The crowd seemed to part before Amelia as she confidently strode through the halls, her long, silky brown hair seemingly blown by a breeze that only affected her. She looked at each person while she walked by, giving them a smile when her green eyes passed over them. Every student looked up to her. Not only did she tower over them at six-and-a-half feet tall, but she was on track to be the class valedictorian with only two weeks left in the semester, and her lean, sculpted body had led her to be a track and field star, taking first in several events at state that year. Brilliant, popular, beautiful, and always dressed in impeccable style and perfect make-up, she was the dream of most men and some women, the embodiment of perfection, with one notable exception.
Amelia fucking hated my guts.
I had no idea what led to this state of affairs. We got along perfectly well when we were younger, and I had a rather serious crush on her. Being an awkward kid, though, I had no clue how to express it, and my feelings came out in inappropriate bursts and long stretches of staring when I thought she wasn’t looking. One day she simply decided I was beneath her and either treated me like dirt or like I didn’t exist. I tried to push back and show that I wasn’t all bad, but she had made up her mind, and the rest of the school followed suit. In under a week I had been publicly rebuked by all my friends and was reduced to hanging out with the weird kids who started fires or bathed in dirt. The only thing that kept me going was the very real dream of going to college out of state and getting far away from Amelia and the hell she had crafted for me.
Unlike our other classmates I steadfastly refused to give ground to Amelia, and she bowled me out of the way with a hard shoulder check. She took a few more steps before turning around and looking down at me. “Oh, sor-ry, little guy!” she said, her apology exaggerated so much it was insultingly fake. “I didn’t see you down there, you’re just so easy to miss!” Our height difference was one of her favorite buttons to press when she wanted to insult me, and she had been leaning on it for years. While she had broken six feet in fifth grade and kept going, I barely cleared five.
“Since you’re here, did you see that Mrs. Morgan posted the results from the last chemistry test?” she asked. I stayed silent, since she wouldn’t have even mentioned it if she hadn’t beaten me. “I got a perfect score, and you got… well, less than perfect. But it’s not like anyone expects differently out of you, is it?” She let out a high-pitched laugh and walked away, shouting over her shoulder “See ya! Maybe.”
I growled and shook with frustration. Just once I would like to be better at something than her so she wouldn’t be able to hold it over my head, but for the whole time since she decided I was dirt she had outperformed me. Even when I got into a better school than her she brushed it off by saying that hers had a top-notch microbiology program, so I would end up on her lab table before long. There was no way to win with her, and she was not shy about heaping her triumphs upon me.
Still grumbling, I trudged through the hall in Amelia’s wake. Since it was a small school there were very few offerings of higher-level classes, and I ended up sharing most of my schedule with her. I hated being unable to get away from her for the whole day and she knew it, and she made a point of subtly harassing me in each class. There was nothing I could do about it, either, since if I protested she would sic her attack dogs on me, or worse, come after me herself.
I walked up the aisle to my seat behind Amelia, but before I could get by her she swung her long, toned legs into the walkway. I tried to step over the barricade but she raised a leg, blocking me. Every way I tried to get over or under her legs she moved to stop. Finally, after a heavy sigh I said, “Come on Amelia, really?”
“What’s the magic word?” she asked smugly.
“Please.”
“Please what?” Amelia did not even deign to look at me through this whole exchange, doodling in her notebook instead.
I hated this game of hers, it was so humiliating. “C’mon, do I really have to?” I asked.
“Dunno. Do you really need to sit at your desk?” she countered, making a few more short strokes on her drawing.
“Amelia,” I began, as deadpan as I could be, “will you please move your legs so I can sit down?”
“Sure will,” she replied, not moving an inch except to scratch her pencil against the paper.
“Well?” I asked after a few seconds had passed and her legs were still blocking my path.
“Well what?” she shot back, slouching further so it would be even harder to get by her. I stared at her impassively, arms crossed, while she continued what must be a very important doodle. “I will move them, just when I’m ready. You should try being more patient, it’s rude to rush people.” Unbelievable, a lesson in manners from her of all people.
The impasse lasted several minutes, with her continuing to stymie every attempt to get through while she doodled away. At last she set her pencil down and grabbed the notebook with both hands. “Wanna see my drawing?”
“Not really.”
“Then you’re not getting through.”
I groaned. “Fine, show me.”
For the first time in this whole conversation Amelia looked at me and flipped the notebook around gleefully. At first it looked like she had simply drawn a simple, stylish flat, much like she was wearing, but upon closer inspection there was something very small and human-shaped by its midsole. She placed the tip of a finger next to the tiny figure and helpfully explained, “That’s you!” Then she moved her finger to the shoe and added, “And that’s me. Do you like it?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” I answered. “Can I get through now?”
