The moment Tyler came to, he knew that something was horribly wrong.

He could feel cool air against his bare buttcheeks and that alone made him sit up in surprise. The young man always slept in something, even with how hot it had been over the past few weeks he had still kept his boxers on while he slept.

When he pushed himself up onto his knees, he noticed that his mattress didn't have any give. Instead, it was a hard surface that was slightly warm to the touch, as if it had been baking in the sun all day.

Opening his eyes in the same instant that he stood up, Tyler found himself staring up at a cloudy plastic ceiling. The same material stretched all around him, forming a wide box that seemed to stretch about ten or twelve feet high and forty to fifty feet long.

The world beyond the cheap plastic was more troubling though: a bedroom of immense proportions.

The plastic box clearly sat atop some kind of desk, based on the computer monitor that loomed over him, and the dominating view it had. A messy bed sat in the center of the opposite wall, flanked by a nightstand on one side and a window on the other with a low shelf running beneath it. Several potted plants sat on the shelf, forming what looked like a literal jungle to Tyler, and obscuring the piles of books and bottles of liquor that were tucked beneath. Clothes and shoes were strewn all over the floor, seemingly emanating from a closet that sat beside the open door.

“The new guy's awake.”

The voice pulled Tyler's gaze to the rest of the box and he immediately stumbled back in fright.

Six people were sat nearby with four of them appearing to be around his height with the remaining two being much larger. A dark skinned girl around his age rose to her feet and suddenly looked as if she was eight or nine feet tall and clearly unconcerned with the fact that everyone could see her naked frame. The only person taller than her was a husky man whose balding head was almost scraping the top of the box despite the fact that he was sitting.

The towering girl started walking toward him and Tyler found his head shaking back and forth, “No, no, this can't be happening, I-I-I...”

“Shh, it's ok,” the young woman cooed as her powerful feet slapped down in front of him, her flat stomach even with his eyes. She crouched down and her warm smiling face appeared a few inches above his own, “It's not so bad being a shrinkee...”

“Are you insane?!” He snapped back, “Who knows what's about to happen to us?!”

“I've been here for a few weeks,” she replied gently, her hands hovering over Tyler's shoulders without touching them, “My name's Sandy and trust me, the person who took you isn't going to squish us or eat us. They've barely made us do anything. The worst thing I've had to do is polish their boots...”

“Oh cool, I have to polish some weirdo's boots for the rest of my life and in exchange I get to live in a box with six other people!” Tyler's voice cracked as he stood up and stumbled away from the girl's oversized hands, “No, fuck this. I'm going to try and get out of here...”

Sandy and the five other shrinkees looked at Tyler with pitying expressions, as if they had all witnessed the exact scene before.

“Fuck all of you!” His voice cracked again as tears welled in his eyes.

Turning about, he started walking toward the other side of the box and he immediately laughed when he saw there was a hole cut into it with what appeared to be a tube leading out. Looking back at the group, he gestured toward it and called out, “We're not even trapped in here?! What the fuck is wrong with you people?!”

Scoffing, Tyler marched on, picking up strength and speed as he went.

Hazy memories bubbled up in his head of what had happened that morning. He had been making his way toward his third day of Freshman Orientation, which seemed to have almost nothing for commuter students like him to do besides a few campus-wide events, when he had felt a strange rumbling in his stomach.

Crawling into the tight tube, Tyler frowned as he realized that all the warning signs had been there. Since he wasn't Immune like his Mom and older sister, his parents had drilled him all summer to make sure that he would know what shrinking would feel like; stomach cramps, flop sweat, full body cramps, and finally paralysis leading to shrinking.

But it had been so hot recently that Tyler hadn't thought anything of the way he had started to sweat. Even the stomach cramping could be blamed on the fact his breakfast had only consisted of the last cup of coffee in the pot, sans milk or sugar.

The full body cramps and paralysis must have come on so quickly that he had no way to notice.

Wriggling through the winding tube, Tyler pushed away the last memories that came to him; the way the whole world seemed to shake, the warm embrace of a giant hand, and the thunderous sound of someone saying 'Score.'

A strange funky smell began to tickle his nostrils as he wound his way through the tube but he couldn't place it until he stumbled into the world beyond to find himself face to face with an enormous bong.

“Holy shit...” Tyler whispered as he stood up, his neck craning back to take in the building sized pipe.

