The internal battle that had been going on in Ralph’s mind ever since his friend had laid out his idea for a ‘glorious last stand’ was an intense one. On the one hand, he didn’t understand how Caleb could just be so willing to go into his death- and a humiliating, painful, disgusting death at that- without at least first trying to find some way out of this. He also didn’t see how his friends could legitimately back such depressing insanity. Did they really want to die in the churning soup of Miss Blaine’s stomach? Could they seriously see no other option? He thought it madness to just accept the fact that she would eat them and allow her to without a struggle.

On the other hand, he knew Caleb, he trusted Caleb, and he was loyal to Caleb. He was their leader, and part of Ralph truly believed that if death was truly the inevitability he saw it as, then he must be right. After all, he surmised, Caleb was rarely wrong when it came to tough decisions. He didn’t understand how letting their giant teacher do as she pleased to them would be one last kick in the teeth to her, but seeing Caleb’s confidence and his mockery of Miss Blaine even at the minute proportions they were, he thought he had an idea of it. Though the survival instinct still gnawed at him, and gnawed at him hard, he had made his mind up, or so he thought. He would follow Caleb to the ends of the earth if he had to.

Then, Miss Blaine had outlined her plan for his demise.

He had, like all the others, listened intently as the ominious rumble of her belly resounded across the desk, and grown uneasy again. Then, he had seen her tongue slide across her lips again, her voice stating how ‘deliciously bite-sized’ they all looked, and had felt the fear rising again in his body. But the straw that broke the camels’ back was watching her lean towards them, this mountainous titan of flesh and bosom and cavern-like jaws, and seeing said mouth right in front of them, articulating in soft tones the way she was going to torture them, torture him, and then swallow them like so much food before them. And Ralph snapped. He couldn’t let her dump them in her giant, disgusting maw and eat him like a sweet. His fear won out, and all rational thinking stopped. Fight or flight kicked in, and looking at the woman whose very spittle was at present being sprayed onto him, whose awful breath was buffeting him like a gale, the short, stocky boy decided then and there to make a run for it. While he still could.

He ran, faster than he ever felt like he had before, away from the voracious monster that had been his philosophy teacher and to God knows where. He didn’t know where he was going, or how to escape the desk for that matter; he only knew that he had to get away from her, and if he didn’t he would be on a whistle-stop tour straight to her stomach. Soon, he was puffing and panting, cursing his short body; Harry was the athlete, he’d always been the fighter. The desk seemed endless, and he could feel himself slowing down; no matter how hard he pushed, he was beginning to get exhausted. He hadn’t been paying attention to anything else, just his own escape, but it was hard to blot out the deific voice of Miss Blaine around him as she saw his desperate attempt.

“Looks like we have her first volunteer!”

That did it. Fear surged through him in the form of adrenaline and he pushed his body through the pain into a sprint once more. Eyes wide, face red, and heart going at breakneck speed, Ralph kept running for his life, knowing that now the chase was on.

He wouldn’t look behind him- he refused to, preferring instead to keep his eyes on the goal, the edge of the desk that now finally seemed to be closer. Had he looked, he would have seen roughly the view that Caleb had seen from his chair upon first encountering Miss Blaine at her new massive stature. Her eyes twinkled with glee, her grin almost a radiant beam if it weren’t for the malicious nature of it, and her giant, grasping hand leisurely sailing through the air at almost imaginable speeds towards the terrified speck she was watching try a futile attempt to escape her. It extended past Caleb and the others, who could only watch in despair and horror at their friends’ plight, before finally coming to hover over Ralph, who through his hazy, tear-filled vision saw his world cast into shadow.

“No!” He refused to believe his time was up, urged himself to keep running out of the shadow of the deadly embrace of the hand he knew was about to descend upon him. In those few seconds, he saw hope as he managed to clear the shadow, get back into the light and towards the edge of the desk, the gap between him and it closing fast. He allowed himself to believe, hoping against hope, that he had outrun her, that he was about to escape the plain of the desk and find a more secluded space to hide. Unfortunately, if he had been thinking logically, or even merely looked above him, he would have realised that Miss Blaine was just playing games with him. Just as he was about to make it to his salvation, he felt a slight windfall directly behind him, and then..

