"Noooo!"

A somewhat hushed, lengthy cry that woke me. How could anyone sleep in times like this? Jessica was still here. My heart skipped a beat as I acknowledged the softness of my makeshift bed; I was in her palm. Quickly I scrambled off my side and looked up, her massive fingers beginning to curl inwards, dangerously closing in the distance.

"Jessica, it's alright, it's alright!" I shouted, pounding against her hand. Her fingers bent ever towards me, and I frantically backed up to avoid their crushing embrace. "Wake up, Jessica, it's alright!"

"Dustin?" she suddenly asked, her voice as giant as she was. Her hand opened like a flower and revealed me to her gaze, thankful to be alive. 

"I'm here, it's okay," I assured her, trying to match my volume to hers the best I could. I still couldn't be sure if she knew about my affair with Melissa: she seemed so genuinely happy to see me. It might not be the right thing to do, but I went along with her oblivious happiness. Melissa didn't exist right now. But I had to tread carefully. This misunderstanding had made me slave to Jessica's every whim.

She was silent for a few moments, breathing in and out and in again, before the fingers of her other hand approached. Oh god, is she going to pick me up again? The height was dizzying when I could balance on her palm; I couldn't imagine being suspended between her fingers.

A single pointer finger -- although that truly gave the behemoth no justice -- rested on my head and stroked me slowly and gently, as if she were testing if I were actually there. 

"Careful!" I warned her as the force of the finger increased ever so slightly. I can see it now: she bores of me and taps down, squishing me into the expanse of her hand. That's all it would take.

"...Dustin..." she repeated, her voice softening by the second. I looked up and saw she was about to cry again.

"What's wrong, Jessica?"

"I had a nightmare," she whined, her booming voice betraying her fearful tone.

"It's alright, it was just a dream," I tried to assure her. "It was just a dream."

"It felt so real, though. I dreamt... I dreamt... I dreamt that I was so hungry I ate you," she sobbed. A chill went down my spine. This was my reality. "And for a while," she added, tears streaming down her face. "I actually considered it."

"Please... please don't eat me, Jessica," I said blankly, knowing deep down that it was all I could do to save myself.

"I told you, I'm a monster!" I had to think fast, I had to cheer her up somehow. 

"You're just hungry, I understand."

"Hungry people don't eat their boyfriends! I'm a monster!"

I had to get her something to eat. Something, anything. Some fruits, or vegetables, or some loose animals. But for the love of god she was not going to eat me.

"You know," she continued, breaking my train of thought. "I only started eating people because I had to. Everything else is too small." Something about that made me almost chuckle; we, the gnats we were, were the biggest option.

"What else did you try?" She sniffed and thought over my question. I prayed I hadn't upset her.

She looked away for a moment and said: "You know, food. Like food normal people would eat."

That seemed like an excuse; maybe she was afraid to try anything. But then why start with people? She was truly psychotic.

"Come on, let's try to find you something," I said, as if I might lead the way. She seemed to understand and lifted me up to her shoulder as she stood up. After a bit of wobbling I managed to sit somewhat comfortably, her ear right above me.  I started to hear her thunderous footsteps and not long after some stray people started screaming. We were moving so fast, so suddenly. 

"Where should we go?" she asked, turning her head to see me. I was looking down at the ground far below, watching her foot carelessly grind a patch of traffic into dust as she walked across a street.

"Anywhere with food," I said, not so sure myself. "Let's try something other than people," I added, making absolutely sure she knew. She stomped around for a bit until we found what looked like a farm; this height distorted everything and it was hard to tell. I directed her towards it and we were there in a single bound.

"Bring me down, please," I said gently. She lowered to her knees and helped me to the ground by the stables. Part of me expected someone to be here, an owner or the owner's daughter or whoever took care of farms, but no one came. Directly ahead was a small pasture of cows. This would work.

"There, Jessica!" I pointed to the herd. "There's a bunch of cows, you can eat that, right?"

