I lay pinned, arms splayed out beside me, beneath Jessica’s foot. Never before had I been so thankful for expensive carpeting or clean white socks. Each played a crucial role in my continued survival, and the sock in particular filtered out a surprising amount of the smell from the foot resting atop me. She gave a slight twist of her foot, wrenching my body and driving me further into the fibers beneath me. Pain spread from the core where she ground against me to my limbs, reminding me that survival may not always be best.
“Bullshit!” Fulda bellowed with such fury that you would have jumped had you been able to move. “This isn’t a negotiation, Jess! If you don’t give him back right now I’m going to come over there and take him from you!” The vibrations of a single thundering footstep reached me even nestled in all this insulation, and I anticipated being freed momentarily.
“Not so fast!” Jessica blurted, and the pressure on top of me increased immensely until the point she nearly crushed me. Her foot pressed my ribs in and I felt them straining to maintain integrity, but they were just this side of their breaking point. “Unless you want to clean your boyfriend out of the carpet you’re going to stay right where you are.”
“Do it,” Fulda challenged. “You’ll take his place right after.”
“Oh yeah?” Jessica replied, her voice brimming with confidence. “And then what? Gina too? I’m sure you’d have fun explaining that to mom when she came back for your graduation. Maybe you wouldn’t kill us, just make us small, like him? You’d have even more fun with that. ‘Hi mom, welcome back, how was the trip? Oh, my elegantly tall, beautiful sisters? Look down by your shoes, they’re bugs now!’ I can’t even imagine what she’d do to you.”
Fulda let out a deep sigh, and my hopes flagged. “Fine, what is it you want?”
“Him. Two nights a week, or one night for each of us. You would get him back intact the morning after each time, and if he isn’t intact you get to decide what to do.”
“I hope you have a different offer in mind.” Fulda spoke slowly, as though she were coiling for a sudden strike. “He’s mine, and I’m not going to share him with you.”
“Can’t blame us for trying,” Gina offered glibly. It seemed like she had more to say, but the words got stuck in her throat.
“Okay, fine.” Jessica paused for a moment, as though she knew what to say but needed time to piece the words together properly. “We’re not idiots, and despite what we said to torment him we know he wasn’t this small yesterday. You shrank him, right?” Another pause, probably while Fulda nodded, and she started again. “I think you have two options. Either give us our own tiny men, or teach us how you did it.”
Again Fulda sighed while she considered Jessica’s terms. “It would take weeks to teach you how to shrink someone, months to control it, and years to be as good at it as me.”
“I think you’ll find we’re dedicated students when motivated like this.” Jessica’s voice was incredibly smug, and she knew she had finally backed Fulda into a corner on something. “Sounds like we’ll need some toys to keep us busy while we learn, and maybe to practice on. Unless you want that to be this little guy,” she lifted up her foot and quickly swung it back down onto me, driving her point home, “you should bring us one a week. Each.” The temporary reprieve from her oppression made her foot slamming back down that much worse. My teeth rattled, my bones shook, and what air was left got forced out of my lungs as she pushed me back into my indent in the carpet.
Silence reigned again, and I wished I could have seen the look Fulda gave her sister during this. “Fine. I’ll find the book and teach you starting tonight, and you’ll get some ‘toys,’ as you call them, on Monday. Now take your foot off him.”
“Book first,” Jessica demanded, and Fulda responded with a growl. “Go get it, and hand it to Gina, so I know you won’t back out.” For sisters they sure didn’t trust each other. A series of angry stomps followed, weakening in intensity and then getting stronger again, culminating in a loud thud of leather slapping against skin. The cotton ceiling lifted off me for good and my captor stepped away, and I no longer felt as though my death were imminent.
Seconds after she had cleared my vision Fulda stepped forward, standing astride me so that she dominated my view. I never thought she had looked so beautiful as she did then, her volleyball uniform notwithstanding. The auburn hair atop her head was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her icy eyes were moister than usual while her thin lips quivered atop her sharp chin. Her clothes were tight, leaving almost nothing to the imagination, and her strong hands rested at the top of her hips, just on the edge of her shorts. They barely covered her bronzed thighs, powerful muscles on them tensed as though she were on the verge of kicking someone’s face in. She still had her socks pulled up to her knees, two tall, white columns in stark contrast with her skin and the black shoes pushing into the carpet around me.
