“MOM!” screamed Alex at the top of his lungs, cupping his hands around his mouth.  “Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus… MOM!  MOM, PLEASE!”  The fifteen-year-old boy stood on the hardwood floor of the kitchen, which had become a seemingly infinite cavern of mountainous marble countertops and sky-high cabinets, peeking around the corner of the kitchen table corner leg.  The leg itself had become like a great temple pillar, painted jet black and carved with an intricate, twisting design spiraling upward toward the cedar tabletop.  “MOM, FOR GOD’S SAKE!  DOWN HERE!”

                High up, so much above that Alex had to strain his neck to see her face, was Michelle, his mother, seated calmly at the kitchen table.  Her silky black locks were swooped over her shoulders stylishly, framing her youthful, carefully salon-tanned skin, and particularly her piercingly emerald eyes, which to Alex were essentially as large as he was now.  Her toned arms rested on the tabletop, a deep olive skirt fitting her slightly curvy but nonetheless fit figure.  To Alex, it was like staring up at an Egyptian monument of a goddess, resting, yet so powerful and omniscient that she could wipe out all structures and forms of life around her like bugs in the dust if she so chose.  Perhaps without even realizing what she was doing due to her simply tremendous, larger-than-life strength and potential for destruction.

                Unfortunately enough for Alex, this particular analogy was pretty much on the mark for the situation.

                Blinking a few times, Alex’s gaze returned absentmindedly to ground level, where his eyes met with his mother’s gargantuan feet.  Even being at ground level, the fifteen-year-old’s height was easily dwarfed by Michelle’s lower appendages, as they were still clad in her comparatively modest two-inch black velvet pumps.  To Alex, of course, this meant his mother’s heel rested comfortably in a shoe hovering at a height four times that of his own.  It simply boggled the boy’s mind, and as he took a moment to try to drink in the situation, he nearly became sick.

                Alex hadn’t the slightest idea of why this had happened.  He had been scurrying around the kitchen, setting the final touches on a surprise for his mother’s forty-second birthday before she arrived home from work: a chocolate cake with coconut cream frosting.  Her favorite.  In fact, he had just set it down on the table and stepped into the restroom for a break when the strangest of sensations overtook him, and in a matter of instants, he found a feeling of cold shooting over his skin as if he had been dunked headfirst into ice water, and when he blinked next, he was naked on the tile floor, standing atop a pile of his clothes, which seemed like a veritable dune of colored fabric to him by that point.  He’d barely had time to begin comprehending the fact that he registered at roughly the height of an average human thumbnail when the door had opened and his mother had entered.  Alex just had enough time to dash under the bathroom door crack, duck behind the leg of the table for safety, and simply gawk at his mother in all of her titanic glory, now towering impossibly over him, her head rising into the heavens of the kitchen, her green skirt swinging in the breeze of the room like a billowing curtain winding around and around her powerful body.  Each clack of her heels against the hardwood sent vibrations through the floor and into Alex’s already weakened legs, and instantly caused great fear to swell in his heart.  Solving the mystery of his condition was the least of his worries at this moment.  For Alex, the greatest current concern was being squished beneath the hard sole of those velvet pumps.

                A matter of minutes later, with his mother seated to go over some paperwork, Alex’s mind was racing wildly.  His voice was such an insignificant squeak that, with some mindless sitcom acting as background noise on the living room TV, his mother couldn’t hear him; worse, his vocal cords already going hoarse as it was from repeated attempts to call out to her.  Alex stared ahead as Michelle’s right foot began tapping for a moment against the wood floor before rocking side to side.  Confused for a moment, Alex realized what was happening just as his mother slipped her bare heel out the back of the pump, followed by the rest of her foot.

                Michelle arched her shapely foot in midair over the floor, wiggling her toes to air them out from a long day at the office.  Alex blinked in disbelief as he stared up at the massive force of nature hovering above that just happened to be his mother’s foot.  He simply couldn’t believe it.  It just didn’t seem real.  Sure, it had everything he would have expected, and then some with his closer vantage point.  Soft flesh.  Wrinkles in the pale sole.  Moist looking pink toes from being cooped up in the pump all day.  A dry, peeling heel.  A rotund ball of her foot.  The sudden salty, musty aroma of body odor leaking out of the massive shoe.  A smog of sweat clouding the breathing space.  All relatively normal.  And yet, compared to Alex, the boy looked at the foot and knew it must be capable of stomping an eighteen-wheeler into a useless pile of crunched metal and wheels like a smashed tin can.

                Alex coughed as the acrid scent of his mother’s tired, filthy foot clogged his breathing cavity.  Under normal circumstances, he doubted he would have noticed such a thing, and even if he did, it wouldn’t have been much of an issue.  However, at his size, and essentially existing under the dispersion zone of the horrid stench, each intake of breath felt to Alex like he was inhaling sweat vapor from between his mother’s meaty toes.

                “Think, Alex, think… think…” he whispered to himself.  “Gotta be smart, gotta…” he began before widening his eyes in sudden, mind-boggling terror.  Michelle, having finished flexing her foot, had clamped the back of the heel between her big and second toes and tossed it forward under the table to get it out of the way.

                The massive, velvety footwear was barreling toward Alex across the floor, rolling over like a sports car involved in some insane Hollywood stunt.  Except this was no movie.  This was real, and Alex barely had time to take a breath before the pump was bulldozing into him.  Clenching his eyes shut and his muscles up, Alex felt himself swept like a dust bunny into the opening of his mother’s shoe as it came easily to rest on its side.

                Reclining on the damp, squishy interior of the pump, soaked thoroughly with Michelle’s tangy perspiration, Alex breathed a sigh of relief that he was unharmed, then rose to his feet.  As he stepped carefully out of the pump, brushing slick residue of his mother’s foot sweat off of his arms and back, he swallowed hard.  At this rate, what kinds of odds did he stand to being rescued?

                Forcing himself to stay frosty, Alex proceeded forward across the hardwood.  Even though Michelle had only tossed the shoe using her toes, it had ended up under the center of the table, meaning Alex had a slight walk to endure before returning to his relative safe haven behind the table leg.  Slowly, Alex approached his mother’s statuesque form, still sitting comfortably in the kitchen chair.  By now, Michelle had kicked both pumps off, freeing her feet to be massaged by the gentle, clean air of the kitchen.  Stopping just short of her right foot’s big toe, Alex gulped.  Even without the pumps on, Michelle dwarfed her unfortunate teenage son to the point that his head didn’t even reach the top of her big toe.  Instead, what he had to stare at was a rounded, peachy wall of peeling skin, rippling toeprint, and a light greasing of perspiration coating the flesh.  It was intimidating, to be sure, and as Michelle absentmindedly raised her toe, stretching it out, before setting it softly back on the ground in front of her son, Alex began to think this undertaking was more and more impossible.  How was the boy supposed to get his mother’s attention when, in all technicality, he could be killed if she decided to inch her bulbous toes forward just a few inches, accidentally grasping him into the sweaty jungle of flesh between her toes, where he would no doubt be instantly ground into lifeless toejam?