“Fine,” Amelia responded, rolling her eyes so hard I thought she was having a seizure. She dropped her feet to the floor, slapping the ground hard with her flats, and began turning in her chair. When her shoes swung past he she was sure to clip my arm with the toe of one, then slid them under the desk. Her legs were so long her thighs actually tilted up while her feet were flat on the ground, and she immediately began fidgeting by bouncing her heel up and down.
The moment I sat down she was no longer interested in slouching, and instead sat straight up in her chair so she completely blocked my view. “Hey, think you could let me see today?” I asked.
“Shh,” she began, not even turning around, “class is starting.” If anything she sat up even more, making it impossible to see past her. Several times during the class I leaned to the side so I could look at the board, but she moved with me as though she were anticipating my movements. She must have been very proud of herself for hindering my education, since she sat a little higher each time. By the end of class even the broad shoulders of her red blouse were blocking me, forming a solid wall that I would never be able to get around.
I hopped out of my chair, hoping to rush to lunch before Amelia could follow me to my hiding spot, and to my surprise had a brief fall before reaching the floor. While I stood there wondering what happened she rose from her desk, and I gaped up at her in shock. There was no question that she had towered over me before, but now she was massive. My eyes were below her toned, round butt, and her back looked like a a sheer red wall. As though nothing were wrong she took the time to stretch, blocking my path with her shapely legs, then gathered her things. She slowly walked down the aisle, shaking her butt in my face, making her gait just wide enough that I could not slip by.
At the front row of desks she turned toward the door, and I tried to close behind her so I could capitalize on the crowd parting in front of her. Unfortunately, I was apparently beneath the notice of other students now, too, and caught a hip to the side of my head. I stumbled sideways into a desk, then turned around to see who had run into me. Rather, I saw the denim skirt of the girl who had hit me. I looked up and saw the scowling face of Rachel, a fairly cute blond who I knew to be exactly average height. She towered over me now, too, and under her glare I felt even smaller.
“Watch where you’re going, twerp!” Rachel scolded, brushing past me. She managed to slam her hip into me again as she went by, shoving me away. I staggered into the next aisle before I recovered, and she was already heading out the door. I waited until there was a safe enough opening to squeeze into, then followed the rest of my classmates into the hallway. None of them noticed that I was about half the size I had been when I first walked in, but that was, unfortunately, what I had expected. Amelia had done such a good job convincing them I was barely even human they only paid attention to me when they absolutely had to, and now they were not even giving me that courtesy.
Just outside the door, the normally firm and dexterous Amelia had dropped her notebook and was bent over picking it back up. Her perfect, heart-shaped butt was right in my face when I stepped into the hall, and the stream of legs rushing by was too dense for me to move past her. I was stuck there, staring at Amelia’s ass while she practically shoved it in my face. She wiggled it back and forth, making a big show of practically grinding her beautiful butt on my nose with nothing but a thin layer of black linen separating them. When she picked it back up she stood, somehow even taller than before, and held the notebook to her side so that her drawing was surreptitiously on display for me.
As expected the crowd gave her a wide berth as though they revered the ground Amelia walked on, and I fell in behind her hoping to go unnoticed as usual. This time, however, she moved with an obnoxiously slow pace that must have been deliberate: her legs were longer than I was, surely she could go faster than me. She was in no rush, however, sweeping her long legs out to the side with each step and slapping her huge shoes on the tile.
I tried to get past her, but each time I sped up and moved to the side Amelia weaved so that she was in my path. If it had only happened a couple times it could have been a coincidence, but she managed to “accidentally” block a dozen tries. She must have been aware of what I was doing and using her impressive size alone to keep me down. Not only that, but every time I stopped just short of running into her legs she grew a little more, and by the time I was at my locker I was looking up at her knees.
Thankfully I had a locker on the bottom row, but when I reached it one of Amelia’s adoring fans was blocking it. I looked from the knees up the shapely thighs to the white linen shorts, then scanned the towering body to see who it was. It was difficult to be sure from such a low vantage point but I was fairly sure it was Beth from her short black hair. She and I had been friends before Amelia began her campaign to make me persona non grata, and without her watchful eye keeping people in line Beth might be inclined to treat me like a person again.
