It was 1964 in Sydney Australia. Bryce Banta was doing exceedingly well at North Sydney Public High (a co-educational school). One afternoon, he was walking to the station, when he was approached by a young woman, who leaned out of the window of her parked car.

“Can I give you a lift?” she asked.

Bryce thanked her and got into the car.

“I’d actually like to take you somewhere else first,” she said, and he agreed to be driven to her own laboratory and let in on one of the best kept secrets in the country.

“I don’t even know your name yet. Mine is Bryce,” he said, as she showed him into a building in Crows Nest and led him to her lab.

“I’m Dr Ann O’Malley,” she said, “And you’re about to see why my codename is Anomaly. I’ve been monitoring your school secretly for some time, and if you’re interested, I have chosen you to be the test subject for my greatest invention: The Super Schoolboy Formula. Once taken it should give you the permanent ability to manifest super powers. These powers are vitally needed, so that we can give you your own television show in an effort to kick start the Australian television industry.”

“Is the situation really that desperate?” he asked.

“Yes, very. Apart from a few low budget cop shows and soap operas, we’re reduced to importing everything from England and the United States. So are you prepared to drink the formula?”

“Well I am due for afternoon tea,” he said.

“That’s good. The formula appropriately includes elements of red cordial, the same type that causes hyperactivity in some children. I’ve added my own chemicals as well. With any luck, you’ll soon be just what the networks need. If it works, I will be the only person working with you in your scenes. I’ll tell other stars in your programs, that your masked hero persona and your secret identity are played by two different people. Here you are. Drink up.”

Bryce tried the formula, and waited to see what would happen. He shrank to tiny size, and found that he had x-ray vision that could see through everything except the material used in making clothing. He concentrated his thoughts on returning to normal size, and found that the x-ray vision power left him as soon as he was full sized again. He made subsequent tests, and found that every time he shrank, he gained a super power (but not the same one each time) until he regrew to full size.

“I wasn’t sure what powers you’d get,” said Dr O’Malley, “I suspect the x-ray vision will return on a subsequent shrinking experience, but you’ll never know which power you’re going to get until you reduce. We need a suitable name for you. How does Captain Miniature sound?”

“I love it,” said Bryce, “Looks like my hero persona will have to be explained to other stars as some sort of remote controlled doll you’ve designed.”

“I’ll build a fake remote control device,” said Dr O’Malley.

“I now vow to wage war on bad ratings and narrow minded network censors,” said Bryce, “Since the formula seems to reduce any item of clothing attached to my body at the time, I can design a costume to be worn under my school uniform, with a mask I can pull up.”

“I’ll stitch it together for you,” she said.

“You can do that too? How good are you?” he asked.

“Sew-sew,” said Ann.

She finally drove him home. In the weeks ahead, they took every opportunity to start filming episodes of the Captain Miniature television show, after O’Malley had successfully pitched a pilot episode to one of the networks.

One lunch time, Bryce Banta was reading a book alone, up in the classroom, when he heard a lot of noise coming from the playground. Looking out the window, he saw a scene of bullying and decided that it could use the personal attention of Captain Miniature. Bryce stripped off his outer school uniform clothing and tossed it behind the lockers. Then he shrank to tiny size, pulled the mask over his face, and used the unique sense that he had acquired from his original consumption of the Super Schoolboy Formula. It would always enable his body to send a quick signal to his brain, instructing his mind as to which power he had acquired. On this occasion, he found that he had received Telly-Scopic vision: the ability to see what was tuned in on any TV screen in a five mile radius of his location.

He was sure that this power would not be of any help in dealing with bullies, as he ran towards the classroom door. Then into the room came the tallest and most beautiful girl in the 9th grade: namely Skye Larke. She had long red hair and a gorgeous face that took his breath away. When she saw the tiny teen on the classroom floor, she ran over and snatched him up.

“So you’re Captain Miniature!” she said, “I thought your powers on TV looked too realistic to be done with special effects and stunts. It would only be apparent to an advanced scientific mind like mine. I’ve spent years putting on a respectable front as the most diligent girl in the school. I’ve been head cheerleader, and chief of the Lunch Hour Maximization Society. My real plans are quite different from the outward show I put on. In the years ahead, I plan to use my most powerful invention: the Equal Impunity Perfume. It will enable me to take over the Australian business world. I didn’t know that the only potential threat to my plans (namely Captain Miniature) was someone in my own class at school. Still, I’ve been meaning to get you out of the way since I first realised you’d be a threat to my plans. The best way to do that is to supplement my lunch with a Miniature mouthful. I’ll just go and refill my drink bottle with water to wash you down.”

She put him on the cupboard and left the classroom. He restored his size, and retrieved his clothes from where he’d hidden them behind the lockers.

Having learned that he’d acquired such a dangerous opponent, he was more careful than ever to guard his secret identity, by fleeing the room before she returned and deduced it. After school, he headed quickly out into the school grounds and shrank surreptitiously again, removing his school uniform. Then he realised he could also telekinetically reduce the uniform to a size so small that it could fit into the pocket of the costume. This would come in handy. He waited on the branch of a tree, which Skye Larke would have to walk under on her way out of the school.

As soon as Skye was right under the branch, he dropped down into her backpack, using the power of invulnerability that he had acquired this time in order to survive the fall. This way he learned her address, something that would come in handy in his future attempts to stop her corporate goals.

The following year, 1965, the television industry had benefited from the reboot that it had needed, and other shows were being picked up as well. The network executive offered to renew the Captain Miniature Show for a second season, but felt that it needed something else to give it an edge. He felt so strongly that the character should have a kangaroo sidekick and was able to get The Romper Zoo to lend them their only trained kangaroo.

Captain Miniature refused to take on an animal partner, during a meeting between himself, Dr O’Malley and the network executive Cyril Beady Miller.

“It’s an un-Australian attitude!” said Cyril, “Shows only last when they reinvent themselves. We can’t just skip over the opportunity the Zoo’s given us. Either the kangaroo comes, or your show goes.”

“We’ll have to go then,” said Dr O’Malley, “I fully sympathize with my star here. I just don’t like the ring of Captain Miniature and Captain Marsupial.”

“I trust you won’t ROO your decision then,” said Cyril, and showed them to the door.

Later, back at Anomaly Lab, Bryce Banta asked Ann O’Malley what they were going to do. Although he was the one with the powers, as a 15 year old, he was used to looking up to the 25 year old woman who had made them possible, and always sought and respected her advice.

“The best answer is to somehow prolong your life until some future decade when censorship won’t be an issue.”

“You could put me in your freezer in suspended animation, after I’ve reduced myself,” said Bryce.

“No. It might be a bit hard to explain when I’m married with kids,” said Ann, “We could have you smuggle yourself aboard a rocket ship and freeze in the cold depths of space for several decades.”

“It won’t work,” said Bryce, “Aussies never take the space program seriously. The Americans are way ahead of us. Why not invent a globe that suspends human animation and put me inside it for a long time?”

“I don’t know of any way to do it,” said Ann.

After a few days, she finally got an idea. Ann took blood samples from the most immature people she knew, and then used radiation to modify the properties of whatever it was in their blood that stopped them from growing up, so that it would go further and physically suspend the aging process. Then she bought a coffin and took it out deep into the bush behind West Roseville University. She placed him into the coffin, injected him with enough irradiated blood to put him under for 35 years, having promised she’d come back and awaken him in the year 2000.

In 1995, he was found and awoken ahead of schedule, by a 19 year old university student named Emma Nation. She thought he was cute, and listened to his whole story. He went to find Ann as Bryce Banta’s ‘son’ Bryce Banta Jr, but her laboratory was now managed by someone else who told him that she was 55 and married. They gave him her address, when he said that his ‘father’ needed to re-establish contact with Ann. His identity card for Anomaly Lab was still recognised. He went to find Ann, who was a little surprised at his having turned up five years earlier than planned.

Ann O’Malley had learned that censorship had eased a lot in the early 1990s. She was able to re-establish him on television, and gave him the cover identity of a boy who had reached school leaving age in 1994. He began dating Emma Nation as well.

It wasn’t long before he learned that Skye Larke was now operating under the public name of Red Moll, and had used her Equal Impunity Perfume to climb to the top of a prominent Australian city based newspaper company. Having heavily influenced Sydney, and the whole of Australia with feminism using her newspaper, she had made it even easier for herself to stay at the top of her ill acquired company. She was now 45.

One night she caught him going through her office at tiny size, and prepared to make another attempt to eat him. With his mask on, she had no idea that he hadn’t aged, but did wonder why he hadn’t appeared on television or anywhere else for 30 years. She told him she had never married, and gave enough clues to indicate that she was too much of a feminist to make a relationship last that long. She was currently seeing the latest in a long line of boyfriends.

Captain Miniature managed to use an intangibility power to escape from Red Moll, and soon confided first in Ann O’Malley and then in Emma Nation.

“I have to bring her down,” he said to Emma, “If I’d stopped her in 1965, things would be so much better here now.”

“I know,” said Emma, “I would still be able to stay at home and enjoy being a happy house wife. Now we’ve got loads of men out of work, as the feminist movement has enabled women to take most of the white collar jobs. They’re actually judging men for not having jobs now. I’m supposed to turn into that sort of woman too. I’ve seen my mother divorce my father, become fiercely independent and push away every nice guy who tries to get near her. She’s pressured me into doing the same thing, though she doesn’t know how much I’ve been inwardly resisting it, especially since I met you and learned what life was like in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Thank goodness I had the chance to pull you out of suspended animation and have you re-challenge the woman who caused all of this.”

With her new awareness of Captain Miniature’s apparent return from his 1965 retirement, Red Moll guessed that he had been in her office looking for the means to destroy her business empire. She had added the newspaper to her Innerbelly conglomerate of companies, and didn’t want Captain Miniature having the chance to get at her. She began surreptitiously hiring the local super villains to start crime waves, in order to keep Captain Miniature busy.

In the months ahead, Captain Miniature fought several of them, and brought them to justice. The first was the Puppy Master, who had found a way to control dogs after bathing them in his mind controlling Puppy Putty. The first few times he shrank, Captain Miniature only acquired powers that enabled him (at best) to battle the dogs physically. Since so many Sydney residents were completely ignoring the Dog Act’s leash laws, there were several unfenced free roaming dogs at Puppy Master’s disposal. Finally, Captain Miniature acquired the power of Canine Telepathy and was able to command the dogs to return to their homes and make no more trouble. He planted permanent hypnotic suggestions in their minds, that would override any future attempts that Puppy Master made to give them his own instructions.

The next villain to be taken on was Mortimer Guage, who had the power (although who knows how) to affect interest rates on home loans. Having set up his own dubious loan company, Mort Gage began bilking the citizens of Sydney, until Captain Miniature acquired the power of Trans-Financial Mediation, and ran Mort’s business into the ground.

The third crook in Red Moll’s employ was the Likeness Monster, a dangerous psychotic man who had the power to impersonate anyone by changing his appearance (known by 1995 as ‘morphing’). None of Captain Miniature’s tactics worked against him, until he got another dose of X-Ray vision. Though he couldn’t look through the Likeness Monster’s clothes, he could see through the camouflage power at work on his facial features. He was able to detect the man and point him out to the police.

The fourth was Albert Ross, who had the power of flight with the aid of a special back pack he’d built. When Captain Miniature got the flight power too, he was able to sabotage the device and force Albert to land.

The only other secret stooge available to Red Moll was Clarence Nette, who was able to use his brass musical instrument during his concerts at the Sydney Opera House, to somehow knock all the guests and staff unconscious for an hour, during which their money was later discovered to have gone missing. Again, Captain Miniature had to make several attempts, before an effective super power accompanied his shrinking: super deafness. With that, he was able to sneak inside Clarry Nette’s brass instrument, while the man had put it down to conduct one of his robberies, and rewire the device using Ann’s instructions, so that it fed back a signal that knocked the user out instead. He was soon taken in by the police as well.

At the end of each bout, he was able to return to normal size and the comfort of his friend and colleague Dr O’Malley, and the far more personal comfort of the lovely Emma Nation.

In a quiet suburban street, in one of the smallest shopping centres in Sydney, Matthew Tell, owner of his shop called Tell Toys, was completing the work on some of his newest original creations. They were all figurines. He then built a toy castle and set some of them on the roof, and others on display in doorways and on the shelf around the castle.

Word of Matthew Tell’s new figurines soon spread from one store visitor to another, as many girls came to buy the figurines. Most of them were teenagers, who were the natural collectors of dolls in their early childhood, but had lately sought more sophisticated figurines.

As they continued to sell, Matthew continued to make more and more to replenish his display. In the middle of a night, a tiny alien spaceship landed in the alley behind the back door to the store. From it emerged several tiny beings, who climbed under the door of the store and headed for the front.

When they came to the shelves, which were lit by the street light shining through the front window, they saw the figurines and the castle.

“We must replace these toys, which to us are life sized, in order to infiltrate this planet just as our enemy has done,” said the leader, (in order to let the readers in on at least part of what was going on), “Get into their clothes and then vaporize the figurines with your lasers. We will allow ourselves to be taken wherever the relatively giant beings of earth wish to take us, until one of us is led to our escaped enemy. Then we will force him to renounce his beliefs … or kill him. I, Newager will dress in the garments of the one with the sword. The rest of you can take your places on or around the castle too: Buddy Hist the prince of pagan idols, Astrol Ogre the fount of all false guidance from star signs, Octavius Ult the prime potentate of dark power, Warwick Locke master of magic and his boy sidekick Tarot Plotter.”

In the days ahead, the alien infiltrators were mistaken for more of Matthew Tell’s figurines and purchased by teenaged girls, who then took them to their homes in various parts of Sydney.

In the meantime, Captain Miniature was testing his ability to elude a full sized woman at tiny size at the Growe Institute for Gifted Size Changers. Larger Woman alias Jeanne Growe herself was hot on Captain Miniature’s trail, as he ran through the grounds at tiny size. Suddenly he came upon something in the bushes, which was not visible to Larger Woman. It was a small spaceship, designed for someone the same size as the reduced Captain Miniature.  He opened the door and looked around inside, until he saw that the pilot of the craft was unconscious and wounded. Captain Miniature carried him out of the ship and called to Larger Woman, who was then able to locate him from the sound.

Jeanne Growe took the tiny alien inside and tended to his wounds, with the help of the more delicate touch of the reduced Captain Miniature. When the tiny man was conscious and sufficiently recovered to talk, he thanked them for their help and explained his situation:

“I am Evan Gelist from the planet Testamentia. The planet is ruled by the invisible but all powerful and benevolent being known as Intelly Gent the Great Designer. Intelly’s second in command was called Lucky Fear. He was the most powerful of Intelly’s created beings, and rebelled against the Great Designer, attempting to take over the planet and plunge it into darkness and evil.”

“But if he knew his creator was more powerful, then why did he take him on?” asked Captain Miniature.”

“Lucky always ignored reality. Now he’s trying to create his own reality,” said Evan, “Lucky wasn’t human. He was given the status of head of the Winged Watchmen. He managed to persuade a third of them to join him in his rebellion against Intelly. They became Lucky’s Legions and have done their best throughout the ages to corrupt the human people of Testamentia, to turn them against the Great Designer. Over thousands of years, he has been quite successful, but Intelly sent his own son into Testamentia’s capital city to set up an early group of devoted followers who became known as The Rescued of Ever-Source. They were hunted and pursued, some of them to the death, but their loyalty to the Great Designer could not be killed.”

“But Evan, why didn’t the Great Designer simply wipe out Lucky’s Legions along with their leader?” asked Larger Woman.

“He had given his word not to interfere with freedom of choice until everyone had been given the chance to choose either loyalty to him or loyalty to Lucky Fear,” said Gelist, “The contest for the willing hearts and souls of Testamentia’s people has gone on for two millennia since the formation of the Rescued of Ever-Source. Around seventy years ago, an influential man named Malice-Star Wood allowed himself to become possessed by one of Lucky’s Legions in order to dramatically increase the manipulation of the people towards evil. He took a woman named Holly as his bride and ally, and used their new subliminal control technology and screens they set up all over the planet, to bombard the people with hypnotic images over the last seventy years.”

“Why weren’t you hypnotized?” asked Captain Miniature.

“The original members of the Rescued of Ever-Source wrote a number of letters, which were soon after published in The New Anthology of Testamentia,” said Evan Gelist, “Anyone who reads a page or so from the letters, at least once a day, will gain knowledge and teaching to enable him to resist the influence of Lucky’s Legions no matter how frequently it is funnelled into plain view from the technology of Malice-Star and Holly Wood. A few like myself resisted, and I became one of their spokesmen, gaining help from the current day Rescued of Ever-Source to set up my own screens and send messages based accurately on the New Anthology of Testamentia. It was successful for some time, to the point that it began to worry Lucky Fear. He used his legions to possess more willing participants. They formed an evil alliance against me, and drove me from the planet and pursued me here. Their ship’s sensors can only home in on the engines of mine. So I switched them off and attempted to glide my ship in, but lost control and crashed, fortunately in the soft overly abundant foliage of your institute. Now I fear that they have nonetheless traced me to your city and will try to shut me down altogether.”

“How can we help?” asked Larger Woman.

“I can think of two ways, and your offer is most generous,” said Evan, “I plan to set up a powerful transmitter, that will enable me to beam my message of loyalty to the Great Designer from your planet all the way to mine. Secondly, to keep it operational, and myself alive, I need protection from the group that even now seeks me here. They call themselves the Minions of Malice-Star, who include their leader Newager, and five others: Buddy Hist, Octavius Ult, Astrol Ogre, Warwick Locke and Tarot Plotter.”

“So what are their subliminal messages teaching?” asked Captain Miniature.

“Extreme frequencies of violence, use of drugs and alcohol, the destruction of lifelong love relationships, betrayal, and the list goes on. In recent years, the messages have also become far more direct in brainwashing people with a hostility to the Great Designer. Whenever members of the Rescued of Ever-Source are portrayed on the screens, they are almost invariably misrepresented as malfeasants or aberrant or dysfunctional. All of the other people of Testamentia are not even aware that they’re being programmed to hate them and reject the rewards of loyalty to the Great Designer. Even the nicest most polite of people are known to accept everything they see or read, with the distinct exception of any pro-Intelly material.”

“A friend of mine named Ann O’Malley might be able to help you with the scientific aspects of setting up your transmitter,” said Captain Miniature.

“And my organization should have the powerful beings necessary to assist you against the Minions of Malice-Star here on earth,” said Larger Woman, “Though Captain Miniature’s adaptive powers are different every time he reduces himself, which will be our best weapon against the Minions. You had better give us an outline of their abilities.”

“I will,” said Evan, “Though they have all acquired their powers by being possessed of Lucky’s Legions. Only the name of Intelly’s son can give one the power to fully defeat them.”

“Power that comes from speaking a name, eh?” said Captain Miniature, “Well I can’t imagine any reason why any of our own heroes should object to that. They’ve seen the concept often enough in fictions of ours before.”

Elsewhere, a 14 year old girl with the gts gene had named herself Smitten Bride, because of her vore crush on a number of boys who had shown no interest in being swallowed. (The fact that none of them had the powers of teleportation might have had something to do with it). She had been reluctant to reveal her power of enlarging to giant size. So she had been a keen buyer of one of the ersatz figurines, who were actually the Minions of Malice-Star. That is to say, she bought Tarot Plotter, because he looked so lifelike that she wished she could eat the figurine. Then, learning of the Growe Institute for Gifted Size Changers, she arranged an appointment with Jeanne Growe to seek a place at the institute. She was accepted and moved her things into her new room at the mansion, which included Tarot Plotter.

Mistaken for a teenaged girl’s doll, Tarot Plotter prowled the place at night, until he located the sleeping Evan Gelist. He then used his radio communication to call the other members of the Minions of Malice-Star.

“I can’t take him alone,” said Tarot Plotter, “You can triangulate on my signal, but there are powerful female beings here, who can become so large that they are giants even to the people of this planet. I believe that there are also male beings who have the powers of teleportation and reduction to our size.”

“Since I am the only one who has not been purchased yet, I will return to the ship and use it to collect the others and bring them to your location,” said Buddy Hist, and snuck out of Tell Toys store and into the alley. He entered the concealed ship, and flew it on his mission of malice. Soon the ship was flying over the walls of the Growe Institute, with Warwick Locke, Octavius Ult, Newager, Buddy Hist and Astrol Ogre aboard. They landed it outside and snuck into the mansion and met up with Tarot Plotter.

“Let’s take them, now!” said Newager.

Using their powers, the Minions of Malice-Star attacked Evan Gelist, which awoke Jeanne Growe first. She sounded the mansion alarm, and spoke into the public address system.

“This is the founder Larger Woman. The mansion has been invaded by the Minions of Malice-Star. All fully trained students who are active members of Gts-Force will now engaged them in combat. Protection of Evan Gelist is top priority.”

Captain Miniature and the giantesses and a number of male shrinker/teleporters put up the best fight they could against a minority of only five invaders, and yet they were losing. The dark powers of the Minions of Malice-Star were so unexpected and varied that even Captain Miniature could not adapt the powers to combat them effectively.

“The name of the Son of Intelly!” he suddenly remembered and called aloud, “Use it!”

Within seconds, the battle shifted dramatically in favour of Gts-Force. The Minions of Malice-Star were almost instantly stripped of their powers by the mere mention of the Son’s name. After that, it was easy for Gts-Force to defeat them and interrogate them about their movements on earth. With their powers gone, all of them began to show sincere remorse for what they had done, except for Newager.

They were given the option of positive defection to Evan Gelist and turned from their evil warring anti-Intelly agenda. Newager remained resistant and was banished from earth forever, to prevent him from seeking allies on earth to aid him in his attempt to locate and destroy the Gelist O’Malley Advanced Transmitter (G.O.A.T. for short, since a sacrificial goat was a necessary plot device for anyone who could read between the lines).

“I suppose that wraps it all up for now,” said Captain Miniature, “You can continue to transmit your messages from the New Anthology of Testamentia to your people for as long as you need to.”

“It will go on until the Son of Intelly returns to the people and cleanses the planet of those of the people who remained rebellious, and perfects the character of his loyal followers, so that they can reign forever on the reborn Testamentia,” said Evan Gelist, “The greatest prediction of that time is that the message would be sent to the ends of Testamentia, and then the Son’s return would come. I believe that, with the G.O.A.T., that time will not be far away.”

“There’s just one thing that’s not going to be so easy to wrap up. Somewhere in Sydney, four girls have lost their dolls,” said Jeanne.

By this time, the authorities in Sydney Australia had managed to invent devices known as the Gland Bands. These could be locked around the wrists of criminal women with the gts gene, and would emit a low level radiation which only affected the glands of those women, thus supressing their growth power. A trio of women who had demonstrated their willingness to eat men against their will were now residing permanently in the Smoked Ham Asylum for the Culinary Insane.

With no warning at all, the place was hit by the trained soldiers of Rash Old Girl, a fourth woman, who had been born in England at the time of the Crusades. She had never been caught eating anyone, but at the age of 60, she found that her particular gts gene enabled her to keep from ageing, if she ate someone and absorbed their youth every fifty years. As a result she now had the ongoing appearance of a 55 year old woman, although she was hundreds of years older.

Her League of Lassies had soon busted the Choker, the Gobbler and Fatwoman out of Smoked Ham Asylum.

Keen to round them up before they found a way to remove the Gland Bands, was a hero without any super powers named Agilitricks. Dressed in blue jeans, a black shirt and a black eye mask, he could blend into society at any moment, simply by removing the mask. The same clothes could be worn by his secret identity, without arousing suspicion, as they were the most common outfit worn by Sydney men.

Agilitricks had caught the three in the past, by facing them one at a time and using his Agilipricks. They were his own invention; giant tranquiliser syringes fired from a portable bazooka.

This time he needed help, as Rash Old Girl had hired a shrinking gene man to get into the locks of the Gland Bands and remove them. So Agilitricks called in his closest friend Torso Man, who had the power of flight. Torso Man used his ability to distract the four rampaging giantesses, while Agilitricks was able to fire and reload his bazooka with more Agilipricks. Soon the four were knocked out. They removed the syringes and waited while the sleeping giants dwindled back to normal size unconsciously. Then they attached new Gland Bands to all four of them this time, and locked them up in Smoked Ham Asylum again.

Torso Man flew back to his own town, and Agilitricks patrolled the streets again. In recent years, Sydney had been plagued with alcohol fuelled violence, to the point that two men in a decade had died from fatal punches to the head, caused by drunks, possibly with the assistance of demons that nobody was aware of. It just didn’t make sense that the same punches to the head which had only knocked people out in decades past were now causing fatalities.

Nonetheless, Agilitricks was walking along a window ledge, when he saw a drunken man start a fight with an innocent man in an alley. He swung down on his rope, kicked the drunk with his landing, tied the man’s wrists and asked the victim to take him to Town Hall Police Station and press charges.

That was enough work for that night. He went home to his large suburban mansion, removed his mask and took a shower before climbing into his pyjamas. Now he was able to retreat into his secret identity of Wooss Brayne, unlikely but fortunate beneficiary of a winning lottery ticket that had been given to him by the grateful recipient of a wallet he had found and returned a few years earlier. Of all people to win that week, he was the only winner who actually never spent a cent on any form of game of chance in his life, trusting that his needs would be met by the highest authority in existence.

After a long night’s sleep, he put on only his civilian clothes, and went into the city. Walking through Hyde Park, he saw that a beautiful model he recognised named Brandi Gold was doing a photo shoot. He took out his camera and zoomed in on her, hoping to take some pictures of his own. She was wearing a two piece pink bikini, walking and posing with her long hair down, and smiling all the time for the professional photographers’ cameras. He tried to zoom in as close as possible to her beautiful facial features, but found that it made it difficult to keep the camera focussed, especially each time she moved position.

Before he knew it, he felt two huge fists take hold of his shirt and shove him back.

“This is a professional shoot only. Push off!” said a man dressed entirely in black, presumably one of their security staff.

Wooss stumbled backwards, staggering from the impact of the shove.

“It seems you’ve done the pushing for me,” he said.

“So you want to be a wise guy, do you?” said the paid thug, presumably on steroids, given his temper and the size of his muscles.

As Agilitricks, Wooss Brayne relied on martial arts, rather than size, having trained for many years and eventually begun teaching as an instructor in the academy where he had learned to fight. It suddenly occurred to him, that dressed as he was, he would be gambling a lot with his secret identity, if he was seen to fight this bully in the same clothes that he wore with his mask.

The man stepped in on him.

“I said PUSH OFF! Or I’ll deck you on the grass!” said the man.

Wooss toyed with the idea of using only judo techniques to trip the man up, and wondered if he could make it look like nothing more than a clumsy accident, rather than a deliberate combat victory.

“I saw that,” said a woman’s voice from behind the security man, “He wasn’t interrupting the shoot from where he stood, and we came out here partly for publicity. I don’t want people like you on our team. You can leave now, and wait for your final pay cheque.”

“Fine! I’m gone then!” grunted the man, who then turned and left, much to the relief of Wooss. 

Now he could see that he’d been saved the trouble of saving himself, by Brandi Gold herself.

“Thank you,” he said with a shyness that Agilitricks would never have portrayed of himself.

“I have to get back to work, but why don’t you take a couple of pictures close up, while I’m here, just quickly?” she said.

“That’s really kind,” said Wooss, and from this distance he had no trouble focussing the camera in record time and snapping his more pleasant memories of the whole experience.

He watched her return to the Hyde Park fountain, and took some more photos from a distance. Eventually the professional shoot was over, and the team began to pack up. He walked the short distance to Centerpoint Tower (which is worth googling by the readers, to save my attempts to describe it), and had lunch in the revolving restaurant at the top, looking out the window at the whole city from its highest vantage point. Well maybe I will describe it after all. The base and many floors of the building form a rectangular prism no different from most buildings, but the top is a long narrow tube with elevators and then a larger circular section at the top complete with tourist viewing telescopes and a revolving restaurant.

Just as he was finishing his meal, the waiter came to collect the bill. He paid the exact fee and waited for the waiter to depart.

“I don’t suppose you could give me a tip,” asked the waiter.

“I guess so. Maybe you could change the colour of the tablecloths,” said Wooss, “But then I think you meant a financial tip.”

He gave the laughing waiter a large banknote, feeling that Brandi’s kindness to him should be passed on in some way, since he now had no trouble affording the gesture anyway. He was about to get up and leave, when he saw a huge female face coming into view. It was Brandi Gold’s. She had begun growing in the street. She must have had the gts gene. Hiding that from a general public filled with fans all over the world must have taken some doing. So why was she suddenly showing it now? Was it a sudden bonus part of the publicity shoot?

She was fairly close to Centerpoint when she’d grown into view. He looked out the window and saw everyone scurrying into buildings below, as Brandi reached down trying to grab one of them. Then her eyes came upon Centerpoint. She stepped closer, and he could see that her face was level with the window.

“You have to open the windows,” she said, “I’ve just finished an exhausting shoot in Hyde Park and then suddenly started growing. It’s never happened to me before. I’m absolutely starving. If you’ll just let me eat one of you, it’ll tide me over until I can figure this thing out.”

The restaurant staff and the Centerpoint security officers quickly instructed people to use either the elevators or the stairs, which were not normally accessible by the public.

“Get down out of the most vulnerable part of the tower quickly,” shouted one of the security staff.

“But I haven’t even finished my main course, and it cost me a small fortune,” said one man.

“If you don’t go now, you could end up being a main course, which would cost you a lot more,” said the restaurant manager, “If we survive this, anyone who left early today will have a complimentary replacement meal on the tower … err, on the house, another time.”

Brandi kept repeating her demands and Wooss found himself looking at her beautiful mouth with admiration. Her gigantic lips, which he’d always admired at normal size, could give the most amazing kisses imaginable.

Then she took hold of the tower’s upper structure with both hands, and began pulling at it. He looked out at her shapely powerful arms. He had been in Centerpoint tower three times before in his life, once as a teenager, and twice as an adult. On the second of the three occasions, it had been a very windy and rainy night, and he had felt the tower shaking a little from side to side during the most extreme gusts. His friend had told him that the upper narrow part of the tower had been deliberately built to flex a little bit under high wind pressure.

However, it could not possibly survive the onslaught of this beautiful giantess for long.

“Are you waiting for her autograph or something? Get out of here!” said a security man.

The men in their profession seemed determined to keep him away from Brandi that day.

“Maybe I could help,” he said, “She was kind to me once before.”

“And maybe you’ll be a second helping if she gets one of us first. Get going!” said the security officer, “She could tear the tower off at any moment.”

Brandi was shaking the building like it had never been shaken before. If she pulled it off while people were still in the stairs or the elevators at that level, anything could happen.

This time he was about ready to deck the security guard, open the window and offer himself to Brandi, but he’d been herded to the staircase before he could react without other customers getting caught in the fight.

He quickly ran down the stairs, but stopped on the top floor of the rectangular part of the building.

Stepping out, he ran to a window and found it was level with Brandi’s bikini. Her chest was right in front of him. He opened the window, whipped out his mask, and put it on. Then he climbed onto her closest breast, slid down between the two, with his head exposed and called up to her:

“Brandi! You can eat me! Please don’t wreck the tower!”

“Oh thank you!” she said, and released her grip.

Brandi stepped back and opened her palm.

“Can you climb out onto my hand?” she asked.

“Sure,” called Agilitricks.

He quickly eased himself out from between her breasts and onto her approaching palm. 

She lifted him up a little, and then surprised him with the gentle grip from behind of her other hand. Brandi Gold, international supermodel and now sudden giantess raised him up in front of her magnificent mouth.

“I didn’t know I had the gts gene until now,” she said, “If I don’t get some food into my tummy I’ll go crazy. Thank you so much for volunteering.”

“It’s OK,” he said, “In my secret identity, I’m one of your keenest fans. This way I’ll get closer to you than any other admirer.”

“Would you like me to kiss you first?” she asked, “I’m seriously starving, but I’m sure I could manage that.”

“I’d love it,” he said, and felt her huge full pink lips come and press against him.

As the experience would undoubtedly end up on grewtube by the end of the day, he kept his head facing Brandi, rather than turning his cheek for any cameras. Her lips were large enough to kiss his whole face at once anyway.

“Thank you!” he said.

“It’s the least I could do,” said Brandi, and then opened her mouth wide and eased him into it.

He would be gulped down within moments, he was sure, but this time he had saved everyone else in Centerpoint Tower in the best way he could think of. He simply couldn’t have brought himself to bazooka fire an Agiliprick at Brandi and see her carted off to Smoked Ham Asylum for the Culinary Insane. Its inmates were deliberate premeditated gobblers for pleasure. Brandi had simply been caught without food, with the worst of timing, by growing unexpectedly after a lot of work.

From outside her mouth he heard a whirring sound, and then a megaphone.

“Take the hostage out of your mouth and release him to us!”

Brandi’s mouth was still open. Agilitricks slid around on her tongue and looked out at a police helicopter. The sides were open. One office was standing on the right (near) side, holding a megaphone and the other was holding a bazooka, but that one would be armed with something far more lethal than a tranquiliser syringe.

“I won’t ask again! Take the hostage out of your mouth!” came the officer.

“It’s alright. I said she could eat me! Stand down!” called Agilitricks.

“That hardly makes it legal, mister mask!” called the policeman, “The moment she gulps, I’ll shoot for the throat. We’ll cut you open to get him out, lady! Don’t think we won’t.”

“No! Don’t! She’s really very kind! She’s only doing this out of urgent hunger needs,” called Agilitricks.

“Giantesses gobbling guys is still off limits, regardless of a victim’s cooperation!” said the officer.

“I’d better get out of your mouth anyway,” said Agilitricks, “They’ll shoot you if you swallow me, and you can’t speak to negotiate with me in here.”

He slid out onto her lower lip, met her approaching hand and was placed gently on her shoulder.

“Don’t surrender me to them,” he called softly up to her ear, “I’ve got an idea.”

“Not good enough!” called the officer, “I said to hand him over to us!”

Agilitricks had clutched one of the long tresses of Brandi’s hair and was slowly pulling an unnoticeable amount of it up, until he had the very end wrapped around his hand. It would serve as a rope. He suddenly launched himself into a wide swing, which took him around the front of the helicopter, just missing the overhead whirring blades. He swung into the left side of the helicopter, and surprised the bazooka operator from behind, hit the man solidly, and flung the weapon out of the helicopter. As the megaphone operator turned to assist his partner, Agilitricks knew he could not kick the man without sending him out of the copter to his death … unless he did the one kick that would have the opposite affect.

He gave the appearance of kicking past the man, as though he had missed, which was the general technique for delivering a hook kick. He brought his heel around slowly behind the man and into his back. Done at full strength, a hook kick would break the spine, but he only wanted to weaken the man.

While the man was at a disadvantage, he pulled him forward a little, and karate chopped him in the back of the neck. The man went down, leaving Agilitricks free to deliver a moderate kick to his partner’s groin. Again, a kick in that area could be fatal, but this was only done with enough impact to induce a collapse. He turned and looked out the right side and saw that Brandi was looking on eagerly.

He took the megaphone and called to Brandi.

“I’ll make the pilot land this thing on the neighbouring rooftop, and then you can pull the rotor blades off and get us out of here before they get another chopper here with another bazooka. If you’re OK with all that, the offer to eat me is still on the dining table.”

“I’d love to!” said Brandi.

Agilitricks retrieved a pistol from the gun belt of one of the fallen policemen and pointed it at the back of the pilot’s head.

“I can fly one of these myself if I have to,” he said.

He would never have really killed the man, but the implied bluff would secure cooperation from the third officer. The helicopter landed on the roof, and the pilot waited inside, with a gun still pointed at him once Agilitricks had stepped out.

“Take it out, Brandi!” called Agilitricks, and watched while her powerful hands approached the copter.

He looked at her stomach, which was now level with the rooftop. The huge wall of soft shapely flesh was almost inviting. He stood on the edge of the rooftop and kissed it.

One hand took firm hold of the main structure, and the other tore at the blades until they came loose. She set them down beside the broken copter on the rooftop, and then picked Agilitricks up.

“Great going. Let’s go!” he said, quietly into her ear, so that the pilot would not hear, “Head quickly past Circular Quay, cross the Harbour and make your way past all the beaches until you get to Roseville Bridge. The bushwalks in that area would take ages for the police to get to, and nobody’s likely to be on them during a weekday.”

“I admire your local geographic knowledge,” she said, and strode rapidly through Wynyard, Circular Quay, into the water and then began to run.

Her giant stomach was never underwater, as she ran through the harbour in no time. Two ferries had quickly steered to avoid her before she’d cleared the city area, and at her size, she reached the East Lindfield bush area and sat down in the shallow water after only fifteen minutes.

“That’s exhausted me all the more,” she said, “I’m so hungry now! But I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me. Let me give you another kiss before I swallow you.”

“I’d love that very much,” he said.

“I felt you leaning against my belly and giving me your little kiss before too. You’ve been very sweet to offer me a quick end to my sudden increased hunger pains.”

“Well I can’t function as a masked hero anymore anyway. They’ll have a Small Pints Bulletin out on me too, since I deliberately aided in your escape. At least this way, I go out in a food cause.”

“It’s better this way,” she said, “I wouldn’t have had the chance to tell you how fantastic you tasted before.”

“What do you think you’ll do after this? They’ll all be after you now.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“If you can lie low, quite literally lie down here until nightfall, and then make your way out of the city and into the large bushy areas like Kuringai National Park, you might be able to avoid being hunted by the police indefinitely.”

“I guess that could work,” she said, “I just don’t know what I’ll do for food, unless any stray animals or bushwalkers come by.”

“Have you had kangaroo meat from the supermarket?”

“Yes, it’s not bad.”

“If you could find a way to start fires, your giant hands should be able to catch plenty of kangaroos out there easily enough. Then you just have to skin them and cook them. You could eat a whole one or more for every meal.”

“You’re still thinking of my needs, when I’m about to …”

“I want to give you as many helpful ideas as I can, since I won’t be here to help you after…”

“After I’ve eaten you. I almost wish I had a kangaroo on hand now, but even if I did, I just can’t forget how nice you tasted before.”

“I understand, and I’m ready and prepared.”

“Not fully prepared,” she said, “I’m sure my stomach acids will be able to digest your clothes, but there’s no need for this.”

She pulled off his mask and looked closely at him.

“It’s you!” she said, recognising him as the man she’d rescued from her former security staff member, “Is that why you made yourself available from the Centerpoint window?”

