Mike felt awful, and he had to pull over to the side of the road. The car was also increasingly difficult to steer, and there seemed to be something wrong with his vision, as if everything was starting to do something strange between magnifying and growing more distant. Fortunately, he was able to stop the car and shut it off, before he lost consciousness.

Karen's cell phone rang. It was Mike Hardt. She wondered why he might call. Mike Hardt was the ex-boyfriend of her ex-friend, who had stolen Karen's ex-boyfriend. It was not that she had not liked Mike - they had been casual acquaintances prior to the betrayal on the part of their lovers - but they never really connected either.

"This is Karen?" she answered the phone.

"Karen!" the voice sounded strange - as if it was away from the receiver of the other phone or something.

"Yes? Mike, is that you?"

"Yes it is!" again, it sounded far away. "I need your help!"

She'd finally been convinced to help him. He had sounded desperate, and he'd never done anything to her (or their former lovers) to make her believe that he had anything but good motives. He'd always struck her as a decent guy. She wasn't sure why they'd never been better friends. It was probably just one of those things.

She pulled her car up behind the red Honda Civic by the side of the road. It was his car all right. Karen walked up to the driver's side door, but she didn't see him inside it. What kind of joke was this? She could, however, see his cell phone lying open in the driver's seat along with a shirt. Maybe he had called 9-1-1 and the ambulance had picked him up. He had made it sound like he was having an emergency, even if he hadn't made it clear what he was suffering from.

The driver's side door was unlocked, so she opened it. There was the cell phone, and...

Her eyes bugged out with amazement. There, beside the shirt and the cell phone was a little man - a naked little man. Down on the floor was a pair of pants and shoes.

The little man was Mike alright. He wasn't moving much, and he seemed a bit groggy. She picked him up and looked at him. This seemed to make him somewhat more conscious. He looked up at her, a little dazed.

"Hi Karen... glad you could come," he said.

* * *

She brought him back to her apartment. They would figure out what to do about his car later. Her apartment was pretty Spartan, as she didn't have many things. Before, when she had been living with her then-boyfriend, she had mostly used his things as furnishings. Since then, she hadn't bought much in the way of furniture, just the necessities like a bed and a small dresser.

Mike had fallen unconscious again. She set him down on the bed and got a small shot-glass of water. She imagined that he would want a little water to drink when he became conscious again. She hoped he would - people might not survive this...whatever it was that had happened to him. Her first instinct had been to take him to the Emergency Room, but before he had passed out, he had asked her not to.

He stirred, and opened his eyes.

"Hey, are you alright?" she asked.

He shook his head to shake off some of the grogginess. "Yeah, I suppose... considering. Thank you for coming for me. I didn't have anyone else I could call."

"Yes," he replied. "I don't think they've ever seen anything like this before, and I'm afraid what they might do to me."

"Gotcha." she said. However, she wasn't really sure what she could do with him, either.

"Would you like some water?"

He nodded 'yes', and she helped him with the shot glass. He was about two inches tall, and it was a bit much for him to handle alone. The water seemed to do him good, as he seemed to be a bit more lucid after the drink.

"Wow, this is something else!" he said as he looked around him, at her apartment and her.

"Yeah, I'll say," she replied. "What are you going to do?"

"I honestly don't know," was the only answer he could give.

* * *

There really was not anything they could do. They agreed that taking him to any authorities or medical people was not going to be good for his personal future. A web search on human shrinking only brought them to strange fetish websites, so they remained at a loss for what to do. The best they could think of was to keep on living.

Karen was very nice to him - gave him food, and let him sleep on a folded up shirt on her dresser. They also had made some makeshift clothes for him from pieces of fabric. In a little time they also found out that they actually could really like each other. As such, they really enjoyed one another's company.

One time, however, they found themselves lying in her bed, teasing each other a bit. He had made a bit of an uppity remark, and she was about to give him a comeback line, when she laid still for a moment.

"Hey Mike?" she said with a playful smirk on her face.

"Yeah?" he replied.

"You'd better watch yourself - you're really in no position to piss me off."

She certainly had a point there.

"In fact, let's think about this," she continued. "You're basically my pet."

He thought about it for a moment, and then grinned. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Hey, wait a minute...!" he protested.

"No, let's think about this," she pressed on. "I feed you and I house you, and you don't do anything back for me."

That look on her face was getting ever more mischievous. He, however, looked more serious and dejected:

"That's not fair. There's not a lot that I can do at my size. Besides, I don't eat a lot, and I don't take up much space."

"Oh, but that doesn't matter. If it wasn't for me, you'd be out there, fighting mice and probably losing."

He stood there, not saying anything.

"But, you're not a pet," she acknowledged, "because even if you're small, you're still human."

"Yes," he agreed, hoping that she would stop denigrating him. Being two inches tall and essentially useless was not particularly good for his ego, and she was making him feel even worse.

"So, I think we need to re-think the deal we have."

"What, you're not going to throw me out are you?!" he asked, panicked.

"Oh no, not that - don't worry."

Mike relaxed. Being with Karen had actually been rather nice, all things considered.

"You don't cost me much at all, but that little bit is still everything to you. Without me, you're in pretty deep shit."

Mike nodded. This was no longer a joke to him, and she was still smirking. It made him somewhat uncomfortable.

"So, instead of you being my pet, I think you need to be my slave."

"Huh?"

Mike was really confused now. What did that mean? It's not like he could do her dishes or anything.

"What do you mean?"

*Oh, come on!* Mike thought, *is this about the little tease, earlier?*

Still, he couldn't deny that she was a lot more powerful than him right now. He had better not push his luck.

He looked dejected. "I didn't mean anything by it - I was just teasing."

She smiled, and she didn't have that little mean streak in her eyes anymore. The smile seemed genuine.

"Oh, I know - no harm done."

Mike was relieved.

"But all the same, I think that if you want to stay living here, you need to be my slave."

He looked at her. She was smiling, but she seemed to be talking very matter-of-fact, and it didn't sound like she was joking around. There was also the slight matter that in the past couple weeks that they had been living together, Mike had developed the secret crush that he had had on her for about a year. He was now full-on in love with her.

"Well?" she asked.

He hung his head, got down on both of his little knees and said:

"Yes, Mistress Karen. I will be your slave."

"Good!" she said, as she sat up on the bed.

This was an earthquake for him, as he had been standing on the mattress all that time. However, he had gotten use to that - they frequently watched her television together from the bed, and whenever she went up to the kitchen or the bathroom, the bed had become an earthquake simulator for him.

She picked him up, looked at him, and then set him down by her foot.

"Take off my sock."

Mike looked down at her foot. He was her slave now, so he had to.

*Well, nothing for it, but to do it,* he thought.

It was going to be quite a task for a two-inch man. Karen flipped on the TV and pretended to watch it, while Mike figured out the sock situation.

After about fifteen minutes of heavy work on his part, her foot was bare. She muted the television and looked at his handiwork. She thought that she detected a tiny little bulge in his homemade pants.

"Take off your clothes," she commanded.

Mike, knowing that he was a bit excited and didn't want to show himself looked at her pleadingly.

His excitement had come about during the course of removing the sock. As he had wrestled with the sock, and despite the relatively light smell of her foot (or, perhaps, because of), he had also been rubbing up against the sole of her foot. It had especially been the feel of his whole body against the arch of her foot that made him feel strangely at home and protected. It was as if he was a puny mortal (which he was), and she was his guardian Goddess.

Guardian Goddess or not, however, he was a little ashamed of his base carnal reaction - especially because the length of his carnal reaction could have been not so much as a quarter of an inch to her.

"Take 'em off!" she reiterated.

*Well, I am her slave,* he thought, and so complied.

She could see his little hard-on, and smiled.

"That's what I thought. Well, now I want you to be a good little slave and kiss my bare foot."

He had been standing beside the outer side of her left foot. He leaned over and kissed it. It was the outside of the foot, however, and while kissing her foot felt properly submissive, there was also a relative coldness and lack of intimacy to it, as compared to having his body surrounded by her arch.

She smiled and moved her right, still socked, foot over her leg and put in front of him.

"Now remove the sock from this one," she commanded and turned the television sound on again.

It took him less time to do the second sock, given his experience from the first. As he was working the sock, however, he was thinking about his predicament. Here he was, a naked two-inch tall man, the slave of a young woman, struggling to take off her socks. It wasn't particularly where he had seen his life going last year. However, Karen really was a nice girl, and he had grown to really love her.

There was also something about having her be this powerful over him and submitting to her will that did something to him that he hadn't experienced before. There was a knot in his stomach and it felt very exciting. He was, in fact, relishing being her little slave.

In the middle of the performance of his sock-removal duties, he figured that she would be paying more attention to the television than to what he was doing. Therefore, he took the moment to live into this new sensation that he was experiencing. He leaned into the arch of her foot and gave her a little private kiss.

"Aha!" I knew it!" she exclaimed to his surprise.

He struggled to keep his footing as she moved. She leaned forward, her hand clasping itself around him. A dizzy instant later, he was looking into her face just a few inches (yards) away from his. It was gargantuan, and her eyes were looking both mischievous and predator-like at him. She was smirking again.

She opened her hand, revealing him in his nakedness and excitement. She inspected him for a few moments. He was too stunned to say anything.

"You are getting off on this more than you thought possible!" she said to him.

Then her mouth opened. It was larger than he was, and he would have been able to fit inside there quite easily.

He was scared stiff - in body and penis.

Her tongue slowly snaked up and nudged him in the testicles. She then ran her tongue along the small underside of his manhood. He gazed into the depth of her mouth. As she moved her tongue, she stroked his penis back and forth. The shock and awe of all these combined things - his submission to her feet, her attractiveness at her size, the dangerous gaping mouth in front of him, and the way the huge wet mattress, that was her tongue, felt against his penis - made him orgasm in seconds flat.

She withdrew her tongue and closed her mouth, as he fell backward. She looked at the limp little man in the palm of her hand.

With determined gaze, she looked at him and said: "You're mine."

The exhausted and overwhelmed Mike replied with wide eyes:

"Yes, Goddess. I am yours."

The weeks after his submission were different than before. Every night, she had him remove her socks and kiss her feet. She would then set him on her bare belly and they would have dinner together, she giving him a bit of her food. After television or reading, she would curl up, and he would lie next to her, wherever he figured he was not in danger of her rolling over onto him. He no longer had to sleep on the dresser. He could be close to her and he could bask in the actual joy that being her slave gave him. She really was very kind and gentle to him, and given the erotic excitement of being her slave, it was hardly a price to pay.

One night, however, she took a shower after coming home from work. In her life outside of her personal realm in her apartment, she was a veterinary technician. Usually, when she came home, she simply plopped down on her bed and made Mike do her feet. Her taking a shower was a little out of the ordinary, as she usually bathed in the mornings, instead. Mike sat on the bed, awaiting her.

When she came out of the bathroom, she looked at him with her mischievous/predator-like gaze. This meant that she had thought about something to do with him. It always made him apprehensive when she looked that way, but he trusted her completely. He also noticed that she was completely in the nude. That was something she rarely did - she normally changed clothes in the bathroom out of his sight. He wondered what it meant.

He wasn't given long to wait, as she snatched him up before plopping herself on the bed. She sat her back against the headboard, and held him in front of her face.

"Slave!" she said.

"Yes, Goddess?" he replied.

This had become a familiar way of addressing one another. They both rather enjoyed it, now.

"I really do love you," she declared with a smile.

"And I worship you," he said with conviction in his voice. This was something new. Despite the carnal act she had done to him that first night of his slavery, she had actually never said that she loved him. She had merely played with him, and he had loved and worshiped her a great deal.

"I know you do," she said.

She then kissed him on the face. Her lips were very big to him. One of her lips was as thick as three times his head, and this was not because she had extraordinarily large lips. In fact, in proportion to her face, they were relatively thin. Nevertheless, her lips enveloped his face with her kiss, and even her tongue darted out for a moment to lick him.

She then pulled him away again and smiled at him, winking.

He was being held up by his armpits, with her pointer finger under one, and her thumb under another. Holding him steady she turned herself toward the little college-dorm refrigerator that was beside the bed. From it, she pulled a wine cooler and popped its cap off. She winked at him again, as she set him down on her bare chest - below her neck, but above her breasts.

"I've had a bad day at work, and I want you to make up for it," She told him.

He nodded - that is what he was for, after all. His living was to serve her.

"I want you to get down on your knees..."

He did so.

"...and kiss my skin."

He did so.

"Now, I want to crawl a little backward, and do the same thing."

Facing her, he crawled a little further down her chest, and kissed it again.

"Good - you got the idea. Now I want you to keep going, but not necessarily in a straight line downward."

*Oh, this is new,* Mike thought. *I wonder where I'll end up.*

He did as he was told, and worshipped her skin, ever lower down her body. As he did so, she took a swig of her wine cooler. He could feel the reverberation of the liquid that she was swallowing. That was quite powerful to him - kissing her chest, and both feeling and hearing a gush of liquid not far below him, inside of her, moving down into her more deeply still.

He made his way to both of her breasts, making sure to do them both good service, and then he went down further. Her gulps of wine cooler took on different feelings as he moved further away from her throat and toward the abdomen. It felt very worshipful to do this and he was certain that she was enjoying it as much as he was. When he made it to her belly button, he took a moment to put his ear against her stomach. He wanted to hear the sounds within. He heard a few gurgles, but then she spoke up:

"Keep going downward."

He noticed a certain quality in her eyes. They were a little bloodshot, and her face was flushed. He guessed (correctly) that she had not had much to eat, and the wine cooler had gone straight into her bloodstream. He certainly did not dare disobey. He also knew where this was headed. It was going to be a heady evening.

It wasn't long, then, before he was at the place where to go any further, he would have to choose either to do down one of the two legs, or climb down in between them. As her slave, he figured, it would not behoove him to take luscious liberties, and so he opted for the left leg, whose foot it had been that he first kissed. As he made his way toward the leg, her hand came up and pushed him a little toward her center. He smiled and knew what his duty was to be.

There was a massive earthquake, however, as she pushed her pelvis upward, allowing her back to slide down so that she was lying flat on her back. After the momentary earthquake, he resumed his course toward her ladyship. She was growing pungent with desire.

He then knew why she had taken the shower. That was most kind. It also meant that while a little pungent, this was quite bearable. He climbed his way down and began wrestling with her labia. This pleased her mightily, as he could feel her tense up. He kept on working at it, however. He worked his hands inside her, for her pleasure, and then when the moment felt right, also his face.

What he hadn't expected when he did this, however, was that she was going to make the most of it. He felt her grab his legs and push him deeper into her.

Mike was completely inside of her. Breathing was very difficult and he instinctively struggled. Karen really enjoyed that. Little Mike had been a whole, six foot-tall, man once, and now he was only two inches, her devoted slave, and presently even pleasuring her deep inside.

This was the existence she wanted - absolute power over others! She closed her eyes and imagined herself the size of a Goddess to all people. She would have humanity down at her feet, doing her bidding.

Inside of her, Mike was having an entirely different feeling. He was completely powerless, completely enveloped by hot moist flesh. She was having her omnipotent way with him, and he wholly accepted it. He moved his body in such a way that he thought would pleasure her.

This is what he had been made to do. He was convinced of it that his shrinking had been no accident; it had been an intervention of destiny to make him her property. Being completely inside her body also accentuated that feeling - she was his entire environment. Everything he was was now within her body.

Her power over him was complete, and her exercise of that power manhandled him to and fro. What had begun as a gentle but firm thrust into her, was now growing more vigorous. Before long, his strokes through her flesh became more violent, as she fiercely shoved him around for her carnal pleasure. As the ferocity of her manhandling reached a crescendo, he was at the edge of his stamina.

The thought of Mike - another human, one being completely inside her, belonging to her, and existing for her pleasure - sent her over the climax that she had been wanting. She felt her walls completely swollen with excited blood squeeze in on him, doubtlessly suffocating him. Whatever discomfort he felt, however, was worth it for her pleasure. That's what being a Goddess and slave couple meant. He existed to serve her pleasure.

She hoped that she hadn't damaged him that much in her pleasure, but the wonderful feeling she had just had was worth the risk.

After she pulled him out, she saw that he was unconscious, but still alive. When he awoke, the lights were out, and he had been placed by her sleeping side. He curled himself around and fell asleep.

Some weeks after the 'internal encounter', Karen had ordered a cable connection to be installed, so that she could use cable television, internet, and telephone in her apartment. It meant that a technician would have to come over and install the cable and its hardware.

