Jared hadn’t been expecting the rain. His umbrella hung morosely from the back of his desk chair where he’d left it that morning, and his legs shrieked in agony as he pushed himself to sprint faster. Streets zoomed past, with streetlights and headlights flashing at him from puddles as he splashed through them at breakneck speed, desperate to reach home.

“Two more blocks,” he muttered between labored breaths. His clothes, like the clothes of every man in Libertania, were made of organic microfibers that disintegrated upon contact with acid. The relative acidic neutrality of rain made the clothes perfectly safe to wear on rainy days, or so the companies claimed. In reality, however, the garments only degraded more slowly in rainwater, which did little to comfort the high school student after suffering nearly fifteen blocks of torrential rainfall. He could already feel the cold sting on his skin where patches of his shirt and pants had been eaten through.

The young man couldn’t afford to stop and survey the damage, however. His mind conjured female eyes gazing out of every window and dark alleyway, and he half-expected a car to stop, depositing a woman in front of him with the sickening swish of an elegant raincoat. Fortunately, no such woman appeared, and the staring eyes proved to be illusory. As he rounded the corner, Jared felt a wave of relief and gratitude wash over him, warming his chilled body.

The chill was promptly reinstated as a sole female figure swung into view. Jared’s childhood friend Melody was standing in front of her family’s one-story house, her umbrella tilted back against her shoulder like the illustration on a box of salt. As Jared skidded to a halt, he realized that she was standing directly between him and the front door of his home with a watering can.

“H-how’s it going, Melody?” Jared asked. He could feel the rain shredding more fibers of his clothes as he struggled to keep his voice from cracking.

“Pretty good, just watering the flowers in your garden.” Melody fiddled innocently with a piece of her long, blond hair and smiled. She flipped the umbrella around so that she could cross her arms beneath her chest, drawing Jared’s attention with practiced ease.

“In, in the rain? I think they’re getting enough water.” Since the girl only stood a few inches taller than him, Jared hoped that his downturned gaze would be less noticeable.

“You know what they say, go big or go home! Hee hee hee.” The chuckle shook a few raindrops from her pink umbrella, generating a kaleidoscopic, shimmery effect from the artificial lace around its edges.

“Speaking of going home, I hope you don’t mind if I get past you?”

“Go for it, bro!” She stepped aside, and Jared’s relief seemed to inflate his chest like a balloon. He reached for the door handle and-

“It’s locked.”
                “Are you sure?” She feigned a frown, but the corners of her eyes were still creased upwards. “Maybe it’s just stuck. You may as well step aside and let a woman handle this.”

“Thanks,” Jared muttered, but fear had returned to the pit of his stomach. “You’ve always been better at feminine stuff than I am.”

“And don’t forget it,” she replied with a wink, then turned the doorknob and pushed hard, making the door shake in its frame. Still, it held firm, and she seemed to sigh. “I think it really is locked, though. Don’t your mother and sister leave a spare key under the doormat or something?”

“They stopped doing that after the house a few doors down got broken into. They installed a security system, too, remember?”

“That’s right! I com-pu-letely forgot about that!” She giggled. “And it’s not like you can give a man the keys to your house. That would be like letting your hamster drive the car.”

“Gee, thanks, Melody. Maybe the hamster’s a good driver! You never know.” Jared lightly punched her on the shoulder. Touching women was usually frowned upon, but he and Melody had an agreement. They were old friends, and old friends didn’t always follow the rules.

“Well, seems like one little hamster is stuck outside on a rainy day. Wanna wait at my place until the rain stops?”

Jared would have preferred to step in front of a moving car, driven by a hamster or otherwise. An automobile accident, at least, had a higher chance of survival. He opened his mouth to make an excuse, to plead with her.

Nonetheless, he gazed at Melody in the rain, her pink raincoat shiny with water and her umbrella resting snugly against her shoulder like a soldier’s rifle, and the edges of a low-cut red top barely poking out around the neckline of her rain jacket. Even as Jared wondered if that rain jacket had been specially designed to ensnare men in his exact situation, he couldn’t help but become transfixed. Melody, after all, could have shrunken him down at any moment, as there weren’t any laws against shrinking down a man in public. Melody’s intentions, he decided, might be benevolent after all. Still, he hesitated, and Melody stuck out her lower lip in an exaggerated pout.

“C’mooooon, J-bear,” she whined, her voice sickeningly sweet. “We neeever get to hang out anymore.”

“Fine. I guess we can wait at your house until Mom comes home.”

