Tori looks down at tiny, trembling Kristie, trying to scoot back and keep her distance on her plush couch, not realizing that she's only trapping herself further inside of the living room. She sighs; she should be used to children being afraid of her by now, but it always hurts just a little, especially when she's known them.
"Wow, kiddo," Tori says. "You really are that scared of me, huh?"
Kristie nods, tears welling up in her eyes.
Tori slowly walks towards the couch, hands held up as nonthreateningly as she can manage. "Is it alright if I sit here?" she asks, gesturing to the side farthest away from the scared little girl. When Kristie nods again, Tori sits down as gently as she can, although she still sends ripples through the couch that throw Kristie a little off balance.
"I understand," Tori says. "I really do. A big lady like me, people tell stories, especially kids. I don't even think they mean anything bad by it, it just happens. You know, the last town I lived in, some kids on my street went missing. Tragedy. A complete tragedy. And the stories started almost the next day. 'Oh, that Miss Tori,' they'd say, 'she took the kids, she gobbled them up, how else you think she got so big?' It was the kids that said that, of course. Mostly the kids. I don't think anyone really believed it, but, you know, after a while, even the adults started looking at me funny, started clutching their kids closer when they saw me, started whispering things about me even if they knew I could hear them."
Tori pauses, sighs, and tries not to cry in front of Kristie. The girl notices the huge woman's shaky voice and sees the water welling up in her eyes. She scoots closer, closer, closer, until she's right next to her.
"Nobody ever asked me to leave," Tori continues. "Not officially, at least. I wasn't run out of town, they didn't charge me with anything. But they never did find the missing kids, and I kept on gaining weight because, well, when you get to be my size, you can just do that, just put on 20 or 30 or 40 pounds and hardly ever notice." She pats her belly for emphasis, and Kirstie watches as it jiggles hypnotically and just doesn't stop. "But then more kids disappeared a few months after, and that's when I heard them talk about me on the news, on the radio, and I knew if I didn't leave I was going to be the whole town's bogeyman. Any time anything happened, I knew they'd blame it on me, and pretty soon they weren't going to just ask me to leave, so I came here."
Seeing that Kristie has calmed down and moved even closer, Tori slowly, carefully, gently puts her huge arm around the tiny girl, who does not protest. "What I'm trying to say, Kristie, is I understand that you're afraid I might gobble you up, I really am, and ..." she pauses, her voice trailing off.
Kristie breaks the silence, her voice still nervous but no longer fearful. "And what, Miss Tori?" she asks.
Tori looks down, smiling suddenly, and says ...
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