The next morning he awoke just before dawn. He watched the sun come up, as he looked out into the garden. This was his new world now. He had lost all the size he’d been accustomed to on his own world. Now there were giant women around all the time. There was no way of avoiding them by travelling through trans-dimensional tubes.

The rays of sunlight shone between the leaves of the tall trees in her garden. It was a garden of a woman who had made herself once again a giant, in comparison to him. His whole existence was now one of struggling to survive and entertaining the one hope of restoring his size. It haunted him, as he looked across the garden at the break of day, knowing that Mrs Long could walk freely through the garden and enjoy it, that her family didn’t know of his existence, and that he would be cut off from anyone he had known at his full size, as he lived each day doing his best to elude her, without being so permanently confined to the drain, that he took no chances to try to get back to full size.

Mrs Long had snared Toby in her shrinking trap. Gilbert, on the other hand, would now proceed to trick Patricia, by dyeing his blond hair black.

He went to the hair dresser’s and had the colour put in.

“Now you know it will only last a month, and possibly less if you use certain shampoos and conditioners,” said the lady.

“The shorter the better,” he thought.

Gilbert made his way into the giant school, and kept a close watch on Patricia. It was interesting sneaking into her classroom, and seeing her teach the students. She carried an air of authority. The girls assumed she was a positive moral influence. She went about this, with no qualms or concerns about the fact that, as far as she knew, she had eaten Gilbert and consigned him to her stomach until the end of his days. It was fascinating to be looking at the woman, and strangely arousing too, to look at someone who was living her life as though he was inside her stomach, in a form.

He was glad that the tube was on one side of her stomach. That way, food fell past it and was eventually digested in the normal way. Otherwise, pieces of giant food would be forever going through the tube and appearing on Gilbert’s earth and piling up, until the tube outlet was eventually noticed by many more people. As well as that, it would have made Patricia perpetually hungry.

He waited until the students left at the end of the day, and then coughed from his hiding place, making sure that Patricia would hear it. She came over and reached under the cupboard, picked him up and said, “Hello little boy. I recently ate a boy about your age. You’ll be interested to know that I’m now going to do the same thing to you.”

She wasted no time in putting him into her mouth.

He lay on her tongue and reflected on the thrilling impact of the speech she had just made, and then she gulped him down again, thinking he was another boy.

Toby had not been game all day, to venture out of the drain, knowing full well that Mrs Long would be waiting for him to do just that. Looking out through the grate, he saw her come out and water the garden and sit down. Then she picked up the hose end again, and brought it over to the drain.

“I think I shall turn this on you and drown you in that drain, unless you come out now,” she said.

“If you do, I will stay here and drown. I’d be gone in your stomach anyway. This way you won’t get any benefit from my demise. You can’t get my dead body out of this drain any easier than you can do so with my live body. You’d be better off to take your chances on catching me another time.”

“You’re right,” she said, and discarded the hose instead of turning it on, “So how have you been anyway?”

“Alright,” he said.

“Did you sleep OK last night?”

“Eventually,” he said, “I lay awake for a while after you turned the house lights off. I was thinking about all that’s happened between us.”

“You can’t go back to any of that,” she said, “You’re in more trouble now than you’ve ever been before. You can only think of the future; and Toby, that future will most likely end for you in my stomach.”

“I know,” he said, “I woke up just before sunrise and looked out into the garden thinking precisely about those things you’ve just said, and the ramifications. I understand the logic of the suggestion you made to me yesterday, but I hope you can see why I want to keep trying.”

“Yes I can understand that,” she said, “You’re still as sweet as ever, after all that I’ve done to you. We’ll have some interesting adventures in store for us, as we seek to outwit each other, Toby. I’m looking forward to them.”

“I can’t quite put it that way, but I will remain optimistic,” he said, “When you first met me and tried so many times to eat me, you never imagined that the lovely romantic scene which developed at the swing set in the school gardens would have come to pass. I could picture you walking out of the building, through the school gardens and sitting down on the swing, even though I was in your stomach and couldn’t see you. I can still picture it. It was such an incredibly unique romantic build up to the love we began to share that night.”

“I know, but breaks like that don’t come often. I’ve eaten every other boy I caught, except the elusive Willy. I will be doing everything I can to lure you out of there and eat you once and for all, Toby. Do you fully comprehend all the advantages I have now?”

“Yes, but I still love you, and I still want to get out of this situation somehow,” he said.

“Then let the adventures continue,” said Mrs Long, “I’m going to read in the garden for a while now.”

He realised she’d never leave the drain out of her sight during the daytime, unless she had to go out. He would have to try at night. He went backwards in the drain, to his bed of leaves, and lay down and slept the rest of the day.

The next time Gilbert dyed his hair, it was red. He went straight up to Patricia after school and said, “Miss Giantess, I was wondering if you would do me the honour of eating me.”

“That’s an original line,” she said, “But as it happens I’ve eaten other boys like you. So I’ll be glad to.

She swallowed the boy whole and had no idea that he once again used her swallowed tube to get back to his own earth.

Toby woke up late in the evening. It was around 9:45 pm. The house lights were still on, but Mrs Long would be with her family. She would not be out hunting him now, as he had the advantages of easier concealment in the dark. He could not risk hitting the place for the pills, while she was still awake. So he would use the time to eat enough fruit to give him all the energy he needed.

He went out of the drain, picked a strawberry and ate most of it. He was bloated. It would take a few hours for the food to go down. He looked up at the moonlight, fantasizing of the day when he would be with Mrs Long again.

At 11:00, she turned out the lights, and soon she and her daughter Kirsty were in bed in darkness. He thought of her lying in bed and knowing that she would resume her secret pursuit of him, as soon as her daughter was back at work the next day.

He approached the house slowly, giving them plenty of time to drift off to sleep. Then he slid under a door, and made his way by moonlight alone, to the first room worth searching for the pills. As her daughter had used them too, she would not have hidden them from Kirsty, but they had no further use for them. She would only have hidden them from a likely approach by Toby.

He found that it was pitch dark in that room. When he had been in it at full size, he had noticed a reading lamp. He would have to try to get to it, and see if he could turn it on quietly.

He made his way around the room, feeling blindly for anything which might be the reading lamp, and knocked something. It fell over and rolled across the floor.

“Too loud,” he thought, and ran back out to the door that he had slid under.

Both Kirsty and Mrs Long awoke.

“I’d better go and see if there’s a burglar,” said Kirsty.

“I recognised the sound. It was that vase. I shouldn’t have left it balanced so precariously,” said Mrs Long, who had no doubt in her mind as to the real cause of the noise, “I’ll go down and move it somewhere safe. If there are any other problems, I’ll call out. You need your sleep more. I’m not working at the moment.”

Toby was now outside the house. He ran across the garden as fast as he could, looking back, when he saw light coming from the downstairs room.