“Yay! I’m so happy!” Melody squealed, her arms wrapping tight across her chest. “C’mon! C’mon!” And without another word, she grasped his hands and dragged him onto her family’s lawn, then through the front door, allowing the watering can to fall to the ground with a clatter. For all the delicacy of her wardrobe, Melody’s grip was strong, and Jared realized that she could have dragged him into her house at any time if she so desired. He decided to think of this as a good sign.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Melody was already removing her coat and closing her umbrella.

“I’m fine,” Jared replied. Now that he was out of the rain, he realized that the damage was far worse than he imagined. His pant legs had now fallen to rest around his ankles, and his shirt had almost entirely dissolved into a fine, shredded fluff. “Could I maybe, wait in the living room while you, like, do homework or something?”

“Don’t be silly!” Her laugh was like the ringing of bells. “We have to hang out in my room. I’ve redecorated since you were last here. It’s almost like you’ve been scared of coming to visit your little old friend lately.” She stuck out a hip and put a hand on it, leaning forward for emphasis.

Jared’s eyes traced the outward curve of her hip, following the gentle recess of her stomach up to the chest that pushed gently at her top. His eyes involuntarily returned to her stomach, and his words caught in his throat as he was dragged down the hall to the bedroom. She cheerfully plopped him down on a red cushion. The color of her shirt, Jared thought before he could stop himself.

“I, uh like what you did with the place. What, um, what did you do with all the stuffed animals?” The door to the room suddenly felt far away.

“Nevermind that, now.” The door closed with a click. “You always were careless, weren’t you, J-bear? I always told you it was gonna get you eaten.” Her pink tongue ran across the surface of her lips, also pink with lip gloss. “What do you think is gonna happen when you, I don’t know, get caught without an umbrella on a rainy day?”

“I d-don’t know,” Jared stuttered. “Maybe a really good friend who’s attractive, strong, and good at decorating will let me stay dry until it stops?”

“May-be,” she purred, her voice shifting into a singsong pitch as she advanced on Jared, her breasts hanging over his head. “But with your clothes like that, you already look half-digested. Wouldn’t hurt to finish the job, would it?”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than the world began to grow around Jared, who let out a pitiful shriek. Melody, previously comparable to Jared in height, grew first to the size of a telephone booth, then to the height of a flagpole, then to the size of one of the tall buildings that dotted the skylines of modest cities. Melody, for her part, was anything but modest, as her mouth had opened into a vicious, open-mouthed smirk that seemed to fill the air with brimstone. Her eyes, normally blue, burned red as coal, and Jared was left gaping at the seams of her now-magnified jean shorts as well as the seeming hundreds of meters of soft leg that stretched beneath them. He could see the pores where she had shaved blonde hairs from the otherwise pristine surface, and he could smell the cool, sweet-and-sour aroma of her sweat mixed with a floral perfume.

And yet, of course, Melody had not grown, she had simply used her innate power, the power of every woman living in a post New Giantess Order world. Melody had shrunk him to the size of a candy, and she was now eyeing him with the same voracious intensity.

“I always knew you were the cutest,” she boomed, her words shaking her breasts in a hypnotizing display, “but this is unreal! I’m lucky that my first crush looks so delicious.”

“Delicious?” Jared choked out. “Please, you don’t have to do this yet, Melody. We’ve been friends forever! Could you, uh, keep me as a pet for a few weeks first and think it over?”

Melody put her pointer finger to her chin as if she was thinking about it, and Jared watched as she inserted the same finger into her mouth, pulling it out with a “schlock!” noise. A thin strand of saliva spun in the air between the finger and her plush, pink lips before she began giggling.

“Friends? Only humans can be friends.” She put her hands on either side of Jared’s pillow for emphasis, creating an artificial ceiling of her chest and face. “I just see a delicious little snack waiting to be gobbled up. Hee hee. Ha ha ha ha!” The laughter shook the cushion like an earthquake, forcing Jared to cling to a seam for dear life. Melody, her radiant golden hair illuminated like a halo around her head, clicked her tongue derisively. “You can’t even handle it when I laugh? You’re way more pathetic than I remember. I bet you can’t even fight back against my tongue.”

Her head hung there for a moment, tongue hanging from an open, laughing mouth. The shrunken boy could see saliva pooling, oozing down along its massive red surface, and eventually dripping from its tip like a stalactite reaching down from this ceiling of a damp, red cave. As the first drop splashed against the red velvet of the pillow, Melody’s grin turned into a sneer, and she bent down even further, touching the tip to the surface of the pillow. Almost like folds of concrete being poured layer after layer, the tongue seemed to grow in density as it spread itself out against the soft fabric and began its advance.