                The prospect of such a situation made Alex shiver horribly, and it wasn’t just from the fact that he was naked and the air was steadily feeling colder.  He wracked his brain as hard as he could, even though it was fighting to go into crisis mode at the unbelievable absurdity of the situation.  The teen had a feeling his mind was going to lose it very soon over the sheer insanity of this reality, and therefore his time to get his mother’s attention was limited.  The longer he stayed calm and collected, to a certain degree, his chances of success were far better.

                For a moment, Alex considered the possibility of climbing onto his mother’s foot and stomping with all his might in hopes of getting her attention, but the margin for error in this ploy quickly revealed itself as Alex thought through the common sense approach to such a situation.  No doubt, with the light, tiny touch of his barely detectable bare feet stomping with all his might, which would only register as a tickling tap on the vast plain of flesh that made up Michelle’s foot, his mother would assume an insect had landed on her.  At this point, she would either kick her leg outward to scare it off, or worse, smash it flat by quickly bringing her other foot down on top of it.  These options, which would send Alex either flying helplessly through the air to break his bones, or ending up mashed into a bloody goo in the crevices of his mother’s sole, respectively, didn’t appeal much to the boy.  Worse, the odds of their happening was pretty high.

                Alex stared ahead, steeling himself.  In this moment, it almost seemed a miraculous godsend that the boy was such a skilled athlete and, more importantly, that he had dabbled a bit in recreational rock-climbing.  He wasn’t fantastic at it by any stretch, but he could hold his own, and that was what mattered here.  Surgically, Alex mentally deduced his battle plan.  He would climb onto his mother’s foot via her pinky toe, which was short enough for him to roughly clamber onto.  From there, he would ever so carefully walk up the slight incline of her wide foot and up to her ankle.  Michelle, being fashionable and always keeping up with the trends, was currently wearing a faux diamond anklet, which, if Alex could reach high enough, would serve as his transition step up to the hem of the billowing skirt.  From there, it would be a hell of a climb up his mother’s body, toward the tabletop and hopefully a place where he could alert his parent without fear of her instinctively smashing him with her deadly fist, thinking he was a bug.

                It wasn’t a pretty plan, but Alex knew there was little other option, and if he didn’t take the opportunity now to get help, his chances of survival only became slimmer.  Clasping his hands together, Alex sauntered forward, attempting to muster some courage in himself as he stopped directly in front of his mother’s pinky toe, which, although it was short enough for him to climb onto, was larger than him even.  It was a disheartening fact for the boy to have to consider: even his mother’s tiniest toe was bigger, stronger, and more powerful than his entire body.  Gently, so as not to alert her to his presence, Alex climbed onto Michelle’s pinky toe.  He could feel the warmth radiating from it, and the slight give of the firm flesh as he crept forward onto her foot.  It was the single most humbling experience of Alex’s life to be in this position, but this was no time to feel lowly.  The boy was on a mission, and although he didn’t like admitting it outright, his life depended on the success of that mission.  His life literally depended on his ability to walk across the terrifyingly long platform of flesh comprising his mother’s calmly resting foot.

                Alex held his breath as he moved forward at a snail’s pace on all fours up the incline of Michelle’s soft ped, feeling his ankles brush past the barely noticeable changes in elevation where veins ran under her sinewy skin.  The stale, fusty odor of his mother’s sweat combined with the salt stained into the leathery interior of the velvet pumps hung in the air like pollution, clogging Alex’s windpipe to the point that with every few breaths, he felt the need to cough as if trying to rid his throat of some of the vile filth.

                The trek up Michelle’s right foot was a slow one, as Alex was determined to not take too hard of a step and risk being mistaken for a pesky insect fit for crushing or swatting.  Despite his fear and desperation, Alex’s mother’s skin was warm and cushy to the touch, and this was comforting to the tiny boy in an odd way.  Even though she was unaware of it, and even though she might accidentally kill her son without even realizing it, Michelle was helping Alex through his perilous journey by the mere fact that she would be present through the entire thing, almost as a spiritual guide, as silly as it felt for the boy to admit to himself.

                “I’m coming, Mom,” whispered Alex down into the wide, pacifying ground made up of her malleable flesh.  As the boy continued slowly but steadily crawling along his mother’s ped, his eyes became transfixed on the crisscrossing patterns that he would never have been able to notice if he wasn’t this size.  He could make out diamond-shaped cells of skin, with the most miniscule of hairs popping up every few feet or so that would normally go unnoticed by even the most perceptive of eyes.  Alex knew this for a fact, as his mother kept herself on a strict hygiene regime, bathing and brushing twice a day, and shaving her legs once every two days just to make sure she kept her skin as smooth as possible.  Even though the teen boy wasn’t nearly as concerned as his mother with his own personal upkeep, he had always secretly admired the pride Michelle took in keeping herself clean.

                Breathing more deeply than he had realized due to the fear, Alex arrived at his mother’s ankle.  Gingerly, he stood up and looked directly upward at the anklet.  It was going to be a tough shot; the piece of jewelry wound around Michelle’s smooth ankle was high enough that Alex had serious doubts that anything less than a well-placed high jump would reach it.  The difficulty was compounded by the fact that Alex had to ensure he didn’t apply any high-impact pressure to any part of his mother’s flesh, lest he have his cover blown and risk being instinctively mulched by a quickly descending wrinkled sole of death from Michelle’s left foot.

                Unfortunately for Alex, the decision about how to proceed was made null and void as gravity began shifting.  The boy felt a chill run down his back as the incline of his mother’s foot became steeper and steeper.  With a shock to his heart, he realized she was arching her foot against the hardwood, splaying her toes out flat on the floor.

                With a silent gasp, Alex tumbled down the fleshy slope of his mother’s foot, plopping directly between two of her moist, bulbous toes.

A pathetic peep of mixed surprise and horror escaped Alex’s lips as he became nestled snugly between his mother’s muscular, juicy big toe and her second toe.  Banging his head against the tender skin located in the crevice between Michelle’s digits, Alex was spared damage to his skull for the moment, but soon found it difficult to see the positives as his mother’s two toes gently began closing around him. 

