With Friends Like These

Shivering as he looked out of one of the classroom windows, Stefan pulled his sweater up a bit further and gazed out into the bleak winter afternoon. It wasn’t actually all that cold inside the building, but even the mere sight of the weather conditions outside was enough for him to want to crawl under a warm blanket and read a book all day. Then again, Stefan would have given pretty much anything preference over having to sit through one of Mr. Schneider’s social science classes. It wasn’t that the subject as such wasn’t interesting, he himself actually was quite interested in the humanities, and wanted to go on studying them at university once he graduated. But there was something creepy about Mr. Schneider, a lean, wiry man with an austere buzz cut and thin glasses, who always was impeccably dressed. He never ever raised his voice to his pupils, but that also wasn’t necessary, since his soft-spoken demeanour somehow only served to enhance his vaguely threatening aura, something nobody could pin down to anything specific. Nevertheless, the whole school was afraid of him. It was one of the sinister flashes of Mr. Schneider’s glasses, briefly reflecting the bright fluorescent light above and hiding his eyes behind two white disks for just a split second, that tore Stefan out of his musings and brought him back to the present. Was he looking at him?

“Now, what many do not realise is that deviancy is not a state, it is a trajectory. A leads to B leads to C. All of you would be well-advised to keep this in mind, some more than others.”

Stefan found himself shivering again and looked around. What was that supposed to mean? His glance wandered over to his classmate Marie, who was sitting next to the window he had been looking out of, flanked on both sides by her minions Carolin and Isabel. She was just opening her mouth for a bored yawn, and though she quickly lifted her right hand up to cover her lips, he briefly found himself staring at the back of her dark, gaping throat. Marie clearly wasn’t listening or, just as likely, had not understood Mr. Schneider’s remark. But then again, she didn’t need to. Their teacher had certainly not been talking to her; Marie was far too well-off and stupid to be at risk of any kind of ‘deviancy’. If anything, she was one of those people who regularly disposed of any misfits, as demonstrated by one of her most popular videos on social media. It showed her snorting a shrunken person up her nose with some cocaine before swallowing them whole, and while the possession of narcotics could theoretically get her into trouble, upper-class bimbos like her never did. Mr. Schneider was right in that regard; some people were predestined to being eaten. And others, like Marie, were predestined to eat.

The sudden ring of the bell made Stefan jerk a little, throwing him off his trail of thoughts. It also caused some commotion among the pupils, with some of them prematurely beginning to put their books and notes away. The surge of noise quickly died down again, however, since Mr. Schneider kept standing where he was, his paper-thin lips warped into a dismissive smirk.

“Class ends when I say so.” He said in his characteristic eerie monotone, although he did dart Marie a disapproving glare when she opened her mouth in silent protest. “Now, if you would kindly open your textbooks on page 137. Jessica, read the title out loud, please.”

The black-haired girl sitting at the desk next to Stefan hastily put on her reading glasses and cleared her throat. “Comparison of social streamlining policies in North America and Europe over the course of the last two decades.” She read out dutifully.

“Read this until Friday and answer questions 1 through 4. You do not need to write an essay; some simple notes will suffice. You are dismissed.” Mr. Schneider then finally concluded the class, sitting down at his desk again and adjusting his glasses.

Stefan also began to put his textbook and notes away, looking out of the window once more. Especially in dreary weather like this, the concrete façade of the school building looked even more depressing, as cold and uninviting as the monotonous grey expanse of the overcast sky, the slightly darker shade of grey of the asphalt schoolyard, or the brownish-black colour of the leafless trees. To make things just a little bit worse, it was starting to rain again, not very much so, but a persistent sleet drizzle that would be quite unpleasant to walk home through.

“What are you looking at, dweeb?” Marie suddenly hissed just as Stefan rose to his feet.

“Huh?” He asked, sounding a little perplexed. “I was just looking out of the…”

“You’ve been staring at me for minutes now. Isn’t that right, Caro?” Marie continued.

“Uh…” Carolin began, looking back and forth between Marie and Stefan for just a moment before she realised that duty was calling for her. “Yeah, right, what was that all about!? Ugh, so creepy!” She then said, crossing her arms in front of her generous cleavage and frowning. Isabel too gave Stefan a judgemental glare and shook her head in disapproval.

“I. Was. Looking. Out. Of. The. Window.” Stefan explained impatiently, putting on his jacket and lifting his school bag over his shoulders.

“Beat it, you three.” Jessica joined into the exchange, stepping up to Stefan’s side and putting her hand on his shoulder in his defence. “You know he was just looking out of the window.”

“And how would you…” Marie shot back.

“Oh my God, you guys gotta see this!” Another female voice chirped from behind.

Before any of the participants in the discussion could even turn their heads around to figure out what this was about, Jessica’s seatmate Tanja had circled around them and put her arms around Marie and Carolin, holding her phone up to their faces as she began to play a video.

“Tanja, we’re in the middle of somethi…” Marie began irritably, but then her eyes suddenly widened when she inadvertently looked at the video Tanja’s phone was playing. “Is that…” She began, gasping. Then she snorted derisively. “Oh my God, what a fucking dork.”

“I know, right?” Tanja grinned and tilted her phone a little for Isabel to see the video too.

As she did so, accompanied by the shrill laughter of Marie and her friends while they eagerly watched what was happening in the video, Tanja purposefully navigated the three towards the door. Before they stepped out, the blonde briefly turned her head towards Stefan and Jessica again, giving them a wink with one of her piercing blue eyes. Stefan breathed a sigh of relief. Marie and her underlings were the resident bullies of their grade, and being somewhat of an introverted nerd, he usually would have been a prime target for them. But through sheer luck, he also happened to be friends with some of the most popular boys and girls in school, who were even above Marie in the social pecking order. Marie knew this and it irked her, so she would try to provoke an argument every now and again, like the test bites of a shark.

“What is her problem?” Jessica asked, almost imperceptibly shaking her head as she zipped up her winter jacket and began to head out of the classroom along with Stefan.

“She’s just looking for trouble.” He answered, sighing again and giving Mr. Schneider a short nod as they walked past his desk. Their teacher responded with a brief nod of his own, and an almost unnoticeable, again somehow derisive smile.

Then they stepped out of the classroom, joining a group of their classmates as they proceeded along the corridor and down the stairs leading to the main foyer. It was almost empty this late in the afternoon, with only a few clusters of older students scattered throughout the large hall. Just as Stefan was about to look around for a group they could join, Tanja skidded back into his field of view, startling him just a little with her sudden reappearance.

“I’m back!” Tanja exclaimed with a mischievous grin and then put her arms around him and Jessica as she began to walk along into the foyer with them, just like she had done with Marie and Carolin before. “Don’t worry, they’re gone.” She then clarified.

“Thanks for that.” Stefan said. “Marie’s in a really bad mood it seems.”

“Don’t mention it.” Tanja said with another knowing wink.

Stefan looked Tanja in the eyes for a moment, breaking into a nervous, shy smile. She was an unbelievably beautiful girl, a natural extrovert who seemingly got along with everyone, and her good mood often proved to be contagious. But nevertheless, he had secretly always felt conflicted about her. Tanja had never given him a personal reason to dislike her; in fact, she had always treated him decently and even kindly, this being not the first time that she had helped him out of a situation like this. But when he looked into her almost hypnotic, icy blue eyes, he always felt that there was a more sinister side to her, something predatory. In a way, she wasn’t that different from Marie, an apex predator who always got what she wanted. And he had seen how she treated shrunken people that had the misfortune of falling into her hands. She didn’t just eat them like most people, but toyed with them like a cat, clearly relishing the power she had over them. Sometimes, when he felt depressed and pessimistic about his future, Stefan had found himself imagining what would happen if he were to be shrunken down and end up in her possession. And despite the kindness she was showing to him at the moment, he still felt almost certain that Tanja would eat him nevertheless.

“Mr. Schneider also seemed a bit grumpy today.” Jessica said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Yeah, because he’s all charm and smiles usually.” Tanja scoffed. “Dude needs to get laid.”

Jessica frowned, but also had to suppress a giggle. “Thanks, Tanja. Now I need brain bleach.”

“Do you think he has a wife?” The blonde mused.

“Well, he’s definitely married. Got a ring on his finger.” Stefan said with a shrug.

“Does he?” Tanja asked, her blue eyes widening with curiosity.

“Maybe he’s gay.” Jessica speculated.

“Huh.” The other girl made, raising her eyebrows. “I never thought about tha… Oh, hey girl!”

During their conversation, they had moved across the foyer to one of the main entrance doors, where another group of students had accumulated, apparently waiting for the rain to ease up a little before they headed home. Stefan hadn’t been paying any attention to them, focusing on his little chat with Jessica and Tanja instead. It was only now that the blonde suddenly tapped one of them on the shoulder and the girl turned around to them that he recognised her. It was Alessia, another one of their classmates and one of the school’s top athletes.

“Oh, hey Tanja.” Alessia said with a broad smile as the two girls embraced each other. “How are you? Haven’t seen you all day.” She continued, hugging Jessica and Stefan as well.

As she put his arms around him and pressed her body against his for a moment, Stefan could not help but feel a slight stinging sensation in his chest. For just a brief moment, he closed his eyes and simply relished Alessia’s affectionate embrace, feeling the warmth of her body, and inhaling her discreet, sporty perfume. When she let go of him again, he momentarily looked into her deep brown eyes, feeling as if he was going to melt as she flashed him a short smile. Stefan was perfectly aware that he was smitten with her, but he had needed a while to admit it even to himself. They had been friends with each other ever since kindergarten, and for most of the time, Stefan had seen Alessia as a cool older sister of sorts, even though their birthdays were just a few weeks apart. It was only over the last two or three years that he had developed somewhat more complex feelings towards her, and it didn’t seem as if they were going away anytime soon. He had even considered talking about it to her, but was too afraid that it might ruin their friendship if he did. Plus, Alessia was in a relationship with their classmate Florian, someone more befitting of her status as perhaps the most beautiful girl in the entire school.

“Eh, I’m fine.” Tanja answered Alessia’s earlier question with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We’re just coming from Mr. Schneider’s social sciences class. Bo-ring!”

Alessia wrinkled her nose. “Don’t envy you for that.”

“We were just wondering if he’s gay!” Tanja said excitedly, making the other girl gently raise her right eyebrow in confusion over her sudden mental leap.

“Huh?” Alessia said. “I don’t think so. He’s got a wife.”

“How do you know that?” Tanja asked, her mouth slightly agape.

“I think he brought her along to the last sports festival or something.” Alessia shrugged. “But yeah, definitely has a wife. She’s pretty good-looking, too. If you would believe that.”

Tanja gasped a little. “Details, girl! I need details!”

Looking back and forth between the two girls as they continued to gossip, Stefan noted that they were oddly complementary. With her light blonde hair and her intense blue eyes, Tanja would have been the perfect choice to play a Valkyrie in a school play, whereas the German-Italian girl would have made for a formidable Venus or Aphrodite. In any case, their beauty truly was verging on supernatural, and Stefan once again found himself wondering how he had ended up being friends with these popular girls. In all likelihood, it was ultimately due to him going way back with Alessia. And even though he had turned out as one of the nerdy and shy types, she had never treated him any differently or with less respect as a result.

“You guys want some?” The voice of another girl interrupted his thoughts.

Stefan looked around for a moment, soon identifying the source of the voice as Jana, another one of his classmates. Jana was a close friend of Tanja, although one wouldn’t have assumed her to be. Unlike her blonde friend, she was a mild-mannered and unassuming girl, with long brown hair and brown eyes, and generally considered to be one of the nicest people in their grade. A fact that echoed through Stefan’s mind somewhat ironically when she lifted a small Vortex box up to her friends, offering them to help themselves to some little snacks. Peering into the plastic box as Jana offered it to him, Stefan shivered a little, seeing that half of the shrunken people inside the small cubicles apparently had been eaten already.

“Uh, no. Not my cup of tea, thanks.” He said nervously.

“You’ve never eaten tinies, have you?” Tanja asked with a quizzical look on her face, smiling and nodding at Jana for a brief moment as she reached inside the box and casually grabbed a wailing shrunken woman. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

“Nah. Not really.” Stefan replied, trying to sound bored. He knew that showing any signs of fear or discomfort only served to get Tanja more engaged and excited. Another one of those little details about her personality that made him slightly afraid of her.

“Suit yourself.” Tanja said with a shrug and leisurely popped the tiny woman into her mouth, swallowing her and, in doing so, promptly cutting off her pitiful cries for mercy.

Awkwardly shifting his stance, Stefan observed the slight contraction in Tanja’s throat. What he was not aware of was that he had just become the last person to see Jasmin Albers alive as Tanja’s lips closed behind her. Jasmin had been a young woman from the other end of town, a hardware store employee whose meagre salary had grown increasingly insufficient to cover her debts. This had led to her stealing money from the cash register, something that had gone unnoticed by her employer for several months. When they had found out, however, she had promptly been turned over to the authorities, and consequently to Vortex. Deemed more of a burden than an asset to society, she had been shrunken down, and now would conclude her short, joyless life inside Tanja’s stomach, soon to be buried underneath her actual lunch.

“Jessica?” Jana asked, handing the box to the black-haired girl next to Stefan.

“No, I’m good.” Jessica shook her head and patted her belly. “Still digesting my lunch.”

“How about you?” Their friend inquired further, looking at Alessia.

“I really shouldn’t.” The German-Italian girl said with a pained expression on her face. “Got that fucking APH exam tomorrow.”

“And?” Tanja asked, slurping another screaming shrunken person into her mouth. Stefan saw that he was a young man, barely older than himself. “So do I.” She said, gently swallowing.