The problem was that the technician could only be scheduled to come during Karen's work hours. The only way out was for Karen to have the apartment manager open the door for the technician to come in and install the cable. To keep him a secret, Karen and Mike agreed that he would be kept hidden in the sock drawer of Karen's dresser.

On the appointed day, the manager let the technician in, but trusting the technician, she did not remain present to observe him - simply asking that he lock the apartment up after he left was through. This would not have been a problem had the technician been trustworthy.

The technician, Dave, was not a thief. He was simply very lonely and a bit given to lechery. After having installed the cable, he wasn't snooping around Karen's apartment for anything to steal - all he wanted to do was feel up the things of a young woman. This led him to the sock drawer of the dresser.

When Dave opened the drawer, Dave and Mike were equally surprised to see each other. Given the size and power difference, it was Dave who overcame the fright first. He reached into the drawer and pulled Mike from it.

He inspected the little man.

"Put me down!" Mike yelled defiantly.

"What?!" Dave exclaimed. "You're real? I thought you was a toy of some sort."

*Well, I am a toy of some sort,* Mike thought, but this wasn't the time to engage in definitions.

"Put me back!" Mike shouted at the tech.

Dave sat down on the bed, still holding Mike. He wasn't yet quite sure what to make of this short, moving action figure.

To add emphasis to his demand, Mike decided to sink his teeth into Dave's hand.

It was more surprise than pain that startled Dave to the point that he let Mike go. Mike fell on the bed, recovered from the cushioned fall quickly and ran for the pillows. Dave tried looking for him, but was soon distracted by a nauseous feeling.

* * *

Karen came home that evening.

Another gruelling day at the vet had her tired. When she put her key into the door and twisted it, she noticed that the door was unlocked. She remembered, then, that the technician should have come. She thought that he or the apartment manager must have forgotten to lock the door on their way out. When she opened the door, however, she noticed that her dresser drawers were hanging open. She also saw the technician's tools lying on the floor... as well as his clothes.

She was on the verge of panic, when she heard Mike call out: "It's alright!"

Seeing him on the bed, she snatched him up and held him to her chest.

"Oh God, that scared me - I was worried something had happened to you!" she said, relieved.

"Well, something could have, but something really weird happened instead," he replied.

Karen looked at him with a confused look.

"Under the bed, you'll find a two-inch tall cable technician afraid for his life."

"Hey lady, I didn't mean nothing by it! Please let me go!" Dave pleaded, when he had been found.

Karen was holding him in front of her face, and not looking very amused with the fellow. This little crook (or perv) had been going through her stuff and had put her little slave in danger. Now, however, he was in her power, and she could do with him what she pleased.

"Honest! I'm really sorry!" He continued. "I'm just very lonely, that's all. Please just make me normal-size, and you'll never see me again."

Karen just looked at him.

"You want money, I can give you money," he pleaded, "just let me go!"

"Shut up, twerp!" Karen barked.

Dave shut himself up.

"The thing is, I can't make you big again. I'm not even sure how you got small. I don't even know how Mike got small, and neither does he. So, I can let you go, but you'll be in a lot of danger out there - with cats, rats and even cockroaches being dangerous to you."

Dave sobbed.

"Let me show you something." Karen said, still with anger in her voice.

She took off her sock, and set her bare foot on the bed. She then looked at Mike, giving him an instruction with just the look in her eye. He knew what to do.

She made Dave watch, and Mike crawled down to her foot and began worshiping her.

"Just like Mike had a few weeks ago, you now have a choice - you can either become my slave, or I can throw you out into the wild, where you will be animal food in no-time."

She set Dave down by her leg, and looked at him.

"If you want to live, do as he is doing."

It didn't take the tech long to make up his mind. Before long, both Dave and Mike were working away, kissing Karen's foot.

*Mmm,* Karen thought, *I'm really liking this power,*

She had, at that point, two slaves licking at the soles of her feet - demonstrating their submission to her - and she relished it.

Mike, on the other hand, was a little worried if, now that she had a second worshipper, her attention to him would diminish. To his surprise, he had found his life more fulfilling as Karen's tiny little slave than he had ever had in his life before being shrunk. Karen had become his world, and he didn't like the idea of sharing.

Dave, meanwhile, was licking the sole of this gigantic girl's foot, wondering despairingly what his strange fate would be - or, more specifically, what this gigantic girl was going to decide his fate would be.

It was also at that point that Karen decided that very question.

Still licking the sole of her foot, together with Mike, Dave was shocked when Karen plucked him up. Her great fingers held him up and carried him to her face. In his nakedness, which did not display a particularly graceful physique, he felt open and transparent as her eyes inspected him. He felt as if he was under the light of an interrogator's lamp.

"SO," she spoke, her voice booming from her mouth, though the loudness was due to size and determined tone, rather than any real volume on her part, "YOU'VE DECIDED TO BE MY SLAVE?"

Dave, in tears, nodded very slightly.

She shook him back and forth a bit with her hand.

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"Yes!" he shouted.

"YOU AGREE THAT YOUR LIFE BELONGS TO ME NOW?"

He hesitated a moment, but contemplating the dangers that faced a man of his size outside the wall of Karen's apartment didn't seem particularly inviting. Besides, she was quite attractive, and Dave had always been a sucker for cute girls, even if they had never been suckers for him.

"Yes!" he shouted again.

Karen then smiled sweetly, and moderated her tone to no longer be as loud to him.

"Good" she said nicely.

Dave relaxed. He felt a little comforted that she was accepting his submission with apparent kindness. Still afraid of her, however, he decided to appease her a little more by saying:

"My life is completely yours, lady, do with me as you wish."

Karen grinned.

"Oh, you bet!" she said, winking at him.

To his surprise, her mouth opened very wide and Dave was plunged forward into it. He barely had time to see the great tongue and looming teeth and molars, when all went dark around him.

He could only feel the massive tongue moving underneath him, against his naked front. He tried getting up, but the tongue, held him secure against the roof of her mouth.

Despite his shock, he could feel his naked scrotum being enveloped by the soft wet tongue. It was a more glorious feeling than he had ever felt, and - had he not been panicking for his life - he would have taken the moment to enjoy it. The tongue was, however, also pushing him forward toward her throat. He felt gravity also shift in that direction, just before the tongue lowered itself and he felt the flesh of her mouth push him into the throat.

Inside the dark esophagus, he was being hugged on all sides by flesh. Again, it was the most amazing feeling he had ever felt. But as amazing as it felt, he also knew that the hugging pressure of that flesh was pushing him downward into her belly. The strength of those fleshy walls were such that his own strength was powerless to struggle against. They pushed him ever downward; downward to his fate...

Watching the two little men, Mike (whom she had come to dote on) and the lousy technician (whom she considered a little human turd), kissing and licking her feet, Karen imagined herself as a real Goddess. She had life-or-death power over these little men. They were hers to do with as she pleased - anything she pleased. She was still angry at the technician for violating her space and putting Mike in danger. He really just deserved to be stomped on by her foot, rather than having the privilege of getting to kiss it.

But she was now his Goddess, regardless of what a waste of humanity he was. Like a Goddess she now commanded his fate.

*Oh wow,* she thought to herself now. *That could be so true, now.*

Yet, for all of this megalomania on her part, and even for the disregard with which she held this new little man, Karen was not without a moral compass. It was wrong of her to steal the life of this man. At the same time, he was her slave.

Philosophically, Karen was a bit of a libertarian, but one who had a peculiar interpretation. She had once read an essay that said that people should have the freedom to become the slaves of others if they chose to do so. She thought that was fair. Both Dave and Mike had chosen to become her slaves, because the alternative was being thrown out into the dangerous wild, where they would surely be killed. Dave had chosen to be her slave, rather than be killed. He had not chosen to have done what she was now contemplating doing with him. Also, he had not yet explicitly stated anything - he had only implied his submission and choice by kissing her foot. She would have to make the deal more explicit, just for her own sense of morality.

Karen plucked Dave up and held him in front of her face.

"So, you've decided to be my slave?" she asked him.

She thought that she saw him nod, but he wanted to hear it from him directly. She shook him a bit, saying: "I can't hear you."

"Yes!" Dave squeaked.

"You agree that your life belongs to me now?" She asked of him.

By asking this question, it would be explicit that she would own all rights to his life, not just his service. Given the coercive nature of the exchange between big girl and little man, she knew this would not hold up in any court of law, but Karen knew this wasn't going to go to any court of law. There was only one place this (meaning Dave) was going, and that was into her belly.

However, she wanted to salve her conscience just a little bit, and was therefore delighted when she heard it from his own lips: "Yes!"

"Good," she said to him, wanting to sound nice and put him off his guard.

The little man relaxed, but then said the words that sealed his fate even more: "My life is completely yours, lady, do with me as you wish."

That did it for Karen - this man was going to be her food.

"Oh, you bet!" she said winking at him, as she popped him into her mouth.

She enjoyed feeling him on her tongue, but she didn't want to waste time. At two inches tall, he could still make her gag and she wanted this to be easy and painless - for her. She therefore took no time in leaning her head back and swallowing.

She swallowed the little man. She could feel him in her throat as he moved down. At two inches, he was substantial, but she had a robust throat. Also, the knowledge that that two-inch lump was a living, breathing human being made it all worthwhile.

Quickly she lunged forward and grabbed Mike. She then leaned back again and put her favored little man against her upper belly.

Moments later, she felt the little technician in her stomach. While her throat had not allowed him to move, given the tightness and peristaltic movements, now in her tummy he could move, buck and flail all he wanted to. Sure enough, the little man did all of that and more. It was the most amazing feeling ever.

There were many people in history who had owned slaves. There had also been plenty of cannibals in history. But she was the first human ever, to her knowledge, to have made herself the mistress-Goddess of another human and then have swallowed him up whole to have and digest in her stomach. That, realization, as well as the knowledge that she had yet another little man to do with as she pleased, made her feel more Goddess-like than anything.

She had an instant dilemma, however. Should she follow this awesome feeling up with yet another, by sacrificing Mike to her being as well - should she seek carnal pleasure, by thrusting him into her lower ladyship - or should she just enjoy the moment, clutching Mike to the belly that was the absorbing fate of Dave?

The decision was forced upon her by the confluence of all of these feelings: the power, the gluttony, the Goddess-feeling, and the struggles of a tiny man trapped inside her tummy. Those same feelings made her also want Mike inside her stomach. She loved Mike, and he worshiped her. It was not at all unfitting that they should consummate their love by becoming one person: a well-fed Karen. However, the choice was decided when all the thoughts and feelings made her climax before she had made the move to take him into her mouth.

* * *

Mike was a bit annoyed at having to share Karen's foot with someone else. She owned him completely, and submitting to her was an awesome feeling. As someone who loved her as powerfully as he did, he also begrudged having to share her. Yet, he did understand that her relationship with him gave her complete freedom - the loyalty was one-way and she was under no obligation to be true to him as his exclusive lover/mistress/Goddess.

But this guy was obnoxious! Why did he get the favor (as Mike saw it) of getting to be her slave, when he had done something as bad as violate Karen's privacy? He deserved her wrath, not her divine benevolence.

Mike did not have long to begrudge Dave their equal position. With a move that took both the little men at unawares, Karen snatched Dave up and brought him to her face. From Mike's vantage point, Dave looked very small in Karen's hand, with her eyes beaming down on him. Mike also noted a strange expression on her face. It was a very predatory look that he had not seen on her before. He wondered what it meant.

"So you've decided to be my slave?" she asked the technician.

Mike could barely tell, but it seemed as if the technician nodded an affirmative.

Karen shook the man around a bit, "I can't hear you!"

"Yes!" the little man shouted.

"You agree that your life belongs to me now?" she asked him.

Mike, looking at the both of them hoped that Dave would not give in. He really didn't want to have to share his Goddess with anyone, much less someone as vile as this person.

"Yes!" the man replied.

"Good."

"My life is completely yours, lady, do with me as you wish."

Mike frowned. *Damn* he thought.

But Karen now grinned and saying,

"Oh, you bet!" she tossed the little man into her mouth.

Mike was totally shocked. His Goddess had just popped that other man into her mouth, and now he could see her lean her head back. He then saw her throat move. She had just swallowed him down! What was more, she looked completely natural doing it. The way in which she did it, made Mike believe that it was the most natural thing in the world that this other human being should serve as her sustenance.

At that moment, Karen took hold of Mike and pressed him against her belly.

Mike knew that in a matter of moments, another human being was going to be on the other side of the fleshy wall against which he was now pressed. That other human being was inside Karen. He was her food.

Karen was indeed his Goddess, and that meant that she had every right to swallow up that other little man. In Mike's eyes, she was completely superior to him in every way, and if she decided he ought to be in her belly, that's where he ought to be.

This idea turned Mike on in a way that he had never contemplated before. He had been completely inside Karen before - essentially inside the corridor to her womb. But Dave was now going inside of her in a way that he would never leave alive. Dave's being was being sacrificed to her being.

The way in which Karen was now eyeing him gave him the distinct impression that she also had thoughts of sending him to the same fate.

*Would she do it* he wondered, *would she swallow him up?*

The thought overwhelmed him. She could absolutely do it if she wanted to. Those lips could part and accept him into her mouth, which would close about him and force him into her throat and then stomach. Inside her, he would be more completely hers than he had even thus far been.

He felt Karen tense-up in pleasure, and he was likewise feeling sexual pleasure the likes of which were unprecedented. The both of them climaxed simultaneously.

***

"WOW!" she exclaimed after they had both had a moment to recover, "That was like nothing I've ever felt before."

Mike simply nodded at her, with his eyes wide.

"What made you cum?" She asked.

"Uh..," he stammered, unable to form a coherent thought, much less an analysis.

She allowed him a moment to collect his brain.

"Honestly, it was because I thought that I was next."

"Oh, not next," she replied, "but some day."

Karen, his love and Goddess, had told him that someday she would swallow him down.

Mike was not sure how he should take that. He probably should be scared out of his mind. He wasn't, however. It seemed quite right and proper that someday he should wind up inside her stomach.

It also wasn't really something that he feared, because her mouth was so beautiful, especially when it was open and he could gaze into it, and her belly was so lovely, soft and comfortable - at least, the exterior of it that he was acquainted with. He was also acquainted with her body's interior - having been swallowed up inside her womanhood before - and that was also a memory that he relished.

And so, in many ways, he anticipated the day that he might become her food with some relish. He loved her, and wanted to belong to her, and being her meal was as intense a belonging as he could imagine.

While he was having this reverie, he was awaiting her return home. After the previous night's 'technician incident', they had gone to sleep - him sleeping right beside her navel. He had neglected to tell her something, given all the commotion with the technician and his fate. He was planning to bring it up once she had come home and made herself comfortable.

Karen walked into her apartment and saw her little slave sitting on the bed, watching some television. Fortunately, he had learned to master the television remote which was several orders larger than he was.

He got up instantly as Karen walked in. He knew his place as her slave. His enthusiasm to see her was quite canine. She, in turn, smiled at him. She dropped her purse, threw off her jacket and kicked off her shoes. She, then proceeded to fall into her spot on the bed. Mike braced and rode the earthquake of her fall onto the mattress.

"Hi!" he said, with excitement.

"Hi," she said in return, "do my feet."

He didn't have to be told twice. He undid her socks, taking occasions to kiss her soles as he did so. Once done, he proceeded to kiss, lick and massage her feet as best he might.

After he serviced her feet, she took him up and set him on her belly. He knelt down and kissed her right below her navel.

"Karen...?" he began.

She thought of playfully rebuking him for using so informal an address, but he seemed serious. The Goddess-protocol could wait. She nodded for him to continue.

"...I thought about what you said last night, when you said that someday you might....er.. you know..."

"Yes...?" Karen said with a questioning yet committed tone of voice.

She had expected this conversation - he was going to plead with her, because being digested by her probably didn't sound as nice for him as it would be for her. Nevertheless, the sexual and mental high that swallowing the technician up had given her was not something that she was likely to forget or give up on.

She did love Mike, but she loved herself more. She loved the feeling of absolute power. Something had changed within her last night... though it had been happening ever since she took control of Mike Hardt. She had become more self-centred and egoistic. It was not something that she was unconscious of, but the feeling was too powerful for her to check. She imagined that it was not unlike some sort of drug addiction. She knew that it was 'bad', but she didn't want to give up on the powerfully satisfying feeling. All the same, Mike shouldn't complain - she hadn't eaten him yet, and he had pledged to be her complete property. He had given her the right to eat him.

"I want you to know that I want to be swallowed up by you too."

This statement of his surprised her, and snapped her out of her train of thought. "What..?"

"You own me and I worship you. If you want to eat me, I will be at peace with the fate of dissipating in your stomach."