                Thrashing wildly to get back to the relative freedom and safety of the kitchen floor, Alex found himself hopelessly gripped in the colossal, iron-strength masses of two of his mother’s squirming, exudate-doused toes.  He squealed as he felt his torso pinned firmly down by Michelle’s second toe, arching carefully over his body, not even realizing his presence, so insignificant was his size.  The toe began to slowly caress Alex’s body, completely unbeknownst to Michelle as she focused on whatever work she had laid out on the table.  The boy fought the urge to squirm as he felt the soft wrinkles of his mother’s toe knead their way over his stomach and chest.  Admittedly, it felt amazing, and unlike any kind of massage Alex had ever received, but the direness of the situation dampened this fact for him.  He had to remain as motionless as possible, now more than ever, where, if he accidentally surprised his mother, her gut reaction might be to stamp downward with her full weight, and with his body wedged precariously under one of her toes, this would prove a messy outcome for the teen boy.

                With bated breath, Alex remained entirely motionless as his mother’s hulk of a toe continued rolling firmly over his midsection, the monstrous digit coming in at well over double his own height.  Despite the smooth, almost buttery feel of the sweat-slicked skin, Alex could feel the thickness of the flesh acting as a sort of protective padding against any sort of chance he had at overpowering it and rolling to safety. 

                As Alex began whole-heartedly praying for his mother to remain focused on her work for the time being rather than becoming aware of the fact that she had a small, animate object trapped helplessly under her enormous foot, the boy could feel the pressure of Michelle’s toe softening on his body as she absentmindedly set her heel back flat on the ground again.  This was his chance.  As the titanic woman’s toes wriggled into their new positions, Alex darted out from under his mother, looking forward just as the tremendous appendage came fully to rest back on the hardwood.

                For a moment, the boy couldn’t help but stare in awe at the pair of airplane-sized feet belonging to his mother Michelle, the feeling of their awesome might bearing down on him lingering in his mind, threatening to disembowel him with a simple clenching of those powerful, fleshy digits.  As the cold air began breezing back over his naked body, Alex couldn’t help but shiver and feel a newfound sense of deep respect for his mother’s feet setting in.  At any other time, they would simply be the size 10 extremities of his female parent, but not right now.  Right now, they were massive, muscular beasts simply taking a rest, but if upset, they could easily lash forward and grind Alex so thoroughly into the wrinkled valleys of Michelle’s sole he would remain as nothing more than a sticky red temporary tattoo under his mother’s foot.  Trembling in fear and disgust at the violent degradation of such a fate, Alex resolved to put such thoughts out of his mind.  He had to focus on staying alive.

                It was at this moment that the observant young teen realized something new about the scene before him.  Littered on the ground under one of the kitchen table chairs were a few loose, multicolored Legos belonging to Alex’s younger brother Thomas, who was still at little league soccer practice.

                Wasting no time, Alex dashed to the little pile of plastic bricks and began weighing his options.  There were six pieces of varying lengths, but more importantly, they were all separated and light enough for Alex to drag.  Getting to work, the boy individually dragged each Lego brick across the length of the kitchen floor back to the chair his mother was sitting at, careful to maintain a safe distance away from her feet just in case she decided to arch them again.  Then, with great effort, Alex managed to lift the pieces just high enough into the air to stack them onto each other and, moving upward, the ingenious little lad managed to build a meager Lego staircase.  Catching his breath from the effort, Alex scrambled up the plastic steps of the stairs, which he had built just behind his mother’s right ankle, and perched himself on the top step.

                He gulped.  This was a risky move, but Alex realized he didn’t have much of a chance of reaching Michelle’s anklet jewelry, much less the hem of her green skirt, if he didn’t make the attempt.  After a few breathless moments of waiting, Alex’s patience was rewarded.  He watched as the sleeping beasts of flesh and muscle slowly awakened, his mother arching her slender bare feet against the hardwood floor again, sliding them backward.  Leaping forward at just the right moment, Alex grabbed ahold of the faux-diamond anklet, firmly grasping at the corners of the gems for a better grip as Michelle nonchalantly kicked over the Lego staircase with her rising heel.

                “What was…?” boomed a feminine voice uncertainly from far above, the warm, familiar tone of Michelle’s voice resonating in Alex’s tiny eardrums.  Slowly, Alex felt his mother’s feet sliding forward, further under the table.  He clung onto the anklet with all he had, determined to not lose his current foothold on the mountainous tower of his mom’s body.  Staring backward, Alex watched, a chill running down his spine, as a slender, shapely hand the size of a parachute descended from above, each fingertip about as large as his entire body sliding over the floor, searching for the foreign object, French tipped fingernails tapping curiously at the ground.  His awe returning, Alex watched as his mother snatched the Lego staircase up between two fingers as if it weighed nothing, recalling how tired it had made him just to build the thing, let alone be able to move it.  It quickly disappeared back above the seat of the chair, beyond his view, along with his mom’s hand.

                “Oh, for God’s sake… how many times have I told Thomas to put his toys away when he’s done with them?” mused Michelle loudly.  Sighing, she scooted the chair backward, then planted both feet flat on the ground, standing up.  This simple motion sent Alex on a wild motion sickness trip, but he held firm, wrapping an arm around the tight loop of the anklet for extra support, his legs banging against the firm skin of Michelle’s ankle.

                “No, no, NO!” gasped Alex as he watched his mother’s left foot rise into the air, preparing to walk.  “Stay here, Mom, stay here!”

                Unsurprisingly, Michelle paid the indiscernible insect whispers of her diminutive son no heed as she lifted her right foot as well, and began padding slowly across the kitchen floor toward the living room.

                “Not good…” gulped Alex as he rose into the air, suddenly an unwilling passenger on Michelle’s Olympian leg, clenching his fists around his mother’s ankle jewelry as tightly as possible in preparation for the rodeo ride he was about to endure.

Alex kept his eyes shut tightly, his arm wrapped firmly around Michelle’s anklet, as her right foot took another gut-twisting rise into the air before plummeting back toward the floor for an earth-shaking smack, the titaness of a mother planting her full, megaton weight onto the heel of her bare foot just below Alex’s desperately flailing body.  He blinked, feeling the wind whip past his face as her left foot rose into the air for another step, then heard the soft, padded flap of her soft sole striking the wood.  His muscles tensing, Alex knew it was his turn again as his mother’s foot rose calmly into the air again.  Each horrifying bounce through the air felt to Alex like bungee jumping without being properly secured, as all he had to support himself was his tired arm’s grip around the jewelry.

                After what felt to Alex’s sore muscles like an eternity, the walk of death came to an end.  Alex stared upward, past the winding, billowing folds of his mother’s olive skirt, past the impossibly rotund mounds of her breasts, and up to her face, framed by the vine jungle of perfectly silky black hair.  She still had his makeshift Lego staircase gripped softly between her fingers to be put back in its proper place.  The miniscule boy saw her bite her lip, her eyes darting over the shelves of the living room looking for its proper location.  Finally settling, she opened a drawer on a side cabinet and plopped the little plastic staircase into a huge pile of multicolored blocks containing Alex’s brother’s Lego collection.

