It is scary enough to suddenly see the next horror you will face in life appear before you without any prior knowledge of it. It is a scarier thing entirely to know a horror is, inevitably, coming.

The six words that had boomed through the cavern not a few seconds before seemed to repeat over and over in my mind as I huddled in the side of her mouth, back up against the slightly soft, pink wall of her gums, the foothills of the mountainous, blemished molars that would soon be the architects of so much destruction and chaos. I had ten minutes, maybe fifteen at most, before my world was turned into anarchy and turmoil as whatever food fell prey to my colossal tormentress's voracious appetite. Having witnessed firsthand what the maw I was inhabiting right now could do to food, needless to say I was petrified; being in the utter bedlam of Jo's mouth while her great jaws chewed and masticated and condemned food to the depths of her gut would be my greatest trial yet. So many opportunities for death presented themselves; suffocation by masticated food blobs, drowning in the maelstrom of spit and mush, being sliced or chopped or crushed by her blemished teeth or being swallowed whole in a mushy bolus of saliva and chewed food, to reach an acidic, burning demise in the pit of her stomach. Indeed, part of me feared it impossible.

But if I could survive Jo's breath, spit, tongue, teeth, voice, and all the other horrors of her gloomy, oppressive mouth this long, I'd be damned if I didn't try to survive this.

Ten minutes of waiting meant ten minutes to plan. If I wanted to survive this, I would have to weather it as best I could, like a great storm. My body still ached, and there was still a dull pain in my head that refused to completely go away, but I had no choice, and no form of escape. My only real option was to try and avoid it as best I could; being anywhere near the centre of her mouth when the first bite made contact was essentially asking for a death sentence, as far as I was concerned. That was a surefire way to end up being pushed by her powerful tongue to her murderous teeth, crushing me to paste and viscera which would mix with the mushed up food like ingredients in a bowl. The thought of my death amounting to becoming a flavouring to Jo's bacon sandwich didn't appeal to me- though I doubt it would to all but the most dedicated masochists and macrophiles- and thus I decided that a better option would be my original fallback plan, the so-called 'safe spot' between her molars and her cheek. Although I didn't relish the prospect of being so close to the crushing, grinding molars, it still beat being sent to my execution on top of them, or disappearing down her oesophagus like the morsel I was. Crawling across the slimy floor where her smooth cheek met the more squishy walls of her gum line, until I came to the last and lowest molar tooth, where I could just about peek over the uneven, yellow surface and into the centre of her mouth.

All was quiet on the Western Front. The old saying took on more meaning than usually credited for as the great, living chamber was soon to become the front line of a tremendous massacre, with my tiny self being caught in the crossfire. For now, however, her teeth rested, upper teeth hanging ominously over their lower counterparts until her larger front incisors overlapped her smaller, more peg-like lower incisors at the front of her mouth. Her tongue, usually so active (mostly at my expense, mind you) was resting almost serenely in the basin of her lower jaw, occasionally moving slowly and slightly to lap at her front teeth in idleness, though not enough to break the thin, slivery strands of saliva that were suspended between her upper palate and the slimy surface of the monstrous appendage. Even the air seemed still, though that was mostly because Jo was breathing out of her nose, leaving the air I was breathing in the same thick, sweltering state it was normally in. The rank, pungent scent of coffee hung in the air, even though any last drip of coffee disappeared down Jo's gullet nearly an hour ago. As if foreshadowing the terrible monstrosity that was about to take place (which it technically was) the general sounds of her body at work and the muffled ambience from outside was drowned out by a huge, gurgling roar rising up from the depths of her body, signaling her stomach's emptiness and requirement of more food to sate the primal beast of her hunger. So loud was it that the titaness herself made a quiet comment about it;

"Damn, how loud can you be? Lunch won't be that long, and then you'll be happy. You might even get a little extra... all depends." The malicious, quiet laugh reverberated through the cavern, sending shivers down my spine. Jo was fully willing to eat me, I'd come to terms with that, but hearing her casually remark on the fact still made the fear rise up in my body. However, it also steeled my resolve; I had to prove to her that I wasn't as easy to kill as she thought. If this was her vigilante justice for my own fantasies, then I would survive all she threw at me to prove I could outlive my sentence.

Finally, I heard from outside the muffled sound of the kitchen bell ring, almost like it was signaling the beginning of the fight. As my body was bounced slightly up and down as Jo ascended the stairs, I braced myself for the first bite and looked over the landscape of her mouth, to watch the show unfold. Saliva ran like rivers into the growing pool in the pit of her mouth as she took her lunch, thanked the chef, and took her seat at the table. This was it- the time to either survive or meet my maker- and, as always, Jo was prepared to make the buildup as dramatic as possible.

"Well, over the lips and past the gums...look out, midget, here it comes!"

The softly-spoken declaration marked the beginning of Jo's latest, and deadliest, show.

Light flooded into the cavern once more, making the saliva that caked everything from her tongue to her teeth glisten in the artificial light of the café's ambient lighting. The gaping hole slowly widened until it was at its widest, like when she had first subjected me to her abhorrent morning halitosis so many hours ago, except this time I was looking at it from the other side. The saliva continued to flow like beer in an alehouse as suddenly, like a great spaceship coming into land at a space station, the huge end of a colossal sandwich, two veritable plains of fluffy, white bread between which were huge slices of delicious-smelling grilled pork, sailed into the huge portal and into her mouth. As the end made contact with her tongue, which reached out like a rabid creature to accept its prey, the jaw below me began to lift up, until the huge shredding, crunching sound of slicing incisors on soft bread and crispy bacon dominated the entire cavern, severing the bite from the rest of the sandwich and leaving it trapped, as I was, in the gloom of her maw.

