Tom was tucked into the inside of Heather’s cheek beneath the rippling might of her tongue, expertly pinned over him such that he could be slid onto any surface in the pitch-black hovel of her mouth that she pleased. Her red muscle pushed him harder, bending him into the squishy give of her jawline wall. Next she flicked him up to her top row of teeth, entrapping him against her gums just beneath her upper lip. It was a predictable cycle that nonetheless never ceased to trip the boy up. There was little else he could do other than throw his hands over his head for added protection as he was transported on a slimy river and a flick of Heather’s tongue to the next desired location in her mouth, and even this didn’t always work.
It was tough contesting the might of the strongest muscle in the body of a girl who was already large enough to lose him like a piece of stray dandruff if she weren’t so intently focused on playing with him which, Tom supposed, was a plus given his size. Attention of any kind would ensure he remained in the awareness of a person, which was the definite priority at this height. He’d heard multiple horror stories before of liars reduced down to a similar crumb-scale being lost on the floor and suddenly finding the shadow of a tennis shoe hovering over them with a few pond-sized globs of rubbery used gum infused into the treads. These stories generally ended without mortality, incredibly enough, but usually there was a solid narrative in the middle of the liar being tramped into the sea of dirty pink waste and worn around on the bottom of the shoe for a few hours without the owner even realizing it until they removed them at the end of the day, and sometimes not even that soon, to find the unfortunate sinner nestled into a canyon of the treads. In short, having Heather make him into her personal human tic-tac was probably the best case scenario for Tom.
The hapless shrunken liar had only managed to regain a couple fractions of an inch over the past half-hour stuck atop Heather’s tongue, making him easier than a fleck of food to transport around the cavernous depths of his friend’s mouth. His only respites for air came when her lips parted, spilling in blinding artificial light from the cafeteria as well as a fresh spoonful of the vanilla pudding that had first delivered him into this muggy mess. He accepted these gratefully and in what eventually turned into a practiced rhythm of awaiting the sanctuary of light pouring in, gulping up the warm oxygen as it became available, and then promptly holding his breath to prepare for the onslaught of pudding already rushing toward him in a sludgy tidal wave as darkness enveloped him once again.
Whenever a new bite was introduced, Heather would slide Tom underneath her tongue, flattening him beneath it like a damp mattress. As the drool would fill in like a gooey moat all around him, the sweet gloop from her lunch would dribble in as well, intermingling into one steaming liquid mess. Tom knew it was just lucky his Truplex outfit was resistant to stains. He already wondered if the sugar-sweet stench of vanilla extract and sour flavor of Heather’s throat would let go of his body any time soon, though it was still preferable to Jordan’s situation, as he was probably damned for the next several days to smell like his younger siblings’ sweaty running shorts.
As the final lump of pudding from the lunch tray neared Heather’s titanic mouth, she allowed her fractional friend to plop into the center of her tongue. Bringing the spoon in close, she stuck her writhing muscle out between her pursed lips, with Tom glued to the tip, and buried it in the soft pile of pudding.
Tom was bulldozed through the yellow muck, finding it hard to breathe as he detached from her tongue and became lost in Heather’s dessert again, but could already feel the spoon lurching forward. In the next instant every morsel of pudding was swept inside the dank environment and guzzled off the utensil, sending Tom tumbling back as it was all sucked down toward her esophagus. It was only a quick tubing of the girl’s tongue that caught him in the gummy center again, preventing an unfortunate detour downward.
Heather’s lips parted again as her tongue pressed through the plush barrier, with Tom still entrapped on its slick surface. As she lapped along the soft rim of her mouth to collect the final smears of pudding, the hapless boy was rolled along with the gargantuan muscle, until he realized his hair and clothes had become ensnared on her newly sticky flesh. Her tongue gulped in the last drops of the vanilla treat and slipped back inside her mouth, leaving Tom glued helplessly to her lower lip like an errant crumb.
Not that he minded so much. It meant more fresh air, plus some conversation to break up the tedium of being continually dunked in the syrupy lake of Heather’s saliva and licked along her teeth.
“C’mon, aren’t you done messing with him already?” Jordan groaned, rolling his eyes as he glanced at the minute speck of Tom dangling by congealed spit to Heather’s steadily growing smile. “He’s already missed two periods today. That’s a lot of work to make up, you know.”
“Hey, I’m helping him improve his work ethic,” she answered, her lips vibrating as she spoke and momentarily making Tom think he might come unpeeled from her mouth, though he luckily didn’t.
“How?”
“Because with how tiny he is now, it’s probably gonna take at least another three periods to get up to normal again,” she commented slyly. “So he’s definitely gonna know a lot about time management after today. Don’t you think?”
And with a soft gurgle from the back of her throat and a lumpy swallow of the final pudding bite, Heather’s tongue snaked back out of her mouth, its tip sliding over Tom to collect him before she licked his body inside her mouth again.