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Story Notes:

Probably didn't ever think you'd see a continuation of this one.

This story was commissioned by Bruskiz as a follow-up to my unaware mother-son birthday adventure from 5 years ago. We're both pleased with how it came out, and I hope you are, too.

Interested in ordering your own custom story from me? Read the details here: https://thejacksmith.deviantart.com/journal/Story-Commissions-698491757

Michelle Robinson traced her fingers along the raw, tear-stained curve of her cheek and down along her neck. Her raven-black hair, ordinarily primed for maximum wow, lay in bedhead tangles against her shoulders. She anxiously bunched the ends of her locks between her palms and digits. Eyes pink and puffy from days of what felt now like infinite weeping, she brushed a knuckle over her stinging lids and gazed down at the image again on the table.

            The photograph, one she’d dug out of a dusty cabinet the day before, glinted in the kitchen light. She reached down to touch it, fingers aquiver, but picked it up all the same, and brought it up to her face again. No matter how dry of tears she felt after an entire week of this agony, she somehow managed to produce more whenever she got a closer look at the picture. Still, she couldn’t bear not to look.

            In the center frame of the picture was Michelle, just a few years younger and minus a couple laughing age lines around her eyes, smiling so broadly she might have been near bursting. In her arms she had her elder son, Alex, looking just as giddy as his mother: the days when he happily leapt into a hug without pause. More than anything in the universe, Michelle wished it was possible to recreate this photo now.

            Alex Robinson hadn’t been seen by a single living soul in six days, twenty-three hours, and forty minutes. Michelle knew, because she’d been counting, growing sicker with every passing minute and hour. One day, on her birthday, no less, the boy had just vanished into thin air. No note, no indication, no hint, no clue. His clothes were left in a heap in the living room, his belongings scattered around his bedroom. It was an absolute uncertainty, and the lack of knowing had driven Michelle to the edge in the intervening days.

            Michelle placed the photo on the kitchen table, where she’d been slumped for the last hour, leaking a steady stream of salty tears. She rested her cheek softly beside the little picture of herself and her beloved child.

            “Oh, my baby,” she sobbed. “My baby, my baby. Where did you go? Please come back to your mommy. She misses you so much.”

            Her voice cracked as she circled her fingertip over the miniature image of her boy, her firstborn, the apple of her eye. The one who’d taken time from his evening to bake her birthday cake, her favorite chocolate-coconut flavor, as a surprise for when she returned, just to make her happy. Now, she wondered if perhaps that was the final time she’d ever truly be happy again.

            The distraught woman couldn’t help but stare at the image of Alex in the picture, comparatively only a few inches tall inside the frame, and recall the last time he’d been small and helpless enough to require her full support and protection minute-by-minute. Wherever he was, if it was even reachable by human emotion, Michelle only hoped that Alex knew she, as well as Alex’s father and brother, missed him deeply and wanted to care for him again. She squeezed her puckered lips against the glossy image of her young son’s face in the picture, kissing him and leaving a distinct lip smudge on the photo.

            “Come back, sweetie. Please,” Michelle begged of the silence. Her words echoed loudly off the walls of the kitchen, despite her whisper. For a moment, she was self-conscious, fearful that Thomas, her younger son, heard her as he sat in his bedroom upstairs, distracted by video games and Legos to keep his mind off his big sibling’s disappearance. Michelle only hoped she hadn’t permanently traumatized her equally precious boy with her sorrow.

            At that moment, there was a knock at the front door.

            It took Michelle a while to generate enough willpower to stand up. She moved down the hall like a zombie, her bare toes grazing along the hardwood floor as she trudged to answer the door. She knew she looked awful, probably as if she’d just returned from a drinking bender, when in reality she’d simply been grieving for a week’s time. Against her better judgement, Michelle opened the door.

            “Hello, ma’am. Mrs. Robinson, right?” the police officer asked, standing on the welcome mat with hands folded behind his back. “I’m sorry to barge over like this, but this couldn’t wait.”

            “Yes, that’s me. What is it? Have you found something?” Michelle uttered. She stumbled forward, nose to nose with the officer. “Have you found something about my son? Is he alive? Where have you got him?”

