He reached the drain, and saw Mrs Long come out in her night gown, with an electric lantern in her hand. She reached the drain and spoke quietly to him, standing in front of the drain.
“It was a good try, Toby. You did choose the best time to try to find the pills.”
“But not the best direction to go feeling about in the dark,” he said.
“You’ll never stop trying for the pills, will you?”
“No, I need to keep trying.”
“Then I’ll catch you one day. We’ll both have to be careful about how we play this vitally important game. We don’t want my daughter to find out about you, do we?”
“I guess not,” he said. Her daughter would be loyal to her, and then the privacy of whatever awaited him, good or bad, would be lost.
He stared up at her, thinking. There was nothing more she could do to catch him, unless he took a risk. There was no way he could get at the pills, without taking a risk. Unless he continued to devise ways to sneak around her house undetected, it was a stale mate, with no preferable outcome for either Toby or Mrs Long.
“I’d better go back to bed,” she said after several seconds of silence, “My husband will be wondering where I am.”
“Oh I’ll forever be daydreaming of how things would be, if you’d not gone back to him.”
“That might just distract you enough, to enable me to catch you sooner rather than later. Sleep well, darling little delicious admirer, if you still need any sleep. Maybe you’ll give me another chance at you in the house.”
She walked back to the house, with only the lantern to illuminate her graceful flowing night dress.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Knowing that Miss Dawes couldn’t eat him permanently, because of the trans-dimensional tube that she had swallowed, Gilbert decided to boldly walk into the school in the middle of the lunch hour.
He made his way through the tube, and soon found Miss Patricia Dawes. She reacted predictably, snatching him up and taking him off to an isolated part of the outer grounds of the school.
“Let me guess what you’re going to do next,” said Gilbert, “I’ll bet your next words will be something like: I’m going to eat you all up, little boy.”
“As a matter of fact they are. I suppose you’ve seen me eating someone else, while you concealed yourself on school property. You’re talking rather casually, for someone whose days are numbered.”
“Not really,” said Gilbert, “You’ve eaten someone with blond hair, then someone with black hair, then someone with dark brown hair. You caught the first two and forced them to be eaten. The third one volunteered. The only thing is, that the first one escaped you the first time, by jumping into a trans-dimensional tube, which would take him back to his own earth. You tried to suck him out of the tube, by closing your mouth around the tube. Yet, through a freak accident, you swallowed the tube. It continued to exist in your stomach. Your stomach has been a gateway to my world for a while now.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Patricia.
“The first boy, Gilbert was caught and eaten by you. When he reached your stomach, he saw the light of the tube, and jumped into it and went safely home. He enjoyed the experience of being eaten (without the lasting consequences) so much, that he dyed his hair black, and came back to you to be eaten again, pretending he was somebody else. Then he came back another time, and had his hair dyed red, to trick you again. His face was so small to you, that you couldn’t recognise the similarity each time. I’m Gilbert, by the way.”
“So that means that no matter how many times I eat you, or anyone for that matter, the meal will use my own stomach to escape from me. It makes it hard to keep a good man down.”
“Well I like being eaten by you, under these conditions. So I’m happy to keep coming back for more. You can capture other boys and either give them the good news before you eat them, or have your fun teasing them and then let them find out their good fortune after you’ve swallowed them.”
“I think I might like to try a bit of both,” said Patricia, “Maybe I should change my name by deed poll to Portalia.”
“Would you consider being my girlfriend as well?” he asked.
“Aren’t you sweet?” she said, “So long as I still have the chance to eat you now and then.”
She sent him on his way once again, and enjoyed the opportunities which arose over the next few days, to capture other tube visitors from the smaller people’s earth and vary her approach to the process, in the ways that Gilbert had suggested.
“Mrs Yeo, the headmistress of my old school has formed a group for giant women with tiny boyfriends,” said Swayna to her husband Jerro, “I joined it. So did Jenny, who dates Willy. Mrs Yeo’s dating a boy named Roy. She’s eaten other boys who have given her their permission. Mrs Yeo wants to run activities that include the boyfriends as well as the giant women in future. I was hoping you’d like to come too.”
“Sure,” said Jerro.
“There’s just one thing I should tell you,” said Swayna, “I never told you before, because I was worried that you might not want to marry me. Do you remember that time ten years ago, when my sister had captured you, and was all set to eat you?”
“I certainly do. When I was bonding with Brooke, that first time she came to visit us, I was very mindful of the fact that it would never have come to pass, if you hadn’t saved me that day.”
“I was able to come into the classroom and free you, because she went out looking for another little boy. His name was Roman. He had made friends with me shortly after I started dating you. There was nothing romantic happening between us, but he happened to be with me, when I learned that you were in Brooke’s clutches. To save you, I turned Roman loose in the school grounds, outside Brooke’s classroom. I made sure Brooke found out about Roman, and then I was able to free you, while she was hunting for Roman.”
“He must have been a brave boy, to help us out like that.”
“He begged me not to do it, but I told him I had to think of you first. I wished him the best of luck to escape my sister, but my ultimate concern was to get in there and rescue you.”
“Did he get away?”
“Brooke told me she caught him and ate him. By the time we discussed it, she’d guessed that I’d used Roman as a decoy. I jeopardised another boy like yourself, knowing he stood every chance of being eaten by my sister, so that I could have you back safe and sound. Do you still love me, knowing that?”
“Nothing could stop me loving you, but you’re really asking if I think any less of you. I can only imagine what would have happened to me, if you hadn’t risked Roman that way. I’m glad I wasn’t in his position, but I guess we all took risks when we came to your world. Don’t worry, my love. I still hold you in my fondest thoughts.”
“Are you ready for this meeting?” asked Mrs Yeo.
“I admire you so much for doing this,” said Roy.
“I should have thought of it years ago,” said Mrs Yeo.
Mrs Yeo put on her shirt, coat, and a long dark skirt. She concealed Roy in her shirt pocket and buttoned her coat, so that nobody could see him. She had convened a staff meeting of all the teachers in the school at 3:30 on a Monday afternoon.
All of the teachers arrived and took their seats.
“I have called this meeting, because I have been aware of the trans-dimensional tubes linking our world with a parallel earth of smaller people for some time,” said Mrs Yeo, “I know that a number of boys from that world have come into ours. I know that many of them have been eaten, some by teachers from this school, some by student girls. I have eaten boys myself, after obtaining their permission. I know about the website denoted www.2vore6ate.com. I suspect that it was designed and maintained by someone in this room. Am I correct?”