“APH?” Stefan asked, trying to block out the cries of the miniaturised people in the box.

“Some inspectors from the Agency of Public Health coming over to the club tomorrow. They do that every so often, especially before tournaments.” Alessia explained, forcing herself to a guilty smile as she reached into the box as well and put her fingers around a shrunken person. “First time they’re coming to one of my exams though. Not gonna lie; I’m a bit nervous.” She explained, ignoring the shrunken man’s cries for help as she flicked him into her mouth.

Unlike Tanja, Alessia didn’t swallow this one immediately, therefore prolonging the agony of Faruk Şahin even further as he was sloshed around on the girl’s tongue. Covered in Alessia’s hot, viscous spit, the former bouncer whose criminal past now had finally caught up with him began to cry out for his mother, begging for help that would never come. Mere moments later, his frightened screams were forever drowned out by a wet gulp that quickly ferried him down to Alessia’s near empty stomach. There, he would endure almost another hour of unspeakable torment before her stomach juices finally got the better of him, proceeding to digest his body with callous efficiency and turning him into mere nutrition for her organism.

“I don’t think you’ve got much to worry about.” Jana said, sounding just a bit envious as she scrutinised Alessia’s athletic figure from the corner of her eye. “Both of you.” She then added as she glanced over at Tanja, who just had helped herself to yet another shrunken woman.

“I’m not letting any fucking inspectors tell me whether my weight is okay or not.” Tanja said snippily before she tossed the tiny into her mouth, devouring her with another quick gulp.

“Easy for you to say.” Jana complained while she reached into the box herself again, lifting a shrunken man to her face and giving him a reproachful look. “These guys are making me fat.”

“Then don’t eat me!” The tiny between her fingers cried incredulously, prompting a round of amused laughter from the other girls. Stefan too couldn’t help but snort a little.

“He’s got a point.” Alessia grinned while she grabbed a shrunken woman and flipped her into her mouth, not even bothering to look at her. Then she swallowed, putting an end to the slight shrieking noises emanating from behind her closed lips.

Jana gave her a playfully indignant glare. “Not what you’re supposed to say, Alessia.”

“Give him to me, then.” Tanja interjected. “I’ve always got room for one more.”

“You’re not fat, Jana.” Jessica said, staring at Alessia and Tanja disapprovingly.

Stefan looked at Jana again. Jessica was right, of course. The brunette may have not been just as athletic as Alessia and Tanja, but she wasn’t fat by any means. In fact, she too was a very pretty young woman, just not as intimidatingly beautiful as the other two girls. She did have a slight amount of extra pudge around her belly and waist, but that really only added to the aura of the cute-girl-next-door vibe she gave off. Stefan always struggled to wrap his head around the thought that someone like Jana could seriously think of herself as fat or unattractive.

“You really aren’t.” He then said, with Alessia nodding in agreement. All the while, he tried to ignore the panicked, pleading look the shrunken man in between Jana’s fingers was giving him. “And Tanja just wants more of your food.” Stefan added with a glance at the blonde.

“Guilty.” Tanja grinned sheepishly.

“You guys are too considerate.” Jana mumbled. “Anyway, I bought them, so I might as well finish them off now.” She decided, tilting her head back and opening her mouth.

“No! Please don’t!” The shrunken man began to sob as he was lifted above the girl’s face.

Jana didn’t pay any attention to his tearful whimpering and dropped him into her mouth. She also didn’t bother to play around with him much further, instead allowing him to slip right to the back of her tongue and swallowing him with her mouth still half open. It was the sad end of Björn Heinze, a prison guard who had grown a bit too close with the inmates he had been supposed to guard. The result had been a mass breakout attempt on his watch, and while all the prisoners had eventually been rounded up and shrunken down as punishment, he still had to face to consequences of his actions by joining all of them on their final journey through the depths of Jana’s digestive system. Not that she ever learned that she had digested every single participant in these events, the news of which had also been kept from the public.

“Yo, what’s going on.” A male voice sounded from behind them.

Stefan noticed how Alessia’s expression darkened considerably and turned around to see who had joined them. Standing behind him was his classmate Nico, a lanky kind of guy with long blond hair, blue-green eyes, and a perpetual stubble across his slender face. His rakish good looks made him quite popular with the girls and some of the boys, but in terms of personality, he was a somewhat more divisive person. Stefan had befriended him only quite recently, after discovering that Nico was an avid reader like himself, and held some interesting, albeit fairly subversive political views. He wasn’t sure what to think of his radical opinions, which, along with his proclivity for mind-altering substances, got him into a lot of conflicts with authority. But Nico was a free spirit. Being someone who was a lot more afraid about the world, Stefan respected, maybe even envied that a little about him. Next to Nico was his girlfriend Vanessa, an emo girl who always looked like she was half asleep even if she happened not to be stoned.

“Hey Nico!” Jana said with a welcoming smile. “Hey Vanessa! You want some tinies?” She asked, holding the Vortex box over at them. This was accompanied by another uproar of tiny voices from inside the cubicles as the shrunken people were tossed around again.

“Oh, thanks.” Vanessa thanked her absent-mindedly and reached for the box, only for Nico to gently grab her arm and move it towards himself instead.

“I told you, you shouldn’t be eating those, babe.” Her boyfriend said and put her arms around his shoulders, leaning in to kiss her. “You don’t wanna be a pawn for The Man, do you?”

“I’m sorry sweetie, I forgot.” Vanessa replied, sounding as if she was completely baked again. Then she started giggling as Nico kissed her and began to tickle her with his stubble.

“Ugh.” Alessia huffed, rolling her eyes. “What do you want, Nico?”

Ignoring her question, the long-haired boy turned to Stefan. “Yo man, you should come join me and Vanessa in the park when you’re done here. Got something I wanna show you.”

“Sure.” Stefan agreed, looking outside. The rain seemed to have stopped for the moment, and even though it still looked cold and wet outside, he was willing to hang around a bit longer to see what Nico was up to before he went home. “Meet you at the benches?”

“That’s where I’ll be!” Nico replied and began to move towards the exit along with Vanessa. Then he turned around and looked at the girls again, making a peace sign. “Later, chicas.”

“Fucking douchebag.” Alessia growled once Nico and his girlfriend had left.

Tanja giggled, zipping up her thick winter jacket as she got ready to head home too. “Come on, he’s fun. He’s gonna get into some serious trouble sooner or later, but might as well enjoy him while he’s still around.” She said with a wink and snatched another tiny from Jana’s box. Tossing them into her mouth, she now began to push them around like a piece of candy.

“Why do you keep hanging out with that loser?” Alessia asked, turning to Stefan with a look of genuine concern on her face. “He is just gonna get you into trouble.”

“I’ll be fine.” Stefan said. “He’s just a bit of a contrarian.”

“Who deals drugs.” Added Jessica, who had been silent the entire time Nico had been there.

“Just stay out of that kind of crap, okay?” Alessia said, still looking worried. “I don’t want a jerk like him to drag you down along with him.”

“Well…” Tanja began, swallowing the shrunken person she had been playing around with in her mouth. “If you become a drug dealer and get shrunk, make sure you get delivered to me. I promise I’ll be really gentle when I eat you.” She then added with a seductive wink towards Stefan and slowly, almost ostensibly licked her full pink lips.

“Tanja!” Alessia hissed, slapping her friend on her upper arm. “That’s not funny.”

“Calm down.” Tanja said, rolling her eyes. “I’m joking, obviously.”

Then she looked over at Stefan again, and while she did give him a kind, reassuring smile, there was just something about the expression in her eyes that made him shiver. He couldn’t say why exactly, but somehow, he just knew that Tanja was lying. She would actually do it.

“Anyway.” The blonde continued, producing a dark grey beanie from one of her pockets and pulling it over her head. “Gonna go home now. You coming, Jana?”

“Mhm.” Jana made, slurping another tiny in between her lips and swallowing quickly. “Sure. Are you sure you don’t want any more?” She then asked Alessia, holding the box to her again.

“Uhh…” Alessia began, looking a little bit hesitant. “Okay, one more for the road.” She then conceded and reached into one of the cubicles again, pulling out a screaming shrunken man.

“You heading home too?” Stefan asked, trying his best to not look at the tiny person between Alessia’s fingers as he began screaming up at him, his voice cracking.

“Please, man! Tell your friend to let me go! Please, I don’t wanna die!” The tiny sobbed.

“Yeah, I might as well.” Alessia said, waving the pitiful shrunken man around as she gestured across the near-empty foyer. Then she nodded to Tanja and Jana as they headed towards the doors and out of the building. “Everyone else is leaving, so no point to hang around.”

“Have you…” Stefan began, furtively looking around and then down at the shrunken person flailing around in Alessia’s grip. “Have you ever let one of them go?”

The girl snorted, seeming mildly amused by the question. “Nope. Why, have you ever given a chicken nugget a second chance? Become friends with it?” She asked with a sarcastic chuckle as they began to head out the main entrance as well. “Fuck, it’s cold.” She then frowned as they stepped out into the open, zipping up her jacket a little further.

Stefan grimaced a little as well as the wall of cold air hit his face. It was probably around zero degrees, but at least it had stopped raining for the time being. “Well, it’s not exactly the same thing.” He then said, turning to his friend and returning to their conversation.

“It is, if you ask me.” Alessia shrugged, her warm breath forming near-invisible clouds as it exited her lips and diffused into the surrounding winter air.

“I’m not a chicken nugget!” The shrunken man cried, tears running down his face.

“Would you be saying that if I were in his place?” Stefan asked, looking over at the main gate of the schoolyard, where Tanja and Jana had just disappeared around the corner.

“Is this about what Tanja said?” Alessia inquired, furrowing her brows. “You know how she is, don’t let her screw with you.” She then added with a reassuring smile at her friend.

“I was just thinking that maybe you…” Stefan began. But before he could finish his sentence, Alessia flicked the little man into her mouth. The tiny let out a last agonised scream for help one final time before the German-Italian girl’s soft lips closed behind him.

“Huh?” Alessia swallowed. “That maybe I…?”

“… Nevermind.” He said as they both stepped through the gate and out onto a pedestrian way leading towards a residential area in one direction, and a park in the other.

“So, you’re really going to hang out with Nico and Vanessa for a bit longer?” Alessia asked. “You know they’re probably smoking weed or something. Please tell me you won’t be?”

Stefan couldn’t help but laugh a little. His friend could be almost comically straight at times. It made sense, of course – her being a top athlete, her stunningly good looks, her good grades, all that didn’t come from slacking off. But still, he thought, it would do her good to just relax a little sometimes. Not that he was anyone to talk, being somewhat high-strung himself. But it was always easier to recognise those traits in others than in oneself. And over the last couple of weeks, Alessia had come across as particularly stressed to him. He knew that it was most likely just due to the upcoming final exams, which had everyone on edge anyway. And on top of all that, she had to deal with her rigid training schedule and those upcoming swimming tournaments as well. It had led to her being somewhat grumpy and impatient recently, and on some level, Stefan was worried that all of this was just getting too much for Alessia.

“I’m just gonna talk with him and Vanessa for a couple of minutes and then head home.” He then said with a calm smile. “I don’t do drugs, and Nico isn’t pushing me, either.”

“Well, okay.” Alessia said, looking at him for a moment with her deep brown eyes. Then she leaned forward and gave him another long hug. “Sorry for being such a bitch lately.”

Hearing the mixture of sadness and regret in her voice, Stefan suddenly felt a little alarmed. It didn’t happen very often that she behaved like this. Returning her embrace, he pulled her a bit closer to himself and hugged her tightly. “You haven’t been, okay? You’re just stressed out.”

“I guess.” Alessia sighed, her warm breath blowing across Stefan’s cold cheeks as she let go of him again and smiled at him somewhat apologetically.

“Promise me to rest up a bit when you get home, okay?” Her friend said. “Take a nap or so.”

“I can’t.” Alessia said, massaging the bridge of her nose with her fingertips. “Still got to eat some proper lunch. Then I’ve also got some homework to do, and then training at six.”

“Can’t you skip that for once? You look exhausted.” Stefan inquired.

“No.” She said categorically, shaking her head. “Got to get in all the practice I can get before the tournament. And there’s the APH exam tomorrow, would look bad if I skipped today.”

“Will I see you tomorrow at all?” He asked.

“No. Only would have had German classes tomorrow, but they’re letting me skip that so I can train all day.” Alessia explained. “Coach talked to the principal about it.”

“Okay. Hey, maybe call me on Saturday or so? We can talk a little if you want.”

“Hm… yeah. Yeah, why not. I’d like that.” She said with a tired smile. “Just like old times.”

“Exactly.” Stefan nodded. “Now get home and eat something, you haven’t had… uh, much.”

Alessia giggled, beaming at him. “Right. Talk to you on Saturday. See you!”

“See you!” Her friend replied and waved to her as she turned around, heading down the path towards the residential area. When she reached the main road, she turned around once more and waved to Stefan one last time before disappearing around the corner of a nearby hedge.

Exhaling into the cold air, Stefan looked at the fleeting clouds formed by his own breath for a moment. When they had dissipated after a few seconds, he turned around and began walking down the path in the opposite direction, further into the park. He had just reached the start of the dirt path leading to the benches where Nico and some of the other school stoners would usually hang out, hidden away behind some dense bushes and trees, when he felt a couple of cold raindrops on his face. Looking up at the depressing grey monotone in the sky, he asked himself for a moment if he should just go home instead, since he really didn’t fancy standing around in the rain for long. But it seemed like it was just a slight drizzle again, and so Stefan just quietly sighed to himself and continued down the gravel path.

