I never asked to be a superhero.  I don’t suppose anyone ever does.  I mean, when I was a kid, of course I pretended to be Captain Justice and The Equalizer and Spider-Boy, just like everyone else after the supers went public. 

No one knows how long the supers have been living among so-called “normals,” but after they stepped up and took sides during WWII they were an acknowledged and documented fact.  Everyone who’s ever seen a newsreel, a television, or a streaming video has seen a super in action, but very few have met a super in person.  I don’t think there’s ever been a super sighting in my home town of Helsinki; heaven knows Finland could have used their help in the 40s.

My name is Gunnar Pääkkönnen.  You might have heard of me even before the Accident.  I started out as a model, but I got an early break in movies and followed my first love: acting.  By age 23 I had made the trifecta with hits in rom-com, quirky indie, and action buddy picture.  I was riding so high that I trusted my old agent Bernie to get me the hosting gig for the Golden Globes.  We weren’t fifteen minutes into the live broadcast when this weird little bald guy rushes the podium.  He looked like a midget version of Ming the Merciless.  He grabbed the mike and started issuing threats.

“I am Reducto!  Unless my demands are met, all of you will be my tiny hostages!  To prove my resolve, I shall now demonstrate my Compressor Ray.”  He pointed some sort of ray gun at me and pulled the trigger.  A green beam enveloped me and I fell unconscious.

Viewing the videotape afterwards, I could see my body seemingly vanish in the green light.  Then the ray gun exploded, killing “Reducto” instantly.  That the rescue workers found me at all is a miracle, because the “Compressor Ray” had somehow reduced me to just over three inches in height.

I spent months with physicians and physicists, but they could never figure out how the “compression” worked, let alone reverse it.  Meanwhile, my career went into a tailspin.  I had three different pictures in production, and a couple of directors were even willing to try to green-screen me into my roles, but none of the producers could get the financing.  Bernie got me a couple of low-budget pictures on SyFy, and I did a season on a kids show, but Bernie didn’t really know what to do with me.

My best post-Accident exposure didn’t originate with Bernie at all.  Nokia contacted me about being their spokesman, playing up the Finnish connection.  That went well until smartphones came out and people stopped wanting their phones to be small.

I decided to ditch Bernie and sign on with someone who had experience with supers as clients.  After some tough negotiating, I scored a coup by signing with Mariela Vauchon.  She’s repped a wide range of super talent, from one-trick ponies like Segway to A-listers like Orbital.  She also has a law degree and connections to high-powered lawyers that specialize in supers law.  She’s also much easier on the eyes than Bernie.

***

It was my third meeting with Mariela, and we still hadn’t come up with how to launch my superhero “career.”  I was reclining in a rack of her business cards that I had rotated to face my giant publicist.  She sat at her computer, typing with fingers as long as my entire body.  She wore a fuchsia short-sleeve blouse that barely contained her ample D-cups.  Below the desk, a tight knee-length charcoal knit skirt hugged her round derriere.  I leaned back to take in her elegant and olive-colored neck and face, with her lush sofa-sized lips and deep brown eyes, each bigger than my head.  Curled around one of her hammock-sized ears was a wireless speaker and mike.  Above it all, her long rich brown hair was tightly wound into a professional bun.

“So,” she said, finishing her email and shining those walnut-colored spotlights down on me, “let’s talk iconography.  Does any particular color combination hold any meaning for you?”

“Pink always gets my attention,” I said.

“I’m after something deeper than simple attention-grabbing.  Identity and message: basic branding.  Let’s see if we can’t get some ideas flowing.  Call Leif,” she said to her phone, which lay on the desk.  Of course it wasn’t a Nokia.

“Could you bring those sketches in here?” she said into her handset.  “The ones we received yesterday.  Thanks.”

Leif was Mariela’s long-suffering executive assistant.  Everyone had told me he was gay, but as soon as I saw him interact with Mariela, it was clear that he was smitten with her.  Maybe she was the one gal who could speak to his dick.  She certainly spoke to mine.

The door opened and admitted Leif, carrying a large envelope that he handed to Mariela.

“Hey there, Mr. Pack—, Mr. Packo—,” he stumbled over my last name.

“It’s okay, Leif,” I said.  “Call me Gunnar.”

Mariela pulled a pad out of the envelope and flipped the cover back.  “I just had Oscar spec these out,” she said.  “I haven’t approached a real shop yet.”

The sketches depicted a generic male figure in “heroic” poses.  The first few concepts had two versions: one with a cape and one without.  I had expected primary colors, but Oscar apparently liked subtle shades between green and blue.  Near the end of the first pad I thought I detected an insect motif.

“Are those...antennae?” I asked.

“These are just brainstorming ideas,” said Mariela reassuringly.  “Finding out what you don’t like is as helpful as discovering something you do like.  I thought we’d start with a theme that captured your unique abilities: your size and your mobility.”

“Like...a grasshopper.”

“Why not?”

It was an evocative image, I’ll give Mariela that.  I tried imagining introducing myself as “The Grasshopper,” and I kept making the same dumb David Carradine joke.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “A bug doesn’t seem very cuddly, you know?”

“Mice are cuddly,” she countered.  “Is that the message you want to send?”

“No, maybe, I don’t know.”

Mariela didn’t miss a beat as she pivoted to the second pad.  “These sketches are a bit more practical, emphasizing your likely primary role: stealth.”

The next set of outfits were all monochrome, blacks and greys, ranging from cat burglar to SWAT team.  I wouldn’t have had a problem wearing any of them; they were certainly less ridiculous than the first bunch.

“That’s cool,” I said.  “Like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.”

“Yes, the spy or special forces look definitely has appeal in certain demographics,” said Mariela.  “It imparts an image of a professional and impersonal agent of violence.  Is that a brand you feel comfortable identifying with?”

Not when she put it like that.  I was thinking more of how it would look at an after-party.

“You bring up a good point with the Mission Impossible connection,” she said.  “Do you have any scaled down spy gear that we could incorporate into your image?”