“Well you helped me. Besides, this has been nicer than a few pictures of you ever would have been. That’s why I told the police that you are usually kind.”

“You’ve been an absolute darling about everything, and I can’t wait to gulp you down my neck, but why don’t you kiss it from the outside first?”

He was lowered into position and wrapped his arms around the front of her neck and kissed it slowly and then leaned his cheek against it.

“You’d better eat me soon and lie down,” he said, “If you stay sitting upright, someone might see you and bring the police down on you.”

“I guess so,” she said, “Kiss my cheek first.”

She held him against it and enjoyed the relatively tiny kiss. Then she opened her mouth and put out her tongue and held his legs and torso gently, while rubbing his head and shoulders on her protruding tongue. After that, she slowly licked him a few times, and then suddenly shrank back to normal size, causing them both to fall into the water. Brandi was a strong swimmer and quickly adjusted, and checked that he was alight.

“You can probably control it now,” he said.

“I’m still hungry, but I’m not going to grow back up and eat you now,” she said, “You’ve been so nice to me, so thoughtful, so brave taking on those policemen for me, just so I could get away and eat you. Besides I don’t want to be located. I’ll be a fugitive forever now. There wouldn’t have been one person in the city who didn’t recognise the giantess who almost toppled Centerpoint Tower.”

“I have a nice large luxurious place. I’ve even built (for my Agilitricks career) a secret room in the basement, in case I am ever visited by the police. You can hide out there forever, and I’ll bring you everything you need, whatever you want. I’ll look after you, whether you love me or not. Maybe we can even sleep in during the daytimes and then go out for moonlight walks and summer midnight swims when nobody will be awake to see you. I guess if anyone did see us together, they might work out that I’ve been Agilitricks too.”

“What do you mean by ‘whether you love me or not’?” she asked, and put her hands on his head and gave him a long passionate kiss.

“I’ve admired a few celebrities, but I thought you were one of the few I could actually fall in love with, if it hadn’t seemed an impossible dream until today.”

“Well I want to be with you, but you’d better get me home to your kitchen quickly, before my tummy gets the better of me.”

“I don’t think we should leave the bush until nightfall. Your face is still an internationally recognised image. If you lie down in the bushes, I’ll duck through to East Lindfield shops and bring you back a small feast.”

“You’re right. Besides, my stomach muscles are starting to tighten up now from the deprivation of food anyway. I’ll make it.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he said, and took off on a food’s errand.

He brought the food back and enjoyed watching her mouth go to work on it, fascinated with the view. She noticed him staring.

“I guess you’re still thinking how close you came to going down the same way … except not bitten,” she said, “I think you were absolutely lovely to offer.”

“Anything for you. But I’m glad I don’t need to now. It was nice being in your mouth just once though.”

“I’ll give you my bank details, so you can withdraw my money when needed, and do my shopping for me,” she said.

“I wish I could disguise you enough to take you out with me after this.”

“No. It’s been tried, just for dodging the paparazzi. It doesn’t work,” she said, and licked a finger clean after finishing off the last of the food, “Lie down and give me a cuddle.”

He lay down snuggled against her bikini clad figure and felt that all of his birthdays had finally caught up with him.

After a few weeks of having all their daytime dates on Wooss Brayne’s property, Wooss came up with an idea.

“I can train you in martial arts to my own level of expertise. I could buy you some material, and you could so yourself a new costume complete with mask, which should be susceptible to your growth powers. Then you can at least go out in public as a new super heroine both at normal and at giant size,” said Wooss.

“But what about you?” asked Brandi, “Your super hero identity is still wanted for aiding in my escape from Centerpoint.”

“I’ll get some more material and you can make me a new costume too, complete with a mask that covers my whole head. It won’t look anything like my Agilitricks mask. We can call ourselves Smartman and Enlarger Girl.”

When he had been a martial arts teacher, he had typically taught his students in classes of several people for around one hour a week. Now, since he had plenty of time, and no desire to charge Brandi Gold any private lesson fees for individual tuition, they trained together for seven or eight hours a day for several months, until she had mastered all the throws, breakfalls, locks and holds, takedowns, kicks, punches, extended knuckle strikes, knee and elbow strikes and every other technique. He also taught everything he’d learned from his weapons classes, so that she could pick up any stick or pole and use it as a staff and peform various manoeuvres with it. He put his amateur drawing skills to work designing costumes and obtaining material, while she did the sewing.

In the meantime, Rash Old Girl suddenly heard a clicking sound from the lock of her cell door in Smoked Ham Asylum for the Culinary Insane. She walked over to the lock and saw a tiny man peeking out.

“It’s me, Sean Harry Rinker, alias the Dwindler,” said the tiny man.

Rash recognised him as the man she had hired to free her three fellow villains from the Gland Bands.

“I guess it would have been easy for you to break in undetected,” she said.

“And easy enough to break you out of both the cell and the Gland Bands,” said the Dwindler, “I’ve got quite a strong mouth play crush on you. Would you be willing to put me into your mouth as often as possible without swallowing me?”

“I imagine so,” said Rash Old Girl, and positioned him in one hand while he went to work on the Gland Band and freed her from its growth suppression factor.

“Don’t make a move until I free the others too. Then we can all bust out of here together,” said the Dwindler.

He made his way into the other cells and liberated the Choker, the Gobbler, and Fatwoman. Then he gave the word and they ran out into the yard and enlarged themselves, and ran off to freedom, with Rash Old Girl carrying the now normal sized Dwindler.

One night, after weeks of being ready for action, Wooss Brayne and Brandi Gold were watching a movie, when it was interrupted by a news update on the television:

“Rash Old Girl, Fatwoman, Gobbler and Choker, four criminal giantesses once taken down by the now fugitive masked vigilante known as Agilitricks, are now attacking Rural Dural Boys High School. Calling themselves The Spiteful Four, the four giantesses escaped from Smoked Ham Asylum earlier today and somehow removed their Gland Bands, thus making their growth power unstoppable. All of the teachers and students are now bailed up inside the school buildings, unable to leave, for fear of being eaten by the giantesses. Our camera crew are filming from a safe distance, and Castle Hill Police are unable to get any closer than us, because there are no super heroes available to take on four giantesses at once. We’ll be back as more news comes to hand, but first, in order to encourage any other would be vore giantesses out there to eat government approved non-human food only, here’s a word from our fast food franchise sponsor…”

“I think it’s time the Spiteful Four had a word from us,” said Wooss.

They put on their costumes, and he led her to the car he had recently customized (while Brandi had been sewing their costumes) and drove her out to New Line Road, Cherrybrook. While continuing on to Dural, he activated the disguise mode of the car, and a vehicle of ordinary appearance soon became the Smartmobile.

Inside one of the classrooms, a group of 9th graders looked out at Fatwoman, as she knelt down and pounded on the roof of the building.

“You’ll all be in my belly soon enough. So you might as well make it easy on yourselves and come out now. You’ll be such an improvement over the prison food at Smoked Ham Asylum.”

The other three giantesses were targeting other classroom buildings.

In the 9th grade room, the boys saw Fatwoman lie down and look in at them. The fact that they were that close to being eaten by her was astounding to process. One boy named Lewis Rickland had a vore crush on her and was finding her onslaught to be enjoyably exciting. He watched in exhilaration as she sat up again and struck the windows with the palm of her hand. Like all the other boys, he immediately took several steps back to avoid the flying glass. The first impact didn’t break the glass, as had only tapped it lightly before gauging how much of her gargantuan strength was needed.

“Turn your desks over and use them as shields when the glass flies!” said the teacher.

The students quickly obeyed, and peeked over the tops of their desks in time to see Fatwoman knocking several of the windows in with one strike. Then she picked up a metal seat out in the garden, broke a piece of metal off it and used it to gouge out the remaining bits of glass still stuck in the window frames. Once they were clear, she reached in with her plump hand. 

One boy picked up a large shard of broken glass, took off his coat and wrapped one end of the glass in it, so that he could hold it without injury, and then thrust the exposed sharp end into Fatwoman’s hand.

Her scream was like a titanic roar to all of them.

“You little brat! You’ll be lucky if my teeth don’t do the same thing to you, except that you’ll taste better going down whole without dribbling blood onto my tongue!” she called.

The boy who liked her saw how serious the wound was. It was very deep and Fatwoman was losing a lot of blood. The curtains had all been open when the Spiteful Four had arrived, and had not been affected by Fatwoman’s attack. The boy quickly pulled one off the rod, threw it out the window and said, “Use this as a bandage!”

“Thank you,” said Fatwoman, “but don’t think that saves you.”

“No … I don’t,” he said.

Fatwoman took a few minutes to wrap the curtain around her hand like a tourniquet and tie it tight, with the help of the Gobbler, whom she diverted from an assault on the 11th Grade building. Then both giantesses resumed their attacks. This time Fatwoman used her protected hand, and reached into the classroom again.

“That thing can’t cover all your hand!” called the boy with the glass sword, and thrust at her again.

She quickly withdrew her hand and got up and seemed to disappear from view.

Suddenly they heard glass smashing behind them and realised that she’d gone around and palmed her way into the windows on the other side. They retreated to the centre of the room and let the boy with the glass sword keep her at bay. However, this time Fatwoman made no attempt to reach in for them. She just put her fingers part way through windows on both sides at once and then began to tug hard.

The students saw the side walls and roof being ripped off the building, and then saw Fatwoman place the roof on the school oval and smile down at them triumphantly. She picked up what remained of the seat she’d broken and held it above the boy with the glass sword.

“If you don’t throw that thing outside now, I’ll bring this down on you and your little weapon at crushing speed,” said Fatwoman.

The boy complied. Then the boy who liked her saw an opportunity.

“I’m the one who helped you bandage your hand, and in so doing I put us all in danger again,” he said, “Would you take me first, so the others have a bit more time before the end?”

“Whatever you say, Sweetie,” said Fatwoman and opened her hand for him to walk between her fingers.

She lifted him up and brought him close to her wide open mouth. He looked inside in admiration and was very glad that the others would think him a hero. Fatwoman would think of him fondly too as she gobbled him down, and he would be the only one to relish the experience.

She slid him into her mouth, which was clearly lit by the afternoon sun, and savoured the taste of him for several minutes, before she gulped. He went down happily, unaware that his sacrifice had bought the other students a lot more time than he’d planned.

Into the scene stepped Enlarger Girl, aiming a devastating roundhouse kick to the Choker’s hips. The Choker staggered back and fell down onto the school oval. Fatwoman rose to her feet and stepped towards Enlarger Girl, planning to use her bulkier build to fight the average built Enlarger Girl like a bear. Enlarger Girl dodged a wild punch from Fatwoman, ducking to the side, pivoting, and cocking her leg to send a powerful side kick into the side of Fatwoman’s body, just below her armpit, while the punch had exposed that position. She had recalled that Wooss had taught her that every martial arts technique that one performs must inevitably open oneself up to a counter act, by exposing something previously guarded. In this case, Fatwoman’s punch had stopped her arm from protecting the side of her body.

“Hit and run with a larger opponent,” she thought, recalling the way that Wooss had done so with her, after they’d practiced in his lounge with her expanded to eight feet tall.

She had gained one strike. Then she dodged quickly again, grabbed Fatwoman’s retreating punch arm with both of her hands, and was now in a position to kick her hard in the back of the leg.

That move brought Fatwoman to the ground. Slowly digesting inside her, the boy who’d willingly saved his friends felt the fact that she was now on her side. Soon he felt nothing at all.

Rash Old Girl had taken the longest, with only the strength of a 55 year old giant woman to use, in getting the roof of the classroom she’d attacked. Being the oldest, she had gone for the 12th graders, as, even not taking her 12 centuries of life into account, she was still nearly 4 decades older than the 12th graders. She took the opportunity to stuff as many of them into her mouth and gulp them down, swallowing each one quickly, while the Gobbler was the next to engage Enlarger Girl in unarmed combat.

Enlarger Girl noticed a tall flagpole in the school courtyard, ripped it out of the ground, and held the rope and flag in her hand. She was now able to swing the pole in a manner similar to the use of what some Sydneysiders referred to as ‘numb chucks’, the slang for what was actually a prohibited weapon in Sydney Australia. The pole caught the Gobbler solidly in the side of the head and made a few other strikes.

Having been taught to remember that a person who comes at you with a weapon is not only going to use the weapon, Enlarger Girl made use of the distraction to aim a fast forward kick straight at the Gobbler’s chest. Within the Gobbler’s stomach, the two boys that the giantess had managed to swallow felt the impact and were jarred a little before continuing to be digested. The Gobbler went down too, landing in the courtyard.

 “It’s just you and me now, Rash,” said Enlarger Girl, stepping towards Rash Old Girl.

“You won’t take me down that easily. I did command my own trained fighters until recently,” said Rash.

“And I was trained by the best,” said Enlarger Girl, as the object of her assertion, namely Smartman, stepped out from the concealment of her hair and onto her shoulder.

Enlarger Girl began looking for openings, as she and Rash began to exchange a series of strikes and blocks. To her surprise, Smartman dived off her shoulder and down the inside of Rash’s neckline.

“How can he prefer her breasts at a time like this? I thought he loved me!” thought Enlarger Girl.

It gave her a rush of anger fuelled adrenaline, and she struck Rash harder than ever before. Although their skills were roughly evenly matched, Rash had the body of a 55 year old woman. Brandi Gold was younger and fitter and faster. Rash went down too, and then Enlarger Girl saw Smartman dragging another normal sized man out from under the neckline of her dress.

“I saw movement in there that your larger eyes would have missed and went in to capture the only one who both would and could have busted the Spiteful Four out of Smoked Ham Asylum,” said Smartman, “Meet the Dwindler.”

“And I thought you fancied her!” said Enlarger Girl.

“No. But he needs a special cell he can’t shrink out of. This time we should be able to keep them all inside. You head over and tell the police that they can move in now with the Gland Bands.”

The students and their teachers came out of what remained of the school buildings and stood beside the fallen villains. One boy was closest to the Gobbler’s face, when she suddenly opened her mouth wide and lunged her head at him. He ran back from her until he was sure that she was too injured to get up and pursue him.

With Enlarger Girl’s help, the Spiteful Four were forced to reduce to normal size and submit to the Gland Bands once more.  Then Enlarger Girl picked Smartman up and was about to carry him back to the Smartmobile, when a group of costumed characters, all currently normal sized, met them at the edge of the school grounds.

“I’m code named Mr Mensa,” said their leader, “Could you shrink down so we could talk more privately in the paddocks behind the school?”

Enlarger Girl shrank back to normal size, and Mr Mensa explained that he was a scientific genius, and the leader of their group, which was known as D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97. It was a covert group of male vore fans and the very few giantesses who reciprocated their fantasies. Having seen the news bulletin, he had gathered his team and headed for Rural Dural Boys High School and arrived just as the two new super heroes were leaving.

Mr Mensa invited Enlarger Girl and Smartman to join D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97. The two accepted, and enjoyed a few months of being accepted by their own kind.

One day, Mr Mensa called a meeting of D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 in order to show and distribute his new invention.

“This is called Time Bubblegum,” said Mr Mensa, “Once chewed, it will project the user 1500 years into the future, and leave them in that future time, until it has been spat out. After that, it’s useless, but I can always make more supplies. It’ll be of great value to our group. I’ve often wondered what the future holds for the giantess and tiny men community.”

They decided to all use some Time Bubblegum together, and were carried forward into the very late 35th Century. There they met a man called Billy Blink, who introduced them to some of the incumbent giantesses. Then Billy took them to the Blue Mountains just outside the far west of Sydney. At Medlow Bath and Blackheath, there were a number of high escarpments that could never have been traversed by normal sized humans. Yet, since the 20th Century, several giantesses had easily stepped from them and built a giant city named Giantessopolis. The upmarket section of that city was now known as the Region of Supermodels.

Normal sized men were welcome in Giantessopolis too, but would have to live in giant dolls houses or stay in suitable visiting quarters. At last the giantesses had the convenience of being able to retain their giant size for as long as they liked. By the 35th Century, many earlier giantesses had married normal sized men and had children with them while at normal size themselves, creating a much higher population of women with the gts gene. Many of them had giantess gobbling fantasies about men. To meet their needs, Billy Blank had exposed himself to a radioactive formula, which he named Smother-I. It had given him the permanent ability to clone himself at will. He was now also known as Project OMUCH (One Man Unlimited Clone Hero). Many of his clones made themselves available to be eaten by keen giantesses, so that the rest of the population were not at risk of being eaten too.

However, some giantesses were not satisfied with eating replicas of the same man over and over again, and insisted on attacking and eating other unwilling participants.

So in 3493, the following speech had been made by Project OMUCH:

“Carolyn Grimmalt, Leeza Bellino, Christine Bahlarti, Katey Panotso, Rebecca Kurkijn, Brooke Strain, Alexandra Sims, Hayden Smart, Jenny Limahughes, Gisele Christie, Natalie Agron, Sandra Cross, and the villainous giantess known only as Insaniac 55; you have all been found guilty of wilful cannibalism of unwilling men. It is the sentence of this tribunal that you be banished from earth to the size suitable uninhabited planet of Jupiter.”

So they were all deported to the unpopulated giant planet. There they built their own city just next to the Jade Jungle of Jupiter, and renamed the whole world Giantess Planet. Their new giant city was named the Region of Supper Villains. One of these banished Giantesses was a direct descendant of Rash Old Girl, the one who had taken the name Insaniac 55 and invented a teleportation device called the Star Snack and set it up in the middle of the Region of Supper Villains.

One day, during D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ‘97’s extended stay in the 35th Century, Mr Mensa had just stepped out of the shower and was putting his pyjama pants on, when he vanished from his bathroom and appeared in a gigantic jungle.

“But there’s very little of that bush left, now that Giantessopolis occupies the old spot,” he thought. 

Then he saw a sign on the trunk of a giant tree. As he read it, he could see that it had obviously been posted low down on the trunk for the benefit of people his size.

Attention earthling. You have been brought here to Giantess Planet, formerly known as Jupiter, by means of a device known as the Star Snack. It is kept in the middle of the city known as the Region of Supper Villains. Any giantess can use its view screen controls to scan earth for a suitable man to eat, and then teleport him from earth into the Jade Jungle of Jupiter, which is just outside our city. You will in fact have arrived there instantly, while the giantess who sent you there will need time to walk into the jungle and start looking for you. She will hunt you down and catch you and eat you all up. The people of Earth responded to us with deportation. We now respond with teleportation. Run and hide well, small man. Your giantess is coming after you even as you read this.

This news was unbelievable. It also explained the rash of unexplained disappearances that D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 had remained in the 35th Century to investigate.

“I’ll have to put a stop to this. She must have seen me in my birthday suit in the shower while she was calibrating that Star Snack device, whoever my giantess is!” he thought, “I wonder if this also explains the disappearance of Smartman. Enlarger Girl’s been worried sick.”

He concealed himself by climbing a hanging vine. Just as he swung on it, he looked down and saw the giantess Katey Panotso running into view. He recognised her instantly. All of the villains’ photographs were on permanent exhibit in the Region of Supermodels Museum, as a permanent warning to any other giantesses who might be thinking of eating unwilling humans.

She was older than him, younger than the 55 year old appearance of his own time’s villainess Rash Old Girl, and very beautiful. He let go of his vine in mid swing, caught the next one and used it to reach a branch. Then he looked back and saw Katey climbing the original vine with much more speed than his relatively small body had done. She swung to the next vine, and then over to his branch.

“That was a very innovative and original chase you gave me,” she said, “This will be the highest vantage point I’ve had while eating someone.”

“Not only that, but I also have the distinction of being the only 20th Century man you’ll ever have eaten. I’m Mr Mensa from D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97.”

“You can time travel! Even our people don’t have that ability in this time.”

She stuck out her tongue mockingly and then licked him with it.

The feel of her gigantic tongue was not in the least unpleasant. He waited while she satisfied it with the taste of him and then placed him into her mouth for a while and swallowed him. Before anything else could happen, he spat out his Time Bubblegum. It would disappear into her stomach acids below now, and have no more effect on anyone. For him, the effect was that of being instantly catapulted back in time to Jupiter 1997.

There he found Smartman, who explained that he too had been teleported to Giantess Planet weeks earlier and eaten by Gisele Christie. He had had the same idea of escaping her stomach by returning to 1997, but lacked the knowledge to fashion materials and build a spaceship to return to earth. For Mr Mensa, this was child’s play, and the two of them got to work. Once back on earth, they obtained more Time Bubblegum and travelled forward in time to 3497. There they filled Project OMUCH, leading giantesses of Giantessopolis and other members of D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 in on what had been happening.

“We’ll have to work together in two teams,” said Project OMUCH, “Giantesses from both D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 and Giantessopolis will take on the deported giantesses in the Region of Supper Villains, while regular sized men from D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 will team with me (and as many clones of myself as I may need to make) to sneak inside the Star Snack and plant enough timed explosives to destroy it. Once both tasks are done, we’ll have to bring Insaniac 55 back to Giantessopolis and imprison her, so that she can never build another Star Snack.”

As it turned out, OMUCH only had to make enough clones to occupy the eager mouths of some of the deported giantesses until the others had completed their assignments. Once the captive Insaniac 55 was safely locked up in Giantessopolis, Mr Mensa decided that it was time for D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 to return to 1997.

“Thank goodness,” said Brandi Gold (alias Enlarger Girl), “I was getting tired of having that piece of Time Bubblegum wedged between my molars for safe keeping each time I went to bed.”

There was nobody else on the beach. It wasn’t a well used beach anyway, too isolated. That very thing was what Surfergirl liked. It was a week day, so she had the entire beach to herself.  She reached down with both hands, pulling at her jeans until she was able to lift her legs out of them. Then came the shirt. It was a short sleeved clingy shirt with no pockets. Even with her jeans removed, the bottom of the shirt, which had been concealed when she’d had it tucked into her jeans, now still covered most of her G-string. She pulled it off and saw that her bikini was still neatly in place, dropped the shirt onto the discarded jeans on her rug, and looked at the water. This was her day. The whole scene was calm, serene, and uniquely private and hers, especially for such a publicly accessible place. She walked slowly down to the water, and into the surf, until she was up to her waist, and then dived into the next small wave and swam freely underwater.

Each time she surfaced, she could see the bright sun glistening on the surface of the water. She swam through even the most challenging conditions with ease, her supple athletic body well able to deal with any aquatic contingency. After over two hours, she came out of the water, walked up to the rug, and saw that there was still nobody else on the beach. She picked up her towel and rubbed herself down until she was completely dry, except for her hair. She was about to lie down and cover herself with a blanket, when she noticed a large shell, as large as her head in fact. It was fairly close to her position, and yet she hadn’t seen it when she’d arrived. Surfergirl walked over, lifted it and held it to her ear, waiting to hear the sounds of the sea that were somehow reproduced in the way the wind blew through the shapes of the interiors of shells.

Instead she heard a song, a song with no words, only a vocal sound. She recalled movies with such wordless vocal singing on the soundtracks, in particular a movie set both on a beach and underwater. The tune was delightful, and made her wish that there was a real person singing it. She wondered how a shell could capture such a perfect harmony and reproduce it like this. One thing was embedded in her thoughts. She simply had to take this shell home with her.

It was late that night, when she was lying in bed, with the beautiful shell resting on the cupboard on the other side of her room, that she heard the singing again. This time it was not necessary to put the shell to her ear. The sound was louder and carried clearly across the room. She leaped out of bed and ran over to the shell, picked it up and held it closely to her chest. 

You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, little shell, she thought. Before she knew it, she’d actually said those words aloud. Here she was talking to an inanimate object, yet not a silent one.  Suddenly she felt a slight movement touching her chest. It didn’t feel like a hard portion of the shell, and it had moved by itself. She suddenly pulled the shell away from her chest and held it to her eyes this time, rather than her ears. She saw a tiny man scurrying around the corner of the shell’s interior and out of sight. There had been a man inside it all along. It was he who had been doing the singing. She took the shell over to her bed, turned it around, so that the opening faced the ground, and shook it gently, until he tumbled out onto the blanket.

“My little marine musician,” she said, “You have a wonderful voice. I’d never have known you were in there, until you touched my chest.”

“It was the way you said you loved the shell. I wanted to physically touch you. When you held the shell to your chest, the opening was out of your sight. I reached out and touched. I hope you didn’t mind.”

“Not at all. Would you like to stay here? I could put you back on the beach, but somebody else would find the shell, and I want you here with me.”

“I do too,” said the little Marine Musician.

“Will you sleep by my ear and sing me to sleep with your lovely tune?” she asked.

He was glad to oblige, and waited for her to position him there, and then began to sing.

“It’s nice, although not quite as nice as when you’re in the shell,” said Surfergirl, “Not that you’d be able to sleep comfortably in there.”

“I could, with the bed of seaweed I pulled into it,” said the Marine Musician, “But I like it out here with you.”

“Why don’t you sleep on my mouth?” she asked, and lifted him gently and rested him on her lips, which meant that she would no longer be talking.

She lay awake, well aware in her own private thoughts, that there was one more reason that she had been glad to find such a small man in that shell. She didn’t think that she should tell him yet, if ever. Why ruin a good thing with spoilers? Yet she did want to find out for herself if things would be as good as she thought. She pretended to fall asleep and then waited a while. When the time seemed right, she suddenly yawned, and the Marine Musician fell into her mouth right on cue. She felt him against her tongue and loved the taste. She’d always like seafood, but this was beyond her wildest expectations. How she easily she could have sat up and gagged right there, until he’d been well and truly swallowed down. It wasn’t out of the question yet, but there seemed such a strong reason not to. She would miss that sweet little guy and his marvellous marine music.

The trade-off would dominate her thinking every day from then on. The urge to gulp and the yearning to keep the music available. She realised that she was having all these thoughts while he was still stuck in her mouth. She sat up, opened up and said ‘ah’ and took him out again.

“Sorry about that,” she said, “Perils of yawning.”

“You don’t really need to apologise,” he said, “I’ve loved being in my shell for some time, but it was much nicer in there.”

“I’m surprised and glad you like it,” she said, “I think I could sleep without gagging if you want to spend the night in there. It’d be rather wet though, but I suspect a shell man from the seaside is used to that.”

“I am at that,” said the Marine Musician as she helped him gently back into her mouth.

An idea finally came to her the next morning. She left him at home for a while and went out and came home with a brand new video camera.

“They make the best audio recorders, and I like to see you anyway,” she said, and spent weeks recording all of his songs, which he sung both from within the shell and out in view in front of it.

She would copy the films to a hard drive and burn multiple DVD backups of each one. Soon she had a collection of his entire repertoire.

“Thank you so much for doing all that,” she said, “Now I can always listen to your songs.”

“You can anyway,” he said, “I don’t plan to leave you.”

“I know,” said Surfergirl, “But I think it might be hard for me to hear them coming from my belly.”

He ran over her body and sat down on her belly and started singing. She reached towards him and cupped his head with her hand, to stop the song.

“Not quite what I meant,” she said, “The acoustics aren’t so feasible on the inside.”

“On the inside? I’ve never been that far down, just into your mouth.”

“It’ll be your chance to explore new territory,” said Surfergirl.

“Do you mean …? Are you going to eat me?”

“You filled a need that day on the beach, and ever since. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have had in my life, and yet the whole time I was in two minds about hearing your sweet music and eating you up. Now that the recordings are all made, I can have both.”

“You were just what I needed too,” said the Marine Musician, “I couldn’t be happier that we came together.”

“Even with the way it’s worked out?”

“I could just never dislike you.”

“I … Well words are awkward, I know. Let’s just get it happening,” said Surfergirl.

“Sure,” said the Marine Musician, “I mean, once I’m in there, you can start playing back the recordings I guess.”

“They’d make a nice backing track now, with the volume turned down low,” she said, and started one of the songs playing.

Surfergirl reached out from the bed, pulled the curtains open and looked out on the beach below, and the surf. It was almost as if she was sitting down there now and eating him in that location, the place where she’d first found the shell. She couldn’t understand his lack of panic, when she’d made her plan so obvious. Well she’d kept her secret long enough and only just revealed it. Maybe he had more surprises for her too.

She fed him into her happy maw and gagged with satisfaction as the music played on. She heard a slight noise from the shell, not a song, just a rustle. Maybe the seaweed had shifted in a brief draft or something. She would still keep the shell too, even though she never expected to hear another tune coming from the shell itself.

Within the shell, the Marine Musician listened for any movement from Surfergirl. He had returned to the shell with a slight noise of displacement, but wherever he’d gone in the world, that shell had always called him back, because of its own unexplained properties. Would he let her know that the shell was unbreakable? Would he let her know that he was no longer in her belly, but back in the shell? That was a decision for another day.

Surfergirl waited until the weekend came, and then picked up the shell and took a walk on a small path beside the seashore, which linked the nearest beach with the next. She came to a shop she had visited many times before, which bore the sign of its name ‘Ocean Treasures’ over the door. The owner was an old friend of Surfergirl and her mother, and was known to her close friends as The Wise Woman of the Seaside.

“Amy!” said the woman, eyeing the large shell, “How nice to see you again. Did you want me to purchase that from you and sell it in the shop?”

“Oh no, I’d never part with it,” said Amy, “Actually I just needed someone to talk to, Carey. I’m in a mixture of emotions about something.”

“I’ll close up and draw the curtains earlier than usual,” said Carey, doing so, “Now tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I don’t know how to say this exactly, but I … ate someone. He was a tiny little guy that I found in this shell. I didn’t hurt him in my mouth, and I really enjoyed it, but now I sort of feel bad. He sang so beautifully inside the shell when I first found it. I shook it and he tumbled out. We were friends for a while, and then I made up my mind and swallowed him.”

The Marine Musician listened keenly. Whatever was said next could have a major impact on his decision as to whether or not he would reveal himself.

“Do you miss him?” asked Carey.

“Maybe a little bit, but that’s not really it, since most of the time I keep wishing there were more of him, so that I could do it again with another one,” said Amy, “It’s just that I have brief moments of feeling sorry for him, and then I go back to thinking how much fun it was to swallow a completely helpless little guy.”

 “You don’t need to feel bad,” said the Marine Musician, stepping out of the shell into view, “Ever since I found that shell, it always brings me back to it, whenever I’m in any trouble under the sea.”

Carey picked the boy up and looked at him closely.

“I have knowledge which could really enlighten both of you,” she said, “Let me start at the beginning. For centuries there has been a race of amphibious air and water breathing tiny people called the Ocean Mites. (Unlike the humans with the shrinking gene, the Ocean Mites were permanently tiny, having been born that way). One day some of the Ocean Mite girls found a half drowned 14 year old boy named Ivan lying in the water and sand on the edge of the surf. They used a modified sea urchin spine as a syringe, and injected a carefully concocted serum into his body. It reduced him to their size, having been derived from their own blood, and gave him the ability to breathe water as they did. He still retained his air breathing ability too. When they revived him, they explained that there was a shortage of males among their people, because there was a family line of women who always married men who were prepared to live at the seaside. This had gone on ever since the first of these women had discovered a tiny male ocean mite and taken to eating him. The women in that family line were all strong divers and swimmers, and never told anyone of the existence of the tiny Ocean Mites. Yet, inevitably, each new female would reach adulthood and discover them, while diving and swimming in the ocean. They would crave them with the same addiction as anyone who loved seafood. Prawns, lobster and calamari were as nothing in comparison to the taste of male Ocean Mites. The Ocean Mite girls told him of the way these women had created a shortage of male Ocean Mites for the girls to fall in love with, and asked him to choose one of them to date and eventually marry. The boy told them that he was already very much in love with a fourteen year old girl he’d been seeing for a number of months, and that he would return to her regardless of his loss in size. Ivan remembered the times he had seen the large freshwater swimming pool, which remained full because of a small opening underwater, that linked it from his girlfriend’s family’s backyard to the sea. He swam through the seaside until he came to the opening, surfaced in the pool and saw his girlfriend’s single mother lying on the grass beside the pool. He climbed out and told her what had happened to him, and that he hoped she wouldn’t now consider him inadequate for her daughter. The woman said that she didn’t find him in the least inadequate, but that it was no longer of any relevance, because, she explained to his surprise, she was in fact the middle aged generation of the family of women who hunted and ate Ocean Mites…”

Carey’s information was spot on, but she did not know the earliest origin of the Ocean Mites. Centuries earlier, earth was visited by tiny beings in a water filled spacecraft. They were travellers from another planet, who chose to make their home on earth. However, earth’s surface people were much larger than the visitors. So they chose to use their amphibious ability to breathe sea water, and lived most of their lives in the ocean. Hence the name Ocean Mites. However, they sometimes came to the surface and took the risk of being found by the relative giants, because they were still born with a love of both land and sea, just as they would have been on their home planet of Testamentia. 

Carey’s narrative continued for Amy’s benefit, but for reader simplicity, it is presented here as a flashback with the dialogue intact.

“How many have you eaten?” asked Ivan.

“I only ever caught one, along with two girls, but I let them go,” said his girlfriend’s mother, “My mother lives not far from here, and she’s cut down their male line a lot in this generation. She’s been very successful in diving for them with nets and then eating them on the rocks when nobody’s around.”

“No wonder they needed me to partner with,” said Ivan, “But I’m in love with your daughter and I’d never leave her for them.”

“You’re very sweet, and she’s been lucky to have spent these last few months with you,” said the mother, “But you do realise that you’ve taken on the flavour and characteristics of the Ocean Mites. If my daughter knew about it, she would undoubtedly want you for her first Ocean Mite meal, regardless of whatever you two have felt for each other up until now. I won’t let her find out what’s happened to you though.”

“Thank you,” said Ivan, not sure if it was such a good thing.

“I should really thank you,” said the mother, “I have a friend coming over for morning tea, but after she’s gone, I’m going to eat you myself.”

“Really?” asked Ivan.

“You’re in exactly the same boat as the Ocean Mites now. Nobody else knows about you, and you taste the same as they do.”

“Well I’m not in any position to say no, and your mouth looks nice like your daughter’s. So I won’t give you any attitude about it. I’ll just have to go to your belly without her ever finding out.”

“Thanks for being so sweet about it,” she said, “I’ll be as nice as I can about swallowing you too.”

She took him inside and emptied a large bag of chips into a low bowl, picked him up and lowered him into an open half used box of tissues.

“You can lie softly on them until Carey’s gone,” said the mother and then heard the doorbell ring.

While his girlfriend’s mom answered the door, Ivan quickly climbed out of the tissue box and into the bowl. He hid himself beneath the chips and waited until his captor took the chips to the table. He remained concealed as each woman occasionally took a chip from the bowl and munched on it.

 “I just want to check on something in the kitchen,” said the mother at last, and left the room.

Ivan quickly revealed himself and hurriedly explained his entire situation and everything he’d learned, to Carey. In fact it was this explanation, which had given Carey the knowledge that she was now sharing in the present with Amy and the Marine Musician.

Carey concealed Ivan in her pocket and waited for the mother to return, guessing correctly that the woman had gone to see how Ivan was feeling and found him missing and tried unsuccessfully to find and recapture him. As long as she didn’t guess that he had hidden in the chips, their ruse would work.

The mother soon came back looking slightly perturbed.

“I’ve lost something important in the kitchen, and I really need to concentrate to find it,” she said, “Will you be able to see yourself out, Carey?”

“Sure, I understand,” said Carey, who understood better than the mother realised.

Carey took Ivan back to her shop and put him on the table.

“I don’t know what to do now,” said Ivan, “Both my girlfriend and her mother would want to eat me.”

“You’ll have to flee far into the ocean,” said Carey, “The mother knows of your shrunken existence, and she’ll never stop hunting you. The daughter would be just as enthusiastic.”

“I’ll spend the rest of my life in love with a girl I can never see again,” said Ivan.

“Not if I made you forget her, and you fell for an Ocean Mite instead,” said Carey, and took out a large blue gem from the desk drawer, “This is the Sea Sapphire. With it I can hypnotize you into forgetting that you were ever a normal sized human, and forgetting that you ever dated a normal sized human. As far as you’ll know, you’ll be another Ocean Mite, capable of falling in love with one of them.”

“Please do it,” said Ivan, and she went ahead.

Carey took him to the edge of the sea, and set him down in the water.  He watched her turn and walk back up the beach, and then dived into the new life which awaited him, free of a broken heart.

The present day Carey concluded her story for Amy and the Marine Musician.

“I think I understand why you told me that story,” said Amy, “This little guy and I are like Ivan and that other girl.”

Carey took out the Sea Sapphire and showed it to them.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, as Amy and the Marine Musician gazed into its brilliance.

“Yes … yes! I remember now,” said Amy, “I was that 14 year old girl! So if I hadn’t found the Marine Musician and eaten him, then my Mom surely would have! Thank you. I don’t feel so bad now. You must have used the Sea Sapphire to make me forget Ivan as well, Carey.”

“It’s true. And you, little man, found a Calling Shell first, before you met Amy, lived in it, and were able to rescued by it,” said Carey to the Marine Musician, “But your greatest achievement might have been teaching yourself to sing in it. Can the Sea Sapphire do anything to enhance your thoughts, little man?”

“I remember too! I’m Ivan!” said the Marine Musician, “No wonder I never met and fell in love with any more Ocean Mites. Subconsciously I must have always been missing Amy, even though I’d forgotten her.”

“I dated other guys after that, but never fell deeply in love enough to marry one even as an adult,” said Amy, “I think it’s partly because I always subconsciously missed Ivan too, and partly because I knew something else was missing. I was yet to discover my own little Ocean Mite and eat him, even if he was a human once.”

“How do you feel now, Ivan?” asked Carey.

“Shell shocked, if you’ll pardon the pun,” said Ivan, “If Mrs L had eaten me before I found the Calling Shell, then Amy and I would never have had this reunion today. I’m so glad to see you again and remember you, Amy.”

“If I could have eaten you forever, I would have,” said Amy, “I don’t know if I should just pick up where we were as 14 year olds.”

“I don’t mind that you wanted to do that. I love you, Amy. I think we were meant to be together, and were kept away from each other for years, because we let things be decided by a painful problem outside of our control. I wish I’d kept my memory of you, so that I could come back once the Calling Shell had made me safe from your belly’s more lasting effects. You won’t be able to find more male Ocean Mites easily, but you can eat me as many times as you like, and I’ll always be OK in the end. So you don’t need to feel bad.”

