Maya dangled her now tiny boyfriend, Blake, high above her mouth with a bright white smile adorning it as she watched the man struggle. “I can’t say this isn’t deserved my little sweet pea. I saw all those texts you and that whore were sending each other.” Maya, being ever kind girl she was, promptly shrunk him with the ray gun she had lying around. 

“Babe, please don’t do this! That girl? Gone. I promise I’ll delete her from everything. You can even eat my phone if you really feel like eating something small.” Blake, mere moments ago was normal size, talking to Maya like he would any other day. That was until things took a turn for the weird and then the worst.  First, she asked Blake to feel her stomach, then to listen to it as the gases and acidic liquids digested long-forgotten food she’d eaten hours prior. It was around that time that Maya shrunk Blake without question. Now that he was looking down at Maya’s mouth, and about to take the plunge of a lifetime, Blake regretted texting that girl in the first place. If he knew he’d end up a fraction of his already small girlfriend's height, he never even would have thought of talking or even looking at other girls. But here he was, about to be swallowed by the seemingly sweetest girl he’d ever meet. This was the end of the line.

Maya just giggled as she opened her mouth, letting her once-loving boyfriend see where he’d be going. Her massive tongue covered in millions of gallons of salvia, with ever-increasing amounts the longer she just stared at his meager form. And then, there were her teeth. Sharper than any blade Blake had seen, white as a dinner plate. This was most terrifying for him as he looked down at the deep dark pit of Maya’s mouth. The only thing keeping him from going into panic mode was the fact that maybe she’d kill him fast. Dying in that bottomless pit of a stomach would be a fate far worse than any death he could come up with. Acids that would ensure a long and painful death for sure.

“Oh hubby. It’s too late for apologizing. You see, I don’t take this kind of thing lightly. You texted her first. You even asked for nudes first. So you shouldn’t be surprised that you’re going to be digested in my tummy.” Maya then brought Blake close to her mouth as she puckered her lips for a kiss. “One last kiss my darling.” Blake’s eardrums were blasted as if he was right next to a jetliner taking off. But soon, he was tossed onto Maya’s lips, plastered onto her skin as his ears were still ringing from being ‘screamed’ at not even a few seconds prior. 

“Please, Maya! Have mercy!” Blake’s apologies and desperate pleas for a return to his normal life would go unheard as Maya simply tuned him out, sticking her tongue out to only snatch him up. And without much of a ceremony, Maya swallowed Blake and sent him down to be digested, just like the countless other people she’d eaten before him. She’d lost track of how many people she’d sent down in her pit of a stomach but knew it was enough to when she ate them, they started to lose their flavor. Maya just went about her day, shrinking more who deserved punishment in her stomach as she saw it was not only the justest form of punishment but also the most painful. She’d tried stepping on them, sitting on them or just tossing them in the wild but none of the ways she used to get rid of people satisfied her more than eating them alive. She couldn’t help but imagine Blake being digested in her acids excited more than normal. This was her boyfriend which made it that much sweeter.

“Well, I guess it’s off to find a new one. Enjoy your stay in there little guy.” Maya patted her stomach and headed out of her apartment, unaware of Blake’s true fate in her stomach. Unbeknownst to her, the tiny people she swallowed and everyone else, her stomach was not only home to the half-eaten food and drink she sent down every day. There was also a city, home to thousands of people, some of whom had been eaten by Maya or another version of her but also some who had only known the confines of the stomach. No one knew the exact origins of this city, just that when newcomers were sent down Maya’s throat, the overwhelming feeling was to save them from the fate that everyone knew would happen.

This is what Trinity does for a living. Fishing or what would be fishing by current standards. Not born in the city like some of her friends had but brought here by force when Maya swallowed her many months ago. She’d never forgotten the reason why she was eaten, it had been that long. It was like a life sentence for Trinity as she went down a girl's throat. But when she was saved by a man in a boat when she landed in the acid, her life took a different turn. The once shy, not so outgoing twenty-year-old girl was tossed in a world she was forced to adapt to. Volunteering as a fisherwoman to not only prove herself to the city but to show herself that she could survive in Maya’s stomach. She’d already seen a few of her fellow fishers save a few people the giantess sent down here but Trinity had yet to save someone, just fish out the remains of whatever Maya had eaten. Food-wise.