                Looking upward again at the hem of his mother’s skirt, dangling just out of reach, Alex realized that, being in a standing position, Michelle’s skirt hung just a little lower than when she was seated.  This was his chance to get a higher foothold on her body to continue his ascent.  With the arm not wrapped around the anklet, Alex reached up as high as he could, grasping at air with his fingers.  The thick hem was just out of reach.  In despair, Alex caught himself on the anklet again, trying to rethink his plan, then felt his mother’s foot rise into the air again as she began the slow trek back to the kitchen table to continue her work. 

                This time, the boy glanced upward at the swaying skirt hem, and realized that at the top of each step arc, his mother’s shapely skirt lowered even further.  Gulping, Alex knew what he had to do to keep moving, despite the incredible risk.  He watched as the colossal mass of foot flesh planted on the ground below him, then quickly went to work, swinging his leg up onto the anklet.  With some effort and a careful sense of balance, Alex managed to poise himself atop the jewelry in a precarious crouching position.  Of course, this meant his grip was no longer firm, and the boy felt a cold sweat begin trickling down his forehead.  If he missed this jump, the trip downward from the air to the ground of his mother’s foot would send him plummeting to the ground below, where, if he managed not to crack his skull, he became fair game to be mulched under Michelle’s dry heel.

                It was time.  As his mother’s left foot planted on the ground, Alex braced himself against the warm skin of Michelle’s ankle, keeping his eyes on the prize: the exact corner of the skirt hem he was planning on grabbing.  He felt gravity shifting underneath him as Michelle’s foot arched against the hardwood floor, preparing to take a step.  Using the momentum afforded to him, Alex pushed off his thin perch of the ankle bracelet and was sent shooting much higher than he was anticipating.  Flailing wildly for a moment, butterflies filling his stomach, Alex’s hands slid past the thick fabric of Michelle’s skirt and, in a frenzy, he grabbed ahold, twisting a leg into the fabric for a better grip.  Looking down, he realized even now just how high up he was: to the poor lad, it was like dangling from the side of a four-story building, and he was just barely up part of Michelle’s shin.

                The next length of time was spent in concentrated silence as Alex meticulously worked his way up his mother’s right leg, using the threads of the skirt as netting to fit his tiny fingers in between and grip.  Each time he made a motion, he tugged lightly at the fabric, ensuring he had a strong grip, before hanging on and moving his next hand higher, pushing his legs into the folds for better support.  Admittedly, it was easier than rock climbing, but the fact remained that he had no rope attached to the ground, and he was certainly much higher up than most rock climbing facilities could have allowed for.  At this moment, Alex was totally on his own.  A fall from this height would kill him instantly no matter how he played it out in his head.

                Occasionally, as Michelle rocked her feet back and forth against the floor, the motion would be felt in her skirt, flapping ever so slightly, and at these intervals Alex’s heart would almost stop as he instantly clammed up, clasping his body tightly against a fold of the skirt for as much support as possible, riding out his mother’s absentminded tics until they no longer represented a true danger to his treacherous climb.  If only Michelle knew just how impactful the simple motions of her legs and feet were on the life of her son.  Alex could only imagine how his mother might react if she knew what was happening right now.  He longed so desperately for this terrifying ordeal to be at an end.  At the moment, his mother’s giant body was like a foreboding mountain, threatening and unknown, the danger of death breathing down his neck at all times as he climbed slowly but surely.  If only Michelle could see him and know it was him, this would all end.  Alex felt a warm shiver run down his back to imagine the immaculate relief he would experience to be discovered and, at long last, be completely safe.  To clamber into the soft, warm palm of his mother’s hand, probably seeming to him at this point to be as wide as his bedroom.  To lay back and know that everything would be all right as she smiled down lovingly at him, swearing to find a way to return him to his normal size.

                Grunting from exhaustion, Alex knew there was no time for such fantasies.  The reality was that his mother was still completely unaware of his plight, and even though she would never want such a thing for all the world if she were aware of it, with a simple brush of her backhand or a sliding shift of her toned leg, Alex would be sent cascading toward his doom on the floor.

                After just over half an hour, the athletic fifteen-year-old’s patience was rewarded as he felt the slope of the skirt begin to level out.  He had reached his mother’s quad, meaning the ground would soon be horizontal, and he could plan out his next move.  Clambering over the last lump of Michelle’s knee, Alex crept across the firm, almost flat plain of his mother’s thigh.  Even through the soft fabric, the boy could feel the well-sculpted muscle underneath of a woman who worked out five times a week at the local gym for an hour at least.  Nodding, Alex silently thanked serendipity for giving him such a healthy and athletic mother, for without her influence, the boy doubted he would be as fit as he was, and thusly wouldn’t have had a chance in hell of safely climbing up his mother’s tremendous tower of a limb.

                Alex’s momentary thanksgiving was brought to an abrupt halt as he heard Michelle sigh deeply, straightening her back against the chair and shifting her legs.  Feeling his mother’s thigh rumbling beneath his feet, the boy tried to keep his balance and, in his panic, began backing away from the side of her leg that led to the death plunge to the ground below.  However, this led him closer to the other side, and before he knew what was happening, Alex was tumbling off his mother’s thigh and into the space between.

                He bounced roughly off her left leg, then back to her right before landing with a hard smack on the wooden chair.  It was incredibly painful and knocked the wind right out of the boy, but at the very least, his mother had chosen that moment to push her legs closer together, thusly allowing them to break his fall as he slipped in between.

                Climbing back to his feet, Alex stared upward out of the darkness of the canyon of green fabric between his mother’s legs and up at the light above, where he could see her towering torso still hard at work at whatever she had laid out on the table.  Her beautiful face was so peaceful; Alex almost hated the fact that he was going to have to deliver the shock of her life to her, on her birthday of all days, once he finally got her attention.

                Suddenly, Alex began trembling.  A cold chill was running over his skin, slowly at first, than more rapidly, as if raw nitrogen was being dumped quickly over his skin.

                “No…” gasped Alex as the tingling sensation returned.

                As hard as the boy tried to deny it, the familiar feeling of cold covering his entire body was returning in full force.  Freezing, biting, tickling his insides and spreading out to the tips of his fingers and the backs of his eyeballs.  With a breathless gasp, Alex felt himself shooting downward, the environment swimming madly around him for an instant before he stopped, landing on his back and opening his eyes.

                Even just lying down, he could tell the difference already.  Staring upward from his vantage point on the chair between his mother’s legs, the folds of her olive skirt hanging loosely on her toned quads, Alex got the distinct sensation he was staring out of a canyon and up into the sky above.  He struggled to his feet, shaking wildly, and felt hot tears begin pouring down his cheeks as the hope began draining from him quickly.  How could he possibly get help when he was this small?  Even if he walked out onto the table in plain sight, screaming his mother’s name at the top of his lungs, could he even be recognized as a person?