“I suppose that’s a really good thing,” said Amy, “But your problem was only outside of your control. If I had found and caught you when we were 14, I would still have been able to decide whether we went on dating or whether you went down the hatch, and you know exactly what I would have decided.”

“It doesn’t matter. You can’t do it now, but if you don’t want me, then I want Carey and the Sea Sapphire to make me forget again. It’s too painful knowing about you if I can’t be with you.”

“And you’d really be happy to be an endless supply of undigested meals for me?”

“Of course I would. Even if your Mom ever found me and ate me, I’d still get safely back to the shell.”

“Let’s go home,” said Amy.

“I’ll tell nobody,” said Carey.

Amy took Ivan to her own home, with the knowledge that her Mom still lived close by, and then put the shell down on the floor.

“I’m really touched by your devotion to me,” she said, placing him on a stool to look at her, “But you’ve overlooked one thing.”

She jumped into the air, and brought her full body weight down, stamping both feet hard onto the shell. He instantly understood her reasoning. With the shell destroyed, he would be at the mercy of her belly with no round trip available.

But the shell wouldn’t break.

“It’s indestructible,” he said, “And it still works.”

“Let’s put it to the test,” said Amy, and she suddenly picked him up and dropped him into her mouth and swallowed him without taking any time to enjoy the taste.

He soon emerged from the shell and smiled up at her.

“I guess you’re stuck with me,” he said, “I know I still want to be stuck with you.”

The next time the beach was deserted, Amy took him down and let him have a head start in the water. He dived in and swam out and into the depths. Soon he saw the beautiful Surfergirl diving in after him, with a phenomenal size advantage, and yet no ability to breathe. He knew that she could gulp in a volume of air, which much exceeded the space occupied by his own body. She pursued him underwater until she caught him, and then took him home and ate him.

They played this game on several occasions, and he became more adept at using seaweed and other underwater growths to evade her for a while. In the end, he enjoyed being caught and teased and eaten.

February 2005, Boatstreamingin Cove, USA….

In the central hall of a large privately owned building in an isolated cove, a mannequin burned. It was in fact, a life size effigy of a child. Six of the most evil, demon-possessed men in the world looked on in pleasure, while their symbolic child sacrifice ritual continued and concluded … until the mannequin was nothing more than ashes.

Judas Galt, Farik See, Rowan Solja, Leon Denn, Mark Beeste and Pappy Romanov were the six richest men in the world. They were the current membership of the Sons of Molech, a cult which had existed for at least a hundred years. They had modelled their ritual of sacrificing child mannequins in the fire, by copying the ancient forbidden practice of sacrificing real children to the pagan false god Molech back in the Old Testament Bible times of human history.

In the 20th Century, the Sons of Molech had been successful in replacing their membership with new heirs, whenever one of their limited number died of old age, so that they always had a core membership of six people: Six men who literally, behind the scenes, ran the entire world. Ultimately their plans could not prevail against an all powerful God who created the world in the first place, but these men, like the demons who’d gain influence over the souls decades ago, chose to ignore that reality, and create their own.

They had amassed an incalculable fortune between them, bribed and bought senior government officials and even perhaps corrupted some of the world leaders themselves. They had engineered economic crises, syphoning much of the wealth of the middle class into their own private coffers. They had inaugurated wars using false flag operations to stir the public into blind unreasoning action, and had continued to go undetected by almost all of the populace. They had controlled the mainstream media, making their existence almost impossible to detect, and had gone on unpunished, while the victims of their wide scale enterprises had suffered beyond measure.

The Sons of Molech were also the global crime cartel behind any current activities of Red Moll. Their agents in Australia had been quick to learn of Red Moll’s existence and to co-opt her into their employ. Her perfume gambit and other tactics detailed in earlier chapters had all been done at the instigation of the Sons of Molech, who actually had no interest in the welfare of women, but had created the feminist movement as a way to destroy the family unit and undermine relationships and cause unworkable office politics in people’s daily vocational situations.

After revelling in the sight of the child mannequin’s ashes a little longer, Judas Galt called their latest meeting to order.

“Gentlemen, in the last four years we have come closer than ever before to meeting our ultimate goal. We have staged the September 11th 2001 World Trade Centre disaster successfully framing so called foreign terrorists. From this, we’ve stirred the people of America into war with other countries, we’ve been able to bypass and even alter the legal system, enabling warrantless searches, torture and detention of suspects … and we’ve even begun to dismantle the Constitution to the point of removing civil liberties. Mr Romanov, can you tell us how things are proceeding with the latest phase in our plan for world domination?”

“We have successfully created a belief in false causes of Global Warming. With this in mind, we can work towards a new world order. We can bring in new taxes on carbon emissions, making businesses cost prohibitive to run, transferring even more wealth away from the middle class,” said Pappy Romanov.

“And finally, when the people have given up most of their freedom in the name of protecting themselves, when we’ve programmed everyone in the world with deceptive movie plots and post 9/11 homages, when we’ve bankrupted every economy in the world, we will move in with our own fortune, call in their debts and take over every country in the world, round up the dissenters and imprison and even kill them. Hitler never went far enough, and left too many people convinced he’d lost the plot. We on the other hand are writing the plot. You’ve done well, Mr Romanov,” said Judas.

And in that moment, five members of the Sons of Molech watched Pappy Romanov rapidly shrink out of sight.

September 1st, 2001…

Since a good story can’t be all gloom and doom, we now digress into a new plotline of a more romantic nature.

Louise Waters washed her hair, dried herself off, put on her loveliest dress and drove to the Flying Wild restaurant in the summit of one of the tallest buildings in New York. She looked around eagerly, until she saw a familiar face. It was a face that she had only seen in a photograph on a dating site, but had instantly come to like. The guy was even featured, well dressed, and had an air of gentility: just her type.

Looking radiant with elegance, she walked over to him.

“Evan?” she said.

“Does reality do justice to the photograph?” he asked.

“I’m not disappointed at all,” said Louise.

Evan Chully kissed her cheek and led her to a table by the window, with a panoramic view of New York below them. Louise Waters smiled in appreciation. In fact, her name was Bea Louise Waters, but the Bea had seemed too old fashioned. So she usually dropped it in favour of her middle name, occasionally referring to herself by the compromise of B Louise Waters, inspired, she admitted by the author L Frank Baum.

They talked about their careers, their past dating experiences, and the things about New York which excited them the most. Louise had not been drinking, and noticed that Evan hadn’t either. Yet she found that he was loosening up as he got to know her, losing his inhibitions and speaking more openly, more boldly in fact. Eventually he said something which, on a first date, might well have turned most women off.

“I’d love to remove all your garments slowly and give you a nightcap in my spa,” said Evan.

“Is that your goal in all this?” asked Louise, betraying no emotional reaction one way or the other.

“Not so much a goal as a fantasy,” said Evan.

“Now that the subject of fantasies has come up, I’d like to tell you something straight up about mine. If I could shrink you down to tiny size and swallow you whole, I would,” said Louise.

Evan sat there in unqualified silence.

“It’s not your average run of the mill fantasy, is it?” asked Louise at last.

“I can’t say I’ve heard it before,” said Evan, and looked down at his watch, “Still it was interesting to meet you, and get to know you this evening. I guess I’d better get the bill now, so we can both get some sleep before work tomorrow.”

“Another one gone,” thought Louise, as she made her way home, “To think he’s never heard of the women with the gts gene and the men with the shrinking gene, not to mention their sometimes mutual fantasies. I just haven’t been able to meet one of THOSE guys at all, let alone one I’d like. But who am I kidding? As if I’ll ever find an available guy who wants to be eaten. They’d already be paired up with giantesses who want to do it. It’s so unfair that I don’t have the gts gene, and yet I do have the giantess vore desires. Not that it would hurt the little guys going down. They show no appreciation for the trouble I’d go to in reducing their size first.”

She had had so many first dates, all of which had ended with that precarious announcement of her fantasy. She knew the causality well enough, but she lived for two moments: the one she had yet to experience, when a first date guy would by some miracle respond positively to her declaration of desire to dine on him; and the one she experienced almost invariably which was the look of stunned surprise on the face of each guy as she told him what she wanted to do.

There was time enough to look again, before she went to bed. She hopped onto the internet and browsed the recently joined new members of the dating sites she frequented, until she saw a profile name which had her licking her lips with longing:

Shrunknguy!

February 2005, Boatstreamingin Cove…

“What the-?”

“He’s just plain gone!”

“Can our masters have turned on us?”

“I thought they took control for our own good,” said Leon Denn.

The Sons of Molech were in confusion and despair as to why their demons had allowed one of their number to rapidly dwindle, apparently out of existence.

Actually he hadn’t. Pappy Romanov was now living on a sub-molecular structure, which to him was as large as an entire planet.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” said Farik.

“That I infiltrated your organisation, that I found your headquarters, or that I cut one of you down to size?” came a voice.

The five remaining Sons of Molech could see nobody. Apparently whoever had exhibited the power to shrink a man to nothingness had also proven to have mastered invisibility.

“All of the above!” yelled Rowan, “Who the hell are you?”

“That’s the last thing you’ll learn from me,” said the voice, “How I found you is the first. You may control the mainstream media, but the underground media has produced videos about your little sicko society for years. With my powers, getting to your lower aides and forcing them to talk was hardly a challenge. You mentioned hell, Mr Rowan. You might well die there one day, but for now, you’re going somewhere else. I don’t know if you’ll meet your missing friend, but if you do, say hello, and tell him to expect company.”

With that, Rowan Solja also shrank out of sight until even his screams of terror could no longer be heard.

“An irony, given the fake war on terrorism you had the government start up,” said the mysterious voice.

Whatever power was used to create the shrinking effect, it too was apparently invisible.

September 1st, 2001…

It was obvious to Louise, that the man on the dating site had chosen the name Shrunkenguy to draw attention to something, but had been restricted by the number of alphanumeric characters allowed by the site’s profile name policy. He had simply dropped an e and settled for Shrunknguy. She read his profile, and a certain paragraph in particular.

“I’m into giantess vore and looking for that rare and special girl who is too,” said the profile.

“Giantess vore?” thought Louise, “Could that be …?”

She had seen the word vore incorporated into ‘carnivore’ and ‘herbivore’ in her studies of animals in high school science classes. Surely the word on its own could refer to nothing else but eating. Surely it could not refer to the idea of eating a giantess, which would no doubt prove difficult. The only logical and desirable assumption for Louise was that this could be the guy she’d only dreamt of meeting: the guy who actually wanted to be eaten by a giantess.

“Perhaps I should test the Waters,” she said aloud, and giggled at her own pun.

She sent him a private message, which was brief and to the point.

“You look delicious, Cutey. You’re now officially on my menu.”

February 2005, Boatstreamingin Cove…

“Fire at the direction of that voice!” said Judas Galt, drawing his own gun to lead by example.

Four men emptied the chambers of their guns into the wall.

“Missed,” said the voice.

“Whoever betrayed our code of secrecy will die for this!” said Mark Beeste.

“Except you’d be out of bullets to do the job with,” said the voice.

It was the last thing that Mark ever heard, since he too now shrank out sight and sound.

September 3rd, 2001…

To her delight, Louise Waters found a reply from Shrunknguy:

“Are you serious? Do you want that as well, or are you just saying it to help my dream along?”

She quickly wrote back:

“I’ve never been more serious about anything else. I find it turns guys right off. I just didn’t imagine I’d meet someone who was not only into the idea but brave enough to put it out there on the internet for me to read. Do you find it turns girls off too?”

September 4th, 2001…

“I don’t get many responses to my contact requests, and they’re usually just brief dismissals, although one girl tried to get me to go for a normal relationship and discard my fantasy. You’re the only other girl that’s contacted me, and the only one whom I’d really like to be with. It’s like we’re made for each other. Did you ever think you’d meet a guy like me?” wrote Shrunknboy, “By the way, my name’s Phil Hermuth, and here’s my email address so we can write off the dating site if you like:…”

Louise wrote back:

“I’m Louise Waters, and it’s funny that you should ask if I ever thought I’d meet someone like you. The night before I found your profile, I went to bed and had two dreams. In one I became a giantess and met a cute guy who asked me to take a picture of me holding him gently in my hand. In the next one, I dreamt I became a giantess and saved a guy from drowning deep in the harbour, and then he said he liked my tongue and asked me to put him in my mouth. I really enjoyed that one, but I don’t think he had any idea that I was thinking of gulping him down. Looking back, it seems as though that explosion of sudden dreams about it were a sign that I’d soon meet the right guy to do it with. Can I ask you a deep and personal question though. Would you actually want to be shrunken and eaten by me. I can assure you it would be a very permanent and inescapable fate. There are a few younger clerks in my workplace that I’d like to gobble whole, but not as much as a handsome guy like you.”

September 5th 2001…

Louise waited patiently, but there was no reply from Phil at all that day. Nothing else mattered now but to hear from this delightful guy who seemed to be the very counterpart of her own identity. He was the piece of the puzzle that slotted into the very puzzle that made up Louise Waters, or more aptly, he would slot into her mouth, if reduced.

“I’ve blown it,” she thought despondently, “I was too forward about it, even for a special guy like him. I would have to write ‘permanent and inescapable fate’, wouldn’t I? Could I not have simply written something a little more euphemistic, like ‘unusual and lasting outcome’?”

February 2005, Boatstreamingin Cove…

“We could come to a profitable arrangement with you, you know,” said Farik See.

“So you think you can deal with me now, do you?” asked the voice, “To someone who can do what I can do, what would the petty achievements of your criminal cartel be able to offer?”

“We’re rich enough to write million dollar cheques every day for the rest of our lives,” said Farik, “You could have the whole damn world in your own Swiss bank account.”

“You genocidal bastards!” said the voice, “I doubt that dollars are the currency where you’re going.”

Farik was the next to suffer disappearance by shrinking.

September 6th 2001…

Blissfully unaware of the fate that would await six global crime masters in less than four years time, Louise Waters’ mind was very much on Phil Hermuth, as she waited in hope for his next reply. Nothing else would bring her days to life now. For so long she had considered a guy like Phil to be nothing more than a fantasy. Now he was at least a name and a face in cyberspace, and how she longed for him to be so much more … or after reduction: so much less.

At last, to her joy and considerable relief his reply finally came.

“Darling Louise, I’m sorry for the delay in returning your fascinating email with all its delightfully scary questions. I was sick with indigestion last night and went straight to bed, finding it hard to sit up straight and go on the computer. I’m fine now. To answer your question, I think I would love to be eaten by you, if I could go out with you first, both as a normal sized guy in the usual cuddly and kissy way, and then as a shrunken guy. So if you would be willing to let us do things that way, then yes, I really would like to be actually eaten by you. Is this what you literally want too, or would it just be role play even if you could shrink me?”

What a question, she thought, and could hardly wait to answer it.

“I think I’d love to date a handsome guy like you in the manner you suggest, both at your full size and then after shrinking you … just so long as you knew where you’d be going in a few days. And can I say that I’m sure you wouldn’t make ME sick with indigestion. I’d be friendly and affectionate, and give you all the love you’d ever want, but I’d certainly eat you in the end.”

September 7th, 2001…

“I wouldn’t mind being eaten in the least if you did everything as you described first,” wrote Phil, “I have thought of one more part to the fantasy though, which I hope you wouldn’t mind enacting for me first. I’d really like you to put on a long feminine dress, with short sleeves and a reach to a few inches below your knees, and chase me through a garden and catch me and cook me first, just enough to warm me up without burning me of course, maybe in a nice pavlova you could then eat around me. Oh how I can imagine watching that pavlova being spooned onto your tongue and going down your throat, knowing that it would not be long before I was next. I’d love to see you licking the spoon each time too. Would you mind factoring those scenes into the voreplay?”

Louise wrote back:

“Your vore-ography of every scene is so creative and sweet! I’d love to do all that, although I don’t have a garden in the apartment block where I live at the moment. I would try to move into one for the purpose of chasing and eating you though. You are seriously lucky I don’t have you in my clutches. If I ever did meet you in person and shrank you, I probably could not stop myself from eating you, although I might miss you a little afterwards.”

September 8th, 2001…

“Dear Gorgeous Louise,” wrote Phil, “Your thrilling emails are driving me wild with wishes, longing and expectation. If only it was possible for you to go ahead with it. The closest I’ve ever come to meeting a girl who would shrink and eat me was some psycho girl I met on datebook who was inspired by Jack the Ripper. Our urges were incompatible and I wondered just how far she’d take it if she ever learned where I live. You’re the real deal and I’m in love with you because of it. Have the best day possible until you have time to write to me again. Love, Phil.”

Louise wrote back:

“That other girl sounds a lot different from me. You’d be safe enough if we met for a date. Of course, if you were reduced, I could offer no such guarantees. But even then I wouldn’t hurt you. I’d just do everything we’ve written about and then gobble you down, which would make me very happy. The way you write to me, I really believe you when you say it would make you happy at that point as well. Even the very idea of calling me gorgeous and romancing me in the same correspondence that we’ve used to talk enthusiastically about the subject of me eating you is … Well the whole thing just seems so surreal and incongruous. Sometimes I don’t know what to say to you next. I wonder what part of the world you live in. If it were France, I’d want to think of you as cuisine Francaise, but then if it were jolly old England, you might be my high tea, or low tea after I’d shrunken you.”

February 2005, Boatstreamingin Cove, USA…

“We’ve got a database that’s gathered more information than most of the internet,” said Leon, “It’s all on our computers. Since we never thought this place could be found, we don’t even have passwords. It’s all yours if you spare us.”

“If it has no passwords, I don’t think I’ll need to spare you,” said the voice, and Leon Denn was shrunken out of existence.”

September 9th, 2001…

“Dear adorable Louise,” wrote Phil, “I’ve been daydreaming of being eaten by a giantess ever since I was a kid. It’s my greatest longing ever, and always has been. Only you can understand what it was like for me to feel both excitement and frustration every time I saw a woman licking an ice cream, spooning food into her mouth … or for that matter even opening her mouth wide in conversation or licking her lips casually as some of them do frequently while talking. Those mouths just seemed to be going to waste, and I knew none of them would ever be interested in eating me, until you came along.”

“I’d love to eat you all up, you sweet little darling man!” wrote Louise, “In fact, I’ve got a proposition to make to you, but I want you to know all the facts first, before you give me your answer. I’ve always dated guys that I thought would taste nice after shrinking, the ones that look handsome and cute. You’re the first one that would be willing to go along with the idea. After I’d been out with you and shrunken you, I’d keep you in a cage in my bedroom, or perhaps in my kitchen where you could think about what was coming up in that room and the dining room. I’d be nice and have fun with you right up until the night I ate you. What do you think of that, before I tell you about my proposition, little man? Oh and whereabouts are you anyway? I’ll need to know where to buy that garden nearby if I’m going to chase you through it.”

February 2005, Boatstreamingin Cove, USA…

 “One of you asked who I was,” said the voice, “I’m someone whose life, hopes and dreams were destroyed by you less than four years ago…”

September 10th, 2001…

Phil Hermuth wrote back, explaining that he was an attorney’s paralegal secretary by trade and that he had prepared the following satirical legal document:

I Philip Hermuth, being of sound mind and

soon to be dramatically but certainly

shrunken body do hereby offer to Louise

 Waters the title deed to my shrunken form,

to permit the aforementioned Louise

 Waters to chase, cook, lick and gobble whole

my shrunken self at her convenience.

This offer is given for the consideration of

 a brief series of dates with me, to be

undertaken prior to shrinking me, followed

 by a brief series of dates with me, to be

undertaken after shrinking me.

…………………………………………

Philip Hermuth

…………………………………………

10th September 2001

“Dear Phil,” wrote Louise, “It was nice to receive another email from you today, and what a fun email it was. You came through for me with your legal department. Now I can go about shrinking and eating the handsome cute guy that you are.

In all seriousness though, I now want to tell you of my proposition. I am going to trust you with something you may not even believe, but if you do believe it, you’ll certainly have some important decisions to make. I could have shrunken and eaten any guy at any time in the last few years, since I invented a shrinking machine. It’s so small that it works from a ring on my finger, and the shrinking ray it fires is invisible to the human eye. This of course makes it important that I point it carefully in the right direction, when I’m going to shrink someone. I’d like to meet you, to make a believer of you, and then to quite literally go ahead and proceed with everything we’ve written about. The moment I knew where to find you, you’d be at my mercy. Like I said, I could have done it with anyone, but to me it had to be someone who reciprocated it, at least in the beginning. You’re the first and only guy who does. I doubt you could talk me out of it once you were shrunken, but I suppose you could try. It would be fun watching you beg me to let you go and restore your size, but in the end I think I would eat you up anyway, regardless of your protests. I know that asking for your address is a lot after all I’ve told you about myself, but I really hope you’ll give it to me.

All my love,

Louise.”

For the next few days, Louise waited, but there was no reply. For the second time since their first exchange of emails, Louise wondered if she had gone too far.

14th September 2001…

Louise jumped in surprise at the presence of a new email from Phil in her inbox.

“Dear Louise, I’m sorry it’s taken a few days to compose myself to tell you this. Most of my family were in the twin towers when they went down on the 11th. I lost them. I’ll always remember you and all you’ve done for me, but I can’t bear the thought of anyone else grieving over losing me, the way I’m grieving now. That’s what would happen if your story about your shrinking ring turned out to be true. I can’t even discuss the idea now. Goodbye,

Phil.”

“Don’t shut me out,” she typed, “Don’t leave me. Let me comfort you. Let me be there for you. It doesn’t have to be…”

She stopped typing in tears, and cancelled the email without sending. She felt the cold sting of truth in the emotions she’d poured into those two deleted and unsent lines, but couldn’t bring herself to send them. She thought back over everything, to the night he’d had indigestion. She wondered if she’d wanted it just that little bit less, if he’d loved her just a little bit less than she loved him. She knew that being eaten might not appeal (even to a giantess vore lover) as much as the idea of eating someone. Yet she couldn’t shake the thought that, if she had been the one with indigestion, neither that nor anything else would have stopped her from sending another reply that night. And she had hinted at wanting clues to his address twice before September 11th, and he’d not answered those parts of her emails.

How could she return to dating guys who didn’t care for her fantasy now? Nothing meant anything after Phil. She briefly went on one date with a much shorter and younger guy, so that she could fantasize about him being shrunken, but at one point late in the date, she asked him to look into her mouth, and opened it wide.

“No,” he had said abruptly, “I’m not a doctor.”

This was all the proof she had needed to know that the new guy would not have been interested in her fantasy, nor even tolerated it. He had pursued her keenly, but only for an ordinairy dull non-vore romance.

She’d faced tragedy herself in life before, but she’d never shut out the people who could have helped her get through it. Yet the whole situation seemed to rob her of any opportunity to appeal to Phil to look at it that way. She had been cheated in perhaps the worst way possible by whoever had planned the destruction of the Twin Towers, and that made her look at some unwatched videos she’d once been given by a friend in the underground media in a whole new light.

February 2005, Boatstreamingin Cove, USA…

“So I put my shrinking ring to another use,” said the voice of Louise Waters, “With it, I fought my way into your cult, and by shrinking myself too small to be seen, I got in here undetected and reduced your colleagues to sub atomic size. Now you’re next. Be glad that the last words of the man you drove away from me have dissuaded me from shrinking you down to four inches and then biting off your rotten heads.”

“For God’s sake! Don’t do it!” said Judas Galt.

“You’ve never served God in your life. Your whole agenda has been the opposite. Yet you have the gall to use his name in vain now!” said the voice, “Carry that blasphemous appeal down to your new home then!”

Judas Galt, leader of the Sons of Molech was the last to go. Somewhere in a tiny microcosm on the floor of his old headquarters, he would live out his life in loneliness, where none of his accumulated wealth would do him any good at all.

Louise turned the ring on herself again, this time twisting it to activate the reverse setting. She enlarged to full size, and thought about that database that the Sons of Molech had brought to her attention. She soon had a suitable search window open and typed in two words: Phil Hermuth.

June 2005…

Phil was on his way home from work late one afternoon. The walk from the station to his home took him through a small nature reserve, which had scenic pathways and plants to look at. He heard a rustling sound in the garden to the left of the path and turned his head. Suddenly he found himself diminishing in size.

He ran into the garden on the right side of the path, as far from the source of the rustling as possible. It would have been quite a coincidence, if the rustling and the shrinking had been unrelated. Just as he reached some cover, he looked back and saw Louise Waters come crawling out of the opposite garden. She stood up and stepped over to look down in at him, towering with confidence.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“By using the database once owned by the people who caused 9/11,” she said, “They took you from me once. It seemed only fair that they helped me to get you back.”

“Did you … eat them?”

“I thought about it, but I sent them into wherever people go after being shrunken out of sight. The privilege of being eaten is reserved for you,” she said, kneeling down and moving her fingers in between the flowers, heading towards him.

“I told you I don’t want to do this anymore!” said Phil.

“And I told you that you were lucky I didn’t have you in my clutches. It’s hardly for you to decide anymore, is it? Besides, I’ve been watching you for some time, and you also told me you’d love to be chased through a garden. You seem to like this one, and you walk through it five days a week. Do you ever think of being chased through it?”

“I used to, and I have to admit that this is turning me on like nothing else,” said Phil, backing away out of reach, as other plants concealed him and blocked any further approach from her hand.

“You know you won’t escape me for long, but you’re so cute and keen for trying,” she said and stood up again, stepping carefully into the garden.

He looked up, as he continued to edge away from her, but she now had a direct vertical line of sight down to any place that he ran to. When she felt confident that the foliage could not offer him any immediate cover, he saw her reaching down and surrounding him with her hands. They closed gently together, herding him onto the palms and then rose up to hold him in front of her chest, while he looked up at her towering neck and then the mouth which had definite plans for him.

“Couldn’t we just have you put me into your mouth and role play it a bit and then let me out again?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Louise, “I know what you wrote in your last email, but you’ll just have to trust me that this will all work out for the best. You don’t have any choice now.”

She took him to his own house.

“It’s a lovely home you have here, especially the dining room,” she said, and licked her lips, “You do still like that, don’t you?”

“I’m … flattered that you can remember what I said about watching women eating and licking their lips,” he said.

“Are you going to be a gentleman and tell me where your cream and fruit are kept?” she asked.

He reluctantly complied, and watched her whipping cream and pulling stalks off strawberries. Then she left him on the cupboard top and went back to her car and came in with a pavlova she’d bought. She took it out, and lowered him into it without mercy or concern.

“Don’t let the stickiness bother you,” she said, “I’ll soon lick it all off. Don’t pretend you won’t enjoy that part of our dinner date.”

“Don’t YOU pretend you can expect me to enjoy getting lost in your stomach.”

“Okay, I won’t, but you can’t avoid it either.”

He watched as she put the pavlova into the oven and sat in front of the glass door smiling in at him and licking the tip of her finger to prepare him for his own upcoming experience. Then she took him to the bench, added the cream and strawberries and took him to the dining room table.

Louise laughed, as she ate pavlova eagerly with her spoon, licking her lips frequently and gulping and swallowing and cleaning her mouth with water from a glass and jug.

She took out a list and he noticed a series of lines, with boxes next to them.

“Shrink to tiny size,” she said, and ticked that one off, “Chase through a garden, tick. Lick my lips, tick. Cook, tick. Sorry I couldn’t manage the dates, but you made that difficult. Now all that remains is to be able to tick off eating you.”

“Well that really will tick me off,” he said.

Louise laughed again.

“Puns in the face of … or should I say the mouth of adversity,” she added, “You knew where you were headed from the moment you saw me in the nature reserve. It’s almost over now. Goodbye little man.”

Louise forced him into her mouth and slid him back and forth, eagerly sucking all the pavlova remains from his tiny body. Then she pushed him to the back of her tongue. He sat and held tightly to her back teeth, while he watched each of her fingers coming into her mouth, one by one, to be cleaned by a quick slide along the front half of her visible tongue. Her soft pink fingers looked adorable, as did the palm of her retracting hand each time he could focus clearly on it. That such a hand had held him after reducing him that day, he considered, had been pleasant in itself, if not for the overlying experience that was to come.

Then he saw her fingers opening and closing in her hand, and realised that she was doing the kind of wave that models did when seeking to acknowledge the attentions of their fans either on catwalks or in public places where they had been seen. Louise was, he still felt, more lovely to him than any model, and she was about to do something to him which no model had ever thought of before.

“I never had those kisses and dates we talked about,” he called, “Maybe we could do that firs-“

Suddenly he felt drawn backwards and fell feet first uncontrollably into Louise’s throat. She gulped with no effort at all, and he went down inside her chest, and towards her tummy, and then suddenly, he was back on the table looking up at her.

“I told you to trust me,” she said, “I added a teleportation effect to the ring’s design. Nobody has to grieve you. I read your emails. I never stopped loving you, and I never stopped working on giving you a solution that would work for both of us … if you’d ever consider wanting it again. If you don’t, I’ll let you go.”

“Like this I guess I do,” he said, “Can that thing make me big again, and then small again?”

“Of course. I just wish you hadn’t shut me out before.”

“People died, Louise. I needed time.”

“You let me think you needed forever, forever without me and everything we dreamed and talked about.”

“Maybe I should have turned to you. I just didn’t know you could teleport me. I thought you could really shrink me and eat me, if your September 10th email was to be believed, and I’m sure now that it is. Back then I just didn’t want it. I’m sorry, but you should be too. You scared me like nothing else today. You could have told me about the teleportation before you ate me.”

“Well from now on you’ll know. I wanted at least one run with you thinking it was forever.”

“I guess that never bothered me when we were emailing. It did add a certain spice to the whole experience. I do still love you more than anyone else, Louise, and in ways that no other guy or girl could understand.”

“I think your dining etiquette’s improved a lot in the last few minutes,” said Louise, “And I still love you too.”

Although Captain Miniature and his friends at the Growe Institute didn’t know it yet, their arch nemesis Red Moll was now without the backing of the organisation that had sponsored and instigated most of her recent activity. Neither did Louise Waters know that she had also shut down the lifeline of Sydney Australia’s leading arch criminal.

January, 1997….

There was a week of the Australian long summer holidays to go. Lewis Rickland was 14 ½ . He lived in Lindfield on Sydney’s North Shore, in New South Wales.  At the end of 9th grade, he had been withdrawn from Rural Dural Boys High School, which had sustained extensive damage from four giantesses (Rash Old Girl, The Gobbler, The Choker and Fatwoman, in previous chapters). At the commencement of 10th Grade, he would be at  another school situated on the boundary of the Lower North Shore and the City, just North of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  However, while the school holidays were still on, he wrote to Fatwoman at Smoked Ham Asylum for the Culinary Insane:

Dear Fatwoman,

After you ate me, I really enjoyed it for a few hours, but then I felt your tummy about to digest me, and so I began to wish I could get out. Somehow I teleported out of you and found myself back in the school grounds. You were gone, and I later learned where you’d been taken. It was so much fun that I wish we could do it again. I came to you, because I had a crush on the idea of you gobbling me and wanted you to do it. This is my address, so you can write to me ….

He waited for a while, and soon got a reply from Fatwoman.

Dear Lewis,

It’s very sweet of you to contact me the way you did, and to offer your explanation. I really liked the taste of you, and gulping you down was one of my greatest pleasures. I would love to eat you again, but there’s no way out of here for me now, and no way to recover my growing powers, as long as the Gland Band suppresses them.

I think that it’s best for us to go our separate ways, so that you can find a girl your own age and hopefully one who reciprocates your gobbling fantasy with her own appetites.

There will always be a special place for you in my heart … and in my tummy,

Love,

Fatwoman xxx

One Saturday afternoon, he felt like reading a novel in a park, but not a park full of people playing sport and exercising active dogs. He pondered on a suitable location, and then remembered a very small park. It could be reached either by walking through the car park behind the Lindfield library on the Pacific Highway, and past the tennis courts, or by walking down a lane way between the back of the Pacific Highway shops and the railway line.

Lewis chose the latter route and settled himself with his book at around two in the afternoon. He had not been reading that long, when three girls around his own age came over and introduced themselves. They were Georgie Donald, Rosie Villiers and Lynda Fielding. It was Lynda who caught his eye. She had long brown hair, laughing happy teenaged eyes, a breathtaking smile, and the air of someone who could create her own fun wherever she went. She was four feet and eleven inches tall, while he was five foot five.

And her mouth was the very essence of the gts vore crush that Fatwoman had alluded to!

Lewis was only in the early stages of lately developed adolescence. He knew that Lynda had made an unprecedented impression on him, but he had no idea that this was meant to lead to dating and kissing. Though 14 or 15 like himself, Lynda had matured much sooner, and wanted keenly to undertake such experiences. Lewis vaguely sensed her fondness for him, but was unable to respond. The girls had been amusing themselves in the park, while their fathers played tennis on the Saturday afternoons. It seemed, from what they said, that it would continue to be a weekly event.

One thing was for certain. Lewis would turn up at that park again the following Saturday afternoon, as though he intended to read again, and hope that somehow something would be revealed of what might come of his having met Lynda Fielding.

The following Saturday, the one before school went back (to year 10 in his case), he was there again. While he was reading, the girls turned up and called out their ‘hello’ greetings to him. They went into the change rooms and soon came out, wearing a different combination of each other’s clothes, and paraded themselves in poses to gain his attention. He smiled and waited to see what would happen next. They went back into the change rooms once more and then came out in a third reshuffling of their combined wardrobe. Still the boy lacked the slightest inkling of what he was meant to do next.

Not willing to lose heart, despite the boy’s apparent inability to take the lead, Lynda led her friends back to their fathers and asked for some money to take up to the corner store for afternoon tea. Then the girls came over to Lewis and invited him to go with them for a walk up to the shops. When they reached the shops, Lynda asked Lewis if he’d like an ice cream.

“I should have the money to buy you one,” he said, embarrassed at the fact that he had spent all of his allowance earlier in the week.

“No, that doesn’t matter,” said Lynda, and persuaded him to accept one.

They all walked back to the park, eating their ice creams. Lewis was driven into an unexplained series of sensations at the sight of Lynda licking her ice cream. How he wished that she had been eating him. When they had finished, the girls’ fathers concluded their last set of tennis and asked the girls to be ready to go home. Lewis was determined to be there the next Saturday afternoon, if he had to spend the whole week trying to understand what was to be done about the fact that one girl, it seemed, was very important to him.

Yet there was a greater problem to be faced than his latent lack of maturity. In years 7 and 8 at school, Lewis had been lazy and dishonest and disruptive at school, achieving grades far below his potential, trying to get away with a minimum of work, and reaching the point where his pranks and misbehaviour during class time brought him within one step of being expelled from the school.

Throughout year 9, his father had closely policed his homework and monitored his grades. He had moved from one of the lowest positions in the order of class merit to one of the highest. Now, on the Monday night of the first week back at school, and a new school at that, his father told him that he had to take his school certificate year even more seriously and study hard in his bedroom every Saturday afternoon, for the whole year around, not merely wait until a few weeks before the exams at the end of each term.

Lewis was heartsick with the secret loss of his only chance to see Lynda again. It seemed that school work, with all its daunting demands, was going to take over his life. He decided that Friday afternoons had to be his own special time, away from school, and away from home. Instead of alighting from the train at Lindfield after school, he would alight at the next station, Killara, and take a longer walk home, giving himself more time to daydream about his hopes and dreams for life in general.

He walked from Killara station, to Stanhope Road and along that road, until he came to a driveway with a large sign:

SWAIN GARDENS

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC SEVEN DAYS

TEA ROOM OPEN ONLY ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS.

He walked along the driveway and passed tall bamboo, and came to beautiful footpaths leading over narrow bridges and streams, up slopes, around curves, past trees and the loveliest gardens. It was the most serene enclosure he had ever seen. There was something about this place, which calmed the awful sense of unfairness he had felt all week, since losing his chance to see Lynda. He had moments of daydreaming that Lynda would walk into the Swain Gardens too and say something lovely to him, but it was not to be. Yet this place was like a sanctuary. It seemed to promise to him, that Year 10 would hold many pleasant surprises to come, not a dead end to his newly discovered dreams of being with a special girl.

He was so taken by the beauty of the scenery, that he took his camera, a recent Christmas present, out of his schoolbag and walked around the gardens, carefully selecting locations to shoot from, to make the 24 available photographs on the film last. Soon there were 11 shots left in the camera. He saw that, on the far edge of the gardens, there was a one foot high stone wall, with steps on either side of it. On the far side, the step led down to the start of a long bushwalk pathway. He decided to stand on the far side, in the middle of the pathway, and take a wide angle photograph which would capture as much of the gardens as possible in a single long distance shot.

Yet the pathway was curving out of sight, only metres from the wall. There was no way to get the scenery of his choice framed properly if he stayed on the path. 

He stepped gently over some ferns and stood in the bushes, between two clumps of shrubbery, and began adjusting his stance to a position that would enable him to hold the camera perfectly steady. He remembered what his Grandfather had said about taking a slight breath just before pressing the button to take the picture. He bent his legs slightly for steadiness, looked through the eye piece and exhaled, pressing the button gently.

After taking the picture, Lewis stood up again and felt confused. The shrubbery had seemed shorter before. Now it was up to his neck. Had he been so focussed on taking his picture, that his eyes had not correctly processed the height of the shrubbery? He walked back to the step, and felt confused again. This time the wall seemed two feet tall. He had to exert his legs a little to get up the step. He just didn’t understand it. Everything in the garden seemed to have doubled in height and width, since he’d taken that picture. It was as if the exercise had altered his vision. It just didn’t make sense.

Nor did it really matter, he decided. The main thing was that he had found such a beautiful retreat from the teenage angst of his life, and the incongruity of the apparent and actual sizes of the garden fascinated him in a strange way which added to the pleasure of the day’s discovery. He walked around the garden, using up his remaining photographs, and then saw the alternative path which had a sign at the start.

ROAD EXIT WALK, Approx 5 minutes.

He decided to go that way, having passed Northcote Road on his way along Stanhope Road. It would be a nice round trip to get to know for future Friday afternoon retreats. The pathway was easy enough to follow, but there was a set of upward steps halfway along, which taxed his leg muscles again, just as the step on the far side of the wall had done.

Soon Lewis reached the street and began walking along the road, until he came to an intersection with a sign that took his breath away.

BRENTWOOD AVENUE.

In a much smaller print, below the words “Brentwood Ave” was the word identifying the suburb of Turramurra.

“But I went in at Killara,” he thought, “And the gardens surely couldn’t have been three suburbs long.”