Small stones crunching beneath his shoes, he turned around a corner, trying to avoid stepping into one of the large puddles stretching across the dirt path. When he finally reached the last stretch leading up to the benches, he froze all of a sudden. The path was largely blocked by a black truck parked right in the middle of it, obstructing his view. Stefan felt himself tense up as his heartbeat accelerated. Something about this didn’t feel right.

“Fucking hippies, honest to God.” A female voice said disdainfully. “They’re all the fucking same. Muh rights, hurr durr. Hey, maybe I should just eat the little losers myself?”

“Calm down, Kim. He just scratched up your pretty face a bit.” A man replied. “Also, none of that would have happened if you had stunned them first. You know, like you’re supposed to?”

“Yeah, maybe.” The woman admitted. “But seriously, maybe I should just eat them?!”

“No, we’ve got a quota to meet, remember? And these two punks got a shit score. Easy meat. No discussions later, no questions asked.” The man explained.

“Ugh, fine. But hey, maybe we should…”

Stefan had slowly started to back up again when a young woman, apparently only a few years older than himself, walked around the truck, freezing when she noticed him. She was wearing black work clothes with the white swirl of the Vortex logo on her upper arms and seemed to be holding something in her left hand, though it was clenched into a fist, and Stefan could not see what exactly it was. She had a couple of thin scratches on her left cheek, with some blood running down her face from the middle cut. From her surprised and angry expression alone, Stefan could tell that he had walked into something he hadn’t been supposed to see.

“Thorsten? Looks like we’ve got a visitor.” The woman then called out to her colleague.

Feeling a sudden surge of panic, Stefan turned around to run away, only to bump into a large middle-aged man who had somehow appeared behind him all of a sudden. Hectically looking around, he tried to make out an alternate escape route, but both were blocking the path.

“Could I see some ID, young man?” The male Vortex employee asked calmly.

“Wha…” Stefan began, confused by the man’s relaxed, even business-like tone. “I-I d-don’t think y-you can…” He stammered, trying to question the man’s authority to ask for his ID.

“Relax, there’s nothing to worry about.” The man said, putting his hand on Stefan’s shoulder. “Me and my colleague here? We just apprehended some dangerous criminals. As you surely know, we are authorised by the Ministry of Justice to do so. We just need to know you have nothing to do with these people.” He explained, giving him a reassuring smile.

Seeing that there really was nowhere to run, and that these two could probably catch up with him anyway, Stefan reluctantly decided to cooperate. He didn’t really believe the man’s story about the dangerous criminals. In fact, he was pretty sure that he was talking about Nico and Vanessa, but that only made him all the more afraid for his own life. Reaching into his pocket, he produced his wallet and took out his ID, handing it to the Vortex employee.

“Thank you for your cooperation.” The man said, pulling a card reader of sorts from his belt and inserting Stefan’s ID into it. After a few moments, there was a slight beeping noise.

“So, what’s the score?” The woman asked.

“Not great, not terrible.” Her colleague replied, shrugging. “But it’s enough. Do it.”

“Wait, what ar…” Stefan began, turning around to see the female employee right behind him.

Before he could figure out what was going on, he suddenly felt an intense pain shoot through his entire body. His muscles violently cramped up and he wanted to scream, but somehow, he was unable to produce a sound. Then he suddenly felt like he was falling, the world, and then the very ground underneath him giving way to a painfully bright void. And then, as swiftly as it had started, the pain disappeared again. The glaring light too vanished all of a sudden, and Stefan felt his eyes close, giving way to nothing but dull, unfeeling darkness.

***

Alessia took a deep breath and looked around the room, impatiently drumming her fingers on the soft padding of the examination table she had taken a seat on. Slowly, her eyes wandered across the posters on the walls, displaying diagrams of various parts of human anatomy, and then over to the clock above the door. Apparently, she had only been waiting in here for five minutes, though it felt more like at least half an hour to her. Trying to ease the sense of wary tension creeping up inside of her, Alessia exhaled and nervously eyed the life-sized model of a human skeleton next to the physician’s desk at the other end of the room. But she was still not sure what to do with her hands, now anxiously fumbling around with the one-way paper spread across the exam table, and tearing little pieces out of it. Then, almost as if to make her even more uncomfortable, her empty stomach contracted and produced a noisy growl. Except for the measly sandwich she had hastily eaten earlier this afternoon, she hadn’t actually eaten anything since breakfast, a fact her stomach was all too eager to remind her of.

I’m starving. Alessia thought to herself, placing her left hand on her belly. I probably should get myself something to eat on the way home.

Gently rubbing her belly as if this would somehow alleviate the nagging sense of hunger, she inhaled again. Alessia felt almost a little sick for a moment, though it was probably due to the combination of her being tense, hungry, and the smell of disinfectant in the air. She was more nervous than she cared to admit to herself. Medical examinations were very much standard procedure before tournaments, but there never had been any APH inspectors there for any of her check-ups, and Alessia wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. In fact, nobody, including her coach, really seemed to know what they did. Every once in a while, they would just show up, conduct medical examinations, take lots of notes, and leave again. Some of the more political members of her sports club had even complained about them at one point, given that the APH wasn’t actually a government agency at all, but a private organisation. This had raised some questions about how they used the data they gathered, but ultimately, it had been made clear that the APH was acting on behalf of the Ministry of Health, which was simply outsourcing some of its competencies to external contractors.

Not that Alessia particularly cared about these kinds of issues anyway. She was quite aware that, if something involved the government and big corporations, there was nothing she could do about it anyway, and thinking about these things was a waste of time. What mattered was that she was being examined today, and that it was important for her sports career to pass this examination. Alessia threw a nervous glance at the scales. With all the stress over the last few weeks, she had been eating more than usual, snacking on fast food like Vortex more often than she should have. For a moment, she found herself worried that she could have put on weight, but then she calmed herself, knowing that she had also been working out a lot more.

Just as Alessia quietly told herself that everything would be fine, the door swung open, and a somewhat stern looking woman in a lab coat entered the room, followed by Ms. Scholz, the sports club’s nurse and physiotherapist. Instinctively, Alessia rose to her feet, only now really noticing the little pieces of torn paper in her hand and quickly letting them disappear into one of the pockets of her tracksuit pants. The inspector nodded to her and extended her hand.

“Ms. Santoro?” She asked as they shook hands for a moment. Alessia nodded politely, noting that the woman had a firm handshake, befitting of the commanding, even a little authoritarian aura she exuded. “I’m Helena Wagner from the Agency of Public Health. As you know, I am conducting your examination along with Ms. Scholz today. We will also update your medical records for the Ministry of Health and gather some additional information in accordance with section 4 of the Law on Public Health and section 8 of the Law on Reproductive Hygiene.”

“Uh, sure.” Alessia said in a somewhat confused tone, not having the faintest idea what the woman was talking about. “Do I need to sign anything?”

Ms. Wagner gently raised an eyebrow. “No, that won’t be necessary. Now, if you would take your clothes off and step onto the scales over there?” She asked while she sat down at the desk, although her tone made it quite clear that it wasn’t a question.

Alessia nodded, zipping down her tracksuit jacket and taking it off before kneeling down and beginning to untie her slightly worn-out sneakers. Meanwhile, the inspector’s fingers scurried across the keyboard as she entered some information into the computer on her desk and then turned to Ms. Scholz, who was still standing near the entrance door.

“Questionnaire?” Ms. Wagner asked, peering at the nurse over the rim of her glasses.

“Handed in.” The younger woman nodded.

“Blood and urine samples?”

“Taken this morning.”

“DNA sample?”

“Not yet.” Ms. Scholz explained.

“I see. If you would kindly get me a kit?” The inspector said, again masking her demand as a question. While Ms. Scholz headed over to a cabinet behind the desk to fetch one of the DNA test kits, the older woman turned her attention back to Alessia, who had stripped down to her underwear by now, and looked slightly lost at what to do next. “All the way.”

“Uh, right.” Alessia replied, taken a little aback by Ms. Wagner’s frosty demeanour.

Then she moved her hands behind her back and grimaced a little as she fumbled around for a couple of seconds to open her sports bra. Having removed that as well a few moments later, Alessia then took off her underpants and put them onto the pile of clothes on the examination table. She shivered a little, feeling the cold, clinical tiles beneath her feet, and looked over at the inspector again. Ms. Wagner wasn’t paying attention to her, instead looking at the screen on her desk and nodding contentedly as she read through some information.

“That is quite a collection of accolades for someone your age, Ms. Santoro.” She said, clearly impressed. “Don’t like finishing second, do you?” The inspector added, finally turning her head just a little to look at her examinee with a satisfied smirk.

Despite the cold feeling on her naked skin, Alessia felt a warm rush go through her body. She already could tell that Ms. Wagner was nobody to make idle compliments, which made these unexpected words of praise sound all the sweeter. Nevertheless, she still felt compelled to at least pretend to be modest about her own achievements as a competitive swimmer.

“I got lucky often.” Alessia said evasively.

“Nonsense.” The inspector interrupted her with a dismissive wave of her right hand. Then she eyed Alessia up and down for a couple of moments. “I know a winner when I see one.”

“Well, I do train a lot…” Alessia cautiously admitted, trying to meet Ms. Wagner’s stare. She was starting to feel uneasy again, even though the older woman seemed to be quite impressed by her. It was difficult to pin down, but something about her demeanour was still off-putting.

“Indeed you do.” The inspector said, briefly nodding to Ms. Scholz as she handed her one of the DNA test kits from the cabinet. “Now, Ms. Santoro, if you would step onto the scales?”

“Oh, right.” The girl remembered the earlier instructions and went over to a stadiometer with built-in scales, almost feeling Ms. Wagner’s inquisitive stare on her naked body.

Stepping onto the small measuring platform, Alessia briefly prayed to herself that she wasn’t in for a nasty surprise, feeling a little better about herself when Ms. Scholz stepped up beside her, giving her a reassuring smile and a wink. Then the nurse pulled down the headpiece and adjusted it to rest on the top of Alessia’s head before turning around to the inspector again.

“Height 176 cm, weight 62 kilograms.” Ms. Scholz said. Alessia couldn’t help herself but let out a faint sigh of relief. That was perfectly acceptable.

“Excellent.” The inspector said, followed by a sharp snap as she put on a pair of examination gloves. “Now, step into the middle of the room, please.”

Again, Alessia did as she was told, feeling a little more confident about herself once more. As she went over to the middle of the examination room, Ms. Wagner also got up from the desk and picked up a little voice recorder, activating it and lifting it to her lips as she stepped up to the examinee. Alessia flinched a little bit as the inspector’s cold, gloved hands pinched the muscles on her left upper arm and the woman began to speak almost mechanically.

“Alessia Santoro, eighteen-year-old female. Height 176 cm, weight 62 kilograms. BMI 20.0. Athletic build, Mediterranean complexion.” Ms. Wagner spoke into her voice recorder. Then she gave the girl another slightly painful pinch in the belly. “No excess fat deposits.”

Listening to the inspector speak, Alessia suppressed a frown. She was aware that everything the woman was saying was flattering to her, but there was something about her tone and her unfeeling, cold touch that made her profoundly uncomfortable, nevertheless. In some ways, it felt like Ms. Wagner wasn’t actually describing her, but some kind of prize cow. Right in that moment, the nurse stepped up behind her and put a measuring tape around her, measuring the circumference of her body in several spots while the inspector continued to observe.

“Bust 98 cm, Waist 66 cm, Hip 98 cm. Proportions optimal.” The inspector continued in her chilly monotone. Suddenly, she grabbed Alessia’s chin and moved her head from side to side, not even waiting for the examinee to comply. “Well-shaped jawline. Facial proportions also optimal. No visible impurities or acne scars.”

“Mh.” Alessia made to articulate at least some protest against this kind of treatment, darting Ms. Wagner a resentful look as she pulled her head back.

While the nurse made an apologetic face and rolled her eyes in sympathetic disapproval, the inspector simply turned off the voice recorder for a moment. “Open your mouth.”

For a split second, Alessia considered complaining about being treated like this, but the look in Ms. Wagner’s eyes made it clear that she didn’t take kindly to people who made a fuss. So Alessia ultimately decided to swallow her pride and opened her mouth, deriving at least some satisfaction from the fact that she got to stick out her tongue at the woman. Ignoring this act of juvenile obstinacy, the inspector turned on the voice recorder again and then produced a little flashlight from one of the pockets of her lab coat, using it to illuminate the dark inside of Alessia’s mouth. Again without any sort of prior warning, she put her gloved fingers in the girl’s mouth and proceeded to feel her teeth, evidently trying to ascertain if any of them were crooked or loose. Then she bent over a little further and looked straight into Alessia’s throat.

Frank Schuhmacher. Takeshi Maeda. Jan Holst. Melanie Frankenfeld. Ann-Christin Schmidt. Benjamin Müller. Marvin Jung. Nele Wieczorek. Faruk Şahin. The inspector had never heard any of these names, and neither had these people ever heard anything of each other. But they all had one thing in common: The sight of Alessia’s gaping maw had been the last thing they had ever seen before being swallowed alive. Travelling down into the athletic girl’s stomach, they had then forever vanished in the dark depths of her digestive system, becoming nothing more than nutrition for and part of the healthy young body the inspector was now examining. And they only were a few of countless people for whom Alessia’s stomach had been the final destination. Not that Helena Wagner of the APH could have cared any less.

“All teeth present, in superb condition. No decay or calculus, no malalignment. Wisdom teeth not yet protruded. Both tonsils present and healthy. No halitosis.” The inspector concluded, removing her fingers from Alessia’s mouth and turning off the recorder. “Fetch me the kit.”

