It was a blessing that my new prison remained calm for as long as it did. That did not change the fact, however, that when the colossus unwittingly was trying to digest me began to move, the chaos made me any more prepared for it.
Unbeknownst to me, after the 'thing in her throat' incident my captor had taken a small amount of time to sit down; when one was as drunk as she was, it was a surprisingly sensible idea of her to sit down and take a breather, in order to make herself feel a little better. After feeling her stomach feel uneasy, the belch I heard booming above me seemed to have perked her up, because not a few moments after I heard the muffled gulping above me signalling the entrance of yet more alcohol to her body. A moment later, the sphincter burst open, and a waterfall of more foul-smelling spirits splashed into her stomach not a few feet away from me. Splattering into the mush, it trickled down into the bubbling lake, which hissed and gurgled in somewhat unwilling acceptance at the new fluid. All around me, the beast of a belly gurgled and glorped; whether out of mere awareness of new fluid entering it or its efforts to keep the melting pot of spirits inside was beyond me. All I was really aware of was the spattering raining down onto my tiny form, joining the amalgam of Jo's bodily slime already coating my body.
Then, the dancing started.
Whatever dance the tipsy titan was doing to the synthetic, muffled music outside, it made her entire stomach bounce up and down too, churning and roiling ever more. As one can imagine, this sent the stomach into utter chaos. The lake became a stormy sea, crashing onto the edges of my mush shore and eroding it away. Scrabbling and slipping further up the mush, I could feel little droplets of the foul stew hitting my skin, wherever the droplets fell leaving a burning sensation that petrified me. Islands of mush now floated in the bubbling, roiling mix, bobbing up and down like seagulls on the sea. The sloshing sound of it filled my ears, along with the more frequent groans and grumbles of her belly protesting and the increased hammering of her heart. On and on it went, until slowly my safe haven was all but destroyed, and I found myself perched with my back to the stomach wall, the floor below me rapidly disintegrating into the surging pool.
It was then, when I seemed so close to death in the storm of festering stomach fluid, that my fight or flight reaction finally kicked in in full. With it came back my resilient hope, that little voice telling me that in the midst of all this death and unknowing, much less uncaring, destruction, that there would be, could be a way out; I had to fight for it, fight as hard as I could for my life to reach it, to not die and disappear as I assimilated into my cruel captor's body, as so many had before me in the horror of this girl's stomach. My oxygen-starved brain may have been causing me to hallucinate, but in that moment I almost felt like I could hear voices egging me on, those who had been condemned to death in the gloom of that gruesome, unforgiving pit and lost the fight to Jo's insatiable belly; telling me that I wouldn't be just another victim.
In that moment, I used all my remaining strength, all my willpower strengthened by my will to live and the delusions of my oxygen deprived brain and leaped for the nearest bobbing island of mush, over the chaos below.
And I made it.
With a resounding splat, I barrelled into the mush, scrabbling up on top of the disgusting yet life-saving bolus of masticated food to keep away from the seething, bubbling liquid below. I didn't realise it at the time, but in her drunkenness and her activity Jo's body had switched priority away from digesting her dinner and towards her dancing; had I been swallowed at any other time, there may well have been no story of survival to tell. Had I been aware of that then, my fear may have been nullified just a tiny amount, but as it was my fear knew no bounds as it fuelled the adrenaline now taking me over.
The chaos seemed to continue for ages, though it was only a few minutes until her raving finally came to an end. As time torturously ticked on, I clung to my soft, slimy mush-berg for dear life, scrambling around it as it was carried by the soupy stomach fluids around Jo's belly. More of the repulsive fluid coated the blob, and spattered onto me as well; realising the fact that I was literally covered in Jo's vomit made me dry-heave again. Perhaps the most terrifying few moments was when the bolus of food flipped entirely, and my body was submerged in the foul digestive spa; immediately my skin started to burn, and I had to swim in the vortex of raging currents and other, smaller bits of digesting material to get back to the surface and onto my little platform, gasping for what little air I could find and shaking as much of the slime off as possible, in order to stop my skin, already red and itching, from getting any worse. How I didn't pass out was beyond me, but I like to believe that my sheer will to survive, even with the slim chances I had, fuelled me on adrenaline, keeping me from blacking out and most likely never waking up again.
When eventually Jo stopped dancing, the fleshy chamber slowly returned to normal, sloshing about as she walked wherever. I flopped down on the mush (disgusting as it was, considering my state I wasn't massively fussed), thanking God it was over and looking out over the destruction it had caused. The stew, now casually bubbling away again, seemed thicker than before; it didn't take a genius to figure out that was because of the food that was now dissolving into it. Various clumps of mush still floated around, most of them smaller than my platform, some sinking below the surface to be eaten away to nothing. Forcing my worry about whether my position would be safe for much longer to the back of my mind, I turned my attention to the sounds coming from the world outside, where I noted with some hope that the nightclub music had faded away. Then, from far above me, the slurred voice of my captor broke through the ambience.
"Yeah, good tuhseeyou... Mell.... I fuckin' love ya, girl...."
Whatever Melissa's response exactly was, I wasn't sure, but I could tell by Jo's response that she had confessed about sending me to my death.