“Hey, excuse me,” I said loudly, hoping to get her attention. Beth’s enraptured gaze remained on Amelia as she walked past, and I figured she must not have heard me. “Hey Beth, down here!” I shouted, and still got no response. Frustrated and hungry for the sandwich she was keeping me from I began steadily tapping on Beth’s thigh, just above her knee, hoping to trigger any reaction at all.
It took several seconds of persistent prodding, but she finally noticed me. Beth looked down, her lip curling upward in frustration, and fixed her blue eyes on me. “What do you want, you little freak?” she yelled, making me recoil. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea after all.
“Um, you’re in front of my locker,” I said nervously, the fire taken out from under me. “Would you mind moving out of the way?”
Everyone else had resumed going about their business in Amelia’s wake, but Beth remained in place, furiously glaring down at me. “Yes, I mind!” she shot back haughtily. “Why should I have to move just because you can’t wait for me to finish what I’m doing?”
“Because I asked you to?” I replied, figuring it was self-evident. “And that’s my locker behind you, and yours is… somewhere else.” I had no clue what she normally did on lunch, but if I had to guess loitering to make my life more difficult was not part of her routine.
“Well excuse the hell out of me for not jumping up just because some little twerp asked me to!” Beth responded, blowing it way out of proportion. “Amelia was right about you, you’re just a conceited jerk.” She glared down at me in silence for a few seconds. “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?”
“I’m sorry?” I offered timidly. I had no idea why she was making such a big deal of this. Was it really so unreasonable to ask that she take one step to the side?
“Unbelievable,” Beth said in exasperation, limply dropping her hands to her sides. “You’d think someone your size would be a little more humble. Fine, I’ll move, but only so I don’t have to deal with you anymore.” She stepped away from the wall of lockers, slamming her knee into my forehead. Beth’s leg drove me back before tipping me over, spilling me onto the floor. Her leg continued its motion, just barely missing me with the smooth sole of her flat as she stepped over me.
Quickly I got back up, rubbing my forehead where her knee had struck it. One benefit of being a non-entity was nobody noticed or cared when you did something embarrassing, since they already could not think less of you. I moved toward my locker, gripping the dial with my whole hand. With some effort I put in my combination and popped the door open, revealing a stack of books with a brown paper bag on top. I grabbed the bag and pulled it toward me, then hefted it with both hands by the bottom. There was almost nothing inside, but the bag was rather cumbersome now, and it took everything I had to keep the bag from controlling my movements.
With the burden of my new load my options for places to stake out while eating were severely limited, but luckily the library was only a short walk away. Nobody was ever in there during lunch, and I rarely used it as a refuge. The only way Amelia would know to look for me there was if she had watched me enter with her own eyes, and by now she was on the other side of the building. I was guaranteed a few minutes of reprieve from her harassment.
Carefully I made my way through the hall, dodging the forest of legs churning back and forth around me. If anyone noticed me walking they showed no sign, and I had to quickly step out of their way before they knocked me over again. Bare and denim-clad legs moved in every direction around me, and in the chaos I had to dart into the small openings when they appeared. Miraculously I avoided another blow to the head, though I did bump into the shins of some people who were, thankfully, not at all concerned with me.
Foot traffic died down as I approached the library, and I allowed myself to relax. The bag had become rather heavy during my journey, and I brought it in front of me to most naturally support it. Its top had unfurled a little so that it blocked my vision, but I did not expect that to be a problem. Nobody was ever down this way except for the library staff, and they had not been receptive to Amelia’s campaign to dehumanize me.
I ran into something very solid and unyielding, like a column, and I stopped in confusion. There was nothing in this part of the school until you reached the library door. Fearing the worst I peered over the top of the bag and saw an enormous pair of toned legs leading to a pair of black linen shorts. Next was a huge red blouse, buttoned up the front, with fine brown hair draped over the shoulders. I already knew the rest but kept craning my neck back until I saw a pair of large, jade green eyes staring back down at me. Somehow Amelia had guessed where I was going to go and beat me there, lying in wait while I dealt with Beth at my locker.
She leaned forward while I stared up at her, paralyzed. Amelia had never physically hurt me before, but this was different. There were no prying eyes, not that they would notice me anyway based on what I had just been through, and now she had overwhelming superiority on her side. I could not possibly stop her, or even run away if I wanted.
Amelia’s fingers clamped around the top of my bag, and she yanked it out of my hands with a loud “Yoink!” She stood up, taking it well out of my reach, and began rifling through its contents.
“Hey, give that back!” I complained. “That’s my lunch!”