Lewis had been walking along the footpath, concentrating on the pathway in front of him, but now he looked to the side, at a parked car, and the size of it caught his attention too. He walked over and saw that he was shorter than the car’s height, even when standing on his tiptoes. He could not see over the car. He studied the front fences of houses in the street, having walked past them before and mistaken them for high walls. The more he thought about it, the more the height of the sign seemed unusually high too. Were they really that different in Turramurra?

Then a lady came walking along the footpath with her daughter, who was wearing a school uniform. The girl had the facial appearance of a seven year old. Yet she was around the same height as Lewis, he realised, as they drew closer. Lewis had been used to the fact that he almost came up to the height of the average adult woman, but this lady was so tall, that Lewis estimated her height at around ten foot eight inches. The lady smiled down at him in a friendly way, and asked, “Are you alright, little boy? Is your Mum around somewhere?”

“I’m 14,” he said.

“Is he one of the dwarves, Mum?” asked the girl.

“No Stefanie, don’t say things like that,” said the lady, assuming he must be a midget, “Can I give you a lift home? Our car’s just over there.”

“I guess so,” said Lewis, “I’ve … found myself a long way from Lindfield.”

She drove him to his front driveway and dropped him off. Yet everything about his property seemed as unexpectedly larger by a factor of two as the surprises he’d had in Turramurra. He was about to step into his driveway, to try to puzzle it out, when he noticed an unfamiliar mother playing with an unfamiliar infant son in the front garden. Again, the woman was tall enough to dwarf Lewis Rickland. It wasn’t his family at all! He studied the driveway carefully. There were small garden beds on each side of it. They were twice as large as he expected them to be, yet they were still parallel to each other and to the driveway.

“Parallel! That’s it!” he thought, “It’s wild as can be, but it’s the only thing that could ever explain this, “I’ve come to a parallel earth.”

Something had happened back at the Swain Gardens. When had it occurred? He had first noticed it after he had taken the picture. It had to have something to do with the place he had been standing when he took the shot. He had to get back to the Gardens. On this earth, which he would call Earth B or Earth Double, in deference to the size factor of its people and objects, the identical Swain Gardens had been built in Brentwood Avenue, Turramurra. On his own earth, which he would call Earth A or Earth Single, the Swain Gardens had been built in Northcote Road (and Stanhope Road) in Killara.

“I just hope that my school student railway pass works on the trains on this earth,” thought Lewis, ”I’ve got to get home. I’d love to come here again, but I can’t get home late enough to have to explain all this to my parents.”

He ran himself to exhaustion, heading for Lindfield station with his schoolbag tiring him further. He caught the train to Turramurra, remembered the view from the lady’s high car window of the streets to take, and ran from the station to Swain Gardens Double. He soon reached the Gardens, glad that daylight saving and the warmer time of the year would prevent the sun from going down and stranding him there lost in the dark.

He went to the exact same spot as he had found himself after taking the picture and stood there again, waiting, he hoped, to be shifted back to the familiar earth where everything would suddenly seem normal sized again.

Yet nothing happened. The shrubs were still up to his neck.

“It must have something to do with my positioning on that spot too,” he thought, “What did I do? … Oh yes. I slightly bent my legs. It must have contributed.”

Lewis bent his legs slightly, just as he had done for steadiness when taking the picture, and kept his eyes on the shrubbery. Then it happened. One second the shrubs were up to his neck. The next he was standing next to shrubs that were not even up to his waist. He had visited an alternate earth for his after school sporting activity.

He thought about the spot that he had chosen for his picture. It was off the path, and it was unlikely that anyone else had seen fit to step into that spot, let alone slightly bend his legs and find himself in another earth. Lewis’s discovery would most likely remain his own private revelry. Swain Gardens was the critical place on both earths. It had a borderline bush section, which contained the one and only position that linked the two earths. He thought of all the television shows, which had hypothesized fictional ways to travel between earths. Some suggested falling through black holes in space. Others involved advanced scientific technology. Others involved using super powers to attain certain speeds or frequencies of vibration. None of these methods had turned out to be accurate, yet the writers of fiction had unknowingly been 100% on target in their speculation about the presence of parallel earths in other dimensions.

The only thing that could have improved on the joy of his discovery would have been the opportunity to share it with Lynda Fielding.

Lewis did not know the scientific facts taught at the Growe Institute (as detailed in an earlier chapter) about the gts genes in boys and girls. Like many boys with giantess fantasies, he had the power of teleportation that inherently came with the gts gene in boys. However, having come to the Swain Gardens, which was actually a grouped series of inter-dimensional gateways, he had found one of the positions in the Swain Gardens, which would allow him to use his teleportation power to travel beyond his own dimension.

Lewis practiced positioning his legs on that spot a few times, and enjoyed the sensation of travelling between the earths. Then he looked at his watch. He would be late for dinner, if he did not head home quickly. He abandoned his plan for a leisurely stroll through the back streets of Killara and Lindfield, and ran home, puffing as he pushed himself to ignore the exertion which had already taken him through the proportionately larger streets of Turramurra Double.

Lewis simply couldn’t wait for the next Friday. He wondered what other geographical inconsistencies existed between the two earths. Was the Swain Gardens the only one, or were there many? On the Sunday morning, Lewis wasted no time in heading straight for the Swain Gardens and into Swain Gardens Double. He had packed a picnic lunch, having truthfully told his parents that he was going for a picnic in a public garden reserve.

He sat down on the lawn to eat, enjoying the double sized version of the beautiful scenery, which had originally caught his eye in Swain Gardens Single. After a while, an older girl came walking into the gardens with a picnic of her own.

“Do you mind if I spread my rug next to yours?” she asked, “This looks like a nice spot you’ve found.”

“Sure,” said Lewis.

“Thank you,” she said, “I’m Jenny Wilmer.”

“I’m Lewis Rickland.”

“What year are you in at school?”

“Year 10,” he said.

“I don’t know how much else you have going on to fill up your week. I’m 18 now, and in my first year at university. I run a youth group on Friday nights at Four Ways Hall in Ryan Road, Turramurra. It’s for all high school years 7 to 12. There’s games and activities and supper. It starts at 6:30 and finishes at 10:00. I’ve been inviting any high school boy or girl I meet along, and the numbers are building up. You’d have a good night at the end of the school week.”

“If my parents don’t mind me going, I’d love to come,” he thought.

“Show them this leaflet with the times and address of the hall, if you like,” said Jenny, and took out a leaflet from a pile in her picnic basket.

“Thank you,” said Lewis, hoping his parents would never drive past the Ryan Road location on his own world, if there was no such place as Four Ways Hall on Earth Single. It would take some explaining, to say the least.

This was an opportunity too good to miss. He would be unlikely to ever have the chance to see Lynda again, but now he could meet other girls. They would all be twice the size of the girls on his own world, but this seemed to make them even more interesting. Most boys were taller than most girls. So most of the girls on earth double would not quite be twice his height, but they would nonetheless be significantly taller.

The pamphlet was like a large poster to Lewis. He folded it and put it in his basket.

He asked his father if it would be alright to go to the youth group each week. His father tentatively approved, on the condition that his school work didn’t suffer.

Suddenly his week of school work, and even the Saturday afternoon which rounded it off, seemed much easier to bear. He threw himself into his studies, and spent around an hour each night lying awake in bed, thinking about the youth group on Earth Double. When Friday came, he went to school as usual, and then went home, discarded his school clothes and changed into his casual clothes for the evening. He walked to Swain Gardens and made the now familiar journey to Swain Gardens Double. He walked the tall streets to Ryan Road, having already been aware of the same streets (which corresponded to those of Earth Single) which led to a point on the map that Jenny Wilmer had given him. Then he was able to use the map to get to Four Ways Hall in Ryan Road. 

Jenny was already there, along with some early arrivals from the regular members. Jenny introduced him to a few boys, and then said, “These are the Chelmsford Girls. They all live in my street: Chelmsford Road Turramurra. Megan Murphett lives over the road from me. Next to her are the twins Bronwyn and Marjorie Proude. One house further down is Joanna Coote. These boys and girls are all around your age, but you’ll meet everyone as the night goes on.”

Joanna was tall, even by the size scale of Earth Double girls. She was slightly more than twice his height. As the night went on, nobody said anything about his size, but he felt sure that Joanna looked down on him with nothing but contempt. Megan was friendlier, but seemed distantly preoccupied with some secret of her own. He doubted that she knew of Earth Single. If she had, then she would have shown much more eagerness to talk to him. The twins’ reaction to the newcomer was the hardest for him to gauge. They showed neither contempt nor friendliness. He was able to tell them apart, as something about Marjorie’s face appealed to him more than Bronwyn’s.

For the next few Friday nights, he concentrated his attentions on making friends with Marjorie. He wondered how he could see her outside of youth group time. He had let one opportunity get lost to circumstance with Lynda on his own Earth. With the chance of seeing Marjorie every week, and possibly more often, he might have more success with her. Then he remembered his first visit to Earth Double, and the hasty return to Swain Gardens Double. His railway pass was the key to it. Given his proportionately smaller size, the ticket inspectors hadn’t at a glance, noticed the proportionately smaller size of the railway pass. If that ruse continued, he would be able to catch trains in the after school peak hour on Earth Double.

In the course of conversations, he learned which school in which suburb the Proude girls went to school, which was Roseville. He knew that they would be travelling from Roseville to Turramurra. Somehow he had to get to Roseville Station Double by 3:00 pm. Yet it was hard enough to get to Roseville Station Single by 3:00 pm.

A week and a half later, he got his chance. His own school had a pupil free afternoon. He hurriedly caught a train to Killara, ran to Swain Gardens, soon ran from Swain Gardens double to Turramurra Station Double, caught a train to Roseville Double, and waited on the Station until he saw Bronwyn Proude arrive with her friends. She waited on the station with them, planning to talk a while and then catch a later train. In the mean time, Marjorie Proude turned up, and caught the very next train with him.

“I didn’t know that Roseville was your station,” said Marjorie.

“I got off at Roseville. I like the shops in Roseville,” he said truthfully.

At least it was true of the Roseville near his own Lindfield.

They got off at Turramurra, and he walked with her.

“Aren’t you going out of your way?” she asked, wondering where exactly he lived.

“It won’t be for me now,” he said, “I like going to Swain Gardens after school sometimes.”

“Wouldn’t it still be quicker for you to go straight along towards Brentwood Avenue?” she asked.

“I can get there later. It’s just nice to talk to you,” he said.

“Well Lewis, you don’t need to walk ME home!” she shouted down at him.

The eruption of her angry outburst had been so loud and unexpected, that it left him stunned, crushed and disappointed.

On the Friday night, he arrived early, told Jenny about it and asked what he’d done wrong.

”I don’t think you did anything wrong,” said Jenny, “She just didn’t appreciate your company. There’ll be other people here who will.”

In early April of 1997, the group went on a camp. If his parents had only known that their son was actually camping down south in the Robertson of a parallel double sized earth.

He found himself sitting next to a girl named Angela Runga. She was over a year younger than he was, and two years below him in school. Yet she was easy to talk to, as the Friday evening bus trip took them towards Robertston. In the seats around theirs, jokes were being made about the length of time that Angela and Lewis had been talking to each other. Angela was a pleasant friendly girl. Yet she had not stirred in him any romantic reaction like his unrequited feelings for Marjorie, or his even stronger feelings for the stunningly beautiful Lynda on his own Earth. To her she was merely the female equivalent of his male friends. So he had no shy reticence, and no difficulty engaging her in conversation, just as he did with his male friends at school.

So he had no idea that Angela was keenly attracted to him. At the end of the weekend, one of the boys said, “Angela likes you, but she thinks you’re a bit boring.”

He still didn’t understand that the girl had been hoping he’d take the opportunity to kiss her. Instead he’d spent the weekend inviting her to play board games and making casual conversation. He wouldn’t have known what to do, had he had a better response from Marjorie, who had conveniently avoided the camp, … and now he hadn’t even recognised the response he was getting from Angela.

In the next two months, he made friends with two other girls: Alexandra Stives and Naomi Wise. They were close friends with each other, and went to the same girls school, although Alexandra was also in year 10. Naomi was 18 months older than them and in year 11. The girls mentioned that they were going to visit their year 12 friend Anne White, who was in hospital. Alexandra had short hair, a lovely face, a subtle sense of humour, and might well have inspired Lewis to try, had he not been so reluctant after his bad experience with Marjorie. Yet Alexandra and Naomi had both told each other, in the course of a conversation which included him, that they never intended to get married. 

Lewis had already made up his mind that he didn’t want to have children. However, he interpreted their declarations as a complete disinterest in romance. There was only one reason for making the hospital visit with them. Anne White was three years older than him, and he’d been completely shy of ever talking to her. Yet she was the only girl in the entire youth group who entranced him as much as Lynda had done.

It was a different affect, but equally chemically motivating. Lynda Fielding had been more bubbly and mischievous and full of laughter. Anne had been a quiet confident intellectual. Lewis had often looked at her across the hall, during youth group activities, had longed to talk to her, but had no idea what to say. She was ahead of him at her own school and might well think even less of him than Marjorie did. Yet here was a chance to go to the hospital and let her know that he was the only boy in the youth group who wanted to visit her. His mere presence would indicate that, without him having to find a word to express it.

He made his way to St Leonards Station Double on the pre-arranged Wednesday after school, via Swain Gardens Double as he was used to doing on the Friday evenings, and they walked over to the hospital, and took the elevator up to the floor of Anne White’s ward. Despite being pale with fever, she looked radiant, lying in the bed, talking mainly to her friends but not showing him any unpleasant response. Surely his presence at the hospital (with a girl he’d never spoken to) was far more unusual in her eyes than his willingness to walk home with a girl he’d spoken to for weeks. Yet Anne White seemed of different material than Marjorie Proude.

“It’s such a different life in here,” said Anne to Naomi, “I wonder how long before they’ll let me out.”

“I went to hospital in second class for an operation,” said Lewis, “It’s a place where one is both waited on like a king or queen and yet imprisoned like a thief or traitor.”

“That’s very poetic,” said Anne.

Lewis would go on to ride that compliment indefinitely. In the weeks ahead, he hoped that he’d be able to see Anne White again. Yet her year 12 studies kept her very busy, and her return from the hospital did not see her return to the youth group. He remembered his own father’s effect on his chances to see Lynda Fielding again and suspected that Anne White would find the Higher School Certificate even more restricting, especially if she was still recovering from a major illness.

In early September, when the Winter Months were over, Jenny Wilmer invited the youth group to a party at her heated backyard pool in Chelmsford Street Turramurra (Double). Lewis was beginning to feel uneasy attending the youth group. He had alienated the Proudes with his attempted courtship of Marjorie, and felt sufficiently negative emanations from other rare few girls who caught his attention to discourage him from approaching them. The only exception had been Anne White’s compliment. Yet she didn’t seem to be returning to the youth group. 

As he stood by the pool, looking into the water, reflecting on the fact that the two most lovely girls he’d met were the only two who seemed to reciprocate his feelings, if he was even right about that; he was despondent. He lived with the realization that the demands of school work (his year 10 School Certificate and Anne White’s year 12 Higher School Certificate) had cut off any chances to explore the possibility of whatever was supposed to happen (between a boy who thought a girl was beautiful and the girl whom he hoped thought positively enough about him to have intended the offer of an ice cream or a compliment to his power of expression as a reciprocation of his feelings).

Suddenly he heard a sound behind him, and felt two hands press against his back. He realised that someone was trying to push him into the water for a prank. He was unable to stop his loss of balance, but his hands shot out behind him and grabbed onto the shirt of his jesting assailant. That told him that, unlike Lewis in his swimmers, the other person was still fully clothed. He fell into the water, pulling the other boy with him. There had been nothing malicious in his response, just an amusement at the way the prank had backfired. He turned to face the boy whose clothes he’d just soaked, and they both laughed. It had been a welcome relief from the heartbreak he had been enduring in one form or another all year. Now perhaps, he could enjoy the youth group a little more, and hope to meet someone who liked him.

He got to know the boy, Torin. Torin was only in year 7, and his double size made him a little taller than Lewis. Yet Lewis had been able to grab the lower part of his shirt, and then gravity had done the rest of the process, which had left Torin’s shorts and shirt drying on his person in the midday sun.

“Do you like anyone else other than Marjorie?” asked Torin.

“How did you know I like Marjorie?” asked Lewis.

“Her friends in the group have told everyone about the day you caught her train and walked with her. Most of these girls gossip about you. They say nobody would go out with a midget. I think they’re mean.”

“I didn’t even like girls in year 7,” said Lewis.

“I don’t either, but I like new friends like you. I don’t think they should be so mean.”

The benefits of having just made a new friend were now lost on the news that his size (the very thing that made these girls more exciting than the ones on his own earth) had turned out to be the stumbling block on his developing romantic aspirations all throughout that year. He understood it all now. To the girls in the youth group, he was nothing more than a toy department prop that could talk and move by itself. The fact that he had the occasional crush on one of them was viewed either as a joke or an inconvenience.

That pool party had been a special activity on a Sunday. Five days later he went to the youth group again, and said very little to anyone all night. Eventually he went outside and sat on the back steps of the Four Ways Hall.

After a while, Jenny Wilmer came out and sat beside him.

“You’ve been quiet tonight, Lewis.”

“I don’t like coming any more. The girls all think I’m a midget that nobody should like.”

“That’s right, they do, but I’m starting to advertise the group more widely. There’ll be more girls to meet, and more friends like Torin. You took each other’s actions at the pool party very well, and now you’re both friends. Apart from that, I’M glad you’re coming.”

“But you wouldn’t want to … really like a guy my size, would you?” he asked.

“Your size is no discouragement to me,” she said, “I’m just older. I started dating someone I met at university. I have thought about you, especially the day I asked you along to the group in Swain Gardens. I chose him only because he was my age, and it was easy to see a lot of him at uni. It doesn’t mean you’re any less of a gentleman or any less handsome. You’ll find someone nice, and hopefully soon. I’ll help you if I can.”

She kissed his cheek.

It was the first time anyone had done that. How ironic that the third beautiful girl who seemed to reciprocate his feelings was both unavailable and yet the only one who had enabled him to know what the touch of a girl’s lips felt like. It would encourage him to resume a pattern of looking for the best in people which he’d all but abandoned lately.

And that was what Jenny had planned.

It soon became apparent to Jenny, that the girls who had snubbed him were attracted to guys who made a significantly negative impression on Jenny herself. Joanna Cootes brought her boyfriend to the youth group one night. At the end of the night, Jenny asked them if he’d enjoyed the youth group. His descriptive response included a four letter word. Marjorie fell for an older man who led her into behaviour, which brought on premature parenting tasks and a sudden move to another country to escape the legal ramifications if his behaviour should be brought to the attention of the police. Only Megan Murphett  had chosen a pleasant boy in the youth group who had been friendly and welcoming to Lewis at the beginning of the year, when he’d been a new member.

In October 1997, Jenny had organised a youth group wide games night, which would utilize both the Four Ways Hall and the grounds outside. Lewis almost didn’t attend. He thought of the fact that the night would draw more attention than ever to the disadvantages of his size on Earth Double. How could he make any impression at all, when even the year seven girls and boys could run faster and jump higher than he could?

Nonetheless, he didn’t want to let Jenny down. She had done so much to help and encourage him, and she had continued to promise that someone with the depth to appreciate him might well come along. How he wished that Anne White would come back. Yet with the Higher School Certificate examinations now imminent, he could discount that as a possibility.

He made his way to Swain Gardens Double as usual that evening, and made no effort to hurry to Four Ways Hall. He finally arrived there, a little after the games had started. He saw Jenny on the front steps of the building, talking to a girl who had her back to him. Jenny saw him from the corner of her eye and sent him a smile.

“This is the latest of the Chelmsford Girls,” said Jenny, “I asked her at the beginning of the year, but she said she needed time to think about it. This is another of this year’s new members, Lewis.”

The girl turned around, and Lewis was moonstruck with surprise. Each of the television shows he had seen about parallel universes had involved alternate identical versions of people from the star character’s own earth. Yet he had never seen any counterparts of the Earth Double people he’d met back on his own Earth Single. Now, standing before him, towering over him in fact, was a beautiful 9 foot 10 inch tall girl whose face looked so identical to Lynda’s, that he felt sure that it could be nobody else.

“Lynda Fielding!” he said.

”Actually it’s Melendy,” said the girl, “But how did you know it was Fielding? Oh, I suppose Jenny told you I was coming and you mixed my first name up with someone else. You must have a lot of names to remember here. It’s a big group.”

“It wasn’t nearly so big when Lewis started coming at the beginning of the year,” said Jenny.

Even Jenny had never been told of his alternate Earth. He had thought of it, but he had decided against sharing anything so special with someone who (as kind as she’d been to him) was dating another guy. It just didn’t feel right. He had allowed everyone on Earth Double to go on thinking of him as a native midget of their own world.

Now he was faced with the irony that the latest girl to discount him as being too small to date would be the living image of the girl he’d joined this group in order to stop missing. Her double size made her even more attractive to him than Lynda. Yet for her, the size difference would most likely work against him, just as it had done with Joanna, Marjorie and the others he’d not even tried to approach.

There were several games to occupy them that night, and when a complex version of chasings was played, he found that Melendy was always choosing him to chase.

“I suppose I’m the obvious target at this size,” he thought, “At least I’m worth something in one way to these girls for one night of the year.”

She always caught him with ease, but seemed to be enjoying it more than the other players in the game were enjoying their chases.

“Would you like to come over to my place for lunch on Sunday?” asked Melendy at the end of the evening.

“Yes, I’d love to,” said Lewis.

She told him her house number in Chelmsford Street, which was now quite familiar to him after his journey to Jenny’s pool party and his now insignificant memory of his attempt to walk down Chelmsford Street with Marjorie.

He was elated, as he watched the significantly taller counterpart of Lynda Fielding walking out of Four Ways Hall and down the steps to undertake the short walk to Chelmsford Street.

“I told you things would change,” said Jenny, who had somehow appeared behind him, “I’ve been watching you two all night. I’m sure she likes you.”

“Oh Jenny, you were right. She does!” said Lewis, “She’s asked me around for lunch on the weekend. I’m so glad you talked me into staying in the group.”

“I’m pleased you stayed too. I think she discounted the group, when I first told her about it, because she was waiting for some kind of romance novel in real life to fall into her hands. Tonight she opened her heart, and found it right here after all.”

On the Sunday, Lewis arrived at Melendy Fielding’s house just before lunch time. Her mother opened the door.

”You must be Lewis,” she said, “Come in. My husband’s usually out playing tennis with his friends on Sundays, but I’m always happy to have my daughter’s guests here.”

Melendy’s polite friendly mother served them lunch and talked with them for a while.

“Can you bring the washing in from the line and fold it up now, Melendy?” she eventually asked.

“Sure Mum,” said Melendy, and smiled at Lewis before walking away.

“Now Lewis, I want to ask you something,” said Mrs Fielding, “Fifteen years ago, I wanted to call our baby girl Lynda. I was going to suggest it, but before I could bring it up, my husband said he was very fond of the name Melendy. It sounded just as nice, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. So Melendy it was. My daughter had no knowledge of the name that could have been hers, when she told me how you two met the other night. So how could you have possibly jumped to the conclusion that her name was Lynda Fielding?”

Lewis went silent. So far nobody here knew of Earth Single. He liked these Fieldings, and wanted to trust them, but what would they think of him as an interdimensional relative-sized midget?

“Are you hiding something I should know about?” asked Mrs Fielding.

There was no unpleasantness in the question, only curiosity in the manner in which she looked and spoke.

“It’s not that I want to hide it from you. I just don’t know if you’d believe it, and I don’t know if you’d still want me to see Melendy. I was surprised that she wanted to see me herself.”

“Well Melendy has quite a crush on you. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her like this, and if your secret is benign and innocent, I want only the best for you both. Why don’t you tell me what it is, and we’ll see?”

“Alright,” he said, “Every Friday night this year, I have been visiting this youth group, but not from the Lindfield you’re familiar with. I come from another Lindfield, on another parallel earth. They’re actually real. All you have to do to go from one to the other is stand in a special spot that’s common to both worlds (although mine is in Killara and yours is in Turramurra) and slightly bend your legs. Then you just suddenly find yourself in the other earth. On my earth, everything and everyone are half the size of the places and structures and plants and people of your earth.”

“I trust you’d be willing to show me this special spot,” said Mrs Fielding.

“Yes, but would you keep it between us and Melendy?”

“I will, but first I’d like to know how being from another earth gave you knowledge of Melendy’s other potential name. Even if your people have mind reading power, it doesn’t explain you knowing something that Melendy herself was never told.”

“We can’t read minds, but in January this year, I met the only person on my earth whom I’ve so far found to have a counterpart on yours. I was reading a book on a Saturday afternoon in January, a week and a half before school resumed, in the park behind the Lindfield library. LYNDA Fielding was there with her friends, while her father played tennis with his … What?”

Mrs Fielding’s mouth had dropped wide open.

“That’s where Melendy’s father was playing tennis on Saturday afternoons earlier in the year. He changed it to Sundays, when he had the chance to play at Turramurra Park. It was closer to home for us, and had available courts on Sundays. Melendy didn’t go with him, but she was there on the Saturdays in January with her friends. Tell me the rest.”

At that point it crossed Lewis’s mind that Lynda Fielding might live in Chelmsford Street Turramurra on Earth Single too, but he didn’t even want to find out. They were both beautiful, but here he was with Melendy, and she was as big and exciting as the other girls in Jenny Wilmer’s youth group. Yet she was as beautiful and friendly and fond of him as Lynda. He would never know what became of Lynda Fielding. She would most likely grow up, marry someone on Earth Single, have children, and many years later, in the age of the internet, she might read Lewis’s online published memoirs (conveniently disguised as a fiction) and think back to the days of her two Saturday near miss encounters with Lewis and laugh. Lewis was in love with Melendy Fielding. Of that he was sure. Right now he had to go on with narrating his story to an expectant Mrs Fielding.

“Lynda and her friends were nice to me, and I thought Lynda and I liked each other. I saw them two weeks in a row. On the third Saturday (which was the first Saturday in February, just after school had gone back) I had hoped to go and try to find a way to see more of her. Then my father told me on the Monday before that I had to do school work on Saturday afternoons. I was devastated. On the Friday afternoon, I was trying to get over it in Swain Gardens on my world, which I call Earth Single, because it’s single sized to me. I stood in that spot and bent my legs to balance steadily to take a photo, and popped into Swain Gardens on your Earth Double. I call it that, because of things being double sized. I guess you could call yours Earth Single and mine Earth Half.”

Mrs Fielding laughed.

“Not at all. You made up the names. You made the discovery. Nobody renamed America after Columbus on either of our worlds, I’m sure.”

“Columbus?”

“Christopher Columbus. Is it different on your world?”

“I dropped history at the end of year 8.”

“Well anyway, we wouldn’t want Earth Single to mean two different things from our two perspectives. It’s an honour to think of myself as a Double,” said Mrs Fielding, “You must have been so crushed to have lost the chance to see Lynda. My daughter has a double on another earth. It’s amazing.”

“At that point, the loss of Lynda was taking a back seat to the fact that I wondered how everything seemed to be so big, and how Swain Gardens had moved from Killara to Turramurra. It wasn’t until I got to the counterpart of my house that I realised my family didn’t seem to have doubles on this world, and that was when I knew I was on a world of double sized people and things. Once I understood, I knew it would be fun to come back here. I picnicked in Swain Gardens Double on the Sunday of that weekend, met the youth leader Jenny Wilmer and got invited to join the group.”

He saw no point in spoiling the story by taking the focus away from her daughter and onto his string of now redundant disappointments with the girls in the youth group. He had not increased his size at all in 1997, but had grown up in maturity concerning the diplomacy and methods of dating. Rule One: Make sure the girl likes you, before you contemplate a journey to her street. Rule Two: Make sure the girl’s mother likes you, when you tell her you’re from a parallel universe.

He suddenly thought of Rule Three: Make sure the girl’s mother knows that you prefer the girl to her parallel counterpart, even though the version from your own earth is your own size.

“She invited Melendy in March, but Melendy didn’t seem interested back then.”

Now he had his chance to make the most vital point.

“I’m so glad she came this week,” said Lewis, “I like her more than Lynda. It’s nice, you Fieldings being bigger than me and still liking me.”

Mrs Fielding beamed at him.

“I’ve just realised how wrong it would be of me to ask you if I could meet your world’s version of my daughter,” said Mrs Fielding, “It would expose that Lynda to the knowledge that you have chosen to be with Melendy instead. You’re a very wise and sensitive young man.”

Suddenly everything was working out well for him.

“When would you like me to show you the way to my Earth?” he asked.

“Melendy had suggested watching videos with us, but I’m going to suggest an afternoon tea in Swain Gardens,” said Mrs Fielding, “Will you help me keep your secret from her a little longer, so we can surprise her?”

He began to see from whence Melendy (and presumably Lynda) got their sense of harmless mischief.

Mrs Fielding walked the teenagers to Swain Gardens Double, and they enjoyed strawberries and scones with jam and cream in the tea room, which was open on Earth Double on Sunday afternoons too.

“You know the gardens better than us,” said Mrs Fielding to Lewis, “Can you show us around?”

He knew he was being prompted to demonstrate the trip to Earth Single. He led them to the spot and left them watching on the path, while he stood in the bushes, bent his legs a little and disappeared from the sight of the Fieldings.

To him, they seemed to disappear from sight, and be replaced by the view on his own world. To his surprise, there were two people sitting on the wall with their backs to him, talking: a husband and wife couple. They had only to turn around and see him.

He certainly couldn’t very well bring two double sized people there at that point.

He returned to Earth Double and explained everything to a surprised Melendy, but leaving out the reason that he’d called her Lynda, and the fact that he loved her more than Lynda. He didn’t want her to feel the faintest concerns about a rival double, as he had no intentions of creating any rivalry. Had he been able to see Lynda again, he’d have been happy with her for the rest of his life, and would never have discovered Earth Double. Yet things had gone in a different direction, and he could not have been happier with the outcome.

Half an hour later, he popped into Earth Single again, wondering what would happen if one of his arrivals had coincided with someone looking in his direction. He’d have to pop out and hope they thought he’d been a mirage. This time the Swain Gardens Single were deserted. He went back, and helped Melendy into position. She vanished towards Earth Single. Then he did the same for Mrs Fielding.

“Oh Mum, look how small and quaint this is!” said Melendy, thinking, “No wonder Lewis is so small and cute.”

“Nobody else on either of our earths knows about the other earth, as far as I’m aware,” said Lewis.

“How tall is the tallest person on your earth?” asked Melendy.

“There is a record of a woman who is eight feet tall (eight of my world’s feet, which would be four of yours),” said Lewis, “You’d be even taller than her, but just as your people thought me a native midget, mine would accept you as a native giant.”

“They’d accept one of us,” said Mrs Fielding, “I think it would arouse too much suspicion if we came here together. I should stay on my world, now that I’ve seen proof of yours. You two young people need to be able to go on outings and see each other on both worlds.”

“If I can fit in your house’s rooms,” said Melendy.

“I don’t think I’d like to tell my parents about your world,” said Lewis, “They might stop us from meeting again. But my year 10 formal is coming up, and the school dance hall is much higher even than you. You could stoop down to go through the door and then be comfortable all evening. Would it be alright for me to take her, Mrs Fielding?”

“Of course it would,” said Mrs Fielding.

“Mum, thanks! I’d love to go!” said Melendy.

“Let’s not tell your father about this either,” said Mrs Fielding, “Too many people could find out after he’s had a few glasses of wine. I don’t drink.”

“I don’t think I ever will either,” said Lewis.

“Nor would I,” said Melendy.

On the next Friday night of youth group, Lewis arrived early at Melendy’s house, and they walked to youth group and arrived holding hands. Lewis had found it surprisingly comfortable to be with the giantess Melendy, even though single sized Lynda had met him at his most inexperienced stage of awareness of girls’ beauty. He had stepped up to the mark and offered his hand to Melendy, who’d happily accepted it.

There were a few familiar faces on the steps.

“What’s she doing with the midget?” asked one girl, named Gates Yale, making no effort to lower her voice.

“Don’t worry about them,” whispered Melendy, “Jenny lets me use her pool during the week. The other night, she told me all about the horrible way they talk of you.

They reached the stairs and started upwards.

Gates made a thinly veiled pretence of tripping a little on the stairs, fell deliberately towards Lewis, knocking him off the second step, so that he fell back onto the concrete courtyard and grazed his hands.

“You did that deliberately!” said Melendy, and shoved Gates with all her strength.

“Just trying to improve your taste!” said Gates, and slapped Melendy hard on the face.

Melendy kicked the girl in the shins, and the two were soon wrestling until Melendy had Gates bent over on the stair rail. The fall would not have hurt her, but her back was hurting from the positioning and the pressure.

“Let me go!” she coughed, as a crowd had now come out to watch.

“Why can’t you just let us be happy?” said Melendy, “I like him much more than anyone else here, and your size-ist wise cracks only show how small you really must be on the inside! I’d like to let you go all the way to the street footpath and hope you keep walking on out of here!”

Lewis had climbed to his feet. His left hand showed small traces of blood, and the skin was torn on both palms, but he wasn’t seriously injured.

“Melendy, it’s alright,” he said, “Nothing any of them say can ever possibly matter to me again, as long as I’m with you.”

“Stop it, girls, and tell me what happened,” said Jenny, who had heard the commotion and come out to the steps too.

“Look at his hands,” said Melendy, pulling Gates abruptly back into an upright position, “She feigned slipping and shoved him off the steps!”

“Is that true, Gates?” asked Jenny.

“Yes,” said Gates.

“Then I think you’d better go. You’re barred from the group for the rest of this year. If you come back in February and behave perfectly, I’ll see about another chance. The same goes for anyone else who wants to do something like this. These nights are supposed to be safe and fun,” said Jenny.

 “So why doesn’t she have to leave?” asked Gates, in reference to Melendy.

“Has she injured someone’s hands too?” asked Jenny.

“She hurt my back!” said Gates.

“She was only protecting me,” said Lewis.

“That’s what I thought,” said Jenny, “Now don’t argue. Just go, or I’ll have to ban you forever.”

Gates sauntered off, while Melendy helped Lewis up the stairs. Jenny led them to the first aid room and found ointment, cotton strips and bandages to wrap around his hands, especially the one which had been bleeding, while Melendy turned the taps on and off for Lewis to wash his hands.

“Do you want to press charges against her?” asked Jenny.

“I guess she’s been punished enough,” said Lewis.

“I can put the things on his hands, Jenny,” said Melendy, “They probably need you to run the activities.”

“Thanks,” said Jenny, sensing that Melendy wanted to be alone with Lewis, and leaving the room.

“I would have reported her to the police,” said Melendy, gently rubbing freshly squeezed ointment onto his hands.

“She might try charging you over the fight. Besides, I can’t account for my identity on your world, and the last people I’d like to see made more aware of my size and presence are the police. In a way I’m even glad she did it. I always had a few doubts of whether you could like me as much as I like you, because to you I’m little more than half your size. When I saw you go into action tonight, I knew she’d given me the chance to find out. So in a strange way, I’m grateful to Gates Yale’s cruelty.”

In another strange way, it felt lovely to have a beautiful tall girl gently starting to apply bandages to his hands. She slowly wrapped each one around and pressed down on the back of his hands, so as not to aggravate the scratches and cuts on the palms. The bandages were secured, and she gently held each hand between finger and thumb and kissed his forehead.

“You need never doubt that again,” she said, “There isn’t a boy on this world I like more than you. There never will be. I’d never met anyone I liked in my first year of starting to think about boys. Then Jenny asked me along here and I didn’t think I’d like anyone here either. Then later this year she asked me again, and I was so lucky to find you. I can’t wait to go to your formal.”

“Me too,” said Lewis.

“Do you really want to face that lot tonight?” she asked.

He thought of the fact that he’d once been too proud to accept an ice cream from Lynda. Now he had been grateful for the way Melendy had protected him, a boy from another girl on a world where he had a significant size disadvantage.

“Torin and some of them are alright … and they all have to face us too. Thanks for taking on Gates for me. Let’s see what Jenny’s organised for tonight.

He stretched up and kissed her cheek.

“I hope Mum doesn’t find out about this. She doesn’t like me fighting. I hardly ever have before.”

 “I just realized I’m going to have to explain this to my parents,” said Lewis, “I’ll have to truthfully say I fell backwards on the stairs, after someone slipped and bumped into me. They won’t see any reason to act on that. I can’t tell them that a girl bully from a parallel earth did the slipping and bumping on purpose.”

The rest of the night went without incident, as well as the following week’s youth group. On the Saturday evening came the formal. As soon as he’d done his homework, he raced off to Swain Gardens Single to meet Melendy, who had practiced the journey enough to come from her own world unassisted.

Lewis was taken aback by the sight of Melendy, as he walked through the gardens towards the wall, where she stood, 9 foot 10 inches tall and wearing a beautiful feminine formal dress. As he drew closer, he looked up into her eyes with unrestrained admiration.

He walked her to the station, and caught the train to his school’s suburb of Wollstonecraft, and up to the school. The couple caught a lot of attention, as Lewis introduced her to his class friends and others in year 10. As she was too tall to sit comfortably on a chair, nobody minded when she used the window ledge and helped him up to sit beside her.

In time, he invited her to dance, and felt elated at having her in his arms. He had her back at Swain Gardens Single by 10pm. The lamps lit up the pathways, and then he thought of something else.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen these gardens in either earth at night,” he said, “I’m so happy to be doing it with you.”

He stretched up, but could only kiss her forearm. Even her neck was simply out of his reach. Melendy smiled and lifted him up onto the one foot wall. He put his arms around her and managed to reach the base of her neck, and kissed it.

He still couldn’t reach her lips.

“Don’t stop. I’ve been waiting for weeks,” she said.

“I have, also. I was just thinking that your earth’s Swain Gardens wall would be just the right height for …”

“I understand,” she said, smiling with amorous intentions. He walked her over to the position in the bush and held out his hand.

“Beautiful giant young ladies first,” he said.

“And handsome young cute small boys best be quick to follow,” said Melendy with a sweet laugh.

Soon he was positioned in her arms on the two foot high (or one of Melendy’s world’s measurement of feet high) wall in Swain Gardens Double.

He looked into her face. Melendy giggled a little, at the happy realisation that he could now be in a position to kiss her in the more common way. She was still taller, but he could reach. She tilted her head downward a little. He tilted his upwards, and touched her lips. Her double sized arms were all but enveloping him.