“Uh, Nokia gave me a phone my size,” I offered weakly.

Mariela tapped her pen to her lips and looked at me for a moment, lost in her thoughts.  Then she jotted down a few notes and put the sketch pads away.

“That’s enough costume ideas for now,” she said.  “Let them stew for a while.  Let’s try this from another angle.  Have you given any thought to your super name?”

“Back home they’re calling me Menninkäinen, which translates as Gnome.”

“Mythological names are well-established and don’t require much marketing, but they also carry baggage that is near-impossible to change.  Gnomes, fairies, pixies, and related creatures are seen as mischievous, whimsical, and capable of world-altering magic.  Their perspectives and goals are also fundamentally alien to humanity, and they are at best inconstant allies.  Is that the image you want to project?”

“Why can’t I just be Gunnar?  It’s not like my secret identity or anything.  Everyone can pronounce it, even if they can’t spell it.”

“My research shows that too many people associate ‘Gunner’ either with an English soccer team or with firearms.  Unless you’ve signed an endorsement deal with Glock that got you a scaled down pistol, it would be a diluted brand.”

She flipped the page on her notepad.  “I’ve come up with some names.  Just like the sketches, these are intended to stimulate the flow of ideas.”

She held the pad upright on the desk so I could read it like a billboard:

Little Big Man

Demitasse

Mini Nuke

Pinpoint

Pocket Justice

Tiny Avenger

Short Cut

Short Stack

Fingerling

Half Mag

Short Pack

Nanostrike

Grasshopper

Travel Size

Fun Size

Noisy Cricket

Fly on the Wall

Garden Gnome

Nanobug

Nanoman

Nanobite

Jumping Bean

Bouncer

The Bounce

Bouncing Mouse

The Mole

Viral

Dart

Shuriken

Shard

Sliver

Needle

Some of the names weren’t painfully bad.  Needle was cool.  Pocket Justice was intriguing, if only because it made me wonder what I would actually do as a superhero.

“I’m sure we could narrow the list down if I had a better idea of what my new role would be,” I said.

This earned me one of Mariela’s cockle-warming smiles.  “Quite right,” she said.  “Aside from sleeping in a matchbox and jumping eight feet straight up, what can you do?”

“Well, since the Accident I’ve fallen off of furniture or been dropped by clumsy people any number of times, and I often land on my feet, and I’ve never so much as bruised.”

“That’s good,” she said, taking notes.  “Increased agility.  What about durability?  Do you recall any increased tolerance for physical impacts?  Has anything struck you or fallen on you that ought to have injured you but didn’t?”

Irene, my household administrator, once knocked over a bag of cantaloupes that had been next to me on the kitchen counter.  There was nowhere to jump to and at least three of the melons rolled right over me, and I was fine.

“Possibly,” I said.

“Hmm,” said Mariela thoughtfully.  She put down her notepad, then reached out and flicked me with her forefinger.  Her fingertip caught me squarely beneath my jaw, and I flew backwards off the desk and landed flat on my back on the carpet.  I didn’t immediately get up.

I felt Mariela’s footsteps through the floor before her titanic figure rounded the desk.  Her colossal legs folded as she lowered herself and gazed down at me.

“How was that?” she asked clinically.

“You took me by surprise,” I replied, “but it wasn’t exceedingly painful.”

“Has anyone ever stepped on you?”

I eyed her two-inch-heel pumps warily.  Getting to my feet, I said, “Not yet; I’m a pretty good acrobat these days.”

“Shall we see how much pressure you can take?  We’ll go slow.”

If it were anyone else suggesting that I stand still while they stepped on me, I’d laugh and bounce away.  Staring up at Mariela as she loomed over me with her shapely curves and graceful kneecaps, however, it seemed a perfectly logical proposal.

“Let’s do it,” I said, raising my palms above my head and extending one leg behind me.

My giant publicist pushed off from her thighs and stood up, then placed her hands on her hips.  She raised one foot and I glanced up into the darkness of her open skirt before the sole of her shoe eclipsed the world.

The leather ceiling descended onto me and I braced myself against the floor to fend it off.  I don’t know how much pressure Mariela initially placed on me or how quickly she increased it, but I think I held up her foot for almost a minute before I fell onto my back.  Even then, I got my legs up and held her off with all my limbs for several moments before her relentless sole settled on my chest.

Although the effort had strained and fatigued me, I was not yet in any genuine pain when Mariela called, “That’s it; that’s my full weight.”

My arms weren’t doing much any more, so I stuck one out to the side and gave a thumbs-up gesture, but I couldn’t be sure it was visible past the edge of her shoe.  Whether she saw my signal or not, Mariela lifted her foot off me and brought her legs back together.  I got slowly to my feet, and she looked down at me with amused curiosity.  I gazed up at her redwood-sized legs, massive hips, formidable torso, and brilliant head, and I marveled that I had held all that up with my own hands for almost two minutes.  My only response was a shrug and my killer smile.

Her handset chirped.  “Yes?” she said to Leif.  “Okay.”

“I’m sorry, Gunnar,” she said, “I have to take this.”  She walked back around her desk and tapped the surface of her phone and launched into a torrent of her Caribbean Spanish.  I was grateful for the break, as it allowed me to conduct a brief inspection of my extremities to confirm that I was truly uninjured.  Then I bounced back up to the desk and reclaimed my seat, basking in the sight of my towering agent handling an urgent request from someone apparently named Augusto.  It wasn’t long before she brought the call to an end.

“My apologies again; that guy is impossible to get a hold of.”

“No worries.”

“Okay,” she said, retrieving her notepad.  “You seem to be as durable as a full-size adult.  Do you think you could knock somebody out?”

“You mean like in a fight?”  I paused.  “I don’t know.  Maybe if he didn’t see me coming.”

Mariela nodded and made a note.  “I’m going to book you with a sparring partner, alright?”

“Sure, why not.”  Being stepped on without a scratch had brought out something reckless in me.

“Anything else you can think of?”

“Hmm.  What about increased...uh...stamina?  I can hold my breath for 30 minutes.”