BANG!!

Miss Blaine’s hand, which had stopped to hover over him out of its owners’ desire to terrify her little snack, had balled into a fist and slammed with unimaginable speed down onto the desk. The result of this was immediate and chaotic; the force of such a large object moving so quickly and hitting the hard surface caused a shockwave like an earthquake to resonate across the table. Such power did the impact have that the resultant shock even made the four spectators, who had watched in silent awe and horror when her giant fist had moved at speeds they couldn’t even comprehend for something that large, tumble onto their arses from halfway across the desk. Ralph, being essentially at the epicentre of the quake, was subject to far worse. He was immediately launched into the air, not awfully high but high enough for him to sustain injury, and fell with a scream back onto the hard surface of the desk. He landed badly, on his front, and a searing pain shot through his ribs and pelvis. Tears filled his eyes, and he could tell that from the pain, he had probably at least cracked a few of his ribs, at worst broken them. Tears now filling his eyes fully, he looked around at the cause of his injury, and saw the balled up, chubby fingers and thumb towering above his prone form, having done its job perfectly.

“Perfect,” came the pleased-sounding voice once again, knowing her prey was now subdued. “Now, come here, you little treat…”

Despite the burning pain in his chest and the aches now all over his exhausted body, Ralph tried to keep moving. Unable to stand, he tried to scrabble forward on his forearms, dragging his tired out body along in a last ditch attempt to clear the desk. Try as he might, however, his time was up, and he felt the warm tips of Miss Blaine’s fingers clamp around his left leg. Refusing even then to give up, he frantically kept trying to crawl forward, twisting and writhing to free his grasped leg, but found himself being dragged backwards like a mouse in the jaws of a snake. Squeal like a mouse he did as he gained speed and was finally lifted off of the ground, left dangling by his leg in open air while the world went by in a blur around him. Eventually he found himself stopping, and the upside-down classroom came into focus. He knew where he was, and much as he didn’t want to see it he felt the sharp twist on his leg bring his body around to face it. He was dangling upside-down in front of Miss Blaine’s enormous, grinning face, and he knew that there was now no escape from being tossed into those yellow, horrifying jaws. Her girlish giggling echoed all around him as he felt the blood rushing to his head.

“So, who’s do we have here, then…?” The huge eyes narrowed as his captor tried to focus on his tiny, dangling body. “Ah, I see you now, Ralph. Caleb’s little bodyguard. Of course it’d be you; you’re the only one stupid enough to think running away from me would actually work.” She laughed cruelly, the laughter all around him only making him feel more self-conscious. He knew he wasn’t that smart; he rarely understood much of what Miss Blaine had been teaching; but his friends had always made him feel as if that didn’t matter. Now, this giant bitch was making him feel smaller than he already was, and amidst the fear his self-confidence sprang up anew.

“Says the one who can only deal with us by shrinking us to size!” he heard Caleb roar up at her. Even at this size, and even after Ralph had betrayed him by running, he was still looking out for him. In the corner of his mind, he realised what Caleb was saying before had been right; if he was to die today, he felt glad to be going out with such great friends as them. He didn’t deserve it.

Miss Blaine ignored his friend’s insults, too fixated on her prey to care. “Oh well, at least you’ll be some useful calories… and I always did like fast food.” Laughing at her own bad joke, she lowered him down slightly, past her nose and in front of her ominous lips. A hint of a tongue poked out from within, like the tip of an iceberg floating on the sea. “Speaking of…I hardly think it’s fair that I’m going to eat you without you at least seeing where you’re going. Don’t you think?”

Ralph stayed silent, rendered speechless by the thought of what he knew was coming. She continued, unphased.