Whatever other troubles lay ahead, whatever ridicule their relationship might still face on either world, whatever secrets might be discovered later, there would be nothing that could ever take away from the joy that they both felt at that moment.

The kiss went on for more than three minutes.

“Oh I love you so much,” she said, when they finally drew back for air, and her arms hugged him even tighter, “I can’t wait to invite you to my own year 10 formal.”

“I feel like I’ve loved you all year,” said Lewis.

The following Friday, Lewis went to the youth group again. It was late October 1997, and he was looking forward to seeing Melendy Fielding again. The trip to Earth B (as he had come to call it, denoting his own world Earth A) had been easy enough in the usual way.

When he reached the youth group hall, he found Jenny Wilmer looking sadly at him.

“I had a call from Melendy’s mother,” she said, “Melendy … died in a car accident this week. I’m so sorry.”

Saddened beyond words, Lewis attended the funeral the next morning and then returned to his own earth shortly after the funeral wake lunch. He sat in Swain Gardens in tears. He thought over all that had happened between himself and the lovely alternate universe version of Lynda Fielding. Then for the first time in months, he found himself thinking specifically of Lynda Fielding of his own world, wishing that he could find her again.

Suddenly he blinked his eyes and wiped away some tears, to see that he had somehow moved from Swain Gardens. He had not been anywhere near the spot where he could pass between worlds.  It seemed that he was in another part of World B, as all of the foliage was certainly larger than he was used to. He walked through the dense greenery until he came to a more sparse form of vegetation, and could see through it. Lewis Rickland was as surprised as he had been when he first discovered that he was on World B all those months ago. He was now in a giant version of Melendy Fielding’s garden!

This was not merely twice the usual size. It was so gigantic that he would have been no taller than a girl’s finger. Sitting in plain view on a giant garden seat, but unable to see Lewis, who was concealed by plants, was a gigantic version of himself. Lewis looked out at the giant, and wondered what had happened.

“I must have moved to another world, but I’ve sat on that seat in Swain Gardens A before, and never been transported to this third World’s giant garden,” he thought, “These people are too big to be size compatible to the people of Earth A & Earth B. I’d best call it Earth G, denoted G for Giant. I’d have to have carrots in my head to call it Earth C, which sounds too much like earthsea. The other question is why my counterpart is here instead of Melendy’s/Lynda’s.”

Lewis didn’t have to wait long for his answer. Soon he saw a gigantic girl, who facially resembled Melendy and Lynda, as she came out of the house and around to the side lawn and sat down beside Lewis, handing him a glass of water and drinking her own. He watched them finish their drinks and start to talk.

“I’m so glad I had that last Saturday afternoon in January to tell you how I felt, Lynda,” said Lewis G.

“So am I,” said Lynda G, “If you’d been shy for that afternoon too, we might never have seen each other again.”

For Lewis A, the next experience was incredibly surreal. He watched a giant version of himself kissing a giant version of his long lost Lynda and his recently deceased Melendy. It took them both so long to come up for air, that he had plenty of time to think about how he had been transported to Earth G.

“I don’t think it was the seat after all. That would have taken me to a giant seat in Swain Gardens G. I was thinking about being near Lynda, just before I came here. Somehow that mental process simply brought me here. I guess the many trips through the dimensional gateway between Earth A and Earth B have given me the absorbed permanent ability to bridge the dimensional barrier from any position.”

He waited and watched the date of Lynda G and Lewis G for the rest of the afternoon, until Lewis G said he’d best be heading home, kissed her goodbye, got up and left. He was so pleased that Lewis G had taken the step he hadn’t. Yet it still left him out of size with Lynda G and unable to ask her out, since she was already dating his counterpart.

Suddenly Lynda G got up and stepped towards him, reached into the garden and lifted him out, and sat on the lawn on her knees. She held him up to her face and gave him a long slow kiss. It felt amazing, and just as he had enjoyed double sized Melendy’s kisses more than he thought he would have enjoyed single sized Lynda A’s kisses, he found his enjoyment of giant sized Lynda G’s kisses to be proportionately more thrilling again.

“Lewis! I thought you’d left,” she said, “How did you get so small?”

He had to tell her the truth. Besides, she would learn soon enough that he wasn’t her Lewis, when his double returned for another date.

“I’m not your Lewis,” he said, “I come from a parallel world. On my world, I met my Lynda Fielding in January too, but was too shy to tell her of my feelings before I lost the opportunity. I’ve never seen her since…”

He was about to go on and tell her about Melendy, and then thought that she might be distressed by the news of her counterpart having just died.

“So I still have my handsome Lewis at my size, and I have you too,” she said, “I suppose I have some decisions to make.”

“Really?” he asked.

Was there a chance that she would actually choose him over Lewis G? Would that even be fair to Lewis G? Could he live with himself?

Suddenly Lynda put out her tongue, so that it reached down and covered most of her chin. Lewis stared at her sparkling pink taste organ in wonder. It was at least a foot taller than his entire body. He had to wonder why Lynda had given him such a visual treat. He remembered that girls on his own world and Earth B had tended to put out their tongues when giving a teasing or mocking response to someone. 

Was Lynda making fun of the fact that he could not compete with her Lewis G? Even if she was, Lewis A had never seen such a large tongue before, nor one protruding at such point blank range. Though she might well be intending to tease him, he would find it very enjoyable to see her doing it. She was holding her tongue in that position for several seconds, allowing him every opportunity to observe its taunting position. Suddenly an obvious thought made its way past the surface level shyness in Lewis’s mind:

He could touch her tongue!

Lewis reached the full length of his arm and rubbed his hand along the moist pink surface of Lynda’s tongue. Lynda didn’t seem to object to this at all.

“It feels nice,” said Lewis anxiously.

“I’m enjoying it myself,” said Lynda, as her tongue was instantly drawn away from his hand and into her mouth to speak the words, “But I was leading up to something more.”

Lynda put out her tongue again, and this time moved him towards it and used it to lick him. He felt the giant tongue passing over his neck and face. He instinctively turned his head to the side, so that her tongue ran over the left side of his face. He was about to change to the right side, when the tongue passed beyond his reach. He had waited too long and missed an opportunity. For a split second, it gave him a flashback memory to his having waited too long to declare his feelings for Lynda A in January. However, Lynda G then licked him slowly again, and this time the tongue saturated the right side of his face instead.

Before he knew it, he had forgotten his January 1997 inability to relocate Lynda Fielding A, the recent demise of Melendy Fielding B and the competition he faced for Lynda Fielding G. All he could think of was the magnificent sight and feel of her enormous tongue.

She licked him a few more times, and then withdrew her tongue.

“Thank you, Lynda,” he said, “That felt very nice.”

“That’s very flattering,” she laughed, giving him an exciting view of her open mouth as she did so, “You taste very nice too, and I certainly can’t eat my Lewis. Where do you think that leaves you?”

“Do you mean you’re going to …?”

“I certainly do!” said Lynda.

“Completely?” he asked.

“All the way down,” she said, and tilted her head back, so that he could look at her long pink neck from the outside and take in the full implications of sliding down inside it, “Watch this gulp.”

She gulped a few times, and he observed the movements, and considered what awaited him.

“So you want me to go down intact?” he asked.

“Of course,” she laughed, “You wouldn’t know much about it otherwise.”

“It’s hard to believe,” said Lewis.

“I guess it’s really possible to have your cake and eat him!” she laughed, “And don’t think about getting away. My parents aren’t home this afternoon. You’re all mine, and that’s good news for my tummy …. even if you can’t quite look at it that way.”

Lewis was not only conscious of the fact that Lynda was enjoying teasing him with his upcoming experience. He was also conscious of the fact that he was enjoying it. He was thrilled beyond belief at the way this beautiful giant girl was going to force him into her mouth and swallow him and go on enjoying her life with his giant counterpart. Having touched her tongue, he knew that the process of being eaten would be very pleasurable for him as well. This was so much better than anything he could have hoped for.

He knew that both he and Lynda would enjoy the experience more, if she had no idea that he wanted her to eat him. This was what his correspondence with Fatwoman had led up to! Still he could compliment her anyway, without giving away his keen interest in her plans for him.

“It looks like you’ve got me,” he said, “But at least I’ll be eaten by the most beautiful giant mouth.”

She laughed at his compliment and kissed him.

“I guess there’s nothing more for us to say to each other,” she said, “I won’t tell my Lewis about you.”

“I guess I’ll definitely never find my Lynda again now,” he said.

“Could you still love her, knowing that she’d probably do the same thing as I’m about to do, if she were in my position?”

“I’m sure I’d still love her … because I’ve fallen in love with you instantly.”

“You’re very kind,” she said, “But it’s time for me to benefit more than you from our meeting.”

“Don’t be too sure,” he thought, as she opened her mouth in a wide open laugh.

He watched as she lowered him into her mouth and onto her tongue. Lewis was inside her mouth now. Only seconds earlier he had been on the outside looking in. Now he was on the inside looking out, as he turned his head and stared back past his own body at her closing lips. Now he was on her tongue, looking into the darkness that was the back of her mouth. He lay there for a while, imagining how much Lynda was enjoying the taste of him, and guessing just how much she was looking forward to the next step.

Lynda took the next step.

Lewis felt her tongue beginning to slope a little and found himself sliding forward, from his perspective, slowly towards the back of her mouth. Lynda was probably thinking that he would try to hold on and avert his fall, and would defeat him by raising her tongue to an even steeper incline. He felt her doing this, and began to slip towards her throat, and down into it. Yet he was still touching the same moist tongue surface, despite now being in a vertical position.

“The tongue must start down in the throat,” he said, and found himself sliding slowly down with each successive giant gulp Lynda made.

Soon he reached the bottom of her throat.

“This was fun,” he thought, “But I’m headed for her stomach, and the fun’s over now. It would be nice to be back at Swain Gardens, completely safe again.”

To his surprise, he suddenly found himself back in the Swain Gardens.

“Looks like I can bridge the dimensional gateway to Earth G from Swain Gardens A to the giant counterpart of any girl I like and then come back to Swain Gardens A,” thought Lewis, “Being eaten is more fun than being kissed or cuddled. The potential is great, but I won’t go back and let Lynda Fielding G know I escaped. She’ll enjoy it more if she thinks she’s eaten me forever.”

The following Saturday, he decided to go to another local park and play tennis, as it appealed to his nostalgic memory of his first meeting with Lynda Fielding A. He was 15, and there was a dark haired girl named Bella there, who was talking to another girl her own age about her second year in university. She must have been at least 19, he thought.

“There’s a lot of the morning tea cake left,” said the coordinator of the tennis club.

“I’d like to take it home and eat it,” said Bella.

There was something about the way that she said those words which excited him immensely, as he imagined her saying to him, “I’d love to take you home and eat you.”

He thought of asking her if she would enjoy it, but worried that she might think he was a lunatic. The coordinator offered the cake to Bella, who took it and began to walk to her car. He recalled the lost opportunity with Lynda Fielding A, and decided not to let shyness deny him the chance to talk to Bella. He quickly walked out to the car park, as though he was leaving the tennis scene to go home, but he stopped by Bella, as she was placing the cake into the back of her car.

How would he broach the subject?

“Are you off home too?” she asked.

“Yes. I was looking at the cake when you said you wanted to take it home and eat it. I was focussed so closely on the cake, that it looked as if I was tiny and on top of it … like the forced vision perspective.”

“WERE you?” asked Bella, “I think I’d like that.”

Maybe he hadn’t imagined it, nor fed his own hopes into his interpretation of the way she had said the words “take it home and eat it.” Maybe she really had similar desires to the giant Lynda Fielding G.

“Why would you like me small?” he asked.

“So I could EAT you,” she said, “You think I’m awful, don’t you?”

“No. I think you’re interesting,” said Lewis, “Could you tell me about it?”

“I’ve been thinking about eating a tiny boy for the last few years. There aren’t any though. Sometimes I look at boys and wish they were small. You’re the only one here that pleases my appetite.”

“Would you eat me if I was tiny and helpless?”

“Without a doubt,” she said.

“Even without my permission?”

“All the better,” said Bella.

“I wish you could,” he said.

“Do you mean it?” asked Bella.

“Yes. Maybe you could taste me anyway.”

“I’d like that. Let’s go for a taste drive.”

She took him to the more secluded side of the park, and he invited her to suck on his fingers, lick his cheeks and enjoyed it.

“I wish you could really do it,” he said.

“Tell me about it!” said Bella, “I’d eat you up without a second thought.”

They knew they had a special secret friendship now, and he looked forward to seeing Bella again at the tennis park the following week. There was something else in his mind. Though he would only ever have loved Lynda / Melendy Fielding, there was something more exciting about being eaten by Bella, because she was an older girl. Their secret longings had put an older girl within his reach, and this had never happened before.

When the next Saturday came, Lewis did not go to the tennis park. Instead, he went to Swain Gardens. He thought of Bella, and of the chance of her having a giant counterpart on Earth G. Before he knew it, he was in the Earth G car park, just under Bella’s parked car. Looking out, he saw her playing on one of the tennis courts, a pretty giantess in the image of the girl who wanted to eat a tiny Lewis. Would she share Bella A’s desire to do it?

He waited the morning out under the car, until he saw Bella G come towards it, and then stepped out into view.

“My, what a tiny boy you are!” said Bella, “I’m Bella. I’m going to take you home and eat you.”

The giantess dropped him into her shirt pocket and got into her car.

“She wants to do it!” he thought, “I’m so glad I met Bella A and thought of this!”

Bella G drove him to her house and took him into her room and shut the door.

“You look very appetising,” she said.

He hadn’t noticed a counterpart of himself at the tennis club, and didn’t expect to, as Lewis G was undoubtedly on a date with Lynda Fielding G. To Bella G, Lewis A was one of a kind, and her interests in him were entirely culinary.

“You’re a pretty giantess, Bella,” he said, “Being your food certainly makes for a dynamic relationship.”

“That’s enough of that,” she mused, “You’re not in any position to flirt with me. Here’s a dynamic experience for you.”

Bella popped him into her mouth and slid him around on her tongue and then gulped rapidly. Lewis enjoyed being swallowed for as long as it was safe, and then instantly returned to Swain Gardens A.

The following day, a Sunday, saw him going to the air show at Bankstown Royal Australian Air Force base on a series of two trains and a bus. In the afternoon, he was making the return trip. When he caught the last train at Central, to make the North Shore trip back, he saw a lady sitting a few seats away in the train, facing in his direction. It was in the downstairs section of a double decker train, and the sun lit her face in the mid afternoon. She had light brown long hair, and was in her fifties. The lady was yawning frequently, and the sight of her tongue made him even keener than ever to be eaten by her counterpart. He studied her tongue every time she yawned, youthfully unaware that she had noticed his keen gaze. Conversely, she was unaware of what thoughts were actually on his mind. She had been widowed a few years, and dismissed in her mind, what seemed to be a childish schoolboy crush.

So keen was he on looking at her for as long as possible, that he stayed on the train even after it passed his own station, until the lady got off at Turramurra. He got off there too, going to the opposite end of the carriage. He waited on the platform seat to catch the return train to his own suburb, and looked out at the wire fence and the footpath and street beyond, daydreaming about being eaten by the much older lady.

Then he noticed the lady walking past the wire fence. She looked in at him, and gave a somewhat unfriendly stare, and then turned her head away and walked off down Eastern Road. It was then that he realised how he had given himself away. She might have suspected him of staring at her, but he had just been caught out in his act of staying on the train after it passed his own station, as she had now clearly seen him waiting on the platform to catch a train in the opposite direction.

“She must think I’m just a silly boy,” he thought, “But I might still have a better response from her giant counterpart.”

Lewis caught the next train back to Killara, ran to the Swain Gardens and thought his way to wherever her double was on Earth G. He found himself inside a luxurious Turramurra house, he presumed, given that the giant widow most likely lived in a house of her own now. Her children would be older than him, moved out, and she was alone. He had not really thought about her having been married once. At this point she was single. He had seen her Earth A double alone on a train on a Sunday afternoon and guessed correctly that she was no longer married.

Lewis was standing on a white lounge room carpet, looking out a glass door at a pleasant garden.

“Just what are you doing in my house?” said a stern voice, and he looked to see that the woman had walked into the room and seen him.

“I … I…” he said, remembering the unfriendly attitude that her Earth A counterpart had towards his crush, as the lady walked over and picked him up.

“Whoever you are, you’re here uninvited. I’ll have to decide what to do with you,” she said.

“Are you going to eat me?” he asked, as she carried him to the kitchen, where she was about to prepare her dinner.

The lady stared at him in deep thought.

“I wasn’t going to, because I hadn’t thought of it, but I think I will. You’ve only yourself to blame, little boy.”

“Did it!” he thought, as she warmed him in a pan of water and took him to the table.

As she began to lick him, he saw that her tongue looked different to the teenaged tongues that he had previously been licked and eaten by, but this lady’s was at least as exciting. It was also exciting to be eaten by a lady who had lived so much longer than he had. It reminded him, in a way, of Fatwoman.

“You taste surprisingly good,” she said, “I’m glad you suggested such a tasty way to punish you for your intrusion … even if you did suggest it unintentionally.”

“Soon I’ll be gone,” he said.

“Yes you will,” said the lady, and slid him along her tongue and into her mouth. When she drew her tongue back into her mouth, he was carried into her throat along with its retraction. He slid straight down in a series of gulps, and then returned to Swain Gardens A in the usual way. 

The 1990s….

One Saturday, Henry Gray, a 12 year old student of Rural Dural Boys High, in Miss Lena Beetlenelly's class, was playing cards with his friend Ginny Burns at her house, when there came a knock at Ginny's front door.

"That will be my friend Babette. She's coming over today too" said Ginny.

She went to open the door.

"Hi Babette. Come in. This is Henry. He's 12, only a little younger than us."

"Pleased to meet you Henry" said Babette smiling politely as she sat down.

"We were playing cards" said Ginny, "Would you like to join in?"

Babette accepted, and they played several games together.

After a while Henry went to the kitchen, having asked if he could have a glass of water.

While he was out of the room, Babette said "Are you dating Henry?"

"No. We're just good friends."
"He is so handsome. Do you think you could find out if he likes me?"

"Sure. I'll ask him when you've gone home" said Ginny "However, I should warn you. I know he has a serious crush on a lady who plays chess with him on the train on the way to school in the mornings. I don't think she's aware of it or feels the same way towards him. She told him she's twenty-five."

*          *          *          *

"Henry, what did you think of Babette?" asked Ginny later.

"She was polite and friendly."

"Yes, but is she pretty enough to take your mind off that lady on the train?"

"Oh no! I'd never feel for Babette the way I feel for Rosa Ville!"

*          *          *          *

"It isn't fair" thought Babette "I simply must find out how Rosa feels about him to put my mind at rest over this. I shall follow Rosa off the train and make sure Henry doesn't see me. Ginny can tell me which train it is. I must ask Rosa Ville if she loves Henry or not."

*          *          *          *

On Monday morning Babette caught the same train, hiding up the back of the carriage watching Henry and Rosa playing chess. They were continuing the game that they had started on Friday morning, and had to postpone when the train arrived at Rosa's station.

Babette kept her hat on, so as to hide as much of her face as possible from recognition. When Rosa left the train, Babette followed her and walked beside her on the street's footpath, looking up at her.

"Excuse me Rosa."

"How did you know my name?"

"I'm Babette,  a friend of Henry's friend Ginny, and I am told by Ginny that Henry is in love with you."

"With me? Are you sure?"

"Yes. Ginny told me after Henry told her over and over again. Do you love him too?"

"He's just a highly intelligent chess partner for his age. I don't have a boyfriend, but I honestly don't see myself falling in love with a boy. I'm sorry Babette, but I may have to stop seeing your friend on the train if it only encourages these false hopes of his."

"Oh this is hopeless" said Babette suddenly bursting into tears "He loves you. I love him and neither he nor I can be happy with things like this."

"That means you envy me in a way" said Rosa.

"Yes I guess I do" said Babette.

"Well don't cry about it. I have a friend who happens to be Henry's teacher, although he knows nothing of our friendship. Her name is Miss Beetlenelly. She is a brilliant scientist, and she even has access to technology which she claims is made on another world in a different dimension. I don't know whether it really does come from there or not, but I can tell you what she showed me once: the most amazing machine you could ever imagine. Why don't you meet me after school this afternoon, and we'll go and see Miss Beetlenelly? Maybe she can find a solution to your problem."

"I will, and thank you Rosa."

*          *          *          *

At the end of the day Rosa and Babette visited Miss Beetlenelly, who now had a home laboratory of her own. She took them into it and showed them the machine that Rosa had mentioned.

"This is a device that I have been unable to use, because I have no right to force people to undergo what it does" said Miss Beetlenelly, "However it is an amazing piece of technology. Have you ever watched science fiction movies about mind transference?"

"Yes. There was one on in the holidays" said Babette.

"There is one problem with the technique used in the movies. When the transfer occurs, for example Smith and Jones transfer their minds into each others bodies, they swap memories too. So Jones is unable to behave convincingly as Smith when he inhabits Smith's body, and vice versa. In real life, I have experimented only on animals, but I am convinced that only the basic personality and personal memories can be exchanged. Acquired knowledge would remain with the original host body."
"Can you really do that?" asked Babette.

"Yes" said Miss Beetlenelly.

In fact, Miss Beetlenelly had acquired the technology from a former boyfriend of hers, who had used his teleportational abilities to visit another world through the Swain Gardens dimensional gateways. When he had shrunken himself and been eaten by her, she had kept the technology that he had brought back from the parallel world, which was more scientifically advanced than earth A.

"And what do you mean again about the knowledge? I did not really understand that" said Babette.

"I mean that if I used the machine to exchange your mind with Rosa's, Babette, your mind would live in her body and be able to use her adult knowledge to lead a normal adult life. You could then respond to Henry's crush on Rosa and make both of you happy. Rosa would live in your body and lose all of her acquired adult mental development. She would need to go through school all over again, passing herself off as Babette. It would be best for you to remain as friends, so that you can still see your mother on occasional visits to your old house, where Rosa will be living in your body pretending to your mother that she is you."

"And you showed me this because you'd actually give up your adulthood, Rosa" asked Babette, "Why?"
"Because I would gain your childhood, a second chance for me at something you would have to be sure that you didn't want" said Rosa "It would be wrong for me to use Miss Beetlenelly's machine to do this mind exchange unless you were absolutely sure that you wanted to stay in my adult life."

"Would I definitely still love Henry when I was in your body?" asked Babette.

"Yes you would" said Miss Beetlenelly, "And Rosa would continue not loving him too."

"I would wait until I was sixteen or so and meet a teenager" said Rosa.

"This is wonderful. Not only would Henry love me, but I wouldn't have t o go to school and university either. I don't know how you could stand to go through it all again" said Babette.

"For one thing, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I helped to prove Miss Beetlenelly's experiment worked. For another, I can learn all the things I need to again and possibly do even better at it than I did last time. Will you be happy as an adult?" asked Rosa.

"I guess so. Anyway it's worth it to be with Henry. Let's do it."

"I guess we can always reverse it and will agree to if either one of us changes our minds"  said Rosa, and laughed at the pun.

"There is a reverse process, isn't there?" asked Babette.

"No" said Miss Beetlenelly.
"What?" asked Rosa shocked.

"Think about it. There's no need for a reverse process, when the same one would reverse the effect anyway. If A swaps minds with B for three weeks, then to use the same procedure on them at the end of the three weeks would put both minds back into their original bodies wouldn't it?"

"Of course" said Rosa, relieved, "This is a big decision for a girl Babette's age to be making. So it's important to know that we can undo it later if she decides to go back to being in her original body."

Miss Beetlenelly sat Rosa and Babette in separate chairs and then connected devices from the machine to their heads. Wires ran from both devices into the original machine. Miss Beetlenelly threw several switches on the machine, and waited.

For a few moments, Babette and Rosa felt their minds, vision and other senses going blank. Then they found themselves in each other’s bodies.

"It's amazing" said Babette in Rosa's body "I will call myself Rosa Ville from now on."

"Henry will never know why his greatest hopes came true" said Rosa in Babette's body.

*          *          *          *

The next morning, Babette caught Henry's train.

"Hello" she said as she sat beside Henry.

"Shall we start a new game Rosa?" asked Henry, unaware that he was now talking to a lady with Babette's mind.

"Well we could if you like, Henry" said Babette thinking how easy it would be to make the first move on Henry, when she already knew that Henry would love her because he had a crush on her in that form. Babette had also retained Rosa's knowledge and skills at chess. Rosa had forgotten all of that in Babette's body.

"Will you be black or white?" asked Henry.

"Actually Henry, I was wondering if we could perhaps not play chess this morning" said Babette as he sat beside her earnestly looking into her eyes.

"Why not?" asked Henry shyly.

"Well it's just that we've been catching the same trains for a while now and gotten familiar with each other. I was hoping that maybe you would like to ask me to kiss you."

"Really? Rosa, I dreamed of a day like this! I would love you to kiss me. I think you are very beautiful."

She lowered her head and kissed his cheek, placing her arms around him.

*          *          *          *

For four years they dated happily, whenever they could manage to see each other alone, so that an adult lady would not have to explain to anyone why she was romancing a young boy.

*          *          *          *

One day he said "Rosa, can I postpone our date for this afternoon? I forgot I was going to a birthday party of a friend of mine who used to play cards with me."

"Sure. I understand. I guess Ginny would have invited me too if she'd known me" said Babette.

"Rosa how did you know it was Ginny? I've never mentioned her before."

"Are you sure?" asked Babette, realising that her recollection of her old friend had caused her to make a slip of the tongue.

"Yes I am sure. How do you explain it?" said Henry.

"Maybe I met her myself and she mentioned you" said Babette, and realised too late why he would not believe this. The ethics of what could be considered as lies and deception in her current situation was beginning to cause her considerable confusion.

"But you just said that Ginny didn't know you, or she would have invited you to her birthday party as well."
"I know. I cannot explain it."
"Rosa, how am I supposed to trust you if you keep a secret from me?"

"I love you. Isn't that enough?"
"Yes, but this way I will always doubt you in some things. I will not be able to fully enjoy our time together."
"Are you saying that you won't see me anymore?"

"No but I am just so confused. Why don't you trust me with the truth about how you knew it was Ginny?" he said sadly.

"Oh Henry I never meant to hurt you. I will tell you everything. You won't believe me unless we go to see your teacher Miss Beetlenelly, to show you though. She is a friend of mine."

*          *          *          *

Soon Miss Beetlenelly connected both Henry and Babette to the machine and exchanged their minds temporarily, and then swapped them back.

"There Henry. For a moment you were in this body looking back at your own" said Babette.

"It was weird. I can hardly believe it. Did you swap minds with Ginny for a while and keep some of her memory or something?"

"No. I will have to explain. Four years ago you fell in love with Rosa Ville while she played chess with you. She did not feel any romantic love for you. I met you at Ginny's house playing cards. I loved you, but Ginny told me you didn't love me. So I told Rosa about it all and did a deal with her to swap minds. I've been pretending to be Rosa ever since."
"You... You're Babette!"

"Yes, and that is how I knew Ginny. I have my original Babette memories, but I have Rosa’s adult body and skills."

"You did all that for me?"
"Yes. Are you ashamed of me?"

"I'm astounded. Does Ginny know?" asked Henry

"I don't think that anyone does, except for Miss Beetlenelly, you, me and Rosa, unless she has made an acting mistake in my old body, or should I say younger body, the one I was born in."

"I'll keep your secret Babette. I still love you very much, and we are all happy with the outcome."

"Thank you Henry."

"I may just call you Babette when nobody's around if you like."

"That would be nice."
"Rosa needn't know that I found out either."

Babette laughed.

"Enjoy the party then" she said.

"I will indeed."

"Don't ask Rosa for a game of chess, whatever you do. I'm afraid that with her current knowledge of the game, she may well be back to square one."

"Queen takes pawn" said Henry.

"Pawn kisses queen" said Babette, lowering her lips.

Miss Beetlenelly smiled from the next room in amusement. Her amusement would have taken a new turn, had she known what her counterpart in earth G had been doing. In recent months, several young men and a number of women with giantess fantasies had connected up with each other on the internet and organised a giantess convention in Sydney Australia. When the weekend for Giantesscon Down Under began, the customers had come from all over the world. After the convention was over, a large number of them were taken on a tour of Sydney’s less known but most beautiful scenic retreats, by two of the local Sydney residents. There were some 39 males and only eight females, as the number of females who actually had giantess fantasies was either less than the male statistic, or it was simply the case that fewer females were willing to come forward and participate in events. When they came to the Swain Gardens, the males found that their teleportational abilities, combined with their wishful thinking, took them to earth G, where they were found by two native born giantesses of earth G, who of course did not need a special gts gene to attain such stature. The giantesses gathered them all up and took them inside to a chess table, where they asked each young man to remove his shirt. Then they used a special food colouring pen to gently write the names of chess pieces on 32 of the young men’s backs and chests. 16 were done with a white food colouring pen.  The other 16 were done with a red food colouring pen. Then the lads were place in suitable positions on a giant chessboard, and the giantesses began to play a game with them.

Eventually, one giantess, the earth G Miss Lena Beetlenelly was in a position to use her bishop to take one of her opponent’s pawns. She moved her own bishop onto the square, and then took her opponent’s pawn (a live lad of course) in her hand and popped him into her mouth and gulped him down.

From then on each remaining lad was aware that, regardless of who won this game, every piece taken would be eaten. Miss Beetlenelly G also explained that any pawns reaching the end of the board would be promoted to queens, using one of the spare lads as the new queen. At the end of the game, the winner and the loser would free all of the remaining lads. The boys waited until most of them had been eaten and saw that Miss Beetlenelly had won. They told her that they actually enjoyed the thought of being eaten, and invited her to finish them off too. Naturally, their teleportation powers took all 39 young men back to Swain Gardens A after they’d been eaten.

The 2000s…

Keene Walker was twenty-one years old, and attended classes at university. Keene was pleased to have been offered a place as a teaching student.

One day his class was given an assignment that required the students to work in pairs.

"What a cumbersome nuisance. I've always been my own man, rushed in here, done the work and rushed home. It won't be so easy, having to fit in with somebody else's plans. I am a bit of a loner. All the people who know each other will pair up, and I'll have to see who is left over. They can be stuck with me, which won't enthuse them if I don't become more of a team-spirited person," he thought.

He was still thinking about improving his concept of teamwork as well as his attitude to it, when another thought invaded his mind.

"This is an excuse to do something with Louise Waters! I have always wanted to be with her."

He found her in the courtyard at lunchtime and asked her:

"Do you have anyone to work with on the assignment yet?"
"Our group is still deciding who is with whom. There'll be an odd one out."
"Would you like to work with me, and that will leave an even number amongst the others?"

"Alright Keene. You live around here, don't you? I've seen you riding your bike."

"I'm very close."
"I'm not that far myself. Shall we meet at my house? Tonight would be fine."

"I'd best get the train and walk to your house. If I use the bike I'd be riding it home in the dark."

What Keene did not know is that Louise Waters, since defeating the Sons of Molech (in an earlier chapter), had started a teaching course, so that she could put her scientific expertise to use as a science teacher, now that she had to support both herself and her shrunken boyfriend Phil Hermuth.
"I could take you. Why don't I pick you up at your house today, as soon as you've got the bike home. I'll cook dinner for us as well."

"Thanks."

He told her his address.

"I can drive you home too" she said.

So at the end of the day Keene cycled home and Louise collected him in her car, a maroon coloured station wagon. She led him into the kitchen.

"Since this assignment is about relating to young children, I thought we might talk a little about our own childhood lives while I prepare our dinner."

"Mine was very lonely. I tend to forget it all these days" he said "It's probably why I'm such a loner now. Many people plunge happily into nostalgic memories of their childhood, but I'd much rather leave mine far behind. What about you?"

"I see. I was an only child. Being an only child was a good thing for me. It did not make me spoiled like some only children. At least that's what everyone says. I grew up a little faster than most children. Maybe it was because I never had any brothers and sisters to play with."

"Fair enough."

"So what will you have to drink at dinner time?"
"Do you have cola?"
"Yes. Will you open a bottle for me?"

They continued talking until dinner, and then they ate together at a grand dining table, until Keene found himself constantly blinking his eyes and struggling to stay awake.

"Are you alright?" asked Louise. She must have noticed a fading in the colouring of his face or something else, which would have betrayed his sudden urge to fall asleep on the spot.

"I just feel tired for some reason. We'd better start the harder parts of the assignment though. I'll sleep better knowing that we've got some of it out of the way."

"I can start on my own, if you're not feeling well."

"No. I should be fine in a minute."
"You do look very drowsy."
"But I can't imagine why. I feel sleepy too, but I had a good night's sleep last night, and I've just eaten a hearty meal. I should be bursting with energy."

*          *          *          *

Keene had fallen asleep. He dreamt of a variety of scenes and was oblivious to whatever Louise was doing while he slept. Many hours later he began to awaken from a deep sleep. His eyes were still closed, but he felt he was now in a bed. Had Louise carried him to the car, driven him home and opened his door with his own keys before putting him into his bed? Had she watched him suddenly drop off and taken him to a spare bed in her own home?

He felt a hand stroking his head and heard her humming to herself. He opened his eyes and saw her standing beside a bed, which was completely new to him.

"How's my darling little Keene this morning?" she said.

"Fine Louise I suppose. Did I fall asleep at dinner?"

"No. I just tucked you into bed when you were ready, like I normally do."
"But I've never been here before. I only came over last night so that we could do some of the assignment."

"I'm doing it with Karen. Anyway I don't think that my university would welcome the help of my foster son."
"Who is he?"

"You. Why do you ask all these silly questions, Keene?"
As she spoke, Louise sat on a chair beside the bed, put her hand under his chin and tilted his head a little so she could kiss his cheek.

"Hey that felt strange."
"Really?" she laughed.

"It was nice, but I haven't shaved yet" he said rubbing his cheek with his fingers "Hey did you shave me? My cheeks are clean. They're never this clear. Whatever you used was marvellous. I've tried all the best and most expensive shaving equipment over the last few months, and I still ended up with chafed up skin and short stubble sticking through."

"You're telling more fibs Keene. You cannot expect me or anyone else to believe that you would need a shave at your age. You don't have any facial hair to shave off."

"Of course I do."
"Nonsense. It's because of all these foolish stories about being an adult, that the school counsellor at your last school gave up on you. They don't know how to cope. They've asked me why I even adopted you in the first place, because of all the trouble you've been. That's why I'm enrolling you in a new school today. It's time for you to face up to the reality of life. The reality is that you are a six year old boy. I adopted you from the orphanage, and I would like you to do your best at school."

"Look Louise, if this is an experiment for our assignment so you can see how an adult reacts to being treated like a child, I think it's very clever but you can stop the playacting now."

"I'm not playacting. You're the one with the unfounded ideas about being an adult. You say this sort of thing to me every morning."

"I'm an adult. You know it. I'm as tall and ordinairy as any adult."

"Then prove it."
"Alright" said Keene.

Louise stood up as he got out of bed. To his surprise he only came up to below her waist, halfway between her waist and her knees.

"What have you done to me? How did you shrink me?"

"I didn't shrink anyone. Such a thing would be impossible. Listen Keene, you have no facial hairs, no adult height, nothing to support these wild stories of yours. Now will you promise to be sensible?"

Keene did not know how it had been done.

"Is she right? Was my adulthood merely a dream? Did I never really grow up the way I seem to remember having done? Did I never really go to university as a teaching student?" he thought "Is it possible to dream a lifetime of activity in one nightmare. I'll have to play along at being a child until I can prove whether or not I am supposed to be an adult."

He agreed to be sensible and spent the day in infant school until Louise picked him up from the after school childcare centre attached to the school.

She looked beautiful in her dress. Now he had to cope with the possibility that she had adopted him.

"The only way to prove who I am is reach my house" he thought "But she's already told me she'll be deadlocking every door in her house, so that she doesn't have to worry about me running away."

Louise drove him home, led him to the kitchen, locked the door and said "You can help yourself to a snack while I do my homework. Then I'll come and make our dinner."

She left him alone in the room looking at the window, which was also deadlocked. If he smashed it, he could still squeeze through but the glass would cut him horribly.

"I know! I'll make her think I tried it anyway. It is dark enough for me to get away with it. Then I can escape while she investigates the crash" he thought.

Keene opened her oven door.

"At six years of age again I'm small enough to hide in here. It will be dark. So she won't see me at a glance, but I can look out the glass front at her."
He threw a large saucepan violently at the window, quickly climbed into the oven and pulled the door shut.

He saw Louise come in, see the window, unlock the door, open it and run outside. He stole out of the oven, ran out the open door and went in the opposite direction to the window.

"If she plans to chase after me, then I gained very little by tricking my way out, except that she will think I am cut and hurt by the window's glass remains" he thought as he ran to the street. He kept running until he reached the station. Louise had not followed him.

"Thank goodness, if it is true that I do remember there are no station masters on the line at night" he thought as he ignored his lack of money and caught a free train home.

"I'll excuse myself from a charge of fare evasion on the grounds of being too young to know any better" he thought.

He got off the train and ran to his house.

She must have taken his keys the night before, leaving him with only one option.

He found the spare key that he had taped to the inside of a hollow tree, let himself into the house and found ample proof that he had indeed been an adult until the night before.

Then he heard a knock at the door.

"It's Louise, Keene. By the time I'd finished searching the garden and worked out what you had done, I came here too late. If you let me in I will explain everything. If you don't I can easily try each of your keys that I took last night until I get in."

He had no choice but to open the door for her.

"Would you like to sit down?" he said, pointing to a couch.

"You were an adult" she said as she sat down "Among my scientific achievements, I invented a youth serum. I put a sleeping drug in your cola and mixed the youth serum into it. You drank it, slept and woke up only six years old."

"But why?"

"I did it for you. You told me that you had a lonely childhood that you didn't enjoy. I thought I could adopt you, explain your memories away as delusions and then be your friend and give you a happy childhood this time, a second chance."

"Then it was a lovely thing to do, except..."
"What?"

He began to cry.

"Except that I was very much in love with an adult girl around my own age yesterday."
"No wonder you wanted so much to be an adult again."
"Yes. She's the most beautiful girl, and she seemed so sweet and kind. By the time I am an adult again she'll have married someone else, and I'll have to be his foster son."
"Do you mean you are in love with me?"
"Yes. That's why I wanted us to do the assignment together."