“I don’t want to know how you know that,” she said, shaking her head.

“Do you think we have enough to refine our concepts for my new image?”

“Oh, we have plenty, I think,” replied Mariela.  “Has anything spoken to you?”

“I don’t know.  Some ideas have some juice, but nothing rang the cherries, if you know what I mean.”

“I do indeed,” she said warmly.  “Sleep on it.”

“Well,” I demurred, “I probably won’t get much sleep tonight.”

“Ah, yes,” said Mariela primly.

“You don’t approve?”

“I’ve seen her show.  It could get messy.”

“My offer’s still open.”

She fixed me with a stern smile.  “It would be less unethical for me to sleep with Leif.”

“And less stimulating.”

“I don’t know about that.  I suspect he’s got a bigger cock.”

“Hey, size doesn’t matter.”

“Which reminds me: that catchphrase did very poorly with the focus groups.  We need to work on some alternatives.”

“It always gets a laugh on Conan.”

“Oddly enough, we’re not planning for all your encounters to take place on late-night TV.”

She stood up and lowered her giant hand next to me.  I could have easily bounced out under my own power, but Mariela was well aware of my preference for being carried by hand or perching on shoulders.  I stepped into her palm and she raised me up to just below her chin where it was easy for me to meet those big brown peepers of hers.

As she carried me out of her office and into the reception area, Mariela asked, “Do you know where you’re going this evening?  I could arrange for some friendly exposure.”

“No idea; it’s her treat.  I think exposure is inevitable; she likes it that way.”

“Fair warning: when your new career gets going, you may find yourself...exposed to a wider variety of society.  It won’t be all peaches and cream.”

“Then I best stock up while I can,” I said, bouncing out of Mariela’s hand and through the door.

***

You’d think that with the paparazzi, choreographed public appearances, and Twitter gaffes, celebrities would be pretty jaded to the lure of starfucking.  In fact, most of us are hyper-aware of the femto-fluctuations in status rankings and will happily chase tail if we can hang onto rising tailfeathers.  I include myself, of course.

When my date picked me up in a limo, I knew the first half of the evening would be pure performance.  I just hoped I’d have enough endurance left over for the second half.

Sure enough, the flash-bulbs stared before the limo came to a stop in front of the restaurant.  Wearing a blue velour strapless evening gown, my date gave the shutterbugs a clear shot at her décolletage as she leaned out and stepped onto the valet porch.  It was time for my entrance.

Mariela would tell me later that the Twitter buzz was initially quite divided over who was whoring off of whose fame when I bounced up from the rear seat of the limo and lit on the bare shoulder of Nigella Lawson, making her first public appearance in the States after her divorce.

“Spago?” I asked.  “I thought this place died years ago.”

“My demo doesn’t know that, darling,” said Nigella, keeping her eyes and smile on the cameras and smartphones aimed at us.  “And if they did, they wouldn’t care.”

Taking a wide stance on her shoulder for balance, I smiled and waved both my arms at the paparazzi as Nigella walked slowly through the restaurant lobby.  Trying not to be distracted by the jiggling canyon of her cleavage, I thought back to the first time I met Nigella.

It was a couple of months ago at a party at Richard Fairbrass’s house.  I was on my way out the door when she showed up.  I never say no when a curvy brunette wants to hold me up to her face, and I stood in her palm for a couple of minutes and let her beam that dishy smile at me.

I must have made an impression, because she was still talking about it a few weeks later to Angela, an assistant producer on her new show.  Angela happens to be a god friend of mine, and she set us up for this, our first date.

The maître d’ met us and gave a curt bow, then led us to a mezzanine table that was elevated enough to allow most of the diners to observe us arrive but recessed enough to allow a modicum of privacy once we were seated.  I stood prominently on Nigella’s outward shoulder to minimize the misapprehension that she was dining alone.

When we got to our table, I saw that the management had provided a doll-size table and chair in the center facing Nigella’s chair.  They had also gamely provided toy cutlery, but almost all such items are useless to me, and early on I had commissioned a miniaturist to fashion custom silverware.  Glass is too fragile to form a suitable drinking vessel at my scale, so I carry my own pewter cup.

I bounced down to the tabletop and stood next to my chair and watched the maître d’ pull the chair back for Nigella, whose round haunches strained against her dress as she lowered herself into her seat.  Sitting at my little table and gazing up at Nigella, I felt like I was dining al fresco in front of a building-size advertisement that followed me with her eyes and, of course, her giant jubblies.

For cocktails I stuck with my usual Stoli martini, while Nigella had a Lillet Blanc, but I deferred to her for the rest.  She ordered us the tasting menu, and Wolfgang himself was on hand to serve the first course.

“Are the portions large enough?” he asked.

I’m on the receiving end of so many cheap jokes that the polite smile has become reflexive, but Nigella thought it was hilarious so I summoned the mirth to share in their laughter.

As the meal progressed, I asked after her new series with Bourdain, and she rattled off a half-dozen occasions where she felt completely intimidated by her co-host.  Watching those bulldozer-size jaws tear through tiger prawns as big as tiger sharks, it was difficult to imagine Nigella being intimidated by anyone.

“What’s it like to be a super?” she asked between impressive bites.  “Do you get to fight crime or save disaster victims?”

That’s not what I usually get asked.  Typically, people want to know how I drive a car (I don’t) or where I buy my clothes (eBay).

“I haven’t quite figured that part out yet,” I said.

“The paparazzi must be a hundred times worse than for TV or movie people.”

“I haven’t noticed much difference.  Perhaps people thought I was super before the Accident.”  That drew a hearty chuckle from Nigella.  “But I’m sure it bugs some supers,” I continued.  “I did a movie premiere with this guy Strobe, and he couldn’t get into it.  They had to shove him up to the rope line.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  He’s had his powers for most of his life, but he kept them secret until he was outed about four years ago.  Still hasn’t adjusted to the life of fame.”

“I guess you were lucky, then,” she said with a naughty smile, “Having already made it, ah, big.”

