Roth awoke with a groggy groan. Every single day for the past week, he found himself under the same tree, deep in the ground where the root formed a canopy over him. For the first day or so, the young man tried to convince himself he was having a dream, but the delusion quickly died when nothing changed.

How he had come to be in the strange burrow, he would never know. Roth had been out attending the family’s flock of sheep one minute and then woke up naked underground the next. It was cool in this place with old fallen leaves worn soft for bedding. At first, Roth had tried crawling his way out, but the tunnel seemed endless with no exit to the world above. Besides, once it had found him wandering around, it dragged him back to this place where he was forced to stay.

Brown eyes gaze down along his own body. A few days ago, Roth would have seen his feet there, but down the vision was obscured by a large belly. It swelled up proudly, curving out from the bottom of his chest and then tucking back in at his pelvis, looking as though it housed triplets. There were faint marks on his hips, but nothing too dark or ugly. The skin was smooth and shiny, and it blushed up towards the peak. His bellybutton was plump as well. It had started off small like a marble, but now it was the size of a fat ripe cherry.

Roth heard a soft rustle of leaves and knew it was coming back. It left him at night, but always came back in the morning. Sometimes it would only stay for a few minutes. Sometimes it would stay for hours.  It wasn’t really an “It.” Roth just called it that in his head. Really, it was a faun, but it didn’t look anything like from his childhood storybooks. Usually fauns looked like friendly boys with little bears. They would have fluffy curly fur starting at their hips down to their little hooves. They’d have little Billy goat horns, brown curly hair and soft brown eyes.

Not this faun.

It was freakishly tall, standing over six feet, and sickly skinny. It had long spindly fingers with gnarly fingernails. The fur on its hips and legs was hardly thick or soft, but rather it was like long scraggly hair, sort of grey in color with leaves and dirt stuck in. Its hooves were unusually large, clomping heavily across the ground. Its face was not at all human, either. This faun had a face that was long like a goat’s, its bottom teeth sticking up from it lips, a concave nose, and two yellow eyes with misshaped pupils. Its eyes bothered Roth the most. They were disturbingly large and looked in opposite directions of each other, back over the faun’s shoulders.

The faun never spoke. Roth wasn’t so sure it could. Instead, the creature would just come to inspect him. Spindly fingers palpated his flesh, poking and prodding, earning small pokes back here and there. Roth would cringe and pretend he hadn’t felt that. A floppy ear came to rest atop the heavy swell, listening carefully. When the faun pulled back, Roth wasn’t surprised to see the disappointment on the creature’s face. It had made the same face for the last five days. Roth knew what that meant. Whatever was growing inside him wasn’t good enough yet. Perhaps it wasn’t big enough, or maybe the amount was too few. The human could never tell. He just knew what was coming next.

The faun moved to the farther end of Roth’s body. It propped his legs up and entered without warning or consent. The boy was used to it by now. After five consecutive days of penetration, all he did was wince and make unhappy grunting noises. As the faun spilled his seed, Roth’s belly grew. For five days he’d progressed to a different size. The faun always seemed to think that this time it would be enough, but it never was. Only this time was different. Roth frowned as the creature remained inside him, spilling more and more into the womb he didn’t know he had. It last for quite a while. Then, just as the human was starting to feel sore with a new pain, it stopped. The faun pulled back, moved some paces away, and then crouched so it could watch.

Roth felt his stomach begin to stretch. Slowly, slowly at first, he was becoming saturated with the seed that had made its way inside him. He pressed his hands firmly into the unyielding sides of his ballooning flanks, feeling another sensation deep inside the swelling sphere. Roth could feel the young taking a more defined shape, their bodies forming into one like that of their sire. He was growing bigger and rounder by the minute with no signs of stopping. Not only was his belly swelling, but so was his bellybutton. There at the peak of his girth, it was starting to fatten. Roth could actually feel it plumping up with the rest of him.

Finally it stopped. Roth stared at the orb of fecund flesh protruding from his figure. He would swear there nine or ten children curled inside his womb. His navel was almost the size of a kiwifruit, jutting out stiffly. Roth’s hands encountered the new curve of his form, larger, prouder, his bulk eclipsed his previously inhuman dimensions. He had become truly vast. Slowly his fingers caressed the bloated gravidity, probing here and there, feeling the resistance of the over taxed expanse of flesh with its unnatural cargo.

The faun gave a soft bleat. It sounded pleased. Like it was approving of Roth’s progress. The human swallowed. He was terrified. What the hell was supposed to happen now? That’s when the faun approached, once more putting its flat hands on his belly. The bloated sphere was tender to the touch. Such sensitive sensations made Roth shiver, but the creature did pay his reaction any mind. Roth sucked in a breath when the faun pressed its forehead to his side. Did that mean this beast was finally pleased? Some relief was felt on the human’s part, that was, until the faun began to bleat again.

The sire was calling to its young.

Suddenly Roth felt a shift. His hand shot to the site of the disturbance, low down on the right side of his belly he felt for it. Another bleating call drew forth a heavy turn. His hands pressed hard into the sides of his stomach as he realized an awful truth. Roth turned frightened brown eyes on his own stomach, watching the heaving surface. To the faun, he paused, hands low on the sides of his immense quaking gut, feeling for more from within its terrible dimensions.

