When Cece finally left for school the next morning, she had five tinies acting as jewelry pinned across her body.

Talia heard everything Cece heard, her body attached to the young teen’s earlobe due to what was— at her height— a large metal spike poking through her body. The chatter around her was muffled by the silk blonde hair in front of her, but that changed when Cece sat down and cupped her hand around her ear to show off her new earring. 

Talia was weary, worn out from the long night of screaming organs and her burning stitches, but her defeated body didn’t make the young girl sitting next to Cece smile any less.

“No way, it's so cute!” The girl reached her large finger over and brushed it down the length of the pearl pinning Talia to the earlobe. This caused the spike in her to jiggle, but nothing could threaten her stitches enough to make them tear. 

“I know, isn’t she just the best, Angie?” Cece rang. Her ear moved, tilted back from the growing smile on her face. 

“I’m literally obsessed.” Angie pulled her finger back, giving Talia a perfect view of the large gaps in some of her teeth. 

“Right!” Cece’s smirked widened. “Check this one out.” The giant’s head pivoted, and Talia’s world turned around. First she saw the gray leather of the bus as it started moving, and then she saw a bunch of other kids sitting throughout the bus. 

Some of the kids on the bus looked as young as 12 and as old as 18, and once in a while any one of them might look over at Talia stuck to Cece’s ear or snap a picture of her on their phone.

Talia frowned. She was supposed to be on a bus exactly like this, only the kids were all highschoolers like her and weren’t so obnoxiously loud. This bus went in the opposite direction of her school, sending her even further away from home. 

She longed to see her mother, to apologize for all those times she yelled at her, but now it seemed like she’d never get that opportunity. Even if she managed to escape the giantess, she’d still only be a couple inches tall and she’d still have to worry about the giant spike in her gut. 

Her life was over the second she shrunk, and it ended the moment she was stabbed to Cece’s ear.

Cece finally turned back around, Angie’s innocent face beaming back at Talia. Why wasn’t Angie or any of the other kids who saw Talia helping her? They all saw her, but instead of being frightened or worried they googled her like she was some kind of… piece of jewelry. 

Talia’s current state finally sunk into her. She wasn’t considered a person anymore; not just by Cece, but by the schoolmates that surrounded her. As the bus ride went on, Talia wondered if the tears that fell down from her eyes made the pearl on her stomach sparkle. 

The bus came to a halting stop, and the sound of double doors sliding opened filled the loudening space. Damian had been unsuccessful at wiggling himself back to the front of Cece’s big toe, so when she stood up the weight of her toe weighed onto his face. 

Damian was fortunate enough to not be directly under her toe, but as Cece walked forward and off the bus Damian’s sliding body would occasionally find half of itself under the sweaty toe. 

Warm air hit Damian—as Cece was wearing flip flops— and Damian could feel Cece’s toe instantly heating up. Even though it was a short walk into the school building, the giant toe still attempted to cool itself down by secreting sweat from every pore. It rubbed into Damian as his body shifted and spun. He spit what he could out next to him, but Cece’s next step just rubbed it back into him. 

Damian had never felt so low in his entire life. His body curled around the toe, and he could look up from the top of it, yet the lower half of his view was covered and he could only see the toe. High above Damian could see the giant teen towering over him, walking on him like a portable door mat. 

From his angle, he’d never be able to tell how young Cece was if it weren’t for very specific features; such as her slightly chubby cheeks, new wave sense of fashion and the misleading innocence still in her eyes. From down below, she looked like a god. 

Things got easier for Damian when Cece finally sat down for class. He was able to breathe, and her toe cooled off enough to stop dripping sweat on him. Several minutes into class, however, Cece’s second toe began to fidget with the beads above him, spinning Damian around and moving him to the top of her toe. With the teacher’s back turned, Cece bent down and inverted the ring so that Damian’s back was resting against the toe and his body was facing upward. 

Cece stuck her foot out to the opposite end of the desk. Damian could make out chewed up wods of gum and pencil markings under the desk before he made his way fully to the otherside. It took a while before people noticed, but Damian would catch the sporadic glance from people inside the classroom. 

One girl cupped her mouth in a gasp, nudging the shoulder of another friend to look over and make fun of the tiny man trapped to Cece’s big toe. A third girl leaned over to Cece and chatted with her about the new display before the teacher yelled at them to stay quiet. Behind Cece and to the left, a boy with pimples lining his forehead stared intensely at her foot, though it was unclear how much he cared about the human toe ring on it. Damien hoped the chod in the teen’s pants wasn’t for him.

Cece lightly tapped her foot, hand raised to ask a question. “I thought you said it wasn’t due until Friday?” Damian’s body shook with the beads as her foot rose and dropped again. His heart pounded, afraid of accidentally sliding over and being crushed flat under her toe. His fear only made the minutes tick by slower, making the hour and a half long class feel more like several days. 

