The Descent

Anticipation

A swamplike atmosphere surrounds me as I wake up dizzily. My flashlight lies in front of my face in a water stain and is illuminating the surrounding. I can hear many strange noises. Apart from them I can identify a human voice mumbling in a grumpy tone. I don’t get this! Where am I? And… how did I get here? I should stay away from coffee machines…

Chapter I – Anomaly

We were on a trip to the next town for a diving adventure in an old shut down event complex. There was an old concert hall completely rebuild on the inside and filled with water. It was really huge. It was big enough to fit a whole lake in it. I did not know her for very long. But she was fun, and the summer has just begun. We were both complete beginners. I can’t tell who of us was more exited, about how it would be to breathe under water.

Some people would consider her as unfunny because her humor is limited to things most people don’t like but I liked especially that. I saw her smiling more often when she was alone with me; and it’s a very charismatic smile. Her teeth are, let’s say, individually and a bit asymmetric. Don’t get me wrong. For me, asymmetry is a deviation from perfection, and this has an impact to our perception of beauty. On everyone. On her right side she had one catchy, sharp canine that caught every third of my gazes. Her eyes had this piercing glance constantly trying to eat me up. Not to mention her clear mindset and her self-assured horselaugh, hahaha.

Everything about her made my stomach fly and my heart flutter. But I stayed cool and tried not to lose grip of my feelings too early. Anyways, I never thought I was good enough for her or that we could fit well together. It was all about that day then. And while we were enjoying our chat in the train, I already imagined ourselves in these super-hot, super tight, black diver's suit. I already knew I look absolutely alluring in these.

We finally arrived at the concert area and signed that we are healthy and fit for the dive. We were about to descent roughly 10 meters which was a very decent aim for complete beginners. We got us two suits from the lockers and went straight to the flooded concert hall. I remember her teasing me: "Until you have dressed up, I will have already found the hidden treasure in the lost wreck on the bottom of the hall, hahaa! Come on, what’cha waiting for?!"

To make this clear, I wasn't that much slower than her dressing up. No need to rush, alright? I know she loves making fun of me and confusing me. She flirtingly pierced me with her finger into my lateral abdomen and smiled. Her words still echo in my ears, now: “Ahaa... What do we have here? Someone looks extremely delicious… without company I could not resist to enjoy a snack like that.” Obviously, we had the same taste concerning skin-tight fashion. I think I answered very concentrated and curiously, very brisk: “You look hot, too. But let’s stay professional before getting interwoven. What we are about to do, I mean diving, can become extremely dangerous and life threatening. Anyways, eating me up won’t happen so fast as long as I am a swifter swimmer.” Assumingly, this was more than an invitation to a comical challenge for her. “Haha, let’s see!” she countered smiling. I was expected about to find out.

The hall was so vast every word echoed at least twice. We sat on the edge to the water. There was also a stair to slowly ease into the ice-cold fluid but we were the tough tyros. Nevertheless, we were not tough enough to dive alone. Each of us had one coach. They showed us the basic diver's hand signals, then we jumped in simultaneously.

It was colder than I thought. We smiled at each other. Then we left the surface and descended into the dark cold depth. Below us were roughly 15 metres of unknown and one could not see the ground. It was not easy to ease into the feeling to breathe under fucking water although you know that scuba-gear is of course fully waterproof and of course not a new technology. Your own mind has to come to the feeling that it is okay to be surrounded by millions of tons of matter.

Due to problems with pressure equalization and the overall uncommon situation, it took a while to reach 5 meters of depth. Halfway there. We both signaled O.K. A circle formed with thumb and pointing finger. We wanted to continue.

Suddenly after we continued our journey into the darkness, a super bright flash hit my eyes and I was completely lost when my eyes came back to normal after several seconds. Something was different. The walls of the hall changed in a strange way. Everything seemed so warped. Perhaps… bigger? My coach stayed close to me and was a very nervous. But he did not seem to be surprised. His hasty views were more like "Fuck… something went a bit wrong!"

Where was she? I turned my head toward the position where I thought I saw her the last time. But something very strange was hazily coming closer to us from that direction. The object was blurred. This is very common under water but can only occur if you have several tens of meters between you and the object. It was something very very big. And it was getting bigger.

As it continuously approaches I came to recognize a face. The face was covered by goggles. But the outlines of the cheeks... reminded me of her face. Her unique glance through the goggles stroke me into a condition of joy... and confusion. It was her... ! Just... a hundred times larger!!!

