This was to be his last romance and last throat ride with Sandra. He wondered if he should run from the school and find a more lasting romance, albeit at tiny size for him, with another girl instead.

He soon worked out that it was holidays, as the school was empty in the middle of the day. Then he saw Sandra Corlani walking towards him with a long black dress and dark sunglasses.

“I can see that I’ll have to teach a time travel class in order to make sure that we meet each other today,” she said.

Realising that his nine selves were down to one, he made a sudden break for it. She stepped towards him with a minimum of effort, as he darted into the flower bed. She stepped into a suitable position and reached down and snatched him up, took him home and sat on an armchair and placed him on the right arm.

She smiled at him, deeply amused with the knowledge that she was about to eat the final Ryan.

“It’s been a few years,” she said, “But I guess you wouldn’t know that.”

“Actually we all knew it,” he said, “It doesn’t hurt to tell you now.”

“But… if you knew what I’d done to the other Ryans, if you all knew, then why did you keep coming back and letting me whittle you down to the one of you that’s left?”

“For the same reason that I came back in time in the first place. I love you.”

She put out her tongue in a wide long stretching movement and licked him.

“You’re as sweet in mind as you are in taste,” she said.

She opened her mouth and slid him back and forth against her tongue several  times, and then beamed at him.

“This will be the last time, for both of us,” she said.

“Not quite for you. The original undivided Ryan will still see you for the term ahead, while you teach the time travel class, and then while you date him in the holidays.”

“I’ll be sure to suggest that he travel back to my youth, when I talk to him on our first date then,” she said.

So continued another predestination paradox, as Sandra opened her mouth, put her tongue just slightly out, so that the tip of it rested on her lower lip, and slid him into her mouth.

He waited with more anticipation than the other eight Ryans had felt, as he knew that this would be the penultimate gulp. She had enjoyed eating versions of him for over 3 decades of her life, while he had been fractured at age 17 to facilitate those meals. Now it was all coming to an end. He had been with the lady of his dreams at points in time when most people could do little more than dream about it, some of them before he’d even been born. He had enjoyed both the kisses of her lovely lips and the gobbling of her lovely tongue and throat, and this was the final round. She let him lie there for nearly an hour, perhaps deciding for herself whether this was really the choice that she wanted to make, before finally drawing him into the top of her throat.

“Maybe she’s going to have second thoughts and cough me up,” he speculated.

Then came the final gulp, which carried him deep down her throat, and he knew that the adventure had reached its final instalment.