He wouldn't even mind being her food. Her eyes were now fixed on him, hungrily. She was fighting back the urge to stuff him into her mouth right away and greedily gobble him up.

"But there's something I need to tell you."

She stalled herself. She was being driven, now, to not wait for the right time. Now was as good a moment as any to feel his puny body squirming inside of her... but what did he have to say?

"When Dave found me in the drawer, I bit him, after which he shrank to his small size. I think that my bite may have done this to him. If so, it might do it to other people."

She thought about this. The reason why Mike, and then Dave, had shrunk down to their small size had remained a mystery. She had resigned herself to the inexplicable nature of the phenomenon. If it was true, however, that Mike's bite caused people to shrink, that did open up a lot of opportunities.

"That's true!" she said.

"We should test it out. It would be good to find out why I was made small."

"So we can figure out how to unshrink you?" she asked.

He paused at that.

"No, not really."

Now she looked at him with a puzzled glance.

"I don't know why - it doesn't make sense - but I don't want to escape from being small. Somehow I feel as good as I've ever done, living with you. I know that someday you're going to eat me and everything, but I really just love being your little slave. It feels more right than anything I have ever felt."

*As well you should!* was her immediate thought-response.

*Wow, where had that come from?* she wondered to herself.

"Now, I want to see if we can make other people small too."

Karen liked that idea. It would allow her to have the high that Dave had given her, through her belly, without having to lose Mike in the digestive process.

Karen and Mike thought about how, when, and on whom to test their theory. They settled on trying it out on a homeless person. Karen was pretty callous when it came to the homeless. She disliked them almost as much as she did welfare recipients - but not quite. Welfare bums, she figured, sucked money away from taxpayers. Street bums just looked nasty and smelled. They also decided on a homeless person, because a homeless person would be an easy target that no one would miss.

Karen stopped her car near the Commerce Street bridge. She knew that the homeless tended to collect there. Now, she wanted to do this to just one homeless guy without being seen by any others. Therefore, she would patrol the area, rather than go strait to the bridge itself. She looked around, and started driving again. She wanted to do this without having to get out of the car. It would be safer and she would be able to drive off quick if she needed to.

Before long, she spotted a lone man walking in dishevelled clothes. She pulled up in her car and rolled down the window.

"Excuse me," she called. "I'm a bit lost, could you give me directions?"

The man looked around. *What was this girl doing?* he thought. While street people got a bum rap, Joe knew that there were some predators out there and a girl like her shouldn't be taking such chances. But, if she needed directions...

Karen asked for some directions to a likely nearby place and the man told her where she would have to go.

"Thank you so much. Can I give you something for your trouble?"

Joe held out his hand. She was passing him a dollar bill, when all of a sudden he felt a bug-bite.

"Ouch!" he said, but still grabbed the dollar.

Then Joe started feeling woozy. He began losing his bearings and soon collapsed.

Karen picked the newly shrunk little man off the pavement. She hurriedly closed her car door again and drove off home.

***

The bum was shocked back to his senses when Karen put him under the flowing tap of her bathroom sink. Until that moment he had been unconscious as the shrinking process had knocked him out. He was pretty foul, and he needed the cleaning that she was putting him through.

He sputtered and panicked, but she paid him very little mind, as she scrubbed him with soft soap. Following the soap, she thoroughly rinsed him, making sure all the soap was washed off of him. By that time, the sputtering and panicking had turned to cursing and shrieking. The technician had made so much less noise and protest, because he had had several hours to mentally adjust to having been shrunk. The bum was just coming to terms with it.

Karen didn't really care.

Mike watched her come back into the main/bedroom of the studio apartment, holding the cleaned little man. She placed him in a tall glass that he would not be able to climb out of or tip over, and placed him on the dresser. Mike admired her as she used her now-free hands and arms to strip off her sweater, showing her bare belly, as she had only a sports bra underneath. She then went to the kitchenette and made a strawberry and banana smoothie in her blender. Returning, she picked the glass with the homeless person up off the dresser, and sat down on her bed. Mike rode the wave of the mattress as he was wont to do. She looked at the man in the glass and then winked at Mike.

Joe was in shock. He was not a man to be easily rattled - he had served in the military during wartime (Desert Storm), and was fairly tough, even if in other respects his psyche had been wounded. These 'other respects' accounted for his chronic unemployment, even if Veteran Affairs didn't want to see it that way. But now he was naked, forcibly cleaned, and in the power of a giant young girl. That did something to a guy - made him feel helpless to say the least.

The giant young girl looked at him through the glass walls that she had put him into - was it a drinking glass of enormous proportions or something? That's what it looked like. She seemed to be holding another, but that one had pink stuff in it.

She looked away for a moment, but then looked back at him.

"Hey bum," she said in a none-too-friendly tone, "I'm about to prove to nature that I'm better than you."

Karen was very satisfied with herself. Here she had yet another little man, and she knew exactly what she was going to do with him.

"Hey lady, you can't do this to me - I'm a vet!"

She knew what he meant, but decided to make a joke about it.

"Yeah, me too," she said, winking at him.

Her job at the veterinarian, had taught her a thing or two about nature. Nature was cruel, but she also thought it was orderly and compelling. Nature had a clear hierarchy of worth. If you were strong, you survived and grew. If you weren't, you were eaten by those who were. Karen had to frequently feed the snakes that were brought in. They had her do this, because the other vet techs had an aversion to it. Mice were simply a lot cuter than snakes. Karen was a little different, however. She had fallen in love with nature's cruel side.

Karen tossed the smoothie into the glass with the bum. A homeless guy was obviously on the low end of the fitness totem pole. He was weak. She was strong, and she was about to prove it.

Joe was doused in pink slush. He attempted to swim to the top, but all of a sudden, he felt his environment shift. He felt gravity pull a touch harder, and then the slush began to flow upward and pull him with it. He caught a quick glimpse of what looked like giant teeth - from the back! Quickly, however, he was encased in darkness. But in a addition to the darkness, there was flesh, and that flesh was manhandling him... in a very definite direction...

Karen saw Mike looking in awe at her. She hadn't forgotten what they had been talking about before Mike had mentioned how he had bitten the technician. But right now, her appetite was well enough satisfied with a man sliding down to her belly. There was another type of appetite that she felt needed to be addressed, and she wanted it sated simultaneously with her stomach.

She opened up her legs, and with a commanding tone told her slave to come inside of her.

Mike did as he was told.

Karen now had two little men inside of her body. One was feeding her stomach and the other was feeding her carnal pleasure. She squirmed on her bed with gratification. With these acts, she had proven to Nature that she was no ordinary human. She had proven herself to be higher up the food chain from two humans. With Mike's extraordinary affliction, she could probably make quite the habit of this. The thought of making that habit coincided with something that she could feel deep inside of her. The bum was fighting for his life inside of her stomach, and she could feel that he was putting forth quite a struggle.

*He must be in quite a bit of pain*, she mused, but that was life. It might not be fair, but that is how it works.

The strong devour the weak.

Several months had passed since Karen had swallowed up her first homeless guy. Those months had been wonderful for her. She and Mike had discovered that it was his saliva that made people (except her, for some unknown reason) shrink down. They had tested it on both homeless men and homeless women with equal results. Only Karen seemed immune. She also delighted in the experimentation, because those who served their science, also served her appetite. Karen supplemented her diet quite nicely with homeless people.

Some months into this 'science diet', however, Karen heard a knock on her door. Opening the door (after peering through the peephole), she saw a middle aged man, dressed in a suit and looking like either a bureaucrat or a banker, flanked by a police officer.

"Yes?" Karen asked as she stood in her doorway.

"Miss Karen Harper?" the man inquired.

"Yes," she answered, "who are you?"

"My apologies," he replied, "my name is Howard Steele."

He waited for a moment to see if the name meant anything to her. When she did not react, he continued, "I am the city manager."

*Bureaucrat, then*, Karen told herself, but other than that, the title meant nothing to her. She was a veterenarian and not into politics, except to think how much of a drain bureaucrats were on too many tax dollars.

"I would like to have a private talk with you about a recent drop in the city's homeless rate, if you don't mind."

That caught Karen's attention. She thought that she and Mike had been pretty careful, and she couldn't fathom that the city might have surveillance cameras under the city's bridges.

"What do you mean, 'private'?" she asked.

The city manager smiled, "Nothing that you should be worried about as far as legalities are concerned."

He turned to the police officer.

"Jeff, could you go down to your squad car. I think everything will be okay here. I will be down when I am done."

'Officer Jeff' nodded and headed down the hall of Karen's apartment building, down toward the parking area.

Karen was now quite weirded-out. She was a slight bit less uneasy, now that the cop was leaving. She knew that what she and Mike had been up to was quite illegal. Those with more sympathy for the homeless might even call it murder. But if the cop was leaving, she at least could be sure that she wasn't being arrested for murder, yet.

"There, you don't have to be afraid of that," the city manager said. "While I know that ACLU-types might howl bloody murder, those of us who actually have to run things are quite relieved to have a few less bums to worry about."

"Now, would you invite me in?"

He was being polite, but it wasn't very proper for a middle-aged man to invite himself into the apartment of a girl of Karen's age, and certainly not one who was in her pyjamas. Besides, her apartment, while sparse, was not exactly ready for company.

Karen hesitated for a second or two.

"Will you give me a moment?" she said, nervously.

"Sure-sure," the man answered, casually.

She took a few moments to remove her stray garments and put on something a little more solid. She stuffed Mike into the familiar sock drawer. She didn't really think about how that place had not proven to be safe the last time. Her mind was preoccupied.

As she was doing these things, she tried to think about what this visit meant. Was he here to blackmail her? She didn't have anything of any value - maybe he was a dirty old man who wanted to threaten to expose her if she didn't offer him up her body. She couldn't make him disappear the way she had the cable creep, given that the cop was outside and knew that this guy was here. What was more, a 'city manager' sounded a bit more important than a cable guy - more likely to be missed.

She opened the door again and let the man inside. She offered him a chair that she had just before been used as a place to put her clothes. These were now in the laundry hamper.

"How can I help you?" she asked, hesitantly as he took the seat.

"Well, Madam Harper, let me get straight to business. You should have been a bit more careful about your...er... 'hunting activities'."

"You were picked up by some of our surveillance cameras. Thankfully, the police reports came straight to me and I was able to keep the knowledge about this very limited. I can't say that I have completely figured out how you do it - or why - but you have been shrinking people - people who don't seem to come back to the streets...?"

"Uh...-...huh." Karen replied slowly, not so much as to confirm the truth of what he said, but to acknowledge that he had said it and that she hoped that he would state his intention.

Mr. Steele smiled in a way of reassuring her, though not very effectively. "Well, I certainly don't want to stop you for keeping on doing that. I am happy to have the bums off the street, but I would like two things."

Here it was. Karen was sure that he was going to ask her to do some old-man nasty. Well, best have it on the table.

"I am dying to find out how and why, but also how I can help you do it more, and keep you off the police's radar."

"Okay...?" Karen asked, waiting for him to add that he would like a blow job, or for her to undress in front of him.

He looked back at her for a second, and then he laughed.

"You're wondering if I have other conditions?"

For Karen, this was getting weirder by the second. She was relieved that he wasn't going to have her hauled off on murder charges or blackmail her to go down on him, but what the hell did this guy really want?

"I don't know... how can I trust you?" she asked.

He sighed.

"I'm sorry," he said, making himself a little more comfortable by releasing his shoulders. They had been a bit tensed up. It had the effect of reducing the tension between himself and Karen. If this guy was a bureaucrat-politician, she could certainly see him ingratiating himself effectively. She didn't trust the guy, but he was trying to make it less uncomfortable at least.

"Ever since I learned of you and what you have been doing, I've been dying to meet you and learn more. Shrinking people down is a... fascination of mine. While I've never really thought it possible in science, and I don't believe in magic, I've always had thoughts about shrinking. That may sound odd to you, but look, imagine how odd it is what you're doing."

"You have a 'fascination' for shrinking people, even though you thought it was impossible," Karen recited back at him.

"Yes," he said, shrugging his shoulders, holding his palms upward.

"You are a perv!" she responded, with a tone of disgust.

"Hey, I only think about it - you're the one doing it. Besides, at least I'm not buggering little boys or whacking off while wearing a Mickey Mouse outfit. You don't want to know what some of the city councilmen are up to... er... but that's a conversation for another time."

"Suffice to say: Yes, I find it fascinating and I want to help you do what you're doing so that you don't get caught at it. Is that so wrong?"

Karen finally relaxed a little. She supposed by now that he wasn't a rapist. He was just a little strange, but probably with no harmful intent toward her.

"We can talk, but go down and tell your cop that you're leaving so that he can go home. Then you can come back and we can talk."

Mr. Steele pulled out his cell phone. He dialled and spoke into it: "Jeff, go ahead and go home. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Don't worry. Jeff knows what side of his bread the butter is on. He'll go home and just assume we're up to something he'll get a bonus for later."

It wasn't what Karen had wanted him to do, but very well, it seemed alright.

"What do you want to know?" she asked.

"I'm curious how you shrink people down and what you do with them afterward."

Karen thought about this question. She really didn't want to tell him the answer to either. The former question would disclose the special power that really lay in Mike's bite, leaving him possibly the target of whatever this Steele guy was up to, and the second answer could land her in jail on murder charges. Thinking this through, she said nothing.

"I don't want to tell you," she said.

"What guarantee can I give you that I can be trusted?" Steele said, trying to bargain. "The fact that I'm here - rather than the police or, worse, the Feds - means that I'm not trying to lock you away. I'm on your side!"

She didn't respond for a bit, but then she had an idea. This man could actually probably be pretty useful to her. Her activities of the past few months had grown very addicting to her. Being someone who devoured lesser humans was something that just did not get old for her. The pleasure of feeling living people struggle inside of her stomach was amazing, but still second to the psychological gratification that it gave her.

But, as she had found out this evening, her activities had not gone unnoticed, and that was a problem. This guy could probably make those problems go away, if she played him right. Of course, he might also be playing her for his own gain. She needed something to hold over him...

"You fantasize about shrinking people down...?" She asked him to reconfirm.

"Yes, I do," he said.

"You like the idea of having power over little people?"

"Oh, no, not at all!" he answered. "Having power over people is my job - it's work; a burden. The idea that fascinates me is the loss of control when being shrunk. That's far more cathartic."

Karen frowned a bit as she caught onto what this was all about. Steele took it that she didn't understand what he meant.

"'Cathartic' means that..." he attempted to explain.

"I know what the word means," she said, cutting him off. "You have a fantasy of losing control to someone more powerful than you. You probably are even enticed by the idea that I might shrink you down right now and do what I do to the homeless people."

He was going to confess an agreement, but she kept on with her analysis:

"It frightens you as well; it gives you a knot in your belly that I might actually do it, even if it would be stupid for me. Bums can go missing without anyone caring. Yet, the police know that you're here and if I 'disappear' you, someone is going to come after me. So, I won't do that."

"I will also not let you in on my secret, unless you give me some proof of a secret of yours - a secret that would bring you down. I need to be able to blackmail you with something serious if I'm going to tell you anything."

She stepped toward him, closing the distance she had maintained between them by half.

"I promise it will be worth it," she said, looking into his eyes.

"Give me power over you and I will let you in on my secret. Until that time, please leave my apartment."

* * *

A week later she had it in her hands. It appeared that City Manager Howard Steele was pretty risqué. He had been blackmailed before by some hooker who had secretly taped the S&M affair he had had with her. He had bought the tape from her, but had failed to destroy it. Thanks to the tape, he had had the ability to enjoy the original experience a second time, watching it on a television. It also, now, allowed him to give into Karen's bargain.

He was back at her apartment. This time he assured her that the police didn't know he was here.

"I'm only going to show you half of my secret, Howard," she said.

She had grown comfortable with him, now that she knew that she had the upper hand. Not only did she have the blackmail tape, she also knew what his psychological buttons were.

She LOVED this. It was one thing to have great control over a friend or a homeless person; it was quite another to have power over one of the most powerful men in the city.

"Get on your knees," she told him.

He did as he was told.

She pulled out another little homeless person that she had recently caught - caught with a bit more care to keep her activities hidden.

"You wanted to know what I do with them?"

Howard Steele would have answered, if he had not been transfixed. Seeing her handiwork on a security camera was one thing. Now he saw her holding the little man, while he knelt before her; subject to her in several different ways, he knew it was quite another. It was also the case that he still didn't know how she did it, or what her plans with him were. She could take the smart route and use him for his power, but maybe - just maybe - she would also shrink him down and have her way with him. The possibility of the latter both terrified and enthralled him.