The nurse complied silently, walking over to the desk and bringing back the DNA test kit for the inspector. Ms. Wagner took it off Ms. Scholz without even looking at her, and then pulled out a small cotton swab. Inserting it into Alessia’s still open mouth, she swiped around inside for a few moments before carefully putting it into a plastic bag. Then she gave it back to the nurse, who sealed it and wrote down a number on it before returning it to the desk. Giving her another stern look, Ms. Wagner circled around Alessia, intently scrutinising her naked body.

“Do you ovulate regularly?” She then asked.

Alessia inhaled. She didn’t think that this was any of the inspector’s business, but even more so, she feared what consequences it might have if she gave anything but her full cooperation.

“Yes.” The girl replied.

“Any observable abnormalities?” The inspector continued.

“No. It hurts pretty bad sometimes. But I don’t think that’s an abnormality.” Alessia said.

For the first time today, Ms. Wagner attempted something that resembled a smile. She looked pained, though Alessia couldn’t tell if she was empathising or if she was just using a group of muscles whose existence she had almost forgotten. “It isn’t. Now, sit on the table again.”

Turning around, Alessia went back to the examination table and sat down again. Meanwhile, Ms. Wagner exchanged her gloves for a new pair and proceeded to put on her stethoscope. Then she picked up the chest piece and placed it on Alessia’s sternum. The girl flinched a bit as she felt the cold medical instrument on her chest, but tried to not show her discomfort.

“Breathe normally.” The inspector demanded.

Again doing as she was told, Alessia sat up straight and tried to breathe as normal as possible, even though she found herself breathing in and out a little more deeply than usually. After a few moments, the woman asked her to take even deeper and slower breaths, moving the cold chest piece around her breasts. Then Ms. Wagner nodded to the nurse again, who strapped a blood pressure meter to Alessia’s left arm and activated it with the press of a button. The cuff inflated until the girl felt a somewhat unpleasant pressure around her arm, then deflated again and gave off a quiet notification sound as the monitor displayed the result.

“Lung function optimal, heartbeat optimal. Blood pressure 108 to 66. Pulse 58.” Ms. Wagner said, speaking into her voice recorder again. She then proceeded to feel around Alessia’s face and neck, and nodded to herself. “Thyroid exam showing no abnormalities.”

The inspector then curtly indicated Alessia to lie down on the examination table, to which the girl complied. She flinched a little again as Ms. Wagner inspected her abdomen, pressing her fingers down on it in several spots. Unbeknownst to either of them, one of these movements released the corroded remains of Faruk Şahin’s skull, which had gotten caught up in between some of the villi deep inside Alessia’s intestine. Now it would travel further through the dark labyrinth of his consumer’s guts, to be finally flushed out of the girl’s digestive tract with one of her next bowel movements. Most of his digested remains had already been excreted earlier this morning, along with what was left of the other two shrunken people Alessia had eaten the day before. The gurgling and groaning noises surrounding the lone skull were also heard by Ms. Wagner as she placed her stethoscope on the girl’s belly. But she didn’t care about what was inside Alessia’s intestines right now, only if they were functioning properly.

“Abdominal exam likewise showing no abnormalities.” The inspector concluded, taking off her stethoscope and telling Alessia to sit up with another perfunctory hand gesture.

Switching off the voice recorder once more, Ms. Wagner then took a little hammer handed to her by Ms. Scholz and gently struck it against Alessia’s patellar tendon, contentedly nodding to herself at the normal reflex it produced. Then she got up and went over to her desk, where she turned around and indicated Alessia to get up.

“Now, spread out your arms and touch the tip of your nose with your index finger. Like this.” She explained, demonstrating the movement. Again, the girl did as she was told.

“Very good. Close your eyes and slowly walk towards me in a straight line. One foot in front of the other.” The inspector demanded, and Alessia complied. “Yes… Okay… A little further. Yes. That’s close enough. Excellent, Ms. Santoro. You may get dressed again; we’re done.”

Letting out a subdued sigh of relief, Alessia turned around and went back to the examination table. She picked up her clothes and started slipping into them again when Ms. Scholz walked past her and towards the door with a supportive smile on her face.

“You did well.” The nurse whispered and winked. “Very well indeed.”

“Thanks.” Alessia nodded and returned her smile.

“Algorithmic valuation accurate.” The inspector mechanically spoke into her voice recorder again as Ms. Scholz headed outside to call in the next examinee. “Overall impression highly indicative of exemplary specimen. Academic and athletic achievements support assumption. Compare results of exam and thorough DNA analysis, update database. Should findings be confirmed, schedule additional IQ evaluation and fertility assessment.”

“More tests?” Alessia groaned, noticing her own exasperated tone a little too late.

“Yes.” The inspector stated calmly. “But not today. And I assure you, it’s a good thing.” She then added, engaging in her own attempt at an encouraging smile again. “Have a nice day.”

“You too.” The girl replied, zipping up her tracksuit jacket as she finished getting dressed.

Alessia then picked up her sports bag from beneath the examination table and headed out the door. As she closed it behind her, she nodded to Ms. Wagner again, but the inspector wasn’t paying attention to her anymore, instead fully focussed on entering information into a form on her computer screen. Finally outside in the hall again, Alessia exhaled and rolled her eyes. That had been even more unpleasant than she had thought. Trying to focus on something else, she started walking down the hallway, looking through the glass panels on the other side and down to one of the main swimming pools of the building. The boys were currently practicing their backstroke, and she could make out her boyfriend Florian amongst them as well. For a moment, she considered waving to him, but then decided against it. He probably wouldn’t see her anyway, and even if he did, she would only distract him. But she did stop to observe him for a couple of seconds, noting that his technique was getting better and better.

Proud of you. She thought lovingly, smiling to herself as she continued along the hallway and down the stairs, where she reached an entrance hall with several glass doors leading outside.

Looking out through the glass, she noted that it was raining a little, just like yesterday. Eager to get home after another long day, she was just about to put her hood over her head when she saw Ms. Scholz and one of her teammates heading towards the staircase from a waiting area. They nodded as they passed each other by, and Alessia was just about to continue outside as she heard a familiar voice call out to her from the waiting area.

“Hey Alessia!” Tanja chirped. “You going home already?”

Turning around, she noticed that her friend was standing next to some of the other girls still sitting in the waiting area. Very much aware of the tugging sensation in her empty stomach, Alessia wasn’t in the mood to talk for long, but decided that she couldn’t just run off now. So she turned around, went over to the seats, and joined the group of girls, who were all wearing the same dark tracksuits with the emblem of their club. Joining Tanja at her side, she saw that the blonde was happily munching away at a ham sandwich, sipping water from an insulated bottle every now and again. The mere sight of her friend’s sandwich made Alessia’s stomach contract and produce an audible groan. Upon hearing that, Tanja broke into a sly grin.

“Yo hongwy?” The blonde inquired with her mouth full and swallowed. “Want a bite?” She then asked, holding up her half-eaten sandwich to Alessia’s face.

The German-Italian girl seemed to think for just a moment and then shrugged. Stealing a bite would at least tide her over until she could get herself something proper to eat. It would have to be something more substantial than just another sandwich, though. She was tiring of those.

“Well, don’t mind if I do.” Alessia then said and leaned over, biting off a big mouthful from the piece of bread. She chewed only two or three times and swallowed noisily. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Tanja said, still grinning. “Wouldn’t want you to starve, sweetie.”

***

“Oh my God.” Klaus Helbig wheezed, frantically trying to breathe as his giant captor pressed the two sandwich slices together around him. “I can’t… I’m suffocating.”

To make things even worse than they already were, the increase in pressure around him now forced up some more of the mayonnaise. The thick goop immediately soaked into his overalls, soon reaching up to his neck. For a moment, Klaus feared that he might drown, but then, the presumed threat actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Now lubricated by the sludge, Klaus managed to pull himself along further between the enormous slices of ham and lettuce, up towards the light. Maybe there still was a way out. Maybe he would not get eaten by Tanja today. Maybe he would live to see tomorrow after all.

In what almost seemed like a previous life, Klaus had run a small record player shop. At first, it had done quite well, but then he had refused to recognise the emergence of new media and technologies, insisting that these were just fleeting trends. By the time it became evident that they weren’t, it had already been too late, and although Klaus had managed to keep the shop alive for another few years with the help of some other vinyl enthusiasts, it had turned into no more than a niche curiosity and finally gone bankrupt. Unable to pay his debts, he had slipped into depression, been divorced by his wife, and lost custody of his two children. When Klaus had finally been shrunken down, he had been nothing but a shadow of his former self.

The Vortex box containing him had been bought by a beautiful blonde girl, probably around the same age as his own daughter. Klaus had been prepared to die that day, witnessing dozens of people getting eaten alive by her while she rolled around on her bed and absent-mindedly watched some girly comedy series on her laptop. But for some reason, she had kept around a third of the tinies from his box, placing them in a different box she had labelled her ‘special reserve’. There, Klaus had met other shrunken people from other boxes, and learned that the girl’s name was Tanja. Apparently, she sometimes kept tinies around for her own personal entertainment, even though he hadn’t understood what that was supposed to mean back then.

Over the following days, he had learned. Tanja took some kind of twisted, sadistic pleasure from playing with shrunken people, sometimes downright torturing them before she ate them. Getting to know the other tinies in the box, Klaus nevertheless had developed a new will to live, particularly a determination not to be eaten by Tanja. She had quickly picked up on this and played deranged mind games with him, making him believe several times that she would swallow him before letting him live yet again. When Tanja had stuffed him into her sandwich this morning, he once more had taken this for yet another one of her games.

For most of the time, this indeed appeared to have been the case. Over the course of the day, she had eaten all sandwich slices but the one containing him, and when she had finally lifted his piece out of her bag, he had assumed she was doing so to let him out.

But then Tanja had started eating. Nightmarish crunches had echoed through the sandwich as the girl’s giant white teeth had cut into it, almost slicing Klaus in half several times. Sobbing and screeching in terror, he had retreated further and further into the sandwich, praying that Tanja was just screwing with him once more. He had noticed that the pressure applied by her fingers was concentrated right around him, so she definitely hadn’t simply forgotten that he was in here. The question now was whether she truly intended to eat him or not.

“Hey Alessia!” He heard his tormentor call out high above. “You going home already?”

Klaus didn’t know who Alessia was, and he didn’t care. All that mattered was that he got out of this sandwich before the blonde got the chance to eat him. Groaning and spitting out a glob of mayonnaise that had dropped onto his face from the slice of ham above, he pulled himself further up towards the light. Once he was free of the two humongous bread slices surrounding him, he would maybe get a chance to jump out of the sandwich before Tanja noticed him. In the distance, he heard a faint rumble, like that of an approaching thunderstorm.

“Yo hongwy?” Tanja asked, followed by an ominous swallowing sound. “Want a bite?”

Suddenly, the entire sandwich moved upward. Klaus’ heart began to race. He had a suspicion of what was going on, but he hoped to God that it wasn’t true. His breathing becoming more frantic and shallow again, he squeezed himself up further, wiping more thick mayonnaise out of his face. The smell of ham, fresh lettuce, bread, and mayonnaise was making him dizzy.

“Well, don’t mind if I do.” Another voice said.

Thrusting himself forward with all his strength, Klaus managed to stick his head out between the slices of ham and bread. He desperately inhaled the fresh air and hectically looked around. But all he could see was the enormous face of a beautiful, Mediterranean-looking girl filling out the entire horizon. But Klaus had no time to appreciate her beauty, instead feeling a surge of mortal panic shoot through his body as she opened her mouth and leaned forward. Before he fully understood what was happening, Klaus saw two rows of colossal teeth slip past and bite into the bread above and underneath him. And right in front of him, he found himself staring into a dark, wet abyss of pink-red flesh, easily recognisable as the inside of a human mouth by the outline of a glistening uvula that seemed to point down into perfect darkness.

All of a sudden, the bite containing Klaus became detached from the rest of the sandwich and pulled deeper into the mouth of the giant girl. What had Tanja called her just then? Alessia? Klaus would never know for sure. Without any further warning, he was thrust around inside the hot, humid cavern, nearly getting flattened between two gigantic molars as they bit down. One or two more chewing motions followed, then there was a loud, wet gulping noise.

“No… no…” Klaus whimpered, tears running down his face as he was sucked into the girl’s oesophagus and swallowed whole. “Please… HELP ME! HELP! PLEA…”

***

Feeling the bite travel down her throat and drop into her stomach a few seconds later, Alessia gave her belly a subconscious pat. Just a mouthful of sandwich like that obviously wouldn’t last for long, but it would keep her stomach from making any more embarrassing noises.

“Mh.” She said appreciatively, smacking her lips as she licked some crumbs and mayonnaise off her lips. “This is quite good. What’s in it?” Alessia then asked, borrowing Tanja’s bottle of water as well for a moment to wash it all down.

“Lots of love.” Tanja said in an almost maternal tone and put her hand on Alessia’s shoulder. “Did you like it?” She then asked innocently. “I made it myself.”

“Really?” Alessia asked, taking a gulp of her water and subtly burping into her closed mouth as she gave the bottle back to Tanja. “I didn’t know you did anything yourself.”

“Big talk from someone who just bit off half my sandwich.” Tanja protested and gave Alessia a playful slap on the arm. “She keeps stealing my food, you know!” She then said to the other girls, accusingly pointing at the German-Italian girl next to her.

“Yeah, right. Keep talking, Tanja.” Another girl said, not looking up from her phone.

“Nobody ever believes me!” The blonde moaned, taking a small bite from her sandwich and shaking her head in mock disappointment at the lack of reaction from her clubmates.

“Wonder why that is.” Alessia said, giving her an amicable, albeit slightly patronising smile.

“Hey, how’d your exam go, by the way?” Tanja changed the topic before she finished off her sandwich, chasing it with a gulp from her bottle of water before putting it back in her bag.

