When I awoke, all around me was dark. Having been used to the gloomy yet still workable light levels within Jo's mouth, this caught me off guard; who turned out the lights? Where was I? The unease that now flooded through me fully awoke me from my dozy state of post-slumber, and I began to take in more of this seeming hostile change of environments. The climate, for one, was sweltering- far hotter than it had been when I dozed off- and the air seemed even harder to breathe, paining my lungs with every breath in. From the waist down, I was immersed in some warm, bubbling liquid; probably saliva, but it seemed somehow more viscous, and I could swear I could feel solid chunks bumping up against my legs. All around me I could hear strange sounds, similar to the ambience I was familiar with in Jo's maw but far, far louder, as if they were all around me...as if I was in the core of her body.. Fear struck through me like a lightning bolt as my legs began to itch, and in a newfound state of panic I realized the dire situation I was in.
I was inside Jo's stomach.
As if the horrific mechanisms of the cruel giantess's body knew I now understood my predicament, with a huge groan the whole fleshy chamber lurched to one side, throwing me and the gallons upon gallons of digesting stew into the slimy wall of her belly. My legs began to burn as if they were on fire, and I was thrust into the gooey, mucous-filled wall, which graciously accepted its new prey and sucked me into a fold in the wrinkled wall. Trapped, I could only scream in terror and defeat as the walls began to exert pressure on my tiny form, trying to break me down like so much food that met its grisly demise in the process of going through Jo's digestive system. As my vision began to fade, I could hear, almost all around me, the booming noise of my victorious tormentress laughing, as she reduced me, her snack, into nothing but energy...
It was around this time that I awoke from the lucid nightmare I had been having with a start.
Shaken thoroughly by what seemed to have been an all too real experience, I took in my current predicament. As it turned out, the 'pressure' from my nightmare was in fact caused by Jo- not that there were many other factors for events happening inside her own mouth- as she pressed me up against the roof of her mouth in a routine spit-swallowing. The irony that my nightmare of being eaten by her was brought about by her attempting to do the exact opposite was lost on me in my relief, breathing the heavy air in deeply as I calmed myself down, lying on the descending tip of her tongue. I had no idea how long I'd rested, but while I still felt tired the doze had done me some good; as had the adrenaline rush from waking up. I had to look over at the ominous, dark portal dominating the back of my oral prison; still looming, more ominous than ever due to my mind racing with fear of what lay at the end of that monstrous gullet.
At that moment, however, I had bigger things to worry about than becoming Jo's bite-sized afternoon snack. Like Jo's continuation of her conversation with Summer. As the air rushed out of her mouth and her tongue moved to form words, I regretted my positioning instantly as I was sent flying off it, crashing into her top teeth and leaving another bruise to remember this hellish event by. Crawling frantically back to behind her teeth, I tried to tune back in to the conversation the two ladies were having.
"...yeah, some customers are just like that, huh. So, got any plans for tonight?" Summer's higher-pitched tones, though muffled, still found their way through the fleshy walls of Jo's cheeks to her miniature prisoner within.
"You know it, girl. Gonna go out to a club, get some drinks, have some fun... you know, the usual stuff." I was intrigued, and wary. Bringing alcohol into this already precarious equation did not seem good for my chances of survival.
"Oh yeah? Where're you thinking of going?"
"No idea, haven't made any plans really. There's a load of good clubs in the centre of the town a few miles away, so I'll probably wander round and find the one I like best."
"Sounds like fun. Where d'you think your favourite place will be?"
"Couldn't possibly say. Where the drinks are cheapest, where the vibe is best..." I felt Jo lean forward as her voice dropped to a whisper. "Or where the guys are cutest." A low giggle rumbled through the cavern, and I could just picture my colossal co-worker, grin on display, leaning in close to my other associate. Summer, however, didn't need to picture it, and Jo's new closeness made a realization pop into her mind.
