WARNING: Contains a more detailed Foot-Crush scene, you can skip if you're not into it! Spoiler in the end note if you're skipping it!

Chapter Fourteen

            Melanie stood like a reigning monarch in front of her champions and surveyed her queendom. Could she call herself queen of this land? She’d need a crown, and a king. But no, that suggested marriage. Princess perhaps? Sure! Then David could be her prince. That sounded like a great idea.

            Melanie’s stomach gave a rather painful lurch and caused her to wince. Hmm, that didn’t feel good. Something she ate wasn’t playing very nice with the rest of what she ate. Maybe eating even more people wasn’t such a great idea after all.

            With her finger to her lips she said, “No, on second thought, you all can have a break.” There was a universal sigh of relief from all of the competitors at her feet. A few of them even had the gall to look like they won the lottery. “My stomach is a little upset for some reason, who could possibly wonder why.”

            “Because you’re fucking eating people you monster!” Someone had just committed suicide.

            The room went dead silent. All eyes turned to look at the perpetrator. Everyone was shocked to find the tall, attractive and up till then quiet form of Sarah who stood there nailed to the spot, suddenly very aware of what she had just said.

            “What was that?” Melanie said quietly, danger seemed to ooze out of the very air as the words landed around the ground like mortar shells.  “I am a monster?”

            Sarah stepped back, quite sure she had just made a mistake. Everyone else thought the same thing, and most were now running back to the house shouting things like,  “You shouldn’t have said that!” and “I’m glad someone said it, but I wasn’t going to!” and other sorts of rubbish the true coward would say at a time of crisis.

            “N-n-no…” Sarah stammered as she took another step back. As if to prove a point Melanie took a quarter of a step forward, really just shifting her weight; she loomed over the terrified little girl.

            Inside Melanie’s stomach David was leaned up against the wall, mostly sitting and relaxing. His demeanor was completely different than the rest of the people Melanie had eaten before him. To say they were practically hysteric would be an understatement.

            They were thrashing around madly, beating against Melanie’s walls and shouting whenever they weren’t heaving for breath. David hadn’t even registered in their senses, mostly because he wasn’t screaming and he was trying to stay out of their way. After all, they couldn’t see in there, although he could see perfectly.

            David wasn’t sure what Melanie was planning, but if she had him in there too long, he might have to shut his eyes and pretend he was elsewhere.

            He knew Melanie had eaten almost a countless number of people already, and all of them had been digested and absorbed into her body, obviously they had all died somewhere before that. He wasn’t quite keen on the idea of actually watching it happen though. It was probably slow, painful, and difficult to watch. He secretly hoped Melanie would get him out before it was too late. He felt the world shift slightly and everyone but him lost their balance as Melanie moved outside.

            “I’m sorry!” Sarah cried as Melanie came at her, walking very slowly, but definitely. Each thunderous boom of her foot was quite exaggerated, but to Sarah it was worse than the car chase scene in Jurassic Park.

            “Monsters have to act like monsters in order to be monsters, don’t they?” Melanie asked almost indifferently as she followed Sarah toward the house. Sarah was running as fast as she could.

            When she was almost there Melanie casually stepped over her and brought her heel down in front of the girl who careened into it and rebounded comically. Melanie leaned back and looked down at the girl between her feet.

            “You gave up already?”

            Sarah didn’t know what she meant but she tried to back away on her hands and knees. To clarify what she meant Melanie lifted one foot and positioned it over top of the girl who instantly shrieked and scrambled to her feet, leaping out of the way as Melanie’s weight came down behind her.

            “That’s better! Better get going!”

            Sarah started running but tripped; she however recovered and kept on running, Melanie was impressed. Trips like that usually make her hit the ground. She watched Sarah flee in terror from her and when she was almost three steps away and showing signs of fatigue Melanie decided to intervene again.

            She stepped twice, smartly, and with her toes she lightly kicked the girl causing her to tumble forward, this time uncorrectable, and land face first on the ground when she stopped rolling. Melanie brought her toes down onto Sarah’s back and pressed into her, she instantly started squirming and screaming incoherently.

            “You know, I’ve never done this before.” Melanie said casually. Sarah continued to claw forward, slowly escaping Melanie’s light pressure. “I don’t know if I like it.” Melanie continued just as casually. Sarah pulled with adrenaline fueled strength and popped out, rolled, and got up to continue running. “I guess I’ll have to decide, won’t I?”

            Sarah was almost at the bookcase, the only other place she could think of that was relatively close by and definitely difficult for this monster of a girl behind her to follow her to. She didn’t make it though.

            Melanie brought the arch of her foot down on the girl and pinned her underneath it, this time she pressed more weight down on it. Sarah, unable to really make any noise, struggled madly as she was suffocated by Melanie’s sole.

            Melanie shifted her foot to the side and rolled Sarah over. She gasped and started coughing. It wasn’t that the floor or Melanie’s foot smelled particularly badly, but not being able to breathe for a few seconds while your heart is racing and you’re flailing about exerting yourself tends to have negative effects on your body.