Slowly, he nodded an affirmative.

"I do anything I want with them, really," she said, toying with the little man in her hand.

She was sitting down in a chair, facing Howard, who was kneeling on the ground.

"One thing I really like, is to have them down at my feet."

As she said this she placed the man on the ground as she gently kicked off her house slipper and placed her bare foot on the man so that he was trapped.

"Go ahead and have a close look," she suggested.

Howard didn't need to be told twice. He bent forward, his face coming very close to her foot. The little man struggled. Howard wasn't sure what captivated him more; seeing the little man or kneeling down at her foot.

She kicked off her other slipper and set that foot on his shoulder. She now had both men, large and small, under her foot and in her power.

"Go ahead and take him," she said, releasing the pinning pressure on the little man. Howard gently took hold of the little man. It was not unlike holding a mouse, except the little man was smaller and not really warm or fuzzy.

"Hand him up to me," she then commanded.

Howard did as he was told from his crouching position under her bare foot.

"You want to know what I do with them?"

He nodded.

"This."

With a slow motion, she held the little man over her head. She opened her mouth and dropped the man into it. Closing her eyes, seemingly forgetting about the larger man at her feet, she savoured the little man in her mouth for a few moments before she swallowed and sent the homeless man into her stomach the way countless had gone before him.

Howard stared, enthralled by the scene. The lovely young woman who had such power over him had completely ingested the little man...the way his dark fantasies had hoped she would. As soon as he regained immediate control over himself he buried his face in her foot, kissing it with complete abandon.

Karen smiled down on this. Soon her days as a midnight huntress of the homeless would be over, and she would be able to go after larger prey.

Some months later, Karen sat in a comfortable reclining chair in her new house, feeling very satisfied with herself. Not only had she moved up in the world with regard to her residence (a large 5 bedroom family-size house, rather than a studio apartment), as well as having one of the city's most powerful administrators as her personal slave, she was also sending more people to her stomach on a more regular basis. Life could not be better for her, at least, not yet.

One of the people who had nourished her hunger had been Howard Steele's wife. Her removal had been necessary, and it had been deftly engineered. Margaret Steele had, so it appeared to the press, simply flown off on vacation to Thailand and simply disappeared off the face of the earth. Most speculation figured a kidnapping gone awry, given that there never was a ransom demand. Karen had also enjoyed a vacation, and in addition to Mrs. Steele, she had come to really enjoy (human) Thai food.

Steele's management of the media had also been deft. As a bureaucrat, he knew like no other how to present a grey and dull image that sent 'inquiring minds' (ie. the press) toward more flashy stories. With another hot affair in the celebrity world, the press had soon diverted themselves elsewhere. Federal and state investigative authorities also had nothing to go on, and the Thai police found no trace of Mrs. Steele after she had left the security cameras of the airport behind.

Howard Steele had given Karen a place to live in a rental property he owned. It was spacious, with a lot of outside light but no nosy neighbors for her to worry about. She had also been given information on the daily movement patterns of homeless people as well as that of security coverage. This allowed her to 'hunt' more stealthily. Meanwhile, the city was very pleased with City Council's management of the homeless problem, and the City Council had no problems or second thoughts of taking credit for something that they had not had any hand in. Karen had also supplemented her diet with some do-gooders who had thought to investigate the disappearances of the city's bums.

Karen's change in diet had also caused her trousers to get tighter. She was gaining weight. But in addition to the tightness of her trousers around the waist, she also noticed that they were getting shorter. Yet, she was happy with herself, and did not pay this much mind.

Despite her satisfaction, however, she was not sated. Gobbling up homeless people and unfortunate impediments was one thing, but she wanted more power still. Eating people and having two slaves was not enough. She wanted more, but had not been sure exactly what until she had done some research. Howard Steele, being a long-time enthusiast for "GTS" and "vore" fantasies, had shown her some websites where people wrote stories, posted photoshopped pictures, or engaged in online roleplaying about shrinking, growing and being eaten. It was all very fascinating to Karen.

What struck her as the most surprising was that the clear majority of people participating on those websites were men and boys who fantasized about themselves as being the ones shrunken down and eaten. This made no sense to her. She understood the lust for power that she felt; that was rational. What these guys wanted was anything but rational.

Yet, while it made little sense to her, she did not let it bother her too much. She was quite happy that there were millions of, predominantly, men in the world who had an instinct for just the sort of thing she had in mind for them. Her problem was how to make use of it.

With Howard kept busy with cover-ups and other things, she delegated the research task to Mike. Mike spent his time hopping across the keyboard of a laptop, figuring out the best way to make use of the online presence of the GTS community. A prominent puzzle was that so many participants guarded their identities, for obvious reasons. Also, given the fantastic nature of the subject matter, the members of the community would be hard to convince that what Mike and Karen had was real and that they too could be a part of Karen's dominion. Mike also had to make sure that his own activities had to not come to the attention of any authorities looking for illegal online behavior.

He had, however, made some headway by participating in online forums where GTS and vore were topics of discussion. He had made contact, and allowed contact to be made with him, by way of personal messages (PMs) through the forums. Through various ways, he had come into contact with some GTS and vore enthusiasts and exchanged enough information with them so as to engineer some personal meetings.

This evening, they had arranged to meet two GTS/vore enthusiasts at a local diner. They had only given their usernames, 'minislave' and 'LadyFood', so as to protect their identities. One of them was, it had turned out, local, while the other had taken a two-day road trip to get there. Apparently, the stories that Mike had written, inspired by his relationship with Karen, had been good enough to really break the ice with these guys: so much so that they had decided to see if what Mike was saying was for real.

The two guys were already sitting next to each other at the diner, as instructed. They had all exchanged information about what they would be wearing, so that they would recognize one another. They were meeting at ten o'clock in the evening. Karen saw them and approached.

"Hi, I'm Karen," she said.

Mike had used her real name, but not her last name. 'Karen' was such a popular name that it really gave little away about her identity. She nodded with her head for one of them to move over to the other seat, so that they would both be facing her when she sat down. The one, 'minislave' as it would turn out, obeyed.

Karen sat across from them and looked them in the eyes, asserting her dominance with body language. She stood up the menus to create a space on the table that only those sitting at it could see. She then pulled Mike out of her purse and set him down on the table between the menus.

"Hi guys," Mike said, "I'm 'Scrumptious', though, as you can see, I've not been eaten yet."

LadyFood and minislave looked at him, their jaws slack. They had both been told that this was what they would see, but it they both had kept doubts about its reality. LadyFood squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again to make sure what he was seeing was for real, and not the result of fatigue from his long drive. 'Scrumptious' was still there, standing on the table in front of him.

The waitress came, and Karen snatched Mike up quickly, dumping him back into her purse. They ordered coffee and a bite to eat.

"Wow, so it's for real," minislave said, once the waitress had left.

"Yes, it is," Karen said. "So, will you come back home with me after we eat to hold up your side of the bargain?"

Both of them nodded.

Back at the house, they walked into her living room. She sat down in her comfy-chair, which also made a good throne.

"Take off your clothes," she commanded.

Both of them did as they were told. The bargain had been that if she proved to be for real, they would both agree to become her slaves, and that one of them would be shrunken down. The other, Karen had decided, would continue to serve her as a full-grown human, though he too would be shrunk within a year. She also reserved the right to eat either of them, whenever she decided that she wanted to.

The only restriction she had agreed to is that she would swallow them whole rather than chew them up. That was fine by her, because there was nothing that she liked better than the feeling of a living person struggling inside of her stomach. She had chewed up one guy, but the experience had been nowhere near as satisfying, and she had not done it again.

When they had disrobed, it was clear that they were both extremely turned on by their situation, even if neither of them was two inches tall yet.

"Take off my shoes and socks, and kiss my feet."

They both did so and within moments they were kissing and licking her toes, soles and heels with abandon. Mike sat on her belly as she was reclined a little backward. He saw her close her eyes and savor the feeling of these guys worshiping her.

She allowed them to continue for a bit, before opening her eyes and looking at Mike. She nodded toward minislave. Mike descended her comfy throne, and walked around toward minislave. He bit the latter on the hand, and minislave slowly shrank down. He continued to kiss Karen's foot with absolute and passionate abandon as his most deeply held desire was coming true for him.

"Okay, stop," she commanded.

They both stopped kissing her feet. They opened their eyes, and LadyFood for the first time saw that he had been chosen to be the one to remain large.

*Damn* he thought to himself.

Karen walked to the cupboard and pulled out a heavy mug. Holding it with one hand, she walked back to the comfy throne, sitting down.

She pulled a little man out of the mug.

"This is Mac," she said, "I found him dumpster-diving behind a strip mall. He's been homeless for six years now."

"I like to know the people I am dealing with. Knowing that they are human beings with complete identities - real people , who think, feel and exist - makes this SOoo much more satisfying..."

As she said that, she popped Mac into her mouth and swallowed.

Seeing her swallow up another human being made minislave almost faint, and LadyFood spontaneously blew his load. Both of them threw themselves completely at her feet again, kissing, licking and sucking, like neither of them had ever done before. Their lives' desires had come true.

Feeling Mac in her tummy, and these two new guys at her feet, made Karen come as well. Mike would tell the more skeptical members of the forums about this, and she would instruct minislave and LadyFood to do so as well. Once more people were convinced, she knew her budding Empire would grow even more. These people would have skills that she could put to use for her growing power. Those that did not, would be swallowed up.

Karen remained a happy and contented woman. Her mastery of more willing slaves, such as minislave and LadyFood, in addition to Mike Hardt and Howard Steele had blossomed into a larger group still. In the last three months, she had added four more slaves. Their names and backgrounds really were not all that important for her. Ironically, she preferred to know everything about the people she ate, but little about the people she owned. She loved that irony. It pleased her love of herself.

One of these new slaves had been a local guy who had worked as a security guard at a sheet-metal shop on the outskirts of the city. The plant was located near a large road, which it used for the delivery of rolls of steel and out-shipments of formed product. Other than the road, however, there was little in the area, other than some other industrial manufacturing plants. Most of these were no longer operating, due to the economy. This facility, therefore, was secluded - far away from the eyes and ears of anyone who might see or hear what happened there. It was perfect for Karen's purposes.

Her slave, the former security guard - who went by the online name of "Tasty" - had wanted revenge on his former employers. He had been fired after he had suffered an accident at work. They knew that they had better lawyers than he did, and so had denied him Workman's Compensation. He had been broke by the time he decided, "what the hell", and had submitted himself to Karen.

As far as his creditors were concerned, he had dropped off the face of the planet. But that didn't mean that he wouldn't let his employers get away with what they had done to him. He knew the ins and outs of the company's security system. Together with Karen's other large slaves - those who had not (yet) been shrunken down - he had planned out how to capture the facility and all who were inside.

Karen strode into the shop floor.

Her slaves had locked all of the building's doors, and set off a gas bomb into the ventilation system. The gas was a special concoction, that had been engineered by another of her servants (she also had forgotten his name). This one had been a chemical engineer. He had taken Mike Hardt's saliva, studied it, and created a highly concentrated gaseous form of it. This gas bomb they had set off in the ventilation system, blew the shrinking gas all over the facility's interior. All of the external vents had been shut, so that none of it would escape the building.

Now, Karen was in the building, and all she had to do was hunt down all the little people who had been working there. This was fun for her. She got to play the cat, and all the little people were the mice. Tasty had let her know who all would be at the facility. She also knew their numbers.

Mercilessly, she hunted all the workers and supervisors down. One by one, she caught them, looked them in the eye, and popped them into her mouth. In each case, she would hold them in her mouth for just a moment, smile, and swallow. After about thirty of these, she grew a little disappointed, because she started to get full. She didn't want to be full; she wanted to be insatiable. There were supposed to be 129 people at the facility. She wanted each and every one of those people in her stomach that very afternoon.

It had stopped being about the weeding out of inferior humans a long time ago. Sure, she had wiped out all the city's homeless (those that hadn't nourished her, had fled the city). Also, the city's welfare recipients had mysteriously thinned out. But she really didn't care any more. It wasn't like she was paying taxes to support these 'freeloaders' anymore anyway. No, now it was simply about having more and more human beings in her stomach. Humanity 'en masse' was inferior to her. She was a higher being than they were. She deserved to eat the lesser humans, because she could.

She stuffed herself swallowing down the company's employees, as well as the plant owner when she had caught him. Howard Steele would not be happy about that. The owner of the plant was someone who made donations to the members of City Council that he had had differences with. Steele wanted to have been there when she slowly swallowed the man. But, really, Karen could not be bothered by that. Steele was lucky enough to be allowed to lick between her toes. He would have been her food a long time ago, were he not so useful. Besides, she had been nice to him already this month. She had done him a favor when he had asked her to let him watch as she had gobbled up his son.

*Sick fuck!* she had thought, *He had totally gotten off on that.*

It didn't matter, however. Steele was useful, and when his meat became more useful than his service, he would follow his son, and his wife, down her gullet.

In the meantime, her gullet had absorbed fifty-three souls, and she was quite stuffed. She continued catching the men until she had the lot of them. The ones she was not able to gobble up (she did manage another seven before she left the facility) she put into a container for a later time (such as dinner). Yes, she was a happy and contented woman.

* * *

After the sheet-metal hunt, she and her slaves went back to her home. She left the remaining men (now only sixty-four, as five other men had not escaped her mouth during the ride home) in the care of Ladyfood. Ladyfood knew what to do with them, so that she could have them for dinner and the following day's breakfast. She told Tasty to come with her to her private bedroom. It was time for his reward.

In the bedroom, she told him to strip his clothes. He did this eagerly. He knew what she had promised him, and he was bursting at the seams to get what he wanted. After he had stripped, she told him to remove her clothing as well.

He did so delicately, with all the reverence that his station as her absolute slave required of him. While removing her clothes, he kissed her knees, her thighs, her toes and heels. He also took his time kissing her belly - which was exhibiting quite the 'food baby'. This she really enjoyed. This slave knew his place. She was round with swallowed people, and this slave was passionately kissing the belly which held all those people - all his former co-workers and bosses.

"Stop," she instructed.

He stopped. She walked over to her scale and stood on it.

"Measure me," she told him.

He jotted down her weight and took her height as well. The latter was not easy. She was now easily seven feet tall, and he was somewhere around 5'9". Her weight measured at 241 pounds - which was healthy for her height. He jotted the measurements down on a piece of paper with other recent measurings. It was undeniable, she was growing quite speedily. She used to be quite a bit shorter than Tasty was, though by the time she had enslaved Tasty, she had already been taller than him.

None of her slaves could tell her why it was that she was getting taller. What was certain was that the eating of miniaturized people was what made her grow. What they were at a loss to explain, however, was why the eating of miniaturized men made her gain height and weight. One theory was that the constitution of the shrunken men and women directly added to her constitution when she ate them - that their proteins were a special form of amino acid, which were premium biosynthesis proteins.

Yet, what puzzled her people was why she was not short on energy if all those proteins were used as building blocks for her body, rather than converted into glucose. While she knew that the knowledge of what was going on could help her do what she wanted to do, she was, nevertheless, quite pleased that her body growth allowed her to eat more people before feeling stuffed. Sixty-five of that afternoon was her record at this point. She would try to have all the rest for dinner.

"Tasty," she said.

"MiLady?" he answered.

"You've done well. You've given me more people to eat than I've ever eaten in a day. I'm quite grateful to you, and you will get the reward I promised you."

"Thank you, MiLady!"Tasty exclaimed, throwing himself at her feet, kissing them with gratitude.

As he prostrated himself at her feet, she sprayed him with a diluted amount of the shrinking mixture. He shrank down, shrinking to three inches. At that height, he was bigger than the standard shrinkee, but that was the plan.

As she picked him up, she smiled at him and he back at her with absolute awe and reverence.

"I'm so glad that you want this," she said, "the others, today, put up such a fight."

She opened her mouth and held her hand in front of it. He stood there, before the entrance to his promised land. The glistening teeth, gums and tongue looked extremely inviting to him. She was such a majestic creature, and her mouth looked heavenly. Slowly he crawled into her patiently waiting mouth. Both of them savored this. He knew that these were going to be his last moments alive. For her, this was the first shrinkee who would be sliding down her throat wholly voluntarily. Of course, there were several volunteers, but she had not allowed them into her stomach yet.

He lay himself faced-down on her tongue. The softness and wetness of her tongue gave his nether regions the most ultimate sensation that he had ever felt. He gyrated his pelvis into her tongue, and she rolled her tongue gently to counter his movements.