                How small had he become?  The size of a grain of rice?  An ant?  A speck of dust?  It was impossible to tell from where Alex stood, and for the most part, the tiny lad didn’t care.  “You’re going to die,” he whispered bitterly to himself.  “You’re going to…”

                Alex leapt to his feet, slapping himself in the cheek and stomping his feet in frustration.  He had been raised better than this.  Never to give up.  Never to accept defeat in the face of impossible odds.  Of course, before, it had just been on sports teams and grades in school.  Now, it was for his life, and yet it didn’t feel truly different to Alex.  It seemed his whole life had been building to this moment: his chance to prove the strength of his spirit and will.  Taking a deep breath, Alex charged toward his mother’s titanic right leg with quadriceps the size of tectonic plates.

                Clambering over the rolling folds of skirt fabric, Alex immediately noticed that, at his newly reduced size, the material of his mother’s clothes had become more like thick ropes, crossing over one another in a loose patchwork.  Perfect for climbing.  Gulping, Alex stared up at his mother’s leg, which seemed to stretch upward for half a dozen stories before rounding off onto the top of her leg.  Shaking his arms out and taking a deep breath, Alex began round 2 of his gut-twisting ascent.

                The climb up the side of Michelle’s thigh took just as long as the climb up her shins to her knees, as the distance had comparatively become similar after Alex’s second shrinkage.  Out of breath and drenched in sweat from the exertion, Alex pulled himself onto the flat surface of his mother’s leg again, gasping for oxygen.  He had made it in one piece.  Now, he just had to get to the table if he was to have any chance of ending this nightmare sooner rather than deader.

                A dark shadow cast over Alex, completely encompassing him.  Glancing upward, the boy realized with horror that the gargantuan hand of his mother was descending on him like a dropship of soft flesh and firm sinew.  Even in the darkness of her shadow, Alex could make out the most intricate of details in the enormous palm lowering toward him.  The creases ran along the pale skin like rivers on a jumbo atlas, and at his size, Alex guessed he could have fit rather snugly into one of these crevices in his mother’s hand.  That was truly how far he had fallen.

                At the last moment, the boy ducked to the side as quickly as he could into a space on the thick fabric ground not cloaked in shadow, and was bounced to the side as Michelle’s hand came firmly to rest on her thigh, her son having survived by diving into the space between her pointer and middle fingers, stretching on either side of Alex like incredible, peachy tree trunks, scrunching inward at the thread ground.  Realizing that Michelle was adjusting the position of the fabric on her leg, Alex gasped as a rolling tidal wave of skirt was pushed further along his mom’s leg to be more comfortable.  With the last of his energy, Alex took a flying leap over the curling fabric rolls and ran along the length of his mother’s fingers, sprinting as quickly as he could and clearing the space just as Michelle’s hand balled into a tremendous, hot air balloon-sized fist, clutching at the fabric.  Uselessly, Alex was sent tumbling backward toward his mother’s hand again as the ground was literally yanked in the other direction like an earthquake.  Screaming, Alex flew through the air by the force of the shift, landing directly on top of his mother’s ring finger.

                No sooner had the boy frozen for fear of being flung somewhere else, then he immediately laid down, clutching his body around the middle knuckle’s skin of Michelle’s ring finger.  Gulping, the boy realized that even if he stretched himself out as far as he could from end to end, he still wouldn’t even match the width of a single finger on his mother’s hand.  At this point, he was small enough to get a firm grip on the rubbery extra skin on his mother’s finger; despite the slenderness of Michelle’s hand, at such massive scale, the most imperceptible of thicker fat deposits were noticeable and useful to Alex.

                It was then that Michelle began raising her hand back to the table.  Realizing his chance, Alex clambered forward, terrified, toward the silver banded diamond wedding ring adorning his mom’s finger like a glistening beacon of his last hope.  Just as he felt himself sliding toward the side of her finger to fall between the crevices and down to oblivion in Michelle’s lap, which by now was a couple dozen stories downward for Alex, the fifteen-year-old wiggled his body as tightly as he could into the space between his mother’s finger and the ring.  It wasn’t much, but it was enough for the miniscule boy’s body to avoid toppling downward to imminent doom.  Now, all Alex had to do was hope his mother didn’t tighten her hand into a fist, which would surely lessen the space between her ring and the finger and crush him insignificantly in the aftermath.

                At last, it seemed, the boy’s patience was rewarded as Michelle’s hand brushed briefly over the tabletop.  Wasting no time, Alex squirmed his way back out from under the ring and rolled over the side of his mother’s finger, landing painfully on his side on the cedar tabletop.  An instant later, Michelle’s hand was reaching higher into the air.  Then, taking a deep breath, Alex stood to his feet, waving his arms.

                “MOM!  HERE, I’M RIGHT HERE!  MOM, HELP ME!” screamed the desperate and tired teen as loud as his vocal chords would allow.  However, Michelle’s eyes showed no signs of darting around the table looking for the source of the nearly nonexistent squeaks of the boy, and instead reached for her cell phone, which had begun to ring so loudly that the dulcet and cheerful melody felt to Alex like he was pressing his ears against the speaker at a heavy metal rock concert, and he doubled over, groaning in pain and clutching his hands over his ears defensively.

                Michelle grasped the cell phone, which to Alex by this point was comparatively the size of a large fishing boat, in her godlike fingers and powerfully lifted it to her ear, snapping it open confidently at the hinge.  The ringing came to an end as the call began, and Alex stared upward, quivering from the shock.

                “Hi, honey,” said Michelle, smiling sweetly.  “How was your day?  Good?  Good, mine too… thanks, honey.  Glad you didn’t forget this year?” she giggled, before rolling her eyes with a smile.  “No, honey, of course I’m kidding, I know you wouldn’t ever forget again.  You just better hope I like whatever it is you got me,” she said teasingly to her husband, resting the arm holding the cell phone on the table.  To Alex, it was like looking at a rounded skyscraper shrouded in soft, toned flesh rising up into the air toward the jungle of chocolate brown follicles dangling silkily from his mother’s head.

                “Alex?  No, I haven’t seen him.  I’m guessing he ran down the block to see his friends, I’m sure he’ll be back soon… yes, yes, I’m sure he knows it’s my birthday.  I’m positive, in fact. Do you know why?’ she said with a proud smile.  “He baked a cake and left it on the table for me.  Can you believe that?” she asked, then chuckled, “Yes, that’s right… our son who’s going to end up living on Ramen when he’s in college actually managed to bake a cake without the house burning down.  So give him a little credit, will you?”