“Oh, I had no idea!” she replied, rolling the top back down and taking it one hand. “Here, you can have it back, you clearly need to eat something.” She bent over, lowering the bag toward me, but keeping it just out of reach. I leapt up to grab it and she jerked it away, laughing. “Too slow, shorty!” she said, lowering back into place. Again I jumped for it, but she pulled it just out of my grasp. “C’mon, do you even want your lunch?”
Amelia offered me my own lunch several times, just tantalizingly out of reach, and when I tried to grab it she pulled it away. It was difficult to notice at first since she was already so huge, but each time I tried to take it back she grew, a little more each time. Finally, when even her knees were far above my reach, she took pity on me. “Fine, it’s yours,” she said, rolling the bag up as far as it would go and popping in the sides so it would stand on its own. “Enjoy your lunch.” She dropped it and the bag crashed to the ground next to me. It wobbled but did not fall over, and I found myself looking up at the opening. There was no way for me to actually get to the food.
I looked up at Amelia in dismay and she chortled. “What, don’t you want it anymore? It’s right there!” she said, pointing at it. Her voice as considerably lower than usual now, with a powerful, rumbling quality to it. With a quick hit I tried to push it over, but only pushed the thick brown paper inward. “Aw, do you need someone big and strong like me to get it out for you?” she teased, and I gave her a pleading look. “Too bad, nerd, I’m not your mom, you should’ve thought of that before bringing such a big bag. Why don’t you tell me why you were going to eat in the library instead of the cafeteria?”
“I was going to get some class work done during the break,” I offered.
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to speak up!” she boomed, cupping a hand around her ear. “I can barely hear your tiny voice!” I repeated myself, louder this time, and she laughed. “Come on, I know that’s not true, we have the same classes! No one’s given us homework today, and if you’re putting in extra time to study I just feel bad for how poorly you still do.” She became even larger, and I was rapidly approaching parity with her ankles. “Don’t you have any friends to sit with?”
“Well, no,” I replied. “You made me a social outcast, remember?”
“Oh yeah!” Amelia exclaimed as though she had forgotten the campaign of sustained abuse and slander spanning over half a decade. “I did do that, didn’t I? Man, I’ll be honest, I forgot why I was even doing that after like two weeks. But by then everyone already despised you, and if I went back I’d have looked dumb, so I kept going with it. Sorry!” She finished by giving an exaggerated shrug and a stupid grin, accompanied by even more growth. I dwindled beneath her ankles, and now stood in the shadow of her monolithic legs. Amelia had gone from making me feel small while standing beside her to cowering at her feet in such a short time I was shocked.
“You’re sorry?” I challenged, unable to believe what she had said. “You ruined my life, and you’re-“
“I’m serious, I really can’t understand you!” she boomed, cutting me off. “You’re so puny that your voice is just a bunch of high-pitched squeaks to normal-sized people. Hold on, I’ll bring you closer.”
“No, that’s really not-” I began, but she was already leaning forward with an arm extended toward me. I tried to move out of the way but her gigantic hand easily tracked me down, and two fingers clamped around my chest. She stood again, plucking me off the floor, and my stomach dropped while blood rushed from my head. Spots filled my vision during the ascent up Amelia’s tremendous body and I felt light-headed. The meteoric rise stopped when I was held in front of Amelia’s face like a kernel of popcorn she was saving.
“Now that I have you up here,” she began, “why don’t you really tell me why you were coming here?” Up close her voice was terrifically loud, and the ringing from her voice persisted for several seconds after she was done speaking. “Were you hiding from someone?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, and she cocked one of her arched eyebrows. Clearly her curiosity had been piqued.
“Were you hiding from me?” she pressed, eager to hear my answer even though she had to already know it.
“Yes, Amelia, I was hiding from you,” I said, knowing I had nothing left to lose. She was already holding me in her hand, and her face dominated my view. Whatever she was going to do she had already decided.
“Ha!” she exclaimed, revealing the dark, tooth-lined cavern behind her lips. “You were hiding from a girl!” Somehow she grew even larger, practically doubling in size before my eyes. “What, were you scared I’d hurt you?”
“Yes!” I shouted. “You’ve been rotten to me every day since we started middle school, why would today be any different?”
“That’s a good point,” she replied. “And now that you’re bite-sized, really anyone could crush you by accident.” Her jade eyes diverted down to the floor. “Say, you’re not going to eat your lunch anymore, are you?” My eyes widened, and I could see where she was going. “Mind if I have it?”