Continuing this, she lay down on her bed, closing her eyes to savor it all the more. Meanwhile, he was enclosed and embraced by her mouth, enveloped in moist and soft darkness. This was it for him. His life would soon be over. He knew that with the destruction of his life prior to subjecting himself to Karen, he really had nothing to lose. By allowing her to destroy what was left of his physical self, he believed that his soul would be forever enveloped by hers, though his would have pride of place over all the schmucks who had preceded him this day. Before his demise, however, he would see those people: the people who had destroyed him. He would see them digesting in her glorious stomach. He would be digesting away as well, but he would be larger than they would be, and they would all perish before him.

With that thought, he reached a climax with his pelvic movements, and ejaculated more sperm than he had ever done before.

She tasted him, smiled wholly satisfied, and swallowed.

*Yes,* she thought, *today was the best day so-far, and I plan to have many more.*

Months later, with many similar activities - soup kitchens and poor old folks homes were frequent targets - Karen had grown to the point (over ten feet), where it was increasingly difficult to get about unnoticed. She had left much of the 'harvesting' to her slaves.

Those slaves, however, were increasingly inspired by her. She also towered over the normal-sized ones. They had also learned to master the shrinking spray, so that they could modulate the size of the targets. As Karen grew, she could swallow larger-sized shrinkees. The size of the shrinkees seemed to positively influence the degree by which Karen grew. The larger the people she swallowed up, the more she grew.

This they used to maximum advantage. Karen WANTED to grow. Karen wanted this, even if it was becoming more and more inconvenient. Fortunately, the more she grew, the more they were able to get the news out covertly over the web, spreading their network of GTS-enthusiasts.

The GTS community, they had discovered, had many brilliant and useful people in it. Howard Steele was far from being the only one with powerful connections, and a position from where to make things happen. Like any population, however, there were also people in the GTS community who were quite useless. To Karen's delight, however, these people could be easily convinced to become her voluntary food.

Swallowing up willing slaves was easier than swallowing up fighting prey. That allowed her to swallow up larger-sized people. While more difficult, the larger people gave her greater pleasure once they were inside her belly. As per her instructions, once they were inside her, they would move around, so as to give her that sensation that she loved - the feeling of another human being inside of her stomach, not only trapped, but actively worshiping her from inside of her body. They had also developed a powerful pain-killer so that the people inside would not suffer as they were digested. This also made it more attractive for members of the GTS community to give themselves to her for the purpose of being devoured.

However, she still had some unfinished business from her previous life...

* * *

A nondescript white van pulled up to the house, and swiftly backed toward the garage. The garage door opened automatically and the van quickly backed into it. As the garage door closed again, men got out of the driver and passenger-side doorways and urgently walked toward the back doors of the van. They opened those doors and reached inside, grabbing hold of the two people who were tied up inside the van's rear compartment.

Unceremoniously, they tossed the two people on the floor and cut the ropes that had bound them, but they left the blindfolds on. Taking each firmly by the arm, they led their captives into the house.

This was a moment that Karen had been waiting for. The two people that she had ordered captured were thrown down on the ground before her bare feet. She signaled to her men that the blindfolds should be removed.

Timothy was the first to blink his eyes at the suddenly returned light. He figured his eyes must still be tricking him, because it looked like there was a very large version of his ex-girlfriend sitting in front of him. Beside him, however, Helena also reacted with shock seeing what she saw.

"What the..." Timothy wondered aloud.

"SILENCE!" one of the captors exclaimed, pushing Timothy so that he tumbled forward onto his face.

His face was now just inches away from Karen's foot - a very large foot. That foot must have been at least a size thirty-five (36" women's) - if such a size even existed. Karen smiled and placed her foot on Timothy's head. She nodded to her goons, and they also dragged Helena forward, forcing her face against Karen's other foot.

"Kiss!" they ordered.

After a moment, Helena did as she was coerced to do. She was wholly bewildered by how she found herself kissing the foot of her ex-friend; the friend who's boyfriend she had stolen about a year ago. What was even more bewildering was how that ex-friend now looked to be about ten feet tall or more, and had thugs to kidnap her and Timothy.

"Now this is a change from a year ago, isn't it?" Karen said. "Back then you were dumping me like yesterday's trash, and now you're slaves at my feet."

"What's going on?" Timothy asked, still muffled because of Karen's foot on his head.

"What's going on is that you're mine now. As you can tell, I'm a little more powerful than the girl you discarded last year."

"Let us go!" Helena demanded.

"Oh no, I'm not doing that," Karen replied. "You really need to suffer for what you did to me."

Karen mused a bit.

"You know, even if you hadn't done what you did, you deserve to be my slaves. Everybody deserves to be my slave! But in this case, there's a poetic justice. I would never have been on the road to total mastery, if it hadn't been for you."

Helena looked confused. Timothy would have looked confused too, but his face was being slightly mashed.

"Oh, yes," Karen said, "because you dumped him, Mike had no choice but to call me when he got into trouble. A very strange trouble."

Karen reached into her lap and picked Mike up to show him to Helena.

"Here's your little ex-boyfriend. This is how I found him on the side of the road in his car one day. Don't ask me how he got to be this way, but he suffers from a strange disease that made him small, and he is very infectious to everyone but me. My scientists have isolated the strain that does it, but we still have no idea where it came from."

Karen reached forward to hand Mike over to Helena who, not thinking about what Karen had just said, took Mike into her hands. She looked at her little ex-boyfriend with wonder. Mike looked back at her. He had truly loved Helena with all his heart. She now loomed over him, gazing at him with her doe-brown eyes which used to captivate him. He noticed that they captivated him still.

Karen grabbed him back from Helena, however. She then nodded at her guards. One of them stepped forward and stuck Timothy with a syringe. He swiftly began to shrink down to Mike's size. The guard picked him up as he was still shrinking and handed him over to Karen. Helena looked on in shock.

Karen held him in the palm of her hand.

"So, Timmy, you're mine again," she said.

"Please Karen," Timothy sobbed, "let us go!"

Helena, still kneeling before Karen, also pleaded for Timothy.

Karen's evil smile became even more satisfied.

"Oh Timmy, you've got to know that we're beyond that now. Having you back, helpless in the palm of my hand, gives me great satisfaction. I need you to know that you made a BIG mistake dumping me."

"I'm sorry!" Timothy exclaimed desperately.

"But you know," Karen continued, "I've found that I've really gotten over you. First there was little Mikey, who has REALLY pleasured me in ways that you never could have before. He has been completely inside of me and has brought me to heights that you never did."

Mike blushed.

"The only thing that still bothers me is that you had the gall to disrespect me in the way that you did."

"I'm sorry!" Timothy exclaimed again, even more desperately.

"Yes, I know that you're sorry, now, and that is good. I'm also not going to make you suffer for very long."

She now lifted him up from her hand.

"Please let me go, Karen!" Timothy pleaded.

"Oh yes," Karen said, grinning.

Timothy looked at her grin. She brought him closer to it - closer to it, and hanging above it.

"I'll let you go."

Her grin opened up. He could now look past her teeth, down into her mouth. Her tongue glistened, just below the darkness of her gullet.

She let go.

"NO!!" Helena exclaimed as she saw her boyfriend disappear into Karen's mouth.

Karen looked at her, with a look of deep evil satisfaction on her face. Helena then saw Karen's throat slowly and subtly convulse in a swallow. Karen closed her eyes and really enjoyed the feeling of her former boyfriend sliding down her throat and into the stomach that would envelop him in a final embrace.

Karen had allowed Helena to look at her throat as she had swallowed down Helena's boyfriend. She now stood up, and at ten feet tall, towered over the kneeling Helena.

"I'm going to be generous, you little wench," Karen said. "You don't deserve this, because of what you did to me. You deserve just to be stomped on right now."

"I'm going to allow you to choose between two options. This first is to follow Timmy down my throat and into my stomach. Think about it; you'll be able to spend your last moments with the guy you loved so much that you betrayed me, and you'll be allowed to contribute to the best cause in the world - me."

Helena looked up at Karen, the girl who used to be her best friend. As horrific as it was, there was something strangely attractive about this; about Karen having swallowed Timothy up into her stomach - a very attractive stomach that now hovered over Helena, and was welcoming her to partake in its feeding. But as attractive as it was - even to Helena, who had never thought of herself as someone who fancied the same sex - death by digestion did not sound very appealing.

"The second is for you to become my foot-maiden."

"Now, believe me, I want as many people as possible inside my stomach. Consuming people has made me this large, and I really love swallowing people up, just like I just did Timmy. I've lost count of how many people I've eaten so far, but there's really nothing like having another human being squirming inside your belly."

Karen leaned forward so that her face approached Helena's. Helena couldn't help but look at Karen's mouth.

"And you would feel just as nice in there as Timmy feels inside me right now. He's squirming, you know. I can feel it."

Helena looked at Karen's belly, imagining Timothy inside of her.

"But I'll allow you to beg for your life," Karen said. "Kiss my feet and swear to be my slave."

Helena was in tears. Her boyfriend had just been extinguished, and she was faced by a dire choice of slavery or death. Nevertheless, there was something disturbingly compelling about her situation. It was something she felt in her own gut, somehow between a stone and butterflies.

With tears on her face, she bent forward and placed her forehead on Karen's foot. The tears dripped onto the foot.

Karen smiled. This was what she wanted.

Slowly, Helena pressed her lips against Karen's foot. She admitted her subjection. Karen was all powerful over her.

The giantess sat back down. Helena stopped for a moment.

"Keep going," Karen commanded.

Helena kissed Karen's foot again. In their former lives, Helena had been a little taller and older than Karen. While Helena was in no way a domineering woman, these differences had had their subtle affects on their relationship. Now that Karen was so much taller, and able to coerce Helena, things were obviously very different.

But, again, Helena felt her predicament as somewhat compelling. There, she was, submitting at Karen's large foot. The width of Karen's foot was about the width of Helena's face. Helena continued to kiss Karen's foot, moving down to the crux of Karen's toes. Completely defeated, Helena gave herself to this task.

Still smiling, Karen lifted her foot slightly, and, as she had hoped, Helena took some of Karen's toes into her mouth. Her voluntary male slaves did this quite frequently, and the physical feeling of it was nothing new to Karen. Yet, having Helena do this gave Karen much more satisfaction, somehow. Helena was a beautiful woman, and had taken Timothy away from Karen. Now, Helena was smaller than her, defeated by her, and, with tears streaming onto Karen's foot, had Karen's toes in her mouth. This was even a greater victory than having Timothy struggling inside her belly. Having both happen at once, however, brought Karen to a climax of ecstasy.

Karen was curious about human behavior. By now, however, she no longer really considered herself human. Humans were the creatures who kissed her feet and fed her belly. Humans were her slaves and her food supply.

But she was curious nonetheless. There was nothing rational about how all these people who had come flocking to her. Mike, sure, he had little choice. Howard Steele, however, had given up power and privilege to be her slave and, someday, her food. The same was true of 'Tasty', 'Ladyfood', 'minislave', and all the others. But, then again, was it really all that irrational? Many of these people had fairly puny lives, and her feet, her mouth, and her stomach were very beautiful. How many humans would really have the chance to serve a Goddess like her? So, perhaps, she was really doing all of them a favor.

But here was something new, or at least something of much bigger scale than what 'Tasty' had suggested. At her feet sat a young anthropologist who had spent time among the people of the Pacific islands. He told her an island in the South Pacific, where some, but not much, modern culture had established itself. Some of what had, had even taken on a religious character with the superstitious native population.

"Tanna Island, my Goddess, is a paradise that is ready to worship you," Richard said.

"The people there are very traditional," by which he meant primitive, "and they are unused to modern life, modern things and modern people. They have what are called 'cargo' cults, which are types of religious practice that have appeared in many traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures."

"I think that if you were to go there, they would worship you wholesale and devote their entire societies to you."

"How many people are we talking about?" she asked, intrigued.

"There are about twenty thousand souls on Tanna Island proper," Richard answered, "but there are many nearby islands which have populations as well. All of Vanuatu, the island chain of which Tanna is a part, has a quarter million people."

* * *

A half dozen men of the island sat on the beach, at night, around a bonfire. They passed a rolled cigarette between them. Tobacco was one of the luxuries that the white man from across the sea had brought them, and they enjoyed it mightily.

One of the men looked out at the blackness of the unlit sea that stretched out before them. He thought he had heard something out of the ordinary among the waves. It was then, also, that he spotted something strange reflecting the bonfire's light. He nudged his cousin next to him. The cousin had just taken a drag off the cigarette and handed it to the man seated on the other side of him. He peered out toward where his cousin had pointed.

He then saw a strange sight.

It was a woman walking out of the sea - a woman with the skin of the white people - a woman with the skin of the white people who was also very tall!

All the men now looked in awe at the young woman who now strode out of the black waves of the night-time sea. She was the size of two Tanna men, if one stood on the shoulders of another, and she looked down on them with a very satisfied - and very disturbing - smile.

She stood before them, wearing a swimsuit - the sort that the tourists liked to wear. It was a two-piece, made of blue fabric. The way that the bathing suit exposed it, and the way that she stood, accentuated the young white woman's belly. The men were strangely mesmerized by it. Some stood, others remained seated.

The senior-most of the men - the son of the tribe's chief - strode forward, to give the large insolent woman a defiant greeting; to tell her she had trespassed on his tribe's part of the island.

She strode forward. Her long legs allowed her to move with alacritous speed, so that she was upon him in moments. Her advance startled the chief-son, who fell backward. Smirking confidently, she caught him in mid-fall. As she held him, he began to shrink.

The other tribesmen looked on in startled shock at this display of magical power.

The chief-son was now two inches tall. She showed him to his kinsmen, to demonstrate his size to them. Her next demonstration was to put him into her mouth and swallow him down.

The shock of the tribesmen now turned to terror. Some fled for the forest behind them; others huddled on their knees, begging the Goddess for mercy. The Goddess walked up to one of the huddling men, and placed her foot gently on his back.

"Kiss," she commanded in the Tanna language.

The three men who had not fled piled onto her foot to worship Karen with foot-kisses. This was what Karen had become used to, with her own slaves. Yet, it was always preferable to have it happen anew, with new people to submit to her, rather than those whom she had already made her property.

Conversely, she preferred it when she consumed those whom had been her longer-serving slaves, to those who had more recently fallen into her hands. Howard Steele, for instance, had been her first voluntary slave (Mike Hardt having essentially been forced into it by his predicament). Steele had served her very capably and loyally. From him she had come into opportunity, power and money. She had known him, profited by him, spoken with him, and he had surrendered his family to her. When she had decided to quit her home city, and his usefulness had become more limited, she had thought it good to give him what he desperately desired: a place inside her stomach. Having Steele inside her stomach, after his long dutiful service to her, had felt even better than when she had swallowed up Timothy, her ex.

Loyal slaves were, however, still a valuable commodity. She would now make a project of enslaving this entire island, consuming its people only occasionally.

Was that impudent fellow that she had just swallowed now putting up a fight inside her stomach? Oh, she LOVED it when they did that!

Steve was thrown unceremoniously onto his side. His shoulder ached. He could feel the rough dirt ground, hear the voices of the men, whose language he could not comprehend, and he smelled the odor of feet.

Steve Putnam was a journalist who had come to Tanna Island following reports of missing tourists to the island. The tourists had gone missing; as had people from nearby islands. The difference had been that no natives seemed to go missing on Tanna Island itself, while on the other islands of the archipelago, the missing people were mostly natives, rather than tourists. The local police were not doing anything about it, so Steve decided that he should have a look himself.

He had left word with his newspaper that he was going to the island, and if he did not check back every 24 hours they should start to get worried. By his reckoning, 24 hours had probably already passed since his last check-in.

He opened his eyes and indeed saw the feet. To his surprise, they were white-skinned female feet. There was also something odd with his vision because the feet had to be very close to him, given that they dominated his field of vision, but his depth-perception, which was coming into focus told him that they were not.

Then, to his greater surprise, he saw another pair of legs with the complexion of the Tanna people, but they were between him and the female feet, but they were much smaller than the feet's legs should have been. He was clearly delirious or intoxicated. He closed his eyes in an attempt to re-boot his senses.

"You're not dreaming," a booming female voice high above him said.

He looked up, and to his fright he saw a huge woman looming over him - the huge woman to whom the feet clearly belonged.

She looked at him as he collected his wits. As he collected them, Steve looked around himself and saw that he was surrounded by Tanna tribespeople - tribespeople his own size - who were looking at him. They were arranged in a circle around him and to either side of the giantess' feet.

"Let me guess," she boomed again, "you came here investigating reports of missing tourists."