The glass was a mixture of blue and purple shades that blended together to create deep calming hues. The warm late afternoon light coming through the windows glinted against the metallic bowl, drawing Tyler's gaze. Staring at the built up resin, he realized that the bong must have been used regularly or owned by someone who didn't care much about cleanliness.

Glancing back across the cavernous room, taking in the dirty clothes strewn across the floor and the collection of mugs and cups that were clustered on the nightstand, Tyler figured that it was probably the latter.

Hoping that that fact might make it easier to find a way down and hide from his enormous captor, Tyler started to move away from his prison and search for some way down to the floor.

Before he made it three steps though, he was frozen in place by the horrific sound of rushing wind and a crash like a building collapsing.

“-an't wait to see you, Spooky,” despite the distance, the voice was still booming.

Tyler trembled as he heard the heavy thumps of footsteps approaching along with one side of a phone conversation echoing through the giant house.

“I mean, yeah, I'll be honest with you, the most masc thing about me right now is how fucking horny I am,” the words were broken up by a clattering of cups and a faucet that sounded like a waterfall, “Oh yeah, if I did have one, it'd be just an instant mess the moment I saw you and I'd probably ruin whatever black dress you show up in.”

The footsteps grew louder and louder as the giant drew closer, making Tyler's whole body shake in fright. His eyes were glued on the open door and encroaching darkness of the giant person's shadow.

Given his place on the desk, the first thing that Tyler noticed was their wide hips wrapped in dark denim. Keys jingled off a carabiner attached to their right hip, the metal clacking loudly against the studded belt they wore. A rough cut just above the knee had turned the jeans into a pair of long cut offs that revealed strong pasty calves and long olive green socks that rose out of a pair of well worn all black Converse.

Watching the sneaker crash down against the hardwood floor and feeling the faint tremor the single step produced made Tyler's knees instantly buckle.

Tearing his eyes away from the floor as the world continued to shake, he noticed that the giant was wearing a dark green t-shirt bearing the logo of the local Irish bar: Finnegan's Wake. The place was notorious for barely checking ID's, which was what made it so popular with college kids and the high school kids brave enough to risk entering a bar. There was also a rumor that they had been selling shrinkees on St. Patrick's Day and Tyler had seen at least one video of someone dropping a shrunken person into a pint of Guinness before swallowing them in a deluge of dark beer.

Their broad shoulders and muscles definitely made them look like someone who hauled around kegs and boxes of liquor. The mane of thick red hair that spilled from a faded cadet cap framed a strong face made of hard blunt angles with a slightly bent, perhaps once broken, nose at its center. The giant's bright blue eyes didn't even glance at the desk as they walked deeper into the room, taking a long gulp from the tall glass of water in their hand.

The whole world shuddered when they came to a sudden halt.

“Shrinkees?” The giant laughed awkwardly, “No, babe, I haven't...”

The immense body turned and Tyler yelped as he watched the giant's eyes immediately snapped to him and then to the box he had just escaped.

“Ok, I might have picked up one or two,” they chuckled, “But I promise, they won't be here when you come this weekend. I know how you feel about them.”

The desk began to rattle as they walked up, taking another long gulp as they went.

“Oh no, Sydney,” the giant redhead grinned as they towered over the desk, “Not a single one of them will be left by the time you get here.”

Despite the fear keeping him pinned, Tyler forced himself to stand, knowing somewhere deep down that if he didn't run at that exact moment, he would be doomed. He was two strides into his escape when a strange whistling noise entered his ears. Looking up, the tiny man screamed as he watched the giant glass rip through the air.

It hit the desk with enough force to knock him backwards, air whooshing through his ears as he flopped about in confusion. Scrambling back to his feet, Tyler found himself trapped by the giant's cup, the glass distorting the world beyond and muffling the giant's booming voice.

“See you soon, Spooky,” they cooed, their voice still powerful enough to rattle Tyler's prison.

A kissing noise echoed out before the giant ended the call and slid the phone into their pocket.

Despite the way the glass prevented him from seeing the giant as anything more than a blur, Tyler could feel the weight of their gaze on him as he stood inside the makeshift prison. A huge shadow passed over him as they plucked up the tube that he had crawled through before setting it down after a momentary inspection.

A faint thumping noise echoed through the room before everything shook and the giant figure receded from Tyler's view and then walked out of the room entirely. He stood there, anger building up in his little body before he let it out by smacking his hands against the glass walls.

No matter how upset he was though, he didn't have the strength to move the heavy glass at all. Instead, hollow thumps rang through his prison, mixing with his own wordless shouts of impotent rage. With a final sigh, he slumped down against the wooden desk and pulled his knees close to his chest.