I gave that one about twice the laugh it deserved.  It was worth it for the extra twinkle in those giant brown eyes.  I don’t know if a woman the size of a skyscraper can be described as looking coy, but Nigella did her best to pull it off.

“There’s something I’ve been dying to ask you,” she said.  Here it comes, I thought.

“Fire away,” I said.

“Is it true that you were once swallowed by a duck?” she ventured.

She surprised me again.  This time my laugh was not exaggerated.  “It was a swan,” I said.  “Plucked me off my feet and knocked me back like a beer nut.”

“Oh no!” she cried, utterly undismayed.

“True story.  It was at the reception for Mariah Carey’s wedding, her second I think.  I was standing on the lip of a ridiculous fountain, a variation on the Manneken Pis theme.  Usually at these events I’m standing on someone’s shoulder or being held in someone’s hand, but it had been a few hours and I needed a moment to myself.  Someone must have been late getting the swans to the reception, and no one told me they were loose on the grounds.  Never heard the bird coming.  One moment I’m trying to figure out if Wanya had posed for the fountain, and the next I’m getting an up-close lesson in avian anatomy.  Before that I never knew what a gizzard actually was.”

“How dreadful!” she giggled.  “How ever did you get out?”

“I’ll spare you the messy details, but I assure you the Alka-Seltzer story is totally an urban legend.”

She looked so triumphantly satisfied with this story, I became suspicious.  “Somehow, Nigella, I was expecting a more...delicate question.”

“Oh,” she said, tucking into her crème brûlée, “well, I think I know all I need to know on that score.”

“Really?  How’s that?”

“I have my sources.”

Angela was a good friend, but we’ve never done anything together, nor did I think she had much in the way of bedroom stories to share.  I pushed the mystery of who Nigella’s source might be to the back of my mind and just enjoyed the spectacle of her log-sized fingers digging the last slivers out of the ramekin and then disappearing smackingly between her elephant-seal-sized lips.

Perhaps disappointingly, few paparazzi followed us back out to the limo as Nigella carried me before her on her open palm.  The chauffer opened the passenger door and I bounced down to the leather-upholstered back seat.  As I had hoped, Nigella turned to wave at the cameras and therefore didn’t see me as she lowered her immense rump towards my position.  I stood on the seat as the shadow fell over me and watched her tight blue dress slide over the hemispheres of her ass as it descended.  At the last possible second, I bounced over to the far side of the limo as her full weight fell on the spot where I had been standing.

She buckled herself in and glanced down at me, betraying no awareness of the near miss.  “Care for a night cap?” she asked.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I replied.

The cameras were blocked by the tinted windows, but Nigella’s eyes flashed when she bared her teeth at me.

“Home,” she said to the chauffer.

***

Nigella had a penthouse in Westwood.  The chauffer took us into the garage and dropped us by the elevator lobby.  Nigella plucked me from the seat and set me on her shoulder.

The elevator shuddered  slightly when it started to ascend, but Nigella was thrown more off-balance than the lurch warranted.  Someone less charitable might have concluded that she had had too much to drink, but I was sure she had stumbled quite deliberately.  I could have easily lighted on the car floor without injury, but in the spirit of the evening I deferred to her gambit and let myself tumble into her cleavage.

I kept my legs together and let my arms flail loose as I rolled in between her enormous knockers.  The warm walls of flesh flowed into me as she squeezed her tits together in a belated (and half-hearted) attempt to keep me out of the crevasse.  My head sank down to the hot and sweaty depths where her breasts were at last supported by her long-suffering dress.

“Oops,” she said, her giggles reverberating in her sternum beneath me and through the waves of boobflesh that buffeted my limp frame.

Not much light filtered through her blue velour dress, but when I tilted my head back I thought I could see part of the brown patch at the tip of the breast I was “facing.”  My arms were already outstretched, and I made a swimming motion “downward.”

Just as Nigella’s fire-hydrant-sized nipple poked into view, I was jostled by another boobquake and I felt her giant fingers pinch me about my ankles and draw me dangling upside down out of her cleavage.  She laid me on my back in her palm and grinned down at me.

“I’m so dreadfully sorry!” she exclaimed without a hint of embarrassment.  “I’m such a klutz.”

“Not at all,” I said.  “In fact, I’m quite experienced with melons.”

When Nigella did not respond to my quip with at least a knowing glance, I knew I could eliminate Roxanne as her informant.

“That reminds me of a sorbet recipe I’ve been meaning to try,” she said distantly, “but not tonight.”

She admitted us to the penthouse.  I didn’t know whether she owned the place or was just renting, but there was no doubt she had personally appointed the kitchen.  A wide prep counter was ringed by every utensil, seasoning, and condiment imaginable.  She slid one hip up to the counter, the shoulder where I was perched jutting out above the surface.

“Find a seat,” she said, and I bounced down to explore her favorite workspace.  To one side stretched a six-burner Viking range, and on the other side towered a 64-jar spice rack.  Behind a bottle of pepper-infused olive oil I found a spent champagne cork, which I rolled to the middle of the counter and then stood upright.  Ignoring the knife-marks on the counter-top, I sat on the cork and looked up to see Nigella return.

Her smile had lost none of its girlish charm, nor had her contours lost any of their allure.  Approaching the counter, her face was farther above me than when we were seated at dinner.  She was carrying a single short wide-mouthed glass, which she then set at the edge of the counter, right beneath her slightly protruding pooch.

Raising her eyebrows briefly, Nigella seemed to fall forward as she leaned over me to reach something on the shelf behind me.    Her belly crowded the glass, and her tits surged ponderously, threatening to spill out of her dress.  Just when I thought her abdomen was going to heave into me, her shadow lifted and she settled back in front of me brandishing a green unlabeled half-liter bottle.

“Still have your cup?” she asked, pulling out the stopper and starting to fill the glass.

I walked up to the glass and pulled out my cup, then tilted my head back to look up past her pooch and her overhanging rack and met her sporting grin.  I raised my cup in salute, then bent over the rim of the glass to dip it.

Her fingers slammed into the back of my legs and knocked me into the mouth of the glass as she grabbed it and raised it to her face.  I managed to keep my head clear of the stinging liquid, which I then confirmed was grappa, easily 100 proof.  I pulled myself above the rim of the glass just as it reached her lips.

“Cin cin,” she said and tilted the glass toward her open mouth.

I prepared to bounce out of the glass, jarring it out of her hand if necessary, but I quickly saw that she had only opened her mouth wide enough to admit the beverage, so I placed my hands above her upper lip and leaned back, wearily looking up past her chimney-sized nose.  With chestnut eyes the size of hogsheads, Nigella drank me in as deeply as she did the grappa.

She wrinkled her nose at my booze-soaked clothes.

“Sorry about that,” she said with all the sincerity of Captain Renault and set the glass back on the counter.  “Leave your things by the sink and I’ll wash them later.”

I climbed out of the glass, fearing that my dress shoes would never recover, and I almost missed seeing Nigella disappear around the corner.  I had been fairly certain this would be the evening’s destination, but I was still slightly taken aback by Nigella’s...precipitation of events.

The sink already contained three or four bowls recently used for mixing and/or noshing on ingredients.  I stripped off my clothes, wrung them out, and hung them as best I could on the tap handle.  Then I bounced down to the floor and started down the hallway, hoping to find Nigella before she found me.

There were multiple rooms in the condo that were furnished with beds, but it was clear which was the only one currently in use.  A mountainous down comforter hulked on the floor next to the bed from which it had been evicted.  The mattress was hugged by a sage green fitted sheet so fine that not even I could count the threads.  Nigella’s blue velour dress, released at last from its labors, was draped inelegantly over a high-backed padded chair.

From the floor I could only see her head near the pillow, so I bounded up to the foot of the bed.  It was then that I figured out whom Nigella had been talking to.

Alice was an event planner who worked primarily for tech companies doing product launches and similar functions.  I met her at a Nokia thing and we hooked up a couple of times afterwards.

One time she asked me, “What is it with guys and anal sex?”  She was reluctant to try it, and her last boyfriend gave her grief about it.  I told her that some guys really like a tight fit, and a lot more guys had been brainwashed by porn videos into thinking that it was the best fit.  Then I said that most guys I’ve talked to can’t really tell the difference.

“Can you tell the difference?” she asked.

“I have a rather different perspective these days,” I replied.

She then proposed that we try it together.  I was game and found it a nice change, but Alice really got off on it.  She resolved that I was the only guy she would have anal sex with, and she said so to anyone who would listen, which apparently included Nigella.

She was lying on her stomach, her head pointed away from me.  Her legs were spread so wide that her feet and ankles dangled on either side of the bed.  She had propped herself up on her elbows, pressing her abdomen against the mattress.  She hadn’t yet noticed my arrival, so I paused to take in the spectacle.

Her legs were thick by any standard, and to me they stretched like chalky cliffs across the width of the bed, meeting at the warm grotto of her pussy.  The surface of her legs was soft and pliant, but rippling underneath were powerful muscles that could trigger a landslide.  At the apex loomed the twin hillocks of her ass.  They weren’t quite spherical, but their curves and carnality demanded deeper exploration.

I saw her head turning to look over her shoulder, so I worked up my best East End accent.  “Nigella,” I declared, “you’ve got a right lovely bum.”

Laughing with her eyes, she didn’t even blush.  “I know, darling,” she said, “but no one else seems to appreciate it.”

“What a crime,” I said, starting up the valley between her legs.

She watched me with a smile that combined both bemusement at and a challenge to my progress, but her face was quickly eclipsed by the horizon of her titanic ass.  Quivers of anticipation passed through her thighs as they rose on either side of me, and I reached out a hand to trace her sensitive flesh to her delicate taint.

Her pussy lips were folded together atop the mattress, and I knelt down to kiss their lowest point, and Nigella gave a short gasp as I slid one arm between them.  I reached past her inner lips and stroked the interior wall of her canal, then withdrew my arm.  It smelled wonderful, but it wasn’t nearly as slick as I had hoped.

The supple flesh of her taint, thighs, and buttocks made for easy hand- and toe-holds as I climbed to the cloven summit of her ass.  I could have made it to the top in a single bounce, but there was a tactile purpose to my ascent.  Plus it was more fun that way.

Standing with one foot on each cheek, I raised both my arms to Nigella, who had looked back again when I reached the top.  “I forgot to bring my flag,” I said.

“I suppose you’ll have to find something else to plant,” she said.  My stiffy had surged and ebbed at various points over the evening, but it had sprung up again at the sight of Nigella’s spread buffet.

“Cheeky girl,” I said, then bounded straight up six inches, performed a tight somersault, then spread my arms and legs wide and belly-flopped onto her left buttock with resounding slap.  Her ass shuddered and clenched reflexively, and she gave an appreciative moan as I buried my face in her supple flesh and took as much as I could between my tiny teeth and bit down.

I let myself slowly slide down her most sensitive slope, digging in with my fingernails and gnawing the brown and pink skin of her taint as I descended.  When I reached the mattress again, I slid first my knee then my entire leg between her pussy lips.

Nigella’s pelvis twitched, raising me briefly into the air.  “I thought you liked my bum,” she said.

I switched my accent to Dublin. “D’ye mind, luv?  I’m workin’ here.”

She settled back down, and my thrusting leg soon became slippery.  I pulled my leg out of her twat, then reached in with my hand to transfer as much of her fluids as possible to my aching cock.  Even at my scale, lubrication is always welcome.

Nigella had been moving her legs closer together during my stimulations, but when I bounced up into her crack and pushed her massive cheeks apart with my arms, she again spread her legs apart to help expose her wrinkled brown eye.

I lay in her crack, my arms outstretched and holding back mountains of flesh, my legs together with my toes sunk into her taint.  By now the atmosphere in the region had become sultry and pungent.  The heat rising off her skin enveloped me, and I breathed in the fumes of both her arousal and her digestion.