“Ugh.” The other girl replied, rolling her eyes again at the memory. “Ms. Scholz said it went well and I guess all the results were very good, but that inspector creeped me out.”

“Right?” Tanja said, her eyes widening. “I swear that bitch was feeling me up when I was in there. And what was up with all that robot talk about specimens and proportions? Could have just fucking said that she liked my tits.” She complained, suggestively giving her left breast a squeeze. “Though maybe she couldn’t help herself, with that view she got.”

“Do we really need to go in there?” Another one of the waiting girls whined.

“I don’t think she’s perving.” Alessia mused. “She was too cold and unemotional for that. It’s more that she just treats you like a cow or something.”

“Reaaally looking forward to this.” Yet another girl said sarcastically.

Despite the bite of sandwich she had eaten, Alessia’s stomach let out another audible rumble. Frowning and giving the other girls a slightly awkward, apologetic smile, she put her hand on her belly, noticing a slight tickle in the pit of her stomach. After a few moments, the sensation grew stronger, resembling the more familiar feeling of a tiny moving around inside her belly.

“Tanja…” Alessia began and let out an exasperated sigh as she slowly moved her hand across her flat stomach, as if trying to pinpoint the exact source of the tickling sensation.

“…Yes?” The blonde said, another impish smile beginning to appear on her face.

“Did you just… was there a tiny in that sandwich?” Her friend asked.

“My secret ingredient.” Tanja winked, causing the other girls to burst into surprised laughter.

“Well, great.” Alessia complained, making a facepalm while trying not to laugh herself. “Girl, I haven’t eaten anything else. I can feel every fucking little kick he’s making in there. Or she?”

“He.” The other girl clarified, visibly struggling not to laugh. “But I really didn’t think you’d swallow him whole.” She then added in her defence. “You didn’t chew properly.”

“Seems so.” The German-Italian girl said, shaking her head in mock disapproval. “Well, now I really need to get something else to eat. Otherwise, this will go on for hours.” She explained, rolling her eyes again at the renewed laughter from the other girls. “Not funny!”

“You gotta admit, it kinda is.” Tanja replied, not able to hold back her giggling any longer.

“Fuck you!” Alessia shot back humorously while also starting to laugh herself. “I gotta take care of this.” She added and put her hood over her head, both in expectation of the slight rain outside, and as if this would somehow shield her from her friends’ laughter. “See you, girls!”

“Bye!” Tanja and the other girls replied in unison, still chuckling to themselves and waving at her as she turned around and headed towards the exit.

When she left the building and stepped out into the chilly evening air, Alessia pulled the hood of her tracksuit jacket down even further to keep the sleet drizzle from falling straight into her face. Cursing herself for not bringing a pair of gloves along, she rubbed her hands and walked over to the bicycle stand. She blew a cloud of her own hot breath onto her hands, then Alessia unlocked her bike and moved it onto the walkway, kicking it off and swinging herself on the saddle in one fluent motion. Turning into a path leading away from the sports club and along the track field, she let go of the handlebar and continued to rub her cold hands again, feeling the cold, wet air blow into her face. While she zoomed past the empty track field hands-free, Alessia looked at the lanterns along the path, lighting up in the beginning dusk. It was getting dark so early these days, and it really was miserably cold. Better to just get herself some fast food and head home quickly. She couldn’t be bothered going shopping and cooking now.

“Stop it.” The girl groaned beneath her breath, giving her belly a gentle slap. Unfortunately, it didn’t result in the tiny she had accidentally eaten to move around any less inside her stomach. If anything, he was getting even more lively due to him panicking as Alessia moved around.

The faint tickle at the bottom of her stomach had at least some subconscious influence on her next decision. Cycling down a few more residential streets, Alessia finally stopped at another bicycle stand in front of a restaurant. There, she got off and locked her bike. And when she was done, she glanced up at the swirling white logo above the entrance as she headed inside.

***

Stefan froze. Over the course of this nightmare of a day, he had heard the discreet bell above the entrance all too often. And yet, every time he heard it, he felt another rush of raw panic go through his entire body, a cold wave of primal fear that made him want to crawl into a corner and hide. The problem was that there were no corners to hide in. He was inside a Vortex box, having woken up shrunken down to one hundredth of his original size this morning. When he had encountered the shady Vortex employees and their black truck in the park, some part of him had already feared that he would wake up to this. But another, perhaps bigger part of him refused to believe that this was going to happen to him, especially since he couldn’t think of any particularly good reason why he would have been shrunken down. Yes, he was somewhat of an outsider, but he wasn’t a criminal, and he was wise enough to stay out of politics.

But here he was, yet again finding himself staring at the entrance of the Vortex restaurant he had been shipped to, inadvertently asking himself if the next guest was the person who would buy the box he was inside of. It also stood to reason that the same person would be the one to eat him. This would have been bad enough already, but after the initial disorientation, he had also discovered that this was the local Vortex, the one right in his own neighbourhood. Where basically everyone he knew went. So there also was somewhat of a chance that he would be bought and eaten alive by someone he knew, perhaps a neighbour. Over the last few hours, Stefan had repeatedly tried to tell himself that it could maybe be a good thing if his box was purchased by an acquaintance, since they might recognise and help him. But that too was an all too optimistic assessment of his situation. First, it would have required for him to actually be bought by someone he knew. Second, that person would have needed to recognise him in time. Third, and perhaps most depressingly, it would have required for that person not to just eat him anyway. It was a sad thing to assume of his fellow human beings, but Stefan couldn’t help but think about what Tanja had said to him just yesterday.

When he fearfully looked over at the entrance, it took him a few seconds to recognise the girl in the black tracksuit who had just entered. Then all the tension suddenly gave way to a wave of relief. It was Alessia. Just seeing a friendly face after spending all day trapped in this box was enough to give him a renewed sense of hope. Stefan was aware that he still was in danger, perhaps even more so now that another customer had entered the restaurant. But he actually found himself praying that Alessia would be the one to buy his box. Sooner or later, his box was going to be sold anyway, but if she were to purchase him, there was at least some chance of being saved after all. There still was the danger that Alessia would accidentally eat him, which was a particularly sad prospect Stefan didn’t even want to think about. But he was sure that if she realised who he was, she would help him. They were friends, after all. There was no way Alessia would intentionally do that to him. Unlike the other three acquaintances of his who had come to the restaurant earlier today. They had been Marie, Carolin, and Isabel.

Marie and her minions had come to the restaurant around lunchtime, a little after classes had ended. Stefan had only recognised them when they were standing right in front of the display counter holding the boxes with shrunken people. They had towered over him like human-shaped skyscrapers while they kept talking to each other about some cosmetics streamer and their newest video. Looking up at his three classmates, he had not only found himself afraid of being purchased and eaten like with all the other customers, but more specifically fearing that he could meet his demise being eaten by Marie, Carolin, or Isabel. All three of them were very good-looking girls, a fact that had only been accentuated even further by the perspective from inside the glass display. At one point, Marie had even turned her back to the boxes for a moment as she pointed to the table she wanted to sit down at, and Stefan’s field of view had almost entirely been filled out by her curvy, jean-clad ass. But Marie and her two underlings were terrible people; spoiled, materialistic brats with a mean streak, and he had no doubt that any of them would still have eaten him even if they had realised who he was. They probably even would have found it funny and made a video of it, like of that poor shrunken guy Marie had just snorted up her nose when doing a line of cocaine. The thought of going out like that, eaten alive by a self-centred bitch like Marie, terrified Stefan even more.

And for just a couple of moments, it had seemed as if that was indeed going to happen to him. The Vortex employee behind the counter had taken out the two medium boxes of tinies right above him and put them on Carolin’s and Isabel’s trays, and had already reached for Stefan’s box next when Marie suddenly had changed her mind, going for a small box instead. Had she not reconsidered just then, Stefan thought gloomily, he would already be nothing more than a few bones floating through Marie’s intestines. When the three giant girls had then sat down at a table just a couple of metres away from the display counter, he had watched on in horror as they devoured their meals. None of them had paid any attention to the tinies they ate, and so Stefan surmised that Marie would have swallowed him without ever realising who she had eaten. It was a harrowing reminder how insignificant and small he was now. And yet, when Marie had pushed away her empty tray, chasing the last tiny with a sip of her milkshake and letting out a dainty belch, he had leaned back in his cubicle for a moment and felt nothing but relief that he had been at least spared that particular fate.

Once they had left, the salesclerk had inserted some new boxes into the metal brackets above Stefan’s box, and it was likely thanks to this decision of the young employee that he was still alive and uneaten hours later, when Alessia entered the store. As she approached the counter, he once again felt the characteristic vibrations of a customer’s approaching footsteps, and sat down on the plastic ground in expectation of the tremors only getting more intense. When she reached the counter, her booming steps indeed had grown to the strength of small earthquakes, and Stefan found himself involuntarily crawling to the back of his cramped prison as Alessia positioned herself right in front of him. Through the translucent dividing walls separating him from the other cubicles, he could see the faint outlines of the other shrunken people acting in very much the same way. Cowering down and fearfully gazing up at the giant who might eat them soon. Feeling his heartbeat speed up with apprehension, Stefan looked up as well.

Alessia looked quite exhausted, obviously having spent all day training at the club, just as she had indicated during the conversation yesterday. But Stefan had always thought that this was when she looked best. Wearing no make-up at all, her long black hair flowing down naturally, and her just wearing a tracksuit she obviously felt comfortable in. It only served to underline how genuinely beautiful she was, with absolutely no need to spiff herself up. The only thing that was different about her was her sheer incredible size. Seeing Marie, Carolin and Isabel at this tremendous scale had been strange enough. But since Stefan always had perceived them as intimidating bullies, them being blown up to the scale of actual skyscraper-sized giants had felt oddly appropriate in a way. Seeing Alessia at this size, however, felt much more surreal, and only now Stefan truly began to get a sense of just how small he was. He was only about as big as one of his friend’s fingernails. It also made him wonder if Alessia really would be able to recognise him before he got eaten by her. Noticing a slight tingle in his extremities as his breathing grew shallower and more hectic, Stefan looked up at her again. From his tiny perspective, her face was partially obscured by the bulge of her breasts, which shifted a little beneath the black fabric of her jacket as she took a closer look at the menu.

“Yes, young lady?” The Vortex employee asked. He was a middle-aged man with a Turkish accent, having replaced his younger colleague for the evening shift.

“Uh… I think…” Alessia began, her voice suddenly sounding much more powerful and loud to her shrunken friend. “Yeah. I would like a salami pizza and a medium box.”

Stefan could feel his heart beat up to his neck all of a sudden. “Please…” He whispered.

“Of course.” The salesclerk said, entering the order into the computer at the register. “What drink would you like to go with that?” He then inquired, reaching into the counter.

“Lemonade, please.” Alessia replied, producing her wallet from her sports bag.

A second later, a sudden jolt went through the box as the employee removed it from the metal brackets and lifted it out of the counter. Even through the walls of the other cubicles, Stefan could hear a ghostly chorus of frightened voices starting to wail and scream. But although his heart was beating excruciatingly fast, and he was on the verge of hyperventilation, he still felt an odd sense of relief as the box was carried towards the register. This had to be a good thing. He had survived through this whole day, had some disturbingly close encounters with death, only for his box to now be bought by Alessia. What were the odds? No, she would definitely recognise him in time. He would just have to do his best to somehow draw her attention.

The salesclerk stopped for a moment. “Dine-in or take-out?” He asked Alessia.

“Take-out.” The girl replied, taking some banknotes out of her wallet.

“Would you like a bag?” The employee inquired further.

“Uh… No. I’ll just carry them in here.” Alessia said with a smile, patting her sports bag.

“Sure.” The salesclerk responded, walking over to the counter and handing the box to her.

All the while, Stefan kept staring out of the window, gasping as the box was reached over the counter and taken by his now gigantic friend. Once more, he looked up at Alessia as she gave the Vortex employee a friendly smile, then the entire box tilted forward all of a sudden. Seeing the giant girl open the zip of her sports bag down below, he suddenly slipped forward and towards the window of his cubicle. He crashed onto the hard plastic surface with a dull thud, accompanied by more variations of the same sound throughout the box as all the shrunken people around him smashed onto the new floors of their shifting prisons. There was more muffled wailing, crying and cursing from the neighbouring cubicles, but Stefan tried to block it out, instead focusing on regaining his bearings as the box slipped into Alessia’s bag. It landed between a folded towel, which gave off a faint smell of chlorine, and what appeared to be gargantuan swimming goggles, but before he could get a closer look at them, the zip of the bag was closed again, sealing the tinies in complete darkness. This resulted in another few seconds of panicked screaming from the other cubicles, but then the sounds slowly died down as everyone began to anxiously wait for whatever was going to happen next.

***

Alessia put the box with the tinies in her bag and closed it again, bringing her left hand to her mouth as she tried to suppress a yawn. It didn’t work, and the yawn turned out much louder and heartier than she had thought it would be. The salesclerk broke into a smile.

“Long day, huh?” He asked casually. “No worries. Pizza will be ready in a few minutes.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Alessia apologised. “Had training all day.”

“You run track?” The employee asked.

“Swimming.” The girl said.

“Swimming.” The man repeated and nodded appreciatively. “Very good for you, very healthy. But you work up quite an appetite. Will have your food ready soon.”

She smiled again. “No rush.”