                Despite his terror, Alex couldn’t help but grin a little.  His mother seemed pleased with the effort he had put into giving her a birthday surprise.  Now, all he had to do was ensure he could spend the rest of it with his mom’s full knowledge of his existence.  Taking a few steps back, Alex realized something important.  As his mother continued conversing jokingly with her husband on the cell phone, her gaze was fixed casually on the coconut cream-chocolate cake he had baked for her, a smile still plastered on her enormous face.  If Alex could at least get into her field of vision, his chances of being discovered seemed improved.  It wasn’t the greatest plan, as she was mainly focused on the conversation with her husband rather than actually studying the cake, but it seemed the best option when she clearly was unable to hear even the loudest of her tiny son’s pitiful cries.  Taking a deep breath, the already exhausted Alex began sprinting across the cedar tabletop toward the towering coliseum-sized birthday pastry he had created with relative ease just over an hour ago.

                Panting heavily as he reached the glass plate base of the cake, Alex looked upward at his mother, hoping to see some sign of recognition in her tremendous green eyes. To his dismay, however, while Michelle was still staring at the cake, her eyesight seemed to be fixed at a point higher than Alex was standing.  Looking upward, Alex moaned at what he knew was necessary to his salvation, yet would require even more effort on his part when he was already well beyond physically spent.  Nevertheless, the boy’s drive was stronger than his attention to his aching body’s cries for rest, and gathering his strength, Alex leaped into the air just high enough to grab the thin edge of the glass plate containing the cake and clambered up, staring up at the massive thing to plan his attack.

                The cake was easily as tall as his mother’s thigh.  The difference here was that there were no thick, rope-like threads of a skirt to aid his ascent.  To climb the almost perfectly vertical wall of sugary cream frosting and coconut shavings (each of which happened to be about as long as Alex’s body) would require some more clever tactics, not to mention expert control.  Alex’s stomach churned.  An ascent like this would make any regular rock climber shake in their boots, but the teen didn’t have time for the luxury of fear.  He was on a mission, he had come this far, and he wasn’t going to let a simple massive improbability stop him.  Rubbing at his temple to calm his pounding headache, Alex inhaled deeply and stepped forward to begin his climb.

                The ascent up the towering birthday cake was physically the single most difficult thing Alex had ever attempted in his life.  Unlike the reassuringly solid threads of his titanic mother’s skirt he had been scaling not long ago, now, his only footholds to gain vertical ground were the curled coconut chips coating the sides of the cake from all sides, dug deeply into the cream frosting.  Alex was grateful that he had been so liberal when sprinkling the coconut shaving chips over the cake when preparing it, as without them, he would’ve had no chance of climbing up to the top where his mother’s gaze happened to be resting idly while she continued chatting with her husband on the phone.

                Alex tried to keep his breathing steady as he reached up his hand, grasping at a crispy coconut chunk and attempting to distribute his weight.  Instantly, he felt the chip tugging downward through the thick, gummy layer of frosting, reacting to his miniscule but nonetheless existent weight, and the only way to stop this was to quickly reach for another chip with his other hand to keep things balanced.  It was a risky method, but Alex discovered that by trying to keep his weight distributed between pairs of coconut shavings, he was actually fully supported by the pastry toppings and was able to make progress upward.  Taking a deep breath, Alex tried not to look down but estimated that he was halfway up the cake now.  There was definitely no turning back at this point, and regardless, the boy doubted he could without losing his grip and splatting down at the base of the cake anyway.

                As he climbed, Alex was forced to press himself against the surface of the cake for support, and as a result was thoroughly coated in the pasty, off-white frosting thickly coating the cake.  It was a rich, creamy mixture, and as a result felt to Alex like pushing through clay or hardened syrup.  Several times, he felt his foot or elbow become stuck in the whipped sea of frosting, and had to gently tug it loose without jostling too much for fear of pulling his coconut foothold entirely out of the frosting and sending him tumbling to his doom.

                The aroma surrounding Alex was pleasant, at the very least: the deeply rich cream coating combining with the exotic, sweetly sour tickle of coconut.  Finally, Alex felt the surface of the cake leveling out with a huge exhalation, Alex plopped onto his back on top of the cake, rolling over a few times just to keep safe from falling off the edge.  As he lay still for a moment, sunken slightly into the frosting as if making a snow angel, the fifteen-year-old listened intently once again to his mother, whom he had been ignoring for the most part during his ascent.

                “I don’t know, honey.  I mean… he couldn’t have forgotten about it, he made me a cake!  Yes… yes, you’re probably right, it’s going to get cold soon, but… what?  Traffic jam?  Oh, honey… I was so looking forward to spending this entire… evening… with you,” she said slyly, poking at her tremendous full lips suggestively with her pointer finger, her green eyes flashing at the very idea of what she was insinuating.

                Alex shuddered a bit, considerably grossed out by the way his mother apparently was willing to speak to his father when she thought no one was around, but continued listening.

                “Well, Thomas has practice until 8:30 tonight, so he’s out anyway… I guess… I guess I could just wait for Alex to get back and we could have some cake together, then we could watch a movie or something when you get back, honey.  How does that sound?  I… what?  Hmmm… I guess that’s true.  The cake looks fresh out of the oven, but the temperature is probably at the right place right now… much longer and it’ll get cold.”

                Alex could note from almost first-hand experience that this was true.  The slightest bit of heat was still emanating up from the deep mountain of thick chocolate cake beneath the shallow cream swamp of frosting, but for the most part, the cake had reached the perfect temperature for eating.

                Michelle shrugged, grinning a little and turning her gaze toward the ceiling pensively.  “Yes, I know… he made it for me, he probably wouldn’t want it to be eaten cold…”

                “No!” gasped Alex, finally catching up with himself and pulling himself to his feet, frustrated that once again he was out of his mother’s field of vision.  As he stood up, though, he instantly was pulled back to his knees, which in turn led to him face-planting back in the frosting.  He had stood up so quickly that he hadn’t accounted for the sugary, gooey waves of frosting that had begun to gel around him as he caught his breath, and had clung tightly to him.  Sputtering and pushing up hard off the squishy floor, Alex struggled to his feet and took a step.  It felt like trying to walk through three feet of snow; each time Alex took a step, he had to swing his leg in the air a few times to break free of the sweet strand of frosting that seemed to have entangled itself around his entire leg like tendrils of cream.

                “You know what?  It looks like he even got out plates, forks, and napkins for us to sit down together and have it?  Honey… that’s one sweet boy we have, huh?  I mean, he’s fifteen years old!  Most guys his age would probably be wandering around the neighborhood at this hour with friends, not baking a cake for his mother.  You know what… I think I’ll go ahead and do that before it gets cold,” she said with a pleased smile.

                A wave of relief washed over Alex.  Finally, she was about to be staring squarely at the cake again!  Now, all he had to do was stand up, wave his arms, and scream with every shred of energy he had left in his vocal cords.  It was foolproof.  He could be seen easily from there, and at long last, this horrendously abnormal and terrifying situation would come to an end.  Alex readied himself, brushing as much frosting off of his body as he could.  It wasn’t particularly easy, as the frosty goop was slick, and even when he had pushed the bigger dangling globs off of his body, he was still thickly lubricated in the sugary stuff.

