’

For once, Graham was lost for words. Gemma’s greedy passion for puddings and cakes and all things sweet had caused the pretty blonde to grow steadily plumper every year he’d known her. But nothing had quite prepared him for this. He’d have thought she was pregnant, if not for the soft rolls that squished up around her upper flanks when she lifted her belly, and the abundance of pudge that oozed like dough between her porky fingers. Soon tiring of holding up such a heavy weight, Gemma let her spectacularly rotund belly drop, and Graham counted three distinct bounces before it settled. 

It was the tubbiest tummy he’d ever seen.

Feeling Gemma’s blue eyes burning into him, Graham smiled and tapped the bed beside him. ‘I always did warn you about putting all that whipped cream on your apple crumble,’ he joked as she sat back down.

‘Really helpful, Graham,’ Gemma pouted, but she leaned into his neck as he slid his arm around her shoulder, cuddling her close, just as he had so often when they were little and she’d grazed her knee or someone had been mean to her at school.

Graham kissed the top of his sister’s hair, between the pigtails: one corn-gold, the other bright red. ‘You really do look like her, you know.’

‘Apart from having a huge gut,’ Gemma snuffled.

‘It’s just a couple of blocks,’ Graham said. ‘People will hardly be able to see you in this fog anyway - and there’ll be tonnes of sweets,’ he added, making a rather crass appeal to said gut.

‘Sweets,’ Gemma seemed to snort the word from her nostrils, ‘are the last thing I need.’ But
Graham had known his little sister long enough to hear the note of longing beneath her indignant tone. He chuckled internally. Vain though she was, Gemma’s greedy appetite always got the better of her. All she needed now was a couple more compliments. 

Graham had opened his mouth to deliver one when a small, highly excited voice blasted through the door.

‘Auntie Gemm-aaaaaaa!’

A green and purple tornado hurtled into the room, did one lap of the bed and then pirouetted, resolving itself into a small figure in a slightly too large purple suit, with a white-painted face topped by an electrocuted shock of dark green hair.

Simon Patterson’s painted-on grin stretched even wider than his character was known for, faltering only slightly when he saw the two adults sitting on the bed.

‘Are… are you ready, Auntie Gemma?’

It was at moments like this that Graham really, really loved his little sister.

‘Oh, Mista J!’ Gemma cooed, all traces of misery gone. She clapped her hands to her cheeks with a coquettish flourish. ‘You look poooifect!’ Springing up the bed at a speed that seemed unrealistic for a lady encumbered by such a sizable paunch, the pigtailed blonde hoisted a baseball bat over her head and winked mischievously. ‘You ready to snag some candy, puddin?’

‘Yeeeaaahh!!!’ The Joker cheered, raising a massive plastic pumpkin above his head.

Smiling, Graham shook his head, chuckling softly as they left the room. ‘Don’t eat too much!’ he called after their departing forms, unsure himself whether he was addressing his son or his sister.

To be continued…  🍬🍬🍬