“Please!” Jared was yelling now, desperate to be heard over the scratchy sound of Melody’s massive tongue dragging along the pillow. “I know I’m going to get eaten someday, but I’m not ready yet! If you wait, I promise I’ll let you be the one to do it. Just give me a few more years. I can even convince Mom to sell me to you, so no one else can eat me until then!”
                Melody, her tongue still gliding toward the tiny morsel, scoffed. “Thath not likthley.”

And with a sinking feeling, Jared knew that she was right. His mother was one of those conservatives who believed that boys shouldn’t get eaten by a woman before college, who would refuse to sell her son on the grounds that if Melody purchased him, the two hormonal youths would just be even more tempted to do the deed.

“I promise!” He yelled. “I won’t let anyone eat me!”

The massive wall of flesh had left an upturned fibers on the soft, fuzzy pillow, much like the swath of destruction in the wake of a hurricane. Now, she lifted it from the pillow that had become Jared’s world. “You can’t promise that,” she said softly.

“Women are cruel,” she continued. “They’ll eat you up if you’re not careful, and you’re the least careful pers- I mean, boy, I know. Do you think a girl has to ask for permission or something?”

“A nice girl might,” Jared protested feebly.

“I’m the nicest you’re gonna get, J-bear.” Melody smirked. “You wanna see if I ask for permission?”

Then, to prove her point, the girl lowered her face until it nearly touched the vast surface of the cushion, extending her tongue again so that it dragged like a monstrous serpent. Jared was quickly swept up with the ravenous efficiency of a dog licking a treat from the ground, and he barely managed to take a deep breath before his world became dark, damp, and viscous. He felt himself being pressed against the roof of her mouth. He heard the “Glick! Glick!” of her tongue sliding against teeth larger than tombstones. He heard (or perhaps felt, as the vibrations of Melody’s massive mouth carried the noise into his bones) a droning, regal “Mmm, mmmmm!” as his childhood friend savored the taste of her tiny meal. Minty-smelling liquid filled Jared’s nose and mouth.

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the pressure ceased. Jared was blinded by the soft light of Melody’s bedroom as he tumbled into her hand, coated in her thick saliva. His clothes seemed to have been reduced entirely to fluid in Melody’s mouth, which she swallowed with a smug air of finality.

“See, J-bear? I can’t trust you to take care of yourself when you’re so easy to eat! It’ll be safer if you let me take care of you just this once.”

Melody’s mouth had been warm, but the saliva caking Jared had started to cool, and he shivered. Her hand stretched around him like an altar of sacrifice, its patron goddess gazing down expectantly at her tribute.

“Did- did you ever see me as anything more than food?!” Jared yelled desperately. “We used to play together as kids! Didn’t you think for a second that maybe, I’m as good as a human?”

“Did I ever see you as more than food?” Her massive eyes wandered as she considered the question. “I think I’ll start with your second question. No, I never thought of you as a human being.” With her other hand, she extended her pointer finger, squishing the tiny boy into her now-sticky palm. “Why would I think of you as something you’re not? And you’ve been a lot of things to me, J-bear, but one of them…” She grinned, then opened up her mouth to unleash a wave of hot breath onto her minute victim, still trapped beneath her massive fingertip. “Was always food.”
                She lifted Jared from her palm with a scooping motion, allowing the goopy spit to keep him stuck to her finger.

“Maybe I can take one request,” she said cheerfully, wiggling her finger in the air as she gazed down at his trapped form. “Do you want me to eat anything after I swallow you? Maybe you’d like some leftover mashed potatoes to keep you company. There’s just one thing I won’t do.” Her large, liquid blue eyes seemed to deepen into endless oceans before Jared’s eyes.

“I won’t eat anyone else to keep you company. I want you all to myself in my last moments.”

For Jared, all hope was lost. His future and all his hopes and plans were about to be devoured by this girl he had known since childhood. And yet in that moment, she seemed so majestic, like an ancient goddess granting one prayer to a loyal servant. The romance stories that Jared had watched and read started to flood his mind. Yes, this was man’s role in society: to serve, then to be eaten. He had been a good male for a decade and a half, and now he would no longer be forced to serve the whims of powerful women. He had one last task, a job that only men were fit to perform.

“Ea-eating me will make you happy, won’t it?”