                “All right, honey, I’ll see you later.  Drive safely!” cooed Michelle before hanging up, snapping the cell phone shut, and setting it calmly down on the pile of paperwork she had been busy on, which she brushed aside for the time being.

                Alex waited patiently as his mother’s house-sized hand reached forth and retrieved a glass plate from the stack he had set out earlier to serve the birthday dessert.  With the same hand, she fished a fork up from the pile with her thumb and set them both down in front of her.  Finally, her hand reached forth, her arched fingers lowered toward the base of the glass plate to pull it towards her.  However, as Alex opened his mouth to begin shouting, he watched Michelle’s head turn slightly to the left as her other hand grasped for the cake slicer that had been set next to the plates.  Grasping the large utensil in her hand, Michelle gripped the edge of the cake’s plate with the other and yanked it toward her across the cedar tabletop, creating a rolling drum effect that allowed the sound of the sliding glass to rumble through the cake itself.

                Alex had no time to react as the force of the pull sent a massive blast of wind directly into him.  It felt like getting tackled by a linebacker, and the boy instantly went down, dizzied by the intense pressure exerted on his body by the sheer speed with which he was moved across such a wide distance.

                The boy felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into the frosting, his breathing stopped for a moment, until he felt his back hit the warm, firm top of the actual cake.  By now, though, the massive, curling folds of cream frosting seemed to be cascading back over him like waves, and Alex was powerless to resist as the light was blocked out adjusting layers of gummy frosting, literally burying him alive in the soft pastry coating.

                “NO!  God…” grumbled Alex angrily, thrashing wildly in the sea of frosting as he clawed his way back up toward the surface of the cake.  However, he was stopped in his tracks once again by an all-too familiar tingling sensation along his fingertips, followed by a shooting rush of cold through his very core.

                Alex screamed in horror.

                Alex convulsed violently, the cold shooting through his limbs again, as he once again felt his size halve.  As the folds of creamy frosting rolled over him even heavier like a whirlpool of sticky cotton, he could feel himself becoming wrapped deeper, his body practically caving in on itself as he continued to shrink.  He screamed again, although it was lost entirely to a thick blob of whipped topping flattening itself over his body.

                When the freezing sensation finally subsided and Alex was able to lie flat for a moment, buried deeply in the fluffy globs of frosting, he whimpered weakly, wondering what the use was in trying to move.  By now, the durable smears of frosting were not only heavy and gooey, they were nigh impenetrable at this point.  Alex thrashed upward with all his might, making only the slightest of dents into the frosty topping.  To Alex, it felt like punching into a wet moonbounce house, the balloon-like structure of each massive glob of frosting refusing to yield to the miniscule assaults from Alex’s pinhead-sized fists.

                With repeated effort, his strained arms already well beyond spent, Alex managed to push his way through the glob laying directly on top of him and pull himself back toward the top.  As he crawled up through a tunnel of creamy frosting, brushing past huge chunks of crunchy coconut shavings which by this point dwarfed him completely, Alex could see the light from the kitchen streaming in through a crack.  If he could just reach the top…

                Alex gasped as he felt the soft ground underneath his feet rumbling, almost bending to the side.  The boy was jostled against another blob of frosting, but was bounced back again.  He dug his fingers into the goop, trying desperately not to fall deeper into the cavern of cake frosting for fear of being hopelessly buried in the succulent pastry topping, and managed to keep his grasp as things returned to normal.  However, just as soon as the shifting to one side ended, it began again, the sticky tunnel of frosting trembling around Alex and bending toward the opposite side.  Nearly losing his grip once again, Alex clenched his fists around puffy, gooey strips of frosting and pulled himself up, his entire body caked so thoroughly in the sugary smear that he couldn’t even see his own hands as he clawed his way steadily up the tunnel of frosting toward the opening.

                With a triumphant gasp, Alex burst through the tiny opening and into the light, flopping over as he climbed over the edge of the frosting and onto the lunar-esque rounded surface of the cake.  Panting heavily, Alex blinked, his eyes readjusting to the brightness of the light, and felt his heart skip a few beats as everything came back into focus.

                Michelle’s face stretched high above him, so impossible large he felt like he had his own face pressed directly against an IMAX screen that happened to be performing a close-up of his mother’s head.  Despite everything Alex had seen to prove to the contrary, the face he saw didn’t even seem real.  It was like looking at a building in the shape of Michelle’s head, and yet her features were so perfectly defined and life like, her breathing affecting each corner of her lips and eyes, nose and chin, that Alex knew that this was his mother.  It just was hard to swallow.  Her lips stretched on for what seemed a couple dozen stories, full and pink, the slightest indications of chapping cracks forming along the otherwise bulbous, curved surface.  Laugh lines around the titanic woman’s eyes cracked like soft indentations into the living, breathing landscape of her face, her tremendous lips curling into a wide smile.  Her head itself was like a planet, her skin made of intricate, peachy hexagons all slowly changing shape with each marginal move of her facial muscles.  Her nose flared in a steady, paced rhythm, sending out a whirlwind of hot air with each simple exhalation, an unstoppable tornado of cold attractive power with each inhalation.  Her teeth, like massive white boulders to Alex, seemed carved to perfection my ancient master craftsmen and glistened with the thick slime of her saliva.

                Alex trembled.

                As he looked side to side, forcing himself to remove his eyes from the attention-consuming features of this colossal and beautiful goddess that just happened to be his green-eyed, brown-haired mother, the fifteen-year-old began to put together the pieces.  The bending and bowing of the frosting he had experienced had been the changing of pressure on the cake as Michelle carved herself out a slice of dessert from the chocolate mountain Alex found himself stranded on top of.  And now, as the boy stared ahead, completely camouflaged with the cream-colored peak of the pastry mountain from smearing his body through so much of the pasty stuff during his escape, he realized something far worse.

                Michelle had lifted her chosen piece out of the massive cake and was setting it down onto a plate.  And Alex just happened to be right smack in the middle of that piece.  The boy gulped hard, shaken hard as the slice was set down calmly onto the glass plate, unable to process what was happening, as he looked behind himself.  The trail of chocolate crumbs from where the ground had literally been split by the mile-long utensil fell like an avalanche, raining downward onto the rest of the cake with great pounding thumps as the slice was dragged messily from the sugary mountain.

                “MOM!  MOM!  MA-” shrieked Alex, coughing as thick globs of frosting clogged his throat, tugging to free his limbs from the sticky surface of his mother’s enormous dessert like a gnat fighting to free itself from flypaper.  “MOM, IT’S ME, DOWN HERE!  LOOK… DOWN… HERE!” he shouted desperately.  “PLEEEEASE!”

