Under the Skin
Jana comes back from the train toilet, wiping away some remnants of water from her lips with the back of her hand. Not guessing what was happening to her friend Sam inside of her guts she confidently walks back to her seat. She’s dead sure she tricked these swines out and let herself fall quickly but leisurely into the seat again. She is chill. But deep inside her, she was pure tension. Her anger is on fire. And you should not talk to her. But she has no clue what this movement did to her friend:
He is violently shaken in her digestive juices. Thus, increasing the digestion process just like stirring up sugar or salt in a cup of water. He could not scream in agony because he is subconscious. Roughly ten minutes after being completely covered in her bile, the pain all over his wounded and partly digested naked body overwhelmed him. When she was falling to the floor to throw up, some minutes after that, he slightly came back to his mind from being tossed around her duodenum, just like now. But it was not bringing him back to life since he stays inside her body prison. He does not care very much anymore. He’s not able to. His skin is already extensively peeling off his arms and chest. Parts of his detached skin flaps already float inside the dissolving lake. When it will be transferred to her small intestine, his broken-down molecules will become part of her as she continues dissolving him until he is completely ingested.
Every single movement she makes, to get a little bit more comfortable in these rigid seats every now and then is translated to the other world inside of her lower gastrointestinal tract. She sinks deeper into the seats and puts her feet on the seat in front of her. People around her are getting uneasy and start to react because she is in one of the faster, more expensive trains. But she does not care about them.
Two stations later someone wants to sit next to her feet. She studies him intensively with her eyes.
“Don’t you dare to say a single word!”
He remains quite until she decides to take off her shoes. She provokes him to get away. It is understandable. The last neighbor poisoned her water. What is the next one about to do? “This is clearly enough. I will call an attendant.” In the moment he tries to stand up, she jumps off and encloses her hands around his neck, slightly suffocating him and pushes him back into the seat.
“We will get along just fine. If you will just do what I told you to do. Be quiet. As if you were a little boy again.”
He is impressed by her ruling radiance. She did not have very much to force him to stay or be quiet, but some people are easier to manipulate than one thinks. And if he knew, that he was forcefully threatened by someone holding two persons captive in the belly, he would run for his life, as fast as he can.
She is almost in her hometown again. Her hands are laying on her belly, holding her smartphone while chatting with Lilly. On the side she researches the internet for information about the obscure diver’s club. She does not find out anything worthy without dark net. So, she continues to get to know more about digestion. Not a very common topic to know everything about. Just after selecting a new music playlist… On the other side of her skin was Sam. Just a hundred times smaller. The sparkling of his body is increasing, yet he is still breathing.
The worst but expected is about to start happening right now. Her duodenum starts to get restless. The increasing movement rocks Sam around the lake. He loses a lot of tissue, his bloody and fatty subcutis becoming uncovered. The entire tube contracts, expands and rearranges itself. Then the whole lake of bile is pressed out over the edge down into her small intestine. All of which she has only slightly taken note from, although she is very concentrated on what happens inside of her right now. Sam is now inside of her small intestine which is even more tight and restless. The bile is slowly running down deeper as he is examined by the muscular, ingesting tube surrounding him. He suddenly opens his blood stained eyes as he realizes the entire pain he missed in the very moment of waking up.
“UNHOLY GHOST! PAIN!!”
He tries to push against the walls to resist Jana’s final realm of consumption with his legs and arms.
Am I still alive?! Am I still… inside of Jana?! Oh fuck… There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be.
It is pitch black. Moving blindly in the darkness he accidently kicks away something hard of weight. He tries to slip after it to find it again. It is soaked in juices, but it should work. He holds the flashlight.
One click and I can reveal the shuddering truth. I long, yet dare not to employ my vision. I dread the first glance at the moist tissue around me. My worst thoughts, then, are confirmed. The moving flesh of eternal consumption encompasses me. A wet endless tube reinforced with lots and lots of circular folds establishes. I pointed my device forward, sending a beam of light between my feet. As the backmost part of the tube stayed dark, my flashlight was not able to reach everywhere. The movement all around me intimidates me. The intensity of the subjection stifles me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. This is madness. I am inside of Jana’s intestinal lumen.
From an inner need to communicate with her, he curiously touches the patiently moving consuming walls of her. The walls that already consumed him partially. They feel of course slimy, but behind that he realizes a fine roughness on it. He then realizes his digested body. On his chest, only a transparent layer of skin covers his white bones that become slightly visible already. Despair. She almost digested his whole upper layer of his leather skin.
As if the small intestine already understood what went wrong with Sam, why the little morsel is still moving, he is slowly pressed down towards the bile. Then the intestinal peristalsis tosses him around the next corner against his will.
A sample of the intestine’s flexibility is demonstrated to me in the next moment. Contraction, gurgling voices oppressing my psyche and tilting movements I cannot resist. I am moved further. Oh please, make an end to this horror… I don’t want to go deeper inside you, Jana!
