It was part of the zany new program Larissa had set for me.
She thought I was beefing up too much on top and needed to
redistribute some intensity to my legs, so I didn’t end up looking like a
‘balloon animal’ man on toothpicks. But after running so many laps maybe the
‘balloon animal’ remark was apt; my body felt weirdly rubbery, and I was wet
and slimy with briny perspiration all over. But there were countless laps still
to go.
Every lap, the room swirled in a never-ending panorama all
around me, the great glass windows of the gym gazed out to a broader room
beyond, with white walls, a door and a window to a blue sky. As the bare white
walls grew nauseatingly dull, I focused on the blue sky outside the window,
like a portal of escape, even if I never grew any closer to it.
My body grew slimier and rubberier as I went around and
around doing my laps, until I could no longer feel my arms or legs, and my neck
was too stiff to turn, my legs limp and wobbly.
As the blue outside the window darkened, the white walls
dimmed to gray, while the various pieces of gym equipment seemed to gradually
disappear from view, as my focus held on the window, and my thoughts receded in
my head until I felt like a dumb animal.
I shouldn’t have been exercising; I was sick. My mouth was
swollen and unusable like I’d had recent dental surgery. It must have been
extensive, when I tried to speak, no sounds came out, only bubbling gurgles. I
stopped moving.
The only thing left to do was sleep. I decided to close my
eyes.
—I couldn’t close my eyes.
Blurry light danced and shimmered and wiggled, my open eyes
forced to watch it for some time.
The walls were literally wavering around me. Oddly
gelatinous, but thin, soupy. The stuff wasn’t just on the walls, it filled up
the entire room, and whatever it was, I was embedded in it.
Yet, there was an expansive airspace beyond it, a space
receding into an indefinite white blur of distant walls. Not the gym, but a
room in a house – a familiar looking room, though the walls distorted and
wiggled through the slimy film covering everything.
For the first time, I didn’t deviate my path in a revolving
lap, but heading straight ahead as far as I could. A moment later, my face connected
with a hard, invisible wall, and slid along the smooth surface with a tiny
squeak. The glass window was much closer than it looked. In fact it curved
tightly around me in every direction. It was some kind of glass coffin filled
with very thin, transparent soupy jelly.
I tried to turn my head to look down at myself, but every
time I did, my entire body followed the movement. No matter where I looked, my
body was directly behind me.
The world stopped revolving as I froze in place, trying to
figure out what to do. There was a feeling of constriction at my neck, which
began to spasm. There were gashes on either side of my neck and it felt like
blood was flowing out, but there was no blood, only water.
I started moving again and the constriction eased, my mind
cleared. Bubbles issued thickly from my lips, which felt so stiff and
impotently rubbery that it honestly felt like I must have submitted myself to
some now botched facelift. Surely I hadn’t been so dumb. But I sure felt dumb,
then. It seemed I could barely retain a train of thought for more than about
three seconds.
But three seconds stretched into three minutes, to thirty
minutes. Then it seemed like an hour passed…two hours…three hours…I could no
longer be sure.
Thunderous vibrations rained down from above. There was a
storm building. So, I was outside. That was unexpected. I’d had the instinctual
sense of being inside, but it occurred to me I’d never actually seen the
ceiling.
Maybe if I
re-oriented my propulsion I could actually get somewhere. Instead of travelling
horizontally I angled myself vertically, travelling up, and up – there actually
was a white ceiling after all – but suddenly, to my shock, I broke through an
invisible soupy surface, and unable to control myself anymore, flipped right
around back into it.
There was
noise, muffled thudding sounds. The airspace vibrated with each thud –but too
thick and slippery to be air.
A giant
pair of bare feet crashed down next to me, but somehow slightly below where the
floor should have been. Or I was floating slightly above the floor.
The feet
were attached to a lofty pair of bare legs that folded down, bringing into
sight a torso that canopied just overhead, crouched, long strands of hair being
pushed back over the shoulders as the looming head turned down.
She gazed
in at me through the wavery filter.
I continued to lap around the glass, but becoming unsettled
as her eyes followed me. A thrill went through my spine, but weirdly, somehow
bypassing my neck entirely, with no gap.
Her long nails came in at either side, shoveling in beneath
until the floor had been replaced with the inside palms of her hands as she
scooped up my globular space and lifted it up. Her head bowed and her lips met the glass window and squished up in a flattened imprint. An
affectionate gesture, but I glared back; paranoidly convinced she was mocking
me somehow.
Like a
compulsive habit, I gulped the thin, bland soup into my mouth only for it to
gush out of my neck again.
The space all
around me jittered as a nail tapped the curving glass panel again to get my
attention, and I looked before I could help it.
She
puckered her lips at me again, and then smirked. It wasn’t affectionate or
flirtatious, I realized in dismay. She was making fun of me, I was sure of it.
My own unworkeable mouth was a rubbery pout and mimicry was her weapon of
choice. She was trying to tell me what I stubbornly refused to see.
Trying not
to let my agitation show, I started going around again, faster, so many rapid
revolutions I should have been running a trench into the ground by now, but
there was no ground anymore, only water, ahead and behind, up and down.
Her
attention followed me, now with the Zenlike patience I no longer enjoyed. She
was prepared to wait for a very long time.
I tried to
fly up out of the glass again, but, once over the surface my body transformed
in an instant to a leaden stone, flipping and dropping back into the warm,
calming soup. Except it was not so calming anymore.
Outside,
she watched with satisfaction, knowing what I had intended – and failed – to
do, and that I was getting closer to submitting to this reality.