He nodded, his mouth too dry and his mind too shocked to speak.

"Well, you've found them," she informed him. "At least, you've discovered where they went. Some of them are still here, in fact."

"Lydia, please step forward."

A white woman stepped forward from between the tribespeople. Through she was dressed in a similar fashion as the tribal women, he recognized her face from the profile of one of the missing tourists. Lydia James. She and her husband had come to the island a month ago and had not been heard from by their relatives.

"Wh'.. where are the others?" Steve finally managed.

"They are within me," the Giantess replied.

He regarded her, not yet comprehending.

"I ate them," she clarified.

"But...?" he croaked, not able to say much more than that.

The giantess looked at Mrs. James and nodded to her, as if instructing the woman to do something. In response, the woman briskly stepped forward and threw herself at the giantess' feet, kissing them passionately. The giantess made the same gesture toward the tribespeople, who also followed suit. Not two seconds later, a mass of people crowded around the giantess' bare feet, struggling with one another for a prime spot at which to worship her.

"They were sacrifices to me," the Giantess explained. "Many of them voluntarily became my food."

"Yes," she replied to his unspoken question, "voluntarily."

"Watch," she commanded.

She then looked down at the throng at her feet and said something in the Tanna language. Many of the people there, including Mrs. James, reached up for the Giantess, seemingly yearning for her to notice them from among the others. She seemed to choose one - a tribesman - and pick him up. The worshipers immediately returned to their worship.

She lifted her chosen worshiper up in front of her face, letting him sit in the palm of her hand. There, he kneeled and genuflected. She then opened her mouth wide and the Tanna man crawled into her mouth. Her mouth closed behind him.

She smiled at Steve, and then leaned her head back and swallowed.

"Now be good, Leipaki," Nassaiu told her child in her language, "or else the Goddess - Ka-rèn - will not swallow you up when you are big."

Leipaki looked at her mother with a mixture of awe and fear.

"Yes," the mother continued, "you will die all alone without Her stomach's embrace. You won't know Her mercy like the foolish chief in the story I told you last night."

"But if you're really good, maybe She'll swallow you up when you're still little. Then you won't have to wait a long and difficult life to be inside Her."

* * *

In all likelihood, Leipaki would not have too long to wait. She was one of the unregistered children. Since Karen's arrival on the island, the real demographics of the island state had shifted dramatically, even if the official statistics belied it. What appeared in the official statistics looked pretty good to statisticians. To them, the declining birth rate meant that Vanuatu was developing, as countries that became more developed also saw declines in fertility. This left the foreign statisticians happy and none the wiser.

Children were Karen's favorite. Her minions had discovered that her rate of physical growth increased, the less her food was pre-shrunk. By now, she was large enough to swallow infants and willing toddlers. There was also something satisfying of absorbing a person who would still have so much potential in a full life, but to have that potential be destined for her stomach.

'Ka-rèn' had truly become a Goddess, and she was still waxing in power and stature. soon, the toddlers would no longer have to be willing, and eventually she would be able to swallow up fully-grown adults. Mike Hardt's peculiar attribute would then be obsolete, because people would no longer need to shrink down to meet their destiny within her. She could (finally) reward him for all his hard work and loyalty by also giving him a place inside her stomach.

It would not be long now before she could grow beyond Tanna Island and its archipelago. It was not that she did not enjoy the tropical Pacific island. She loved it, and she loved how its people loved her - worshiped her. Yet, what she wanted was a greater empire - an overt, rather than a covert empire. Eventually, she wanted her empire to swallow up the entire world!

For the time being, her realm was Vanuatu and the kinky corners of the internet. The religion devoted to her captured the devotion of the islanders and those who seemed to have a hidden desire for submission. The island nation's authorities had either been co-opted or swallowed. They had engineered that 'what happened on Vanuatu' 'remained in Vanuatu'. People could go there without being tracked, and therefore they could disappear without being traced to her. It was almost common knowledge on the web, but the Western authorities treated it like a fictitious fad. Hundreds of tourists - she thought of them as pilgrims - would come to the island and show her their devotion. Many decided to never leave, but become hers in their entirety. Some had that decision made on their behalf. Many returned home to be her evangelists.

Those evangelists spread the word of the island Goddess, which brought more tourists. Initially, those tourists had primarily come from wealthy Western countries, where internet traffic was relatively unregulated. As word began to spread, so did the origins of her worshippers. There were many from Indonesia, which was relatively close, as well as from Japan, which had always had a special relationship with kinky things on the internet. (She had even been featured in a hentai manga.)

The great growing population of worshippers, however, came from India. Part of that was purely a function of size. A certain small percentage of any population would be interested in anything, but when that percentage was multiplied by over a billion people, that percentage represented millions, and some of them had the financial wherewithal to make a one-way journey to Vanuatu and into Karen's stomach. Her evangelists in India, however, attempted to dissuade people from taking out loans to pay for their trip. While paying back those loans would not be a problem for those who had found their end in the gullet of their Goddess, she didn't want to have too many creditors hunting their debtors all the way to Tanna Island and making problems.

There were, however, very few Chinese worshippers. Maybe that had to do with Chinese culture, or maybe it was because the internet was controlled by the government. That government frowned on anything too religious or strangely foreign.

So, it came as a surprise to Karen's following when a plane arrived on Tanna Island that was not only from China, but that it was a government aircraft to boot. The aircraft of foreign governments did not come to Tanna Island. Official government business was conducted in the capital, Port Vila, on the island of Efate. Efate was some hundred miles from Tanna's shore. Yet, this Chinese government airplane had arrived unannounced and unexpected.

It was in the evening that the plane landed, and a party of men disembarked on the airstrip. Junior members of the delegation inquired with select locals, and received silent negatives in return. The islanders were smartly distrustful of these official outsiders. The senior members of the delegation grew impatient with their subordinates' lack of progress, but were similarly rebuffed.

Eventually, they wound up in the lounge of a tourist resort, which had drinks and also served snack foods. They didn't care for the island food that much, but appreciated the adult beverages. They sat in two groups, divided by seniority, talking among themselves; the seniors being louder and more indignant than the subordinates.

A western man walked in and ordered a drink, before appraising the two groups. Eventually, he approached the junior officials, speaking heavily-accented but fairly-competent Mandarin:

"I hear you've been asking around about the 'believers'," he said.

The junior officials were hesitant to reply, but their superiors were not paying attention.

"We are looking for someone," one of the juniors said, guardedly.

"Looking!? Found someone you have!" the man said in English, barely keeping himself from adopting the iconic character's voice.

The Chinese officials did not get the reference.

"Steve Smalls, formerly of the New York Times," he said in Mandarin again, introducing himself. "I used to be at the Beijing bureau."

The officials nodded.

"Like I said, I hear you've been asking around, and I might be able to be of help."

They didn't trust this intervention, but at the same time the superiors looked to be getting deeper into their cups, and probably did not want to be disturbed. Besides, this was an opportunity to produce results.

"What kind of help?" the most entrepreneurial of the officials inquired.

"Well, I know what - and who - you're looking for, but parties want to know why you're looking."

As a journalist, he wanted to get to the point quickly. On the side of his interlocutors, however, the matter had quickly shot up over their pay grade. The matter was sensitive; a senior should be in charge of it, and here was this unexpected Western journalist. The juniors seemed largely befuddled, but it remained the case that the seniors were in no position to negotiate or make decisions.

"You should come back tomorrow, and talk to the Deputy Secretary," one of them said.

"Deputy secretary?" Steve asked. "Deputy secretary of what?"

"Deputy Secretary!" the official replied, putting greater emphasis on the words.

Steve thought for a moment, when it dawned on him. The man was the Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, one of the most important councils in the Communist Party of China. He looked at the group of seniors and then recognized the person who was the Deputy Secretary.

"Holy crap!" Steve said to himself, in English.

"Yes!" the entrepreneurial junior chimed in, also in English.

* * *

After some initial overcoming of wariness and protocol, the following morning Steven Smalls met with the Deputy Secretary. The latter had insisted that Steven negotiate in English, so that the translation would be done by one of the junior officials. Steven had been around long enough to know what that was about and did not fight it, regardless of his own capacity for speaking and understanding Mandarin. It had also taken some doing to convince the Deputy Secretary that Steven could speak on behalf of the 'Island Goddess'.

It appeared that the Chinese authorities were fully aware of what had been happening on the island; its missing tourists and the online fetish empire that had emerged. Initially, Steven thought that this might mean trouble for Karen, but it seemed like the Chinese, or, at least the Deputy Secretary had something very different in mind.

Over the past several months, Steven had also come to take a position with Karen's 'regime' on the island. As a Times journalist, who had had several worldwide postings, he knew a thing or two about international politics, which is why he had been sent to deal with the Chinese. Like so many had done, Steven had also fallen in worship of Karen.

It was a strange thing - maybe almost as strange as the premise that an otherwise regular girl would have this gift of growing from the consumption of shrunken people, and have come into this position on an out-of-the-way Pacific island. The strange thing was that when confronted with Karen, her size, and her voraciousness, most people did not recoil. One would have thought that she would be seen as a monster, just like so many people-eating giants in old fairy tales. But instead, she had the effect of inspiring awe, and, indeed even worshipful devotion. It was not just islanders, who may have been culturally peculiar, but she had this effect on tens or hundreds of thousands of people on the internet.

Apparently, she also had this effect on high-level Chinese functionaries. The Deputy Secretary had a scheme in mind. He had convinced a number of fellow collaborators within the Communist Party that the 'Island Goddess' could solve a burgeoning problem in China - namely a growing unbalanced overpopulation of elderly people.

* * *

"They want what??" Karen demanded, incredulously.

"They seem completely serious, mistress," Steven told her. "If you are willing to come to China, you can have all the elderly people you could possibly devour."

"Elderly are not my favorite, but I do like the idea of a limitless supply of human food," Karen mused.

She had not forgotten about her wish to rule a world empire, one in which any human being might wind up inside of her stomach after a moment's whim. The more people she swallowed up, the closer that dream seemed to be in sight. Also, the People's Republic of China already ruled a fifth of the world's people.

"And what would be my relationship to the Chinese government?" she asked.

"I'm not really sure," Steven replied. "I don't know for sure who all the Deputy Secretary really represents."

"Well, let's find this out," she said, "If he's for real, he shouldn't mind coming here."

Eventually, the Deputy Secretary had been convinced. Steve could tell that the man was a 'fellow traveler' in terms of his own predilections, but he also had an advanced sense of self-preservation. One probably did not become the Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection by taking too many personal risks.

Another element that had been part of the deal that Steve had negotiated with the Deputy was what was about to happen.

The Standing Committee member's eyes went wide as her mouth gaped open before him. He was one of the Deputy's senior associates, and had seemed to be the one least convinced that the whole idea was a good one. Soon one of the more loyal junior associates would be taking his place on the Committee. The man was pleading loudly with anyone who would listen that he would be fiercely loyal from here on out.

His pleas fell on deaf ears as Karen lowered him into her mouth.

For her own enjoyment, as well as that of her audience, she took her time closing her mouth, rolling the half-shrunken man around inside, and finally swallowing him down.

The Deputy Secretary giggled as he watched.

"That was amazing!" he said to Steve, with as much enthusiasm as the latter had seen in any of Karen's worshipers.

"We have a deal!" he added, shaking Steve's hand.

* * *

China is a country where information is strictly controlled, but where the government is still hard-pressed to curtail the power of gossip. The People's Republic, however, knew that they would need to keep this deal under wraps. As a result, the Deputy Secretary and Karen had come to the decision to relocate her to a place that was unlike Tanna island with the one exception of its remoteness.

The Katok Monastery fit the bill of what they were looking for. It was located on the borders of Tibet, where the prying eyes of the press and gossipers could be held at bay. It was a Buddhist establishment which had been taken over by the communist Chinese regime. After the initial repressions, it had been slowly permitted to once again practice the old ways, but with a new face. Monks returned there to once again take up their ceremonies and scholarship.

That was until Karen and the Deputy had other ideas for them.

* * *

She emerged from the specially-made shipping container, which was about eight times the volume of a standard-size container. It had allowed her to come to China and travel secretly from the port of Beihai by rail into Sichuan province to Chengdu and then by road up to the monastery. It was a welcome change. She was a little irritated by the lack of comfort, but more than that, the indignity. Now, however, she stood in the open, and breathed in the mountain air. That mountain air buffeted her as she adjusted her eyes to the bright light.

She saw that she stood in a mountain valley. Before her feet, hundreds of monks knelt down with their hands splayed out on the ground. They lined up alongside the path that went from the massive truck that had transported her, up to the vast monastery complex further up the hill.

The Deputy emerged from his official limousine, his great coat whipping in the wind. He grinned up at her, once again appreciating the great size difference between them.

"Your temple, my Goddess," he announced to her.

She smiled. This pleased her. But she still wanted him to show the crowd how this was going to be.

"Goddess is right, Yang," she said calling the Deputy by his family name, as if it were his given. "Show them how it's done, if you don't want to disappear down my gullet right now."

"Oh, but I am still too large, your worshipfulness," he objected, playfully. "I will not yet fit through your serene throat without excessive discomfort to you."

It was regrettable, but it was true that adult human beings were generally still too large for Karen to swallow down without first being shrunk - especially if they decided to put up a fight. Also, even though she had gobbled down a good share of Tanna's population before leaving there, the degree to which each shrunken human added to her size seemed to be diminishing. She longed for the day when people didn't first require to be shrunken down, or when any struggle on their part was going to be futile.

"You wouldn't be if I chewed you up first," she told him.

"Quite so, your majesty," he agreed.

Much of this dialogue in English would have been lost on the many monks who remained silent and kneeling. Those who did understand English had been placed at the back, where the dialogue was drowned out by the buffeting winds. But they would understand the symbolic meaning of what was about to happen.

They, of course, knew who Yang Xiadou, Deputy Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection was. As China's Minister of Supervision, he wielded much power behind the scenes of the politburo, and they had every reason to believe that he represented the Chinese government as a whole - that government which had deprived them of the sacred religious freedoms which they had once been able to cherish. Once, many decades ago.

What they did not know was who this gigantic woman was, or what she represented. They had been told that they had to come out to the road and kneel before the massive arriving truck, which would arrive with the visiting dignitary from Beijing. Seeing this tremendous person emerge had been a shock, but they knew that they had to keep their faces to the ground, and that they were not to make any exclamations.

But what they saw next shocked them worse. The Deputy Secretary, the face of the repressive regime, knelt down before the gigantic woman's sandals, and placed his lips on her foot. Despite the orders to remain silent, a murmur could be heard among the crowd of kneeling monks.

Yang Xiadou put his lips on her foot ten times. It felt wonderful, and his coat and trousers hid the excitement he felt. To the monks it would seem that the leadership of the most populous nation on earth - their oppressive overlords - were now submitting to this woman, who must truly be a goddess. As far as Yang was also concerned, this was exactly that. Before his plans were complete, she would indeed be a goddess, with the fate of millions in her stomach.

"Rise," she said, "and show me to my palace."

"Gladly," she said, beaming, once he had gotten up from the ground before her. He maintained a stiff forward bow to continue to conceal his excitement.

"Please," he said, gesturing towards the path up to the majestic monastery.

The monastery was a great edifice. It had recently been renovated and expanded by the government to be a tourist attraction. That was before the government had changed policies and wiped a great deal of the advertisements and information from the internet. Even the internet archives, and individuals' travel-blog posts had been hacked in order to make it seem as if the monastery had never existed.

It certainly did, however, exist. There were numerous lower buildings with white walls and red tiled roofs around the lower hillside. Between these was a great marble staircase, which Karen now ascended. Thankfully, the staircase had been modified so that she could have a sure foothold.

Uphill from the white-walled buildings stood the massive main building with red walls and two square gold-plated towers on each side of a great doorway. Before the doorway, at the top of the stairs was a flagstone-tiled square on which a welcoming party awaited Karen's arrival.

Among the welcoming party were senior monks and communist party officials, the latter all loyalists of the Deputy Secretary. They were standing in a semi-circle in the square, at the center of which stood a young boy, perhaps five years of age. He was dressed in fine silk monks' robes.

He was the 12th Panchen Lama, the reincarnation of a spirit said to have led regional Buddhism for nearly seven centuries. Though he was a pretender in the eyes of the worldwide diaspora of Tibetans, this was the official Panchen Lama designated by the Chinese government. To the monks and the local population, however, the boy was a living god. The boy had also been instructed in this, but he was also taught to always do his duties. He had recently been informed that his duties would soon be coming to fulfillment, and he knew what his duty was.

