I turned the corner onto Greek Row, the one street on campus I had never felt quite welcome. Driving between the mansions and townhouses, the domains of privileged kids living off their parents’ money, I noticed that, aside from a few people passed out on lawns, there was nobody outside, just as I had expected this early on a Sunday. Their trust funds would be there to bail them out if their grades tanked too much from partying all weekend. As I continued toward my work-study job, I may have been a little resentful, maybe even envious of how easy they had it.
I cranked the volume on my stereo high enough that the windows rattled in their slots. It was one of the few luxuries I allowed myself, and installing the gigantic subwoofer and speakers had been good practice for working with electrical diagrams. Making my music loud enough I could feel it in my chest was one of my points of pride, and I knew they would be able to hear it inside their palaces. While it may not be much, making these entitled would-be nobles feel the slightest consequence for their actions made me smile. A hangover may not sting like having to claw your way through life, but it was the best I could do.
With the music blaring, I slowed down to make sure they would all be roused from their drunken comas. Bodies lying in grass began to twitch as they were startled awake, and people opened windows to shout at me, though I obviously could not hear them. As I neared the end of the street, a dark-haired woman even walked out of one of the sorority houses to glare at me. It was working – I had annoyed them into being uncomfortable.
The next thing I knew, I was driving along an unmarked highway wide enough to accommodate dozens of cars going in both directions. In the far distance on either side, across a great plain of asphalt, were lush forests of green trees that had a single leaf, uniformly shorn off roughly at the top. I swerved around a boulder that had suddenly appeared in the road, and my tires thudded into a deep ravine I had not noticed before. Thankfully, they bounced out without bending the axle, allowing me to continue my way to work, but I had no idea where I was. My GPS said I was in the same spot, but there was no way that was right.
A shadow cast long by the morning sun fell over me, and I hit the brakes in surprise. A pair of enormous brown loafers had come out of nowhere to stand in front of me, twenty lanes of traffic between them, with gigantic, flared black pillars rising out of them. I followed them up to what appeared to be human knees on a gargantuan scale, covered by lightly tanned skin, that gave way to a pleated plaid skirt the size of a circus tent. From there, it was a wrinkled curtain of white linen, bulging around a sizable chest, the top two buttons undone to allow it some freedom to move. At the top was a face, and I was shocked when the dark brown eyes blinked, telling me she was alive.
I did not know where this giantess had come from, nor did I want to stick around long enough to find out what she wanted. Stomping on the gas pedal, my tires squealed and the car shot forward. Her feet were spread wide enough for me to drive between them without issue, and once I was away from her I could figure out what was going on. In just a couple seconds I had halved the distance to her, and once I reached her shoes it would be just one second more before I blew past her heels.
My car slammed into something, deploying the airbag, and when it threw me back against the headrest I saw the thick, wrinkled line crossing a palm pressed against my windshield. I struggled to get free from the airbag, but as the car lifted off the ground I knew any escape would be in vain. The hand squeezed, making the metal shell around me groan, and a long crack appeared in the windshield. A large dent appeared in the frame, and I covered my eyes just in time to keep glass from the shattering windshield from cutting my face and neck.
The meteoric rise pressed me into the chair while the airbag deflated, and I fought to keep from slumping down. It was only a few seconds, but in the dark surrounded by a giantess’s fist it seemed like forever. Dark spots appeared on the edges of my vision, then subsided when I came to an abrupt stop. My heart leapt into my throat, and the vehicle shuddered when it set down on something. Music was still blasting, bouncing off the walls around me even as her skin absorbed some of the sound, making it seem even louder and discordant as it saturated the air around me.
Her hand lifted away, revealing that she had simply set me down in the middle of the vast, fleshy expanse of her other palm. Through the empty hole of my windshield I saw pink lips pulled tight in a wry grin, easily wide enough to fit my car through them with room to spare. A wide, rounded nose loomed over me, and two dark eyes stared down from above, narrowed in rage. Strands of black hair fell in a waterfall of bangs, only a hint of the tremendous volumes flowing behind her head and past her shoulders.
I stomped on the accelerator again. If she was going to take me prisoner like this, the least I could do was give her a fat lip with my car. Unfortunately, though the engine revved intensely, it did not move. Running into her hand had messed with the inner workings of my vehicle, and I was stuck on her palm.
“Let’s turn this shit off already,” she boomed. To my surprise, her voice easily cut through my music, drowning it out with her own power. She reached for me with her other hand, and a single finger blocked my view as she pinched them around my car’s engine. Metal squealed and tore as she brought them together, and with a firm yank she separated the compartment from the rest of the chassis. Casually she opened her fingers, dropping it past the huge platform of her hand, and I never even heard it hit the ground.
Glaring, she turned her attention back to me. “Do you have any idea how hungover I am?” she asked, her rumbling voice making my insides shake harder than my bass ever did.
“I figure you’re very hungover,” I answered. “Did my music wake you up? That was the plan, after all.” I was feeling uncharacteristically brave, knowing that what I said would not matter in the long run.
Her expression did not change, and she was certainly not amused. “I was hoping to sleep until noon today, but your obnoxious fucking car messed with my plans.” It was possible she could not hear me, or she simply found what I said unimportant enough to completely ignore. “Maybe the other houses can’t do anything about it, but us Gammas have ways of dealing with annoying little pests like you.”
