I was alive.

Good God, I was alive.

Admittedly, at first my unconscious rendered me confused; as I awoke, body aching from slamming into her tooth at rocket speed, my first thoughts were that the afterlife, whatever or wherever it was, was awfully dark, and awfully hot. Then the smell hit me; the stench of vomit and alcohol and other foul things. Yet still, my mind was baffled as to where I was, this seeming afterlife that was uncomfortably closer to a hell than a heaven. The last thing I remembered was falling unconscious, and before that my predicament in Jo's stomach... which was when it hit me.

Quite literally.

Jo's lethargic tongue flopped straight down on top of me, making me collapse again onto the slimy floor with all the weight of the fleshy appendage on my back. In any other case, such a blow would have caused me at least some discomfort. But it reminded me where I was, and what had happened.

I had escaped Jo's stomach.

Relief and joy flooded through me. Against all the odds, including a very near sweep with death, I had managed to cheat death yet again; and cheat my titanic captor of delivering it. If I could escape that most forsaken and hellish of places, I could finish this off; which brought me back to the matter I had been mulling over since my equally close brush with death mere hours before, before the chaotic evening began. It was time to make my escape.

Wriggling out from under her tongue, I looked around the maw I knew so well, strangely tranquil. Moonlight flooded in through her agape jaws, a steady wind blowing in and out methodically; clearly, my tormentress had finally fallen into a drunken stupor after vomiting her late night snack and the rest of her guts up. In the light, Jo's mouth almost had a strange beauty to it; the teeth, despite their filthiness, almost seemed to glisten in the silvery moonlight. I pulled myself over her teeth and decided to sit myself on her lower lip, those same red streaks that had been the sealed gates to my prison all through my hectic day. They were surprisingly soft and plushy, not to mention warm from the blood rushing through them, and it seemed like the perfect place to just sit and think, plan out my next move. I had never expected to find myself in such a tranquil situation so close to the mouth that had been almost nothing but active and at times chaotic for the entire time I had experienced it. Sat on her lip, I let myself relax, feeling the warm, rancid air blowing gently against my back, before lightly pulling at me as the sleeping giant inhaled.

Before me, the continent sized body of my co-worker laid out before me. It was almost as if I was looking over the land from a mountaintop; from my position, I could see all the way to the precipices of her feet, one leg curled inwards at such an angle that I could see, even from a distance, the wrinkles of her sole. Her arms were similarly splayed out, indicating her collapse onto the bed she was currently sleeping in, head propped up against pillows in an arrangement that could easily save her life should she throw up again. Taking in the fascinating sight, this living landscape of hills and precipices and places to explore, and despite all the suffering I had experienced from the owner of said body, my curiosity begged to explore this new environment, serene in torpor as Jo slept off her drunken escapades. I had survived Jo's breath, her tongue, her teeth, and her saliva. I had survived her meals and her drinks, her exercise and her rest. I had even bargained my life away in order to save myself from her slicing me in two out of anger. Reflecting on all of this, I knew that if I was to escape, now was the time to fly; but I knew also that I had time. A little adventure couldn't hurt.

Standing up on the plush surface and looking behind me, I took in the sleeping visage above me. Immediately, I was hit with a wall of humid heat, stinking of vomit and alcohol blending together in the night to eventually form, I figured with some fantasy-driven wonder, a morning breath to rival the worst of stenches. Now I was looking in more detail, I could see the after effects of Jo's chunder on her maw; the surface of her tongue, already filthy with that white film of bacteria, was dominated by a disgusting brownish shade splattered across it like a stain. Small amounts of half-digested food were spotted around surfaces in her maw; between her teeth, in her saliva, and more predominantly splattered around her lips, where a crust of drying vomit now caked her lower face. It was the perfect visage of the calm after the storm, the after-party stupor that no-one remembers, and rarely anyone sees. Above me, Jo's face sloped upwards, the twin nostrils two dark pits looming above me, and further still the black ropes of her eyelashes. I decided my first expedition, as it were, would be in that direction; up to the very precipice of the mountain.

I negotiated my way around her lips and eventually found myself crawling up the steep slope of her upper lip. It was hard going, but thanks to my size, I could pull myself up her skin with relative ease, especially with the abundance of small, brown hairs, all but invisible to the regular naked eye, that I could use as handholds should the going get too rough. To say it was exhilarating to be climbing Jo's colossal face was an understatement; knowing I was climbing a giant being, like I had read about in so many of the stories I loved, was another of my fantasies come true. I couldn't help but smile as I looked around me in wonder, knowing that I was actually on a real, living giantess. The feeling had of course been there when I was in her maw, but actually exploring the living landscape made the feeling all the more potent; so much so that it is hard to find the words to describe the pure feeling of the emotions running through me.

