My head is pounding. 

Noelle has shifted into her ‘you don’t really exist’ phase with me, and it wouldn’t be so bad, if she actually treated me like I didn’t exist.  The problem with this phase is that she willingly puts me in harm’s way, and then decides I don’t exist, leaving me to escape whatever situation it is on my own.  It would be easier if she left me to fend for myself the whole time.

Today is the fourth day of such treatment, and yesterday was the worst it’s ever been.  The day started with me on the kitchen table.  I believe at some point, earlier in this journal I had mentioned preferring to stay floor level, but I have found that it is better for my own safety that I avoid the floor.  I have only had a few encounters with bugs and once instance with a falling book, but Noelle’s feet were unmerciful, regardless of where I stood in her mind, as I have found out more lately than ever before.

Whatever Noelle’s profession was, she awoke promptly by alarm clock at 7:30.  This meant, for me, I was up at 7:15.  I never knew what the day would hold, so I was sure to be awake before her, and hide somewhere out of sight, so as to avoid her wrath should she want to punish me for something I may or may not be doing, but also hide close enough that if she called my name, I would be immediately available.  Taking too long to be at her fingertips was often an 8 hour sentence in a plastic cup, above the refrigerator.  You’d be surprised how well you do at setting your own body clock, when you fear for your life every morning.

As expected, Noelle was up at 7:30, and I was hiding in the assorted condiments on the table.  Salt, sugar, and pepper shakers three and four times as tall as I was threatened to flatten me, should they topple over.  I remember seeing the salt shaker on its side once.  I could just barely fit my entire arm through the little dispensing holes.  It was one of those humbling moments.

Noelle came in, dawned in her usual sleepwear; a silk robe, bra and panties, those infamous slippers.  As she passed by the counter that I stood on, I made sure to stay hidden.  I try not to think that Noelle is absent minded, as I would never think anything negative of my goddess, but it’s often hard to wager that Noelle is always considering where I may be, and what my circumstances were, and I used that knowledge often.  After a few seconds of banging around, opening of cabinets and doors, I heard Noelle set something plastic down on the cabinet, out of my view.  I couldn’t see much out of the shadow of the condiment shakers, but I knew she had to have been preparing breakfast, as usual.

I also knew that the sugar shaker, with my back against it, was the furthest forward in the group of condiments.  It was the best place to be, should the giantess decide my presence was necessary.  However, it also meant that I had less room to move with the salt and pepper immediately in front of me.  My positioning, this morning, had a potentially fatal flaw.

I never saw Noelle’s graceful hand coming.  In one swift movement, Noelle’s finger appeared around the corner of the sugar shaker, and curled around it, pinning me between the flesh of her index finger and the glass of the shaker.  I immediately began to flail and do my best to avoid her wrath, but the finger was hardly using a quarter of its mass to pin me in my place, and I was helpless, as it carried me up into the air. 

As I have mentioned numerous times before, Noelle seemed to enjoy my torment, especially when she had the pleasure of pretending that she was unaware that it was happening at her hands.  This often led to dramatic, unnecessary movement on her part, and dramatic, unnecessary stress on mine.

Before I was even give a good perspective on where I was going, my world inverted, and I heard the sound of sugar draining out of the dispenser.  It was hardly to see below me, but I could tell by the sound alone that the sugar was being poured into liquid.  Coffee, maybe?  I didn’t really care; I just wanted the blood to stop rushing to my head before I had a nose bleed. 

My wish was granted, though, as you may expect, not in the way I wanted it to.  I felt Noelle’s finger budge, and I grabbed hold of it for support, but it was too little, too late.  The finger released its grip on me, and I tumbled off of it, into a free fall.  My eyes immediately closed.  Unless Noelle decided to catch me, I was going to crack my head on the marble counter top, or suffer second degree burns from the coffee, all over my body.  Either way, life was about to suck.

And nothing sucks worse than to prepare yourself for one sensation, like being burned alive, and receive the opposite, like splashing into ice cold milk.

I immediately swam to the surface, and wiped the milk out of my eyes, only to be pelted with baseball-sized grains of sugar.  Swimming out of the way, pulled myself onto what I thought was land, only it was orange, and hard.  No questions about where I was, especially as I got my first view of the rim’s of Noelle’s deep, blue cereal bowl. 

As soon as I had made the realization, the cascade of sugar came to an end, and I got my first glance of Noelle’s sleepy looking face.  Staring down at me, like god herself (or himself, whatever the case may be), and uncaringly reaching for what I assumed was a spoon.  I’d been to Noelle’s stomach once, and I knew, in the state of mind that she was in now, another trip there would be one way. 

“Goddess!  Noelle, please help me!”  I called out to her, half heartedly.  But this was the third day that Noelle had refused to acknowledge me; it was unlikely that it would change now.  Her only response was to yawn, her soft, unpainted lips parting to reveal the inside of that terrible cave of destruction beyond, shrouded in darkness, other than the pearl white teeth that protected it.

She knew I was here, I knew that I was an inch tall, which was roughly the same size, or bigger than every corn flake that I found myself sitting on in the hungry giant woman’s bowl.  Noelle had worn reading glasses before, but there was no way she wouldn’t see a tiny man scrambling to the edge of her bowl across a pile of Corn Flakes.

“Oh, oops…”  I heard her say, and as I half crawled, half swam through the bowl, I glanced up, hopeful that her ‘oops’ was forgetting to rescue me before dining.  I was not so lucky.   As Noelle stepped away, my heart sank.  However, when she returned, I don’t think my heart could have fallen any harder.  One by one, I watch as she began to dice large slices of banana into the bowl. 