Alessia waited for another few minutes, then the salesclerk disappeared into the kitchen for a moment before returning with a pizza carton and her drink. Paying for her order, she thanked him once more and headed outside. She frowned as she stepped into the cold, rainy evening again. The sleet drizzle was starting to turn into real rainfall now, but at least she lived just around the corner. Hurrying to her bike and putting the pizza and the drink into the basket behind the saddle, she looked down at the carton with the Vortex logo and let out a quiet sigh. For her as a real Italian, it seemed almost criminal to be buying pizza from a fast-food joint. She even had lectured Florian more than once about what could be considered a real pizza, and felt a tad hypocritical now. But she was hungry, and nobody had to know about this.

Unlocking her bike and swinging herself on the saddle, she cycled off down the road again, turning right after a few dozen metres. Once more rubbing her cold hands as she drove along the quiet residential streets, she smiled as she felt another delicate flutter in her stomach.

Still kicking, huh? She thought to herself. Don’t worry, you’ll have some company soon.

At first, she had been a bit annoyed about swallowing that shrunken man in Tanja’s sandwich whole, since there hadn’t been much she could do about the tickling sensation he had caused in her belly. It wasn’t that she particularly minded the feeling in general, but on an otherwise empty stomach, it could be a little bothersome. When Alessia had started cycling home again, however, she had focused on the feeling a bit more, finding herself imagining how that little guy was fighting for his life inside of her stomach while it inevitably got started on digesting him. Unlike Tanja, who obviously relished the power one had over shrunken people, Alessia usually just saw them as food and didn’t think too much about them. But after a day like this, being subjected to such a humiliating treatment, there was an undeniable appeal in imagining how much more powerful she was than all of these shrunken criminals and miscreants. That she could just eat them and swallow them alive. And that they could do nothing to stop her. It was a feeling she felt a little ambivalent about. But again, nobody had to know about this.

When she finally reached her family home, Alessia got off her bike and rolled it up the paved path leading to the front entrance, locking it to a big wooden bench none of them really used during the winter months. Then she took the paper cup and the pizza carton from the basket, awkwardly balancing the former on the latter for a moment as she reached into her sports bag again and fumbled for her keys. She found them after a few seconds of feeling around inside the bag, then carefully pulled them out and unlocked the door.

“I’m back!” She called out cheerfully, stepping inside.

***

“Sono tornata!” Alessia’s voice sounded from above as she apparently opened a door.

Stefan squinted a little at the bright light falling in through the slit of the open zip. When the young giantess had reached into her bag and fumbled around inside of it for a few moments, the other shrunken people inside the box had almost lost their minds. Fearing that the girl was about to eat them, they had started screaming and crying again, hammering their fists against the unyielding confines of their plastic prison. They had calmed down again for now, but this was something that wouldn’t go on for long. His eyes still adjusting to the brightness inside the building Alessia had entered, he tried to make out where she was, though this was made even more difficult by her sports bag rhythmically rocking around in unison with her mighty, booming footsteps. But judging from the fact that Alessia was speaking Italian, it seemed safe to assume that she was back home now, talking to her family.

“Oh, eccoti qui. Mi chiedevo dove... Ma davvero, Alessia?” The voice of his friend’s mother said from beyond Stefan’s field of view. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand what she was saying, but he did notice a shift in tone, from friendly to almost indignant.

“Non guardarmi così, mamma. Non ero sicura che tu o papà foste già tornati.” The girl said defensively. “Inoltre, ho avuto una giornata molto lunga e stavo morendo di fame!”

“Oh Mio Dio.” Her mother replied, sounding exasperated, though not really upset.

“Che succede, Claudia? Cosa ha combinato nostra figlia?” Alessia’s father chimed in just as she stopped walking, apparently reaching one of the rooms inside the house.

High above, Alessia groaned impatiently. Despite the dire situation, Stefan couldn’t help but smile to himself. He could vividly imagine his friend rolling her eyes, as she always did when people, usually Tanja, were starting to get on her nerves. Strangely enough, this light-hearted conversation between Alessia and her family somehow calmed him down a bit, even though nothing about his circumstances had changed. Somehow, Stefan just wasn’t able to associate the sound of Alessia bickering with her mother to the imminent danger of being eaten.

“Ha preso una pizza da asporto.” Ms. Santoro said disapprovingly, instantly followed by her husband starting to laugh out loud. “Perché ridi?” She shot back at him.

“Non è giusto!” Another, younger female voice complained. Stefan recognised this voice as that of Alessia’s younger sister Valeria. “Anch’io voglio una pizza!”

“Assolutamente no. Sto già cucinando per te.” Her mother told her, followed by the teenager letting out an exaggerated groan of discontent. “Ora riguardo te, Alessia …”

“Lascia che la ragazza mangi la sua pizza.” Mr. Santoro chuckled.

“Grazie, papà.” Alessia sighed.

“Stavo per chiederle se ha bisogno del forno per scaldarla.” Her mother said. “Probabilmente si è raffreddata mentre tornava a casa.”

“Ehm... sì, perché no. Grazie. Ma non ti serve il forno per cucinare?” The girl asked, starting to move again. Her renewed movements were once more accompanied by the powerful boom of her footsteps below, and the familiar rocking sensation. “Non voglio intralciarti...”

“Non mi sei d‘intralcio, tesoro.” Ms. Santoro said a lot more amicably and gave her daughter a loving hug, her towering shape now briefly visible through the opening in the bag. “Ecco, posso farlo io per te?” She then asked when she let go of her again.

“No, tutto bene. Volevo comunque mettere un po’ di extra sulla pizza.” Alessia explained as they went into another room. Judging from the sounds and smells, it was the Santoro family’s kitchen. The notion caused Stefan’s heartbeat to accelerate again. “Ma cosa stai cucinando lì?”

“Solo un risotto. Puoi mangiarne un po’ domani, se vuoi.” Ms. Santoro explained, her voice moving away a little. “Ovviamente, se Valeria non lo mangia tutto.”

Alessia laughed kindly. “No, no. In ogni caso, dovrebbe mangiare quanto vuole.”

Through the open zip above him, Stefan observed how the giant girl placed the pizza carton and her drink on some sort of counter, then she suddenly reached down into the bag, grabbing the box with the shrunken people inside. There was another uproar of frightened voices as the box was promptly lifted upward, causing Stefan to fall over and lie flat on his back again, the G-forces so overwhelmingly strong that he could barely move. Then, the box tilted by ninety degrees, causing the tinies inside to brutally crash on the old and new floors of their cubicles, which just a split second ago had been one of the walls. Groaning with pain, Stefan rolled on the ground for a couple of moments before looking up again. Rising up in front of him like a mountain was Alessia, slipping her pizza out of the carton and onto a baking tray. Maybe she was going to warm it up in the oven for a moment – it was quite cold outside after all, and it seemed possible that the pizza would have cooled off a bit in the meantime. Nearly forgetting about his miniscule size for a moment, Stefan looked on as his gigantic friend turned on the oven next to her. And then, to his absolute horror, she grabbed the box again, lifting it above the tray with her pizza. This time, he joined the chorus of anguished screams.

“Alessia!” He shrieked as an icy wave of panic went through his body. “Stop! Please don’t!”

Like all the voices of the other wailing and crying tinies in the box, Stefan’s too went unheard by the giant girl. Pulling back the plastic foil covering the cubicles, she started to tilt the box again, carefully sprinkling the occupants onto the enormous pizza on the tray below. Feeling tears run freely down his cheeks, he cried out for Alessia to stop over and over again as more shrunken people began to fall out, landing on the molten cheese and pieces of salami on the pizza with soft splatting sounds. Gravity forced him against the plastic foil, still covering his cubicle for the time being, but Stefan was aware that he would simply fall out of his cubicle as soon as it was removed. Desperately trying to crawl back into his prison, he sobbed and cried, refusing to believe that he was going to end like this. It just couldn’t be.

“Please!” He whimpered. “I don’t wanna… Oh God, no.”

Tears clouded his vision as more and more tinies dropped out of the adjacent cubicles, crying out in mortal fear as they fell down onto the pizza. Then the foil above the cubicles right next to his own prison came off, and Stefan’s eyes widened in shock as he briefly saw Nico fly past. He couldn’t be sure if the other shrunken boy had seen him, but his face, distorted by fear and panic, sent a cold shiver down his spine. Seeing his tiny form fall onto the pizza near the crust, all the anger he had felt towards him over this day, blaming him and Vanessa for dragging him into this situation, evaporated and gave way to sympathy. Nobody deserved to die like this, regardless of whether they were actual criminals or just misfits.

“Nico!” A female voice cried out next to him. “Oh my God! Nico!”

Looking to his right side, Stefan saw Vanessa desperately clawing to the edge of the cubicle she apparently had been trapped in, right next to his own. “Vanessa?” He called out.

“Who… Wha…” The girl began, looking around. Wearing a set of black Vortex overalls like all the other shrunken people instead of her trademark emo clothes, she looked very different from how Stefan remembered her. Her face didn’t look like it usually did, much more awake, and obviously terrified. He noticed that Vanessa too had been crying a lot. “Stefan?”

Wiping away some of the tears around her bloodshot eyes, the girl extended her hand out to him, apparently hoping that he would help her. But with the plastic foil still in between them, there was nothing he could do, except clumsily trying to push his own arm through one of the narrow airholes. Suddenly, the box tilted back into an upright position, and Vanessa lost her grip. Letting out a shrill shriek, she plummeted downwards and out of Stefan’s sight, falling onto the giant pizza somewhere near her boyfriend. Smashing back down onto the floor of his prison yet again, Stefan simply lay there for the next couple of moments, quietly crying into the collar of his overalls as Alessia placed the box back on the counter. Then she grabbed the tray with the pizza and pushed it into the oven, humming to herself as she casually set a timer.

***

Screaming in utter horror as her hand slipped off the edge of the box and she found herself in freefall, Vanessa helplessly flailed around with her arms and legs, reaching out into thin air as if something to hold onto would somehow magically appear out of nowhere. Obviously, this didn’t happen, and so her rapid drop only came to a sudden halt as she smashed into a bizarre landscape of molten cheese and oversized salami slices with an indecorous splat. Falling onto what almost felt like a mattress of soft, warm cheese, her impact sent globs of thick red liquid splattering across her immediate vicinity. To an observer, it would have almost seemed as if she had simply exploded on impact. Even Vanessa herself believed that she had been gravely injured, letting out a high-pitched shriek as she found herself covered in red goo.

It was only when she accidentally swallowed some of the fluid that she realised it wasn’t her blood, but simply tomato sauce from the giant pizza she had fallen onto. At least physically, Vanessa remained unharmed for the moment. Psychologically speaking, however, she was on the verge of a mental breakdown, sobbing uncontrollably and starting to hyperventilate as she rolled over onto her belly. As she pressed her hands into the gooey molten cheese and tried to get up, even more tomato sauce squirted out from below, spraying all over her face. Vanessa began to cough and retch, spitting out globs of the thick red fluid, but somehow, she actually managed to rise to her feet and look up at the colossal shape of her normal-sized classmate.

“Alessia!” She yelled as loud as she could. “We’re down here! Please! You gotta help us!”

Just like back when Vanessa had been in her cubicle, repeatedly calling out Alessia’s name, the giant German-Italian girl didn’t hear her. Instead, the giantess simply put the half-emptied box back on the kitchen counter and then grabbed the enormous baking tray the pizza was on, sending a jolt through Vanessa’s surroundings that made her fall over on her behind. Almost as if to add to her humiliation, this resulted in a moist farting noise and was followed by even more tomato sauce squirting out of the molten cheese beneath Vanessa. But the shrunken girl didn’t care. Seeing how Alessia lifted up the baking tray, the pizza, and her, carrying them to a gargantuan oven next to the kitchen counter, she just shuddered, overcome with paralysing dread as she suddenly realised what was going to happen to her next.

“N-no… no…” Vanessa began to stammer. “No, no… Alessia… What are you…”

All of a sudden, the air around her became almost unbearably hot, making it difficult for her to continue breathing normally. Vanessa then heard an unpleasant metallic screeching sound as her classmate perfunctorily pushed the tray into the oven, finding her weird surroundings illuminated by an eerie, yellow-orange light shining down from above. Then there was a loud thud, and the baking tray shook a little in its brackets as Alessia closed the oven door. Staring out through the glass, Vanessa simply looked at the giant girl in disbelief as she glanced into the oven one more time and then set a timer for herself. Vanessa was aware that, by the time that timer ran out, she would very likely be dead, burnt to death as just another topping on Alessia’s pizza. And what remained of her charred corpse would then simply be eaten by her classmate, chewed into pulp, and finally swallowed and digested. Vanessa was not a human being anymore, just a piece of meat on a pizza, like the giant slices of salami around her.

Feeling her chest constrict as she struggled to breathe, her vision began to blur, although she wasn’t able to tell if this was due to the tears pooling in her eyes, or due to the air starting to shimmer because of the intense heat. Vanessa laboriously inhaled, her tiny lungs cramping up in protest against the unbearably hot air, and began stumbling towards the crust of the pizza. She was aware that making it off the pizza wouldn’t change anything about her situation. After all, she still was inside a gigantic oven, which would soon heat up to temperatures that no human being could hope to survive. Nevertheless, she couldn’t just sit there and wait to be baked to death over the next few minutes. She had to at least try and do something.

Staggering across the expanse of molten cheese, Vanessa ignored the screaming of the other shrunken people feebly crawling around on the pizza. All that mattered now was to perhaps find some way of getting out of this oven, no matter how remote the possibility was. Feeling sweat stream down her body and soak into her black overalls as her body desperately tried to cool itself in the ever-increasing heat, she coughed and gasped for air again, even though this resulted in a painful burning sensation in her lungs. But even though she wasn’t too far away from the crust, her progress towards the edge of the pizza was seriously slowed down by the slippery and squishy underground she had to navigate. To make it even more difficult for her to move forward, the cheese also began to soften with the increasing temperatures. Just as she thought that she had found a way to balance herself, the ground underneath simply sank in as she made another step forward, causing her to fall flat on her face. Inhaling the overpowering smell of cheese, oregano, and tomato sauce along with the burning hot air, Vanessa tried to push herself up, only to realise that she was beginning to sink into the molten cheese.

