Needless to say Ben did not get much sleep that night. Considering the amount of worry he was going through it didn't help his, now developing, sense of paranoia. Throughout the entire morning he kept going through senarios of what could happen when he, inevitably, has to confront Amy. Everything she might say or do, as well as his reactions and responses, were played over and over in his head. But he was forced to stop when his mind went over board and started showing him senarios in which he died. Fucking brain.

In the end, as he stood waiting for the bus, he decided the best thing for him to do was keep going as if yesterday had never occured. He would find his friends, hang out before class, emerge himself in work as a distraction, then get back on the bus and go home. If she was truly as angry as he thought she would find him and there was nothing he could do about that. So make the most of the day and whatever happens happens. Bit by bit he was learning to put more and more faith into things. And hopefully faith won't screw me over.

The bus pulled up to the human sized enterance and everyone got off. Ben's bus always arrived before Amy came to school so he went about with his normal routine. He walked to his locker, grabbed the books he'd need for the first few periods, and met up with his friends over by their first class. Johnny and Mark were already in the midst of talking when they saw him. They gave him a mixed look of question and worry. He shook his head to tell them that he had yet to encounter Amy. The tension seemed to flow out of them, but only a little.

"Look at us," Johnny grinned. "Scared over a girl we think is going to kill us. It's Junior prom all over again."

The three of them shared a laugh. "Remember the time you tried asking out that girl from the debate team?" Mark asked.

Johnny's grinned widened. "And she gave me the most pursuasive argument I'd ever received on why she wouldn't go to prom with me."

They burst out laughing again, enjoying the moment for all it was worth.

"Hey," Ben said as he tried to speak through his own laughing. "Remember that time I asked a girl to go see The Dark Knight with me? She slapped me first, tweeted about it, and for the rest of the day I kept getting slapped randomly by girls in the school."

This time they struggled to breath. "Oh man," Mark said. "She probably wasn't even mad at you. She probably just thought it would be funny."

"My jaw was so sore it hurt to eat for two days, but it was still her loss."

Mark pat him on the shoulder. "Whatever helps you sleep at night dude."

All at once their laughs were cut short by the familiar tremmors that indicated the coming of Amy. Sure enough she rounded the corner, casting a search light gaze across the ground. Once her eyes spotted the three of them she gave a small smile and walked up to them. Standing before her they had to admit, she was truly an imposing figure. The toe of her boot came up to their chests, so she knelt down in order to better speak with the three of them.

"Good morning Ben," she said in a soft voice, which was strange. Normally she spoke in either a nice voice that was obviously meant to be ironic, or a commanding voice that told how she expected to get her way. "Care to introduce me to your friends?"

Ben narrowed his eyes, this was not something he had expected out of her. Ben was no Sherlock Holmes but amy wasn't a very hard person to deduce. She had grow up getting whatever they could give for her, meaning that she usually got something whenever she wanted it. This made her spoiled. She walked around wherever she went with an air of command and power, meaning she wasn't acustommed to being repramanded. Not to mention she was repramended in front of the entire senior class, people who have been afraid of her since freshmen year. Put together, all of these facts added up to one royally pissed off Red Queen. Maybe there was a chance Ben wouldn't lose his head.

"Um, sure," he said, hope slowly filling him. Maybe what he said had knocked some sense into her. "This is Mark Fisher and Johnny Rice."

They waved at her, equally unsure as to what was going on. Amy waved back. "Nice to meet you two." Then she turned her attention back to Ben. "Look, I've been doing a lot of thinking since yesterday."

You and me both, Ben thought as images from his dream flashed through his head.

Amy continued. "I guess in the end I was the one being a bitch so . . ." she took a deep breath. ". . . I'm sorry for how I treated you. Could you forgive me for what I did at lunch?"

Ben's eyes went straight from narrowed to wide. Of all of the senarios he'd gone over in his head, this was something he had only laughed over. He was incredibly suspicious of her, yet his conscience told him to give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, it was only an apology.

So he softened up and nodded. "Um, yeah, I forgive you. Thanks Amy that was very mature."

Her smile widened as he spoke. "You're welcome, um . . ." she hesitated a bit. "If it's alright with you, I'd like to make it up to you."

Good feelings gone, paranoia at max. Ben was careful to keep his face neutral, so as not to offend her if she was sincere, though. "Uh . . . make it up to me? How?"

Very slowly Amy brought her hand down to rest in front him, palm up. "Here," she said. "Climb aboard."

If telepathy was real Ben would have sworn he could hear his friends thinking the exact same thing as him. Admiral Ackbar saying 'It's a trap!'. Thinking quickly, which wasn't easy with everyone in the hall watching them, he tried to come up with an excuse to pass.

"I'd love to Amy but I doubt we have enough time. First period's going to start any minute now."

"Don'y worry," she assured him. "I'm never late, I take big steps."

He smiled outwardly while inwardly his heart beat faster. "No seriously, I don't think we have the time. Maybe some other time?"

Amy frowned at him, she seemed hurt by his refusal. Ben even thought he might have been hallucinating when he saw a glimmer of a tear in her diamond blue eye. "I know you're afraid of me. You should be, I'm a monster."

"No, no!" he said quickly. "Not at all. I uh . . ." He looked back at his friends who tried to shake their heads as discretely as possible. Ben sighed and turned back to her. "Ok then."