“Not so bad,” Tyler darkly muttered to himself, “They're one of the good ones...”

He snorted, shocked that the girl he had spoken to in the box had actually seemed to believe those words.

Tyler had believed that there had to be good people as a kid. After all, his mom and sister were Immune and they weren't mean but when he got to high school he started to see the world for what it really was.

The Immune were the ones who got all the opportunities and everyone else was left to fight over their crumbs. He had to work twice as hard to get anything and even then, he was reminded of the fact that he paled in comparison to his older sister. An older sister who he learned was just as cruel as every other Immune person in the school, having crushed shrinkees after leading both the soccer and the softball teams to victory in her senior year as part of some 'tradition.'

The worst though had been his friend Jake's girlfriend Sam.

Sam had seemed like everything an Immune person wasn't.

After all, she had been willing to talk to them like they were actual people in the first place.

Throughout their whole relationship, Sam had made Tyler question what his entire four years of high school had taught him. Then it happened, Jake had shrunk down to the size of a teddy bear when he slept over at Sam's house while her parents were out of town.

Instead of turning Jake over to his family or Tyler, she had decided to keep him. She had even made a video about how it was what was best for Jake. His family wasn't Immune and she was so clearly she would be able to actually take care of him long term.

It didn't matter that that 'care' involved treating him like a living doll.

From then on, Tyler only saw Jake through Sam's posts, where he was always dressed up in costumes designed to make him look as 'cute' as possible. All while Sam clutched him close to her chest like he was her favorite stuffed animal.

Her posts always seemed to imply that his life was more than what Tyler could actually see. References were made to how 'helpful' Jake had become since shrinking, which always accompanied a shot of freshly painted nails or pristine sneakers. Then there were the comments about keeping him safe in 'an enclosure' and giving him plenty of 'enrichment' time, as if he were a literal animal in the zoo.

And then Jake shrank again, to a size that made him more 'manageable' which was apparently code word for wearable. Tyler actually got to see Jake again but that's because he was dangling from Sam's neck or wrist, contorted into painful positions to best complement her outfit that day.

He tried once to talk to her about it but she just dismissed him with a scoff of 'whatever' and the laughter of her many Immune friends.

After graduation, Tyler had found it easier to put it all out of his head since he no longer saw them everyday but then it finally happened: Jake had another shrinking bout.

The last post had been a photo of Sam cuddled up against some muscular college guy who worked the same summer job she did at an ice cream shop near the lake. She held a milkshake up to the camera with a caption that read: Put a shot of protein in here to make it healthy lol see if you can spot him.

Tyler had zoomed in as much as possible until he caught sight of an arm and face struggling against the thick chocolate shake. There was no doubt in his mind that Sam had slurped up her shrunken ex without so much as a second thought.

It was why he had known it would be better to escape that box rather than polish someone's boots in exchange for literal scraps. Tears welled in his eyes again as he realized that his brief escape had been ended by an upturned water glass, like he was an offensive bug that needed to be trapped.

Approaching footsteps were soon accompanied by faint tremors, a brief warning before the giant reappeared. They carried something in their hand and even with the glass distorting his view, Tyler was able to make out that it was an immense plate.

The giant grabbed the box that held the other six shrinkees and popped open one of its sides. Muffled screams echoed out as the box was upended, sending every shrunken person tumbling out onto the giant's plate while their happy humming rolled across the heavens.

The plate was brought just below the lip of the desk and then Tyler's prison shook.

He jumped to his feet, planning to make a run for it the moment the glass lifted away but then the ground began to tremble. “What the-” the glass wall smacking into him cut Tyler off and he was suddenly forced to run to avoid being sent sprawling to the floor.

After almost a dozen steps, his foot suddenly met empty air and he plummeted.

Tumbling through the air, he ended up on his side when his body met the cool porcelain of the plate below. Pain radiated from his left arm and hip but he could feel everything so he knew he wasn't immobilized.

The plate shook as the giant carried it through the house, the sheer power of their footfalls enough to keep Tyler pinned down. On one side of him was a small pile of baby carrots, celery stalks, and cut up strips of what looked like red bell pepper. On the other was a mound of green grapes and through the vines he could see movement from his fellow prisoners.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered as the realization of what was about to happen washed over him.

Everything stopped and the faucet roared once again, loud enough to make his ears ring.

The giant started walking once more and then the ceiling was replaced by wide open sky as they stepped onto some kind of deck.