Lowering my head and torso deeper into her crack, I plunged my cock into her paella-sized asshole.  Her reflexes again tightened her sphincter and tried to crush me between her glutes, but I held back the avalanche of ass and easily slid my slick prick in and out of her roiling rectum.  A gasp of delight was my reward as my rod probed Nigella’s delicate pucker.

Looking up it was hard to see anything beyond the rolling waves of ass.  She had stopped trying to see me over the curve of her bum and instead lowered her head to the mattress and was moaning into the pillow.  Looking down, I could see her arsehole constrict and release my cock and then constrict it again, like some eyeless subterranean creature sucking the moisture from a tree root.  Imagining no happier fate than to be buried alive in Nigella’s ass, I thrust and thrust my rigid member against the rim of her bunghole until at last I shot my load into her cavernous rectum.

Nigella’s clenching buttocks were not as strong as Mariela’s full-weighted step, but I had been holding my date’s cheeks apart for far longer than I had held up my agent’s foot, and with release my arms weakened and then collapsed.  I settled into her crack as her buttocks closed about me like two enormous soufflés rising in the heat.

The substance of Nigella’s ass returned less than a minute later when she rolled over and partially sat up, scooting her bum backward along the mattress.  I curled up to avoid injury to my limbs, but half of her weight was focused on my miniscule frame.  In that dark and hot prison, I could hear an unmistakable gurgling reverberating through the tortuous organs above me.  The only sliver of light was below me, so I summoned what strength I had left, flipped onto my stomach, and squirmed against the oppressive ceiling of flesh as I crawled out of her ass.

I emerged beneath her taint, first my hands and then my head straining into the light.  Her legs weren’t very far apart, but by the time I had stood up, turned around, and backed away from her looming vulva to find her face, she had spread her colossal thighs and raised her knees slightly.

Taking slow, deep breaths, I made a leisurely survey of Nigella, towering over me in nude splendor.  There was scarcely any minge around the bottom of her pussy, but now I could see a modest brown landing strip extending up from her clit and beginning to trace the underside of her pooch.  There was no escaping her overhanging belly, pale and pliant, curving in from her hips to her waist.  Freed from all support, her massive mammaries sagged low but hadn’t lost any of their fetching contours.  Her wide brown eyes sparkled down at me, a gracious smile on her face.

“That was brilliant, Gunnar,” she gushed.  “I’ve never felt anything like that.”

“So my reputation is secure, then,” I said.

“Well,” she said, tilting her head, “it is in part.”  She then leaned back on the pillows, her belly stretching back and her boobs lolling to each side.  She draped one arm over head and spread her legs a bit wider.

Standing between her titanic thighs, I tore my gaze from Nigella’s recumbent curves and focused on her yawning pussy.  Half again as tall as I was, it beckoned me to lose myself in its embrace.  Her outer lips were swollen, puffing out from her crotch and promising a soft and juicy reception.  Between them blossomed her pink inner lips, wafting open and closed with each anticipatory breath.

I spread my own legs apart, then twisted my torso and arms in one direction and then the other, putting each of my shoulders through their full range of motion.  Nigella’s grin had widened, so I turned around and let her look at my ass as I bent over and stretched my leg muscles.  When I had become as limber as I was going to get, I turned back around and approached her giant twat.

Nigella’s face again disappeared from view, this time behind her pooch.  I walked right up to her slit and spread my arms to either side of her pillowy petals.  I pressed my face against her wet inner lips and drank in her humid lust.  I wanted to dive in right then, but I had another signature move to apply.

Sinking my hands and feet into her soft folds, I climbed up to her mons, her nether lips kissing my head, torso, and cock as I ascended.  Cresting her clit, I met her hungry eyes across the rolling hills of her belly and tits.  Standing up astride her landing strip, I dispensed with further ceremony and lay down on her neat carpet, my legs and ass splayed across her mons and my head and arms positioned atop her swelling bud.

Nigella was almost certainly ready for more rough stimulation, but I always like to start off with some kissing and nibbling, and I’m told the sensation of my tiny mouth on the clit is fairly unique.  I slid back the hood to reveal her tender horn, which to me was about the size of a beef shoulder.  I ran my hands around the base and lowered my head to kiss, suckle, and gnaw the sensitive flesh.  My stomach dropped as her pelvis bucked sharply upward, but my grip was strong and she soon settled her giant ass back onto the mattress.

She tasted of shellfish and nuts and Pinot Grigio, and I fit as much of her succulent clit into my mouth as I could.  Beneath my chest and belly and cock I could feel her blood vessels and capillaries surge as I stroked and nuzzled her pulsing nub.  More pelvic tremors as her breathing quickened, and I could see her fingers tracing their way along both of her thighs towards her gaping pussy.

Latching on to give her clit a devoted hickey, I raised up on my elbows and swung my legs and trunk down into her crotch.  I grimaced at the rugburn from her landing strip on my stiffening cock as I used her slickening button as a pivot to rotate my body into her pussy.  My feet found their way between her inner lips, and as more of my body entered her I rolled onto my back.  Releasing her clit at last, I drew in lungfuls of air and waved at Nigella, although I doubted whether she could see me as I slipped inside.

Being inside the pussy of a woman twenty-five times your size never gets old.  There is very little air or light, and I’m always surprised at how hot it is.  Fortunately, the Accident seems to have expanded my lung capacity, and I can go for several minutes of heavy exertion without air.

The first thing you notice are the inescapable sounds.  Her heartbeat drowns out yours until they sync up and you hope hers never stops.  Her rushing blood surrounds you like a personal ocean, and her distant moans still manage to find you and echo in your bones.

The best part of being vaginally engulfed is that you are making love with every cubic centimeter of your body.  Her walls buffet you on every side, and they want you to buffet back.  Recent but overdue studies have shown that what we know as the clitoris is actually just the tip of a sophisticated network of nerve clusters stretching throughout the female pelvis.  I could have told them that for a lot less money; I would just need a steady supply of electrolytes.

