It all started one cool winter morning. I awoke to the glare of the sun in my eyes, as was the usual on a Saturday morning. What wasn’t usual was what I saw after I shielded my eyes from the blinding glare. The bed seemed to stretch for miles. I stood up on the colossal bed and looked around. Everything seemed to be massive, or perhaps I was extremely tiny. My massive pyjamas lay beside me; I had shrunk but my clothes hadn’t. I made my way to the edge of the bed. The journey was very tiring; it was like walking in a vast jumping castle. Once at the edge of the bed I looked around for the washing basket, my wife usually left it near the bed waiting for our pyjamas before putting the load in the washing machine. I spotted it about twenty metres from where I was standing. I made my way there and prepared to jump into the white plastic basket full of dirty clothes. My heart began to race; heights had never really been my thing. I usually liked to keep my feet flat on the ground. Trembling, I lined up ready to leap, closed my eyes and held my breath. Then, I jumped. The wind roaring past my ears was deafening for a few moments until I landed on the soft pile of clothing below. It didn’t work exactly as planned, the moment the soft cushion of fabric contacted my body, I began to roll down the sloping pile. I opened my eyes to see the edge of the basket rapidly approaching. I screamed as I hurdled out of the basket and onto the carpet below. My entire body ached, the carpet was not as soft as one would expect. All I could think was thank god that it hadn’t been tiles. Honestly, I felt lucky to be alive. Although my body felt like one big bruise, I was remarkably unharmed from the washing basket ordeal. After struggling to my feet, I scanned the room and tried to think of a plan. I wandered into the centre of the bedroom, away from the washing basket that had nearly taken my life. There was no way that I would ever be stupid enough to try jumping into a pile of washing again. Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet began to shake. I was overcome with panic as I realised what it was. It was the sound of feet charging up the stairs. Frantically, I searched for a place to hide, if I remained in the middle of the bedroom when my wife came through that door I would most likely be squished. I dived under the dressing table next to the bedroom door just in time to see two gigantic feet step past me. Carly’s massive feet stopped as she reached the centre of the room, just where I had been standing just a few moments ago.
“Honey?” my wife’s normally soft voice boomed as she spoke, “honey? Are you hiding somewhere?”
Carly proceeded to look under the bed and in the wardrobe, assuming that I was playing some practical joke on her.
“Hmmm,” she sounded very confused when she couldn’t find me. That was when I decided I needed to get her attention. Without hesitation, I started to sprint towards her, screaming at the top of my lungs. She couldn’t hear me; I was too small and my voice must have shrunk with me. I reached the back of her left foot and just as I reached out to touch her heel, she turned around and strode back downstairs. I was once again left alone in my city sized bedroom. I needed a new plan and fast. What if she assumed I had left her? I couldn’t bear to break her heart like that. I ran to the bedroom door and saw Carly looking around for something. That was when it hit me, she was trying to find her slippers. I spun around and saw the back of them poking out from under the queen-sized bed. I ran towards them as fast as I could. Hitching a ride on one of my wife’s slipper was my only chance of making down the stairs alive.
“Ah, there they are,” Carly’s colossal footsteps were approaching very quickly. I tried to run faster to reach the slipper before she did. I was almost there, just a few more metres. Suddenly, something struck me in the back. Carly had accidentally kicked me with her toe. The carpet could no longer be felt beneath my feet. I was soaring through the air.
“This is it,” I told myself, “this is how I die.”