It was then that I realized the gravity of my mistake. If there was one Greek organization you did not want to get on the wrong side of, it was Gamma Tau Sigma. The sorority had a reputation of being incredibly exclusive, making it appeal to all the would-be princesses on campus, but I was more concerned with another aspect of their reputation. Men tended to go missing around them, both at parties and in casual encounters with their members. There was never enough to make formal accusations, and no one could find any traces of foul play, but there were definitely suspicions among the more skeptical members of the student body.
Her fingers returned, reaching for me through the empty gap of the windshield, and got stuck in the broken frame. Before I could sigh in relief, she proved this was only a temporary setback for her by spreading her fingers. The manifold crumpled under the weight of her thumb, and the roof tore backward with a great screech, leaving me uncovered. While I stared at her in awe, she did not waste any time. She thrust her fingers forward, gripping the seatbelt strap that went over my shoulder, and gave it a firm tug. With a loud tear the strap split, and she pulled it away so it draped over the steering wheel.
With that out of the way, there was nothing between me and her wrath. Her fingers spread and came forward, settling around my body, and lifted me out of my seat. Fighting was pointless; with her fingers holding my arms and legs, I could not even move them to struggle. Her fingertips alone were wide enough to encompass my entire length, and she had more strength in her pinky than I had in my whole body. I was at her mercy, and from how she glowered down at me I did not like my chances.
Beneath me, her fingers snapped shut around my ruined car, closing it in a tight fist. She squeezed, barely putting forth any effort, and I heard a loud pop as it gave way beneath the pressure. When she opened her fingers again, I saw a crumpled heap of metal where my car had been, compacted to the size of a coin inside her hand. Dismissively, she tilted her hand to the side, and it slid off to land on the ground far below.
She turned her attention back to me, and I felt a chill run down my spine under her harsh gaze. “You know what’s good for hangovers?” she asked rhetorically, making my hair and clothes blow back from the force of her voice. “Protein. I won’t get much from you, but it’s a start.”
My stomach sank. Was she really going to eat me? Even taking a bite out of another person was unconscionable, but to completely devour one was unthinkable. As I looked at her lips, though, I knew it was at least possible. It would be trivial for her to drop me between them, and once inside I had no doubt she could swallow me whole.
Her mouth opened, and two thick strands of saliva stretched between her lips. Beyond them, I saw a row of straight white teeth lining the top and bottom, and her red uvula dangling over the back of her throat. A broad pink floor spread flat over the bottom of her mouth, stretching between her teeth, and I realized, horrified, that it was her tongue. If this was just a joke, it had long passed the point where I found it funny.
Slowly she started drawing me toward her open mouth, dropping her jaw even lower in anticipation, and I concluded this was not a joke at all. “Please don’t eat me!” I shouted, hoping she could hear me. “I’m sorry I woke you up, but I’ve learned my lesson, please let me go!”
A rush of hot air buffeted me from her nose when she laughed. “Shut the fuck up,” she boomed, her voice overwhelming me with its incredible power. Her lips spread and came together while she spoke, making the tiny lines in her lips into obvious wrinkles for a split second. “Your squeaky little voice is almost as bad as your music.”
Before I could keep defiantly screaming at her, she pitched her hands forward and let go, tossing me into her mouth. I sailed between her lips and through her teeth, landing on the spongy surface of her tongue. After a couple of bounces I stopped and turned back toward her lips, only to see them seal shut behind me. I was plunged into darkness, with only the humid air of her mouth to tell me where I was.
I stood uneasily on her tongue, its soft surface sucking my feet into it, and wondered what I could do. Saliva had saturated my clothes, and was burning me all over, adding a strong sense of urgency to my situation. In the complete darkness of her cavernous maw, I only knew which way was forward, and began running toward it. It would be difficult to fight my way through her lips, but it was the only chance I had to survive.
Two steps in, the floor rose up and slammed me against the roof of her mouth. She held me there for a moment, letting her tongue form around me, before its tip solidified. Slowly she dragged me backward along her palate, grinding me into the hard ridges along its length, while I vainly struggled to get free. The soft flesh was all too willing to let my arms and legs move through it, but I could gain no leverage against the material, and it simply let me sink into it was I pushed downward.
Her tongue suddenly bolted to the side, pressing me into her cheek. I screamed in surprise at the unexpected quick movement, then tried to push myself off the inside of her cheek as well. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make any progress freeing myself from the hold. Saliva gathered around me, making my skin tingle as it burned more intensely. No matter what I did, it seemed that as long as I could not overcome her tongue I would be at her mercy.
With a quick flick her tongue tossed me into the air, and I soared back to bounce off one of her molars before landing on the base of her tongue. Saliva rushed around me, forming a thick stream, and I found myself caught up in the fluid. My desperate grasps for handholds were for naught as my hands slipped off the slick surface, and it carried me off her tongue and onto a tight band of tensed muscle. If I could not get away from here, I knew, there would be no more chances.
Before I could even stand up, her gullet opened, and a powerful waterfall of saliva washed me down with it. “No!” I shouted, thrusting a hand upward, but the muscle simply closed around it, allowing my arm to slip through as I was dragged down her throat. Her throat muscles formed a tight seal around me, not even allowing me to struggle, though I definitely tried to get free. No matter how hard I fought, however, I could not overcome the power of her throat, and I was inexorably compelled toward her stomach.
I landed with a loud plop, and that was the last sound I ever heard. Her stomach acid burned me much more intensely than her saliva had, and I found myself paralyzed with pain, unable to even swim along the surface. Worse, there was no oxygen inside her stomach, and whatever I breathed in, it was not oxygen and very hot. Despite my willpower, this was a one-way trip, and as I lost consciousness I realized I was only at the first stop.