It is the exact wrong direction. He wants to leave this place. He did not even want to get here in the first place. He was forced to. He knows, that every second he remains, he draws nearer to death. And now, instead of moving out, her emotionless, voracious bowels even kick him further down. Step by step further away from his escape. Maybe 20 more curves until he will meet the large intestine.
What he did not know, his subcutis below mainly consists of fatty tissue, which is a real delicacy for intestinal bile and it’s enzymes. The peristalsis presses him further as his body is grinded inside of remands of bile. The enzymes instantly start working. He is consumed with an intolerable thirst. Moments of helpless existence follow. He is squeezed around by sometimes stronger, sometimes softer movements. The creaking from her muscles all around, both her humongous abs and the wrapping intestines, contribute to his forsakenness.
He realizes to get tired and dizzy as the oxygen in his cylinder is getting scarce. After several curves he is close to an edge revealing a bottomless pit. Apart from his dizziness, he is mentally absent or hypnotized into another unwary state from the pain and monotonous digestion process he can not hold back. In the moment of being close to fall down he realizes gravity is pulling him down he and wakes up! The intestine muscles nudge him over the edge into the abyss…
He landed heavily. His ankle hurt. In the next moment something strikes his eyes: “What is that?” He realizes another gas cylinder just three feet below his feet behind a contracted tube. He turns his body around to put his hands and head to the front. His weakened body is not able to find the strength, but he tries to grab the gas cylinder towards him. He runs out of air… and his fingers lose grip painting down the cylinder and falling onto the soft moist bottom. His efforts cause the intestine to rearrange completely. Suddenly the yellow cylinder is pressed backwards just above Sam. A muffled scream resounds from where the gas cylinder came. It must be the coach …! Sam manages to catch a breath of oxygen and turns over again. The air is very fresh compared to his own air. Suddenly a dark and warped creature crawls towards Sam! “Finally, you are inside of her hell, too! You really earned this death! And it’s not her who will kill you. It’s me.” Sam is unable to move very fast due to his pain and exhaustion. He approaches and crawls over him. Very very closely as there is not much place for two. All of things, the coach recognizes his knife floating towards him in the very moment. In his fortune for revenge, he is surprised as well and he picks it up grinning. “Look…, what do we have here? Do you remember this blade?” Sam spits in his face. “Do your worst, lunatic!” He wipes it away as he knows his following words will sink into Sam like the blade will afterwards: “Looking at you and especially your warped body while knowing the person you love did this to you – I would consider this love as blind lunacy.” He was right. All his feelings were just blind emotions. Nothing counted for her as well. She just did not care about him.
“NO! She did not want to do this to me! She wanted so safe us! And the reason for my partially digested and broken down myself is you! If you hadn’t slashed me I would still have air, and my suit was still complete!” Amazed by his still rational mind the coach pauses for a moment bending up. But he does not care for too long. “Say goodbye!” He dons his knife to his throat and cuts into Sam’s skin. Without much effort it starts bleeding.
All the sudden the intestinal system rearranges again. A rodeo ride starts to squeeze both the coach and Sam away from another. He grabs Sam’s thighs and both are sucked deeper down. Suddenly, his eyes open wide immediately shortly before he starts screaming. The tube heavily contracts, one or two bones are breaking. He loses his knife out of his opening and stretched hands… In one final peristaltic suction her intestine does away with him. Sam goes completely into freeze mode as he hears the bestial sounds from her bowels, almost like she was savaging him like a wild beast again. Desperate and futile high-pitched screams of pure anguish are resounding. From an ambivalently safe distance Sam slightly recognizes the noise of dozens of bones snapping and breaking. His body is squeezed and crushed to death until nothing, but a mush of gore and bone-fragments remain; ready to be broken down and absorbed.
She effortlessly killed him… just like that. And she probably did not even know it, yet. The timing was perfect… She saved my miserable life. Yet, I recognized where I am only now. I am completely and utterly at the mercy of her and her grumpy, moody, manic bowel. I could die a brutal death just like him in every moment… Additionally to that I do not want to be grinded in his bloody remnants when she pushes me further down again.
I remember the knife he hast lost and pick it up. I fold it up and keep it. Oh hell. Something that sharp could have harmed her very much. I am glad he could not keep it. Some could think I should stab her from the inside. But this would not bring me out. I would need to cut through her bowel and then through her abs which might be the biggest problem. No. I can’t do this to her. I am dead sure she did not want to do all of this to me either.
As he loses himself in his selflessness the intestine has to move on to its task and kneads him down as if nothing happened. As if she has not saved him and he has not decided to not stab his way out of her belly. The digestion must go on.
These shadowy walls of flesh polish me off, squeezing down -- down -- still down -- till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent.