Chapter 6: Blair
The hallway had changed. The strands of marshmallow and licorice hanged longer now and doubled in number. White-green light lit the place just as it did in that chamber. The floor was a mix of slippery caramel syrup and chitinous coatings of hard-candy.
Karen ran. She went back the way she came to find a dead end in the form of a slimy, toffee wall. Karen gave it a kick to see if she could break it: no dice, it was hard as bricks.
“Hey, I felt that you know.” taunted Blair from all around. “I’m tasting you constantly.” A slimy rope of licorice slipped down from the ceiling to lap at Karen’s neck.
“Mmm, delicious~”
Karen was practically hyperventilating now. She ran the opposite direction through another split in the hallway. The next corridor pulsed with caramel coated, flesh colored taffy. She felt the thick syrup lap at her sneakers as she stepped into it. Immediately, she had second thoughts and sought to turn around but the entry-portion of that hallway sealed up with a wall of taffy. She took a step back and tripped on another licorice rope Blair snaked out for the purpose.
The wall warbled as a large naked human-looking body stepped out of it: Blair!
“Blair, is that you?” squeaked Karen.
“As much as the floor you’ve fallen on, yes.”
The ponytailed woman smiled wide and stepped towards Karen. The clown-costumed brunette scrambled back, but Blair was faster and taller. This body stood a good 12ft tall. Her feet squished against the confectionery hazard, but she moved through it without any hindrance unlike Karen.
“B-blair, please I’m sorry!”
“I’ll bet~” said the body.
A long arm reached out at towards Karen and the brunette instinctively screamed. Mouth agape, her chewed up gum rolled right off her tongue into Blair’s awaiting hand. Paralyzed with fear, Karen watched as Blair’s body took the chewed up wad and pressed it to her own forehead, just like Karen did to torment her earlier in the day.
The gob sunk right into Blair’s taffy flesh.
“Keep running, I’ll give you a head start.”
Karen scrambled to her feet and bolted down the hallway. She heard Blair’s voice all around.
“5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Ready or not, here I come!”
She heard the distant splashing of Blair’s feet against the syrup floor. Even with her head start Karen couldn't stay ahead for long. It seemed every other hallway she tried got sealed up. She followed the brightest white-green lights down the sweetest and most candy-horror filled hallways. Licorice grew like vines on the sugary, pulsing walls of taffy. She saw broken brick get filled in by the chewy stuff, and realized that Blair must be consuming the building from the inside out.
With all the dead ends, she knew Blair was leading her somewhere, but she didn’t have much of a choice other than follow the monster-gal’s route. She didn’t want to know what would happen if Blair’s amazonian body caught her. Karen never would, though. The chase was a ruse to get Karen into the biggest part of the building all the way at the back: the warehouse.
The last hallway was the worst. The floor here was thick as tar with caramel. The walls were lined with tendrillic ropes of licorice, slimy with sugar-water spittle. Thick columns of marshmallow dangled from the ceiling here and tapered down near the floor like stalactites.
Blair’s pounding footsteps roared closer. Karen thought the amazon would be right atop her to rip her in half any second now. Yet, right as Blair would’ve reached the hallway it slammed shut with a toffee wall. There was no need to chase anymore and only one place to go: deeper inside.
She couldn’t see into the warehouse at the end of the hallway. Blair snuffed the lights in there beforehand. Once the corridor entrance sealed, she cut the lights there too.
Karen moved through the darkness, brushing against moist and wet candy appendages. They waggled against her like tongues. Every bit of contact had Blair’s voice echoing around her.
“Mmmmm~”
“You’re so delicious.”
“I just can’t wait~”
Karen got sick of the gooey marshmallow strands above and started crawling on the floor. Her hands and body grew slick and sticky with all the syrup. Even here she couldn’t escape Blair’s savoring.
“Your hands taste so buttery. New moisturizer?” said Blair’s voice in a taunt.
Karen felt nubs on the floor here, soft and gummy: gumdrops. No matter where she moved she was being tasted by the living hallway of candy-flesh. She paused, tears welling in her eyes. There was no time to stop and cry as the floor itself rippled her forward with a push of taffy.
“I’m growing impatient. It’s hard to resist just engulfing you here and now. It’d be so easy...”
A drop of caramel drenched her hair from the ceiling and Blair laughed. Karen scrambled to her feet and ran forward into the dark. Her steps sounded different soon enough. In particular, a good deal less wet. The ground still had a bit of give to it under step, so she kept moving hoping to step on something other than candy. The brunette didn’t stop till she ran into something and bounced onto her butt.
Then, light flooded in, yet it wasn’t that green tinted phosphorescence from before, but daylight. It came from the windows as Blair willed her taffy away from them to brighten up the warehouse.
As her eyes adjusted to the return of natural light, Karen realized what she bumped into was a humongous torso extending up from the taffy floor. It was Blair.
Karen turned and ran back towards the corridor she came in from. Blair saw, obviously, and just willed the taffy-floor she made to grow outwards and cover the hallway. Her various candy matter could get through that bulk, but not Karen.
“C’mon.” spoke Blair’s thundering voice. “You should know better than to try and escape me by now.”
The clown-dressed woman worked up the courage to turn around and face this gigantic Blair. The woman--or at least this part of her, given how ‘present’ she was throughout the building--extended from the taffy-flesh floor to just under the ceiling of the ware house. This put her at about 50 feet tall from base to top of her ponytailed head, which meant, if standing, she’d be about 100 feet in height.
Blair had made herself quite the nest here. From the top of her head to her navel she was as ‘normal’ looking as any candy-monster-woman could be. From the torso’s base, marshmallow strings spiraled over the licorice ropes which extended from her body like the roots of a tree--or wires to a machine. Each appendage varied in thickness from thin as a vine to thick as a rope to thicker than the sturdiest tree root. They spread across the room and through the taffy-blocked hallway out into the rest of the building.
Karen realized the base didn’t just ‘end’, but rather flattened out to make up the entire floor. The taffy here was as fair as Blair’s own flesh. It jiggled a bit now and then under Karen’s sneakers, and the look that made on the Karen’s face got smirk on the giant Blair’s own each and every time.
They taffy’s surface was somewhat moist with a thin layer of caramel and syrup, which served some horrific purpose no doubt. Blair wasn’t satisfied with just covering the floor, however, and her licorice, marshmallow, and taffy matter scaled up the walls. Her candy-flesh even lingered on the ceiling, where one of the dangling strands of syrup coated marshmallow could occasionally catch a flying bug like a trap.
There were some free areas though, little squares of gray concrete or metal she left for one reason or another. Also, the windows high by the ceiling. She had slipped her taffy flesh off the large panes to let in the sunshine. Karen looked to them with hope and started shouting.
“Help! Please help!” she yelled.
Blair giggled. “Those windows are sound-proof if that blueprint I found held any truth to it. Besides, Feint Street is a dead area in this city, so no one would be near. I’ve even blocked the shutter doors out of here. There’s no way out, it’s just you and me my little treat~”
Karen turned and ran away from Blair’s bulk towards one of the room’s corners, but the taffy by the costumed woman’s feet reached up to engulf her legs.
“Please, as if I’d grow legs and chase you? I wouldn’t mind feeling you squirm under my step, but this warehouse area is small enough as it is.”
Karen tried to pry out the top of the taffy, which sucked on her her like a gross slimy worm maw. She failed of course. The taffy was too thick: too tough. The floor undulated Karen towards Blair. While her former bully screamed, the candy-monster of a woman spoke.
“You know, I think I finally get why you bullied me so.” Karen mumbled some stuff about being sorry, but Blair’s voice was louder so she just kept talking.
“A part of me thought you were just rotten, which you are, but that’s not enough. It wasn’t until I saw the fear in Lauren’s eyes as I sucked her right into my chest cavity that I realized tormenting others is just *so* much fun. There’s a certain thrill to it, you know? A sense of power that can be hard to replicate.”
Karen finally stopped moving a short distance away from Blair’s gigantic upper-body melded to the floor.
“It’s all new to me, of course. Now that the shoe’s on the other foot I can hardly help myself. I’ve been going through some changes, as you can see.”
Blair giggled. The taffy trapping Karen started slurping on the brunette’s form. It felt moist, slimy, and sticky and Karen let out some more whimpering groans.
“Gee, you taste delicious. Your friends did too. They’re still inside me, and you’ll be joining them real soon.”, said Blair.
Blair leaned over and reached down at Karen’s shoulders. The brunette fussed and fidgeted against the cocooning taffy, but that only got a pleased sigh from the monstrous woman above. “Mmmf, keep squirming all you like. It just makes tasting you easier~”
The candy lump loosened from around Karen so the clown of a woman could be tugged right out. Then, it dissolved into the taffy floor. Karen’s stomach lurched up with Blair’s palm as the massive body rose back up to its full height.
“P-please.” begged Karen. “Don’t kill me. I’m sorry I bullied you, it’s just I-”
“Save it.” said Blair. “I don’t care why and I’ll find out soon enough from your immortal soul. My guess is I was just the easiest target. Well, funny thing, you’re right in my palm, I’m looking to torment someone... looks like you’re the easiest target now...” She let her words trail to another giggle.
“Mmm.”, she continued. “I haven’t laughed this much in awhile. I guess that’s why you three seemed so happy all the time. Nothing lifts one’s spirits quite like keeping another’s down.”
Karen begged again.
“I’m sorry, just don’t kill me there’s much I haven’t done I-”
Blair smiled. “Hush, you’re not dying just yet. My experiments on Deanna didn’t go to waste. I need to put you in a more suitable form. I thought up a special punishment just for you.”
“Wha-” said Karen. Her words were cut short as she froze in horror at the licorice vines that burst from Blair’s palm. Each of the appendages dripped with hard-candy tips sharp as fangs. The clown-dressed woman scurried back into the fingers, where two other licorice tendrils slipped out to hold her arms to the side.
“Hold still. This might sting.”, said Blair.
It stung. It stung very bad.
Karen let out a pained scream that was music to the ponytailed monstrosity's ears. The brunette felt like her flesh was melting. A strange sticky fluid coursed through her veins with a gross warmth to it.
Karen watched her flesh change. It became stiff and frightfully dry. Her insides throbbed with agony as she felt them melt away. She closed her eyes from the sudden pain, then opened them up to see her skin turning from its fair shade to red and then pink. The smell of her new body hit her nose with its unmistakable odor. There wasn’t a smell in the world she knew better.
Bubble Gum.
“No!” cried Karen. “Please, no.”
“Shush up you scaredy cat.” said Blair, giggling after.
“Let’s get those clothes off you now.”
The toothed licorice appendages slipped into Karen’s clothes and cut them free. Once loose on her palm, the soft, warm taffy-flesh just sucked the garbs right in for dissolution.
No sooner did the appendages let Karen free did Blair’s other fingers pinch the gum-gal right up. Karen tried to fidget, but the stiff nature of her body made every movement an agony. The once brunette cried with every movement: without tear ducts, there were no tears though, of course.
“The body I made for you keeps your nerves in tact. Well, some kind of ‘nerves’. I wouldn’t want you to miss any sensation of feeling as I chew you up~”
Blair opened wide and Karen got a view of that oppressive maw. The candy-monster-gal was really a master of food coloring at this point. The taffy-flesh of her cheeks and throat were the perfect shade and a similar texture of a normal human mouth. Her hard candy chompers were a perfect white though slightly transparent at their very surface. The tongue was gummy of course, and strands of viscous sugar syrup and caramel dangled from the roof of her mouth. Her breath was overpoweringly sweet, and Karen shivered at the thought of going in there.
But, Blair paused.
“Hmm, you’re a little big for a wad of gum, you know. I’ll just take up a bit more of your mass. Gives us more time to chat I suppose.”
A licorice tentacle slipped from her thumb to pierce at Karen’s sides. The once-brunette began to feel her mass get sucked away. It was a painful process, and agonizingly slow.
“Stop, please.”