“No…” She began to sob again, realising that her limbs were stuck in the warm goop and that she was unable to free herself as she sank in further and further. “Not like this.”

All of a sudden, she felt someone put their arms around her hips and pull her back out of the cheesy swamp. “I got you, babe.” She then heard Nico’s voice in her ear as he leaned over.

Feeling a wave of relief rush through her, Vanessa put in all of her renewed strength to push herself out of the cheese. For a couple of moments, they both continued to struggle, but then, she finally came loose and fell backwards into her boyfriend’s embrace. All she wanted to do in that moment was to lie down and rest for just a minute, but the burning air all around was a harsh reminder that they had no time to lose. Nico too seemed aware of this, pulling her up on her feet and putting his arm underneath hers to support her as he started walking again.

“Nico…” Vanessa coughed, frowning when she felt a searing pain on her skin. “I didn’t… I didn’t know where you…” She began, now feeling a sense of guilt that she hadn’t even tried to look for him. But when she had realised that Alessia had put them into an oven, the sheer panic had washed away any thoughts that hadn’t been concerned with her own raw survival.

“It’s okay.” Nico simply replied, wheezing as he tried to draw breath. “Come on, we got to…”

Somewhere from behind them, near the middle of the pizza, they heard a gruesome howl that was clearly distinguishable even against the backdrop of screaming and crying from the other miniaturised people all around them. Vanessa turned her head for just a moment, only to feel Nico’s hand cover her eyes and turn it away again. Nevertheless, in the corner of her eye, she still caught a glimpse of a shrunken person’s overalls catching fire, and them starting to flail around in agony for a few seconds as they burned to death with a grisly sizzling sound.

“Don’t look.” Her boyfriend said, coughing once more as they continued to stumble towards the crust. “See those? We gotta try and get into one of them.” He added, pointing to several cracks in the pizza’s bread crust that almost looked like crevices in a cliff.

“Do you think…” Vanessa began sceptically. She couldn’t imagine that crawling into one of those would really protect them from the heat. But where else could they possibly go?

“Come on.” Nico replied, helping her move forward another step. “It’s our only chance.”

***

Stefan slowly wiped away his tears, continuing to stare at Alessia in disbelief as she pushed her pizza into the oven and set a timer for five minutes, all while silently humming away to herself. At the back of his mind, he was aware that his disbelief was somewhat unwarranted, since there wasn’t anything unusual about Alessia’s behaviour. She had eaten countless tinies in front of him, some of them she had swallowed alive, some she had chewed up, and others she had used to top up some other food of hers. This was what people did with tinies, after all. But seeing all of this happen from the perspective of one of the shrunken people made it feel a lot different. Stefan still couldn’t really grasp what was happening. Alessia just had turned Nico and Vanessa into pizza toppings and put them in an oven. And soon, she would possibly eat him alive like all the other tinies who still remained in the box with him.

“Vado a mettermi qualcosa di più comodo. Puoi averne un po’ se vuoi.” The giant girl said to her mother, pointing at the box as she turned around and walked out of the kitchen.

“Grazie. Forse ne prenderò uno o due.” Her mother replied as Alessia went into the hallway, although she seemed to be more focused on the pot on the stove she had been stirring.

For a couple of minutes, she kept cooking, but then she glanced over at the box. Stefan once again had not understood what precisely Ms. Santoro and her daughter had been saying, but Alessia pointing at the box before she headed out had felt ominous enough. Now, her mother put the cooking spoon down for a moment and picked up the half-empty glass of red wine she had been drinking from every now and again, taking another sip as she began walking toward the kitchen counter. Once more noting the tremors caused by a giant human being’s footsteps, Stefan felt his heartbeat speed up again and instinctively backed up against one of the cubicle walls. Then he looked up just as Ms. Santoro’s approaching form cast a dark shadow over the box, whimpering as her elegantly manicured fingers reached down towards it and pulled back the plastic foil a little further. This time, his cubicle became uncovered, and Stefan gasped as the enormous Italian woman reached into one of the cubicles right next to his own. He could hear a shrill shriek and saw a pair of hands slip across the semi-transparent dividing wall for a moment, then Ms. Santoro lifted a squirming shrunken woman out of the box.

“Let me go!” The woman cried out in panic. “Please, I’m begging you! Don’t eat me!”

Stefan felt the urge to look away, but there was also something almost hypnotising about the sheer horror of the situation unfolding before him that simply made him unable to do so. And so he watched on as the struggling tiny woman continued to be lifted up into dizzying heights against the backdrop of a vast feminine belly, hidden behind a cosy grey sweater. Further up, the sweater gently bulged out to accommodate a pair of voluptuous breasts, where just a hint of cleavage peeked out at the bottom of the V-shaped neckline.

“No!” The woman yelped, her voice sounding increasingly frantic. “Help! Someone help me!”

Her screams turned into nothing more than incoherent blubbering when she reached the giant woman’s face and Ms. Santoro began to open her mouth. Looking at the gentle smile around her lips as she lifted the tiny towards them, Stefan couldn’t help but take note of the striking family resemblance. Just like her daughter, Claudia Santoro was an incredibly good-looking person, even though she was a few years into middle age now. She had the same sun-kissed Mediterranean complexion and warm brown eyes, though her hair was markedly curlier than Alessia’s. What also set her apart from her daughter were the minor wrinkles that had started to appear on her face over the last years, especially in the corner of her eyes and her mouth. But she still was extremely attractive, and whenever he visited the Santoros, Stefan had found himself quietly admiring them, noting with some envy that this family was the very definition of a genetic goldmine. It could be very discouraging to think how unequally looks, health and ability were distributed throughout humanity. Alessia’s family sure lacked in none of it.

“Oh God, no! Let me g…” The tiny begged one last time, not getting to finish her plea before she was dropped into Ms. Santoro’s mouth, disappearing between her shiny white teeth.

Then the giant Italian woman closed her lips again and rolled the shrunken woman around in her mouth for just a few moments, smiling to herself as she relished her taste. When she was done, she lifted her glass of wine to her mouth and took a gentle sip again, sending her living snack down to her stomach along with it. Stefan watched the slight contraction in the giantess’ neck as she swallowed the little woman, accompanied by an almost imperceptible bulge that rapidly travelled downward and then disappeared into Ms. Santoro’s busty chest. But before he even had the opportunity to really empathise with the tiny Alessia’s mother had just eaten, the giantess reached down into the box again. This time, her enormous fingers reached right into his cubicle, inquisitively feeling around as they searched for Ms. Santoro’s next snack.

“Fuck.” Stefan cursed beneath his breath and pushed himself flat against one of the dividing walls inside his prison. He knew that he would eventually have to try to get one of the giant human beings’ attention, but after seeing how Ms. Santoro had just swallowed that shrunken woman without even looking at her, he felt a lot less confident that he would be recognised.

Inhaling the scent of garlic and parmesan coming from the giantess’ fingers, Stefan closed his eyes and tried to fill his lungs with as much air as possible. Once she grabbed him, he would have to call out her name as loud as he could, and while he already shuddered at the thought of her simply not hearing and eating him, he knew that he had only this chance. If he blew it now, Ms. Santoro would swallow him whole, and then he would go down to where that poor woman was. Into her stomach, to be digested by his friend’s mother, and never be seen again.

One of her fingertips touched his face, and Stefan could feel the small, bumpy friction ridges against his cheek. Her other fingers closed around him, grabbing his shrunken body with ease and lifting him up. His own pulse beating in his head like a drumbeat, Stefan breathed in deep and was just about to scream out her name when there suddenly was a loud beeping sound. It apparently caught Ms. Santoro off guard as well, as her whole body slightly flinched and she let go of him again, dropping him back into his small cubicle. Stefan let out a surprised groan as he fell onto the hard plastic floor again, feeling a sharp pain go through his entire body.

“Alessia, la pizza è pronta!” She called out, sounding just a little bit annoyed.

“Sì, sì, sì!” Her daughter replied from somewhere upstairs. “Arrivo!”

Picking up the little timer next to the oven, Ms. Santoro turned it off and then peered into the oven for a couple of seconds, apparently deciding that the pizza had been warmed up enough. She turned off the oven and grabbed a thick kitchen towel, then opened the door and took out the baking tray. Pushing the towel underneath the hot tray so that it wouldn’t come into direct contact with the countertop, she put it down next to the box. Stefan didn’t even want to see if any of the tinies Alessia had sprinkled onto her pizza were still alive, let alone what state they were in, and so he looked up at Ms. Santoro again instead. His eyes widened as she reached down into the box once more, but luckily, she didn’t really seem to care which particular tiny she ate, and now picked up another one several cubicles away. This one was a fat young man with a neckbeard who kept squealing like a pig as the giant woman lifted him to her mouth.

“Hai già tolto la pizza dal forno?” Alessia asked as she stepped back into the kitchen, having changed into a crop top that showed off her tan belly, and some tight-fitting yoga pants.

“Sì, è laggiù.” Her mother confirmed, lowering the screaming tiny again for a moment as she turned around and pointed at the pizza, leaving her snack dangling above her wide cleavage. “Dovrebbe essere abbastanza calda ora.” She added, picking up her glass of wine again.

“Grazie.” Alessia smiled and gave Ms. Santoro a kiss on the cheek. “Ti voglio bene, mamma.”

“Non c’è di che. Anch’io ti voglio bene, tesoro.” The woman replied with a smile of her own, also giving her daughter a kiss on her forehead. Then she dropped the tiny into her glass.

Stefan flinched when the pudgy shrunken man fell into Ms. Santoro’s red wine with a visible splash, only to resurface a couple of moments later with a panicked gasp. This turned into a series of high-pitched shrieks again as the Italian woman brought the glass to her lips, tilting it to let the little bit of wine that remained flow into her mouth. Seconds later, the tiny slipped into the darkness between her teeth, but Stefan would never see the gulp with which Alessia’s mother sent the man down into her belly. Instead, he only heard it, as she now turned around and walked towards the stove again, her large and firm butt cheeks jiggling slightly in her tight-fitting jeans. Ms. Santoro then placed the empty glass next to the sink, silently providing an answer to the question of the poor man’s fate. As she resumed stirring the contents of the pot on the stove, her daughter slipped the warmed-up pizza from the tray and onto a wooden board she had produced from a nearby drawer. To his dismay, Stefan could now see several small human shapes on the giant pizza, some of which turned out to be still moving.

Trying to not look too closely at the shrunken people on the pizza, Stefan looked up towards Alessia again. The giant girl briefly turned around as well, folding the empty pizza carton and throwing it into the nearby rubbish bin. Then she came back to the kitchen counter to take her food, but carrying the wooden board, her drink, and the box at the same time turned out to be a bit tricky. Picking up the box with her left hand, she pinned the board between her left arm and her belly, inadvertently giving the surviving tinies quite a view of where they were going to end up in soon, and picked up her drink with her right hand. As she carefully balanced her way towards the kitchen door, she stopped a moment when her mother raised an eyebrow and gave her a look that was somewhere between questioning and disapproving.

“Non far cadere nulla.” Ms. Santoro then said strictly, lifting a warning finger.

“So cosa sto facendo.” Alessia answered and rolled her eyes, nevertheless checking that she had a firm grip on everything before proceeding out of the kitchen and into the hallway.

“Buon appetito.” Her mother called out from behind her.

“Grazie.” Alessia said back, though she still seemed preoccupied with not dropping the items she was carrying. “Vado nella mia stanza!” She then called out towards the living room.

“Va bene, tesoro.” Her father’s voice came back, sounding somewhat distracted.

“Buon appetito!” Valeria called out happily.

“Grazie, grazie.” Alessia muttered more to herself, now slowly moving up the stairs.

Stefan, meanwhile, was still trying to get his bearings again after being thrown around in his cubicle once more when Alessia had picked up the Vortex box. Even now, the incline of the floor below him kept shifting with every one of her footsteps, forcing him to extend his arms to keep himself from smashing against the walls. In the few moments of relative calm before Alessia had lifted up the box, he had considered to scale these walls and try to escape, since her mother had removed the plastic foil keeping him trapped in the cubicle. But that was not even remotely possible now, with him not even being able to stand up straight. And so he did the only thing that was left to do for him right now. To yell up at his towering friend, calling out her name in the hope that she might somehow hear him after all.

***

Nico let out a groan, rubbing his forehead to alleviate some of the throbbing pain behind his skull, only to find his skin to be surprisingly sensitive to the touch. For a couple of moments, he continued to just lay on the hard ground beneath him, wondering where he was. But when he painstakingly pushed himself up to sit, he found himself feeling awfully dizzy once more, overwhelmed by the surreal sight that presented itself to him. He was looking across a vast, flat expanse, which gave way to the sight of an absolutely enormous kitchen in some distance. At the other end of the giant room, he saw an unbelievably massive woman standing next to a stove, apparently cooking something. After a few more seconds of profound disorientation, it finally all came back to him. Him and Vanessa being shrunk. The box. The pizza. The oven.

