It is often said of those who have experienced and survived a natural disaster or other such terrible, scarring events that they emerge from the horror with a greatly altered perspective on life. While to the general observer the act of Jo consuming her bacon sandwich in a quiet corner of the café may seem mundane and trivial, to the itty-bitty person held prisoner inside the harsh confines of her mouth it was as if any order and semblance to the world had collapsed in a maelstrom of saliva, masticated mush and chomping, destructive teeth. Certainly I had come out of the experience with a new reverence and fear of the human mouth and its capabilities- more specifically Jo's considering I was its prisoner but as a generalised feeling also- but far more palpable was the immense feeling of relief which washed over me like a cool breeze; ironically, the opposite of the climate I was still languishing in at present. Even wedged between two of her boulder-like molars like an escaped crumb, watching her giant fingers entering her lips one by one with unbearable slurping noises, I was blissful in the knowledge that Jo's hunger, at least for now, had been sated, and I had not become prey to it.
In my new position, stuck like so many morsels of food that had escaped the fate of her gullet between two of her infamous, yellow teeth, I found I was finally up-close and personal with the final part of her mouth, the frequent yet fleeting display of which were what had dragged me headfirst into this situation in the first place. In her 'full tour' of her dangerous and oppressive maw, Jo had neglected to give me an interactive experience of her teeth, the closest I'd got to which was a dramatic showing of what exactly they could do by obliterating and condemning her breakfast directly in front of me. This was probably because giving me such a tour would have required me to enter the living cavern itself; surely such a trial would have then ruined the terrifying yet exhilarating descent into her hungry jaws. After that, aside from a couple of chewing sessions, during which the thought of not dying had been far more prominent than the state of her teeth, my period of time behind the giantess's sealed lips had been relatively free of encounters with the blemished boulders; until now, when in the chaos of Jo eating her lunch I had been flung across her mouth and somehow wedged between two of her molar teeth, stuck or, more accurately, unwilling to move until the bedlam had finally been gulped down into her body. Now, with two imposing yellow walls either side of me, I could finally get a closer look at the grin that had pulled me down the rabbit hole.
As I had mentioned previously and often, Jo's teeth were stained a pretty deep shade of yellow; more so than usual for people of the area. However, this yellow staining was not entirely uniform, entirely depending on where one was in her mouth. Her huge top incisors were arguably the least yellow, getting slowly darker as the teeth marched back into her mouth. In my little crevice, the staining was worst of all; poor dental hygiene in the hard-to-reach areas between her teeth meant that I was probably in one of the more dirty areas of her mouth. It made me slightly queasy to think that I was sharing this tight space with the bacteria that had already begun multiplying since Jo last brushed and was probably already forming little colonies of grimy plaque on the walls around me. The surface of the tooth, while it looked fairly smooth from a distance, up close revealed countless tiny blemishes, eroded areas and pockmarks, complemented by a rough texture underneath the warm, pungent saliva that covered it like a thin coating. Over the years, constant attacking by the bacteria that loved to colonise her sweltering mouth had eroded away the rock-hard surface of her teeth, which helped to contribute to their blemished, yellow colouration. Jo's addiction to coffee didn't help either, as the brown, heavily aromatic liquid helped to stain them even more, darkening them further. There was also the lingering possibility that Jo was a smoker; although I strongly doubted it, there was a chance she had the odd cigarette every now and then, which would also contribute to that iconic, yellow-toothed beam I had been faced with so often. Whatever the reasoning, the result was the moderately deep shade of yellow before me, varying slightly in hue between the various blotches that made up its colouration.
As I was taking the time to take a closer look at the discoloured mountainside before me, my co-worker, now with a sated and busily churning belly, was noticing the irritating little crumbs of food that had gotten stuck between her teeth during her repast and wondering what to do about them. Realising she had the perfect implement already in her mouth to solve the problem, my world was suddenly rocked as Jo whispered her new orders to me.
"Hey, little guy, you still in there? I need you to get these annoying little bits of food out of my teeth. Don't know how I didn't swallow you, but I certainly will if you don't get on it. Consider it hard labour while you're doing time."
Diverting my attention away from the tooth in front of me, I finally looked across the rest of the landscape of her mouth, fresh and humming from its recent meal. As I scanned the semi-circular wall of teeth around me, I noticed several pieces of food that were indeed stuck between the thrusting peaks and plateaus; somehow the only trace that any food had even passed her lips, aside from the ripe new stench of coffee mingling with digesting bacon, bread and ketchup, complemented by the sour, vile odour of stomach fluid.
