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.