"I could try it..." she said, not sounding too excited. Her arm reached over me and grabbed a cow, mooing and blurting like crazy. Even the cow could easily fit into her mouth with room to spare, and she began to chew.

"What do you think?"  She gagged and vomited the bovine mess into the grass, coughing and wiping her mouth.

"Alright, you don't like cows, let's try something else. Over there's some apple trees, here, I'll get you some," I said desperately, running over to the harvest. For twenty minutes I plucked apples from branches until I had a sizable amount of them. I rolled them into the clearing and Jessica took them all in her hand, eating them cores and all.  "How about that?"

"Hardly felt it," she said quietly. I sighed in exasperation: that was half the orchard. "Dustin..."

"Yeah?"

"...I need people."

I couldn't believe this. I was trying to help her but she was too picky to eat anything but human beings. She cried all night about how much of a monster she was and she wanted nothing else.

"What do you want me to do?!" I exploded. "Just round up some people and feed 'em to you?! This isn't fucking Little Shop of Horrors, I have a conscience!" I'm so dead. She reached towards me. "...Jessica!" I began. "Let's talk about this!"

I was pinched up and brought to her shoulder again. "You gave me an idea," she said, taking off. 

"Where are we going?" I asked uneasily.

"I'm not exactly sure, but I have an idea."

"What's that?"

"A prison."

"Why?"

"To eat the prisoners."

"What?!"

"The problem with eating people is conscience. If I eat people who committed horrible crimes, who have no conscience, it won't affect mine."

"No, the problem with eating people is that you're eating people!"

"I'm sorry if this scares you, Dustin. But I don't have a choice."

"We just walked away from tons of choices! What about those?"

"It's hard to explain, Dustin. It's not the same kind of food. It's less... filling."

Quite honestly I was floored. She had practically admitted to enjoying eating people. Maybe, just maybe, I would have thought differently if she ate people as a last resort. But she was doing it because she wanted to. That was evil. Who is this girl I'm riding the shoulder of, because it certainly was not Jessica. Where did the old Jessica go? I missed her, if only because her absence quite literally brought armageddon.

I sat the rest of the ride in silence as she lumbered about, looking for a prison. Surprisingly it didn't take long for her to find one, a puny little jail under her knees. She knelt down and took me in her hand. "I'll put you over on the ground. Don't watch if you don't want to," she told me like I was a child, placing me on the ground, by the far side of the prison. I was quite far from her, she was just so massive it was hard to tell.

Without a moment of hesitation she pried apart the roof and looked in at what I could only imagine as horrified people. I didn't want to watch, but I did anyway. I was frozen in my fear, unable to turn away. Her arm fished through the building for someone in an orange jumpsuit. They were snatched in a second, smashed in her teeth a second later, and swallowed right after. One man, two man, three man, four, all down the hatch. When she did this the first time back home, at least she was careful to a certain degree. She even looked a bit remorseful, now that I think about it. But this was different, this was feeding a hunger beyond what her stomach demanded.

Within moments I saw prisoners and guards alike bursting from the building, running in all directions. Order had been lost. I guess Jessica was really good at making that happen. The surging mob caught her attention and she leaned over and started picking people from it. Did she...? Yep, that was a guard. It was all an excuse all along. That's all Jessica was, was excuses. Did she believe in them herself? 

"Hey!" someone suddenly shouted, tugging on my shoulder. "What are you doing here?!" It was a prison guard, sweating profusely. "Whatever, it doesn't matter, we gotta get you outta here!"

"No, I... I can't...!" I stuttered, wrenching free of him.

"Whaddaya mean you can't!? You wanna be eaten or something?!"

"No, it's..."

"It's what, huh?!"

"She wouldn't let me leave," I say somberly. "She knows me."

"What?"

"I can't leave her, you don't understand!"

"...you're helping that son of a bitch?!"

"No, I... please, let me..."

"Hey!" a giant voice boomed through the air. "Leave him alone!" Jessica roared, crawling towards us. I felt a strange coldness as the guard handcuffed us together in the blink of an eye. 