"You whaaat! You mean he's... in ma tummy? Shiiit, thass not gonna be good for him," the garbled raving continued. "I thought I was missing something in ma mouth. Yur a bitch, huh?" Inebriated giggling filled the chamber. Either Jo was too drunk to care, or, more likely, she didn't care regardless. That I'd come to terms with a long time ago.
"Ohh well, I'm sure he'll love it anyway, since he loved ma mouth so much. And soon he'll be a part of me... unless he comes out the other end unharmed!" She erupted into raucous laughter, the kind only used by typecast movie villains and people who are completely soused. In any other context, her extreme inebriation might have made me laugh. As it was, I was more focused on her just getting home; perhaps then, an opportunity for escape might arise.
Despite everything, Jo managed to hail down a taxi and give the poor driver inside instructions on how to get back home. Meanwhile, her stomach continued to gurgle uncomfortably away, trying to get back to its job while not upsetting itself and spewing all its contents onto the floor of the vehicle as it sped through the late night. More and more platforms sunk beneath the brown, bubbling surface, and I came to realise that I was now caught in a deadly race of time- and I had no idea of the time limit. I had between then, and when my own faithful bolus of food disappeared into the still thickening muck, to escape the fleshy, churning pit deep inside my co-worker before it assimilated me into her.
I just had to hope the opportunity would arise- and arise it would.
"I'm hoooommmmeeee!" Jo shouted at no-one in particular as she presumably entered her house once more. Stumbling about, her belly started to get a bit more stormy again, but my focus was held by the slurred statement from the heavens that came next.
"Mmmmmmm, I'm hungry...."
Immediately, I went into both scared and planning mode. On the one hand, introducing more food into Jo's already fairly full belly would be chaos on a new scale, chaos that I wasn't sure I could survive. On the other... were her belly to get full enough, it was entirely possible that I could pull myself through her sphincter and up her throat once she inevitably passed out. It was a big if, and a dangerous one at that, if I wanted to survive long enough to get to that stage... but it was better than nothing. All I had to do was wait for whatever was unfortunate enough to come in the drunk giant's ravenous sights to come falling into her belly.
After a few minutes, I could hear above the muffled but distinctive chomping, sloshing and squelching that I knew to be her jaws at work. In fact, it sounded a little too similar; and so it should have, as my questions were answered when a stream of white liquid with brown chunks came splattering into the sack, landing with a multitude of splashes in the bubbling lake below. Cereal; with toast, the staple of those returning from the night out. It was almost ironic that the very meal she'd been eating when we started on the long and torturous escapade was now the same meal I was seeing splashing into her belly, like some strange déjà vu. Ironies, however, would have to wait; there were far more pressing issues as more and more mouthfuls made their way down Jo's long, slimy gullet.
The reaction from the stomach was immediate. It groaned and protested louder than before, and started churning more vigorously, whipping up a storm less powerful than when she was dancing, but chaos all the same. The smell in the air was permeated by the sour stench of milk and saliva, as well as the rank smell of half-digested chocolate; clearly, my co-worker was partial to something sweet after her nights on the town. More and more splashed down into the soup, raising the level higher and higher, while the storm continued and my platform got smaller and smaller all the while. Soon, I knew, it would slip under the waves and take me with it, and I started desperately looking around for a new safe spot in vain. The chewing, gulping, and splashing continued all around me, but my time was up. Slowly, I realised my faithful platform was finally sinking; first I was knee-deep, then waist deep, then all too quickly I was up to my neck in the revolting stew and paddling with all my energy to stay afloat. The disgusting mixture lapped at my face, stinging my eyes, my nose, my mouth; the taste of Jo's vomit was almost too much to bear in itself. More and more slop poured through the roof of her stomach periodically, only making the storm worse and pushing me towards the wall, which sucked me in like so many forlorn pieces of masticated food before it. Trapped in a slimy, fleshy crevice, I felt my skin sear with pain as more acids were secreted around me, still neck deep in a pocket of the burning hot fluid, and I saw my life begin to flash before my eyes as I was literally beginning to be digested. Terrified, I refused to believe this was it, this was the end of my struggle, that I was going to die in the belly of a drunk woman I only partially knew.
And it wasn't.
Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was inevitable considering the factors. Maybe it was fate, God, destiny, whatever one wants to call it. But the roar that engulfed Jo's belly, a gurgling, rumbling noise that resounded louder than any noise I had heard from the evil organ before, was the signal that my life, so close to being on the brink of leaving this world, was not yet over.
"Ughhhhh, shiiit, I don't feel so good..." came the sonorous moan from above; but I didn't need her to tell me that. Already, I was being ejected from the wrinkle in her stomach, caught up in a torrent of alcohol, digesting sushi and cereal, milk, acid, and a whole manner f other terrible substances heading straight for the sphincter at the top of her stomach. Screwing up my eyes and keeping my mouth shut, I let myself be taken with the torrent, only really half-conscious as the vomit shot up her gullet again. Suddenly I could feel fresh air on my face, and opened my eyes to see the mouth I was so familiar with rushing past me, the pristine white porcelain and tranquil water of what I rightly assumed was a toilet bowl rushing up to meet the explosive blast of sick. I didn't even notice I was on a collision course with her filthy yellow incisors until they were right in front of me.
In the last moment, I could only think that I had been saved by a miracle.
Then, I smashed into the enamel, and everything went black.