"Geez, Jo, no offence, but your breath is nasty," she said in slight revulsion. "You could really use a mint of some kind."
She wasn't wrong. While I had napped, the stench of Jo's breath had deteriorated yet again, the various food smells from lunch mingling with the bitter stench of coffee from her cup earlier still this morning and blending together into a stale pallor that dominated the climate within her maw. I couldn't help but laugh at Summer for only being subjected to a whiff of it and complaining; she had no idea how much worse I had it in my current situation. Not only did my every inhalation force me to smell the stale, musty odour of her breath, but I had no choice but to breathe it in, meaning every breath I took was literally like breathing from a gas mask connected to an air tank filled with air recycled from her lungs. It was like being stuck in the back of a dump truck, only far warmer, far slimier, and (much to my relief) far less rubbish, that being made up for by the invisible bacteria that was making headway in re-colonising my prison. I felt air rush through her mouth in a short, sharp gale as Jo exhaled, presumably smelling her own breath to see if her colleague was right.
"Damn, suppose it is sort of bad," she conceded. "Too bad I don't have any gum. But I guess if I just don't get super close to people, no-one's gonna notice. After all, it's not like I'm gonna go around openly breathing on anyone I see, right?"
The two ladies laughed, but Jo knew perfectly well that in keeping me in her smelly grotto of a mouth she was doing exactly that- and she was doing it with pleasure at my discontent. Still, when Summer offered her a piece of her own chewing gum, Jo wasn't about to say no; she knew the sticky bedlam that could cause me in the next hour.
"I only really have this fruit-flavoured bubblegum, but here. It beats the funk that's coming out of your mouth right now." Summer laughed as a packet rustled, and presumably she handed a bit of what was to be my new, in-life nightmare to her co-worker, still oblivious to the fact that within that same co-worker's mouth was her other tiny colleague who was in a very much unpleasant situation.
"Thanks, Summer, you're a lifesaver. Looks like it's almost time for you to head home, too, so if you want to just fill in your timesheets you can head off."
I didn't hear Summer's response, though the sound of her speaking registered. My senses were too focused on the light flooding into Jo's mouth, as a giant pillow-shaped object, vivid pink in colour, came flying into her mouth as the scheming titaness tossed it casually into her maw like popcorn. I watched as, like with her lunch, her beast of a tongue pushed the piece of gum towards her awaiting teeth, which upon receiving their new prize immediately clamped down on it, squashing the pink pillow unceremoniously between the two powerful, dirty yellow walls. Unlike the sandwich, which seemed to just decimate between her jaws, the gum seemed to compress, flatten out, resist the immense pressure of the giantess's jowls by becoming a blob of rubbery material, already soaked by the saliva that was flowing in rivers around it. After a couple of good chews, which would have made my own tiny body into nothing but blood and viscera by this stage, the pink pillow that had entered Jo's mouth mere seconds before was only recognizable by colour, having become a soaking, sticky putty-like substance now somewhat conforming to the increasing and relaxing of pressure of her jaws. All this happened in the space of a few seconds on (thankfully) the other side of the chamber, so I was left to watch the strangely fascinating scene unfold. Squelching sounds echoed throughout the maw as her teeth made short work of whatever solid structure it had, and a pleasant scent of strawberry began to pervade the stuffy, dank air. Part of me thought that perhaps Jo would let me survive this newest visitor to her jaws without me ever having to come into contact with it.
The rest of me slapped myself, and told me to be more realistic.