No two women are precisely the same.  Some like a lot of friction on the “roof,” where Dr. Gräfenberg pitched his tent.  Others like it when I stand up to my fullest extent to maximize the “girth” effect.  And some don’t care what I do as long as I keep moving.

I still hadn’t found the optimal stimulation for Nigella when I heard the unmistakable roar of gasses finally escaping the chamber next door.  People without my magnified exposure to others’ bodily functions might have been disgusted, but in my experience the fact that she held it in while I pried her cheeks open and pricked her pucker showed singular forbearance and, yes, class.

Sealed deep inside her cunt, the only odor was the briny tang of her arousal.  Not that I was breathing much; I had already put the strongest pearl diver to shame.  I had received positive feedback when I lay on my back and spread my arms and legs back and forth (I call this “making snatch angels”) followed by lifting my legs straight up and scuffing my feet across the taut membrane.  Her sharp gasps and deep moans were masked by her voluminous viscera, but I’ve become attuned to certain sounds.  There was nothing subtle about her Kegel muscles crushing me in their grip.

It turned out that Nigella was most sensitive closer to the surface.  I got the strongest response when I reached my hands just outside her pussy, grabbed her inner lip, brought my legs up almost to her opening, then swung my legs back down, pressing my feet against the wall of her cunt as I stretched out.  On the “downstroke,” my cock rubbed against her wall, which clearly trembled in recognition.

My inner ear told me that Nigella was gyrating her crotch, and the intermittent light from between her lips suggested she was closing her thighs on her pussy and then opening them again.  No amount of contortion, however, could obscure her distinct cries of, “Yes!  That’s it!  Come on then!”

I tightened my grip and concentrated on finding a rhythm that kept up with her libido without provoking my lumbago.  Everything around me was surging with heat and slick with desire, and my cock and balls were ready to come home.  Of course, nothing is quite so inspirational as being clenched by the pussy of a 200-ton woman while she shouts, “Shag me, you brilliant little fuck!”

Dirty talk always brings me off, and I paused in my rhythm to hug Nigella’s throbbing clit and to grind my pelvis into the roof of her cunt, adding my modest contribution to the secretions all around me.  I couldn’t see her face over her pooch, but her breathing was still constricted and I knew she was still seeking release.  Her left hand slid over her belly towards her crotch, heading right for my position.  I abandoned her bud and slid feet-first entirely back into her cunt.

Passing through her urgent contractions, I got on my back with my feet almost at her cervix.  I started rapidly undulating my whole body like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.  Her muscles couldn’t grip me as tight that far in, so I was able to attain a greater acceleration.  Above (below?) my head I could sense one or two of her giant fingers probing her pussy, and I was sure that she was also working her clit.  The heat was becoming unbearable, but no sauna ever felt this good.

I felt her howl resonating in my chest before I heard it in my ears.  It rumbled out of the deep like the call of a humpback, then it grew to hurricane pitch, punctuated by the gasps of her cry and the spasms of her cunt.  I thought my chest was going to burst from the pressure and the heat, and I wanted to die right then, kissing her deepest parts with every last bit of my tiny body.

As the tempest of cum ebbed away, I found myself curled up next to her cervix, which was nudging me in time with her pulse.  I crawled toward the light as gently as I could, but her membranes were still tender and trembled at the slightest touch.  Pushing my head out between her inner lips, I paused to take several deep breaths of cool air.  Any invigoration I might have gained was mixed with the intoxication from her post-climactic scent.

Looking out I could see Nigella’s enormous legs stretching to the end of the bed, her powerful muscles and tendons finally relaxed.  Her pussy lips hung loose and dripped with her cum and mine.  Her hands were nowhere in sight.  I reached up and grabbed a bit of minge, careful to avoid her raw clit, and pulled myself slurpily out of her canal.  It was easy to imagine steam rising from my exhausted limbs as I crawled over her musky landing strip and crested her belly.

I collapsed and lay spread-eagle, my face against her soft skin as her pooch rose and sank beneath me with her weary breaths.  My deflated cock nestled against her giant belly, drawing warmth and protection.  Her guts gurgled in my ear, and her salty juices ran down my face and trickled into my nose and mouth.  Smacking my lips, I propped myself up on my elbows and sought refuge in Nigella’s beatific face.

Acres of heaving flesh stretched before me, rolling over her sternum and rising into her smashing breasts.  Her slopes glistened with sweat, and her wide areolae were flushed a ruddy brown.  Her arms lay limp to each side, although I doubted they had had the same workout as mine had.  All fatigue was forgotten, however, when I beheld the sunrise of her face, that invincible smile and those triumphant eyes.

“That was just fabulous, Gunnar,” she said.  “I had no idea shagging like that was possible.”

“Neither did I,” I said, “but when life hands you lemons...”

“You did better than lemonade, darling.  That was a creamy lemon-raspberry gelato.”

It didn’t really get any better than that.  Basking in the glow of her smile and her praise, I surveyed the peaks and valleys of the woman I had helped bring off, marveling at her dimensions.  She was a glorious volume, only a fraction of which had been necessary to contain me entirely.  I shivered.

“A bit of a mess, aren’t we?” she said.  “Hang on.”

Hang on I did as she rolled her mountainous body a third of the way onto her side and reached toward the shelves on the wall behind the bed.  Damn if she didn’t have a small microwave back there.  Thirty seconds later she drew out a bowl containing a pair of cotton napkins soaked in water.  Warm moist handtowels after a meal might seem luxurious in a first-class airliner cabin, but standing naked on the belly of yacht-sized woman, coated in the viscous evidence of the satisfaction you’ve just given each other, they touch the sublime.

After we had both wiped ourselves down, Nigella collected the wet linens and set them on a bedside table.

“Speaking of confections,” she said, “Here’s something I made this morning.”  She reached behind her head again and opened a mini-fridge.  Of course.

She brought out a smaller bowl covered in plastic wrap, and she also found a nearby spoon.  She lifted off the wrap to reveal a heap of white whipped cream.  She extracted a dollop and offered it to me.  I was only able to dip a finger before she withdrew the spoon.