The boy knelt down as the great woman ascended the stairway. She smiled down at the small boy.

Behind her, the Deputy Secretary's entourage, her own small group of personal devotees, and the hundreds of monks, had followed her up the staircase. More monks looked from the opened windows of all the surrounding buildings - the lower white-walled buildings, and the red-walled great hall. The boy god and the great Goddess were the center of everyone's attention.

Karen held out her hand to the boy, palm upward.

Choekyi Yeshe, the boy lama, looked at her with awe. He knew what was about to happen, and he shivered with nervousness as much as from being cold. The ceremonial silk robes did little to hold back the cold mountain wind blowing down from the Tibetan peaks. The Goddess smiled at him, however, indicating to him in a somewhat auntly way that all was going to be alright. He would be quite warm soon enough, and there would be nothing to worry about.

He crawled into her outstretched hand. She was warm to the touch, and he felt inclined to assume a fetal position in the cup of her hand. He knew his duty, however, and returned to the kneeling position that he had assumed in the cold flagstone square.

She raised him up to her face. He wasn't the first toddler that had been given to her, nor even the first to come to her willingly. She had truly loved how the Tanna mothers had raised so many willing morsels for her. But this boy was supposed to be a god, as well as the supreme symbol of his people. Symbolically, then, she was swallowing them all.

She drew him close and kissed him on the small top of his head. He looked up, and saw her wink at him, before opening her mouth, ready to accept his sacrifice.

The entire audience knelt, knowing that this was the passing of one god into another. A few anointed their trousers with their families' seed.

Choekyi crawled onto her tongue, the softest and most inviting red carpet that the boy had ever seen. It was soft, warm and wet. He took off the silk robe, and threw it behind him, leaving himself naked. He lay down, settling his unblemished five-year-old skin against her soft warm tongue.

As the silk robe was caught up by the wind and flew off to the Tibetan peaks, her mouth closed in on him, enveloping his cold body in her dark warmth.

She surveyed the crowd of, now, thousands, surrounding her, watching her closed mouth with their own mouths agape. This, more than the first time she had taken a man's service (Mike Hardt), or a man life (Dave the cable technician), or a people's devotion (Tanna Island), was her making moment.

She closed her eyes and swallowed. She was a Goddess swallowing a god. In so doing, she was taking her place at the top of the world. That world submit at her feet and would pray to follow the boy god into her stomach.

She felt both the boy passing smoothly down her gullet, as well as the rush of small men clamoring to kiss her feet with devotion. She turned around to face the valley with her back toward the monastery, and stretched out her arms and hands to either side like wings. The thousand or more robed monks all bowed, knelt and prayed to her. She owned them; she owned it all, just like the small god-boy whom she could feel arriving in her stomach.

She was the Goddess.

Choekyi Yeshe, the five-year-old boy, and thousand-year-old soul, felt her flesh all around him. It massaged him ever downward until he fell down into a pool of warm liquid. He knew what this meant.

It meant that he had arrived in her stomach, and this was where he would transition from the short life of this human existence, and perhaps escape the Samsāra - the cyclicality of all life, matter, and existence - altogether. By giving himself to her, he had demonstrated his growing out of desire for human existence. His only fear was that this fear was too much, and that this represented residual desire.

The pool churned, as he felt the surrounding walls undulate. The liquid tingled on his skin.

The woman must have been an Asura, a demi-god, titan, or anti-god - a soul that had been good, but still had some blemish of desire. He suspected gluttony, though she had been uncommonly thin for such a desire.

The liquid tingled even more, and felt ever warmer, as the soft stomach walls continued to caress and massage him.

* * *

Above him, Karen closed her eyes in order to savor the moment even more. If any single unshrunken human could help her grow, certainly it would have to be this little boy. She felt him inside. Unlike most, however, he did not squirm. Even the volunteers - the people who had given themselves to her voluntarily - wound up starting to writhe at a certain moment when they felt her juices burn their skin, her stomach toss them around, and their minds lose both hope and oxygen. Despite their agony, she always enjoyed that feeling inside of her. It reminded her of her power and their sacrifice to her. Perhaps there had been some real Buddhist spirit in him after all. She was not sure if this pleased her or not. She enjoyed the feeling of power, as well as the physical sensation, of when her swallowees squirmed. At the same time, she also liked the idea of some mystical old soul inside of her belly.

* * *

Choekyi, the boy, also had ambivalence. The tingling and shortness of breath had become uncomfortable. At the same time, he felt that there was something welcome about being inside the stomach, and being the subject of desire, of this great beautiful demi-goddess. Meanwhile, he also began having another awareness - the awareness of the Panchen Lama within him. Many memories - ancient memories - began to return to him.

Along with those memories, there were memories of death and rebirth, and with those memories came the realization that something was different. In the past, each death led directly to a rebirth, but while the feeling of death felt familiar to him, he did not feel the feeling of rebirth either.

Was this the liberation from desire? Had he finally completed the beginning-less cycle of repeated birth? It did not feel as he had anticipated that it would, and, in fact, he wondered if his desire for that end was, in itself, something that meant that he was not ready for that liberation.

What he did feel was that he was not alone. He was not alone because he still felt surrounded by the beautiful asura who had swallowed him. But, in addition to that surrounding feeling of her, he also felt surrounded by them.

Who they were he did not know. They did not feel familiar to him. Some felt anguished, and they made him feel as if he had entered the diyu naraka - the hell realm. Yet, there were also many who felt at peace with their new being - or non-being. The anguished ones felt as if they had been captured, and swallowed alive against their will, while the ones who were at peace felt as if that swallowing alive had been their sincere wish, and they worshiped the one who had swallowed them.

But if this was not the diyu naraka or any of the other named realms of the bhavachakra, then where was he?

* * *

At some deep recess of her near-awareness, Karen felt the curiosity and uncertainty within her. She had never felt this before. While she had certainly imagined the gratitude of the many Tanna volunteers that she had consumed, this was a feeling that was distinct, and it was within her, but not of her. Before she could meditate on this matter, however, her consciousness was prodded back to the world outside of her.

"Please, your divine majesty," the Deputy Secretary said, raising his voice up to her.

"Your throne awaits."

As she had been focusing on the feelings within her, she had been unaware that the great doors of the monastery had opened. Through the great aperture that they had left open, she saw the great hall of the monastery. It was deep, and along the walls leading inside were numerous great statues - statues of the many Buddhist gods. At the far end of the hall, however, stood what Yang Xiadou, the Deputy Secretary, spoke of: a great gold-plated throne. Before the throne lay the remnants of a broken statue.

Karen entered the hall. This was her moment of victory. Instead of a self-made deity of a small island people in the South Pacific, she was now going to be the Goddess of the most numerous people in the world. She would soon be seated as a proper Goddess - no, she would make sure that she was the Goddess.

She looked down at the many kneeling monks. She revelled in this. She truly enjoyed being worshiped. The only thing that still limited her enjoyment of it was that she knew that she was not the self-made Goddess. All of this had been engineered by Yang and his compatriots of the Chinese politburo. They were using her as a way to keep down the Tibetan Buddhists. Many of these were known to be separatists who preferred to follow the Dalai Lama, the exiled religious leader.

As she thought on this, and had a moment of annoyance, she also knocked her head on something. It was a part of the ceiling. As she did so, it was as if everyone else in the hall both gasped and held their breath.

Yang was the first to break the momentary silence.

"I beg forgiveness, your worshipfulness," he said. "The masons had been given your measurements. They will be punished for their mistake."

One of the party officials in attendance seemed to object, and he spoke to Yang in Chinese. He seemed to both argue plead with the Deputy Secretary. Karen, however, thought she knew the reason for the discrepancy, and it was not the fault of the masons or the architect.

"You are all forgiven, and there will be no punishments," Karen declared.

"If you take my measurements again, I believe you will find that they have changed."

Yang was as puzzled by this as any of the party officials, not to mention the monks.

"I am greater because of the greatness of the Panchen Lama," she said.

"He is now one with me," she added, rubbing her belly.

It was true, she could feel it. Absorbing the holy boy had given her power, and that power had made her grow. That meant that the boy had expired and was in the process of being digested.

*But why can I still feel his presence?* she wondered, as she continued to sense the emotions of curiosity and uncertainty from the boy-god-meal.

It was a question she would have to put off. She had more immediate matters to attend to.

She approached the throne, careful not to bump her head again, and turned herself around to face the throngs of monks and communist party officials, who all gazed up at her.

She sat down in the throne.

This was power, she felt. She was being worshiped, and had been promised a gigantic population to swallow. The 'presence' she felt inside her was not unlike the warm feeling you get from whiskey on an empty stomach, except this was - she supposed - the spiritual variety. She closed her eyes and basked in the feeling of being drunk on power.

The people, monks and bureaucrats all, kneeled silently, awaiting her pleasure.

She opened her eyes and looked down on the people. With a slight smirk, she put her sandaled foot forward. A team of monks rushed forward and unclasped the sandal's buckles. Once her sandal was taken off and away, she put her second foot forward and the process was repeated. A gigantic velvet pillow was brought to her and she rested both her feet in its comfortable plushness.

She smiled contentedly and nodded. This began the supplication ritual. The bureaucrats showed by example what the monks needed to do. They thronged around her feet and kissed them a number of times, before stepping back and allowing someone else to do the same. Once the bureaucrats were done, the monks also joined in.

The mass of foot-kissing continued. Karen was delighted, and she basked in the worship. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, cherishing the moment. She still felt the soul within her. It felt comfortable, and it felt a 'togetherness'. It was hard for her to understand what this was. Was she imagining it? She tried to reach out her spirit into her stomach to see if she could touch it?

That was when the hubbub at her feet began to change. There was some different commotion.

She opened her eyes, and saw one of the monks being dragged back from her feet by a couple of the bureaucrats. There was shouting in Chinese and Tibetan.

"Stop!" she said in English, and everyone halted.

There was a moment in which nothing happened, before the Deputy stepped forward.

"Forgive us, your worshipfulness," he said, "this monk got carried away."

The man shouted something, which she could not understand.

"He just wishes to follow the Panchen Lama, and has forgotten his place," the Deputy told her.

"Bring him to me," Karen said.

"He has forgotten his place," the Deputy repeated, "and should not be rewarded."

"Stick him with the serum and bring him to me," Karen responded, contradicting Deputy Yang's objection.

There was a moment of tension as their powers struggled. The Deputy relented, and the monk was treated with the serum and brought back before her feet. The monk began to shrink.

She picked him up and held him in the palm of her hand. He knelt and prayed, as he shrank down to the point where he looked to be about two inches tall to her perspective.

"Come, follow your master," Karen told him, and opened her mouth.

The monk crawled into her mouth. She mused about how much she loved it when they not only just surrendered to her, but took pro-active action to become her food. It was one thing to be a goddess who could command people's sacrifice; it was an even higher level of satisfaction to be willfully worshiped.

Her only pang of doubt was if this monk was giving himself to her, or following the Panchen Lama. She tried to put it out of her mind. The Panchen Lama was no longer separable from her. He had become part of her, and therefore if the monk was loyal to the Lama, he was loyal to her. Still, the fact that she had to rationalize this to herself annoyed her slightly.

She swallowed, hard, in order to take out the annoyance of her doubt on the monk.

Meanwhile, Yang was a bit annoyed. This was not part of the plan. People needed to know their place. People knowing their places, from top to bottom, was what kept society orderly and stable. As a member of the party highest elite, he knew that he also had to obey the strict rules of behavior. Surely the same was true of goddesses. Perhaps having a Goddess of Western origins had its downsides. Regrettably, Karen, was the only known giantess that could fulfil the role. He really wished that she had been Chinese, and would therefore have obeyed the implicit script.

Karen, meanwhile, knew that Yang was frustrated. After the pleasure of swallowing someone who wanted to be swallowed, it was the second reason she had gobbled up the monk. She also wanted the Deputy to know that it was she who was in charge; not that little party bureaucrat with a kink.

After all, She was the Goddess.

After her ascendance at the Katok Monastery, Deputy Yang's plans were put into full force. The selecting of people for mountain 'retreats' took on industrial proportions. It began with Yang's political opponents, then their families, followed by people whose social credit scores were deemed to be in a certain range. High enough to be politically valuable, but low enough to escape attention.

While Karen's people-to-growth ratio had gone down, the solution they reached was the ever-more supply of people. Even if it took a hundred people for her to grow just one centimeter, there were thousands of people being shuttled towards the mountain monastery. Regrettably, however, Karen was growing discontent with the situation. When she had first arrived, it had been glorious to accept the Panchen Lama's self-sacrifice. That first follower had been satisfying as well, and he had not been the only volunteer. At that time, Karen's ambitions seemed to have been achieved.

Once the buses of Yang's opponents began arriving, she relished the numbers. Feeling throngs of them writhing inside of her stomach had been epic. Yet, after a couple of months, it was as if she was being turned from a Goddess into a sanctified dumpster. On Tanna Island, she had enjoyed personal relationships with her sacifices. Those relationships had been short, but they had felt wholesome. Now people were being shrunk smaller than they needed to be, just so that more and more of them could be shoveled down her gullet. Day by day she could no longer keep count of how many were filling her stomach. She knew that this was more about getting rid of people than it was about her deification, and that did not sit well with her. She wanted a change, and she felt the time was about ripe.

* * *

Yang was visiting her again. It had been some time, as his visits had become rarer. She had finished the evening devouring session. She told Yang that she was so full, she couldn't swallow another single person. Yang had joined for dinner, though he had had duck. He also looked a bit bored. Having now seen her swallow hundreds over numerous times, the process did not excite him as much anymore.

"It's too bad I don't have more room, it would have been nice to welcome you inside," she teased.

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Goddess," he replied half-heartedly, "but I am necessary to provide you with ever more sustainance. I truly regret that I cannot become your food along with the many others. They are the lucky ones."

She resented his lie. He got off on the idea of it, but he clearly had no intention of actually becoming her food.

He was sitting at a table on a balcony overlooking her throne room. The monastery's interior had been expanded again recently to make space for her growing body. The balcony was at about her face level, specifically so that they could talk directly.

"You're right," she acknowledged. "Thank you for all you do. I would never have become what I am now without your help."

He nodded a 'you're welcome', but did not vocally respond. He was thinking about some business he needed to clear up with his adjudant back in Beijing. He was even on his smartphone reviewing some reports while he did so.

His adjudant had been taking on more and more of the Deputy's duties, faithfully executing the plans and policies. What Yang did not know, however, was quite how ambitious the adjudant was. He also did not know that the Deputy's underling had been in contact with Karen.

She got up from her throne and made her way toward Yang's balcony.

"I'd like to reward you for your efforts," she said.

That got his attention. He looked up from his phone to look Karen straight in the eye. Her gigantic face was a mere fifteen feet away from him.

"Why don't you strip down, my little man," she suggested. "That way I can reward you properly."

His mouth went dry. His survival instinct told him this was dangerous. While she was not yet big enough to swallow a whole-sized man down her throat, he had just witnessed her gobble up about a hundred half-sized people. Furthermore, as she had told him upon her arrival at the monastery, she could decide to chew him up if she wanted to. At the same time, this fear combined with the sort of reward she might be suggesting to him made his brain share blood with his nether regions.

The nether regions took over.

"Yes, your holiness," he said, hastily beginning to unbutton his suit.

Deputy Yang, an old Chinese senior bureaucrat, was not the ugliest man in the world, but he was not a male porn star either. Karen was not turned on by his body as he disrobed himself. Karen was, however, turned on by her own power. That fact was lost on Yang as he saw the look of lust in Karen's eyes. Had he been of more sober mind, he would probably have figured that out for himself, but he was far from being so clear-headed.

He was barely done with undressing himself when her hand came up behind him and gently pulled him toward her. She smiled, and then stuck out her tongue. It touched the tip of his penis.

Pleasure jolted up his spine.

Her mouth then opened to give him a view of her gullet.

His limbic system sent that jolt back down his spine and to his loins. The tip of her tongue gently flicked back and forth long the underside of his penis.

"I have a hundred people inside my stomach, Yang," she said, "and you sent them there."

This was pure sex-talk to him. As a fetishist, he imagined himself in their place, but he also got off on the power of having defeated so many enemies.

"I am your grateful goddess," she told him, before letting her tongue slither along his member again.

He wanted to say something, though he didn't immediately know what to say. It was doubtful that he could have articulated anything even if he had known what to say. He just took in the pleasure of it.

Her hand ushered him closer, and her lips surrounded his penis. Behind her lips, her tongue again flicked against the head of his member. His hips gyrated to get the feeling of friction against those lips.

