*  *  *

            Halley was ordering a nice cold tea when she looked away from her boyfriend and his best friend. They had been getting her a nice cupcake. She paid for her tea and returned to find the table empty of both her friends. Only her cupcake remained. The boys must have seen a friend somewhere and wandered off as boys tended to do, she reasoned. She seated herself on the chair in front of the cupcake, the simple sight of the sweet white frosting bringing the saliva to her mouth.

             Jared had never been looked at quite like that. Halley was staring, in a greedy sort of way; down at what she supposed was a cupcake devoid of intelligent life. However this was in stark contrast to Jared’s presence on that of the icing of the back of the bun where he was now stuck and could not dislodge himself. Jimmy was way off on the horizon of the frosting, waving to his girlfriend. He was similarly trapped in the glaze of the icing.

            Halley’s blue eyes bore down on him. Jared could have sworn that she was looking directly at him as he waved his arms. She had to know he was here. Where would he have gone? He flourished his arms franticly but she deliberately chose to ignore him, he was sure of it!

            She uncapped her drink and momentarily released Jared from the hypnosis of her blue eyes as she drank. Then she returned her attention to the cupcake. Lifting the pastry on which Jared was perched, she brought it to her lips and her mouth opened wide to reveal a pink cavern lined with teeth the size of his house. ‘How could she be so big?’ ‘How could her mouth be so big?’ ‘Did she know what a terrible thing it was to gaze upon?’ Surely she was doing this on purpose!

            In his heart he knew it was not true. Halley would never hurt them on purpose. She did however, have a veracious apatite. Her mouth bit down and ripped off a chunk of the pastry that was the size of an aircraft carrier. Halley closed her eyes as she did this, savoring the flavor.

            Thank God Jimmy had not been taken. He could still see Jimmy trying to signal to Halley. Jared watched as she chewed her food slowly. He had had a crush on her since he met her. Of course he never told Jimmy or Halley that, but his desire for her love was almost a physical need as he watched her mouth mash the food to bits, then the gulping swallow as she finished her food.

            Her eyes were on them again and her giant grotto of a mouth was bearing down on them. The last Jared saw of Jimmy, he was waving his arm in a forlorn hope to prevent his consumption by his extraordinarily beautiful girlfriend. Then, giant white teeth plunged into the cupcake, obscuring Jimmy from Jared’s view.

            Halley’s mouth closed around the food she had fit into it and the dessert was sliced in half by the bite. Halley’s lips came together and she straightened up as she slowly began chewing. Jared watched half aghast, half enchanted by the site of Halley chewing up a cupcake and his best friend, who also happened to be her boyfriend. Her mouth chewed the food easily and her eyes roamed around the room. She was probably looking for them thought Jared. She is going to eat us and never know we were her food.

            Halley put down the cupcake and took up her tea. She swallowed the cake and then, took a long drink of the tea. Jared watched as she swallowed. If any of his friends had been left un-swallowed in the first gulp, he was certainly completely in her belly now. Halley’s eyes drifted back to the cupcake. Jared swore she was looking directly at him! She licked her lips and swallowed again. The thought that he was next penetrated Jared. He was terrified! He wet his pants.

            Halley reached for him and picked up the cupcake. Her eyes were still upon him. Jared looked from the eyes down to the giant mouth spreading open, for him!

            He was pushed passed the giant teeth into the mouth that smelled like tea, cupcake and saliva. The mouth darkened as the cupcake blocked the light. Then the mouth closed like a trap, sealing Jared in darkness.

            He was thrashed about. There were smacking sounds all around him which he knew was her mouth chewing, the sound of the bun being shushed and the swish of saliva. He was thrown about violently, which quite hurt his neck. Then suddenly with pain that lasted for only a millionth of a second, he was dead.

            Halley swallowed the bit of bun she had been chewing and then ate the rest. She finished her tea and sat waiting for her two companions who would never come because they were dead and being digested somewhere in the warm wet room of corrosion within her.

*  *  *

            Melanie’s spell was by no means limited to Jimmy and Jared. Only one table over, a young man had also been shrunk.

            One moment Janna had been staring at her boyfriend, slurping a juice drink, the next he was simply gone. For Martin, it was a shocking thing. He was suddenly immersed in horribly cold red liquid. The shock of cold caused him to breathe in the juice and he choked and sputtered.

            He fought to the giant white pillar with the blue stripe running down it was sticking out of the liquid. He could not for the life of him imagine where he was. First thing was first. He grabbed the giant pole, which was larger than he was, and tried to hold on. This proved difficult as the circumference of the pole exceeded that of his arm length. He clung on as best he could and followed the pole upwards, tilting his head back. What he saw shook him more than the frigid liquid about him.

            A giant Janna was above him. She was massive. The end of the pole to which he clung was inserted into her mouth and she was sucking on the end. It was a straw! He was in her drink! How the Hell had this happened?

            No answer came to him, nor did it seem likely that one would. Suddenly, the water level lowered by astounding proportions in the cylindrical chamber in which Martin found himself. Janna was drinking up her drink. She rose to look for him, he was sure. She constantly was gulping down huge quantities of the icy liquid.

            He could watch her throat from here. Still, he was reassured to realize that there was plenty of liquid left in the cup. However he was jostled about with the melting icebergs of Janna’s drink with her every step.

            His vision began to blur, his hands and feet began to go numb. It was agony. He lost track of time as hypothermia began to set in. He was vaguely aware of the water level lowering and a pulling feeling towards that center tube which he now knew to be a straw. He tried to swim away but it was hard to move his body. It was hard to concentrate too. He never fully appreciated how much work it was to swim.