“What do you think?” she asked.  I licked the chantilly from my finger, careful to get it all.

“Decadent,” I said.  “Lavender?”

“Of course!” she said, grinning and tossing her head in delight.  She deposited the rest of the spoonful on her left nipple.

That’s all I needed to get me moving again.  I scrambled up the side of her left boob, raised my head above her frosted nipple, and plunged my face into the sweet cream.  I gripped Nigella’s tit with my legs to ride out the jostling as I slurped and licked the cream from her sensitive tip.  My earlier conversation with Mariela regarding brand awareness must have really sunk in, because all I could think was, This would make a great spot for the Dairy Council.

She had really balanced the sugar and lavender flavor well, and it was no chore to lick her boob clean.  She giggled, and I looked up to see that she had anointed the right nipple as well, and I gamely slid off the left breast and scaled its twin.

After I had sucked her pokie dry, I stood atop her tit and faced her, hands on hips and pelvis thrust forward.  I met her heavenly brown eyes, which never strayed from me as she dabbed my crotch with the laden spoon.

Nigella reached behind me and slipped her thumb and forefinger underneath my arms, then raised me to her immense face.  My only desire was to fall into her eyes forever, but then her tongue, as large and remorseless as a Nile crocodile, emerged from her mouth and slid between my legs.  My cock and balls melted on her tongue like garlic shavings on a hot skillet, and I shut my eyes and gave myself over to that warm and wet muscle.

She cleaned off my thighs and got into the crack of my ass.  My legs dangled limply on either side of her tongue, letting her have her way with my lower extremities.  She managed to curl her tongue into a U-shape around my cock and balls and proceeded to milk the cream off.  I was pretty sure I was out of jism for the night, so I was happy to let her guzzle down the lavender chantilly instead.

The sounds and sensation of her oral ministrations were so blissful that I went into a bit of a trance.  I didn’t immediately notice when she pulled me away from her face, and I opened my eyes just in time to get a quick glimpse of the bowl of whipped cream before she dunked my head, shoulders, and chest entirely in the confection.  Nigella gave a naughty chuckle.  My face covered in cream, I smiled to myself and waited for the spongy blanket to wrap around my head.

Instead I felt her fingers pitch me forward onto her writhing tongue, and then the shift in light and pressure as I was enclosed inside her mouth.  Her tongue slammed me against her palate, and I felt a hundred sucking mouths as she evacuated the cream from every nook and cranny of my tiny body.  My ears popped as she aerated her taste buds to savor each sweet drop.

She chuckled again, echoing all around me in her mouth, and I thought, Oh, don’t you do it, babe, and then the bottom fell out of my tiny world and I was shoved headlong down her throat.

For sound evolutionary reasons, there is nothing in the esophagus for swallowed live prey to catch hold of.  If I had had my wits about me, I might have stretched out horizontally and wedged myself against the sides, but that would have only arrested my descent and I would have had to rely on only Nigella’s choking reflex to expel me from her gullet.   Of course, this would have risked suffocation to my hostess, and I was squeezed through the narrow sphincter into her stomach before I had fully grasped my predicament.

If I had thought there was scarcely any air or light in Nigella’s cunt, there was absolutely none in her stomach.  I landed in a pool of glop, and I quickly identified bits of shell from the tiger prawns.  The slime stung my skin slightly, and I couldn’t tell if it was gastric acid or just the grappa.  I didn’t dare take a whiff, for unlike my last spelunking expedition, this time I neglected to fill my lungs before descending.

I had spared Nigella the messy details of my exit from the swan at Mariah Carey’s wedding, but even if I hadn’t I don’t think she would have been very deterred.  While the Accident had certainly opened up exciting new opportunities, it didn’t take much imagination for “being devoured” to loom large among the many new hazards.

Accordingly, well before my unfortunate avian encounter, I had commissioned a scaled-down serrated titanium Bowie knife.  I carry it everywhere, and it proved quite effective in providing my egress from the poor stupid bird.

For better or worse, my knife was with my phone and other effects on Nigella’s kitchen counter, next to my drying clothes.  Unlike my previous gastric captor, however, Nigella had been blessed by evolution with the gift of emesis.

I couldn’t exert myself too much because I needed to conserve oxygen, but I wanted to stimulate overproduction of acid via rapid percussion against her stomach wall.  I also figured that agitating the remaining alcohol might contribute to an upset tummy, so I kicked up the glop at my feet when I could.

The floor of the human stomach did not evolve to provide a stable platform for tiny ingested bipeds, so I was constantly losing my footing and crashing into her stomach lining, and it was difficult to tell whether I had had managed to trigger the desired reflex.  I was pretty sure that Nigella had at least sat up, but beyond that it was impossible to distinguish external motion from the local turbulence.

I could feel my lungs start to burn, and I resorted to desperate-if-oxygen-consuming measures.  I bounced off her stomach lining toward what I estimated to be her esophagus.  This seemed to provoke a systemic contraction, and I was washed with astringent juice.

I bounced “up” again, and before I fell back “down,” the walls of her stomach contracted with immense force, shoving me and everything else back into her esophagus.  It was a slippery ride, and I curled into a ball to aid in my expulsion from her throat and mouth.

I hit the porcelain hard, landing on my right shoulder and hip, and I barely had time to suck in a breath of bilious air before I fell into the cold water.  Nigella’s deafening retches echoed in the toilet bowl as wine-stained chunks and slime rained down, forming a lake of lavender-scented puke.

Her toilet didn’t have any more hand- or foot-holds than her gullet did, so I could only tread water and dodge bits of prawn as she swept her brown hair away from the rim and lifted her flushed face out of the bowl.

“Sorry, luv,” she whispered, then wiped her mouth and collapsed out of sight onto the bathroom floor.

I floated in the foul-smelling water with the other by-products of Nigella’s appetites, trying to imagine how else I could have expected the evening to conclude.  I have to call Mariela, I thought.  Fighting supervillains has to be easier than this.