But I didn’t die. I landed on a nice soft surface. I realised, to my horror, that I had landed in Carly’s slipper. I looked behind me to see her sedan sized toes sliding into the slipper. I was trapped. If I didn’t think quickly I knew I would be crushed alive by my wife’s foot. I tried to run away but the soft fleece padding beneath me was too squishy and I kept tripping over. In the end, I decided to give up on standing and just crawled as fast as I could away from my doom. I managed to reach the end of the slipper and pressed my back up against the fluffy pink wall as hard as I could. I have never been a religious man but as those five humongous toes wiggled their way towards me I prayed. I prayed for my life. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable. The floor of the slipper sunk, I had survived. Carly’s toes didn’t reach all the way into the end of the slipper. I exhaled relieved to be alive. The unfortunate part was now I was trapped in the toe of my wife’s pink, fluffy slipper. My stomach did somersaults as the slipper raised into the air and came crashing back down with every step that Carly took. The tumultuous journey, coupled with the arid stench of sweat, was making me feel severely ill. It took all my focus to not vomit all over Carly’s toes. Finally, I could hear the muffled sound of the television through the slipper. We seemed to have stopped moving, I figured that Carly was taking a seat on the couch to watch television. Without warning the slipper felt as though it was rushing upwards. My stomach lurched as I rolled around within the slipper. I held onto the fur strands in the end of the slipper to prevent falling onto my wife’s toes. I was afraid that if she felt me inside the slipper then she would assume it was a bug and kill me. The soft, pink prison came to a halt at an extreme angle. She must have been sitting with her legs crossed. I was still holding onto the fur for dear life. Pain was shooting though my sweaty hands as I tried to hold on. I started slipping. The fur slid from my hands and I slid right in between Carly’s big and second toes. The moment I contacted her soft, pale flesh I heard her scream in terror as she kicked the slipper from her foot. I fell from between her sweaty toes and landed on the loungeroom rug. Luckily it wasn’t a very long fall. I looked up to see her face, twisted with disgust at the sight of something crawling on her rug. Her gigantic foot came hurdling towards me at an incredible speed. I rolled to my left, barely avoiding Carly’s deadly foot. I had barely a moment to regain my breath when she tried to stomp on me again. This time I dived under the couch. It was so dusty that I began coughing and struggled to breath. Without looking back, I rose to my feet and ran towards the wall at the back of the couch. I could hear Carly’s footfalls as she stormed off towards the kitchen, “Eww, so gross.”
A sudden bolt of fear struck me when I realised why she was going to the kitchen, that was where we kept the bug spray. I turned and ran through the sea of dust until I reached the end of the couch farthest from the kitchen. I didn’t stop when I made it to the end of the couch, I just kept on running until I slid underneath the wooden shoe rack that sat next to the front door. Carly returned to the loungeroom with the can of insecticide and started spraying an insane amount of poison beneath the couch. Once again I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t still under there. My beautiful, but currently lethal wife placed the bug spray on the coffee table and then looked around. She seemed very confused that her scream had not made me appear to see if she was alright. As I cowered beneath the shoe rack, Carly was moving from room to room, searching everywhere for me. Where would she think I am? A part of me wanted her to find me to put her mind at ease, however, the other part of me dreaded her finding me because chances if she did, I would become nothing more than a stain on the bottom of her foot. It was a catch twenty-two and I had no idea what to do next. I decided to creep out from my hiding place and try find something to amplify my voice. All morning I had been running around and focussing on surviving, but now that I was walking, stark naked across the tiled floor, I was shivering. Why couldn’t this have happened in summer or spring? Why winter? Slowly but surely I made my way to the window beside the television. The beaded lanyard that opened and closed the vertical blinds hung nearly to the floor. I jumped and managed to grasp the lanyard. As much as I hated heights, I knew that my chances of survival were much higher than down at ground level. Inch by inch I made my way upwards until I could clamber onto the runner that housed the top of the vertical blinds.
“Great, more dust,” I vowed that I would clean all these horribly dusty areas when I was back to my original size. Wait, that was something that I hadn’t had a chance to think of yet. How would I get back to my normal size? I didn’t even know how I had shrunk to the size of a bug. I figured that dwelling on that fact was pointless, I would cross that bridge when I came to it. The view from the top of the blinds runner was incredible. My loungeroom looked like it was the size of a small country. I decided that from this height I should be able to spot something that could help me. Every so often, Carly would re-enter the loungeroom and look around with a confused look on her pretty face before hurrying off to check another part of the house. Perhaps I could get to my phone and call Carly, surely the handset could amplify my voice enough to get her attention. I always left my phone on charge in the kitchen overnight. That was my mission, to find my way to the kitchen bench. I wasn’t up for climbing back down the beaded blinds lanyard, my muscles throbbed and ached. Somehow I needed to find a quick and easy way of making the journey. Just as Carly came back into the loungeroom for the fifth time, there was a knock on the front door. She strode to the door and opened it. My sister-in-law, Sarah was standing on the doorstep with her hands behind her back. Carly hugged her sister and invited her in before heading back towards the kitchen. Sarah entered the loungeroom and called out to her sister, “Hey Carly, guess what. I got the job.”
Sarah pulled a chocolate cake from behind her back and raised it into the air in a triumphant manner.
“Let’s celebrate,” Sarah headed towards the kitchen, she was about to pass right by me.