Staring up at the vastness of the now giant world, all of Tyler's hope for escape fizzled in an instant. The ceiling had felt too far away from his place on the giant's desk but the sheer vastness of the sky was enough to remind him of just how truly small he was now.

The plate rattled as it was set down on a table that seemed to sway under the sudden weight of the giant's meal. The enormous redhead let out a contented sigh as they settled down onto a chair that looked like it had been stolen from the local college. Taking off their cap and running their hands through their sweaty red hair, they grinned down at their assembled meal.

“Sorry, little guys,” they boomed as they reached down to pluck up a cracker and a small slice of cheese. Tyler watched as both pieces disappeared past their lips and then a loud crunch echoed out, making him flinch. The giant continued to talk, despite the food in their mouth, and Tyler couldn't pull his eyes away from the enormous flapping lips, “My girlfriend's going to be spending the weekend here before she moves back into the dorms on Monday and she cannot stand shrinkees...”

One of the people Tyler's size was suddenly lifted up into the sky and the silence that had reigned among the shrinkees was broken.

The group's pleas and terrified screams clearly didn't bother the giant though, as they simply slid the person into their mouth and began to chew. Soft cracks and pops echoed out, provoking even louder screams.

Tyler knew that he was screaming, though he couldn't really hear his own voice as he watched a person be turned into nothing more than red mush by enormous coffee-stained teeth.

“I know, like,” their hand came down, plucked up three grapes and tossed them into the giant maw in quick succession, “Her friend Brianna had told me that she actually ate a shrinkee this summer and I thought 'ok, maybe Sydney's finally gonna be normal about all this' but nope.”

Tyler cowered as the hand descended once more to snatch up some veggies, which were quickly dipped in a pool of unseen ranch on another part of the plate.

“Turns out she still thinks shrinkees are gross little bugs,” every word was punctuated with a snap and crunch from the giant's teeth, “She actually called me the day after she ate her first shrinkee and talked about how it upset her stomach and all this stuff. I told her it was probably whatever she had to drink on the fourth of July but she claims she didn't drink at all cause she was at a thing with her church...”

Tyler watched as someone his size vaulted over the edge of the plate.

The shrunken middle aged woman ran with all of her might, only to be caught by the giant's waiting palm. The worst part was that the palm didn't even slow down, it just lifted the woman mechanically up to the giant's wide open mouth.

A powerful gulp sounded and the tiny man watched with horror as a wriggling bulge went down the ginger's throat. They cleared their throat and then took a long gulp of water before grabbing more cheese and crackers.

“She can be kind of weird like that,” a strange smile passed over their face, “But you know, if you take the time to get to know her and stuff, she's actually really sweet. She's just this little goth cutie pie...”

The whole world creaked and shook as the giant twisted about to pull out their phone.

Flicking through some kind of photo album with one hand, their other descended to the plate again, grabbing up food and absentmindedly popping it into their mouth. Tyler tried to tell himself to use the momentary distraction to escape but his legs simply remained rooted to the plate, his muscles almost seizing with fear.

“Here's how she normally looks...”

They turned their screen around to show a quick selfie, obviously taken months earlier when it was colder because the giant was in a leather jacket and long pants tucked into a pair of scuffed up Doc Martens. Their arm was wrapped around a short girl with an almost skeletal frame that was accentuated by the long goth dress she wore while her thick dark make-up seemed to highlight her pointy face and pinched lips. Big circular eyes stared out from pits of black eyeshadow and their blankness seemed to emphasize the bored yet haughty expression on the girl's face.

“And where's the other one, I just saw it...”

A scream pulled Tyler's attention away from the screen and back to the horror happening before him. While he had studied the picture, the giant had continued to munch away and another unlucky shrinkee had been brought into the sky.

This time it was the heavyset man who was almost double the size of anyone else in the box.

His head and torso were slid past the giant's lips before the teeth came down, severing him in half at the waist. His legs convulsed for a moment with literal death throes before a loud slurping sound echoed out.

The lower half of his body was pulled away while the giant's beastly tongue lapped up bits of blood from their lips. While he had been shorn in half around the belly, Tyler realized that the slurping noise had been the giant literally sucking out the remainder of his organs before swallowing.

Bile rose in his throat as he struggled to comprehend it, only to have his thoughts derailed by the giant crunching down on the man's remains. His legs were pulled apart like a wish bone and then each one was ground to dust beneath the giant's molars.

“Here it is,” they boomed while sucking blood from their fingers, “She's been stuck at home so I sent her this squishmallow...”