She smiled broadly. “It will make me the happiest woman alive.”

The tension drained from Jared’s body. It was like he was watching a movie, or like he was back in his bed imagining what it would be like to finally be devoured.

“Just tell my mom and sister that I was a good snack.”

“Oh, they already know.” Melody’s laughter rang through the air like the lightest, most cheerful death knell Jared had ever heard. “Who do you think locked the front door? Your sister wants a vore selfie, so be sure to make a good face for her!”

Melody’s lips parted, and the finger carrying Jared seemed to hover between them like a spaceship in a sci-fi film coasting into a hangar bay. Once more, Jared smelled an inviting, minty aroma. She must have brushed her teeth, then gargled in mouthwash just to make sure her childhood friend was comfortable. Jared felt gratitude take its place alongside the terror in his heart as the gigantic finger dragged along the massive, rolling surface of the tongue, depositing him with all the ceremony of a Tic Tac.

Outside, Jared could still see the bedroom, with its soft lighting, pink walls, and large red pillows on the floor. That room had been his world mere moments ago, but now his universe had been replaced with a cavernous mouth, its dripping surfaces soaring high above his head like the ceiling of a cathedral. Jared was thrust forward by his own limbs, scrambling toward Melody’s gaping mouth, but he felt a chuckle shake the tongue beneath him, and he fell to his hands and knees. The view beyond the girl’s lips was replaced with a rectangle, and a bright light nearly blinded Jared until his eyes focused on its source.

Melody had raised her smartphone to take a picture. The shot captured her bright eyes, hair splayed about and glowing. She looked young, happy, and powerful, basking in the glory of her own beauty and strength.

Within her mouth, Jared saw himself reflected back in the phone’s screen. He looked small, awestruck, and very naked. He had to agree: the tiny speck sitting on Melody’s tongue did not look human. It looked like a very small bug about to be devoured by a hungry bird.

“Humm onnn!” the walls around Jared rumbled. That was right, he had to pose for the picture. Melody couldn’t eat him if he didn’t. Jared sat up, then stood shakily. He could feel Melody’s efforts to keep her body still, but the tongue beneath him still pulsed and tensed as he tried to raise himself. Then, swallowing his own fear to the back of his throat, he put his hands over his head in the shape of a heart and forced a big, sloppy grin onto his face.

He heard the shutter sound just a moment before his world went dark, and he felt his ears pop as he was shoved against Melody’s right cheek with the force of a train. He felt himself being squeezed between two surfaces, one smooth and slick, the other rough and forceful. Then, the surface below him curved downward into a fleshy bowl, and he tumbled down into the center, hugging the ground. Just when he thought he was stable, he was slammed upward again, and he felt his body begin to slide backward when-

*GULP*

                “Your sister wants a vore selfie, so be sure to make a good face for her!” Melody enjoyed Jared’s pitiful struggles as he tried to break free of the saliva coating her finger. She playfully hovered her finger over her tongue before unceremoniously scraping him onto it, then she grabbed her phone, switching over to the front camera. Which filter was best for a picture of two best friends?

                She felt the tiny man try to regain his footing on her tongue, try to claw his way toward the front of her mouth. How cute. She let out a soft “Hee hee” at the thought, which sent the little morsel tumbling backwards.

                Ah, here was the perfect filter: Willing Victim. She held up the camera to make sure that her face was fully in the shot, and she clicked on the phone’s light just to make sure that everything was nice and bright.

                Jared, however, was still sprawled on her tongue like a broken toy. Melody’s brow creased with annoyance. “Come on,” she tried to say, but the sound was distorted. At this rate, her little meal was going to ruin his last picture.

                Ever so slowly, the tiny form rose to its feet, shifting its little feet to the sides as it proudly grinned an infinitesimal grin and raised its hands over its head in the shape of…

                Melody resisted the urge to laugh. This was so him. J-bear had always been a dork, but this last little romantic gesture was too much. She kept her composure, beaming at the camera, and with a click, the moment had been documented.

                Her little dork had had enough light. The girl closed her lips firmly, then set to work sending the photo to Jared’s sister. Almost without thinking about it, she ran her tongue over his fragile body, pressing it against her cheek, then against the roof of her mouth. He tasted so good! How had she never known that the subtle-yet-savory taste of a man could be this perfect? She knew that she should savor every moment with him, but her dominant, female nature threatened to overpower her self-control. As she clicked “Send…”

                *GULP*

Melody felt the tiny hands that struggled for a hold on her throat, but they did nothing to stop the descent of her miniaturized meal. She licked her lips one more time as the bulge in her neck slid below her collarbone, slipped into her chest, and finally landed with the gentlest of vibrations in her stomach.