                Things didn’t seem to be going in the boy’s favor as he continued screaming.  Alex watched, distraught, as his dear leviathan mother, completely unaware of his plight, smiled widely at the idea that her beloved son had taken the time to make her a special birthday treat.  Then, slowly, with fingers stretched out like fleshy skyscrapers to Alex folded inward, gripping a fork like Poseidon’s trident, Michelle’s hulk of a slender hand descended on the cake eagerly, prongs of the fork glistening silver as they dove downward toward the vulnerable surface of Alex’s carefully prepared pastry.

                Shutting his eyes tightly while still struggling fruitlessly against the globs of frosting binding him powerfully onto the top of the cake, Alex felt the soft ground around him bouncing downward for a moment as the towering spears of each prong of the fork easily punctured the relatively soft surface of the frosting and cake, digging deeper and twisting at the base until it was good and low into the ground, as if Michelle was driving her godlike weapon into the fragile ground of Alex’s very world.  As the boy slowly opened his eyes again, he realized he had fit easily between two of the fork prongs, which stretched upward incredibly on either side of his head.  He swallowed hard, clenching his teeth and fighting wildly against the steadily hardening frosting, and found it nearly impossible when combined with how exhausted he already was.

                Alex felt the ground underneath him shifting as his mother’s goddess digits twisted the aircraft carrier-sized fork at a lower angle, scooping up mounds and mounds of delicious chocolately earth and rippling waves of thick frosting.  Slowly, the prongs drove upward, lifting up a tectonic plate of chocolate cake, with a lone citizen along for the ride, the towering woman blissfully oblivious to what was going on a mere few inches away from her fingertips.  The carnage she was inflicting with a simple flick of her wrist.  A gentle lift of her forearm, raising the bite of moist chocolate cake clump closer to her chin.  A quick lap of her tongue along her full lips as she sampled the intoxicating aroma of tangy coconut and sweet chocolate hanging in the air.

                Alex looked on his mother’s tongue, sinewy and muscular, raked along her lips like a bright pink whale, twisting and turning as gallons upon gallons of broiling, goopy saliva dribbled between the rubbery taste buds like a flood flowing between fleshy molehills.  Then, slowly, the lips parted, like plushy dams of bouncy peach skin, allowing a blast of warm breath to unfurl into the open like flame belched from the belly of a dragon, the deep and imposing cavern of Michelle’s mouth, painted with saliva, thick stalactites of dribbling phlegm and spit hanging around the deathly powerful chompers, stretching before Alex like the dark inner circle of hell.

                The blood rushed to Alex’s head along with the adrenaline as his heart rate kicked into high gear.  It was now or never.  With the last iota of energy he had left in his arms, Alex roared and broke free of his bonds, staggering wearily to his feet, so badly beaten and tired he felt like he had just fought a war and run a marathon in the same day.  Breathing so heavily he could barely get the words out, Alex clutched his stomach to prevent himself from puking and sighed before speaking.

                “MOOOOOOOOOOM!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.  “I’M DOWN HERE!  IT’S ME, ALEX, YOUR SON!”  He paused for a moment, hacking again and trying unsuccessfully to fully catch his breath.  “DON’T TAKE A BITE!  PLEASE!  DON’T… DON’T EAT ME!”

                Almost as soon as the words had left Alex’s mouth, he felt himself plunging forward into the black depths of his mother’s mouth like he was on a roller coaster shooting down the final drop and into the inner sanctum of the structure.  He screamed, feeling the clump of thick cake smashing against the surface of his mother’s flattened tongue, the frosting beginning to melt in the intense heat.  Instantly, Alex began to sweat from the unbearably hot temperature of Michelle’s oven-like mouth.  A second later, a tidal wave of gummy saliva rolled over the entire bite of cake, washing everything in a thick layer of goopy spit and practically liquefying the cake on contact.  Alex felt himself washed away with the tide of his mother’s spit, bouncing between broken cake crumbs and clumps of melting frosting, as the last crack of light sprayed into the mouth cave before Michelle’s lips closed satisfyingly.

                Michelle sighed happily, savoring the flavor of the perfectly prepared cake on her tongue, allowing the flecks of frosting to flow over her teeth and against her cheeks, the chunky coconut shavings becoming pleasantly stuck in between her teeth.

                “Oh, that son of mine…” thought Michelle to herself joyfully as she mulled over the first euphoric bite of her favorite dessert in her mouth.  “He’s so, so special.  I just wish he was here so I could tell him.”  Nodding to herself, Michelle bit down on the soggy ball of chocolate cake sitting on the tip of her tongue that hadn’t yet been broken up by the saliva and moaned with pleasure at the taste.

                The clashing of the massive ivory statues forming Alex’s mother’s teeth sent a stormy ripple through the pitch blackness, the crashing sea of broiling sputum that had the Lilliputian lad practically lost amongst the rolling waves of drool spinning wildly.  Alex was mashed through several soppy cake crumbs that then stuck to his body, weighing him down and making it harder to find anything.  Suddenly, Michelle’s tongue rose up underneath all of it.  Alex felt his feet make contact with the rounded hills of his mother’s taste buds for an instant before the entire vast, writhing platform of the tongue was rolling backward, pushing the bite back toward the awaiting entrance to Michelle’s esophagus.

                Alex stopped thrashing, and instead let himself lie still as the tremendous monster of a tongue flicked his flea-sized body back amongst the impossible mess of soupy, gooey dessert remnants and motherly froth.  He just closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and let himself float peacefully on top of the sticky waves.  He sighed quietly.

                Somehow, it wasn’t as bad as Alex had always imagined “it.”  The feeling.  The feeling that his life was about to come to an end at any instant.  He had always imagined having great fear, apprehension, and pain leading up to a climax of torment.  He felt none of that now.  His weary body was finally at rest in a warm, soft environment, and most importantly, one of the most important women in his life was here.  Even though she didn’t know the part she was playing in it, and even though the very notion of the current reality crossing Michelle’s mind would undoubtedly drive her insane with sorrow, Alex’s mom was here for him as he passed from the land of the living into whatever awaited in the great beyond.  And somehow, Alex wasn’t worried about this either.  He was at complete peace.  He had no anger at the universe for whatever bizarre circumstances had caused him to be in this position so arbitrarily on today of all days.  More importantly, he noted to himself that he didn’t blame his mother for indirectly killing her son.  Now, he didn’t have to die of some disease, or in a painful accident, or slowly in a nursing home.  He was about to die painlessly in the gargantuan stomach of someone he loved and who loved him back, and more importantly, it was all in the name of making his mother happy.

                “Happy Birthday, Mom.  I love you...” gurgled Alex, hardly able to speak anymore as he disappeared easily and insignificantly down the slide of his loving mother's esophagus amidst a river of sopping chocolate cake morsels.