By the end of the second period, Cece’s stomach began rumbling like a jet engine. While barely audible to most, Stanly heard it clearer than Cece herself had. In addition to the rumble of her stomach, there were the sounds of stomach acids shifting inside her gut, food pressing up against the slimy walls that trickled and belched, and when all other sounds were vacant Stanly could hear Cece’s proud heartbeat. It was calm and stead, much unlike Stanly’s own.

The skin he rested on was smooth and soft, though sweaty and moist. He was suspended by a hook that punctured between his rib cage, holding him up in the giant girl’s belly button. It wasn’t so bad; he didn’t poke out far enough to be dangled by gravity, so he could keep his feet firmly planted on the bottom of Cece’s slippery belly button. While listening to the sounds of her digesting food, he’d forget about the constant pain his chest was in, or the humility of his situation. 

The worst of it came when Cece grew bored in class. She couldn’t be seen playing with her earring, nor was it entertaining to continually bully the girl drowning in her mouth, but she could secretly poke and twirl tiny Stanly trapped in her belly. She’d use her fingers to squeeze him through her shirt, spin him around and press him deeper into her belly button. Each time she did that, he was pressed against the hook and he slammed to the back of her belly button and was lathered in its sweat. It hurt just as much as it was humiliating, but he liked being acknowledged. There were points where he believed he was being left for dead, but it brought Stanly comfort knowing that he was at least providing some use for her. 

Walking was hard for him, since the ring was a little loose and he’d end up swaying back and forth. This would cause the hook inside of him to slam against either end of his rib cage, sending Stanly into a coughing fit until Cece finally sat back down. Breathing hurt, too, his damaged lungs finding it difficult to expand and contract, but the soothing sounds of Cece’s heartbeat always brought him peace.

Stanly had a different point of view of Cece than the other tinies did. He knew she wasn’t a total monster— no heartbeat that soft could belong to somebody entirely evil. Stanly remembered what it was like being a teenager, too. Hearing Cece’s muffled voice through her shirt talking about gossip or tv shows sent him back to his days as a youth. His teen years used to seem so close, but now that he was reeling towards the end of his life, those days seemed like an eternity ago. 

Stanly wondered how one girl could talk so much without saying anything important at all. Every tenth word was some iteration of “like” or “um,” and whoever she was speaking to ate up every word of it. Cece talked obnoxiously about a boy in her science class she thought was weird, or chatted about softball tryouts, or really any sort of nonsense that came to her mind about the colors of pencils or words on a poster. All the while, Stanly was beginning to heat up in his belly button, desperately wishing Cece would pay attention to him one more time before he passed out from the pain.

Even though Cece seemed to talk nonstop, Faye heard not a single word of it. 

Ironic as it was— Faye being in Cece’s mouth and all— Faye was glad she couldn’t hear any more. The first couple days as Cece’s mouth ring were excruciating. Not only was she constantly drowning in spit, being covered in acidic soda or chewed food, but the sound of her voice boomed every time she spoke, laughed, whispered or burped. Faye’s eardrums rang and bled for days until finally she couldn’t hear any more. Her days got easier after she lost her hearing, but she still questioned why she held onto life.

What was she waiting for? There was no way out of Cece’s mouth, and if she did manage to escape the spike that held her in place as Cece’s tongue ring, she’d surely bleed out. Her life would end the moment she gave up or the moment Cece took Faye out of her mouth. It was a cruel existence, reduced to a young girl’s tongue ring. 

Faye had lost all her hair a few days ago. It had already been cut short by Cece, who was trying to reduce the amount of loose hairs falling down her throat, but they had all been ripped out by the constant swishing of spit not long after Faye was trapped inside. Her skin had also been softened, the spit soaking into her flesh and wrinkling it. She couldn’t feel much anymore, but she could tell Cece’s spit was slowly dissolving her. If the plush tongue Faye laid on started to excrete any more spit that it already did, Faye would’ve died a long time ago.

The worst part of being Cece’s tongue ring— now that her sense of hearing was gone— was when Cece would play with her. Cece would press her tongue up to the roof of her mouth, grinding Faye against it. Then she would move over to the underside of her top row of teeth, pressing Faye into it so hard that her skin would cut and start to bleed. Cece liked this, and would suck up the poor ring’s blood like she would suck on a piece of candy. 

Then Cece would stick her tongue out all the way and brush Faye against her braces. Her skin would scrape and peel against the metal that was played in plaque, but luckily Faye’s skin being softened by the spit protected her from sustaining too much damage, and Cece couldn’t keep that up for long without being bored. 