As quickly as it came to tower over me the tower of Fulda crumbled, falling to one knee with a soft thud. I flinched when she reached for me, her palm bearing down over my prone body, but she carefully dug her finger into the carpet and pried me out from among the entangling fibers, then held me gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. Slowly she stood so I wouldn’t be jostled further, and when she reached her impressive height she turned to leave without a word to her sisters. While she deliberately strode for the doorway she lifted me up to her face, and I understood her expression was not the result of tenderness, but barely contained rage.
Fulda crossed the hallway and entered her room with four long strides, then swung the door closed with her free hand. She walked over and plopped down on her bed, slightly swinging me while she bobbed up and down on the mattress, then kicked her shoes off. There was a loud rush of air into her nose while she inhaled, her eyes closed, trying to calm herself down. Her eyes snapped open and calm returned to her face, or at least a façade of it. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
Pain still lingered throughout my whole body, and I would probably be sore for several days to come, but I tried to put on a brave face. “Nothing’s broken,” I reported, matter-of-factly, “and you aren’t scraping me out of the carpet, so I’m no worse for the wear. My pride might need some mending, though.” That, and years of therapy after so many brushes with death.
Fulda tilted her head this way and that, looking me over for crushed limbs or relatively large streaks of blood. Apparently satisfied, she centered me between her eyes again and said, “I’m honestly shocked, they usually love breaking my stuff. What did they do to you?”
I didn’t care for being referred to as her ‘stuff,’ but for now I pushed that thought away so I could answer her. “Well, first Jessica grabbed me from the house and threw me onto the carpet. Gina came up and stepped on me, they berated me for a bit, then they took me into that room. Gina continued berating me, Jess sat on me until I passed out and I woke up under a glass. If it hadn’t been for you coming home when you did she very well might have killed me.”
Her face turned grim, and Fulda grabbed me tightly to stop my rocking. “I don’t like anything about what they did, and everyone involved is lucky that you didn’t get washed with their socks.” Fulda’s nose twitched, the landscape in front of me shifting grabbing my attention, and she continued, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I swallowed while considering where to go from here. Even if I told her about how traumatized I was, would it matter? Fulda was so much bigger than me I could scarcely comprehend it, and she was always fairly aggressive. “I’ll be sore for a while,” I admitted, “and really suspicious of your sisters, but that’s nothing new. Are you sure you want them to be able to shrink people like you can?”
“I really don’t,” Fulda said, “but I wanted them to smash you even less. I’m not sure what I’d do if they…” She trailed off, leaving an awkward silence to hang in the air. Normally this is when we would make out, but now that she controlled my every movement my options were rather limited. Quickly she held me up to her mouth and engulfed my head with her lips, giving me a quick peck, then pulled me away again. “I didn’t want you to think I was going to, um, eat you.” How considerate.
We stayed in silence for a while, me comfortably in her grip, her eyes darting around awkwardly. “So, uh,” Fulda finally broke the silence, “are you hungry? Because I could definitely eat after practice.” I nodded. My last meal was before I picked her up last night, and I didn’t realize how hungry I was until now. “I’ll go make us something then!” She hesitated. “I sort of didn’t plan on them kidnapping you and planned to play with you at lunch, so play along.” Sounded like she had already decided on it, and it’s not like I could really stop her or change her mind.
She stood, and the sensation of vertigo told me that she had dropped her outward consideration for my well-being. While she walked she looked over me dangling between her fingers, trying not to trip over her lanky legs during her trip down the stairs. Her thunderous footsteps resonated each time they hit the hollow steps, and in short order she had finished her descent and made her way to the kitchen.
It wasn’t my first time in the kitchen by a longshot, but previously I hadn’t been the right size to be on the menu. The familiar white tiles reminded me of agricultural plots as seen from an airplane, and the burnished steel refrigerator doors were like gates to a forbidden place in a fantasy movie. Fulda easily opened a door with her free hand, blasting me with cold air, then withdrew a pre-made salad from one of the shelves. Wind rushed past me when she slammed it closed and turned back to the table.
I felt myself falling, and then landed softly on a bed of leafy green vegetables. Beside me was a wide circle of sliced tomato that came up to my waist, and hunks of chicken two or three times my size were scattered about, with a light dusting of shredded cheese throughout. The bowl’s white walls limited what I could see, and far above Fulda was looking away, acting uninterested in me atop her salad. My vessel shuddered when she set it down on the table, and she picked up a fork from the table before looking down into the bowl.