“If she can just swallow something good for once that’d be fantastic. A Twinkie maybe. I’ll even take a snowball but no this bitch always has to eat healthily.” Trinity said as she started shining her flashlight the area around her boat, looking for anything remotely edible. The ironic thing about being in a stomach is that you’re completely surrounded by food but half of it is usually inedible from the acids. Out of the thousands of tons of food eaten by the girl, they now lived inside, only about a tenth of it was even edible anymore. As hard of a concept to understand it, starvation was actually the leading cause of death in Maya’s stomach or known locally as just The Prison. Falling in the acids was actually a slow process and not instantaneous as many thought. Some could stay in the acids for a few minutes before skin burning would set in. That was how the fishers found new people Maya had introduced them to. Through sheer luck and lights on their boats, they managed to find about half of Maya’s victims before they were dissolved in the acids.

“Ugghhh..” Trinity heard a moan behind her and when she brought her light to meet it, she gasped as she saw a man floating face up in the acids. Rushing over to him, she used all her strength to pull him up on the boat, his clothes mostly already dissolved as she tried her best to get him breathing once again as best she could. The last time she had to perform this was in high school so she was basically just pounding on his chest until she eventually managed to get the ‘water’ out of his lungs. And after a few minutes, Trinity finally managed to get the man breathing once more.

“Ah! Where am I? Is this hell?” Blake said as he looked around, seeing nothing around him besides some lights floating around the lake. Other than that, it was almost pitch black.

“No friend, this isn’t hell. Although it certainly feels like it sometimes. I’m Trinity, and you are?”

“What? Where are we exactly? The last thing I remember is-“

“Getting eaten by Maya? Yep, that’s how we all got here. Now, name please.”

“It’s Blake. So you’re saying we’re in her stomach? Wait, what do you mean all?”

“Alright Blake, let's get you to see a doctor in The City. You probably have a lot of questions.” Trinity soon started rowing in the thick sludge of half-digested food and acids that Blake had just been pulled from. 

“Yeah like why aren’t we dead! We should be digesting and not in this little rowboat! It doesn’t make sense

“You sound ungrateful to be alive Mr. Blake. In my home, that would be grossly offensive especially in our scenario. In the stomach of a fifteen-year-old girl, our only fate is to die here and then get tossed in to feed her ever-growing hunger.” As much as Blake’s anger and confusion clouded his judgment and thought process, what Trinity said confused Blake even more. Maya and him went back to childhood. He was twenty-two and she was twenty-one right up until she ate him alive. Her being fifteen years old wouldn’t make much sense since he’s seen her drink liquor for the first time a few months ago, he’d even seen her ID, which was just a year off from his. This was just going to be the first of many strange and astonishing anomalies Blake would find in the stomach of his former girlfriend. For now, he kept quiet about this revelation as to not startle Trinity. 

“Yeah, I’m not really ungrateful, more so confused.”

“I know it’s difficult to understand this new life but it’s something you’re just going to have to accept. Not a single soul has managed to escape this place, at least as far as we know. Either through the top or bottom exit. Up you’ll get sent back down and down you’ll never go up again.” Just as the two locked eyes, the boat was soon docked in the city, letting Blake see the shanty sea town that would be his new home for the rest of his life. It was then that he noticed that the perceived smell of vomit and acids were absent around the town. Instead, it was replaced by the smell of saltwater, further adding to the atmosphere of the city. “Here it is, home sweet home. It may take a bit to get used to but it’s a place that isn’t at the bottom of the acids. Come on, I’ll show you around. Get you to the doctor, lord knows if you have any broken bones. If I know Maya, she loves to chew her food. She either must’ve wanted you to suffer or just didn’t care.” Trinity then helped Blake up from the boat as they headed out into the town.