"Then you're the sweetest little darling boy I could ever have, but I already have a very special boyfriend. Why don't I adopt you and look after you until you're an adult again? I'll give you foster son kisses too."
"That will be wonderful. This will be the best we can do, I guess."
"Yes, and now that you agree to keep our secret, I can show you to the other girls I see at university. You've seen them around, but they'll think you're an ordinairy six year old boy."

"There's just one thing. After this, I won't need a bedtime story tonight when you tuck me in."

They laughed.

*          *          *          *

In a few years Louise Waters graduated from the teaching course, and she accepted a teaching position.

*          *          *          *

One morning Keene woke up in his bed to see that he was tiny-sized, with Louise Waters standing by the bed.

"How did I get so small? How will I get to school?"

"You won't be going to school today" said Louise carrying him to the kitchen table and sitting down, "It was as easy as the shock that I inflicted on you when I de-aged you. I was surprised to learn of your crush on me when we first met, but I have a very special boyfriend already. So now I have decided I'd rather have you for breakfast."

To the boy's surprise, she soon gulped him down whole.

The 2000s…

Robert Sinclair was an exceptional illusionist, who had applied his talent to the pleasing of children. He had his own truck complete with his props, equipment, costume and room for only one passenger. He was always keen to study and examine the scene of an upcoming performance in advance, so as to plan a thoroughly captivating show for the children in any audience. On Monday he was to set up his equipment at the Van Horner mansion which was a beautiful white building with terraces, balconies, courtyards and large gardens; and prepare a  show for Saturday evening.

Mrs Van Horner was holding a birthday party for her nephew Daniel and his friends. She would hope to have the adults adequately entertained as well, but the thrust of Robert's performance would be aimed at the ears and eyes of dozens of enthusiastic primary school children.

He parked his truck in the street, opened the gate and walked to the distant front door, rang the bell and waited for an answer. The door was opened by a beautiful tall lady with blonde hair that curved upwards neatly above her shoulders. She wore a white neck-to-knees dress and the faintest shade of lipstick.

"Hello. I'm Robert Sinclair, the illusionist performing here on Saturday night. I promised Mrs Van Horner that I would have a look in the main room and set up most of my equipment today."
"Mother's not home at the moment, but I'll show you to the room. There's a side exit to the courtyard at the end of the middle driveway. You can back up to the door if you like."
"Thank you. I'll try not to disturb you with too much noise. Once I've brought the bulky things in and positioned them, the rest should be a fairly quiet procedure."
"You won't disturb me. I will be in the far wing of the house. You won't ever disturb me, Mr Sinclair."
"She senses my attraction to her" he thought "And she hardly seems keen to respond positively. I know there is no point in trying to impress her, and yet I cannot simply just accept that she is too cold and aloof to be the girl I wish she were. For some reason I strongly hope that there is a fair reason for her coolness."
"Okay. Thank you."
"You should be able to open that door without a key, from the inside. When you're finished don't bother saying goodbye. I'll be far too busy to see you out."
"I'll just pull the door shut and leave then."

*          *          *          *

The truck was in position outside the courtyard door to the main room. As Robert carried in his platform, he listened to make sure that none of its hidden doors were rattling around loose. Within it were concealed magnets, hiding areas and other devices necessary to technically create a plausible illusion. The show need only be sufficiently exciting to bewilder the children, but the secrecy of the techniques must still be sufficient to prevent them from being discovered or exposed by the adults.

"I have the awful feeling that any attempts to dazzle that girl would be the greatest magic feat of all" he thought. She would resist him and take a sadistic pleasure in keeping him at a distance.

"It's never enough. No magic trick will do anything more than telegraph to her the hopelessness of my desperation. I wonder if she ever shows her cousin any friendliness on the nights of his birthday parties. Well this is a well paid appearance that I cannot afford to jeopardise with bad public relations; and that is exactly what any other attempt to approach Miss Van Horner would do. Why am I hoping for any change of fortune on Saturday night? After all if she wore a hat at all, her lips would inevitably tell me that she doesn't like rabbits. There's never a wonderful audience when you need it, except the children. The worst of it is that I cannot enjoy the children's positive responses the way I usually do, with their host's older adult cousin snubbing me brazenly. What would I do for a second chance at magic matching?" he thought.

He had his second chance in the middle of town on Wednesday, when he was performing in the open air theatre sponsored by the local council. She was eating from a plastic container with a disposable spoon, sitting on a bench facing the stage.

This time she wore a cream coat with matching dress, and her hair had been cut slightly shorter since the encounter on Monday. He walked around the audience talking trivially as he finished a feat of deception with an apparently shrinking wand.

"It's the trouble with trying to make people believe in the power of magic during lunch hours" he said "I seldom have the time or opportunity for providing myself with food for thought, and what's worse: I don't seem to be able to find my red handkerchief. Could I borrow a spare tissue from you Madam?"

He had made this request of Miss Van Horner.

"I would want to know if I'd have it back at the conclusion of your show without any knots in it or other damage. I'm not that keen on the way you illusionists amuse people by embarrassing members of your own audiences."
"You will have it back exactly as you lend it to me. What colour is it by the way?" asked Robert.

"White" she said reaching into her pocket to remove a red handkerchief, "... What? Not only are you an exhibitionist. You seek to make me appear a liar and a simple fool for your deception."
"Open it up if you like" said Robert hearing the amused murmur of the crowd.

"Oh alright!"

She violently separated the fold of the handkerchief to discover and reveal that it bore his initials RS in maroon old fashioned lettering.

"Well I had better let you keep it anyway."
"I don't see why! It certainly isn't mine!" she exclaimed indignantly.

"But I'll never be able to prove that it's mine, since you found it in your pocket."
"I know what you're trying to prove, but I will have no more of it!"

She threw the handkerchief at his face, furious at whatever trickery or sleight of hand had enabled him to replace her pocket handkerchief with his own. She stood up and walked away in a huff, while the audience watched him screw the handkerchief up in his hand, hold out his fist, open it to reveal the mysterious absence of the handkerchief, and return to his final illusion on the stage.

Regretful looks caught his eyes, as people glanced at their watches and noticed that they would soon be due back in their offices. He concluded the act and shook hands with the council's master of ceremonies.

"Could you mind the shop while I pursue some lunch?" he asked "You'd be welcome to look around."

The council worker seized the opportunity.

"Why am I doing this for such an arrogant snob?" he thought. Beauty seemed so often to be wasted on girls who would never let a person benefit from it.

Miss Van Horner came to the end of the park and turned onto the footpath, stopping abruptly as Robert Sinclair stepped out from behind a tree, producing a silk white handkerchief.

"I thought I had best return this while I had the opportunity. You see I found it in my pocket. Dashed surprise really. Can't imagine how it managed to teleport itself into my pocket while mine was whisking itself into yours."
"You can keep your hands out of my pocket in future. How did you follow me? I left before you started your last item."
"My second last item was to distract both you and the crowd with the simple palming of a red and maroon handkerchief, while sprinkling luminescent powder on the grass in front of your feet with my free hand. It wasn't that difficult to follow you. It's a lot harder to befriend you."

"It's unlikely to become any easier."
Why on earth were they born like that?

"Why can't I believe that there isn't a sweet version of you sometimes? You've hardly improved yourself by stepping out of that big house today."
"Do you mean that you're the Saturday night's party illusionist? I have to put up with you then too."
"Recognition is the beginning of acceptance."
"And the end of approval. I'm leaving. Please don't bother me."

*          *          *          *

As he was packing up his more portable street show props, he felt a policeman's hand rest on his right shoulder from behind.

"Excuse me, what were you doing bothering Miss Van Horner?"

"Well next time I return someone's property I shall do it by reporting to the police station and bothering you. I just couldn't bear the thought of her blowing her nose with a common disposable tissue."
"Just be quick about packing up and moving out; and if you give me the slightest cause, I'll be looking for an excuse to arrest you."

*          *          *          *

As he sat on his own terrace recalling the incidents of Monday and Wednesday, he knew that all of his jokes had done nothing to solve his emotional frustration at the way Miss Van Horner had snubbed him.

"Would you mind if I sat down for some of that lemonade?" came a voice behind him.
He turned his head to see her again, walking around to the other side of the table, this time wearing a medium blue dress with a perfectly fitting light blue trench coat around it. Her hair was adorably bundled behind her head, and her eyes had the most confusingly evident glow of friendship that he had yearned for on the previous two occasions.

"I'm sorry if I caught you at an uncomfortable moment."

"Why would it be uncomfortable?  I fell in love with an intangible quality on Monday, which I wrongly imagined you to possess. If that wasn't bad enough, you had the police hound me for trying to improve things on Wednesday."
"I could hound them back for you if you like. I'm a part time journalist, and since you are performing at our house tomorrow, I thought that it would be marvellous to meet you and request a brief interview, especially if you fell in love with my Monday column photograph."

"You weren't a photograph in the park on Wednesday."
"I work on Wednesdays and Fridays. I don't have time for parks. It must have been Hanya. She looks just like me, and you have been the badly treated victim of confusion."
"So it was she who didn't like me on Monday either. I knew somehow that you could be as sweet as this when I saw Hanya on Monday."
"That must have been Irma. Hanya and I were both out on Monday."
"Do you mean that you are triplets?"
"You couldn't have known, but I wish I'd known what you must have been going through if they didn't like you."
"I feel so foolish, a illusionist taken unawares by the simplest illusion of nature."
"I would say that you are exciting. I am Carrie. You are an inspiration, to believe in me before you knew that I existed. You will promise to propose to me? I'll do anything for a handsome fiancé."
"When?"
"By the end of the week. I'll interview you tomorrow morning. We could have a picnic lunch on Sunday. There is still time to look for rings today."
"It all seems to be happening so fast and easily now. Don't people usually have problems?"

"I wouldn't want us to be usual, Robert. Please let's just be us. That is the way that it should be."
"When will you come?"
"Eleven. Don't worry about Irma and Hanya. They will get used to you."

*          *          *          *

The Saturday evening performance came to a conclusion, and the children were shown out to their parents' cars by the Van Horners.

Irma and Hanya were curiously unconcerned by the presence of Robert, now that he was an established sweetheart of their sister.

"Carrie, I would love to take you on a picnic tomorrow, but could we also walk through the garden tonight with the pathway lights on? It would be so romantic."
"Of course."

*          *          *          *

"I thought that you might look forward to the picnic even more if I did a little magic tonight."'

"Yes do."

"I'll need help with this trick. Check that my hands are free of anything."
She faced him, taking his hands in her own, separating his fingers with hers, and said "They're empty. Now about that magic trick."
"I'd say it's coming if you keep smiling. Yes it's on the tip of your tongue. You had better open your mouth" he said seeing a sudden look of surprise in her eyes. He kissed her. Then the startled girl opened her mouth to discover that there really was something on top of her tongue.

"Well what have we here Carrie? Put out your tongue."
He removed from her outstretched tongue a small object, and she then withdrew her tongue and saw that he held an engagement ring.
"It's beautiful. You really found one."
"Will you be engaged to me for a long and happy courtship followed by a magical marriage?"
"I will."
"Will you kiss me?"

"But the ring?"
"But the kiss."

"Alright...mm....that's lovely the way you rest your palms gently against my cheeks while you kiss me."
"Palming is a habit I just cannot seem to break. Don't yours feel any different?"
"The ring. You slipped it on my finger."
"Yes."
"You wouldn't try to palm it back?"

"You'll be Carrie Sinclair one day."
"I'll be carried away."
"Mmm."

"Mmm."

*          *          *          *

One day Robert was performing again at a Van Horner party when Mrs Van Horner's friend Louise Waters was a guest. After the party Robert and Carrie went out to kiss on the lawn.

"I really wonder what she sees in him" said Mrs Van Horner.

"So do I" said Hanya, "and it's ruined my friendship with my sister, who knows that I can't stand him."

Louise took Hanya aside and said:

"Could you pretend to be her for long enough to fool him?"

"Why would I want to?"
"Because I could help you to shrink him. If he thought that you were Carrie, he'd walk straight into your trap when you get him alone with my shrinking ring I’ll lend you. Then you could gobble him whole, and he'd think it was Carrie eating him. You'd be rid of him and take the smug confidence out of him as well, if that's what's bothering you."
"Shrinking ring! You're kidding!"

However, Louise soon had Hanya convinced, and they made their plans and arranged for Robert to have the shock of his life.

1983…

Vector Small was 14, and due to turn 15 later that year. After being beaten by school bullies one time too many, and being unable to change schools, he stowed away on a boat and was eventually caught and set adrift in a life raft with limited food supplies. Shortly after they’d run out, he drifted onto an island and lay in the raft on the beach exhausted, until he saw two enormous gigantic women jogging along the beach, wearing sleeveless feminine dresses. He looked on in awe, as they saw him and came to a halt in front of him. The taller of the two knelt down and lifted him out of the raft.

“You look poorly,” she said, “I’m Princess Adrianne.”

“I’m Vector, and I’m just hungry. My food supplies ran out yesterday. I’ve been drifting for much longer.”

“Pauletta, run and tell my mother the Queen that I’m bringing a small young man to the palace. He needs food, fresh water, and a small makeshift bed,” said the Adrianne.

“Yes Princess,” said the other giantess, and raced off to obey.

Princess Adrianne carried the boy more gently and slowly to the palace, and introduced him to her mother Queen Lippylotta.

“Well we can feed and take care of you for now,” said the Queen, “But the question remains of what to be done about you, as you now know the secret location of our island.”

“Since you’re feeding me, I’d be happy for one of you to eat me,” said Vector, “I’d like that, while it lasts.”

“It could last as long as you like,” said the Queen, “Everyone on our island has the gts gene but without the ability to shrink to your size, as far as we know. However, each of us does have a separate section in the front of her stomach, where you could live and sleep and daydream in comfort. We could never let you leave our secret island, but one of us could take up your offer to be eaten by her. I shall declare a contest in which all of our women will walk the catwalk for you. You can choose any whom you would like to be eaten by. Then I shall hide you in the palace gardens myself, and the contestants you have chosen will then search for you until one of them finds you and captures you. She will be the one to eat you.”

“That sounds wonderful,” said Vector, thinking it was an apt choice of wording.

When the Queen was busy arranging the contest, Adrianne tended to Vector alone.

“I hope you’ll be the one to eat me,” he said.

“I hope so too,” said Adrianne.

She smiled sweetly at him and touched him with the tip of her tongue.

Later she told her mother how she hoped to win.

“No my daughter, I forbid it. Whoever eats him could well develop a taste for boys that size and leave our island to find more. We must remain in seclusion here,” said the Queen.

Adrianne returned to Vector and told him of her mother’s decision.

The next day, the catwalk contest began, and Vector chose 13 beautiful giant women, including one who looked as pretty as Adrianne, but instead of dark brown long hair, she had medium length light brown hair with streaks of red, as well as a pair of glasses. As she reminded him so much of Adrianne, he simply had to make sure that she won the garden hunt for him. It would be the closest thing to the forbidden opportunity to be eaten by Adrianne herself.

Queen Lippylotta set him loose in the palace gardens, while the 13 contestants remained indoors. After he’d had time to hide, she announced the start of the hunt. Vector stayed well hidden from everyone, until he saw the lady in glasses get close, and then made sure that she saw him. She caught him and took him back to the queen, and pulled off her glasses, and what turned out to be a wig, to reveal that she was in fact Adrianne all along.

“I’m sorry, mother. I want him in my tummy very much, and I will not leave the island for more. He is enough. He always will be.”

“I shall have to trust you, my daughter,” said the Queen, “You may take him to your chamber and eat him.”

 “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone with him in the garden first,” said Adrianne, and sat down in a beautiful scenic spot with the boy in the lap of her dress.

“Did you know it was me?” she asked.

“I thought it was someone who closely resembled you. I was heartbroken that your mother wouldn’t let you compete. Your other identity was the closest I thought I would come to being eaten by you. I … I made sure that you were the only one who saw me in the hunt,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, and kissed him.

“Thank you too,” he said, “This is so much better than the school bullying I left behind.”

“You’ll face none of that in my tummy,” she said.

They talked all afternoon, and then she took him to her chamber, and slowly slid him into her mouth. He waited on her tongue in anticipation and then slowly eased himself off into her throat. She sensed his enthusiasm and helped him down with a careful gulp, which took him to the front section of her stomach, where he would be safe.

2013….

After years and years of carefree life in Princess Adrianne’s tummy, he suddenly felt himself being vomited up again. Surrounded only by the moisture of her tongue, he came out of her mouth and into her hand.

“I had to let you out now,” she said, “I’ve grown many years older, as you can see, and I’m now the new queen, with the recent passing of my mother. Now my own word is law, and I wanted to give you the chance to start anew among your own people. If you stayed in my tummy, I would eventually die of old age long before you were ready to and you’d be trapped in a lifeless body which would no longer sustain you.”

She built him a sturdy boat to his own size scale and farewelled him from the beach, with all of her people looking on. She trusted him to keep their secret, unlike her mother, and would never expect to see him again.

He found that he was able to claim an inheritance from his recently departed parents, but he still had the mind and education of the mere 14 year old boy who had learned nothing new in all the three decades he had spent in Princess Adrianne’s giant stomach. Unlike Bryce Banta, alias Captain Miniature, who had retained his youth after a similar absence from the 1960s to the 1990s (in the earliest chapters of this book), Vector Small was only just coming to terms with how much he had aged physically but not mentally. It was not until Adrianne had brought him up and out of her mouth, that she had had the chance to tell him exactly how many years had passed. He had not been able to keep count of it himself, as there was constant darkness in her stomach, giving him no inkling of the passing of night and day. Nor had he obtained any vitamin D from sunlight exposure in that time. The offsetting quality was that he had also avoided any sunburn or skin damage. His facial features had largely retained the youthful appearance of a man in his 20s, and hair dye would hide a few grey hairs too. All he could do was to claim social security and do his best to make ends meet in his inherited house until suitable work came along. He managed to enrol in simpler tertiary education courses, that did not require him to finish high school, and learned as much as he could about modern computers and the internet, so that he could eventually begin a career of some sort.

The late 2000s…

Brandi Gold had been hiding out at Brayne Mansion to avoid being recognised as the ex-model who had, in a moment of hunger, attacked Sydney Centerpoint Tower in search of a human repast. When in public, whether at normal or giant size, she always wore the mask and costume of her new alter ego, Enlarger Girl. However, there was one realm, where she could retain her original identity of Brandi Gold: the internet. Checking her own fan website, Brandi found an email message from a young admirer who was placed in a career position that had great significance to Brandi and every other giantess in Australia:

Dear Brandi,

I saw the news coverage of your recent … visit to Centerpoint Tower, and I really wish I’d been there. I think I’d have loved the thought of you eating me, just so I could have gone inside your beautiful mouth. I’ve seen every photo of you on your website, and I just love the ones where you’re laughing with your mouth open or sticking your tongue out. I think you’d be the best vore giantess ever, but I’m worried about your safety. I’m an admin assistant / secretary for a member of parliament, and I’ve been told to attend a private cabinet meeting with my employer and the Prime Minister and other MPs next week, the purpose of which is “to end the giantess problem forever.”

I know this can’t be good for you, and you mean so much to me. Even if you didn’t, even if no giantess did, I still have the awful fear that whatever the government is planning is so wrong that it must be stopped.

Your adoring fan,

Mike Roman (but you can call me Microman which sounds the same).

Brandi forwarded the email to her private email address, and then edited out the references to Mike’s personal feelings for her, leaving only the revelation of his news about the government. Then she printed the rest and showed it to the Smartman formerly known as Agilitricks, namely her host and boyfriend Wooss Brayne.

“We could send this guy in and get him to report to us, but if he gets caught, he could be in great danger,” said Smartman, “I think it’s time to call in some other players. I’ve been observing and monitoring their activities for some time. There’s a Dr Ann O’Malley whose scientific knowledge created the project known as Captain Miniature, and there’s Louise Waters, who single handedly defeated the Sons of Molech. I had spent years working on a plan to raid the secret inner headquarters of the global criminal elite, and just couldn’t come up with an attack that even had a reasonable chance of success, let alone a good safety factor. The Sons of Molech were actually the real players behind the activities of Sydney’s biggest crime leader Red Moll. Everyone who tried to take Red Moll down thought that her name was spelt with two Ls, making her a modern day version of the 1927-1934 Sydney gangsters Katie Leigh and Tilly Devine. In fact her code name wasn’t Moll, but Mol, based on her own sick devotion to the pagan god of child sacrifice known as Molech. Here’s the interesting crossover: Ann O’Malley and Captain Miniature never knew about the Sons of Molech. It was Louise Waters who took them down, because her boyfriend’s closest kin died in the Twin Towers bombing of September 11th 2001. I don’t think Louise was aware of Red Mol’s involvement, or that she had also cut off the funding and guidance of Sydney’s worst crime leader, any more than Captain Miniature was aware of the existence of the Sons of Molech. Then there’s one more player who might be useful to us: a man named Vector Small, who has been the target of every contemptible scheme by the Australian government to victimize people who have been unemployed through no fault of their own. This guy spent 3 decades inside the front compartment of a giantess’s stomach, growing from adolescence to middle age without the ability or opportunity to gain a tertiary education or even keep up with the technical changes in society. He was unemployed through no fault of his own, and was targeted for government sanctioned slave labour programs and constant denigration and stigma. I’m going to contact them all, using methods only I have learned about, and arrange a secret meeting in a dummy location I purchased years ago for just such a purpose.”

And so it was that Louise Waters, Smartman, Enlarger Girl, Captain Miniature, Dr Ann O’Malley and Vector Small all met in a small house on the waterfront of Sydney.

“We’ve got to know exactly what the government is planning,” said Smartman, “and since we’re not willing to risk Mike Roman, we need to get ourselves in there. I’ve got some bugging equipment that would enable the wearer to hear everything the cabinet says and transmit it to this headquarters and record it.”

“But we’ll need to come up with a good name for our little group, before we go into any action, surreptitiously of course,” said Vector, “How about the Surreptitious & Somewhat Secluded Six?”

“Sounds alliterative enough for me,” said Dr O’Malley, “All in favour?”

“Aye,” came the unanimous response from the remaining four members.

“Of course Smartman and I are honorary members of a giantesss community in the distant future as well,” said Enlarger Girl.

“That’s okay. I’m involved with the Growe Institute myself,” said Captain Miniature, “But to get back to addressing Smartman’s plan of action, I can shrink myself and acquire a different one time use super power each time I do so. But nothing would enable me to shrink your bugging equipment along with myself.”

“My only power comes from my shrinking ring invention,” said Louise Waters, “I’ve used it to shrink myself and then to permanently shrink the Sons of Molech right out of the regular sized universe. It’ll work fine on your gear, and I could wear it just before I shrink myself.”

“Okay, but you’re not going in alone,” said Smartman, “Captain Miniature will go with you, using his own super powers to run bodyguard interference in case you get caught. We don’t want the government getting wind of Louise’s shrinking ring, or even of her existence. Enlarger Girl will contact her informer again, let him know that we’re ready to act, and get all the details of the upcoming private cabinet meeting. Then we’ll go ahead. I’ll stay here with Dr O’Malley and Vector Small, to monitor the incoming transmissions from you two, and then to devise a counter strategy against whatever they’re up to.”

So the meeting day came, and several of the highest ranking Australian politicians, met with Australian Liberal Party Prime Minister Rich Gardyan, unaware that two shrunken members of the Surreptitious & Somewhat Secluded Six were hiding in their room and operating a bugging device with an outgoing feed.

“As you all know, I’ve convened this meeting, because a secret scientist in my employ has come up with a way to end the giantess scourge once and for all,” said the Prime Minister, “My anonymous expert has devised a device called the GTS Anti-Bomb, which, when detonated, would release a widespread burst of special gas across the whole of Australia, and possibly beyond. The gas would have no effect on most of the population, but to anyone possessing the gts gene, it would be instantly fatal. The gas would take effect, whether the woman was at normal or giant size at the time. Now I call for your comments.”

“Anyone with the gts gene?” said one MP, “Does that include all the males with the shrinking ability or tendency too?”

“It does, and while they’re all relatively harmless, we could put their deaths down to a necessary casualty of collateral damage,” said the Prime Minister, “Besides that, we’d probably be taking steps to protect our nation’s security from a form of espionage we could not possibly hope to counteract. Just think what an army of shrunken men could do if they worked together to spy on our military or even our politicians.”

“You have no idea how relevant that speculation is right now, both to you, and to us,” whispered Captain Miniature, as Louise nudged him in agreement.

“But the public would never approve,” said another MP, “Most of the giantesses are benevolent.”

“True,” said the Prime Minister, “Benevolent so far, as far as they’ve let on, but we need to apply the only blanket cure we have. Look at the 1990s attacks on Centerpoint Tower and Rural Dural Boys High School. The public have lived in fear of what these giantesses can do for long enough.”

“I agree,” said another MP, “We used to have a culture in this country defined by Aussie blokes, football, alcohol and backyard barbeques. Now all of that has been overshadowed by huge women and the wimpy men who admire them, ever since these gts fanatics all started coming out of their closets. Let’s wipe them out and get back to the basics that made this country great.”

“I can see why you wanted this meeting off the record,” said Mike Roman, hoping that Captain Miniature and his ally were actually getting all of this recorded, while acting as callous and evil as his employer’s colleagues, in order to preserve his cover, “So many bleeding hearts out there would think we’re just about to victimize a minority group.”

“They already feel the same about the way we hound and harass the long term unemployed with punishment policies instead of taking measures to get them real jobs,” said the Prime Minister, “And we all know that there isn’t enough work available to gain full employment in this country. Some people are going to miss out. Some of the public are going to perceive them as welfare bludgers, and our voters are going to elect us to come up with ways to hound them off our welfare system and onto the street with no roof over their heads. It’s a necessary collateral damage once again. The unemployed minority are no real threat to our re-election possibilities, and they can do nothing to fight back against us. The only difference is that the giantesses could, if they knew what we were planning. That’s why I’ve screened this meeting down to people who have expressed anti-giantess sentiment in the past.”

At this point, Mike Roman was feeling pleased that he had always perceived his giantess fantasy as a twisted fetish best kept secret. Sheer fear of embarrassment had motivated him to keep his aspirations about Brandi Gold under wraps for the few years (since graduating from college) that he had worked in a political environment dominated by the so-called values of Australian culture which had been espoused in the very meeting being held right now. 

Mike Roman had held a giantess vore crush on recent upcoming politician and former journalist Maxima Kute and enjoyed her screen time when she’d chosen to challenge the Prime Minister for his own local electoral seat. He had never contacted her or pursued her, as she had no known interest in giantess fantasies, nor any known giantess abilities. Most importantly, he had put his fantasies of her out of his mind quickly and not enterained them at all, because she was a married woman. The thought of anyone in parliament learning of his private longings would have put him off turning up to work at all. So to cover his tracks, he had even given the appearance of being a more outspoken anti-giantess activist, with the unexpected result, that he had been invited to attend this secret meeting.

“In the case of giantesses, we can hardly refer to them as ‘a minority’ if we go by the amount of space they’re known to take up,” quipped another MP, even though he knew full well that the term really referred to a numerical minority, rather than the size of any particular woman concerned.”

“So we’re all agreed then. The GTS Anti-Bomb must be detonated,” said the Prime Minister, “And since we can’t risk Operation Giantess Fall being leaked out to anyone outside this room, we cannot involve any of our own security staff. I alone will help to detonate the bomb. The scientist will be in attendance, instructing me on the measures necessary to help him activate the two person controls for the detonation sequence.  The rest of you will be on the site to act only as watchdogs and security staff, and witnesses to a scientific accident gone wrong, should anyone overfly the area and observe our little blow-up. Now that I have your unanimous support, I can reveal that the scientist’s complex is constructed in the most unviable part of rural New South Wales, where no farming community would ever come into existence. From the underground silo, the scientist and I will launch a miniature missile, which will carry the GTS Anti-Bomb to a suitable height for remote control detonation. The scientist assures me that, once in the air, the released gas will spread and spread and wipe out every giantess, and every shrinking male for that matter, in the country. Whatever drifts offshore might even provide the same service of giantess extermination to another continent.”

“Let’s hope the kiwis are not feeling sheepish about the whole giantess business,” said the same punster who had spoken a few minutes earlier.” (He was definitely not in Carycomic’s league, neither with the quality nor the sentiment of his witticisms).

“We should use this recording to reassign everyone in that cabinet meeting from parliament to Long Bay Jail,” said Smartman.

“Everyone except our inside man Mike Roman,” said Vector Small.

“That’s taken as read,” said Ann O’Malley, “I think Louise and I could use her own technology to work out how to modify both the missile and the bomb, so that, when they try to launch it, instead of leaving their silo to reach a suitable height for detonation, the rocket itself will implode, and release an effect that will shrink the entire complex right out of this universe. They can take their evil plans down to whatever sub-molecular realm that the Sons of Molech ended up calling their new home. I’m so glad you told me about them, by the way. Nice to know what really facilitated Red Mol all those years. I’ve never even been able to discuss these matters with my own family.”

“We’re your second family now,” said Enlarger Girl, “Not one of intimacy, but of allegiance.”

“Alright, well I’ll tell the others as soon as they return,” said Smartman, “If the location of the silo is not revealed to our recording gear verbally by the Prime Minister, before this meeting ends, then Enlarger Girl will use her secret identity online to get it from her tipster Mike Roman. Once we know it, Enlarger Girl will carry us there under cover of nightfall at her giant size, after I fly us out there in the Smartcopter. Then Louise will temporarily shrink us all enough for us to break into the complex undetected. Then she enlarges all of us, except for Captain Miniature, who will have shrunken under his own power. Under her guidance and Ann’s he will go inside the devices and make the changes necessary. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be on watch for the scientist, in case they need a tip-off to avoid being caught. I don’t want our presence there detected either. It is important that they go ahead with their attempt, believing that it will succeed, because it is not enough that the corrupt giant-icidal politicians and the Prime Minister are reduced out of our universe forever. The diseased mind that constructed the GTS Anti-Bomb should also be removed from any possibility of duplicating his own efforts in the future. He too must be consigned to wherever Louise Waters ultimately despatched the Sons of Molech.”

“Then let’s hit the bastards as soon as our tiny spies return,” said Vector, “On the sly, of course.”

“Aren’t we all forgetting something?” said Ann O’Malley, “What about Mike Roman? He’s the innocent man who tipped us off. They’ll be expected him to attend on the day of Operation Giantess Fall.”

“Then he’ll have to be credibly attacked by a giantess a few days earlier,” said Enlarger Girl.

“If you do that, you’ll turn the public against a known super heroic giantess,” said Smartman.

“Not necessarily,” said Enlarger Girl, removing her mask, “It’s time to trust our fellow members of the Surreptitious & Somewhat Secluded Six. Mike won’t be attacked in parliament house by Enlarger Girl. He’ll be attacked on the weekend, and swallowed whole by known voracious giantess temporary menace Brandi Gold. Now that Vector’s told us about the secret second compartment in the front of our stomachs, I can gulp Mike down to there in his own backyard in full view of his neighbours, then beat it out of there and cough him up from the safe part of my tummy later. He can wait until the cabinet members and the scientist have been shrunken by their own rejigged equipment, and then reveal to the public that I ‘vomited’ him up, giving him the chance to run away. There’ll have to be a re-election. With any luck we’ll get the labour party back into power for the first time in 11 years while we’re at it.”

Brandi emailed Mike, knowing that he wouldn’t read it until he got home that night. She was his only contact link between Mike himself and the Surreptitious & Somewhat Secluded Six, and he was still unaware that Brandi Gold was the secret identity of Enlarger Girl.

Dear Mike,

You did a fantastic job today. We’ve got a plan to cause Operation Giantess Fall to backfire, but you mustn’t be suspected. Nor should you be at the silo to face the same counter measure we’re going to use. So my plan is to publically eat you on Sunday afternoon. How does your own backyard sound as a location? I’ll do my best to cause you no discomfort, and you’ll go down to a safe compartment in the front of my stomach, where no digestive acids will ever reach you. Once our plan’s been achieved, I’ll cough you up again and release you. You can tell the public that it was a random vore attack and keep both your political admin assistant career and your anonymity of having assisted my allies. Is all of this okay with you?

Brandi xx

Mike saw his emails that night and wrote back in a frenzy of excited anticipation.

“Oh Brandy I can hardly wait. This is my greatest fantasy about to come true. I never dreamed that it would at all, and let alone in such a good cause. I’ll make like I’m enjoying a day in my pool, which you can interrupt with your ‘attack’ on me. Oh, actually, the chlorine would be bad for your tongue, and I couldn’t do that to you. I’ll read on a deck chair beside the pool instead. You can stride in, snatch me up and gobble me down. I’m looking forward to it so much.

Mike xxx.

Brandi revealed the details of Mike’s cooperation, but not the details of his vore crush on Brandi. As far as her current boyfriend Smartman knew, Mike was merely a fan of Brandi’s former modelling career, not her giantess vore attempt on Centerpoint Tower.

That Sunday, Mike set about giving his neighbours the impression of a normal day of backyard bookworm recreation, while he awaited Brandi’s simulated attack. Soon he heard a voice from high above him.

“Well don’t you look delicious!”

“Oh my goodness!” screamed a neighbour, “It’s Brandi Gold! She’s at it again.”

“No! No! Please don’t eat me up! I’m a fan! I like you!” said Mike, for the benefit of his audience.

Brandi stepped from the street onto his lawn and sat down in his backyard, with her bikini clad posterior completely covering the pool for want of any other space to place it.

“I’m sure I’m going to like you too,” said Brandi with simulated mockery, “I’m a bit of a fan myself, that is, a fan of the finest Australian raw cuisine.”

She put out her tongue, picked him up and held him over her outstretched taste organ and slid him back and forth across it.

Mike Roman felt that all of his wildest dreams were coming true in that one encounter.

After a minute or so of this, Brandi slurped him into her mouth and slid him happily around on her tongue for several minutes more, before giving the neighbours a terrify view of her gulping neck in action.

Her giant legs enabled her to run out of the suburbs long before any police cars could get near her, and they didn’t have the availability of the helicopter that the city police had brought into play at Centerpoint Tower all those years earlier.

With Mike Roman still in her tummy, Brandi thought it unwise to shrink back to normal size. She ran until nightfall, having done the gobbling late Sunday afternoon, and then put on her Enlarger Girl outfit and patrolled other parts of Sydney looking for opportunities to assist the police and State Emergency Services with rescues and crime fighting, having retooled Smartman’s original idea of having her join the assault on Operation Giantess Fall’s silo.

A few weeks later.

Mike Roman was watching the prime time news.

“Police and military intelligence forces have today agreed to abandon the search for several  mysteriously missing federal cabinet ministers along with the Prime Minister. Remaining Liberal MPs have bowed to the opposition leader’s pressure to call an early election. Australia will go to the polls as soon as November. The opposition leader said, that if elected, he will appeal to super heroin giantess Enlarger Girl to join his own security staff.”

Well wasn’t that an amusing irony, Mike? Not that I’d accept. I’m a free agent, apart from my secret allies. That’s right, I said “I.” You see, Mike, you’ve earned more trust from Brandi Gold about my Enlarger Girl identity than anyone else has earned from Enlarger Girl about my Brandi Gold identity. The truth is that you’ve done more than that. I’ve been both working with and dating Smartman. I can’t tell you his secret identity, but he did coordinate my allies’ attack on Operation Giantess Fall, which you made possible by contacting me in the first place. More than that, although I came close to eating Smartman the day of my assault on Centerpoint Tower, it can’t compare with the sweet taste and pleasure of eating you when I did it. I almost wanted to leave you down there, but I wouldn’t have done that to you. I’ll keep my professional crime fighting alliance with Smartman, but I don’t know how long I’ll keep dating him. The truth is that I can’t get you out of my thoughts, nor do I want to keep you out of my mouth, especially knowing how much you enjoyed it too. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, and in the meantime, I’d really like to keep in touch with you over the internet. I’m not married to Smartman, just dating. So my commitment to him need not be permanent. He’s a good man, but maybe you’re the right one for me to spend my life with. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about me … or to reading them at any rate.

Love, and thanks,

Brandi xxx

Mike was ecstatic.

My thoughts! Brandi, Brandi, Brandi! Whatever you decide, I wouldn’t have missed that gobbling for anything. But whatever you decide, I also hope you can do another one in a less public place, in fact, in total privacy. I’d really like to enjoy it without the neighbours looking on. In fact, darling Brandi, if you’re going to stay with Smartman, if that’s what you decide, I think I’d like you to gobble me down to that safe space for as long as you go on dating him. If you decide to marry him, then you can cough me up and we’ll permanently go our separate ways. What do you think of that? Is it too silly?

Love,

Microman.

Dear Microman,

I don’t think it’s silly at all. In fact, I’d take it a step further, if you’re willing. Why don’t I meet you as soon as possible, and gobble you whole anyway? You can stay in my tummy while I make up my mind about Smartman. If I ever marry him, I’ll cough you up as you suggested. If I ever leave him, I’ll also cough you up and gobble you again at frequent opportunities. Let’s do that, if you’re willing.

Love,

Brandi

Dear Brandi,

Of course I’m willing! I’d love that. In fact, I’ll resign from parliament now, so that I won’t be missed. If I do end up with you later, I can always explain the gaps in my CV by something other than making direct accounts of my time spent in your tummy, without telling any lies. Where and when, my heart’s and vore fantasy’s desire?

Love,

Mike.

Dear Mike,

You won’t need a CV. I’ve a fortune in investments from the original capital I raised with my former modelling career. Why have you out working, when I could put you to use for the same time massaging the inside of my tummy, and then kiss and cuddle you at normal size in the evenings too?...

So it was that two significant things happened. The Labour Party came to power in Australia, and Mike Roman came to live in Brandi Gold’s stomach, while she continued contemplating whether or not to wind up her romantic involvement with Wooss Brayne alias Smartman.

1976….

School was out, which for 8 year old Jacoby Kurk meant the Wahroonga Public School, surrounded by a nature reserve on one side, two streets, and a suburban house on the other side. Third class was out of the way, and he had the long summer holidays to enjoy: nine weeks in fact. Jacoby liked the school grounds and the forest like nature reserve more than his own backyard. So he took the short walk there from home on the first day of the holidays, and took his action figurines and their vehicles out of his backpack and set up a few toy adventure scenarios in the nature reserve, before beginning to realise that he was starting to grow out of any interest in them.