“Amelia, whatever you’re thinking, please don’t do it,” I begged. “We graduate in two weeks, then we’ll never have to see each other again. You can keep me as your pet until then, your slave, anything, just please don’t do what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, calm down!” she said in a failed attempt to reassure me. She bent over and reached her free hand into my lunch bag, holding me roughly in place. “I’m eating your lunch, it’s not like I’m eating you.” Her hand came out of the bag, fingers wrapped around my sandwich. Quickly she brought it to her face and looked it over. “This is what you eat for lunch? No wonder you’re so small.”
Amelia opened her mouth and slid half the sandwich into her gaping maw, then cut it with her teeth. She pulled the remainder away while she chewed her bite. After a half-dozen movements of her powerful jaw she gulped it down, a small lump in her throat showing its progress. “Ham and cheese? Gross. I’m gonna need some more flavor to choke this next bite down.”
She drew me toward the sandwich, pressing me against the top side of white bread while her fingers lifted it up. “No, please!” I cried out. “I’m begging you, please don’t eat me! You can do anything you want to me, I’ll even live in your shoe, just don’t do this!” Completely ignoring my protests she set me down on the cool slice of cheese, then set the bread back down on top of me. Amelia gave the bread two quick pats, securing it in place with my head poking out of it.
“Come on, look on the bright side!” she said, gripping the remaining sandwich with two fingers. “Once you’re in my stomach you won’t have to worry about failing your way through life like you failed so miserably in school.” Amelia moved the sandwich toward her mouth and I began to scream at the top of my lungs. Her pink lips parted, unheeding of my desperate desire to live, revealing the row of teeth on either side of her maw. A gigantic tongue extended to welcome me like a landing strip, and she set me down atop it along with the sandwich.
Slowly the tongue receded into her mouth, drawing me between her glistening lips and the sharp, menacing teeth all around. I could see small bits of food from her previous bite clinging to her teeth and gums, the soggy white bread easy to spot against the veiny tissue inside her mouth. Then her lips closed, condemning me to darkness.
Amelia’s tongue flicked the sandwich to the side, whipping me along with it. The bread caught between her teeth, and her dull molars ripped through the bread. Meat squished between the flat surfaces, torn to shreds under intense pressure from her jaw, and the part of her bite that held me fell off and rolled back toward her tongue. Her saliva had rapidly saturated the bread, causing it to become moist and sticky. I tried to fight my way out of it but it was like trying to swim through a marsh, and my arms passed through the bread seemingly without damaging it.
Her molars clamped down around the bread again and began scything through it. The horrific, moist tearing of the bread giving way between her teeth clawed at my ears, and the finality of her teeth clicking together resonated through the dank pit of her mouth. By some twist of fate she had missed me with two bites, and my grainy prison was compromised enough by them that I could slip out.
I fell inward toward her tongue, which knocked me down with a hard strike. With a gasp I fell backward into a pool of saliva and chewed bread, tortured by the sound of her jaw mashing its way through another bite. Her tongue dove for me and her tip pushed me toward her menacing teeth. Food piled up before she could flick me onto them, however, and she tore through more of my lunch.
While her jaw did its work I got out from beneath the tongue and tried to run around it. The soft, tender tissue of her mouth sucked at my feet, and I fell on my face in the tissue. Her saliva began to do its work, burning my skin in the first step of digestion. Teeth mashed together again, and I struggled to get back to my feet. There were no hard surfaces to push against aside from her deadly molars, leaving me to flounder helplessly against the bottom of her mouth.
Amelia’s tongue slammed into me again, pushing me toward her molars. I fought against the powerful pink tentacle, just managing to avoid being cut to pieces by her teeth when they came together again. The titanic beast swept that whole side of her mouth, mixing me in with the ground-up bits of sandwich. That was six, and she had only needed to chew the first bite six times too. This was it.
Saliva gushed around me in a swift current, making it impossible to resist as her tongue shoved me toward her throat. I became intermingled with the mess of meat, cheese, and bread, indistinguishable from any other bit of it. A loud schlurp came from beneath and her gullet opened, dropping me into her throat. Her throat muscles clamped down on me immediately, and I joined the lump of food as it traveled down to her stomach.
Amelia enjoyed the little battle her tongue had with the little pest before he slid down her throat, and his desperate thrashes for life tickled her stomach. His movements quickly weakened, though, and soon stopped all together. What was his name again? It didn’t matter, he was an asshole anyway. She swallowed the bits and pieces of his sandwich that had been clinging to her gums and walked toward the cafeteria, tossing his lunch back into the trash along the way. Overall, she felt good about ridding the world of an asshole, and hoped the few grams of protein she got from him would give her a boost at the track meet that afternoon.