USA, 19 years ago…

For four years, the widow Dianne Archer Leslie had continued secretly dating her adopted son Corey in the confines of her home. Corey enjoyed kissing her soft white skin, and loved looking at the happiness he’d brought back into her eyes.

Since reaching adolescence, he had felt more and more consumed with her. The boy was now 19, one year older than her late husband Jared had been when Dianne Archer had first met him in the department store where she’d worked since leaving school until the day that they married.

The grief at Jared’s passing had now turned largely to joy at each other’s love.

One evening over dinner, Corey said something which Dianne found highly amusing. He saw her mouth open wide with laughter. Her entire tongue was clearly on display, and he could think of nothing better than to touch it, but not as he was. Corey had never read ‘Love and the Shrinking Male’ nor Christine Long’s story, nor the works in progress of Leanne Commons and Tarquin. Yet he could no longer deny what had been building in his mind for four years, what had possibly even been in his subconscious since he had first met her at the age of six going on seven.

Corey wanted to be tiny sized and climb into Dianne’s lovely mouth!

He had witnessed her tongue from across the dinner table, but from then on, he took every opportunity to try to make her laugh, whenever he was sitting right next to her. He did his best not to be noticed staring in at her tongue. She had done her best to come to terms with the idea of dating an adopted son some 21 years her junior, but would not be so likely to continue doing so if she knew of his bizarre fantasy.

Every time he succeeded in making her laugh, it filled him with ecstasy. He would lie in bed cuddled up to her, daydreaming about crawling across her upper body and sliding into her mouth.

Corey’s infatuation with her had taken on the wildest new dimension. How he wished he could make his home indefinitely in that beautiful mouth of hers every night of the week.

Christine Long’s fictional story continued, read in present day…

He darted into the flower bed and concealed himself, looking back as she crossed the lawn in no time. He kept creeping away, looking out at her towering form on the edge of the lawn. She had put on her black dress with white dots, and found the hair strands no doubt, and deduced what he had done.

"Come on out, little boy, and we will get you ready for my lunch."

He crept away under the cover of flower petals, heading away from the house. He ran as fast as he could, taking care not to step on anything that would rustle and alert her to his location. He turned and peeked out, and saw her sit down and begin to gently part the flowers with her hands, and then she began to crawl through the flower bed, mindless of any flowers that she might crush in the process.

He ran for his life, and at last he felt that he had outdistanced her, for he could no longer hear her distant crawling behind him.

"Thank goodness I've eluded her at last!" he thought.

Now he would make it back to earth again.

Suddenly he saw Mrs Long burst through the plants in front of him. She had doubled around and ambushed him. She smiled down at him, licking her lips, and he saw that she was going to lunge for him with her hand, before he could even think of darting away again. He was soon surrounded by her giant fingers and unable to see out of her closed hand.

When he had been released by her fingers, he instantly fell into some sticky substance, and heard a door close. He struggled to the surface and looked around. He seemed to be in a dark room. However, there was light behind him. He turned around, and was shocked to find himself in a piece of pavlova warming up in an oven which must have been turned down low so as not to burn him.

He looked through the glass at a giant unoccupied kitchen, and recognised it as Mrs Long's. Soon she came back into the room, opened the oven door and leaned down to look in at him.

"It was silly to run away. You're still going to be eaten" she said.

She smiled at him, closed the oven door and began setting the table, and soon came and sat on a chair in front of the oven door, beaming in at him, licking her lips with glee.

Mrs Long had won.

She looked big beyond compare, and she was now going to eat him for her lunch. She opened the door, dipped her finger in the pavlova and licked it.

"I think you are ready to be gobbled now."

She took out the pavlova, with him still inside it, placed it at the table, and sat down towering over him.

"Do you want to say anything before I start, Timothy? I will not be able to talk to you with my mouth full, especially when it is full of you."

"No Mrs Long. I know it won't help at all to beg for mercy."

"Good. Then without further ado, little Timothy, I shall proceed to eat you."

She ate the pavlova around him, using her fingers.

Then she picked him up and licked off the close bits of pavlova from him.