Whenever Cece went to the bathroom— which she always did right before she ate lunch— she’d be sure to open her mouth and show Faye her reflection in the mirror. Faye looked nothing like her former self. Her entire body was pudgy and soft, her skin covered in cuts and marks. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut because of inflation, and she was paler than she ever had been before. Cece wouldn’t say anything as she did this, instead holding her mouth open and until some passer byer would compliment her on her tongue ring. She’d thank them, drawing her tongue back in in the process. It seemed Cece hated her tongue ring most of all, or at least tormenting was the most fun.

Faye already dreaded meal time, even if it was the only time she was able to eat anything other than spit. Cece barely drank water with her meals, meaning Faye would have to suffer through that, and it wasn’t exactly exciting eating already mashed up food; however, it was better than dying. 

Light flooded into the dark cave of Cece’s mouth, and the rim of her lips were quickly filled with a green plastic. Faye was familiar with this; Cece always drank Sprite with her lunch. A gushing waterfall of bubbly liquid flooded out of the bottle and rushed through Cece’s mouth. As it gulped down her throat, it flooded over Faye. She longed for the day she lost complete feeling in her nerves, but for now she suffered as the Sprite fizzed and burned her body. As Faye screamed, the soda entered her mouth, and she reluctantly took in the Sprite that was regrettable mixed in with Cece’s thick spit. Faye swallowed at the same time Cece took her last gulp, the sight of her screwing the cap on visible through her closing lips. 

Faye gasped a breath, trying to take it all in before the next rush inevitably came. Judging by how long Cece drank, she barely finished an eighth of the bottle, meaning there was still a lot more to go. However, before that could happen, Cece grabbed ahold of her homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Her mouth expanded, glistening spit hanging from the top of her mouth blocking Faye’s view of Cece’s friend Angie, who subsequently disappeared behind the massive sandwich. 

Cece took a bite. The full piece landed on Faye’s body. Before Faye was able to take a bite out of it, Cece’s tongue pushed it to the roof of her mouth. Faye was squished into it as the sandwich flattened, strides of peanut butter and jelly molding out of it and onto Faye’s body as the bread ripped apart. Faye licked up for it, but only got a little bit before the tongue pushed the bits to Cece’s teeth.

Faye watched as the sandwich was chewed up into little pieces, molded back together only to be ripped apart once more. Once the sandwich was chewed up enough and covered in so much spit that it looked much like Faye’s own body did, Cece moved it back onto her tongue to be swallowed. Faye was quick, and bit down on a piece of chewed up bread just as the girl swallowed. Cece sighed, relishing in the first bite of her sandwich. Steamy breath that now wreaked of peanut butter brushed over Faye as Cece reopened her mouth and took another bite. 

The sound of Cece munching down on her food was terrifying. How awful must it have been to be the person inside her mouth while she ate? She must’ve been covered in food and other excrements that degraded her a lot worse than being one of Cece’s other human rings. 

Nikki— who was on the ear opposite Talia— was supposed to be used as a replacement for Cece’s tongue ring when she died. Given that, Cece decided not to stab her with an earring like she did Talia, instead opting to tie a piece of thin string though the hole in her earlobe and tying Nikki around it. Cece spent the entire day with her hair covering her ear, only parting it to show Nikki off to a select few of her closest friends. 

Nikki was the prettiest out of any of the girls Cece had shrank, and she wanted to— to quote the devil herself— watch as all the beauty and life washed away from Nikki as she slowly dwindled away as her tongue ring. Given that, there was an extra layer of meaning to listening to the sound of Cece swallow three more gulps of her soda. 

As the day went on, Nikki was becoming more and more comfortable with being stuck to Cece’s earlobe. She didn’t experience the pain Talia or Stanly felt, since her body hadn’t been punctured by anything, so she got the best of being tied against Cece's soft earlobe. Nikki compared it to being on a long rollercoaster or thrill ride, something Nikki loved to do in her free time anyway. Cece ignored her throughout the day, instead chatting with friends and occasionally showing off the other people she displayed on her body.

Meanwhile, Damian was growing tired on Cece’s toes. The heat of her foot was getting to him, not to mention the increasingly worsening sweat. It only got worse as Cece decided to walk home with a friend instead of taking the bus. Still twisted around on the top of her toe, Damian was in clear view of the burning sun that baked his skin.

Stanly wasn’t doing much better. Being trapped behind the shirt was like being stuck in an oven, and he was in and out of consciousness to begin with. Not to mention Talia, who’s earlobe was still exposed to the beating sun that heated up the metal spike impaling her that burned her skin. Her white flesh tanned to a bright red by the time Cece got back to her home.

When she got to her room, Cece did what many of the tinies weren’t expecting. One by one, she undid all of her human rings except the one in her mouth, starting with Nikki, then Talia and Stanly and finally Damian, and deposited them all into a jewelry box before shutting the lid and sealing them in darkness.