Without warning, all the muscles in his belly jerked tightly. His belly rose upward, climbing ever higher, and shook heavily. It actually hung for a second before dropping again with an audible thud. Roth groaned loudly. Again his stomach lurched, harder and firmer this time. The faun appeared delighted by this, as evidenced by the twisted smile on its lips. It pushed up on its long legs and began to lap wetly at the human’s navel.

Roth shook his head in despair, a sob welling up from his chest as he saw the things within him convulse, the surface of his belly visibly shifting outward with an elasticized creak from the skin. His body billowed outward, the brood within him denting and distorting the surface of his womb as they began to move and seek escape. He could feel the strangest sensation coming from where the faun continued to lick. His bellybutton was becoming tender from all the stimulation, but somehow it also felt… bigger? Roth strained his head to see. Brown eyes widened when he saw his bellybutton had indeed grown fuller. It was practically the size of a peach!

The painfully tight skin of his belly heaved slightly as stronger and stronger muscular waves coursed through it. Each brought a gasp and a groan of pain from Roth as he squeezed his poor, overstretched womb in time with them, trying to direct whatever it was inside down and out. The bulk of his fecund swell had failed to shift lower yet, though. Surely they had to get out? This had to be labor. They needed to get out. So why was nothing happening. Roth gritted his teeth. The strained pink skin bulged outrageously for a moment with a distinct outline of a creature within pressing against the wall of his belly. Right after, his belly exploded in a series of kicks and violet elbows, each strike punctuating the tortured skin. Roth groaned and panted for a moment before looking up at the faun with pleading eyes.

Still the faun was licking, making the navel raw and red. Roth couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His bellybutton had bloated even further, becoming the size of a grapefruit. Roth closed his eyes and let out a very tired, very confused, very scared moan. The faun finally pulled back. It palpated the engorged navel with its fingers, feeling a warm pulse beneath the surface. The faun rubbed the navel with its palm and then gave a sharp squeeze which drew a pained noise from the boy. It began to bleat and pushed its fingers into the top of Roth’s belly all around his navel. Another shift signaled the captured attention of the brood within. At once they started to scramble upward.

The vast sphere bulged, rising with a sudden jerk as the creatures within fought for escape. Roth arched his back, sweat jumping out over his skin in a glistening sheen as his massive stomach convulsed and heaved, pants and moans falling from his lips as he writhed against the waves of kicks and thrusts from his womb. The bulges and twisting shapes within him cavorted, the surface heaved and twitched, unknown shapes pushing and testing the surface with malicious intent. The boy gasped as a strong push momentarily forced the face of his bloated womb upwards into an outrageous bulb, the monster inside focusing their effort on a sole space, just beneath his massive bellybutton.

Strange thick, viscous, yellow liquid started to well up from Roth’s bellybutton. He could feel the stuff pool from its fattened face and slowly drip down his swollen sides. Suddenly, Roth understood what was going to happen to him. Again and again the faun’s brood attacked the inside of his navel, forcing it to jut painfully skyward over and over. The human sobbed as he felt the flesh begin to weaken. Brown eyes looked to the faun. How could a creature that was so pure and playful in his childhood books turn out to be such a beast of macabre? Those deranged yellow eyes were watching eagerly, waiting patiently for its children to birth themselves. Roth then looked back to his belly. It thrashed and heaved with their effort, the peak bulging and straining again and again. His grotesque bellybutton pulsed and throbbed, feeling hot and painful.

Just when Roth started to feel like the nightmarish labor would never end, he heard the first squelch. At first he was in too much shock to feel anything. All he could do was watch in numb horror as a boney arm pierced through his bellybutton. Tiny claws gripped the fattened flesh and used the leverage to pull itself out. Roth screamed as the horns struggled through. Already they were curled like a ram’s, hard as stone and textured with stiff ridges. The infant faun hissed and bleated loudly as it fought its way out, wrenching its other arm free and then its hooves. Tumbling to the ground, its sire was there to pick it up and cradle the new youngling.

Roth watched as his own blood began to mix with the yellow fluid, making a strange orange color as they dripped down together. He hardly had enough time to catch his breath before the next one came. Two hands shot up and clawed feverishly, hoisting its head and torso out. The second youngling screeched when its siblings all pushed at once, forcing it out so they could have their turn. Roth’s stomach bulged violently as two infants struggled out at once. His bellybutton stretched open painfully, drawing another scream from the human. Suddenly Roth wished he could just die. Surely death was world’s better than this horrific ordeal.

One infant faun after another wrenched themselves from his womb, even more of them coming two at a time, until finally, there were ten tiny fauns. After hours of nothing but pain, sweat and screams, it was over. Roth was just laid there. His enormous belly had fallen still. No heaving, no bulging, no thrashing, not even a quiver. His bellybutton was still abnormally large and raw, but it had gone numb now. Roth’s eyes were dull. He didn’t want to think about anything anymore. He just wanted to slip away wherever his mind would take him.

The faun gathered up its new younglings, getting them all on their feet, and with a gentle bleat, it led them away.