The phone again dominated the sky and Tyler's eyes widened at the sight.

The girl from before was beaming at the camera while clutching a squishable plush toy against her chest. The stuffed animal had a neon green skeleton on it, complete with skeletal bunny ears, that stood out against its otherwise black fur.

What was far more noticeable though was the fact that the girl wasn't wearing anything else in the photo. She was perched up on what appeared to be her childhood bed with a white metal frame that matched the robin's egg blue wall, which was obscured by a few band posters. Sitting on her knees, Tyler could see every inch of the girl's pale white skin, with the stuffed animal only covering from her nipples down to her crotch. She had on far less make-up than in the previous photo but that didn't help to detract from her big wet eyes or rodent-like features.

But it was hard to argue with the fact that she was clearly happy, far happier than Tyler would've imagined she could look from the previous photo.

“So, you know,” the giant shrugged while grabbing up another shrinkee and wedging them between a slice of cheese and a cracker, “If she says 'no shrinkees' then that means no shrinkees.”

The crunching of the cracker overwhelmed the cracking of bone but did little to stop Tyler from being able to hear his own horrified screams. The bunch of grapes was lifted up, removing the barrier from between him and his fellow prisoners.

Only two shrinkees remained. One was Sandy, who like him was crouched as if she was ready to run but clearly too terrified to even stand. The other was a man several years older than them who kept pivoting about in total panic.

He started to stumble toward the center of the plate while the giant simply devoured grape after grape without a care in the world. They had continued to flick through their phone as they ate and Tyler suddenly wondered if the girl had sent more than just the single photo.

“If you get a goth girlfriend as hot as her,” the enormous redhead boomed as they reached down to grab the last celery stalk. They brought it past the stumbling man, knocking him over before running it through the pool of ranch and then up to their mouth, “You kind of have to respect her boundaries, right?”

Grinning as they reached down and grabbed the panicking man in the center of the plate, they dropped him onto a slice of red bell pepper before smushing two slices of cheese down onto him. His muffled screams almost disappeared as he was lifted into the sky but Tyler could still see faint movement against the pepper's thick skin.

“I mean, even if I was a total dick and kept a few of you around,” blood dribbled down their lips as they took a bite and mulled over the scenario, “If she saw you, she wouldn't leap to 'Maeve lied to me, how could they?' She'd just step on you and then tell me that shrinkees were infesting my apartment.”

The giant, who Tyler had to assume was named Maeve, began to chuckle as they popped the last of the person-stuffed pepper into their mouth. Munching away, they thundered on, “I wonder if she'd actually make me and Cole put down traps. Could you imagine?”

Their hand came down and this time they grabbed Sandy, who after remaining frozen for so long suddenly spasmed and kicked about like a madwoman. The giant hand brought her over a small pile of some kind of jam before sliding her feet directly into it. Despite the way Sandy struggled desperately against the jam, she was firmly stuck.

“Imagine being stuck like this to a glue trap,” the giant laughed while they grabbed two pieces of cheese to scoop up the jam around Sandy's ankles with, “And me or my roommate would find you eventually, like when we opened the cabinet beneath the sink or wherever the hell we put it...”

They used the cheese to rub the sticky jam up and down Sandy's body before pressing one slice against her belly and the other against the small of her back. Pinching her at the waist, the giant lifted her high up into the air, licking their lips the whole time.

“If you were even still alive at that point, I guess I'd have to fold it up and stomp you just to put you out of your misery,” the giant's body shuddered for a moment, “God, that'd be fucked up...”

Sandy screamed a profanity laced accusation at Maeve but the redhead clearly didn't care.

They simply brought her up to their lips and took a bite.

Unlike the larger man, Maeve simply pressed Sandy into her mouth, chewing and slurping the whole way. Their cheeks didn't even bulge from the shrunken girl being stuffed inside nearly whole.

While they swallowed the girl who had assured him everything would be fine, Tyler looked around the plate to realize that he was the last thing on it.

Footsteps pounded up a flight of stairs, giving him a moment to think as Maeve turned to greet the newcomer.

However, the muscular giant who arrived only served as a sudden reminder of just how small Tyler was. To him, Maeve was an unfathomable towering giant who was rippling with muscles but in reality, he could now see that they were probably a broad shouldered but slight person who barely cracked five and a half feet.

Their roommate, meanwhile, was a man who was probably taller than Tyler's original height of 5'10''. On top of that, he was utterly jacked and looked like he was about to rip through the t-shirt he wore.