"Let me just finish my water, and then I'll let you start," she continued, stale air rushing through her erratically moving jaws as she did so. "Pick 'em out and place 'em on my tongue, and I'll swallow them down with the rest."
Instincitvely I tried to curl up and avoid being swept away as a cascade of fresh water entered her mouth, sloshing around her jaws in an Atlantic heavy storm fashion before disappearing down her throat. The water was, admittedly, convenient; I was parched, having nothing liquid based to drink but Jo's saliva, which I'd had more than my forced fill of, plus it washed some of the sticky food mush and other crud out of my tangled, thoroughly dishevelled hair. After the torrent had passed, I managed to shimmy out from my crevice with a small amount of difficulty, sliding down her teeth and gums until I reached the hard-ish surface of the pit of her mouth. She had lifted her tongue up and out of the way, allowing me safe passage across to the ridge on the other side of her maw, where my first crumbs awaited.
"Right, I've gotta get back to work," Jo's voice whispered around me, making me lose my balance momentarily. "I want them all gone within the hour... or you'll be paying rent in my small intestine by the end of the day."
That was all the motivation I needed. Approaching the first defiant morsel- what looked to be a masticated crumb of bacon- I swallowed my disgust and grabbed for it with both hands, pulling backwards with all my might. The surface was lukewarm, squishy and slimy to the touch, sending shivers of revulsion through my body as my pulling was able to slowly dislodge the mush ball from between her molars. My big mistake was letting it fall on me upon its freedom; it was almost as big as I was, and most likely nearly as heavy, too. I had to roll it off me, and then roll it towards her resting tongue, feeling for all the world as if I was a druid offering some sacrifice up to my god of whatever; which, considering I was trapped within the world of her mouth, I guess Jo was. With a great flick, the tongue threw the insubstantial nub of food towards the back if her mouth, where it fell down into her oesophagus with no difficulty. By this point, I was able to largely repress fears of Jo's ability to effortlessly swallow me whole, but watching something as large as my miniscule form disappear so easily down her throat still gave me shivers. Continuing on to the next crumb, of similar size and nature to the first but this time with the pale colouration of bread, I repeated the process, continuing with each morsel until my arms and legs ached and I was breathing in and out heavily; a harder task given the thickness of the stale, stagnant air. Some morsels were easy to pull out; some defiant and stubborn as a Missouri mule. All were taken, all were offered, and all were sacrificed, being sucked down the giantess's hungry gullet to their delayed fate within. As I worked, I had to marvel at how sloppy or voracious an eater Jo must be to get this must stuck in her teeth; how she managed it was beyond me.
It wasn't until I reached the final morsel of chewed up bacon that I felt my own stomach growl.
Crazy as it seemed, I hadn't actually eaten since yesterday, when I had gotten lunch after leaving work. I don't assume I ever made it home after that; there was a blank spot in my memory between then and waking up on Jo's breakfast bar. Either way, my stomach, filled only thus far by water and disgusting saliva (which I had to commend it for not immediately rejecting, was starved, and the only food it could see was the masticated blob that was stuck in front of me. Internally, my mind warred against my stomach; on the one hand, it was a disgusting blob of masticated food, and eating it would basically be equivalent to eating Jo's regurgitated food; on the other, it was, technically, still edible. After much debate, stomach won over; I'd thrown any sense of dignity out the window when I woke up naked and tiny beside my co-worker's breakfast, before being tortured by and imprisoned within her hellish mouth. After extracting it from between her teeth, I tentatively scraped off a bite-sized portion, and scrunching my eyes up I shoved it in my mouth, chewing. The slimy, squishy texture was awful, making me shiver... but the taste, despite the bacon already being chewed up and condemned to being stuck between the teeth of this hungry titaness, still tasted fairly decent. My stomach craved more, and I got stuck in, sitting in the pit of her mouth devouring her leftovers like a scavenger dog rooting through bins.
It amazed me that what would barely even be a speck on her tongue could fill me up with more to spare, reminding me of truly just how small I was in this alien cavern within my scheming co-worker. But for now, at least, I felt somewhat content, even letting myself stretch out my body into the hard, smooth plain of the bottom of her mouth, head and back propped up against the teeth I had just served as toothpick for. I had survived the chaos of lunch and even done the janitorial work afterwards, and now I was taking a well-deserved break while Jo continued to work. The exhaustion, which I had been thus far keeping somewhat at bay through all the adrenaline rushes of my time in Jo's mouth, crept over me like a veil, and despite myself I found myself dozing off to sleep, ready to awaken when the next trial inevitably came.