            Melanie compared the girl to the size of her foot and giggled to herself, she was so small. Her foot was unbelievable sensitive and she had never really even contemplated playing with someone using them, and the feeling was quite a bit different. She’d have to remember to see if David was interested in the possibility of playing with them. Sarah’s flails very gently rubbed against her sole and caused her to wince, apparently she was very ticklish.

           Sarah tried to get up again but Melanie was done chasing her. She hovered her foot over her again and dropped the ball of her foot onto the poor girl, pushing her back into the carpet again with another scream. She pressed on her until the screaming stopped before releasing her. She wasn’t dead, but she might have lost consciousness for a moment. Melanie flipped her over.

           Everyone else in the room was watching Melanie with a new found of horror and fascination from the house and other hiding places throughout her room. The giant girl was torturing someone who spoke up against her. Okay, calling someone who has a gun to your head, or in this case hundreds of times your size on you, a monster isn’t the brightest thing in the world to do, but surely it didn’t warrant this? They were all going to die, but this was torture.

           Melanie placed her hand on her exposed stomach and rubbed it gently with small circles. She thought about what to do with the little girl; she didn’t even know her name. She had seen her hanging around very close to David, did he know her? She’d have to ask him later when she got him out of her stomach, but he’ll have to find a new friend.

           Melanie wasn’t particularly sure she liked being called a monster, she’ll have to ask David about that too. But this girl tried to throw a knife at her, and she caught it. Now she was going to throw it back, and she had much better aim.

“Good bye.” Melanie said, as the little girl’s eyes opened and looked up at her.

Melanie brought her foot over Sarah who in turn instinctively threw out her arms to protect herself and didn’t even scream.

           David wasn’t sure what was going on outside but it was beginning to settle down. Maybe she was building something else? He could have sworn he felt some movement that felt like stairs, but he didn’t feel it the other way.

           The activity inside Melanie’s stomach was beginning to settle down too as everyone else started to run out of steam. Still, apparently someone had done something to upset Melanie because without warning her throat opened up and spewed her stomach in a very thick pink liquid. The air was instantly filled with mint.

           David laughed and was instantly coated from head to foot in Pepto-Bismol. There was a bought of coughing and renewed shouts from the other guests of Melanie’s stomach; this would mean prolonged life for them but of course they didn’t know this.

           It wasn’t much longer before something else came through and entered Melanie’s stomach. David couldn’t identify it straight away, but knew exactly what it was. A gigantic wad of masticated food and saliva. It slammed into someone and completely engulfed them, submerging them into the growing level of stomach-liquids.

           There was some more panicking as the space in her stomach began to fill up slowly, as more and more unrecognizable objects of mashed up stuff entered her body. If David concentrated he could predict the next shipment of food from the deep but distant gulp and then the growing crescendo of muscles cascading as they brought her meal down to meet them.

           David was pressed into the side of her wall as another mass shoved its way into her stomach, his hands and knees sank into its mushy depths. He could very clearly make out her saliva as it held the food together, but it quickly drained away and was replaced by stomach acids.

           Then something that worried him, the sound of gulping came much, much faster and sure enough liquid poured into her stomach and filled every available space. All the people she had eaten were now struggling for air as it dwindled away. Sure the stomach expanded as it filled, but that didn’t stop the air from becoming thin and difficult to get to, especially with Melanie gulping what must have been an entire glass of possibly water.

           Melanie finished off her glass and burped far louder and longer than any lady ever should. She covered her mouth and chuckled, excusing herself. Thankfully, no one was around to scold her. Only David, who probably heard it and was shaking his head right this very second.

           She leaned back and looked down at her stomach, trying to imagine what David must be going through right on the other side of her skin. She pressed her hand into her belly and felt around. She could feel movements coming from her stomach as people struggled inside her, it gave her a neat little thrill. It helped that she couldn’t know which were David’s and which were her food’s, she kind of liked not knowing; then again, she liked feeling David inside her.

           That was a dangerous thought, and she would have to be careful. The longer they spend together the more and more dangerous and crazy things she seems to want to do with him, or to him.  Happily, up till now, David hadn’t rejected her. She hoped he never would, she wasn’t quite sure how she would handle that. Not like he really could say no to her, if she wanted to, she could make him do whatever she wanted and he couldn’t do anything about it.

           This new train of thought came out of nowhere and seemed to originate from some inner, darker part of Melanie’s mind. She had never even harbored such thoughts before but now here they were, plain as day, as though they had been there all along, just biding their time, waiting for the right moment to strike.

            She was going to have to think about that a bit later.  But for now she pushed them off to the side and mentally left a sticky note on them. She cleaned up her mess and laid out on the couch resting her hands on her stomach. The struggling inside her stomach was beginning to die down as her belly began to make some awfully wonderful noises as it entered its digestion stage in full; gurgling and rumbling up a storm that kept her skin almost constantly vibrating from the sheer power of her digestive organs working over-time.

            Melanie let her eyes close as she listened to the groans and rumbles of her stomach happily digesting her meal.