"If you're giant bitch wants to eat me, she's eatin' you too, you fucker," the guard barked. Jessica's fingers swept up the guard and yanked me along with him.

"Let go of him, Dustin," she said, the look on her face one of pure anger. "I'm gonna give this guy what he deserves for trying to hurt you." That broke all of the guard's strength and he began to cry. 

"We're cuffed together, Jessica, I can't!"

"Please don't fuckin' eat me, please!"

"You're gonna have to trust me, then, Dustin," Jessica said, opening her mouth and dangling us over it. It was my worst nightmare come true: held by a string, hung over her mouth. She readjusted us so the guard was on the bottom and dipped him inside.

"PLEASE, NO!" I heard him scream as he struggled. Then I heard a gunshot and Jessica winced in pain: it had struck her in the eye. Her grip was made loose and the tuggings of the guard dragged me inside Jessica's mouth with him.

I was thrown onto the wet surface of her tongue, like an enormous pink snake. All around me were her teeth, like white chunks of concrete, splashed with blood and with loose scraps of skin and limb and clothing between them. Her punching bag of a uvula seemed miles away, and past that was nothing but black.

The guard tackled me, pressing me further into the stickiness of Jessica's tongue. It was hot and terribly humid, completely dark if not for the pockets of light as Jessica spoke: "Dustin? Dustin?!" 

The ground undulated with her every word, knocking us off balance. I was wrestled across her tongue when I saw he was trying to hurl me down her throat. It reminded me of when I was a kid and we pushed each other off rafts, but no one would swim out of that river down there. Melissa's sister was down there.

"We're still chained, you idiot!" I screamed. Thrusting with my legs, I kicked him off of me and he managed to keep himself safely in Jessica's mouth, falling off the tongue and into the canyon of gums directly below. Jessica's tongue pressed down for a moment, stealing his breath, and I was jerked to the side. Like a slimy rodeo, some macabre amusement ride, her tongue reared back and tossed us to the roof of her mouth.

Looking at my heels her esophagus was right behind us.I dug my fingers into an opening between her teeth, disregarding for now the human goop it rewarded me with, and held for dear life. 

"JESSICA GET ME OUT OF HERE!" I screamed, crying like a baby.

"AND ME TOO, PLEASE, GOD PLEASE!" the guard chanted with me, on his stomach amidst the saliva.

Suddenly a ray of light washed over us and two larger than life fingers appeared over her tongue. They blindly held the guard and pulled outward, taking me along with him. But he was brought into the light, and her lips closed before I had made it.

"JESSICA! I'M STILL IN HERE!" I wailed. Her teeth crashed down inches from my hand and the chain between me and the guard was broken. The lips parted and I fell into her palm, drenched and shaking.

"Are you okay, Dustin?" Jessica asked me. I was so disturbed I hardly noticed the sweetness of her voice.

"I... I... guess..." She smiled and seized the guard in her other hand. He screamed and cried and begged, but it fell onto ears deafened by hunger. She was still smiling as he was doomed by her lips, tongue, and teeth. Even as she chewed she grinned at me, as if her charm might lighten my spirits. 

"When I'm done we'll get you cleaned up, okay?" she set me back onto the ground and returned to her meal. No one came my way after that; Jessica didn't even spare them long enough to get that far. Every last one of them was hunted like animals, and dealt the very fate she had become so feared for. I held my knees in my hands and sat there, dripping in my girlfriend's saliva, remembering the chewed-up people on my fingers.

After another ten minutes, she was done. She licked her lips clean and knelt down to see me. "All set?" she asked calmly. I nodded in response and was brought once more to her shoulder. "Let's clean up," she said, again making me feel even more insignificant than I already did.

I guess this was it. I was Jessica's little excuse to carry around. My being let her pretend eating people was okay, and she liked that. She didn't seem all too worried that she nearly ate me. But what about Micheal?

My arm shot to my pocket, hoping Jessica hadn't swallowed my phone, and I nearly sighed in relief as I felt it's bulge. Not right now, but soon. This was too much. Melissa was right. Jessica needed to die.