“Oh, come on now, Ralph, don’t go shy on me now. You were always so loud in class, joking around and backing up your leader like the imbecile sycophant you are. Well, I suppose I don’t need to show my food where it’s going… but it is fun torturing you like this.” More giggling ensued. Miss Blaine formed her lips into an ‘o’ shape and started blowing on him gently, the cold air making him twirl around like a leaf in the wind and shiver somewhat, naked as he was. “Guess that’s decided, then. I was always taught not to play with my food, but I think this is a special exception…”

Ralph found himself being dangled ever closer to her lips as they came apart from each other, the narrow ravine slowly growing wider until it was a yawning chasm before him. Her yellow incisors and canines for the first time he had seen parted like gates, revealing the horrors within. As her mouth gaped wider and wider, he was hit by a hot, damp, stinking blanket of air, escaping the chamber it had been confined in and enveloping him in the thick, cloying atmosphere of Miss Blaine’s mouth. Within her mouth, he could see all of her molars marching back into the steamy, dark depths of the back of her maw, yellow boulders that framed the fleshy cavern and the darkness of her throat beyond it. In the middle of it all, her pink, sluggish tongue, glistening with saliva in the light now flooding into the pungent cave, dominated her mouth, slowly moving like a beast all unto itself. The saliva was everywhere; it glistened on her teeth, her cheeks, her tongue; it formed silvery strands that criss-crossed her mouth from her tongue to the smooth, red roof of her upper palate; and a huge lake of it had pooled in the bottom of her mouth, making her tongue look all the more like some disgusting alien swamp creature. To top the horrifying scene off, her saliva production had produced so much that it actually overflowed, a steady stream of spit escaping over her lips and slowly descending to pool on the table below. She’s actually so eager to eat us that she’s drooling, Ralph noted in horror and disgust. Like we’re the sweetest chocolate out there. He shuddered, despite the oppressive, swamp-like heat he was bathed in.

“Lah wa eu hee?” the great abyss before him garbled, saliva flying like rain and the stinking air gusting past him in a gale of rank breath. He certainly didn’t like what he saw. He was absolutely petrified of the horror he saw and smelled and felt before him, all the more so because he knew he was to end up in that hellish pit. As before, though, he didn’t answer, instead opting to continue to gawp at what he was seeing numbly. The great voice rumbled from within once more.

“I ring I wan a lihl athe…”

He didn’t understand the garbled gibberish he had just heard, from the great vocal chords he was so close to that the sound made his ears hurt. What he did immediately understand though was her intentions. Her tongue, previously docile, came to life, slithering up over her teeth and lips like a serpent before reaching out towards him. Ralph closed his eyes as it advanced towards him, shuddering profusely as the slimy tip of the muscle touched his feet and took his lower legs into its warm, slimy embrace. From there, as it had with her lips, the inquisitive muscle dragged its way up his body, dragging across his face and leaving a sheen of foul-smelling goo across his entire body. It immediately got into his nose and mouth, and he spit and gagged at the taste. Too soon the tongue was back for another assault, the rough taste buds dragging against his skin under the coat of saliva that gave the muscle its sliminess that made him cringe so. Mercifully, after two licks the beast retreated into her mouth, which closed up again, a smile on his colossal teacher’s face.

“For a useless pest of a student, you taste pretty good,” she said to him, matter-of-factly. “A little salty, but that’s to be expected from all the sweat. The other tastes, though… they’re just…” she dropped her voice almost to a whisper, “indescribable.” The grin returned. “Ooh, I bet you’d be really chewy, that fat little body of yours. All the flavour… it’s making me salivate even more just thinking about it. I could just eat you up right now… but no. If you’re going into my digestive tract, you’re getting the grand entrance. I’ve just got to think…”

Ralph could only begin to imagine all the horrifying ways Miss Blaine could have sent him to his imprisonment in her awful jaws. He could see, far to vividly, her slurping him up like pasta; he could see her tearing his limbs off one by one with her teeth; he could see her lowering him slowly into the horrifying pit, watching her excitement to finally send him down her gullet. But, in the event, none of those horrifying visions became a reality, as Miss Blaine was suddenly interrupted from her torturous teasing- by her own belly, grumbling and gurgling like a boiling stew.