            “I’m so sorry, ma’am, we don’t have your son, not yet. But we do have a lead. Something I think you need to hear.”

            “WHAT IS IT?” Michelle demanded. She snatched the cop’s tie in her fist, shaking him. “Tell me! Where is my boy?”

            “Again, I apologize, Mrs. Robinson. We’ve called your husband. He’s coming to the station, too. This is just something you need to see for yourself. Please, follow me.”

 

***

 

            Alex Robinson didn’t know when the last time was that he’d opened his eyes.

            His world had gone plenty dark as he’d watched the horizon go black while he and the island of chocolate-coconut dessert passed over the ivory barrier of his mother’s enormous teeth. Even then, he’d kept his eyes as open as possible. The steam of roiling saliva had burned against his skin, the sheer muscular destructive force of Michelle’s tongue below ripping through fluffy pastry and sending him careening toward his destiny: all of that, he saw. Once it appeared hopeless, though, not merely unlikely, but absolutely positive that he was, in fact, not going to be rescued, but instead eaten by his doting mother, Alex finally shut his eyes.

            And he’d kept them clenched closed since.

            At least, that’s what he assumed. By now, minutes, or maybe hours, after that fateful lurching of dark matter and cake crumbs into Michelle’s slimy gullet, Alex was still conscious. Which was strange for the teen to realize, as he was fairly certain his odds of survival would diminish once he became too deeply ensconced in the rolling rivers of spit and half-digested food. Whether he drowned in the gooey liquid, suffocated inside a glob of cake, or was simply crushed and popped like a mouse in his mother’s snake-like esophagus, Alex was more surprised than ever to discover he was still alive.

            Or was he? Was he really awake? Maybe this was just what the afterlife felt like. Maybe he was damned to exist in the warmth and shapelessness of his mother’s titanic body, all without her knowledge, for eternity. He supposed it wasn’t the worst fate possible, just so long as it didn’t hurt. At least he could be near his mother.

            Indeed, he hardly experienced the heat of Michelle’s throat now, nor the rough grazing of cake asteroids passing by. At least he’d been able to give her one last gift on her birthday. Now, Alex was simply adrift, untouched by his surroundings. What was done was done.

            Summoning the courage, the boy swallowed nervously, and at last forced himself to open his eyes.

            The sight nearly knocked the wind from Alex, or at least it would’ve, if gravity still affected him at all. He was floating, just as he’d predicted from lack of contact with any moving bodies. What he hadn’t expected to see was the environment awaiting him now, stretching all around for what felt to the humble boy like infinite miles.

            Rings, like those of celestial planets, twirling and crossing in concentric patterns, hued in shades of red, blue, green, purple, and even some colors he couldn’t identify. Each ring carried a line of orbs behind like balloons, faintly glowing in the same startling neon. It was like watching a dance of heavenly bodies, and Alex was situated in the middle of it all: his body, just as naked and vulnerable as he’d been when Michelle accidentally swallowed him, rotating end over end, providing him a full and overwhelming view of the cosmic sights beyond. At first it reminded Alex of space, as though his mother’s digestive tract contained a portal into the solar system itself, and then he realized where he’d seen this sight before. It wasn’t through a telescope.

            It was through a microscope.

            Nothing so impressive as this, of course, not in these colors or in this motion of life, but it made the most sense now, difficult as it was for his tiny brain to process.

            He’d begun shrinking in his family’s kitchen by instantly reducing to less than an inch in height, and from there had lost his stature with great speed, watching the world continually double in size around him. It was conceivable now, if the pattern continued, that he’d simply shrunk down below a size even perceptible to the human eye. That he was now watching molecules, atoms, maybe even objects smaller than that revolving like planets in a space so tight that a mere microbe represented the entire universe.
            “Hello?” the boy said into the void. His voice barely registered in his own skull, let alone amongst the endless array of rings and spheres.

            Alex trembled. He opened his mouth, wanting to scream, but couldn’t quite convince his vocal cords to function. Instead, he opened his eyes wider and allowed the tears to flow again down his cheeks. The boy didn’t care how childish or weak it made him feel to think: he knew in that instant, at the base of his humanity, what was required.

            He just wanted his mommy.

 

Chapter End Notes:

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