Yes, goddess, please add insult to injury.

The first landed on the opposite side of the bowl from me.  A little splash, no harm.  The next, however, came hurtling towards me, and it was all I could do to get out of the way.  With the Corn Flakes still mostly hard, not soggy at all, I could stay buoyant, but it wasn’t until the third landed in front of me, causing a rift between a patch of cereal, and I fell face first into the milk grabbing onto the uncooperative slice of banana to pull myself up.  I felt ridiculous, and infuriated at the same time.

It’s funny how those feelings all seemed to melt into one gigantic, emotional mess though.  It didn’t take long for there to be enough banana slices in the bowl, and Noelle stepped away for a split second, only to return with that spoon again.  This time, she sat down. 

“Goddess, please let me out!”  A benefit of the bananas was that they were more stable than the fickle Corn Flakes.  They provided more structure to the swamp like atmosphere inside the bowl, and it was easier to clamber from fruit slice to fruit slice.  Noelle had other plans though.  She had grabbed a newspaper, and set it down next to the bowl,  then slipped the spoon inside her breakfast finally, beginning to sti

It started out as a gentle spinning, nothing I could handle.  Maybe she was giving me the chance to escape?  I had confidence that if I made it to the edge of the bowl, I would be granted freedom.  With that idea in mind, I did my best to avoid trying to swim through the cereal, and stay on top of the bananas and flakes. 

Noelle must have predicted this though, because her stirring shifted from a circular motion, to a chopping motion.  In that first lift, the gigantic spoon, twice as large as me at the head, dropped through the air inches in front of me, dripping with milk. It surfaced only seconds later, tossing me off of the banana I was clinging to, and back into the milk.  I recovered quickly, and half expected a giggle from Noelle, but there was none.  She did however, continue to chop up the cereal with her spoon, and yawn again.

Finally, she grew tired of this game, and her hunger took precedence.  Her first spoonful, luckily, was far from me, and I watched as my innocent breakfast brethren were carried high into the air on that dripping, deadly spoon.  For a second, I looked further up to Noelle’s eyes, and regretted it.  Noelle hadn't even been looking at the spoon; I very well could have been on it, and she wouldn't have known. Those perfect lips separated, and the spoon delivered the passengers inside.  The spoon slipped out perfectly clean, and I heard the most terrible, devastating, crunching noise I’d ever heard from a human’s mouth.

That single chew from Noelle’s powerful jaws was enough to send me running again.  No more calling for help, it wasn’t coming.

The edge of the bowl wasn’t far.  Two bananas and five flakes away, to be precise.  I was already celebrating the joy of having solid ground under my feet, when Noelle’s spoon struck again.  It cut through the banana I was clambering over, tossing me back into the milk.  When I resurfaced, half of the banana was next to me, the other half floating off somewhere.  But there was no mistaking that cold, chilling sensation of metal under me, and as hard as I tried to fight it, that accursed banana conspired with the spoon to trap me between them and several soggy corn flakes.  I fought, I fought hard, but my energy was less than half, thanks to the chill of the milk, and the surprising heaviness of that banana slice.  Before I knew it, I was fifty feet in the air, or so it felt, and climbing. 

“Noelle!”  Another pointless scream, but I couldn’t just sit there and be devoured, could I?  As I got higher, I could feel Noelle’s breath beating down on me, and the other items chosen for her consumption.  I think she must have felt my added weight the spoon, because the ascent began to slow as we neared her face.

Passing her neck, I could see her chin bobbing gently, and higher, her lips shifting and contorting up and down.  She was still chewing that last bite, slowly and deliberately.

Nearly the same time we, as in those of us doomed to navigate Noelle’s digestive tract, arrived at Noelle’s mouth, she finished chewing, pausing our journey.  The edge of the spoon rested lightly on her lower lip, so close that I could see nothing but those warm, pouty tiers of flesh, daunting and beautiful.  As I admired them with both awe and respect, Noelle took an exaggerated swallow.  Her entire jaw shifted slightly, and the sound of her muscles pushing everything out of her mouth, and into the pit of her esophagus seemed even louder than when I had made that same journey.  I was only glad that I could not see her neck undulate with the swallow.

“Mmm.”  She uttered, loud enough that my ears throbbed, and I looked upward to see if she was looking at me, but was only greeted with the sight of her nostrils flaring, as she inhaled hard enough to send my hair whipping around my face.  For fuck’s sake, she was taunting me.

“Ahh...”  Finally, it was my turn to revisit that mouth of Those lips parted ever so softly, so slowly, so majestically, until they exposed that perfect, pink tongue.  With an intentional, methodical patience, Noelle delivered me, spoon, cereal, banana and all, into her waiting mouth.   The temperature and humidity exploded the moment we passed her teeth, each as tall as my chest.   We were set with the most precise aim onto the slick surface of her tongue, where she finally closed her mouth again, sealing us in darkness.

I heard the distinct click of her front teeth settle on the metal spoon, and it jarred me forward, just in enough time for the spoon to slide out of her mouth with a loud, high pitched scraping sound.  Her lips sealed shut, and the sound of dripping saliva from every crevice of my organic jail cell rung in my ears.

The tongue shifted…she was beginning to chew. 

Noelle…my cruel, hateful goddess…she is anything but what I thought she was.  How could I have ever worshipped her?

My hatred for her in this moment is absolutely…magnificent.

(To be continued.)