Then another tiny vehicle rolled into view all by itself. It was like an overly wide and overly long motor cycle, with a domed passenger compartment on the top. There was a small moving figurine in it, which seemed to be driving the toy.

As he looked on in surprise, the dome opened and then the cycle flew up to his head height and its occupant actually spoke:

“You must be my double on this earth.”

“Double?” said Jacoby.

“Take a closer look. We could be twins, except for our sizes. I know I talk like an adult, but that’s because the Glamorous Trio used their Eye Box to advance my language skills. They made it by combining technology from Brother Box and Mother Eye (two other devices). Now it does all sorts of things. It even invented the Trio’s custom sized version of this Slipper Cycle.”

While trying to absorb all that, Jacoby looked at the tiny boy closely and saw that his facial features were identical.

“It’s true. We are like twins,” he said.

“I’m also Jacoby Kurk, but from a parallel earth,” said the newcomer, “The Slipper Cycle is so named because it can roll along the ground, or fly through the air, or SLIP between dimensions to any of the four earths. It also fires Meagre beams, by the way. They’re like minor strength lasers, that just knock someone out for a while. But let me tell you about the earths, now that I’ve seen them all. There’s earth-T, from your perspective, which has tiny people like me. There’s earth-G, which has people who are so large that you’d seem like my size in comparison. There’s earth-B, which has people exactly twice the size of their counterparts on your earth (for those who have counterparts, and not all people are replicated on the other earths). Your earth-A has people your size, but some of them have the gts gene. It allows those boys and men to shrink, and to teleport and grow back to normal size, and allows girls and ladies to grow to giant size and back to normal size. Some people can even use the gts gene’s teleportational ability to cross between earths (in certain specific gateway areas) without the use of the Slipper Cycle.”

(Earths A, B & G have already been mentioned in previous chapters concerning Lewis Rickland’s inter-dimensional exploits, making earth-T the fourth earth.)

“I wish I could be small enough to ride the Slipper Cycle too,” said Jacoby-A.

Suddenly he shrank to the size of Jacoby-T.

“You’ve got the gts gene!” said Jacoby-T, quickly stabilizing the Slipper Cycle, as Jacoby-A was now too small to hold it up, “I learn about scientific things quickly too, thanks to Box Eye. It also taught me everything I need to know about maintaining and repairing the Slipper Cycle, if anything ever happens to it. There’s room in here for you now, if you want to take a flight with me.”

“I sure do,” said Jacoby-A, “Who are the Glamorous Trio?”

“Well they come from another planet in the same parallel universe as Earth-B. So from your point of view, Beautiful Drama would be 10 foot tall on this earth, Big Barbara would be 13 foot tall, and Irresistible Girl would be 11 foot tall.  They age the equivalent of one of our years in every ten, and so they live much longer. Being the inventors of Eye Box, which in turn invented the Slipper Cycle, they were the only three to escape the planet of New Genecide, when its mad ruler Bonnie Badness accidentally destroyed the planet, while experimenting with the Ranting Wife Equation. They came to earth-B and found that only Big Barbara’s height stood out a little. They were able to blend in with the people on Earth-B, but decided to use the Slipper Cycle to explore other dimensions too, in the hopes of making their home in a surviving New Genecide-T or New Genecide-A or New Genecide-G. However, they quickly learned that the same fate had befallen the other three New Genecide planets, and in each case without the survival of their counterparts.”

“You mean the Glamorous Trios of those worlds all died?” asked Jacoby-A, still struggling a little with the adult like diction of his counterpart.

“Sadly yes,” said Jacoby-A, “After learning that New Genecide-T was also gone, and that they would have been like giants there anyway, they tried to befriend the people of my planet, Earth-T. Most of its earthlings were too frightened to welcome them, and begged them to leave the planet, but not before they met me. I loved the thought of pretty giant ladies, and asked them to give me kisses. They said I was cute and sweet and gave me lots of kisses, and then also gave me the Eye Box treatment and my own Slipper Cycle. Then they returned to earth-T to make their home there. I take my Slipper Cycle out exploring the other earths a lot. I’m too small to be noticed at all on earth-G, like an ant to those giants. To the people of earth-B, I’ll be about one of their inches tall when I’m fully grown, and to your people, I’ll be about two inches tall as an adult. Now let’s fly over your neighbourhood.”

The two Jacobys rode the Slipper Cycle over several houses and then came to land in a large garden. 

Jacoby-T & Jacoby-A went walking through for a while, both enjoying the beauty of having relatively giant flowers around them. Suddenly they saw two hands reaching down, and both of them were snatched up by a beautiful 30 year old lady.

“You’re Samantha Palem!” said Jacoby-A, “I’ve seen you in Season Twelve of the Space Girls.”

“You must be my youngest fan,” she said, walking to a garden seat and making herself comfortable on it, “I did lots of movies in my native England in my teens and twenties, and then joined the case of Space Girls for Season 12, and then moved to Australia to enjoy the independent wealth I’d earned and look for an opportunity to start a family. I haven’t met the right man yet, but it looks like I’ve found the right little boys. Which one of you should I eat first?”

“Eat!” said Jacoby-T, “Why do you need to eat us?”

“I don’t need to, but I’d certainly like to,” said Miss Palem.

She tasted Jacoby-A’s face with the front 2 centimetres of her tongue.

“But other giants thought I was cute and sweet,” said Jacoby-T.

“Oh good!” giggled Miss Palem, “I love sweets. You’ll go down comfortably and make a welcome addition to my celebrity stomach. Think of all the other viewers of Space Girls who’ll never have such an opportunity.”

“If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather not have it either,” said Jacoby-T.

“But I would,” said Samantha, “I think I’ll call this the unaired Season 13.”

“Use your other power and teleport away,” said Jacoby-T, “I’m done for.”

Reluctantly, Jacoby-A found that he could teleport out of Miss Palem’s hand and back into the garden. He looked up anxiously, as he watched her push his doppleganger into her mouth. It was like watching himself be swallowed, as he saw her neck gulping. Then he noticed that another woman had been crossing the garden during the gobbling of Jacoby-T.

“Now that’s not fair!” said the visiting lady, “I’ve just had a boring sandwich, and you’re eating one of my favourite wishful thinking little boy lunches.”

“There’s another one in the garden, Lydia,” said Miss Palem, now able to open her mouth and speak again, “You might have trouble catching him though.”

Both women walked over and looked down into the flowerbed.

“Little boy, may I introduce my friend Lydia Dalton, recently divorced,” said Miss Palem, “She’s going to help me to try to recapture you and then whichever of us gets you first is going to eat you.”

“I’m Jacoby Kurk,” called the boy, “I wish I could give you a cuddle.”

With that, he suddenly grew back to normal size, having manifested the last of his three gts gene powers.

“It seems you can,” said Lydia, and knelt down and hugged the boy, which gave her an opportunity to lick his cheek, “My but you are delicious. What a shame you didn’t stay tiny.”

“We’d never have been able to eat him if he kept teleporting out of our clutches anyway,” said Miss Palem, “Isn’t that right, boy?”

 “Yes,” said Jacoby.

“Well couldn’t you just let one of us eat you and then teleport out afterwards, and then give the other one a turn?” asked Lydia, “I promise I’ll swallow you whole.”

“I guess so,” said Jacoby, “Your lick was nice. I’d like it at tiny size.”

He shrank himself down again and enjoyed the feel of Lydia’s soft pink hand scooping him up and loading him into her mouth. It felt incredible to be sliding around on her tongue and then descending her throat, and even more surreal to know that he could easily liberate himself from her by teleporting out. He waited for the right moment and did so, near the bottom of her throat.

“It’s wonderful!” said Lydia, “You were delicious, little boy!”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Miss Palem, “Let me show you something inside, Jacoby.”

Lydia carried him into her lounge room, where she took out a large photo of several women standing or seated in her garden for a group shot.

“These are all the ladies in the street who come to my garden parties sometimes. We’re all good friends now,” said Miss Palem, “Could you point to any that you wouldn’t mind being eaten by?”

Jacoby looked at their faces, and particularly their mouths, and pointed out three of them.

“Well Miss Jolum’s single, Miss Florenson is widowed and Miss Jones is separated,” said Miss Palem, “How about if I asked just those three and Lydia over for a special party? You could hide in the garden, Jacoby, without using your teleportation power. We could all look for you and chase you until one of use catches you. Then she could swallow you down to her interior until you teleport back out for another round of the game.”

“I’d like to play that game,” said Jacoby, “I think it was unfair of you to eat the other Jacoby. He can’t teleport out, and he’ll be gone forever.”

“Well I can feel him in my interior now and what’s done is done,” said Miss Palem casually, “You’d be there too, if not for your powers. I’m glad we’ve still got you though.”

The next day, the other three women joined them to hear Miss Palem’s invitation.

“I’d have eaten him even if he couldn’t have teleported,” said Miss Jones, “So long as my daughters didn’t find out. He’s between their ages.”

“I did try,” said Miss Palem.

“He’s younger than my daughter, and I’m sure he’d be delicious,” said Miss Florenson, “But I don’t think I could have done it without his power to get out of me afterwards.”

“I think I’d have put him in my mouth and thought long and hard about whether or not I’d swallow him,” said Miss Jolum, “I don’t have any children.”

“So are you all interested in coming to a secret gobbling party in this garden sometimes?” asked Miss Palem.

The women concurred.

“There’s just one question I have,” said Miss Florenson, “Why did you choose us?”

“I didn’t. He did,” said Miss Palem.

“I think you have the nicest mouth of all, Miss Florenson,” said Jacoby.

Miss Florenson blushed and kissed him, and then licked him.

“No wonder you invited us!” she said, “He’s mouth watering!”

At that point he could still feel the water from her mouth on his face.

“So if you have these powers, do you have a special name?” asked Miss Jones.

“I haven’t thought of one yet,” said Jacoby.

“How about Reducible Kid?” suggested Miss Jones.

“Okay,” said Jacoby, “The other Jacoby told me about three ladies called the Glamorous Trio. Would you like to have a group name too?”

“Why not?” said Miss Jolum, “But what name should be adopted by a group of women who take turns gulping a little boy down to their interiors?”

“How about the Interior Five?” said Miss Palem.

“Reducible Kid and the Interior Five,” said Jacoby, “What adventures we will have!”

He had decided never to tell any of the five women about the Slipper Cycle. He would let them continue to think that he teleported his way into Miss Palem’s garden each time he visited them.

The first garden gobbling party was held the next day. Miss Jolum was wearing a pink jumper and a patterned long skirt that stopped three inches below her knees. She was very athletically inclined, and Jacoby was able to see her running through the garden much faster than the other ladies. She found and caught him first and put out her tongue and licked his face and chest and shoulders several times, before putting him into her mouth and swallowing him, shorts and all.

Jacoby decided to use his teleportation power in the games, from concealment within the garden, to secretly move from one place of concealment to another, only when it was necessary to prevent the same ladies from winning the game too often, while the others missed out on their chances to catch and eat him. This way he was able to roughly allot equal amounts of gobbling experience to all of his five pursuers.

When the long summer holidays came to an end, they wondered what to do.

“I can play again in the holidays at the end of term one,” said Jacoby.

Both Reducible Kid and the Interior Five looked forward to that immensely.

1987…

After 10 years or so on Earth-B, the Glamorous Trio felt a certain wander-love, and even a desire for a little more attention. To that end, they took their Slipper Cycle to Earth-A, where they would be noticed for their greater sizes. They moved into a historical Sydney house, which had very high ceilings, so that they could just fit without bumping their heads, and found that Eye Box was able to duplicate the currency to finance their expenditure. Technically Eye Box was being used in the most advanced form of undetectable counterfeiting of Australian currency. However, they synthesized only the exact value of the money that they had earned on Earth-B, and then destroyed their original earnings, so that their Earth-A wealth was economically, merely just an inter-dimensional currency conversion of their legitimate holdings.

Although well over 200 years old, the three women had the appearance of women in their late twenties, albeit very tall women. Knowing that they would age much slower than earthlings, they decided to look for partners who would be barely adults, and to that end, they visited Sydney’s various universities especially during lunch times to find first year students fresh out of school. Most of the boys were not keen on dating women who averaged twice their height, but among the few who were turned on by such a thing, they each found one to their liking.

Eye Box was able to advance the learning abilities of their three consorts, just as it had done for the language skills of Jacoby-T. Big Barbara’s boyfriend Theo Kerr was studying architecture, and was able to take on extra subjects and pass them all, gaining his degree in two years instead of three. He was then able to design and build a house with rooms tall enough to accommodate Big Barbara comfortably.

Irresistible Girl’s boyfriend Maury Davison soon became a highly successful financier, and was able to have the downstairs ceilings removed from a two-storey house, so that all of the downstairs rooms were effectively doubled in height, which made them perfect for Irresistible Girl.

Beautiful Drama’s boyfriend Terry George simply visited her whenever she liked, at the existing high ceilinged historical house that the Glamorous Trio had originally purchased with some of their replication-conversion currency.

(And of course any big bad wolf would have had a hard time blowing any of them down. LOL).

Beautiful Drama’s large garage also concealed the Glamorous Trio’s Slipper Cycle, which eventually gave her an idea. One day while Terry George was at work, running his comic book store, Beautiful Drama rode the Slipper Cycle across dimensions and came to hover in the air above the surface of earth-T. She knew that the Slipper Cycle’s Meagre beams would knock someone out by applying a forward force in that person’s direction. With the help of Eye Box, she modified their controls with a reverse polarity setting, that would enable the Meagre beams to reverse that force, and hence act as tractor beams. She then fired the reverse Meagre beams at an earth-T tertiary college below.

The entire university was dislodged from the ground and carried up into the Slipper Cycle, to come to rest on the seat beside Beautiful Drama. She had struck in the middle of a weekday morning, when the attendance was at its peak, and acquired almost every student and teacher in one go. She returned to Earth-A and garaged the Slipper Cycle, before carrying her prize catch into the kitchen. Holding it upright, she used a brush to dust any residual earth-T soil from the undersides, and then placed the university towering building in her pantry, which she would lock from now on.

Then she knelt down, punched in a door and reached in and seized the nearest student.

“You’re one of those three giants that came to earth when I was a little boy,” he said.

“I am indeed. One of you alone wouldn’t satisfy my hunger at any given mealtime,” said Beautiful Drama, “And I wouldn’t want to send a whole lot of you down to my tummy at once. I believe gobbling should be an intimate experience for two. So I’ll swallow one of you each night as an After Dinner Miniature.”

She stood up, carried her captive selection out of the pantry, locked it and took him to the kitchen. He watched her preparing her lunch and serving some for both of them, watched her enjoying the afternoon and then eating her dinner, and then waited for what she had indicated would come next.

“Of course on the days of the nights I’m expecting my boyfriend over, I’ll be eating one of your fellow students after lunch instead of after dinner,” said Beautiful Drama, licking her full shapely red lips, “But you’ll go down nicely now. At least you know you’ll all be yummy, if not alumni.”

With that, Beautiful Drama put the young man into her mouth. While her mouth was still open, he sat at the front and only took up a limited space on the front of her tongue, being half the size that he would have been to anyone born on earth-A. He looked back at the grand beauty of the rest of her tongue and knew that there was nothing else he could do but wait. He felt the tip of her finger nudging him irresistibly from behind, and fell over onto his tummy and slid slowly along her tongue, until he plummeted off the back into her throat. Down and down he went, until he reached her inescapable tummy.”

Over the next few weeks, Beautiful Drama went through many of the students. Those who were dating each other persuaded her to eat them together as couples, so that they could face their fate together.

One day, now in his late teens, self-shrunken Jacoby-A flew was flying his own Slipper Cycle (that he had inherited from Jacoby-T) above the neighbourhood, when the fascinating architecture of Beautiful Drama’s huge historical house caught his eye. He flew down and hovered around, and was surprised to be able to see a much larger version of his Slipper Cycle through the high garage window.

“This must belong to the Glamorous Trio that Jacoby-T told me about all those years ago,” he thought, and hovered some more, until he decided it would be less conspicuous to land it in the garden and teleport in under his own power. While exploring the house, he teleported into the pantry and met the surviving university students from Earth-T who explained their plight.

“If Beautiful Drama thinks I’m Jacoby-T, she might still think of me as the friend she once knew, which may help me to persuade her to let the rest of you go and eat me repeatedly instead,” he said.

“I don’t think she’d let us go at all,” said one of the students.

Jacoby-A explored the house further, since Beautiful Drama was evidently out for the day.

Jacoby found a diary with the addresses and phone numbers of Big Barbara and Irresistible Girl. He telephoned both of them and explained what Beautiful Drama had been up to. Thankfully the other two were sympathetic to the plight of the earth-T students and decided to take drastic measures. Big Barbara confiscated their Slipper Cycle from Beautiful Drama and agreed to conceal it in a secret location known only to herself and Irresistible Girl from now on, just as soon as they returned the university and surviving students to earth-T. The tiny people would be forever inaccessible to Beautiful Drama.

Having made their point, Big Barbara and Irresistible Girl went back to their boyfriends, leaving Jacoby-A still in Beautiful Drama’s living room.

“Well you’d better be going too,” she said coldly, “Thanks to you, I can’t eat anyone else.”

“I could give you someone twice their size as often as you wanted,” he said, and reduced himself to two inch height, “Go ahead …. Eat me up.”

“… Thank you,” she said, “Is it Okay if I start now?”

“Of course,” said Jacoby and enjoyed the feel of her mouth going to work on him.

To her subsequent surprise, he teleported out of her tummy unscathed and told her of the gobbling games he used to play with Samantha Palem, Miss Jolum, Lydia Dalton, Miss Jones, and Miss Florenson. The Interior Five had since moved on into new relationships, which did not allow for the presence of a tiny temporarily consumable younger man.

“So you see it’s good for me too, if you don’t mind eating the same little guy over and over,” said Jacoby.

“Well you taste great, and there is just as much of you to eat as there was of an earth-T guy,” said Beautiful Drama, “And you’re the same age as my boyfriend. Only he can’t shrink. Do you think you could be happy as my boyfriend too, knowing I ate all those little guys from earth-T?”

“So long as you’re not eating any more of them, I can. But what about your existing boyfriend?”

“He’s a nice guy, but I can’t eat him. It would simplify things if I was dating and eating the same young man, don’t you think? Do you have a girlfriend? I guess I should have asked.”

“I’ve never had one, unless you count my childhood gobbling relationships with the Interior Five.”

“Would you ever go back to them?”

“No. I’ll only be going to your interior from now on.”

“You are sweet as can be. I could eat you all up again right now!”

“I must confess that I knew about you already, back then. Don’t I remind you of someone, when I’m this size?”

“Maybe. It’s hard to tell. I did know a Jacoby once. Say! Are you this earth’s version of Jacoby KURK?”

“Yes. He told me all about the Glamorous Trio back in 1976. You all seemed so benevolent from his description. I never imagined you’d raid earth-T for a supply of after dinner miniatures.”

“Neither did I back then, but I guess it took me a while to acquire the taste,” she said.

1999….

Bryce Banta alias Captain Miniature had been out of his ageless slumber since 1995. (See Chapter 3). He was looking forward to a date with his girlfriend Emma Nation, but was currently scouring Sydney at his tiny size in search of his arch nemesis Red Moll (who was revealed in later chapters to be Red Mol, a servant of the Sons of Molech, until Louise Waters shrank them into a sub-molecular universe).

On this occasion, while shrunken, Captain Miniature had not acquired any powers that enabled him to leave the ground under his own steam. So it came to him as a pleasant surprise, when a man his own size came to land beside him on what looked like a flying motorcycle.

“Captain Miniature, I presume,” he said, “I recognise the costume well.”

“You have the advantage,” said Captain Miniature.

“I’m Jacoby Kurk, and this is the Slipper Cycle. It can fly, drive on land, and cross the dimensional barrier to the other three parallel earths.”

“There are parallel earths?”

“Oh yeah. Earth-T has people of our current size. Earth-B has people who are double our normal size. Earth-G has giant people who are as large in comparison to our normal size as this earth-A’s people are in comparison to us right now.”

“A whole earth full of people who’d be the same size as me while I had my powers,” said Captain Miniature, “I’m getting nowhere trying to get a lead on Red Moll. I don’t suppose you’d care to take me to earth-T for a bit of a reconnaissance.”

“It’d be an honour to take Captain Miniature anywhere. Hop in.”

Jacoby used the dimension spanning controls for the Slipper Cycle, and they were soon travelling the void or limbo between dimensions. Suddenly a dimensional storm shook the Slipper Cycle off course, and the new diminished duo found themselves having to land and check the cycle out.

“By the size of everything, I think we can take it that we’re back on earth-A,” said Jacoby.

“On a footpath just before dawn too,” said Captain Miniature, “Look at this stuff that’s been put out for the council’s pick-up to take to the tip.”

“Maybe we’d better go back to normal size to be less noticeable,” said Jacoby.

They both grew back to full size, and Jacoby picked up the Slipper Cycle to carry it by hand. Captain Miniature began browsing through a pile of discarded books and magazines, until he came to one that took his breath away. It was a paperback, titled “Rhymescribe Presents Captain Miniature.”

He opened the book to the first page and then leafed through to the first chapter and began to read:

It was 1964 in Sydney, where a boy called Bryce

Was befriended by a scientist. She gave some sound advice.

Dr Ann O’Malley offered him the Super Schoolboy Stuff.

Once he took it, seeking super powers, he found he had enough.

Then they used him to reboot the Aussie market for TV,

As the star of his own show, with viewers who would watch and see

Captain Miniature as just a doll, controlled by Ann’s remote.

But the secret of his stunts in fact was worthy of this note.

They decided that a costume was the natural way to go.

Ann took on the task of stitching one, and did the job sew-sew.

He was captured in the 9th grade by a redhead named Skye Larke,

Who had plans for him and other folks that bordered on the dark.

She’d been diligent in studies, head cheerleader, social chief,

In the school, so she could cultivate a widely held belief

In her innocence, while planning use of perfume powered sin.

She decided he’d be great for lunch, and planned to gulp him in.

He restored his size and got away, and learned her home address,

For advantage, when he’d later need to clean up Skye Larke’s mess.

Then the TV network felt he’d need a sidekick to kickstart

Sydney’s TV industry, and looked for who would play the part.

Then they settled on a casting trip to Sydney’s Romper Zoo,

And his animal assistant was a well trained kangaroo.

Bryce and Ann rejected such a thought and so the show was canned.

They looked forward to a future time when censorship was banned.

But to get Bryce there, still young, she had to then suspend his age,

While he slept. She set things for the year 2000 on the guage.

But in 1995, he was awoken by a lass,

Who became his lucky girlfriend, while Skye Larke had turned out crass.

She was now Red Moll the crime boss, leaving Bryce and aging Ann

With a job of bringing Red Moll down, as only heroes can.

They fought Puppy Master too, the Likeness Monster, Albert Ross,

And Mort Guage and Clarence Nette, before the villains took a loss.

“It’s a poetry account of everything I did from 1965 to 1995,” said Bryce, thumbing through subsequent pages, “I didn’t authorize the publication of this in any form. I didn’t even reveal much of it to the public.”

“Look on the bottom of page one for publication details, or on the back cover,” said Jacoby.

“Hmm… It says Rhymescribe House…. Seems to be a one man show. At least there’s an address. We’d better go and find whoever it is. Do you think the Cycle’s up to it, or should we take the train?”

“The Cycle’s alright. Let’s just get behind a tree before we shrink down and board it though,” said Jacoby.

When the Slipper Cycle landed on the windowsill of Rhymescribe House’s office, a writer looked up from his desk and saw two tiny men grow to full size and step onto his office floor.

“That costume!” said the writer, “Does this mean that someone’s acquired the powers to bring my Captain Miniature character to life?”

“YOUR CREATION?” said Captain Miniature, “I was given my powers by the scientific efforts of Dr Ann O’Malley, as your first chapter about me documents quite succinctly. I don’t know how you got your information, and I admire your artistic skills, but you had no right using my life for your latest effort. I presume you’re Rhymescribe.”

“Correct. And I created Dr Ann O’Malley,” laughed the writer, “Just a pun on the word Anomaly. Look, normally I wouldn’t have time to humour a fan who stalks me through my window, but since you’ve somehow turned into a real Captain Miniature, what can I say? Maybe we can scratch each other’s backs in some way.”

“Are you on something?” said Captain Miniature, “What do you mean YOU created Ann?”

“I thought up the character, just like I did Bryce Banta,” said Rhymescribe.

“You mean you just imagined her?” said Captain Miniature, “And you know my identity too.”

“Well it was my idea. I was having lunch at Taronga Zoo, and thinking about what I’d learned about the Australian film industry developing the way it did back in the ‘60s. I thought it’d be funny to make the kangaroo the discarded sidekick who got the series canned, instead of the lead star. Hence the short lived Captain Marsupial gag. Did I end up using that name in the poem?”

“No, you didn’t,” said Bryce.

“I couldn’t make it scan on the verse, now that I remember it,” said Rhymescribe.

“Yet you thought it up, and only shared it with me now. That really was the name of the trained kangaroo sidekick the networks tried to force on me. That’s why Ann and I walked from the show,” said Bryce.

“Wait a minute,” said Jacoby, “Did you say Taronga Zoo?”

“Yes,” said Rhymescribe.

“Where is it?” asked Jacoby.

“Where the Mosman bush meets the water,” said Rhymescribe.

“But it’s not called that. It’s called the Romper Zoo, just as you named it in your poem,” said Bryce.

“I was just hunting for a new name for fictional purposes,” said Rhymescribe.

“I know what’s going on now,” said Jacoby, picking the Slipper Cycle off the windowsill, “This bike allows me to cross the dimensions when I’m at tiny size. This really is Captain Miniature. We’re both from a parallel earth. I didn’t know that this one existed. That dimensional storm we passed through must have enabled us to access a previously undiscovered earth, where we exist only as characters in your fictional poetry.”

“That’s so surreal,” said Rhymescribe, “You mean those earths in my ‘Chelmsford Girls’ draft are all out there: Lewis Rickland’s earth, and the two earths with larger and much larger people that he teleported to in the later chapters?”

“I guess his earth is ours,” said Jacoby.

“At least it will be,” said Rhymescribe, “The ideas were just drafts in note point form. I haven’t even written those poems yet. I was going to wait until the giantess gobbling subplots might be accepted by society. As far as I know, I’m the only person who likes that sort of thing.”

“Trust me. On my world it’s catching on,” said Captain Miniature, “You will write that one out in full and publish it, I’m sure. I’m sorry I came in here so steamed up. I guess, if I don’t exist on this world, there’s no harm in people knowing all about me, as merely a fictional concept.”

 “We’ve got to try and get back to earth-A. Do you mind if we take off from your floor?” asked Jacoby.

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I don’t suppose you’d like a souvenir copy of my poem about your exploits, Jacoby,” said Rhymescribe, “I presume you really did call yourself Reducible Kid and interact with the Interior 5 back in the 1970s, and then with the Glamorous Trio in the 1980s?” (See recent chapters).

“I did,” said Jacoby, “Who knows how your creative mind has tuned into our reality? I certainly wouldn’t choose to believe that we exist in our world only because of your imagination. What a demeaning thought.”

“Yet the alternative I must now humbly accept is that my creativity exists only because my imaginative mind picks up on your adventures,” said Rhymescribe.

“Well the least we can do is give your earth a designation or name,” said Jacoby, “Let’s call it Earth-Rhyme.”

“Would you mind if I put our encounter to poetry for a future publication?” asked Rhymescribe, “I doubt anyone would treat it as anything more than my warped mind pushing the artistic boundaries a little further.”

“I guess it’s okay,” said Captain Miniature, shrinking down to tiny size again, as Jacoby did the same, “Are we right to go, Jacoby?”

“Sure are. I just hope it works,” said Jacoby.

Rhymescribe looked on as they popped out of existence as he knew it, and began drafting notes to put the whole interruption to his other writing project down in poetry. Jacoby and Captain Miniature were careening through the dimensional void.

“I didn’t realise you had a super hero name too. Reducible Kid, eh?” said Captain Miniature.

“It’s not widely known. I mainly used my power to be eaten by five women who’d compete to find and catch me first back in the 1970s.”

“The Interior 5, I take it. I was still in suspended sleep, and you would have been just a kid.”

“They went their own way eventually. Now my girlfriend’s even more ageless than you, over 200 years old with a massive gobbling tendency that makes her and me an ideal match for each other. She’s the rogue of the former Glamorous Trio. They’re the only survivors of all dimensions’ versions of the destroyed planet New Genecide. Hey, we’re breaking through.”

They landed the Slipper Cycle in the familiar streets of Sydney, restored their size and decided to check the newsagents and bookshops, to make sure they weren’t still on earth-Rhyme. There were no publications of poetry about them this time.

“Earth-A, thank goodness,” said Jacoby, “Otherwise we’d still be out of size with the locals. I don’t suppose you’d like to come over and meet Beautiful Drama, my girlfriend. We could invite Emma too and make it a foursome.”

“Sure. Can I ring her from your place?” asked Captain Miniature.

“Fine by me. Next stop Wahroonga,” said Jacoby and they returned to the Slipper Cycle.

They landed in the yard, and Jacoby and Bryce grew back to normal size and Jacoby turned his key in the door and walked in. To his surprise, they were greeted by a man, who seemed to live there.

“Rhymescribe!” said Bryce, “I thought we’d gotten off your earth. Do you mean that this is your home address?”

“Sure, but where’d you get the Captain Miniature outfit? I’ve never drawn it for the online readers. Its appearance is only in my head. Not to mention the question of where’d you get the key to my house?” asked the man, “And what did you call me?”

“Your pen name of Rhymescribe,” said Jacoby, “We took off from your office before, but somehow ended up back in your universe.”

“My universe? I’m Timescribe, and boy do you have some explaining to do.”

“Oh no. Not another one,” said Bryce, “Jacoby, just how many of these fictionalizing universes with their own earths could there be?”

“Don’t ask me,” said Jacoby, “Until today I only knew of the four regular earths, if you can call the size differences of their inhabitants any indication of regularity.”

For the next few minutes, they explained to Timescribe in detail their encounter on Rhymescribe’s earth.

“So it would seem that I’m also tuned into the realities of earths A, B, G and T,” said Timescribe, “When I wrote about you, Jacoby, I based your house on mine. That’s why you came here, and why your key works. You didn’t find any publications at the shops here, because I haven’t achieved the same recognition as Rhymescribe did on his earth. My stories about you guys are all in plain narrative, not poetry, and they’re only published online, and read for free.”

“So what do we call this earth? Not to mention how do we leave it?” asked Bryce.

“Will Earth-Prose do for a name, and I can’t solve your other problem,” said Timescribe, “Except that if I were writing a solution, I’d say just try the Slipper Cycle again and hope that the dimension storm takes you back to your own earth this time.”

“It’s all we can do,” said Jacoby, “It’s been great to meet you, Timescribe. Keep the yarns about us coming. You really deserve to have your stuff in the stores.”

“I guess my counterpart might be writing about this even now and rhyming vore with store,” said Timescribe, “I’m surprised I didn’t tune into what was happening with him.”

“Given a few hours, you probably would have, unless it’s impossible for you two fictionalizers to imagine things about each other, only about us,” said Jacoby, “Well here we go again, Bryce. Give us a good write-up, Timescribe.”

They shrank again and went back to the Slipper Cycle and into the dimensional void.

“That Timescribe’s got good staying power,” said Bryce.

“Yes. I think he’ll get his published author status one day. It’s a shame he can’t realise his giantess fantasy on his world too, like I can on ours,” said Jacoby.

They passed through more of the storm and then materialized in some soft white sticky substance and couldn’t even get off the Slipper Cycle.

“It smells like jelly,” said Bryce and tasted some, “It’s partly transparent, and it is jelly. Look, there’s berries and small bits of chopped up fruit mixed into it.”

They looked up through the jelly to see a beautiful woman holding a spoon, which was dripping jelly. She licked it, which was an amazing sight, and then looked down at the jelly again.

“Oh great. We’re home again only to end up in someone’s dessert,” said Bryce.

“It could be fun though,” said Jacoby.

“Only if this thing can dimension hop out of her belly before we’re digested,” said Bryce, thinking that Rhymescribe would be rhyming jelly and belly when he wrote about this.

The woman satisfied herself that she had adequately cleaned the spoon with her tongue, and then dipped it into the jelly again, scooping up the Slipper Cycle and its two passengers.

“I’ll be cleaning this muck out for weeks anyway,” said Jacoby, as the spoon was raised to the woman’s mouth, “Wait a minute! Look at the scale. Even at tiny size, there’s no way that we and the Slipper Cycle could all fit inside a single spoonful of jelly. Just look how enormous her mouth is!”

“You’re right. We’re like dots to her!” said Bryce.

They saw her tongue come out of her mouth just in front of the spoon. Her magnificent huge sparkling tongue was many times the length of the Slipper Cycle. Jacoby was transfixed beyond words at such a sight. In less than a second, they were lowered onto it, as she spooned them into her mouth, jelly and Slipper Cycle and all. The giantess had no idea that she was eating two much smaller living men.

“We must be on earth-G!” said Jacoby, and turned on all the Slipper Cycle’s flood lights, “We could enlarge and make her aware of our presence, although it would be a little crowded with two of us in her mouth. I wouldn’t advise it though. If she made our acquaintance, but decided to swallow us intentionally anyway, the Slipper Cycle would do us no good as a toy sized object in our possession.”

The giantess’s mouth and the jelly were now lit up around them. Jacoby saw that they were facing the back of her mouth. He quickly put the Slipper Cycle in land travel mode and hit full reverse throttle, bursting the Cycle out of the back of the jelly to gently bounce off the inside of the giantess’s lower lip.

“It’s a good thing her tongue’s in this position, or we might have hit her lower teeth instead,” said Bryce.

They saw the jelly sliding towards the back of her mouth and down out of sight. Now they could see the huge expanse of her tongue in her lit up mouth.

“She’ll think we’re a piece of berry that got dislodged from the jelly,” Jacoby said, as he felt a slight movement of her tongue shaking the Cycle a little.

Jacoby was so fascinated by the sight of such a giant tongue, while at his tiny size, that he was momentarily distracted from the obvious ramifications of being inside the mouth of a woman who was currently engaged in eating her dessert. The urge to get out of the Slipper Cycle and attempt to walk or slide around on such a tongue was overwhelming. Yet he had his fidelity to Beautiful Drama’s gobbling mouth to think of, and she was roughly twice his height when he was normal sized anyway.

“Quick, before she swallows us!” said Bryce.

Jacoby put the Slipper Cycle in dimensional mode, and it disappeared from the giantess’s mouth and returned to the dimensional void. They finally emerged again onto an earth, which turned out to be their own.

“Do you still want to make that journey to earth-T with me? The dimensional storm seems to be over,” said Jacoby.

“Maybe. Give me time to get over being fictionalized twice and almost being some giantess’s just desserts,” said Captain Miniature.

“It could have been worse …. if she’d been having hot soup,” said Jacoby.

“Oh terrific,” said Captain Miniature, “I wonder whose copyrights would have been at risk on which earths, if we’d ended up having to rename it the Soup-er Cycle.”

Louise Waters was still with her boyfriend Phil Hermuth, who reciprocated her giantess vore crush very much. One day she met a handsome teenage boy named Teddy and they became friends. She invited Teddy out to her holiday house. They got there in the middle of the morning, and walked around the large garden, holding hands. Then Louise embraced Teddy and kissed him for several minutes.

“You give lovely kisses,” she said, “I’ll always remember that. It will soon be lunch time. You wait here, while I go inside and see what can be done about food.”

Louise walked into the house. Suddenly Teddy found himself shrinking. It didn’t stop until he was not much larger than his smallest finger had been.

“Louise!” he called, “Come and help me! Something strange has happened!”

His voice was so soft now, that he doubted she could hear him. In a few minutes he saw Louise come out and stand on the porch looking out into the garden towards him.

She looked like a giant to him now. He looked at her long dress and then up further at her face.

“There’s a few things you should know, Teddy,” she called, “I have spent years engineering a special shrinking device, the only type of its kind in the world. I have used it to reduce you to the size you now find yourself. I’m sure you can appreciate that it is a suitable size to help you fit comfortably into my mouth. You could certainly slide down my throat without causing me to feel as though I’m choking, wouldn’t you agree? You’d also have plenty of room to move around and make yourself at home in my tummy too, until you’re painlessly digested in it. That’s what you’ll have to do, Teddy. There’s no way out of this garden. However, I’m going to give you an hour to run and make the most of the best hiding spots in the garden. Then I’m going to come and find you, little Teddy. When I do, I’m going to eat you up right there in that garden. There’s nothing you can do, and no way that you can appeal to me to call this off. It will be very frightening for you, I’m going to have a lot of fun. Your time starts now, Teddy.”

With that she turned and walked calmly back into the house.

Teddy couldn’t believe it. He had set out that morning with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Louise would still have all her life ahead of her, but she was going to hunt him down and eat him for sport and amusement and obviously some eating pleasure of consuming him too.

He headed away from the house and concealed himself deep in the garden, trying to think of a more lasting way to escape. Soon he saw her come out and look everywhere, until she found him.

“Do you have any questions before I finish you off?” she asked.

 “Did you really like being with me, or was it all just a lead up to trapping me here like this?” asked Teddy.

“You’re very cute,” she said, and kissed him, taunting him with the fact that he’d never enjoy those kisses again at normal or tiny size, “And I certainly do love you, not enough to marry you, but enough to have enjoyed the last year or so. I’m so beautiful that I already have a boyfriend, and eventually someone to marry. But that won’t be you, Teddy. Just think what you’re losing, because you came here and fell into my trap.”

She licked her lips and smiled at him.

“I am thinking of it. Most of all, I’m losing the life I dreamed of with you.”

“Well don’t feel too bad,” she laughed, “You’ll certainly be a part of my life ahead. I expect to gain some lasting nourishment from you, but for you, it’s all over. Give my regards to my throat on the way down.”

She simply pushed him helplessly into her mouth, kept him there for a while, and gulped him into her throat. It all happened as rapidly and unavoidably as that, with nothing he could do.

Louise later met a boy named Paul. He was 14 and she was a good four inches taller than him.  With the summer holidays just started, Paul asked her if she'd like to go out on a date.

"Well my house in the hills is a nice place to meet. So we'd be completely alone," she said, and they set a date.