If she differentiated me from the poultry in her food she showed no sign of it, and mercilessly speared her fork through a chunk, driving the tines all the way through. She effortlessly withdrew the bite, leaving a large hole in the terrain, and lifted it to her mouth. Her lips opened to allow the passage of enough vegetation to fill my room, and I watched, transfixed, while her jaw worked her first bite into paste. Finally she swallowed, and when the lump passed her throat her eyes darted to me. “Eat!” she implored. “This is your lunch, too!”
Reluctantly I picked up one of the spinach leaves and held the edge in both hands. I tried to tear off a piece to eat, but the rubbery green was too tough for me to rip through. Before I could set it down the fork came down again, piercing the leaf I was holding. Fulda began lifting her next bite out of the bowl, and the floor carried me up with it. She was rapidly moving the food toward her mouth, me along with it, and had already opened her maw to shove it in. With a yelp I stepped back off the spinach so I could plummet, then landed with a wet thump in the middle of the tomato slice.
Realizing my predicament I tried to get up, but the slick surface made it all but impossible to get any traction. All I could do was watch while Fulda deliberately chewed then swallowed, all while gazing at me with a knowing look. She smiled, displaying her wall of white teeth, and plunged her fork back into the bowl. It pierced the tomato with a crisp crunch, and a tine passed beside my legs on each side, pinning me against the vegetable. I looked up the length of the monolithic silverware to her fingers delicately gripping the handle, with her gigantic face looming beyond.
Horror shot through my body as I felt myself being lifted, and the open kitchen soon replaced the ceramic walls of the bowl. I ascended the length of Fulda’s monumental torso while she rotated the fork so that she could look at me helplessly laid out in her food. “Mmm, this bite looks better than the last one,” she purred, her warm breath a contrast to the cold tomato beneath me. “Can’t put my finger on why though.” Her pink lips remained spread in a grin while she considered me, held still by her fork.
Fulda’s lips parted and I slowly began being drawn forward, her gullet illuminated by the light pouring in. I paused on the threshold of her maw and a great tentacle slithered out from between her teeth, the tip of it slamming into my head before passing over the rest of my body. Her tongue ran up and down my body several times, leaving me drenched with her saliva, before she withdrew it into her mouth. “Tastes better, too.” At this distance her voice sounded like the crack of thunder, and the force of her breath rustled my hair and clothes. “Too bad my boyfriend isn’t here to share this, he’d appreciate it. Wonder where he ran off to.”
She pulled the fork away from her lips just enough for her eyes to gaze at me over her nose. “Huh, that’s weird,” she began, the boom of her voice nearly rendering me deaf. “There’s a man-shaped bug in my salad. Kind of looks like him, too.” Fulda paused, but the smug grin never left her face. “Can’t be, though. He’s not nearly that big.” Her mouth opened again, and with a rush I was forced past her teeth. Darkness overtook the inside of the cavity as her lips closed, sealing me in the damp cavern.
The pressure on my legs eased as she pulled the fork back out of her mouth, and I came separated from the rest of her food. Immediately her tongue attacked me, throwing me against the back of her top incisors. I fell back onto the tip, and she quickly slammed me into the roof of her mouth. Her tongue pushed me into her palate while it dragged me along the ridged surface until I nearly reached her uvula. Then she flicked me forward again so that I landed amid the pile of spinach that I came in with. It began to seem very possible that Fulda was about to eat me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I scarcely even came to a rest before her tongue battered me again, throwing me to the side with the rest of her food. Her soft cheek stopped me and tossed me back onto her row of molars. The hard, rough teeth were softened by the vegetables beneath me, but that was scarce comfort in the pitch black that surrounded me. Terror seized me when the ceiling swung down and made contact, her teeth running the length of my body. She wiggled her jaw back and forth, grinding me between her molars without crushing me with them. Fulda was teasingly chewing on me, I realized, as her jaw opened and closed minutely and repeatedly held me between her teeth.