I decided to take a quick foray into the dark cavern of her nose, though I didn't stray too far for fear of becoming trapped in the close confines of her nasal cavity so soon after escaping her jaws. The hairs inside the cave were much larger and black, and brushed past me like vines as I crawled past, careful not to cause too much disruption in the sensitive area. The further I crawled in, the warmer and the darker it got; the tunnel seemed to continue endlessly into the gloom, its end obscured by the hairs sprouting from every angle. I decided to stop when I put my hand forward and immediately recoiled as it plunged into warm, viscous muck, thicker than saliva but no less familiar. Jo's mucous, of course, had plagued me both in the morning when she spat her horrid phlegm at me, and in the gloomy pit of her belly where it coated the wrinkly walls. By comparison, her snot was more viscous, but the texture was largely the same, and it was enough for me to recoil my hand in mild shock. Disgust, of course, had gone out of the window an age ago. Exiting the left nostril, which gave me a farewell by pushing me out with a gust of air, I continued onwards, climbing up smooth skin to the very tip of her nose and sat there for a while, admiring the view once again. I then slid down the bridge of the slight hill and climbed up past her eyes, marvelling at the thick, glossy hairs of her eyelashes which curled upwards to be taller than my tiny form.

Upon reaching her brow, I decided to take another detour, across the skin of her forehead to her eyebrows. Clearly, Jo had been sweating, if only slightly; the surface was warmer than the rest of the face I had explored, and damp to the touch. In various places, I could see beads of sweat, again almost invisible to the naked eye but almost half my size to me, slowly raising out of her skin as her conked-out body tried to cool itself down. It was fascinating to watch the little beads grow bigger and bigger as her pores excreted the waste material, and as I reached her right eyebrow I saw one drop cascade down her brow and into the crater dominated by the hills of her eyelids. The hairs of her eyebrows became more and more numerous as I crossed her brow, until I reached her eyebrow proper and felt as if I was crawling through a strip of long, brown grass. The hairs were soft, if a little itchy, and I took a moment to lie down in it to take in the experience. I have to admit, of all the places on Jo's body I could have visited, her eyebrows would have never come into my mind if I was to pick a destination, but as a mini-detour to crawl through that soft strip of hair was a strangely interesting, not to mention comfortable, experience. The adventure on Jo's giant body made me realise how much there was to explore, and strangely, a small voice began to say to me that if this was what I could experience every day, then taking up my life's servitude at my current size wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

Such thoughts only grew stronger as I crawled ever further up her brow, and entered the brown locks of her hair. It grew thick and strong around me, great brown silken ropes, if a tad greasy, shooting up like bamboo from the pale skin of her scalp. It was as if I had crawled into an alien forest, as I crawled between and pushed through the groves and thickets of hair like an explorer through the Amazon. Every now and then , I would come across little patches of skin where it was flaking off, leaving flakes of dead skin that I could actually pick up in my hands and examine. Delicate even in my tiny hands, they often broke apart when I set my hands on them, but to look at the little lines and patterns on the flakes from the surface of the scalp was fascinating, especially for what was literally Jo's dandruff. Eventually, the thick 'foliage' gave way to a short passage, bordered by the thick forest of light brown hair, that I realised upon breaking out to it was the natural parting of her hair, which would lead me to my destination. Following it upwards, I reached the front of her hair; the highest point on her body at that point, with a spectacular view across her colossal form lying in slumber. Sitting down and drinking it in, I realised I was at a crossroads.

My mind was in conflict. On the one hand, I wanted to escape. I had a life to live, dreams I wanted to achieve, family and friends I loved; I couldn't give that up to be a slave to the giantess who I only knew through my weekend job, who had imprisoned me and tortured me inside her maw for the last day, fantasy or no. On the other... I wanted to keep doing this. Despite everything; the torture, the humiliation, even the brushes with death; I wanted to keep being able to live out the fantasy, the adventure which had started when I woke up on that breakfast bar, when I was lowered into that hellish, stinking pit that fateful morning. I wanted to explore the rest of Jo's body, interact with her as a tiny person, keep playing with the fantasy that Jo had made, albeit out of her own reasons and not kindness, come true.

But I couldn't do both. That was impossible.

Perhaps there was a compromise to be made somewhere. Maybe I could convince her to let me go, and then allow her to do this again at regular intervals when she pleased. She enjoyed having the dominance over me, that much was obvious. It was just a matter of bargaining for at least a bit of my freedom back; to make this experience a willing activity for both parties, rather than a permanent slave contract. Besides, escape would have been a dangerous business; as far as I knew, Jo and only Jo knew how to manipulate my size.

It would work, I was confident. It had to. If it didn't, I was foregoing the best window for escape I as probably going to get.

Thus, I made the decision to stick it out in Jo's mouth until morning. Considering the original deal was surviving twenty-four hours in there, I figured I should keep up with that, even if the benefactor of the deal was currently in a stupor and thought I was digesting away in her belly. All I would have to do was survive until morning, somehow get her attention, and then plead for a new deal to get the best of both worlds, hoping she would be receptive. Sliding down her forehead, using the sweat to speed me up, I slid down the bridge of her nose and flew off the end, landing directly back with a wet splat where I started; behind her bottom teeth, underneath her tongue. I had to pat myself on the back a little for such an impressive landing. Smirking to myself, I made my way to the spot I knew best of all in her mouth -between her gums and her cheeks- and curled up to get some sleep, trying to figure out what I was to say tomorrow to the hungover mess that was my captor. My final challenge, I realised, would be to get the groggy Jo to notice me in her stinking maw before she accidentally swallowed me again; it wouldn't do to get to in sight of the finishing line and then trip up in the last few yards.

And considering the state of her mouth, the last challenge would undoubtedly be the most disgusting and foul experience thus far.