He kept her long swaying skirt between himself and her eyes, as he ducked around her shoe, and raced around the corner. She closed the door, and headed for the dolls house.

He grabbed a vine at the edge of the porch, and climbed down to the garden. Then he ran through it.

"I just hope it takes her a while to guess what I've done," he thought. This garden is only a ten second walk for her, but it's like a forest to me, that could take hours to cross."

It took him a long time to get to the far side of the garden. Then he looked back, and saw no sign of her. It was now or never. He started running across the lawn, headed towards the next patch of garden, which would lead to the fence. If he made it, he could duck through the fence, be safely onto the neighbour's property, and ask the housewife next door to help him.

He was a foot away from the garden, when he saw her turn a bend on the distant part of the lawn and come into view. She saw him, and began running towards him.

He darted into the garden, and ran as fast as she could. She reached the garden in seconds, and walked slowly in after him, searching the plants that concealed him.

Estimating two feet between him and the fence, he sprinted for it, but she just caught him in time, seizing him in her hand and lifting him high in the air.

She walked back into the house, carrying him by her side, and then placed him on her shoulder, as she sat up in her bed.

"The thing I'm curious about is why you ran away," she said at last.

"I… I guess you hurt my feelings," he said, not wanting to reveal what he knew, hoping he would still have a chance to get away again, if she did not know he was trying to save himself from being eaten.

"Well you’ve no idea how much it might have benefitted you and disappointed me, if you’d succeeded. The surprise at dinner tomorrow is the fact that you are going to be the main course. I'm going to gobble you all up, little boy. I don't need you anymore as a boyfriend, nor as an adopted child. I think you'll make a delicious meal. Your escape didn’t work. I'm going to eat you for my dinner."

"I guess you are."

"Well I think I can find a place to keep you tonight, where you won't escape at all."

"Where?"

"Inside my mouth. You can sleep the night on my tongue. It's as soft as a mattress, although it will be more like a waterbed with the moisture on the outside."

Her tongue had looked excitingly beautiful to his tiny self, both when she was 55 and now, but this time it would seal his fate. He could do nothing but lie against it for the night, spend the following day with her, and then be eaten the next night.