Remaining inside the walls permanently was still a defeatist option for Paul. There were any number of methods his family could utilize to smoke him out of the tunnels. Thus he selected his next room with greater care this time. The sprint was a tough one, but when Paul finally emerged through the grate again at the exact opposite corner of the house, he was rewarded with a deserted room.

            Nettie’s room. Not a soul in sight.

            Paul ducked behind the carved post of his older sister’s lilac-painted bedframe. He watched her shut the door behind, then take a stand in the center of the room: hand to her hip, chin held high, and a swell of confidence on her face.

            “Now where, oh where, could my little brother have gone?” Nettie wondered loudly. She rested her chin upon a softly closed fist and tapped her foot. Despite the gentility of this motion, Paul still shook from the vibration.

            The boy watched his sister commence her hunt. Like their mother and aunts, she seemed to be in no major hurry. She even checked in places she had to know were physical impossibilities. Inside her jewelry box, on the top bookshelf, and the upper drawer of her dresser. Her fingers petted everything she touched, barely bothering to move any laid objects to properly search.

            “I’ll bet wherever he is, though, he’s just trying not to get crushed. And that’s all. There’s no way he could be hiding somewhere and trying not to rub himself at the thought of his big family stamping him into the rug,” Nettie continued with the same lilting, sarcastic naiveté. “Cuz that would make him awfully messed up. That would make him… well, obviously it would make him not a person. But it would also make him a creep. An itty, bitty, weird little creep.”

            Guiltily, cheeks aflame despite there being no witnesses no, Paul looked down. She wasn’t wrong. About any of it. He wanted to strike his erection just as much as he wanted to stroke it.

            “I know you can hear me,” Nettie said at last. The musical chastity of her tone was dispensed now. This was the sister he knew better. “I know you’re under my bed. So come out, Paul. Come out where I can see you. If you come out, I promise not to crush you right away. But you have to do it now.”

            Paul was surprised and angry to find his feet cooperating. One leg and then the other. So much for escape. He soon stood out in the open in the shadow of his sister.

            “Wow. Looks like somebody is liking this even more than us,” Nettie commented as she glared down at him. She tsked, shaking her head. “Admit it, Paul. This is what you’ve been dreaming about for a long time. Years, probably. You wanted this. Don’t try and fake out of it anymore. Not after we all saw you ejaculate on Aunt Kathleen’s foot.”

            Drooping his shoulders, Paul shrugged.

            “Answer me, buggy,” Nettie demanded.

            “I don’t know.”

            “I can literally see your erection, Paul. I mean, I have to squint, but I can see it. Who are you trying to fool? Why are you pretending you don’t get hard over the idea of big ladies in pretty dresses coming to squish you?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Wrong answer.” In a single bound, the girl was upon him. The shockwave of her slammed shoe toppled Paul over. And her hands were just as quick. A slender thumb and forefinger fastened around Paul’s left ankle and lifted him up in a rush of wind. They rose back to her full height.

            “Let go! Let go, Nettie!” Paul screeched with fresh panic. His voice was higher-pitched than he thought it capable. He squirmed and swung like an upside-down pendulum, from the pivot point of his sister’s pinched fingers. The world spun below. “Please, let go. HELP!”

            “Well, I’m sorry…” Nettie drawled with a moony innocence. She rolled her big eyes and chewed every syllable for all it was worth. “But I must… eat… something!”

            The sickness he’d felt before tripled and metastasized to every skin cell.

            Was she actually doing “the scene” right now?

            Paul’s chin quivered as he witnessed his sister’s cherry lips purse and pucker in consideration. Then, at last, her tongue emerged: a slimy instrument to drive home this humiliating re-enactment.

            “Go ahead,” Nettie dared him in whisper. Her eyes narrowed. “You know you wanna. Say the part from the movie that you’re supposed to say. Say it to me.”

            “N-N-Not… n-not m-me, you… you…” he sputtered on autopilot. Just as when he was being drowned in petticoats and masturbated by his aunt’s toes earlier, Paul’s entire body ached for him to resist. And just as it was then, he had no choice but to obey instinct. “…you barbarian!”

            A guttural chuckle erupted from the darkness of Nettie’s throat. Irises crackled with victorious joy. Her lips parted again, her glistening pearly whites displayed like medieval weaponry. Hot breath poured in seeping fog over Paul’s dangling half-inch body.

            And then, true to the story, she clamped her teeth around his carrot.

            Paul actually screamed this time, though in anticipation rather than pain. With admirable dexterity, Nettie had fastened two rows of sharp ivories in a vice around her brother’s pathetically tiny penis. His erect member just managed to squeeze into the narrow gap between her front teeth and lower incisors.

            Nettie’s burly fingertips pulled away, yanking Paul and his dick from the narrow porthole between the girl’s teeth. He was suspended in space a mere inch from the girl’s lips. Her teeth clacked then parted. The bulbous pink mass of her tongue emerged between her jaws again.

            Flat, sopping with saliva, the slab of Nettie’s tongue oozed itself up the entire length of Paul’s body. She lapped from his head and up to his legs, caking him easily in a grimy coating of spit. The boy couldn’t help but moan in teased ecstasy.

            “Just kidding, perv,” Nettie accused. “You think I’d eat your gross little body? There’s no way I’m getting rid of you in any way I can’t just wash off with the hose outside.”

            Paul flinched as the ground spiraled near again. His sister’s fingers released their grip on his leg and he met the floor, unharmed, for now. This seemed a temporary state, though, as a sole-shaped darkness had blossomed around his body.

            “If you’re still planning on creaming yourself again, little brother…” Nettie taunted as she lifted her leg high above her half-inch sibling. “…I suggest you do it real quick!”

            Despite a subconscious curiosity to remain still and attempt exactly this, Paul finally retook control of his selfish brain. He sprinted to the side. Mercifully, Nettie’s foot was raised so pompously high, her balance was thrown off, and by the time she’d slammed her shoe back to earth, the boy was already running toward the wall.

            “You really can’t keep yourself from cheating, can you, you little freak?” Nettie scowled. “I can’t believe I licked you and that I still… felt your ridiculous little penis, all hard for me about to eat you. Unbelievable.” Her shoes thumped somewhere behind Paul, though she didn’t run. Perhaps to create the illusion of a chance.

            Paul sprinted nonetheless. He was shocked to discover he wasn’t yet a stain on his sister’s shoe when he reached the vent and clambered over the metal lip.

            “Fine, run away! See if I care. I just want you to think about how you’re never going to get away from all of us. Us, the smarter, bigger, better ones than you,” Nettie called after him. She cupped her hands around her lips as she bellowed into the vent. “I mean, seriously. Who are YOU?”

            The boy quaked with latent disgrace and arousal as he ran. He wiped his hands of the sticky saliva now painted and dried over his whole body. There was no good answer to his sister’s question.