Fulda’s jaw opened with a sense of finality, and I accepted that my girlfriend was on the verge of making me part of her lunch. For all the good it would do I screamed, and my voice echoed off the enamel that was nearly brushing my face. I felt her teeth getting closer, and tried to prepare myself for the end. There would be a moment of excruciating pain, I expected, then I would be killed almost immediately. Luckily I wouldn’t have to experience being submerged in her stomach acid or digestion.
A slimy lump of flesh prodded me hard, forcing me off the salad and from between her teeth. Fulda’s tongue pushed me hard enough into her cheek that I sank into the soft tissue, and I stayed embedded in it after her tongue left my back. I slid down the wet surface until I was wedged between it and her gums, and a sickening crunch resonated throughout her mouth as she finally bit down on the salad. Small flecks spattered on my face, and with each movement of her jaw everything around me shuddered while everything inside me shook with it. It wasn’t just the physical force of her powerful jaw chewing, but also the knowledge that I was almost in there as well and had narrowly escaped becoming another morsel for her.
It nearly took a minute until her food was thoroughly chewed, with tiny bits flaking off and landing on or around me, and the whole time my body was seized with the fear of slipping back in and being chewed with one powerful blow. Saliva rushed around me in a powerful river and flowed through the minute spaces between her teeth, catching the mush in the current and rushing it back toward her throat. A horrific sound filled her mouth when she swallowed, the simultaneous opening of her gullet and flexing of her throat muscles combining to make an alien cacophony. If I hadn’t been inside my girlfriend’s mouth I would have been sure I wasn’t even on planet Earth anymore, not that being inside her mouth wasn’t strange enough.
When her food had passed into her throat Fulda’s tongue sallied out again and began probing along her gums. The monstrous pink tentacle found me easily, and the tip scooped me up along with the rest of her food that had avoided getting swallowed. She pushed me along her gums so that I felt the root of every tooth I passed, until I was before her great incisors. Her tongue flattened and held me against those enormous teeth, swaying back and forth so that she rubbed me against her enamel.
After what seemed like an hour her tongue lifted, then she wedged the tip between me and her teeth. Fulda ran me along the inside of her bottom lip, teasing me with freedom, before flicking me back through her teeth. I landed softly on the broad bed of her tongue and rolled along the bumps until I came to a stop in the middle. She shifted it, dumping me off so that I landed among her frenulum, sinking into the tender tissue around me, then her tongue set back down. Once again she flattened it so that it filled the entire floor of her teeth, holding me at her mercy. Several times her tongue twitched, pounding me back into her frenulum and driving home how hopeless I was.
Finally she had her fill of fun, and Fulda’s tongue lifted off me once more. Her lips parted, allowing thin shafts of light through, and the horrifying cavern I had been stuck in was illuminated. My jaw dropped as I took in the pearly white all around me, marred in places by specks of green or red clinging to the otherwise pristine white. Her gullet remained sealed for the moment, but it was difficult not to imagine one more flick of her tongue before it opened, conveying me down into her stomach to join the rest of her salad.
I nearly leapt out of my skin when her tongue pressed into my back, forcing me forward and between her teeth. She pressed me into her lips, which puckered around my waist and held me firmly. Fulda’s thumb and forefinger approached and closed around my chest, and with a quick yank she dragged me from between her lips. Gently she lowered me along her torso, past her generous chest, and set me down atop the hard wood of the table. Her fingers opened and I struggled to stand on my own power, and her hand dropped back to her side.
“Oh my!” Fulda exclaimed with an enthusiastic smile. “That little bug was actually my tiny, bug-sized boyfriend! And I came as close as he is tall to eating him! Mostly I’m surprised it’s taken this long to happen, he’s just soooo small!” Fiendish mirth flooded her eyes, and she continued, “I hope you learned your lesson about playing in my food. Next time I might swallow you, too.”
A pair of titanic, tanned hands swung down and slapped the table, shaking everything on it and creating a tremendous boom. Slowly Fulda lowered her face down until her chin came to a rest on her hands, looking at me. Rage, fear, joy, and a host of other emotions flashed through my system. I wanted to yell at her, tell her that I didn’t find it nearly as funny as she did, something to wipe that grin off her face. She spoke before I could though, and drowned out anything I might have said. “You were great, don’t worry,” she whispered, as though we were conspiring together. “Thanks for letting me do that.” Then she pushed her head forward, tapped me with the rounded tip of her nose, and sat back up to continue eating.
My life was in serious danger if Fulda didn’t grow me back, and soon.