She held him in front of her face and laughed at him.

Then she opened her mouth, placed him inside it and closed it, rolling him around on her tongue.

"I know what I should have said. I will try to get out and ask her" he thought "If I can just-"

She drew him suddenly into her throat.

He struggled to keep from falling down further as she started gulping with tremendous pressure in an attempt to fully swallow him. Little by little he lost more ground and sank lower into her gulping throat, and eventually reached her stomach.

She went into her bedroom, changed to her nightdress, got into bed and lay awake thinking that she was still happily married, was now a giantess, and looking forward to enjoying the rest of her life, with her captive finally accepting that he would not escape her stomach. She was his destiny.

Suddenly he felt a tingling sensation and realised that her stomach acids were dissolving him into part of her, part of a beautiful giant lady now older than himself. His mind went blank as it dissolved.

She licked her lips every time she remembered him, glad that age and size could no longer separate them. He would be a part of her stomach forever.

The real Timothy awoke once more, to find that it was just another ordinairy day in the year 10 May school holidays.

*         *          *          *

Timothy Scribener didn’t dream about Mrs Long again. He finished high school, went to university, started his career, and eventually reached the age of 24. One day he went to a lovely set of nature gardens and set up a picnic lunch on a small stretch of lawn which was enclosed by hedges and trees. He took out a plate of green salad and set it up on the picnic rug and poured a glass of water and put that down too.

Suddenly he shrank to a miniature size of just under two inches.

“I can’t be dreaming again,” he thought, “This seems very real, somehow. Yet I’ve shrunken just like I did in those dreams I had from ages 10 to 14. Mrs Long was in all of them, but I haven’t seen her since I was due to turn 12. That was more than 12 years ago. Why should I suddenly shrink now?”

Then he heard footsteps coming from a path in another part of the gardens. He looked around, between the hedges, and saw a woman walking in his direction. If he ran anywhere, she would notice him for sure. The only place to hide was in his own plate of green salad. He dived under a lettuce leaf and peeked out as the woman approached. She had long dark hair and looked familiar. She would have been in her mid forties, but he was absolutely certain that she couldn’t have been anyone else but Mrs Christine Long.

“After all those dreams, I can’t take a chance,” he thought, “I’ll have to wait until she’s well and truly passed this spot, before I start working out what to do next.”

Mrs Long drew closer and closer, and then noticed the unattended picnic set up. She looked around, using her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun. It reminded him distinctly of the way her dream self had done the same thing at the top of the slope at the school playing fields, when he had been in sixth class.

Seeing nobody else in the gardens, Mrs Long sat down and looked at the plate of salad which concealed him. She lifted a piece of cucumber, put it into her mouth and ate happily. Then he saw her fingers approach and lift the piece of lettuce which had been his cover.

She gaped in surprise, as she put it into her mouth.

“Is that you after all these years, Timothy?” she asked, after swallowing the lettuce.

“Yes Mrs Long. I was sure I recognised you too,” he said.

“Did you just shrink today?”

“Yes.”

“Well you won’t be able to finish that salad now. I’ll pack up your rug and take the picnic basket down to the garden wall and sit there and eat it for you,” said Mrs Long, and was soon positioned in the new location, seated on the wall.

She put him on the edge of the plate, so that he could still eat what he could fit in his greatly reduced stomach.

“If you recognised me, why didn’t you say hello?” she asked.

“I had some dreams about shrinking unexpectedly or going to a giant woman’s house. They were all when I was in 6th class through to year 10. When it actually happened, I was too surprised to know what to do.”

“Was I in the dreams too?” asked Mrs Long.

“Yes, all of them. When I was shrunken, you retained your full size. When you were a giant, I retained my full size. How did you guess?”

“I had similar dreams around the same time too,” said Mrs Long.”

“I wonder how it’s possible for both of us to have dreams like that,” asked Timothy, who was also wondering how they could have predicted his shrinking and how the shrinking itself could have happened.

“My dreams were just wishful thinking,” said Mrs Long, “I don’t know why you had yours.”