I could hear Carly cheering excitedly for her sister as she rushed back out of the kitchen. Sarah stepped closer to my vantage point, cake still above her head. This was the perfect opportunity to get to the kitchen. I took a run up and ran towards the edge of the runner and leapt. As I soared through the air, I held my breath. I landed near the middle of the chocolate cake. The icing almost drowned me at first. I managed to get my head back to the surface of the thick chocolate ocean. Sarah carried the cake into the kitchen and placed it on the bench. Without hesitation, I waded to the surface and went to make my way to the edge of the cake. I didn’t make it very far before Carly drew a long knife from the drawer and made a slice right next to where I was wading. I froze, the last thing I wanted was for her to think I was an insect again, especially whilst brandishing a knife. The blade of the knife slid into the chocolate cake on the other side of me. My stomach dropped as the piece of cake was lifted into the air.
“Where’s the husband?” Sarah was raising the piece of cake towards her mouth as she spoke.
“I don’t know, I left him in bed when I woke up this morning but when I went to wake him, he wasn’t there.”
From my place in the icing on the tip of the cake slice, I could see Sarah’s gaping jaws, her perfect, white teeth and the seemingly unending abyss beyond. I pulled my legs from the brown goo, there was no way that I was going to die inside the stomach of my sister-in-law. With every ounce of energy I could muster, I dragged myself across the slice of cake. Sarah’s teeth sunk into the chocolate, narrowly missing my legs. I managed to stand and run to the edge of the cake. Without a second thought, I dived over Sarah’s massive fingers and closed my eyes. I had no idea where I was going to land and honestly I didn’t want to know at that point. If I was going to fall to my death then I didn’t want to see it coming. Instead of a solid, painful impact, I landed in more sticky goo. The scent of chocolate once again filled my nostrils. I hand landed back on the cake. I opened my eyes and peered around. I was almost completely buried in the icing, on either side of me I could see the edge of the icing. Once again I was filled with horror as I realised that I wasn’t on the remainder of the cake, but another slice. I looked up towards where the two edges connected and saw a pair of pink lips. The lips opened to reveal more white teeth. What terrible luck, I had landed right on Carly’s slice of cake. Hopelessly, I tried to free myself from the chocolate icing. It was no use. I had fallen so far from Sarah’s slice that I had almost completely sunk into the icing of Carly’s piece. I watched in terror as Carly’s teeth passed above me and I entered the dark wet Cave behind them. Her breath was hot and still smelled of her morning coffee. My breathing became frantic and I continued to struggle. I managed to twist around in time to see my wife’s jaws close. All the light vanished from her warm, wet mouth. My chocolate prison tumbled towards the side of her mouth. I felt something hard brush my leg, it could only have been her powerful teeth chewing up the cake. Her saliva drenched me which allowed me to free myself. I landed on Carly’s soft tongue, surrounded by chunks of chocolate. Every time her tongue pushed me back into her teeth, I jumped back onto her tongue. With everything I had, I fought my way towards the tip of her tongue. With a trembling hand, I reached for Carly’s front teeth but I didn’t make it. Just then, I felt her tongue tilt backwards. Covered in my wife’s saliva, I slid towards the back of her throat. Alongside sticky, chewed up chunks of chocolate cake, I was pushed into the back of Carly’s throat and into her oesophagus. Between the immense pressure of her throat and my fear of what was coming, I cried. I was always one of those men who never cried, but my coming fate would be enough to make anyone cry. A part of me thought that I wasn’t even going to survive the journey down Carly’s throat. The way the walls contracted and squeezed to push me further downwards was excruciatingly painful. After what felt like an eternity, the pressure subsided and I was falling. I landed in a large, wet chamber. The realism of the situation was hitting me like a truck, I was inside my wife’s stomach. My skin began to tingle. It was so dark that it was hard to believe where I was. I could hear more chunks of saliva soaked cake crashing down around me. I crawled through the wetness until I started to feel the wall of Carly’s stomach, I pulled my knees up to my chest and continued to sob. My fingers and toes went numb; the rest of my body was still tingling. After a while the numbness in my appendages subsided and was replaced with a painful burning sensation. I screamed in agony as my wife’s stomach acids began digesting me. It was the most intense pain I have ever felt. I was alone in the dark, being slowly digested in Carly’s stomach. This was the story of how I died, swallowed whole by my completely unaware wife, digested into nothing. Never to be seen or heard from again.