Tyler's eyes went wide as he noticed that his shirt was also branded by a local business: Lakeside Scoops. Craning his neck back to take in the giant's handsome face, Tyler fell backwards as realization hit him like a ton of bricks. It was the same giant that Sam had been cuddled against while Jake struggled against her chocolate shake.

His dark eyes peered down at the nearly empty plate and a soft laugh boomed out, “You must be feeling really femme today if you're having girl dinner.”

“Oh shut up,” they playfully smacked his forearm, “I got a lot more ammo ready for you than you have on me.”

“Oh yeah?” The giant boomed as he peeled off his t-shirt to reveal a tribal tattoo wrapped around his bicep. With the giant's heavy pecs and cut abs on display, Tyler couldn't help but look down at his own flat chest and wonder if he or Jake could have ever competed against someone Immune. “Hit me with your best shot?”

“Summer lovin'” Maeve began to sing tunelessly, “Happened so faaaaaast.”

The giant cocked his head for a moment before his cheeks suddenly reddened, “Shut up, Maeve.”

“Oh Cole, you're soooooo cool,” the redhead boomed in a frightening imitation of Sam's voice, “And you're a bartender? That's so awesome, could you make me a drink?”

“She said she was in college!” The giant stomped his foot in frustration, making Tyler's whole world shake.

“And she is,” Maeve giggled, “We follow each other so I know she's been posting about how she's becoming total besties with all the girls on her Freshman hall. Franklin-1-South forever!”

The redhead then put their hands into a heart shape as they smugly grinned up at the giant.

“Just for that.”

Wind howled in Tyler's ears and then he was suddenly wrapped up in an enormous fist.

His whole world went dark, he began to sweat from the unbearable heat of the steel-like flesh around him, and he felt as if his stomach was in once place and the rest of his body in another as he rose higher and higher into the sky.

Tyler's chest was too tight to even take in air to scream.

His ears popped.

The fingers opened and blinding light poured in around him, framing the dark pit of the giant man's hungry mouth that hovered directly before him.

He was airborne for a horrifying moment and then he crashed down upon a blazing hot tongue. Saliva stuck him to the muscular beast, reminding him of Maeve's terrifying words about being stuck to glue moments earlier. The lips closed behind him, trapping him in the muggy cavern, but the giant's tongue didn't toss him into his abyss-like gullet.

Instead spit continued to drip around him as everything started to shake.

Through the giant man's lips, he could hear Maeve calling after him, “You're such a little bitch, Cole!”

Cole had no response though except for the hissing of a can opening.

Light washed over the dripping wet tongue one more time and Tyler turned to see a beer can block out the whole world. Everything tipped back as golden waves crashed down over everything, sliding between Tyler and the sticky tongue to send him traveling back toward the giant's throat.

He screamed, desperately trying to swim against the current, but Cole's throat muscles flexed as the giant started to gulp down the sudsy torrent and Tyler was nowhere near strong enough to fight it. The tiny man was pulled down through a dark tunnel, far straighter than the plastic one he had climbed through to escape the box he woke up in.

Tyler came to a stop in a pitch black prison with beer pouring down around him. The rumble of the giant's heart echoed above and he could just barely hear the outside world in between the undulating of the stomach walls.

The air quickly became stale and Tyler's skin started to burn.

“C'mon, it was just a joke, Cole,” Maeve whined, “You're not actually mad are you?”

The giant's voice seemed to come from everywhere, more than enough to keep Tyler conscious as the burning grew strong enough to swallow the world, “Not really but that's all the dinner I have time for. I got a shift at the bar tonight too.”

“A shrinkee and a beer, classic boy dinner.”

The world grew darker for a second as Tyler writhed in pain amid the giant's stomach acid.

“Shut up.”

The giant's voice jolted him awake once more, making him let out a pain filled gasp.

“Also, don't mention that around Brianna.”

“What's your guys' deal anyway? Are you dating?”

“What? No, we fooled around, like, once last year,” even Cole's words were becoming hard to parse despite the fact that they came from every direction, “I just don't want her thinking I'm some loser who screws around with high school chicks.”

“Oh man, you didn't just do that though,” Maeve laughed, “Didn't you eat her first boyfriend?”

“Drop it, Maeve,” Cole boomed as the world shook.

Tyler swore he could still hear Maeve laughing as the darkness washed over him.

The burning pain was gone and all he was left with was the terrible thought that Jake had gone the same way in the same stomach just a few weeks earlier.