The next week, she met him at the park and drove him up to her house. She took out a picnic rug and lay down beside him.

“How long have you wanted to ask me for this date?” she asked.

“Since we met,” he said.

“And you finally found the courage,” said Louise.

“Yes. The other girls said you were out of my reach, because I was too young.”

“Out of your reach,” laughed Louise, apparently at some joke she was not willing to share, “Have you ever kissed a girl before?”

“No. Have you ever kissed a boy before?”

“I have,” said Louise, “Would you like me to help you get started on kissing me?”

“Yes,” said Paul.

She leaned across, put her hand on his face and brought her lips to his and kissed him. He felt her tongue moving into his mouth, and guessed that she wanted him to do the same. She pressed her body hard against his own, and kept kissing him for several minutes.

“How was that?” she asked.

“It was wonderful,” said Paul.

“You’re not used to having your tongue in my mouth, are you?”

“Not yet.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes, it’s nice.”

“Imagine how you’d feel if your whole body was inside my mouth.”

“I might like that too, but it isn’t as if I could fit.”

“I guess you can’t,” she said.

They talked for a minute and then he shrank to tiny size before her eyes.

She sat up and picked him up. She put out her tongue, which was now relatively enormous, and licked his face and shoulders.

"I should think you're grateful for the benefits of being made small enough to fit in my mouth. If I left you at your full size, you’d get hurt a lot, while I'm eating you."

"Eating me!"

"Well you asked me out on a lunch date. I thought I'd enjoy it more, if you were the lunch."

"Oh Louise, all I dreamed of was a kiss."

"Well it's not quite lunch time yet," she said, and kissed him.

"Louise, if you let me grow back to normal, I'll be in your debt forever."

"Paul, you'll be in my stomach forever. I'm going to take a walk around the garden, and then come back. You've got that much time to hide. Then I'll come and have fun looking for you."

They played the frightening game, and Louise eventually found him and lifted him towards her face.

"Louise, please! Spare me! I'll do anything!"

She laughed.

"Thanks for the date," she said, "Goodbye Paul."

She licked him several times, and then pushed him over her lower lip and onto her tongue.

He lay there a while, and then she took him out of her mouth.

“How are you feeling about your upcoming fate?” she asked.

“A little grateful,” he said.

“Are you serious?” she asked, “I’m going to eat you.”

"I meant that I should be grateful for the time in your mouth. Apart from the expectancy of being swallowed, I have thrilling memories of lying on that sparkling tongue of yours."

Louise smiled and placed him straight into her mouth, and closed it. Then she gulped him into her throat and swallowed him.

Louise went to a social function in the community hall.

She met and danced with a 19 year old boy named Tommy.

He walked in the gardens with her and kissed her.

"I have a deal for you," she said, "Would you like to marry me?"

"Yes, I think I'd love to."

"I have an invention which will reduce you to tiny size. In my garden, I have already hidden a small container with a signed promise to marry you and love your tiny self always. I would position you on the edge of the garden, while I closed my eyes and counted out 5 minutes. Then I would come looking for you. If you found the container before I found you, I would marry you. If I found and caught you, before you found it, I would put you into my mouth and gulp you down my throat."

"Do you mean you'd like to eat me?"

"Yes," she said, and licked her lips and smiled mischievously, "I still have a boyfriend, and I could have just reduced you and eaten you anyway, which I have done with other boys. However, I'm allowing you to compete with me, on the terms I've suggested, with a prize for you if you win."

The terms were interesting. Even if he won, he would be her tiny boyfriend forever.

"So a journey into your mouth wouldn't be totally unbearable for me if I lost. I'll give it my best, and see who wins."

She shrank him and put him on the edge of the garden.

"I'll see you soon," she said, and closed her eyes.

He ran through the garden, and was soon able to see her stand up and start searching for him, towering above everything.

Eventually, he saw the container in the distance, hidden under a mushroom. He looked up, and saw that, on the lawn beyond, was Louise, staring into the garden. He would have to move under concealment of flowers and shrubs, as she was looking in the direction of himself and the container.

He began to make his way towards the container. It was about nine feet from him, which was a long way to a shrunken boy.

He moved from one mushroom to another, staying under them, so that he was not visible. However, he had not taken one thing into account.

"It's a sunny day," he heard Louise say, "and although you are concealed by those mushrooms, I know you're there, because your shadow is to the right of them. Here I come to get you."

There was no point in concealment now. He needed speed. He risked everything on a desperate sprint towards the container. However, Louise took two steps with her long legs, which brought her between himself and the container.

She reached down, grabbed him and put him into her mouth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Louise briefly took on a science teaching position at a school, to put her scientific knowledge to use, and also to meet more potential young meals. 11 ½ year old Milo was determined to get away with as much misbehaviour as he could in his first year of high school.

He started with a series of pranks.

For the first one, he replaced the white board markers with permanent markers, so that the teacher’s next set of notes could not be rubbed off.

His French teacher was not amused, and threatened to punish the whole class with a detention if the culprit didn’t own up. So he admitted it.

He also put glue on the door handle, but was caught doing it.

Determined to continue anyway, he pulled every practical joke he could think of on all of his teachers, except for his form mistress, Miss Waters, since he had a crush on her.

After two months of this, she asked him to remain behind after school and see her for a talk.

“Milo, you’ve done so many naughty things, that you’re in more trouble than you realise,” she said, “The principal wants to give you a suspension.”

He had a sudden realisation that he had gone too far.

“I won’t muck up any more, Miss Waters.”

“It’s probably too late to turn things around by behaving in the future,” said Miss Waters, “I suppose I could tell the Principal that you’ve learned your lesson at last after a serious talk with me. I’d want something very important from you in return though.”

“I’d do anything to avoid getting the suspension.”

“What I have in mind wouldn’t hurt at all, but you wouldn’t be able to continue on in the way you’re used to.”

He was curious now.

“How would that be?” he asked.

“I’ve invented a way to shrink you to tiny size.”

That could mean that she meant to keep him as her personal possession after doing it. That could be enjoyable. Besides, he doubted whether she was serious about having found a way to do this. Playing along with her game would be fun, and would certainly be far better than being suspended by the headmaster.

“That might be better,” he said, “Would you keep me with you?”

“That’s the part you’ll need to think about, Milo. In a way I will keep you with me. My intention would be to gobble you whole for a delicious meal.”

He went silent.

“Do you think you’d rather have the suspension after all?” she asked, after 30 seconds of silence.

“No, I think I’d actually like your idea more. I think you’re beautiful, Miss Waters. That’s why I behave for you.”

“I’m flattered. Do we have an agreement then?”

“Yes, Miss Waters.”

“Good. I’ll convince the principal you’re ready to turn over a new leaf.”

“And then one day I’ll be no bigger than a leaf. How much time would you want to give me as a full sized person, before you start on this?”

“We’ve still a few weeks until the first term holidays. We can talk about it in privacy. I want to keep this between you and me. No talking about it with other students or teachers.”

She kissed his cheek.

The next day he went to talk to her after school again.

“I was awake a lot thinking about things last night,” he said.

“Did you enjoy your thoughts?” asked Miss Waters.

“Yes. I’m just wondering how you would enjoy doing something like that to one of the boys in your class. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a caring teacher would do.”

“Don’t allow yourself to think that way, Milo. Once I’ve shrunken you, I will eat you all up, and I won’t have any apprehensions because of our student-teacher relationship. I have a rare appetite for doing this. Yet you agreed to it, knowing the suspension would not have such permanent affects. What motivated you to choose my plan for you over the principal’s?”

“It’s your mouth, Miss Waters. It’s so beautiful.”

“I suppose I’d like to turn around the usual protective kind aspects of being a teacher, and become like a mythical giantess, feasting on my student, knowing that I live on happily, and he doesn’t, being aware that the unfairness of the situation is working in my favour.”

“And you don’t feel guilty about it?”

“No more than you felt guilty about all the things you did to the other teachers. It will be as much fun for me, much more actually. Cats enjoy similar dealings with mice, although you needn’t fear the physical pain that the mice face. I’d like to understand more about your motives though, Milo. You told me that I’m beautiful. But I’m not really clear on how this is of any benefit to a boy being eaten. I’m not going to gobble you down for several weeks. I’d like to gain a better understanding of you before then.”

“Your mouth is the most beautiful part of you to me, Miss Waters. It was partly a pleasant surprise to be trading the suspension for the opportunity to go inside it.”

“So is this the main appeal for you, to go inside my mouth?”

“Yes, Miss Waters.”

“I find that strangely encouraging. But you do realise that I’ll enjoy it much more than you. I’m going to gobble you down my throat. You might even enjoy that.”

“I think, in a way, I will enjoy that part of it too.”

“But soon after that, it will all be over for you, Milo. But I will continue as a teacher in this school and a long living woman for all those decades after you’re gone. Knowing that is a part of the treat you will be, young boy. It’s a very real part of being eaten. I was pleased that you stayed awake in bed thinking about it. Being my student isn’t going to save you, Milo.”

“I don’t see how you could smuggle any kind of machine into this school to shrink me with. There are always so many people around.”

“There could be other ways to shrink a boy, Milo. You’ll have to wait and see. Sorry if I’m upsetting you by going on asking about this, but what is it about my mouth, that you find so beautiful? You’ll only have one chance to kiss me on the lips.”

“Your lips are beautiful, Miss Waters, but your tongue is even more beautiful, and I’ll certainly have the chance for my whole body to touch that, after it’s been reduced.”

He realised he was talking about this, as though he’d been convinced it was possible. That had still to be proven, as far as he was concerned.

“So you like looking at a lady’s tongue. Have there been other ladies whose tongues have caught your attention?”

“There was a teacher at my prep school. She was very pretty, but not as beautiful as you. Are you just looking forward to surviving this in a lasting way, with me not doing so, or would you like the actual process of eating me too?”

She looked around. There was nobody in the hallway. She closed the classroom door and licked his cheek. Then she took his fingers and sucked on them.

“Does that answer your question? You’ll taste marvellous. I can’t wait for the satisfying succulent meal you shall be for me. I’ll enjoy feeling your reduced young meat resting on my tongue. Our age difference means a lot to me too. I wouldn’t want to do this with an adult man. You’re only 11. The thought of making a delicious meal out of someone who has only lived a fraction of the time I have is a definite element of the eager anticipation that’s been building in my mind. I do have a code of honour though. I shall keep my word on not eating you before the holidays. Besides, I like these personal conversations that give me a measure of your responses to this situation. You might as well spend any waking hours in bed thinking about me doing this, because by the beginning of next term, you won’t be my student here anymore. We’ll have a much closer connection by the time it happens, if we interact verbally to a great extent first. I believe dialog is at least as paramount to eating someone as deeds are. Make the most of it yourself, enjoying a good thing while it lasts, as they say.”

“I guess I’d better get the bus,” he said.

“I can drive you home much faster than the bus,” said Miss Waters, “I’ll pick you up in North Street, around the block, to preserve the secrecy of our relationship.”

She stopped at a shop on the way and bought them both sorbet cups from the corner store, and then parked in a private spot, where they sat and ate them. He watched her tongue coming out of her mouth to receive spoonfuls of sorbet. She noticed his close attention.

“In a few weeks, you’ll be in the same situation as the sorbet,” she said.

“It’s a lot of fun playing this game with you, Miss Waters. I’ve swapped a suspension for a thrilling pretence.”

“Be warned about thinking it’s merely a game, Milo. You’ve agreed to this, because in your dreams, you’d like to be married to me. But you’ve given up the chance to grow up and marry anyone. I rather enjoy having the advantage of that experience over you.”

“Do you think I’m a handsome boy though?”

“Yes I do. It’s part of what made you look so delicious, even before I licked you.”

“Oh well, then you’d be better off to leave me uneaten, so you can still look at me in class next term.”

“Milo, I’d much rather eat you than look at you. I want you to take this seriously. The days of being a safe student in my classes are coming to an end for you. You struck a bargain with me, and you might doubt the likelihood of having to meet your end of it. The foolishness is yours, if you think that way, Milo. You’d better be ready to go through with your part. My hunger for you will increase exponentially from now on.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Waters. I didn’t mean for you to think I was laughing at you. You know I love you.”

“I understand, and you should love me. I’m the first, last and only woman you’ll ever have anything to do with, although not romantically. I’m going to make you all mine to gulp down, Milo. I’ll do everything I can to make you happy with my mouth, but that’s as far as it goes.”

He noticed she had been licking her lips a lot more after speaking each paragraph, and there didn’t seem to be any sorbet which needed licking. It was her thoughts of him which were generating the generous and varied views of her tongue’s movements. She saw him staring across at it again in the car seat.

“Take my word for it, Milo. I have invented the means to keep to our arrangement. The closer you come to being sure you can believe in my ability to do this, the more excited I feel inside, in my mouth, in my stomach, every part of me. I’m the first person to invent this. You hardly believe it yourself. So nobody else will have the slightest suspicion of what will have happened to you, let alone that I had anything to do with it. I do think you’ll be a little more worried about it, when you see the proof for yourself. You won’t still be asking questions or voicing doubts, when you’re lying on your back on a dinner plate, looking up at my full sized face, looking across at my stomach, knowing that there’s nothing you can do to avoid going into it. There’s already nothing you can do about it. I’m sorry.”

It began to sound more likely, just from the persuasive manner of speaking used by a beautiful teacher who had never been untruthful with him before. He thought of wagging school in the last few days of term, just in case it was true. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t want to pass up the chance to touch her tongue at tiny size. He wondered if there was a way to have that part of the ‘being eaten’ experience, and escape the rest. He could think of none. It would have to be an act of truancy.

“You’ve done so many naughty things AT school, but you’ve never played hookey. Where do you think you would go, if you missed a day of school?” she asked.

She was always thinking a few steps ahead of him. He pretended that he hadn’t been considering the subject anyway.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Or you don’t want me to come looking for you. That’s OK. In your position, I wouldn’t answer the question either. I’ll be watching you in class, and I know you’ll be watching me. Don’t think that I won’t notice how much more wary you become, as the term draws to a close. You’ll try to pretend otherwise, but I can read a student like a book. Well, I’d better finish driving you home.”

When the last week of school came, he didn’t know what Miss Waters was going to do. Hopefully she would take him somewhere and admit that, although it was not possible to shrink him, she would still enjoy licking his face all over. That would be the thrill of his school life. He wouldn’t pass that opportunity up for anything. Part of him wished it was possible. He would have loved to have really lain down on her tongue, inside her mouth at tiny size. Yet she had also outlined the lifetime of other things he would have to give up. Over all, he was glad that it was just a convincing game she was playing. He just continued to wonder how she would advance the game, once the last day of school came, and she could no longer attempt to lead him on with promises of doing what she must know was not only scientifically impossible but not likely to ever be possible at any time in the future of technology.

She approached him just before he went into class on the last day of school.

“I’ll meet you in North Street again after school, and we’ll take it from there,” she said.

He began to feel a strange arousal. He spent the whole day wondering how Miss Waters would advance the game after school. By the time he reached North Street, he was in an erotic fever of expectancy.

Miss Waters’s car pulled up, and he got in.

“No thoughts of running home without me?” she asked.

“Without your lovely tongue,” he said, “Never.”

“I’m touched, Milo.”

She drove him to the same place they had eaten their sorbets. Then she started driving again. When they had gone about a mile, she seemed to point something at him, and he suddenly shrank to tiny size.

 “Miss Waters!”

“I think we have a believer,” she said, as she stopped at a stop sign and looked down at him, with a slight turn of her head.

“It’s amazing. You’re a genius.”

“You’re taking it well so far. I guess it hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

“Where are we going now?” he asked, as he realised just how real this had all suddenly turned out to be.

“My house.”

She stopped at a supermarket on the way, and left him in the glove box, while she bought some groceries.

They talked all the way to the holiday house. Miss Waters took him into the house and spent the night with him lying on her soft skin, and spent most of the next day talking happily with him, as she took him on pleasant walks alone.

He had been planning ways to get out of the kitchen at the last moment, but no opportunity presented itself. In the end, she warmed him on the stove, and then took him to the dinner table and sat down.

“You were right,” he said, “I’m no longer asking questions of disbelief.”

“Naturally,” she said.

“I’m going to enjoy this as much as I can, even though I wish I could get out of the permanency of the ending.”

“I can guarantee you’ll enjoy it,” she said, “Tell me honestly though: Would you have chosen the suspension instead, if you’d known this was real?”

“It’s hard to know. Maybe your tongue will give me the best I could ever have, and still spare me the suspension.”

“You’re so sweet, little Milo, I’m going to gobble you all up!”

Miss Waters kissed his whole face and upper body for several minutes, and then slid him gently into her mouth and ate him.

In the end of year university holidays, 19 year old Beany went into the city to walk around it. He entered a food mall at the base of a skyscraper building, and saw a familiar lady. He walked over and said hello.

She was wearing light blue, and had the long hair he remembered, and looked lovely.

“Hello,” she said, “I’m sure we’ve met before, but I can’t think where.”

“It was many years ago, on a Sunday morning. I was staying at a relative’s house, the one I’ve since inherited actually. I went for a walk through a nearby bush reserve, and came to a Girls Club house on the edge of the reserve. You were 19, the oldest Guide, and the leader. You invited me in, with the other members, and showed me the booklets, and told me all about the Girls Club. I stayed for morning tea, became friends with you, and then eventually went back.”

“You remembered all that better than I did!” she said, beaming, “You were barely 9 at the time. Do you work here in the city?”

“No. I’m on university holidays.”

“You don’t have much money to spare. I’m meeting my boyfriend Phil for lunch here shortly, and then driving him to the airport for his overseas trip. Why don’t I take you out for dinner tonight, and we can catch up on years of news?”

“Thank you. That would be fun.”

“Let’s meet back here at six o’clock then,” she said.

He spent the afternoon walking around the city, while she had her lunch, and drove to and from the airport. He waited at the food mall, looking forward to seeing her.  

Soon she walked in and smiled adorably at him.

“There’s a nice restaurant on the second floor of a building overlooking the park,” she said.

They walked through the city, as the sun began to set. She showed him the way to the restaurant, and they sat down and ordered their main courses.

“So how long have you been dating?” he asked.

“Quite a while. Are you seeing anyone?”

“Yes, but you might find my story a little hard to believe.”

“That makes it sound more fun,” she bubbled, tell me about her.”

“I inherited a mansion two years ago. Earlier this year I learned of an invisible gateway in my garden, which led to another earth, where everyone was tiny compared to me. I met a very sweet girl who came through the gateway to my garden. So I was excited to fall in love with a girl in the tiny folks’ land, when she came through the gateway to visit me. She’s very pretty, but I can’t seem to reduce myself to her size. Still I doubt you’d believe such a thing could really happen.”

He was in fact talking about earth-T (covered in depth in previous chapters).

“I can help you. I could drive you home from here later tonight. That way I’d know where you live. I could come over tomorrow morning, and you could show me the gateway, and I could help you do the shrinking trick with something I’ve created.”

“I guess you’ll be the only person who has the chance to farewell me from earth. I haven’t trusted anyone else with the knowledge of the gateway’s existence.”

They continued to talk, ate their main courses, ordered dessert, and were still eating it, when the music started. Some people got out of their chairs, and began to dance.

“Would you like to dance too?” she asked, “I won’t be able to dance with you at your wedding if you do propose to that tiny girl.”

“Sure,” he said, and got up.

She offered him her hand, and he led her to the dance floor. Her soft white hand felt nice in his own. In 24 hours time, she would be like a giantess on a world of giants to him. Now he was able to spend his last night on earth in her arms, rekindling an old friendship.

She put her arms around him in the suitable way, and they danced slowly together. She rested her cheek against his, and they both enjoyed the evening.

“You have a big day tomorrow,” she said at last, “Would you like me to take you home now?”

“Yes, thank you,” he said, “It was nice having this dance with you.”

She smiled, kissed his cheek, and turned her head, inviting him to do the same. They walked to the inner city car park, and she drove him all the way to his home.

She pulled up in his driveway, and looked at him.

“Do you think we’d get a glimpse of this gateway, if we went into the garden tonight?” she asked, “I’ll still come over and see you off tomorrow.”

“It stands out more at night actually. It glows in the dark, if you’re close enough to see it.”

He led her inside, collected a lantern, and then turned on the porch lights. They walked down to the edge of the garden, and then crawled through the undergrowth, until they came to a small glowing circular gateway. It was not as if they could actually see it, but he had remembered where his tiny earth-T girlfriend had come through it. Louise leaned down and tried to peek through it.

“You can’t see anything from this side. You have to go through,” he said.

She put her hand through a little way, but her palm was too wide to fit.

“Let’s hope nobody’s near the other side,” he said, “I think a giant lady’s hand might surprise them a lot.”

“I showed you my Girls Club hut all those years ago, and now you’ve shown me this. It’s amazing,” she said. He led her back to the porch, and offered her a cup of herbal tea. They went inside and drank together, and then she prepared to go. She stopped on his doorstep and looked at him.

“I’ve only just met up with my child friend again. You’re all grown up, and you’re going to another world.”

She put her arms around him and gave him a friendly hug.

If he hadn’t been chasing a girl from another world, his feelings would have been very much at risk, knowing that she had been dating Phil for a long time. As it was, there was something exciting about being in the company of a pretty lady who was years older than him, someone who had known him when he had been just a boy. He found himself imagining what might have happened, if she had not been dating Phil, if he had not met the tiny girl, if they had reunited this very day, and fallen in love. Then he realised something. He had fallen in love with her. There was no reason to go on thinking about it, but he could not deny the fact that he loved her that little bit more than he loved the tiny girl. However, she was engaged, and the tiny girl was the first pretty girl who had ever returned his affections. If he was that envious of the now adult former Girls Club member’s engagement, then his best option was to go ahead and get engaged himself.

He was so lost in these thoughts, that he had forgotten just how long they had been hugging each other.

“I’d best let you go to sleep,” she said, “What time are you going to leave in the morning?”

“Around the middle of the day if your shrinking idea works,” he said, “Why don’t you come over at noon for lunch, and then we’ll go down to the gateway?”

“Alright. I’ll see you just before 12.”

She walked down to her car and drove off. He went to sleep, and dreamt of her many times. Finally he awoke, and waited for his friend to arrive. She got there at 11:45, and he sat them both at the dining table for lunch. Once they’d eaten, they made their way to the gateway.

“Now you’ll be able to see something really amazing,” she said, “Can I give you another cuddle first? If you’re really about to make yourself small enough to fit through that gateway, I don’t think you’d be able to put your arms around me afterwards.”

Kneeling together, they cuddled for a few minutes, and then she said, “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you do this.”

He sat down, while she sat in front of him and pointed something small at him. Then it took effect, and he dwindled to a height of just under two inches. Her enormous legs now looked incredible beside him where she sat.”

“Well, um… before I go, would you like to kiss me goodbye?” he asked, thinking that her lips would now be able to kiss his entire shoulder and the side of his face at once. If she said yes, it would be wonderful to enjoy.

She sat with her back leaning against the porch wall, and picked him up. She slowly kissed each side of him in turn, and smiled. He leaned across and kissed her neck.

“I guess I should go then,” he said, “If you can just put me gently in front of the gateway, you can wave goodbye with your big hand.”

“You’ve planned all this most effectively for months, Beany, but there’s one thing you haven’t thought of.”

“What have I overlooked?” he asked, out of curiosity.

“I don’t want to let you go.”

Did this mean she had fallen in love with him too, even though she had a boyfriend already? He had to tell her his feelings now.

“Really?” he said, “I was too embarrassed to tell you, but I’ve fallen in love with you.”

“I’ve noticed that, since we started dancing last night.”

“I spent last night thinking that I love you even more than my little friend. You’re such a pretty lady.”

She gave him a long giant kiss, which enveloped his entire face.

“You’ve grown into quite a handsome boy too. But I’m happily in love already.”

“I know. Still I’ll always feel a special fondness for you, knowing that there’s a lovely giant lady back on my home world, who didn’t want to part with me today. I suppose it’s best not to draw this out. I have to think of your situation. I’ll go now, if you can lower me gently to the ground.”

She looked up at the branches, away from him, in thought, and then placed him into the pocket of her coat. She crawled back out of the garden, stood up, and walked into the house, without saying a word. She walked along the hallway, and lifted a dollhouse off the cupboard. 

The dollhouse had belonged to the former owner in her childhood. She took the dollhouse up to the bedroom, and placed it on the bedside table. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and placed him in an upstairs room of the dollhouse. She put her face outside the window and looked in at him. He stood at the window, waiting for her to speak, wondering how she would resolve the triangle of feelings which no longer seemed to revolve around his tiny friend.

“I have a special fondness for you too, Beany, but I’ve been doing some thinking of my own. When you first told me of your gateway to a tiny world, I wasn’t to know whether it was really possible or not. I only knew that, I have made plans of my own. When I said I didn’t want to let you go through the gateway, I know you thought I was in love with you. I know it’s what you wanted me to feel. You’re a sweet young friend, and I’m very flattered. But it’s not what I had in mind. My boyfriend’s going to be away for three weeks. I’d like to spend at least some of that time living here, talking to you. However, by the time that three weeks is up, it will be a significant delight for me to have a shrunken younger man as the main course of one of her evening meals. It seems you won’t be getting engaged after all, darling little Beany. In less than three weeks, I’m going to eat you all up for dinner.”

She beamed at him, obviously aware of his reaction to her announcement.

“You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?” he said shyly.

She smiled happily.

“I know you want me to let you go, but think about your tiny friend. It’s better for her, if she finds someone else who doesn’t love me more. And you won’t have to be parted from me, like you have been for so many years.”

“You know it’s still not fair for me though.”

“Beany, I’m going to do it,” she laughed.

For the next two weeks, she lived in his house. At nights, he enjoyed lying on her neck to sleep, while she slept with no fear of what lay ahead. On the 13th night, she lay down in bed as usual, placed him onto her neck, and said, “I think I’ll have you for dinner tomorrow.”

“Alright,” he said nervously.

They talked themselves to sleep, and he awoke in the morning and looked at her stomach. She soon awoke as well, and spent the morning in his company, had lunch at the garden table on the back lawn with him, and then asked what he’d like for dessert. He had enjoyed looking up at her beaming face, during that last lunch.

“It would be nice to swim around in a big bowl of fruit salad,” he said.

“I won’t be able to carry that back with one hand. I’ll have to leave you here,” she said.

She walked into the house. Beany slipped between the pattern of the table’s surface, and climbed down the curved central table leg to the ground. He made it into the garden, just as she came out and noticed his absence. He had to make it to the gateway before she found and caught him.

She began to walk around the garden, looking behind every plant or leaf. Her long calves towered below her skirt, as she stepped closer to him now and then. It took her nearly two hours of searching, but she eventually found him and recaptured him in her soft white fingers. She took him to the table, let him swim in the fruit salad and eat from it, while she spooned the rest into her mouth. Then she carried the bowl to the kitchen, took him out and licked him clean.

Soon she spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening talking to him, and then

took him to the dining table and happily swallowed him whole.

7 year old Quentin was playing alone in the bush reserve behind his prep school during lunch break. Louise, now teaching at Quentin’s prep school, rather than the high school where she’d met Milo, came into the bush reserve too, and offered him a drink. He accepted it, then fell asleep, and awoke several hours later.

He found himself in a school classroom at about nine o'clock in the evening. He was on the carpet on the floor, looking up at the lit room wondering how he could be at school at night time. 

Then he noticed something else. The roof seemed a long way away. In fact, everything seemed a lot larger in proportion to his own size than it should have been.

"I've been shrunk to tiny size!" he exclaimed, "I'm only about an inch tall!"

"Quentin, you're awake," came a voice behind him.

He turned to see that seated on the carpet behind him, towering like a huge tall giantess was Louise his second class teacher.

"Louise! What happened to me?"

"I managed to put you to sleep in the bushes with a drugged drink and make you a lot smaller with a device I invented. I'll put you on my desk now."

Her white slender fingers enclosed him as she stood up and placed him gently on her desk beside other items that were usually there anyway. She sat down comfortably in her chair and smiled down at him.

"So why do you want me to be so small?" he asked.

"Well it's nice to see you so small, Quentin. Now my boyfriend Phil will be working late tonight. So he won't be coming over to have supper with me. I thought that I could enjoy a special treat for supper (here at the school) myself. You always looked rather tasty, being the youngest boy in my class. However, I could never have managed to fit you into my mouth. So I had to dramatically reduce your size first. Now that all of this has been arranged, I wanted to ask you if you would make a nice tasty supper for me tonight."

"Do you want to eat me up for your supper, Louise?" he asked, looking up at her pretty smiling lips in amazement.

"That's correct," she said calmly, "Nobody else would know about it except you and me, Quentin. It would be our own private secret."

"I guess it would be quite a wonderful adventure for me, Louise. Yes, I'd be happy for you to eat me for your supper."

"Thank you. I'm very grateful. I'd like to put you outside and play hide-&-seek and catch you first."

She went out, turned the outside lights on, and put Quentin in a soft flowerbed in the garden.

"I'll go inside and wait a few minutes, before I come and look for you," she said.

There was something about the school gardens and being a teacher that made her even more happy to be doing this, than she had been when she’d set her old would-be boyfriends up in the garden at her house in the hills.

He got up and ran through the school garden in the moonlight.

Soon Louise came around the building and walked along the pathway looking down into the garden in search of him. Although she did not see him when she walked past, she stopped at the end of the path, effectively cutting off his escape from the end of the garden. Louise squatted down and began searching through the garden, parting the plants with her hands and looking closely for him.

If he headed back away from her, then she would eventually herd him up against the classroom's outer wall and capture him. If he remained hidden where he was, then she would find him as soon as her search brought her to his part of the garden. If he attempted to reach his original destination, then he could never manage to successfully sneak past her.

For the thrill of being chased, he decided to move sideways out of the garden, across the path and into the next garden. He made sure that she was looking down into the garden ahead, sidestepped all the paces across the path and into the next garden, and began to run through it.

Suddenly he stepped over a dry leaf

Louise heard its distinctive rustling sound, stood up, walked briskly along the path and stooped down to make a grab for him. He saw her fingers approaching him. They encircled him and closed in a comfortable grip, and lifted him high into the air.

She carried him back to the classroom. 

Louise put him back down on her desk and sat down, stroked her own hair back with her hand and licked her lips.

"You shall be inside my stomach before I go home tonight, little Quentin."

She walked over to a cupboard and took out a plate and a glass and a bottle of lime cordial, poured herself a glass, and placed the drink and plate on her desk and sat down.

"Would you like to sip some of my cordial?" she asked.

"Thank you Louise," he said and drank from the top of the glass.

She raised the glass to her lips, sipped a little of it, put it down, licked her lips in several directions showing most of her sparkling tongue, and then reached for him with her fingers, smiling as he was grasped and lifted towards her mouth. He looked at her stomach, then her neck, then her mouth, and finally at her happy eyes.

He looked straight ahead as her mouth opened wide in front of him. He saw her neat even teeth and then her sparkling tongue, and immediately in front of him her lower lip. She gently slid him over her lower lip, onto her tongue, and then withdrew her fingers. He looked back as her mouth closed. He quickly turned around, so that his head was facing the front of her mouth. Then he felt her tongue arching upwards. He slid off the back of her tongue, into her throat, and was gulped down inside her.

Louise eventually returned to teaching high school.

Marty was now in year 9. Louise had become his class teacher at the beginning of the year. A few weeks into the term, Louise spoke to him one day after class.

“I know you think you’re cleverer than other naughty students, who misbehave openly and get punished for it, but I’m aware of your sneaky misconduct. If you don’t stop it, I shall take you home and eat you.”

She remembered Milo’s misconduct and thought what fun it was to taunt naughty students.

Marty had had a crush on her. Louise didn’t know of this. He had tried to hide his misbehaviour since she’d come to his school, because of his feelings for her. Yet he had been unsuccessful. He didn’t see how she’d be able to take him away and eat him, without the school preventing her. 

He tried to be even more subtle about his underhanded naughtiness, resolving to leave quickly after school each day, so that Louise had no chance to abduct him with whatever gun or other weapon she might be counting on to do it, if she detected his further disobedience of her instruction.

On Friday at lunch time, he decided to walk through a narrow walkway between two buildings in the next block while eating his lunch. He ate all of his lunch and suddenly found himself getting shorter. He turned around to see that Louise has quietly followed him into the walkway. As she walked towards him, he found himself looking upwards. He was now only up to the height of her knees, shorter than he’d been when he first met her. Soon he was only an inch and a half tall.

Louise leaned down and picked him up.

“I followed you and pointed my shrinking invention at you. I did warn you, Marty. Tonight I will gobble you whole,” she said, and put him into her handbag and took him to the classroom.

So this was how she planned to eat him. He had never thought of being eaten before Louise had threatened him on Monday, and he had never even dreamed of being gobbled whole. He had the whole afternoon to prepare for being put into Louise’s mouth, in direct contact with her exciting looking tongue, and then being gobbled down to finally disappear dreamily into the acids in her well-proportioned stomach. It was both haunting and exciting. He was only new at adolescent experience of sensations, being 13.

Louise closed the door and opened her handbag on the desk. She took Marty out and placed him in the desk drawer and sat looking in at him.

“Nobody else knows about this, Marty. So my method of punishing you will be as covert as your misbehaviour. People will think you just didn’t come back from the shops. Nobody will guess that you will have been shrunken and swallowed by your teacher. You’re doomed, Marty.”

Louise shut the desk, and waited for the students to return to the classroom.

To maintain her ruse, she asked if anyone had seen Marty, which he overheard her doing. When the afternoon classes were over, she put him in her handbag again, went to the headmistress and reported Marty as playing truant, and then went to her car. She would gobble him down with the intention of making it a fearsome punishment, with no concern for the excessive severity of her actions.  He was living something akin to a science fiction story. Yet this was real. She had really reduced his size dramatically, knowing that she would really eat him all up.

Early in the evening, she opened the oven and placed him inside. She closed the oven door. It had looked dark inside the oven from the outside, but now he could look out and see the kitchen clearly illuminated. He saw Louise bend down and turn the oven on, adjusting the knob to a very low setting. She wasn’t going to burn him to death. She had planned to gobble him alive. So he would be slowly warming up.

He sat comfortably, and watched Louise go to a cupboard, take out a can of fruit, open it, sit at the table and slowly spoon it into her mouth. He was fully focussed on Louise’s mouth.  Louise finally took Marty out of the oven. She took him to the dining table, and sat down.

“So are you sorry for your ongoing naughtiness?” she asked.

 “Would it save me, if I was?”

“No,” she said.

“Then I’m still sorry.”

“You soon will be,” said Louise, and lifted him high into the air, tilted her head back and said, “Take a look where you’re going. Your fellow students will go on and have long and interesting lives. Your existence is going to come to an end down there in my tummy.”

She opened her mouth wide and let him look into it.

“I’ll climb out while you’re lying down asleep and your body is horizontal,” said Marty.

“You should have paid more attention in class, Marty. Have you forgotten that my stomach acids will make short work of you?”

“I guess they will,” said Marty, noticing Louise’s arousing sense of triumph.

“Not so confident now then, are you?” she said, “It’s time to taste my dinner, you naughty little boy.”

Louise licked him. In that second he felt the most amazing stimulation that he’d ever known. Nothing could have prepared him for the thrill of his beautiful teacher’s huge tongue sliding over his shrunken body.

She did it again, and again, and again.

“You taste much better than you behave,” she said at last, “Well it’s all over for you, now Marty. I’m going to gulp you down to my stomach.”

She opened her mouth, and he saw the different but equally appealing view of her awaiting tongue on the inside of her mouth. She slowly slid him into it. He felt her tongue below him for several minutes, until he began to slide along it and then off the back and down into her stomach.

Early 1996…

During his lunch hour, a man who was almost 26 years old, and who worked in the city of Sydney, sat down in an outside mall, just beside an amphitheatre to relax in the sunshine, which filtered between the leaves of a partially shady small tree. He noticed an older woman sitting on the low knee high wall out the front of a large building. He looked at her for a while, and then saw her make gestures with her eyes and hand, indicating that she would like him to come over and sit beside her. He quickly obliged, and introduced himself.

“I’m Martin,” he said.

“I’m Dr Ann O’Malley, although my doctorate’s in science, not medicine.”

The front centimetre of her tongue slipped between her lips and licked them, and then disappeared back into her mouth. It was something, which caught Martin’s attention, and looked strangely inviting. He would have liked to have touched it, and wondered what the whole of her tongue would look like.

After they had been talking for a few minutes, during which she had frequently repeated the tongue gesture, he saw her laugh, which gave him a clear view of her entire tongue inside her mouth.

“My husband died a few months ago,” she said, “And I’ve recently turned 56. You look like a very young man yourself.”

“I’m almost 26,” he said.

“That’s a very appealing age for something I have in mind,” said Ann, eyeing him closely in a way that he found exciting and intriguing, “I have a formula, which is capable of reducing you dramatically in size. It could in fact make you so small, that I would be able to eat you by swallowing you alive. That’s why I beckoned you over here, young man. It’s something I’d very much like to do. I know you’ve got to get back to work, and you’ll need time to think about my request. Could I have your home telephone number and contact you some time to see how you feel about it?”

She put her tongue out much further and licked the side of her mouth. It made her request very interesting to consider. He gave her his number and asked him to call him in the evening after another two weeks and two days had passed.

When she called, he told her that he had used the first two days to make up his mind and then given notice at work, and left at the end of the last two weeks of the time he had given her to wait before calling him.

“I’m going to do it,” he said.

“That’s wonderful!” said Ann, “I’d like to get to know you at your normal size, before I shrink you. Would you like to go out dancing with me?”

He loved the idea, and for the first time in his life, he was able to take a lady in his arms and enjoy holding her closely and touching her cheek against his own. She asked him all about his life story, and learned much of his background. As the evening drew late, she pressed her lips to his cheek and kissed him slowly, then the other cheek, and then eventually the lips.

Finally, Ann invited him to her home, and gave him the shrinking formula. It reduced him to tiny size.

“This is a reconstructed version of a formula. The previous version could also impart a different super power to the user each time he shrank, and the ability to return to normal size later. Your version has simply reduced your size permanently. Now that you’ve accepted the shrinking formula, I can tell you that the previous version was something called the Super Schoolboy Formula. In 1965, I used it to turn an ordinairy teenager into the super hero who resurfaced last year after being frozen in suspended animation for three decades. His name is Captain Miniature.”