In that moment, he could see from the lighting up of her eyes, still high above him considering his proximity to her face, that she didn’t need to think about it. Her belly had made her decision for her.

“Of course…” she mumbled, “…I don’t have to make it all slow and fancy. I am pretty hungry…. So why don’t we just… send you down the hatch! “

It all happened in an instant. Suddenly, he felt her fingers pull violently on his leg, dislocating his leg in the process. Like a ragdoll he was pulled upwards, and at the apex of his ascent he felt her fingers let go, sending him flying into the air. The room once again blurred around him as he shot like a rocket into the sky, doing aerial somersaults and climbing ever higher. Eventually, he reached the apex of his climb, and for a split second he was neither climbing nor falling in the air. In the same split second, he looked down, and saw the twinkling eyes, the brown hair thrown back over her head, exposing her bare forehead, the almost petite button nose- and most of all, the yawning, gaping abyss of Miss Blaine’s open maw far, far below him.

In that moment, he screamed for all he was worth.

Then, he was falling, back down to earth like so many raindrops, seeing the red, slimy abyss get closer and closer….

Snap.

Another instant went by, and all went gloomy and dark as her mouth closed again, the sound of her teeth closing resounding through the cave and leaving him careering down her slippery tongue like a slip n’ slide. He thought he would be funnelled straight into her gullet on a straight journey to her belly, but his momentum was quickly stopped by her tongue, which pressed him hard against her slimy hard palate. As it lowered again, Ralph finally looked around him, and the horrors he had just experienced were made only all the worse.

The yellowed, grimy walls of her teeth were only all the more petrifying when viewed from the inside. In the gloom, the saliva that covered everything no longer glistened, but he could still tell it was everywhere- including a copious amount on himself. The air, awful enough simply being subjected to it outside of her mouth, was unbearable within; the swamp-like, steamy atmosphere was made all the more unbreathable by the fact that much of the oxygen had already been leached by her powerful lungs, leaving it thick and cloying. The horrible stench of her breath, too, was only amplified within the hellish environment, and Ralph could now smell the decaying reek of whatever she had eaten for lunch added to the putrid mix of tea and general halitosis. There was no escape now; he knew that, and he was terrified of what was inevitably going to happen next.

It’s over. She’s gonna swallow me whole, and I’m gonna die in her stomach. Eaten by my philosophy teacher, what a way to go. He closed his tear-filled eyes, trembling and tearful, and waited for the sound of her gulp, any mocking final messages before he was consigned to the depths of her body.

Miss Blaine, however, wasn’t done.

Ralph found himself being suddenly pulled around her mouth by her monstrous tongue, its inquisitive nature knowing no bounds of privacy. He was sucked upon and pressed into her palate and cheeks, screaming all the while. Saliva flew around in a torrent of disgusting slime, getting him ever more thoroughly coated in her rank oral secretion. Over it all, the moans of satisfaction reverberated through the cavern, making his ears burn in pain and his whole body vibrate from the rumbling, blasting moan of pleasure. He was battered, he was bruised, he could barely breathe, and the pain in his chest and leg was blindingly awful- only made worse when she sucked on him like a boiled sweet. He didn’t even have the energy to scream after a while; he just wanted the horror and the humiliation of being a snack for his sociopathic, revenge-mad teacher, literally being used as a human gumball, to end, and let him be at piece.

He didn’t realise she had deposited him on her teeth until he felt the diamond-hard, bumpy surface of her grimy molar on top of him. The pressure built almost instantly; on his torso, his legs, his arms, his head; and the pain increased exponentially until, in one instantaneous searing, excruciating stab of pain he felt his tiny, battered body explode into crushed bones and viscera, and his only, last thoughts were of pain, terrible, blinding pain. The next instant, everything had gone black.

In a horrible, sickening crunch, one of the five members of the gang was no more.