In the split second before the chaos started, despite all my fears, I had to wonder with some amusement how silly Jo must have looked to anyone passing by while she dramatized that first bite.

With what seemed like incredible power, Jo's tongue tossed the bite over to the side of her mouth, the side I was on. I ducked down quickly as tons of bread and bacon were suddenly thrust over my head, looking up in amazement and horror as her crushing, powerful jaws obliterated the building-sized piece of sandwich. My hearing, now essentially fully functional again, was assaulted by the intense mushing and slight crunching as seeming acres of food was obliterated between her teeth, relentlessly masticating and obliterating any structure the food had and turning it into mush, great blobs of which were now raining down around me like a saliva-drenched mudslide. Alongside these sounds of destruction were the squelching sounds of her monster of a tongue at work, helping to fish up and deliver any bits of food that were lucky enough to escape her teeth beforehand to their inevitable execution. Saliva flew around, as it always seemed to, in a maelstrom as the tongue suddenly shifted the mush to the other side of her maw for chewing, as if the other side of her mouth needed as much attention as my side. I found myself trapped in a churning river of disgusting slop, made up of the horrid amalgamation of masticated bread, bacon and Jo's ever-present gooey saliva, moving like a mudslide down the canal between her gums and teeth and out into exactly where I didn't want to be; the centre of her mouth.

'Storm' doesn't even begin to accurately describe the utter discord that reigned in Jo's mouth then; a maelstrom of saliva and mush and her tongue in the middle of it all, directing great boulders of the same gooey, disgusting slop to her ever mashing teeth. The bitter smell of coffee mixed with the scent of tomato ketchup, which had of course mingled with her saliva to make repulsive dull red goo, and the smoky, somehow still mildly pleasant scent of grilled bacon. Somehow I managed to escape the mess I was trapped in, and struggled over to the pit of her mouth in the hurricane-esque chaos, my tiny size enabling me to dodge her monstrous tongue and dive into the slimy, yet more sheltered pit, cowering by the root of her tongue. A terrible hum of pleasure, not dissimilar to the ones I heard in my first hellish moments trapped in her mouth, echoed through the bedlam and acting a background ambience to all its various squelching and mushing sounds, indicating Jo's pleasure at taking her first bite of her lunch, beginning to sate her hunger and giving me the fight of my life in the process. Eventually, the grand finale came; I hugged the veiny, bulbous base of her tongue tight as I could as Jo used the immense forces of her mouth to bring all the mush and saliva together onto the platform of her monstrous tongue, before sending it to oblivion down her gullet with a monstrous, squelching gulp, taking a large amount of saliva with it. Had I not been clinging onto the appendage at the time, I would've inevitably shared its fate; but I had survived, at least the first bite. After the chaos and utter terror of that first, savoury bite, all I could have asked for was at least a small reprieve; but the giantess was hungry, and she already had her prey in her hands, opening her lips to take in the next delicious bite.

What followed was chaos followed by chaos followed by chaos; more mountainous chunks of bread and bacon, enough to feed me separately for weeks, if not months, meeting their immediate ends at the hands (or rather, surfaces) of her slicing, cutting, and crushing teeth, formidably reducing the once delicious-looking sandwich into more and more of the revolting masticated mush, coated and imbued with a foul mix of ketchup and saliva. Each theatre of destruction was ended in the same way, in the form of the mush being formed into a food bolus under massive pressure from Jo's mouth, pressure that made my ears pop and my tired eyes feel as if they were bulging out of my skull. Then, they were swallowed down into her body with the same audible, squelching gulp, condemned to the even more unholy pit of her stomach for further digestion in its acids. During what I assumed was the fourth bite- I lost count after a while- a mass of the repulsive food mush knocked me from my shelter under Jo's tongue, forcing me back into the storm. Along with a load of other food mush, I was flung across her mouth directly at her teeth, mechanically moving up and down constantly. Closing my eyes, I waited for my puny body to be crushed into the same paste... only to find that, by some insane streak of luck, I had ended up wedged between two of her molars, directly underneath where all the terrible destruction was occurring. As far as I was aware, I was stuck fast; and I wasn't willing to try and get unstuck for the time being. My new position was perfect for watching the discord unfold and yet not experience any of the effects of it that might get me killed. Wedged between the stained, coated boulders, I was immune to the immense pressure and suction of Jo swallowing, and no amount of sips of water could wash me out. For the next five or so minutes, I weathered the storm from my new outcropping, surviving food being obliterated by her murderous teeth mere centimetres from my head, getting assaulted by yet more tons of the glutinous food, and occasionally having the same abhorrent mixture washed off me by a sip of rushing water. Eventually, I watched as she gulped down the last remnants of the sandwich, signaling the conclusion of her meal with a belch that never escaped her lips, instead being confined to her mouth for politeness's sake. The stinking mixture of air from her stomach dominated the already stale, sweltering cavern, stinking of vomit and ketchup and bacon and chewed up bread, but despite my eyes watering and a bout of lightheadedness, my mind was in ecstasy. Lunch was over.

And I had survived.