            He lazily gave up his struggle as the current flowing towards the bottom of the straw overtook him. His body was pulled under the red water and then he was shooting up into the tube, fast as lightning.

            His view of Janna was blocked by the straw, which was not transparent. Even if it had been clear, the images in the occipital lobe would barely have registered in his brain, which was beginning to shut down. He did remember how he was in Janna’s drink though. How silly. This must be a dream, he thought. That was okay. He would wake up in his nice warm bed, he thought as he passed into her mouth.

            With a loud “Gulp,” he was swallowed by her girlfriend. He traveled down her esophagus with the feeling of falling. Everyone had that falling dream sometime, he thought. He landed in Janna’s stomach not long after. It was much warmer in here. That was nice. He started to wake up a bit, but slowly. How funny to be in Janna’s belly when she was a vegetarian. ‘Ha ha!’ His dreams had no sense in reality. He tried to return to sleep again.

            Janna finished her drink and burped. She was walking around the mall, looking for Martin. It would be some time before she gave up.

*  *  *

            Melanie and David made their way out of the mall. It was disappointing for Melanie that she hadn’t caught anyone all day. She looked both ways and crossed the street, almost getting run over by a speeding car. In a flourish, the car was the size of a toy. She quickly raced over and grabbed it and emptied its passenger into her palm. There was a man of about forty, rather stout and with a beard.

            This gave her an idea. With a hint of mischief in her eye she spotted a convertible with four people somewhat older than she. Perhaps they were in their late twenties or early thirties. Three boys and one girl were within, as far as she could tell from where she stood. She murmured a spell and they and the car shrank into oblivion.

            Not quite oblivion, she thought as she hurried over and picked the people out of the car and hastened to put them in her purse. She dropped the two cars, and crushed them with all her weight on her foot, and then she kicked what was left into a sewer opening. Then she nonchalantly returned to her own vehicle and headed home.

            As she drove, Melanie hatched schemes with David over the fate of their new captives for when they got home. She would not be hungry for a while yet. They had a little time to think of something fun to do with her new prey.  

*  *  *

            As Melanie exited her car, she proceeded to walk into another store. It was an ice cream parlor, and once inside decided to buy a small dish of the product. She quickly went back to her car and took David out of her pocket. Upon sitting down she placed him on her right thigh, and opened her bag. She looked inside, and located her objects of desire, small people that were lying on the floor of her purse.

            “Well hey there guys. I had an idea, but I just changed my mind. It would be a bit too hard for me to work with, so I’m just going to do this now, okay?” She reached in and picked up each person, one by one. Once inside her grasp, the people had little struggle left due to the bashing of the contents of the purse, and dropped each one onto her ice cream.

            Let it be known, it was still quite a shock for every person dropped into the cup, as it was freezing and slippery. No one could see anything but the white mass underneath them, the grayish colour of their prison, and a girl bigger than life.

            Jared had to hand it to her though, that massive girl was incredibly beautiful. Even though he was now badly beaten, frozen to the bone, and mad as hell, he thought she was incredibly cute. He had just been about to get some of this girl he had recently picked up, then just minutes after he and his pals were being thrown around, dumped out of their vehicle, and humiliated. Jared watched as his expensive car was dropped miles, and miles as if it was a toy, and simply stomped on. He was pissed!

            Melanie wasted no time in smiling at David down under her gaze, and picked up a spoon and guided it under the landscape underneath a single person. She lifted him up to her lips, and opened her mouth wide.

            David was a bit excited, but he did want to go and do something else, but he respected her decision. He watched as she moved the spoon into her mouth, her breath expelling and melting the glob rather quickly. Before her mouth could conceal more than half of the spoon, a massive drop began to form, and fall.

            David was going to shout to Melanie about the melting ice cream, when the oddest thing happened. As the drop began to fall under gravity, it seemed to stop. Everything seemed to stop.

            He watched, and waited… And waited some more. Finally, David came to the conclusion that something bad had just happened. The drop of ice cream was suspended in mid-air only by a small pillar no bigger than his leg, and was not even moving. He also noted that Melanie had stopped breathing, and in fact, her heart beat had stopped as well.

            David got up and walked over to Melanie’s torso, and placed his head against her exposed stomach. Leaning up against the wall of her jeans, he listened. He felt no warmth, and what was even more weird, for the first time in his living memory, Melanie’s stomach was making absolutely no noise at all. It was as if someone had pushed pause on a video player.

            “Good day, David.” Came a voice from behind him. David nearly had a heart attack when he heard it, and he spun around, ready to defend himself. He was shocked to see another person, his height, standing right in front of him. “Lovely girl isn’t she?”

            “Who… Who are you? And what have you done?”

            “You will come to know me in due time. But be aware, that everything is perfectly fine. All I have done is take you out of the time stream. There is something I must show you.” With that, this stranger, who David could tell was a man, turned around.

             “David, I ask you a question,” The man said turning only his head. “Do you want to know more than what you know now, do you want to do more than you ever possibly thought you could… or do you want to stay here, and pass this opportunity?”

            David considered for a moment the possibility of getting hurt, but seeing as how he didn’t like passing up chances or not knowing something he decided to go along with the stranger, not like he had much of a choice anyway. “Sure, I will come.” He spoke with a hint of apprehension in his voice.

            The man raised his hand in front of him and put his palm out, from it shown a small light that quickly grew into a small ellipse of blue light. “Come,” He spoke as he stepped to the side, he beckoned David to go through.