That brought the smile back to Amy's face. As he stepped carefully onto her palm he could still hear the Admiral: 'It's a trap!'. I know Admiral. I know.

Very slowly, and very carefully, Amy stood up and brought Ben up to her face. He thought back to when she held him only yesterday. Only then it had been between her fingers, not like this. Standing in her palm, while this was definitely preferable, he felt even smaller by comparison.

"Brace yourself," she warned. "I wouldn't want you to fall."

Ben panicked as she said that, and it only got worse when he realized what she was doing. Amy brought him right up to her mouth, pursed her lips, and covered his entire upper body in a kiss. Feelings shot through Ben's entire body like lightning bolts stricking his skin. Fear. Surprise. Warmth. Comfort. Pleasure. Ecstasy. He lost himself in the enormous kiss, time stopped all around him. Had he been capable of noticing anything he would he been able to hear the surprised babbling of voices down bellow him.

After a moment that seemed both a second and a decade Amy withdrew her lips. Ben staggered to remain standing on her palm, which he failed at. He dropped to his knees and gazed up at her, she giggled. "Watch yourself there Iron Man. If you fell there's no telling where you'd end up."

Suddenly realizing he was directly over her chest made his whole face go red. Luckily she hadn't been wearing any lipstick or his whole body would have matched the color of his face.

Amy continued. "Like right here for example." Without warning she opened her mouth, and in he went.

The sceams and squeals coming from everyone in the hallway were beaten only the shouts of Mark and Johnny. "YOU GODDAMNED BITCH! LET HIM GO!"

Amy didn't swallow him, but she kept him trapped in her mouth. Her tongue swirling him around made Ben think of a washing machine. Or at least he would have if he could think. It all happened so fast. In one second he went from could nine to rock bottom. She tossed him about the small confines of her mouth so suddenly he couldn't tell up from down. Suddenly her tongue pinned him to the roof of her mouth and held him there. Chuckles began to escape her throat, the sounds jarred through him.

Down bellow him Johnny and Mark felt completely useless standing there. They wanted to get help for Ben, but at the same time they were afraid to leave him. Not that they could really keep amy from swallowing him whole. Still there legs turned to lead and they found themselves unable to move. They weren't sure who it was they hated more right now, Amy or themselves.

It seemed Amy had notcied their looks and smiled. Very carefully, she maneuvered Ben underneath of her tongue so as to allow herself the ability to speak. She bent down and whispered to Mark and Johnny. "Don't worry, I haven't eaten him . . . yet. See?"

Whispering made the noise bearable, yet did nothing for the constant thrashing of her tongue atop of him. That is until she opened her mouth and lifted her tongue to display Ben to his friends. Between the all encompassing noise and the pounding of her tongue on him Ben's ears were ringing. He tried to focus on what his friends were yelling at him.

" . . . ve ing fi . . . fi fin fil . . . five finger fillet!" they screamed. "Ben! Five finger fillet!"

Five finger fillet was a game they had learned while playing Red Dead Redemption. It was a game where you would spread your fingers on a table, then take a knife and try and stab the area between your fingers as fsat as you could without stabbing yourself. They had tried it a few times before, with pens of course, but they had no great talent at the game. Only Johnny and Mark weren't telling him to remember the game itself, they had something else in mind. Ben realized what they were imploring, and he prayed to God above that it worked. Once Amy closed her mouth he crawled out from under her tongue and worked his way onto it. As soon as he landed safely on it her tongue began to thrash again. Trying his hardest to reach into his pocket Ben withdrew a pen. Holding it up high he stabbed down on her tongue with all of his might.

The smile fell right off of Amy's face as pain exploded through her entire mouth. She dropped to her knees and spit Ben right into her hand. Placing it close enough to the ground to drop Ben without him being hurt she stood back up and placed a finger on her tongue. Sure enough, when she pulled her finger out, there was blood on it. "You fucking asshole!" she yelled. "You stabbed my fucking tongue!"

Ben was too tired from his ordeal in her mouth to reply, so Amy ran off to find a bathroom. The nurses had no band aids big enough for her, mostly since no body believed she could be hurt by anyone in the school. So she needed some paper towels to stop the bleeding herself. Luckily, as it was explained before, scientist had found ways of producing more materials, like wood, without having to take it from trees. So there was a roll of paper towels in every bathroom for her.

Ben, on the other hand, remained lying on the ground until his friends rushed over. The two of them lifted him and supported him on their shoulders without a care for the saliva. Ben just groaned and did his best to support as much of his weight as he could.

"Don't worry Ben, we got you," Johnny assured him. "Let's get you to the locker rooms. You need a shower."

"And you can wear you gym clothes for the rest of the day," Mark added. "After that we'll take you to the nurse."

Ben smiled weakly at his friends as he allowed them to carry him away. The muttering of everybody around him didn't even register. Just like they said Mark and Johnny took him to the showers, bagged his wet clothes in a plastic bag from one of their school bags, and carried him to the nurse after he changed into his gym clothes. Showering and changing he was able to do on his own, albiet with much effort, but walking was difficult. By the time they got him to the nurses office Ben only had time to hear Nurse Hadel say "Here we go again." before he blacked out.