Blair rolled her eyes. She spoke matter-of-factly after. “I’m glad I wasn’t so cliche when *I* was the victim. So, if Lauren likes Coleman, that leaves you with... Brad right? He’s the one that’s running the party.”
“W-wait.” stammered Karen. “How do you know these things?”
“Like I said earlier, I gleamed it from the souls of your little minions. Did you think I was kidding? Maybe you just weren’t paying attention. You’re suffering’s not ending once your dead. Far from it.”
Karen would have gone pale as a ghost if her skin was still skin.
“The party...” It occurred to Karen she’d never go there, or to any other party ever again.
“That’s right. I’ll be heading to that warehouse shindig you and the other cool students were going to. I think my appearance will really up the fear factor at the event. Don’t you worry though, in a sense, you and your two friends will still make an appearance.”
“W-what? What do you mean?”
Blair simply chuckled. Karen stopped shrinking once she was at around two-thirds of her old height. She felt those short thin tentacles slip out of her body.
“There, now its time to test my new teeth~” said Blair. She clacked her chompers together in a taunt.
Karen got thrown right into the mouth and shuddered as that syrupy spittle soaked her form. “Wait, no!” she shouted, but those luscious candy-wax coated lips of Blair’s slammed shut.
Blair brushed Karen to the roof of her mouth and rubbed the gum-gal to and fro. “Mmm~” she rumbled, and lit up her mouth with some phosphorescence. She shifted Karen to the side of her cheek.
“There, now you can see yourself get all smushed up.”
A flex of that cheek flesh moved Karen right atop Blair’s back molars. The candy saliva pooled everywhere. As expected, Karen was wonderfully sweet and delicious.
Blair brought her teeth down without mercy. The first chomp was slow, and she savored the pained screams of the woman who once tormented her. Karen’s chest compressed flat down to the shape of the tooth’s top, but she didn’t die. The pain was enough she felt like she should’ve, but her gummy body took a lot of punishment.
Another chomp, then another. Karen tried to protect her face but one of Blair’s forward teeth easily smashed to a flat pulp. Every bite was agony. Her ‘nerves’ in this form were super sensitive and permeated every bit of her body: surface and inside. She felt like she was in a trash compactor when the tongue and teeth worked in tandem to mash her into a ball.
The sugary spittle now entirely soaked her form. Karen felt so gross, and the moister her body got the looser her body was and so every chomp grew more and more agonizing. Blair worked Karen to her front teeth and cut her gummy mass clean down the middle. Karen got real loud at that one. Off to the other side of molars Karen went, and her soaking wet halves were mashed back together whole in more agonizing mastications.
Blair munched nosily. She made sure to smack her lips and suck her cheeks just as much as Karen did when she chewed her gum like a cow. After much suffering on Karen’s end, Blair tilted her gummy tongue and gulped Karen right down.
“Ah.” she sighed. Her voice reached Karen through the bulk of her taffy-flesh.
“I know they say you shouldn’t swallow your gum, but I think my body can handle you just fine.”
Karen slipped down a syrupy throat and plopped into a dark chamber. A sour smelling and tasting fluid began to fizzle at her gum flesh. It stung, burned, but she didn’t die.
“Oh that’s right. Gum doesn’t digest in acid does it? Oh well, I’ll just absorb you through the walls of my stomach... when I feel like it. I gotta finish my prep for the party first.”
Blair called back her body from the candy factory. It was time to go on the move. The warehouse slowly filled up with her mass, but she wasn’t planning to stay here or bust out into the city just yet. There was a grate in this building that lead to the water drainage system of the city which, thankfully, wasn’t the same series of pipes and tunnels as the deeper set sewer system.
She liquefied her countless tons of taffy flesh and flowed through the grate as viscous caramel. The building began to collapse without her supporting it with her bulk, but she had her fill. No one would miss this place anyways.
Gathering up all her mass took a few minutes during which time Karen simmered in agony but, soon enough, she absorbed the gum into the candy-flesh of her body and assimilated Karen’s soul. From her old bully she learned all the details of the event.
It was time to party.