As Blake walked around with his new friend, he attempted to cover himself but it took him longer than he’d care to admit that no one seemed to mind. At one ‘store’, he saw a few naked women and men shopping for whatever the vendor had which just seemed to be food partially covered in the acids he was just sitting in. As much it freaked him out about being nude with seemingly hundreds of people watching his every move, Blake soon uncovered himself to further ‘blend in’. This new world he found himself in would not be like New York, not one bit as the people around him only stared at him when he was covered.

“Welcome to The City of Maya. Home for the lost, swallowed and forgotten. As confusing as it seems, some got swallowed willingly. They didn’t know Maya eating them would lead here but what they knew was that they wouldn’t have to be out there anymore. Nine to fives, kids, ex-wife’s or husbands. All gone. Only bad thing is, you can’t leave.” As Trinity spoke to Blake about the strange people that were now going to be his neighbors, they passed a market of sorts that had a sign on the front reading ‘Maya’s exclusive items” in bold letters. Stopping in place, he noticed the variety of food Maya ate including a piece of paper, snot, and a strange blue circle that had strange symbols on it. 

“Oh, you must be new here to The City. Name’s Lincoln. Born and raised here.” Blake looked up from his browsing and saw a man about six-two, blue skin, and gills around his neck. Unsurprisingly, Blake took a step back as he took Lincoln’s full form. It was surprising to see a full-on city here but what he never expected to see a fish man

“Born here? In a stomach? I’m sorry but that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Blake said as he tried his best to remain calm as he watched the fish-man Lincoln step closer to him.

“Trust me kid, born in a stomach is the least mysterious thing about this place. When I was born, the city was already a few hundred years old. Nothing is as it seems here. But that’s just between us.”

“A hundred years? My girlfriend is not a hundred years old!” Blake shouted as Lincoln backed up, holding his hands up as he closed the gate of his shop, separating him from the outside world as he knew what was going to happen. A riot and that was exactly what was forming around Blake.

“This is your girlfriend? How can you date a seventy-year-old?” One man shouted as the crowd gathered around Blake.

“Seventy! God, have we been in that long?” A woman shouted as she began crying on the ground.

“I was eaten the other week, she was thirty! I swear!” Another woman shouted as the crowd grew even larger until it encompassed the whole market. Fortunately, Trinity managed to grab Blake amongst the shouting over Maya’s age, why they were here and general hatred of their lives here.

“Congratulations dipshit, you broke the town. Now you realize why we don’t discuss her here anymore. Bad enough that we have to live in her stomach but when someone mentions her, the whole town goes wild.” As Trinity and Blake walked the streets once more, he made it clear to not converse with anyone that wasn’t Trinity as he thought any knowledge he knew about Maya would be debated heavily.

“So it doesn’t make sense. I know Maya as a girl in her twenties, you’re telling me she’s fifteen. And the other people just don’t know what to agree on. Besides living in a stomach, this place is insane.”

Trinity halted as she brought him into an alley devoid of people, the only contents being trash cans and other assorted items. “Look, being a girl's stomach is weird. My best friend says that she’s from a place that the US blew up. It’s a crazy world we live in now. Point being, don’t mention where you’re from around crowds. They’ll want to argue with each other for hours. Got it?”

“You got it? I’m just so conf-“

“I know you are, we all are. We live in a stomach now with fish people that swim in the acid. It doesn’t make sense. But keep it to yourself.” Trinity grabbed hold of Blake’s mouth as she silenced him from talking any further. “Your old life is gone. Whoever you had waiting for you back home doesn’t matter anymore.” As Trinity lowered her hand from Blake’s face, she expected more questions out of him but he remained silent as the thought of never returning home quickly took over his mind. Trapped. In a stomach. His girlfriend's stomach no less. Or at least something he assumed to be Maya’s stomach.

“Yeah. I get you. I never really liked my old life anyway. A terrible job that gave me nothing. A girlfriend that ate me because I was texting my best friend from high school. How can living here be any worse?” Blake said as he shed one single tear before standing back up. “I think I’m alright. It’s not like I can escape from here.”