"I am almost big enough to swallow a whole man whole," she said, "against his will."

He gained control of his ability to speak, and said: "It will be a glorious day when you are, my Goddess."

She pleasured him a little more, bringing him closer to climax.

She then grabbed him by his ankles and picked him up, hanging him upside down. He gasped, as his orientation shifted. He craned his neck 'up' to look down. Her smiling face looked up at him.

"Do you want to go down my throat?" she asked him.

"Of course!" he said, possibly lying, "but there are too many people whose sacrifice must precede mine."

"Yes, you have been important to the project of turning me into a world goddess," Karen acknowledged. "I could not have done it without you."

Despite his predicament of hanging upside down, naked, over Karen's face, Yang was still conscious enough to notice how she used the perfect present tense: 'have been' and 'have done'.

He then found himself being dunked into a container of liquid. The liquid was oily - olive oil if he was not mistaken. In addition to the oil, there were little flecks of herbs.

"So I'm happy to reward you," she said.

"My Goddess!" he spluttered. "But you still need me, and you're not yet big enough to swallow me down like this!"

"You are also too full of other people!" he added in desperation.

"You're like dessert," she countered to his last statement, "and there's always room for dessert."

"Don't worry about me needing you any longer," she added. "You are a very capable manager, and you've made sure that your underlings know how to manage the country without you."

"But,..." he began, wanting to remind her of his remaining point.

"I think I can just about manage a well-oiled man who goes down my gullet voluntarily."

They looked at one another for a moment, before she asked: "you don't want me to chew you up, do you?"

He did not.

"Good. Come on in then," she said, opening her mouth.

That mouth now gaped before him, the tongue He was clearly hesitant, but his erection betrayed his mixed feelings on the matter. His rational mind didn't want to die in her stomach, but his libido saw this as the fulfillment of a life-long wet dream.

"The longer you wait, the more I'll be inclined to chew you up," she said after he did not rush in.

He realized that his game was up, and that he really only had the choice between going down willingly, or going down in several pieces. Among those two, the former was clearly the preferable one.

"Come!" she commanded.

He obeyed, giving in to the inevitable.

Yang slouched toward her gaping mouth. Her tongue unfurled itself for him. He knelt before it, just wondering if he drew this out that she would change her mind. His face planted itself against the end of her tongue. It felt warm, wet, and soft. It pushed itself underneath him, essentially scooping him up like a spatula.

She pulled herself back from the balcony, and stood herself tall and self-possessed. Her open mouth smiled, with Yang Xiadou still on her tongue. He was the largest man that she had atempted to swallow. He had not been shrunk, and she really liked the idea of not using the shrinking serum, just like she had not used it on Choekyi Yeshe, the Panchen Lama. Just like the Lama, Deputy Yang was also a significant person, whose significance did not prevent them from becoming her food. In fact, it was precisely their significance which destined them to this fate.

Karen slowly tilted her head back. She could feel Yang complying with her wish. He held his arms close, which would make him easier to swallow. The oil she had dipped him in also made him easier to slide. She braced herself, and then let him slide down into her throat.

He was clearly a larger-than-normal lump, and her throat had to work to get him down. After just a little bit of discomfort, however, she did manage to put him on the downward path.

She sat back down in her throne and took a breath of relief.

"Mmmm, there you go," she said to herself - or, rather to the full-size man now being pushed into her stomach.

She bared her belly and allowed her fingers to caress its slightly-distended contours. Yang really had been like a dessert. She certainly enjoyed not only the feeling of around a hundred smaller people writhing around in her belly, but also the idea of so many people being conquered by her in so carnal a way. Yang, on the other hand, was an integral part of a regime that ruled well over a billion people: nearly a fifth of humanity. If she could order him into her stomach, then she figured that she was also the ruler of those people, even if she was so only indirectly.

She was confident that some day, that indirect rulership would become direct, and that she would also expand her rule. She knew, in her mind, but also in her soul, that it was her destiny to become the Goddess of All. As Goddess of All, she would not have to have people trucked to her under false pretenses. Like on Tanna, people would grovel at her feet and beg for the privilege of being her food.

It was destiny.

Lakshmi and Dinesh were elated when the pilgrimage route to Mount Kailash had been reopened. They had planned for this journey for years, but then the Chinese government had put a halt on the passages over the Lipulekh Pass.

The official word had been that the road on the pass had become unsafe and needed repair, but word-of-mouth had it that the Chinese authorities had a much more ambitious project in mind. Strangely, that word-of-mouth channel had dried up. Even the old traditional pilgrims – those people who had been making the trek for millennia despite the prohibitions of governments – had vanished. The last to return spoke of loud explosions causing avalanches on the formidable Tibetan crags, but they could not say more.

Then, suddenly, the border was reopened, and pilgrims encouraged to come in greater numbers than ever before. Dinesh figured that the Chinese were simply looking for a way to increase revenue. The couple was, however, more than eager to pay for their way. They would at long last lay eyes on the ancient home of the great god Shiva and his consort, the goddess Parvati.

They were not alone on the bus from Pithoragarh, in the Uttarakhand state of India. Furthermore, theirs was not the only bus heading toward their common destination. There were many fellow pilgrims, though not all were Hindus like they were. There were Buddhists and Jains as well – and probably people of more sects and religions than any could count. On this route, it was impossible to make sense of the different beliefs. But along this journey what mattered was that they were together, not how they were apart.

There was indeed a disorganized convoy on the road. While creating problems, the energy of the great community of pilgrims was palpable. Even the Chinese government minders were getting into the spirit, telling the pilgrims that they were sure to witness the Goddess herself and the end of the journey.

“See, even the paradeshi are getting into it!” Lakshmi observed, excitedly, referring to those Chinese ‘outsiders’ – excited despite having already been on the bus for seven hours.

The road wound itself alongside the Sarda River which separated India from Nepal.  Soon they would be in Garbyang. There they would enjoy the hospitality of the local Rung people – a herding, semi-nomadic people native to the thin airs of the Himalayas.  

On the bus there was one person – an obnoxious man from Gujarat. He told all who would listen that he was an early follower of the Goddess – a few years ago when she lived on a small island in the Pacific. He had finally been able to sell all his belonging so that he could go to her and give himself to be consumed by her.

Dinesh clearly thought the man was mad. The goddess Parvati, of course had many incarnations and even more names – but an American woman called “Karen”, lounging on a tropical island beach was not something that he had read in the Devi Gita. Mahadevi was how Dinesh thought of her: She who is the form of divine joy, Who knows everything, Who is the mother of all. He and his wife were Shaktas from Tamil Nadu in the very south of India. Their tradition was millennia old.

Dinesh made a face and Lakshmi elbowed him. She was more into the togetherness spirit than he was.

She agreed with the man. “Yes, Sundari is all at once the source of all creation, its embodiment, the energy that animates and governs it, and She into which everything and everyone will ultimately dissolve.”

“Well, I am going to dissolve into her stomach!” he said to her.

Lakshmi smiled and nodded encouragingly. Yes, she too thought the man was mad, but the crazy giddiness of this whole pilgrimage was a large part of what she loved about it.

* * *

Days later, the convoy of pilgrims of which Dinesh and Lakshmi were a part, finally arrived at the foot of the great Mount Kailash. They had bathed themselves in the frigid waters of Lake Manasarovar and donned their robes over their otherwise naked bodies. Now, the press of their fellow pilgrims kept them warm as stood before the great doors of the grand temple.

The temple was new, the Chinese minders had told them – or, at least what they had understood in the minders’ broken Hindi. Yet, this temple was unlike anything they had ever seen or even imagined. It was cut straight into the steep side of the valley running to the left of the mountain. The gilded doors were unfathomably large, probably even taller than the Taj Mahal.  Over the doors was a sheer cliff and then a slower slope that led up to the peak. Dinesh also saw parapet balconies carved over and to the sides of the doors.  To each door’s side the cliff faces were carved with decorative etchings in numerous scripts, including Sanskrit and Chinese glyphs. Dinesh, to his satisfaction, even saw some Brahmic script, though he could not read it.

The doors themselves depicted the Goddess, but not the god Shiva. That certainly pleased Dinesh as a Shakti, but he imagined the other Hindus, not to mention the Buddhists and Jains, would be a little less impressed by it. If they were, however, he did not notice it. Everyone seemed to be in complete awe. Lakshmi was clearly completely struck. She spontaneously knelt down and was followed by the rest of the crowd. Dinesh was a little slower to do so, but he took the opportunity to look around at the crowd behind him. They must have numbered in the thousands, though he quickly followed suit and knelt down with them.

It was but a few moments after the crowd knelt that red-robed Tibetan monks emerged on the parapet balconies. They had great horns upon which they blew in unison. The low sound filled the valley and reverberated off the other cliffs. It was then that an even lower rumble could be heard. The doors were opening!

Dinesh’s mouth dropped open. He had just assumed that the doors had been decorative only. Now his face was bathed in the light that shone out from the doors. As his eyes began to grow accustomed to the glare from the doors, he started to make out the silhouette of a figure – a human figure – a human figure that was not much smaller than the gigantic doors.

The light then changed. Rather than illuminating the door’s aperture, it lighted the figure stepping through it. She was gigantic and carried herself with a calm surety as well as sublime gracefulness. About her she wore light white robes that waved gently in the wind. Much of her all-but bare figure could be seen through the fabric. Dinesh was positive that this truly could be none other than the Mahadevi - the delightful delusion, the dream-like expression of divinity that makes life comprehensible, hence worth living.

The great kneeling crowd was stunned as she softly strode towards them. It was then that the obnoxious Gujarati from the bus stood up and ran towards the Goddess’ bare feet.

“Great Goddess Karen!” he shouted in English. “You have answered my prayers!”

She halted her stride before him. Her big toe came up to the man’s waste, though he now threw himself before it.

“For many years I have yearned and begged for this to happen. I followed you virtually from San Antonio in America, to the island, to the monastery. Only now have I had the means to become yours completely!”

“I beg of you but one final honor,” he pleaded, “and that is to swim down your divine gullet!”

The Goddess smiled down upon him. She bent her legs and reached down to him. He eagerly crawled into the open palm of her hand. She than stood back up, holding him in front of her face.

“Such a generous prayer is a pleasure to grant,” she said, replying in the same language, and opening her mouth.

The Gujarati leapt inside of her mouth. She smiled with satisfaction as her lips closed behind him. Not a single person in the valley failed to see the subtle undulation of her throat that signalled his downwards passing.

“Welcome to your new home,” she spoke softly as she rubbed her subtly-exposed belly.

“And welcome to all of you as well,” she said louder to the great crowd kneeling before her feet on the valley floor.

They crowded in on her further, but respectfully left a place for her to place her feet as she stepped forward. She beamed down benevolently at her mass of subjects.

“You are truly welcome,” she assured them again.

Both Dinesh and Lakshmi were beside themselves with awe. Dinesh had previously harbored doubts about the ancient stories of the Hindu Vedas and epics. He was a somewhat modern man, after all. Yet, as a modern man, how could he deny the truth as he saw it before his very eyes? Here was truly an incarnate Goddess before them, dwelling in the mountain just as the stories told that she would. It could not be a delusion. She had just swallowed up a man whom he had shared a bus ride with.

Perhaps to allay all of their doubts, the crowd now flocked to the Goddess’ feet, which stood in their midst. The pilgrims laid their hands upon those feet and kissed those feet with their lips. The Goddess was as flesh-solid as any of them were.

After having done as the other pilgrims had done, Lakshmi embraced Dinesh with ecstatic glee.

“We are here with Her!” Lakshmi squealed.

“We are surely thrice blessed!” Dinesh agreed with equal enthusiasm.

The Goddess then cleared her throat to regain the pilgrims’ attentions up from her feet back to her face and words.

“Welcome, my children,” she said again. “Please now come into my home.”

She carefully turned around so that none of the pilgrims would find themselves underfoot, and then walked back towards the great doors. The crowd followed at her heels.

Looking at both the doors in the cliffside as well as the mountain peak far above it, Dinesh felt reminded of a temple – the peak appearing like a Shikhara tower.  The doors, then would lead to the Ardhamandapa, the first antechamber. As he joined his wife and fellow pilgrims behind the Goddess’ heels, he was awestricken by the scale of it all. And, as large as it all was, the Goddess was not at all dwarfed by it.

They passed into the Ardhamandapa. The tremendous walls loomed over the crowd. High above, there were the openings that allowed light to shine into the chamber as well as provide access to the balconies where the monks had stood with their trumpets. Now, as the pilgrims entered the mountain temple, the monks filed in from those balconies to platforms high above the chamber’s ground floor. Dinesh could hear their chanting.

“Ka-rèn,” they chanted, followed by other names of the Goddess that Dinesh recognized, and many that he did not. He nudged her shoulder when his wife’s given name was also used, Lakshmi, the aspect of The Goddess of wealth, fortune, power, beauty, fertility and prosperity. She smiled at him, lovingly.

Dinesh loved his wife dearly. She had led him in the learning and devotion of the Shakti faith. He had particularly relished surrendering to her ministrations in the bedroom. All along the pilgrimage route to the lake and the mountain they had kept chaste. He hoped that they would tonight break their sexual fast in celebration of what they were now experiencing. In her eyes he could see that she was thinking along similar lines.

The pilgrims then began passing into the ante-chamber proper, the Mandapa. Along the walls Dinesh made out scenes from the Ramayana and verses from the Devi Mahatmya. From there, Dinesh saw that the Goddess strode into the temple’s inner sanctum, where she took her place on a large red cushion in the center of the Garbhagriha or “womb-chamber”. The procession of pilgrims took their cue from the temple’s layout and began to perform the Parikrama, the clockwise circumambulation around the place where the Goddess sat. As they did so, they also took up the monks’ chant.

Dinesh and Lakshmi joined the pilgrims in their devotions, moving around the Goddess. The Goddess sat cross-legged with the palms of her hands together in a praying pose. As the Parikrama proceeded she allowed one of her legs to slip and her foot came down to the floor level where the pilgrims paced. It just so happened that this was just in front of where Dinesh and Lakshmi were at that moment. Lakshmi felt so honored that she dove upon the foot in utter devotion, and Dinesh followed immediately.

The Goddess chuckled and looked down at them.

“Come here, you two,” she said as she reached down and picked up the couple from Tamil Nadu.

She held them in front of her face. Both of them blushed under the Goddess loving gaze.

“Aren’t you two cute!” she observed. “Are you a couple?”

They nodded. Dinesh was utterly robbed of his voice. Lakshmi was able to find her own.

“Yes… your holiness,” she stammered. “Married. Three years now. We have come many, many miles from South India – Tamil Nadu.”

“What are you called?” the divinity asked.

“I am named in your honor – Lakshmi. My husband is Dinesh.”

“Nice to meet you!”

“Thank you, truly!” Lakshmi uttered nervously as she quickly took Dinesh by the arm to stabilize herself.

“Aw, you two are really sweet!” the Goddess spoke, “but come and show me how sweet you two really are.”

With that, she brought her hands holding the couple closer to her mouth, which she opened wide. Lakshmi was astounded at her great fortune to be allowed to demonstrate her devotion in this ultimate way. She looked at Dinesh with her own mouth agape. Dinesh was also beside himself, but he kissed her and held her close before following his wife into the Goddess’ open mouth.

Everyone within the Garbhagriha was awestruck as they witnessed the couple’s loving sacrifice. As the crowd of pilgrims did so, the monks began to close the outer temple doors behind them. The Goddess also closer her mouth. She could feel the couple embrace one another inside.

“Mmmmm,” the Goddess hummed in satisfaction. The vibration also caused both of the worshipers inside of her mouth to be overcome with the ecstasy of their self-sacrifice and their own mutual love. The Goddess could taste this, which signalled to her that it was time to send them down.

Lakshmi was the first to go. Going down face first, she felt the flesh walls of the Goddess’ throat tighten behind her as they softened before her. She was pushed down moreso than that gravity allowed her to fall.

Dinesh was literally right on his wife’s heels as Karen gulped him down too. He kissed the soles of his wife’s feet as he was also pressed down the gullet. He belonged to both of these women, in mind, body and soul.

Goddess Karen meanwhile caressed her hand down her throat as it tracked the married lovers’ path toward her stomach. She allowed both of her feet to reach out into the public that gratefully accepted them.

“Come to me,” she bade the crowd.

In worshipful response, they crawled onto her feet and legs. She guided some of them to pleasure her. Others begged her to allow them to follow where the Tamilar couple and the Gujarati man had gone before. Taking it at her ease, she indulged both them and herself all through the night.

She had truly become a Goddess on Earth.