When she was clearly visible for us, she spilled out her respirator to open her mouth wide open, like a subsea predator. My heart felt like it has stopped beating in this moment. “When will she stop coming closer?” I wondered. She was not stopping. She was heading for us. And her mouth was opened on purpose. Her speed was beyond our capabilities. We went into freeze mode since there was no reason to try to avoid her. We were finished. Her gigantic lips and teeth approached, and her mouth entirely engulfed me and the coach alive.

A moment later: Darkness. A rhythmic and dull background-beat traveled around us. The coach lighted up his waterproof bulb. We were floating inside of her mouth. As if we were inside a blue whale’s mouth. But it was a woman's mouth. Her wobbling tongue was like a heavy carpet below us. It lay there, peacefully. But in every moment capable to crush us into bits and pieces. All around us were hasty moving walls of flesh. Strained and relaxed tissue alike. The size of her two mouth-raphes (the pterygomandibular raphes) on the left and right side, connecting her jaw muscles, expanded over my whole height. Together with her enormous sharp and strong teeth towering above us, these ligaments explained the danger her mouth posed to us. We were trapped. There was no way to move her teeth. The only way out was sealed by her will. The only safe way out…

And these white polished rocks were almost as big as me! But these weren’t rocks, they were teeth! I could not believe it as I stare around her whole set of teeth. Her incisors, her canines and her molars! I still could not believe what was happening. Was it a dream? Her mouth started to get excited. We were constantly nudged from left to right, up and down. No chance to gain control over the situation in any way.

She put her respirator in her mouth again and pushed out the water. It did not suck us out of her mouth, and we were finally able to breath without our masks. "What the fuck is your girlfriend doing here?" "We’re not coupled!! And I think she thought we were in trouble and wants to help us. Maybe this is kind of strange, but we can actually breathe here. And that’s fine” The nudging decreased but it was still shaky. “I feel a lot safer in her mouth. I mean I know her… what could actually happen, man? Do you want to be out there? In a super huge hall of water with all these huge fish? Well they became huge when we..." "Shut up! She has no idea what she is doing!" He interrupted me with a verbal explosion of anger and a slight slip of tongue. He knows more than I do... And it seemed something was supposed to be different.

Then, a sudden movement behind us spooked the hell out of us! The coach lighted it up: The vast walls of her closed rear mouth revealed her threatening, terrifying throat arch. The opening of her throat was followed by some kind of fluid or pressure balancing, gargling sound from her neck. This was happening so slowly, but it was so overwhelming that we were still like frozen. The real threat came to us as a sucking windy suction forced us in the direction of her pharynx. We fell on her rough tongue and tried to find some grip. She inhaled! Her lungs were so powerful! We were almost sucked into her chest! Only by their expansion, a necessary body function. Since her lungs are connected to the automatic nervous system, it was not even her will to suck us in. It just happened, only because we were inside of her jaws! The suction stopped. It was still again. Still lying on my stomach, I stretched my neck to look up to her open throat as the sucked air came back. Her uvula was lifted by the warm storm. The moist air misted up my goggles. To see something again I needed to pull them up on my forehead. The inhaling and exhaling repeated. Due to the fear of being sucked in, we both did not dare to stand up. I tried to sit down and proceed backwards. But I did not want to come to close to the respirator as well! Because my nose wasn’t covered by the googles anymore, I was now able to smell. I liked her body odor, even when I was laying in her mouth and blown by her inner warmth.

Her tongue suddenly lifted and tilted so we fell to the back most of her mouth! Different than before, both of us jumped up before her throat shoved everything near it down. It was so close! We were able to evade being swallowed by a hair’s breadth!

Even though I had already lost sympathy for him; in that very moment we stared into each other’s eyes with pure fear. We felt a shivering groaning from her throat. “I think… she is annoyed that she did not swallow us.” He said. More water came in from between her lips and flowed straight to the back of her mouth.

And he was proven right: The masses immediately snatched him off his feet while I was holding on between her moist inside cheeks and her solid molars. I attached my hands to her raphe ligaments. It was like a ghostly storm on the high seas. The water tips around her mouth and the light bulb flashed hectically around like lightnings from the sky. Like an emerging sea monster her throat slowly opened and revealed her uvula. The drop-shaped monster constantly vanished in the darkness when it was not illuminated.

In a consequence of the opening, gravity swept him away, down into the grim abysses of her ravening throat. One reflexive movement of her soft palate was enough for the darkness to swallow the beams of light. And so was he.