There was
no escape.
Now, one
hand slid up from beneath the glass as she extended a finger overhead, dipped a
finger in the water and was swirling it around, tracking me.
My eyes boggled, I swam faster.
The finger pursued, matching my speed.
I twisted around and went the opposite way. The finger
effortlessly went with me.
In a panic I twisted around again but bonked my face into
the globular window. My body compressed for an instant like it was made of
rubber.
Something snatched my floppy, flexible legs and dragged me
backwards before retreating.
Then the finger appeared on the other side of the glass,
dripping wet.
I halted, the gashes in my neck started to flap in building
agitation as she raised the dripping hand to her mouth and, keeping her calmly
eyes locked on mine the whole time, plunging the extended wet finger deep into
her mouth, wrapping her lips around it and slowly withdrawing it again.
I began to circle again, blindly, madly, my eyes practically
rolling in the sockets as the water jiggled around me with her booming
laughter…
Both palms pressed on either side of the window, the fingers
spanning around the glass. The room started wobbling all over the place, knocking
me off balance. Actually, the room was still, my enclosure was listing back and
forth as the globe window was slid along the floor, being drawn into her as the
powerful thighs spread, framing the window on either side and pressing in
tightly, clamping it between.
A hand was outstretched over my head, fingers twitching with
preparation. Each of the fingertips were armed with its own sharp blade tip,
against which my soft, rubbery body had no defence.
The fan of fingertips parted the water, paddling it like a
series of oars, creating eddies in that swirled me upside down. As I flippered
around to right myself, the oars swept in and collected my tiny body in one
deft snatch.
The water broke over my face, casting me into a world that
was chill and airy. The fist enclosing me was like a tight barrel, only my face
visible. Before I knew what was happening, the fist was subjecting my body to a
series of firm pumps as if examining my organs. Her thumb dug into my soft
underbelly while her first two fingers clamped against my spine, while I
twitched, helplessly suspended just below her face.
Even as I knew what was going to come next she was content
to play with me, drawing it out, distracting herself with a game of trying to
elicit from me increasingly desperate reactions for her own amusement.
Unable to speak, my mouth could only open in a silent plea
for mercy.
Rather than mercy, there was instead there was a shattering
pressure around my middle as she pinched my body to see how supple I was,
sending water dribbling out of my mouth. She spluttered with accidental
laughter, and then mimicked my face with puckered lips, which fluidly turned
into a kiss as my mouth was impulsively mashed against hers. As I was drawn
away from her face again, she tickled my lips with the tip of her tongue.
The flat ridges of a pinky fingerprint began to grind back
and forth against my puffed up lips, calmly investigating the soft rubbery
texture. Every fiber of my being willed my non-existent eyelids to shield my
eyes from the razor nail tip flashing in front of my face.
She made a gesture at me then: pointing at me and then
pushing her nail against the inside of her cheek like a hook.
My stomach plummeted into what seemed like my feet, only I
couldn’t feel my feet anymore, but a floppy tail.
She finally decided she’d had enough teasing. A finger
summarily tapped my forehead – or, lacking a forehead, above my eyes – as if to
say ‘so long, little buddy’
Her face
grew bigger and bigger as I was brought closer until it loomed oppressively
large, crowding out every other part of the featureless background behind it.
She pouted
her lips one final time, not to mock me this time, but to apply them against my
own lips and suck my face with relish. It was not flirtatious but hungry, keen
to satisfy only the base instinct to consume – with my body, as squishy and
defenceless as a bath toy, lined up to provide the raw material for
satisfaction.
Unable to
turn my head away because I had no neck, I helplessly as my tiny rubbery body
was smacked and tugged by the flexion of her cheek muscles. Worse, having no
eyelids, my eyeballs were forced to endure the queasy intimacy of her bumpy wet
tongue’s passage as more and more of my head was sucked into her mouth, which
stung with her hot breath steamed against my delicate scaled skin.
The rubbery
ring made by her tight lips slid down my body as more of me was pulled into her
mouth, drawing my body inwards like a pressure sleeve as it went. As my tail
entered her mouth, her lips snapped shut behind me, throwing me in pitch
darkness. My soft weight triggered her tongue to automatically form a curving
slide which sent me inescapably towards the plummeting tunnel of her throat. A
pulpy extension – the uvula – struck my head as I went sliding on through darkness,
something else wet and spongy banged into my eye – one of her tonsils – while
puddles of saliva swished back and forth over my face, some of it dribbling
between my lips, and lacking water, I desperately sucked it into my mouth for
respiration.
My head
breached her throat and became caught for an instant. Then the muscular throat
walls responded by narrowing in a single crushing blow, so fast it winded me.
Dislodged, I became giddily weightless, shooting down and down—
Aaaaaargh!”
I wailed into the night, and the pitch of my voice must have
shifted up so high it made a dog bark out the bedroom window. Once the dog
noise settled, there was the low thrum of churning air driven by the fan of a
ventilation unit outside.
I was sweating under the blanket, and the orientation of the
room jarred me until I remembered where I was. Slate gray bedroom walls
surrounded me at every side. It was grainy and charcoal out the window, but
judging by the stirring traffic and street noises, probably not for much
longer.
My phone lay on the bedside table; if I was normal size I
could have reached over and checked the time, but I was too small and couldn’t
be bothered clambering up to look. Next to the phone, a tank-size can of
Kolade.
That was the culprit. For some reason that bubbly mocha trash
made my dreams ultra-realistic and bizarre.
Breathing heard and wiping the sweat from my brow, I turned
over and went back to sleep.