Sure enough, the now thoroughly masticated piece of chewing gum was taken by her tongue and pulled around the outside of her teeth, as if it were cleaning them, along with a torrent of rank-smelling spit. Unable to escape the stretching, gooey substance, I found my tiny body adhering to it, being dragged along with the constantly shapeshifting blob as it was barrelled about her mouth, allowing the titaness to leach its flavour as she did with my own tiny body. The experience was much akin to my own first terrifying moments within Jo's oppressive mouth; being pushed into her elastic cheeks, the hard upper palate of her jaws and even her lips by her over-inquisitive and powerful tongue, except this time the smell, while still fairly stale and vile, was nowhere near the powerful, reeking stench I had encountered upon my introduction to my new prison, and every time I was slammed into something I was plastered there by a sheet of warm, pink gum, covered like everything else in the gooey spit, of which there was seeming oceans that were constantly disappearing down her throat. As for the gum itself, it was as if instead of stepping in it or getting it in my hair, I had essentially fallen into a massive vat of the vile, sticky stuff. It was everywhere; between my toes, in my hair (both on my head and in other places), in my belly button, and at some points clogging my nose, ears and mouth, which made breathing sometimes exceptionally difficult, fighting against a sticky, stringy wall of gum.
Worst, however, was when Jo did what one was meant to do with gum; chew it. When those stained guillotines first came down on both me and the squishy material around me, I very nearly screamed; holding back just in case Summer happened to hear, and her questioning led to my demise in the bubbling pit of Jo's belly. Every time her teeth came down, they hit the gum with a massive squelch, like a person pulling their boot out of cloying mud, that echoed through the strawberry-scented air. The pressure on both sides was immense each time, and with each chew I was sure my bones would crack and I would become a splat of viscera then and there, but somehow the squishy nature of the gum I was stuck in saved me from any harm by her relentless jaws. For minutes at a time I was subjected to this torture in my pink, sticky straightjacket, facing what felt like an eternity of pressure going up and down constantly, with nothing but the terrible squelching to focus on. It was torture at its purest form; constant discomfort, constant fear, and constant threat of death. If I wasn't already as accustomed to the terrors I had encountered in that hellish maw already, it would have driven me insane.
Eventually, I was released from the terrible, crushing molars, my whole body somewhat aching from the constant grinding, and I was unceremoniously dragged across her upper palate. Stuck like roadkill on the pulsating platform of her tongue, I barely could lift my head, to see that she had flattened out the gum on the muscle as much as she could. As the great appendage shifted forwards, I tried to figure out what Jo was trying to do, but my curiosity was soon sated.
She began to blow more air out of her powerful lungs into the cavern. I watched in both anxiety and amazement as the gum on her tongue began to move between her lips, carrying me with them until I found myself, for the first time in at least five hours, outside of her mouth. Outside the pink-tinted walls, I could see the familiarity of the café bar area, as colossal as Jo's breakfast bar and Jo herself, stretching for miles and miles seemingly. After five hours in perpetual gloom, it was a wondrous and refreshing sight, even if only for a moment and through the bubble of my captor's bubblegum. After that captivating moment, the bubble burst like a balloon, and I fell onto the skin of her upper lip, stuck by the sticky gum all around me and only able to watch as her hungry tongue smothered me, lapping me back up into my prison. My brief foray into the outside world again was over, but I was glad that it had at least happened; I feared I may have gone insane had I stayed in that perpetual gloom of the awful, oxygen-starved environment of Jo's mouth for too long.I had to relish times like that, because they certainly would not happen often.
For the next hour, I was subject to the idle playing of the titaness with her chewing gum. I was chewed more, incorporated into a few more bubbles, and generally thrown about her mouth along with the gooey, rapidly decolourising substance. The flavour soon wore off, as did the smell; the problem with such fruit gums is that they merely mask the stale odours already present, and not very well. After the initial panic, I grew used to my new predicament, and as she toyed with me while she closed down the café for the day I had time to listen to her moving chairs and tables, cleaning and preparing for tomorrow's staff; but more importantly, I had time to think. Jo's conversation with Summer, aside from the admittedly humorous interaction about her stale breath, had garnered me some useful information; Jo was planning on hitting the town tonight. Which meant that, as the prisoner of her mouth, so was I.
I just had to figure out how to survive in the mouth of a drunk giantess.