“There’s no use struggling,” she purred, her belly vibrating with every word. “You can’t escape. It was too late for you to escape when you were born next door to me. Didn’t you realize it was your fate to become food for me?”

A low groan escaped from her belly, and she began to giggle.

“Hee hee, sorry, I just can’t take you seriously when my stomach is louder than you are. I really should’ve bought one of those AcidTone phones for you so I could hear you in there, but who has that kind of money. Amirite, J-bear?”

She waited patiently for a reply, and she sighed when she heard none.

“I dunno how long you’re gonna last, so I’ll just be real with you, okay?” She pulled up her shirt to reveal her smooth, tight midriff.

“When I was a little girl, I always read stories about finding a guy you love and gulping him down. I always dreamed of that.” She smiled. “I always wanted it to be you. You were the first guy I ever thought of as a meal. I hope you’re glad to hear that!” She rubbed her belly.

“You really were my best friend growing up, but you know what, J-bear? You were always my little gummy bear. You were just so cute!”

“But when you got into high school, I started to get scared. I saw the way other girls looked at you like a piece of meat. And you weren’t. You were my piece of meat. If someone else had gotten to you first, I would’ve-!”

But she stopped herself. Melody had been about to say that she would’ve eaten any girl who got to Jared first, but this was simply untrue. Women were almost impossible to shrink, and eating a human being was considered a serious crime. Men, of course, were classified as pets or food items, so such rules hardly applied to tiny humanoid snacks like Jared.

“Well, J-bear, you made my dreams come true today.” Melody grinned a huge, toothy grin. She had beaten every other woman in Jared’s life by snatching him from right under their jaws. He was hers, and her body would never let him go. “I’ll never forget ya, J-bear. You’re the best kind of food a growing girl like me could ask for.”

“I bet I’ll have a lot of great meals in the future. But until then?”

“I’m glad you were my first one.”

Jared heard every word. His flesh was on fire as it slowly dissolved in the caustic acid around him. His tiny, battered body lay fully engulfed in the folds of the massive organ. He was breathing heavily, growing delirious.

And yet, the smile on Jared’s face was one of pure bliss. He’d been scared, but there was no turning back now. This was the final stage of his life, and he realized that he had performed perfectly. He was just a man, after all, just food, and he was finally giving himself up to the betterment of society, and to someone he loved more than life itself. Melody was cute and fun. She was clever, overwhelmingly strong, and sillier than any woman he’d ever met. To give his strength to her, he decided, was the greatest privilege he could imagine.

He had yelled to be heard, this time not out of fear but out of love. He shouted that he hoped Melody had a good life, that she was always happy and well-fed. He shouted that he was glad it had been her, and that death was less scary when he was inside of her. Most of all, he shouted that he loved her.

Melody, of course, could not hear him, but that was just fine. After all, the job of a man was not to be heard but to listen. Jared had been a good, subservient man for his whole life, and as his last shreds of consciousness faded, he realized that his death was not punishment for not being good enough. In fact, it was a reward for a job well done.

About fifteen minutes later, Melody’s cell phone buzzed, notifying her that Jared’s sister had replied to the text.

“Congrats! How’d he taste?” The text was followed by a confetti emoji.

Melody turned the question over in her head. By now, the taste had faded from her tongue, and she no longer felt any movement in her stomach. It was as if he had never existed.

“Kinda sweet,” she replied. “Better than candy. I loved him!” She thought for a moment, then retyped the last sentence. “I loved eating him.”

“Happy 4 you!” The response was almost immediate. “Now that I don’t have to look after that little bug, I can start going to more parties. I hear Lauren is holding one next Friday. Wanna come with?”

Melody’s stomach felt pleasantly full as she contemplated the idea. Today had been the most fulfilling day of her life in more ways than one, and there were plenty of attractive boys at her school. Who would be lucky enough to become her second favorite snack? She licked her lips and was pleased to notice that they still held the faintest taste of Jared.

“Ya,” she typed, “let’s do it.”

As the rest of her life seemed to stretch out in front of her, Melody imagined that she was drawing energy from the tiny body being digested in her gut. She imagined herself becoming more beautiful, more desired, and more powerful. As she lay back on her bed and pulled her homework out of her backpack, she spared one more fond thought for her first crush before turning her attention to other things.