He and Vanessa had been ambushed by two of those Vortex goons in the park just when he had been about to show his girlfriend the fine weed he had gotten a hold of earlier this week. Nico had desperately tried to fight them off, even succeeding in scratching up the face of his female assailant. Visibly enraged, the woman then had suddenly pulled out something like an electric cattle prod and shocked him, causing him to lose consciousness. When he had woken up again, he had already been shrunk and placed in a Vortex box, and ultimately, it had been bought by no one else than that jockette Alessia. Nico didn’t like her, and he knew very well that the feeling was mutual. She obviously thought of him as a lazy stoner and made no secret of her contempt for him. And although she was extremely popular with his classmates, Nico saw her for what she truly was: a self-absorbed conformist who was obsessed with fitting in and excelling in academic and athletic achievement. Unlike Marie and her friends, she didn’t really bully people, at least not aggressively. But her wilful ignorance to what was going on in this society made her a poster girl for the system. A willing cog in the machine.

A machine he and his girlfriend had fallen victim to as well now. He hadn’t known for sure if he was in the same box as Vanessa until the now gigantic Alessia had dropped them onto the pizza and put them into the oven. They had fallen onto the pizza in different places, but Nico had managed to find her again quickly, saving her from sinking into the melting cheese. They then had attempted to find shelter from the rapidly increasing heat in the oven by hiding in a crack in the pizza crust. This had turned out to be not particularly effective, and while it had saved them from catching fire and burning to death like some other tinies, they both had soon realised that they were going to die anyway. Unable to breathe the hot air, their skins turning red and blistering, they had tightly embraced each other one final time, expecting imminent death. But just then, the oven had been turned off again, and the pizza had been taken out of the oven by Alessia’s mother. Realising that this was the best chance at escape they had been given so far, Nico and Vanessa had hastily crawled out of the crack again and begun to climb the crust. They had even made it to the very edge of the pizza and just tried to figure out a way to climb down onto the counter when Alessia had come back and lifted the wooden board up all of a sudden. The jolt had separated them, and while Vanessa had fallen back on the pizza, Nico had fallen on the counter and lost consciousness for a few moments.

Now, Nico was all alone. Realising where he was again and remembering what had happened, he felt the urge to cry. Vanessa wasn’t dead yet, but she was still on Alessia’s pizza, and in all likelihood, she would be eaten by their giant classmate soon. To survive all of that ordeal just to get eaten anyway. It just wasn’t fair. But thinking like that was going to get him nowhere. First, he would have to get off this gigantic counter somehow, and then he could start looking for Alessia’s room somewhere in this gargantuan house. Nico was not kidding himself. Even if he managed to get there in one piece, the chances of Vanessa somehow surviving were slim. But he had to try. And so, he forced himself on his feet again, flinching a little as he touched the cold, hard surface of the countertop with his bare hands. Like large parts of his skin, they were slightly red and showed fresh blisters, probably second-degree burns. Then again, Nico tried telling himself, this was probably a surprisingly mild outcome after having spent several minutes in an actual oven. So he tried to ignore the burning sense of pain all over his skin and began to walk forward, reaching the edge of the kitchen counter after a few minutes.

When he saw how far the drop down to the tiled floor of the kitchen was, Nico began to feel a profound sense of vertigo and stumbled a couple of steps back again. Getting off this counter was going to be more difficult than he had thought. But when he looked around to maybe find something that would help him get down there, the shrunken boy was presented with another, much more immediate problem. It announced itself in the familiar form of the ominous thuds and tremors that accompanied the footsteps of normal-sized people at this scale. Looking up and instinctively gasping, Nico saw Ms. Santoro suddenly approach the counter. Intuitively, he began walking backwards a couple of steps, frantically looking around in search of some place to hide behind, but unfortunately, he could not see anything in his vicinity. But it didn’t seem as if Alessia’s mother had seen him. And indeed, the giantess reached up towards some shelf high above Nico, apparently looking for some spice to add to whatever she was cooking in the pot. He exhaled again, still quietly backing away from the sweatshirt-clad belly in front of him when Ms. Santoro took a small pepper box out of the shelf. She was just about to turn around and walk back to the stove when she suddenly froze. Nico shivered.

“Well, what do we have here?” She said in an almost amused tone. If it hadn’t been for this terrifying situation, Nico would have found her friendly, warm voice and her pleasant Italian accent quite charming. But instead, it filled him with cold, existential dread. “Come here.”

His muscles tensed up, ready for him to run as fast as he could, but before his body was able to translate the impulse into action, he suddenly found himself pinned between a giant thumb and index finger. A mere instant later, Nico was lifted up high into the air with uncanny ease, as if the giant woman didn’t need to put in effort at all to pick him up. And then he realised that she indeed didn’t have to, given that his whole body maybe was only around as large as one of her fingernails. Swiftly passing by her belly and her large chest, he soon found himself face to face with her, looking directly into her deep brown eyes. Ms. Santoro smiled, showing two rows of impeccably white, straight teeth that sent another shiver down Nico’s spine. But it was a kind, almost compassionate smile, and the slight wrinkles showing around her mouth and eyes only served to enhance the bizarre sense of maternal care he got from her.

“Were you trying to run away?” Ms. Santoro asked gently.

“P-please.” Nico began to stammer, feeling his heart beat violently in his chest. And although the giantess’ grip on him wasn’t very forceful, he still felt almost unable to breathe. “I-I know your daughter. P-please, you g-got to help me, my g-girlfriend is somewhere on that piz…”

Ms. Santoro raised her eyebrows and huffed in disbelief. “You know my daughter?” She said, cautiously looking at him for a moment. Then she broke into a soft laugh. “Not bad. I haven’t heard that one before.” She said and gave him a wink before she opened her mouth.

Nico shrieked as he felt Ms. Santoro’s hot breath on his skin. It was almost like being thrown into the oven again, though it was more humid, and gave off a scent of wine. “No, no, please! Please wait, I…” He began, but suddenly felt himself being thrust forward.

Flying through the air for just a moment, Nico looked down, an atavistic response of his brain expecting for him to fall. But all he could see were Ms. Santoro’s big boobs tightly squeezed against each other in her cleavage. Then he passed through her lips and crashed onto a soft, squishy and moist surface, covered in organic bumps that squirted out hot, sticky fluid as he came into contact with them. Knowing that this was the enormous woman’s tongue, he tried to push himself up, only to slip even further down the sloped surface. When he looked up, he found himself staring right into a visceral, organic abyss of wet flesh.

“Please don’t!” He screamed again, his voice cracking as tears began to run down his cheeks.

Nico frantically tried to push himself away from Ms. Santoro’s gaping throat, the sight of her cheerfully bouncing uvula being the last thing he ever saw before the giantess closed her lips behind him and sealed him in darkness. For a few moments, the fleshy cave he was trapped in was filled with nothing but the muffled sound of his own sobbing and the wet splatting noises caused by him trying to move around on the giant tongue. Nico tried to control his panicked breathing, but found himself retching at the overpowering smell of saliva and wine. And then, the tongue suddenly squeezed him against Ms. Santoro’s palate, tilting towards her throat.

“No, no, please, I don’t wanna die!” He whimpered. “Please…”

Then there was a loud gulping sound and Nico was catapulted forward, feeling the woman’s uvula slide across his back for just a split second before he was sucked downward in a deluge of saliva. He let out a last sob, and then fell silent forever as his tiny body was forced down into Ms. Santoro’s digestive system, her oesophagus closing behind him with a wet smack.

***

Claudia swallowed gently, feeling the silly little shrunken boy slip into her throat and travel down her oesophagus. Having enjoyed her impromptu snack, she licked her lips and gave her belly a pat as she felt him drop into her stomach. There, he would join the other two tinies she had swallowed earlier to go with her wine, and of course the caprese salad she had made for herself and her husband earlier today. It really was a shame that Valeria had such an aversion to salad, or anything vegetable-based, for that matter. But then again, unlike her older sister, Valeria still was just a bratty teenager. She would grow out of it eventually.

Sighing to herself, Claudia turned around and returned to the stove, where the risotto she was preparing was still quietly bubbling away in the pot. She then carefully seasoned it with some of the pepper she had taken from the shelf above the counter and stirred it for a few moments. Lifting a teaspoon out of the drawer next to her, Claudia proceeded to taste a mouthful of the risotto, rolling it around on her tongue for a moment to check the taste. When she concluded that it tasted just right, she swallowed and turned off the stove. She put the used teaspoon in the dishwasher, and then took a plate from the cupboard, using the ladle to serve her famous homemade risotto for her younger daughter. At least Valeria liked that.

Just when she was finished serving the risotto onto the plate and about to carry it over into the living room, Claudia’s belly gave off a gurgle, followed by a surge of air travelling up inside her chest. Since she was alone in the kitchen, she allowed it to escape through her mouth as a soft burp. More out of habit, she still raised her hand to her lips, but didn’t think much about it otherwise as she went back to the living room to bring Valeria her evening meal.

***

Awkwardly shutting the door to her room behind her with her foot, Alessia suddenly found herself feeling utterly exhausted, as if she had locked out all of the stress of the outside world as well. She stifled a yawn and looked at the digital clock on her nightstand as she carried her food to her bed, placing the pizza and the Vortex box on the mattress while putting her drink down on the nightstand as well. It still was too early for her to go to bed, and she would have to stay awake for at least another few hours to not mess up her circadian rhythm. Looking down at her food, she felt another contraction in her near empty stomach, which was accompanied by a loud growl once again. This also caused a renewed tickle beneath her left breast. Apparently, the tiny she had been unknowingly fed by Tanja earlier was still alive. Alessia couldn’t help but be a bit impressed by that, even though the sensation had slightly annoyed her over the course of the evening, and his survival was probably not due to some particular tenacity on his part. One shrunken person likely just wasn’t enough for her digestive system to take note of, and with her stomach being empty, he wasn’t going to run out of oxygen.

“Well, playtime’s over.” She muttered to herself with a cursory glance down at her bare belly, taking a slice of pizza and raising it to her mouth as she went to her desk to fetch her laptop.

Stuffing almost half the slice into her mouth, Alessia noisily smacked her lips and started to chew, easily pulverising the charred bodies of three shrunken people that had not survived the heat in the oven between her teeth. But to her, the roasted tinies were just an additional meat topping on her pizza, not all that different from the salami. If anything, they reminded her of bacon bits. It wasn’t something she had come up with herself, but instead learned from Tanja, who apparently had come up with the idea of putting tinies into an oven as part of some kind of game she played with them every now and again. As usual, Alessia had disapproved of her friend messing around with food like that, but when Tanja had later offered her some of the losers of the game, she had found the result to be surprisingly tasty. Not to mention crispy.

Alessia swallowed greedily, sending the mouthful of pizza down to her stomach after barely chewing at all again. She was aware that she was pigging out right now, but she was too tired and hungry to care. And here in her room, nobody could see what she was doing anyway. At least nobody who wasn’t going to get eaten by her over the next half hour or so. Ignoring the frantic pleading from a shrunken woman near the crust, who was among the few survivors of the pizza’s stay in the oven, Alessia stuffed the other half of the pizza slice into her mouth as well, her cheeks visibly bulging outward. She could faintly hear another shrill scream from the tiny woman as she closed her mouth and began to chew, this time taking a little longer to chew her food in order to not accidentally choke on it. Picking up her laptop, she went back to her bed and let herself drop down onto it, the sudden impact of her body on the mattress nearly sending the box flying off the bed, and several shrunken people out of their uncovered cubicles. Seeing the half dozen tinies on her sheets quickly trying to scramble to safety, she let out an annoyed groan and swallowed hectically, barely taking note of the near inaudible, high-pitched shriek that accompanied the bolus of chewed pizza being forced into her throat.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Alessia cursed, quickly picking them up before they could escape.

For a moment, she considered eating them right away, but then decided against it. However, since putting them all back into their cubicles individually was unnecessarily complicated as well, Alessia simply sprinkled them on her pizza, immediately picking up one of them again with the next slice she grabbed. This particular one was a shrunken young man who, judging from his muscular physique, would have been quite strong at normal size. Now, however, he wasn’t even able to free himself from the sticky molten cheese he had fallen into, screaming in unrestrained panic as he was lifted up towards Alessia’s opening mouth.

“Wait!” He yelled frantically. “I didn’t do anything, you gotta belie…”

The tiny never even got to finish his sentence. Instead, his torso was cleanly sliced in half as Alessia’s incisors came down on the slice of pizza right where he had been stuck, killing him instantly. Easily chewing up the upper half of his body along with the bite of pizza, Alessia leaned over to her laptop and selected the next episode of an immensely popular and violent fantasy series. With her extensive training schedule, she wasn’t always able to watch the new episodes right when they were released, but at least this meant she also could watch several in a row when she finally got around to catching up. When the episode started playing, Alessia leaned back in her pillow and swallowed, letting out a sigh as she finally allowed her body to relax, and bit off another mouthful of pizza. This time, the lower half of the tiny disappeared into her mouth as well, also being thoroughly masticated before being sent down to Alessia’s stomach a couple of moments later. She then ate the rest of her second slice, washing it down with a generous gulp of her lemonade. Feeling the warm food and the cool drink settle in her belly, Alessia noticed that the mildly annoying tickle caused by the lone tiny had also stopped. In all likelihood, he had been buried beneath the two pizza slices she had just devoured.

It was just a fleeting thought for her, and one that didn’t especially concern her, now that the cause of the issue had been dealt with. Instead of wasting any more thoughts on the shrunken man now miserably suffocating underneath several layers of chewed-up pizza deep inside her stomach, Alessia just grabbed the next slice of pizza and opened her mouth again. The three living tinies still trapped on it began to wail and cry as her lips parted, revealing to them her cavernous mouth and the chewed remains of pizza still stuck to her tongue and her teeth. But just as she was about to bite off a first mouthful, her throat suddenly quivered, and before she could do something to hold it back, a wet burp slipped out of her mouth, blowing right across the unfortunate tinies stuck on her pizza slice. Alessia blushed just a little.

“Whoopsie.” She said, giving the three tinies on her pizza a sheepish grin. “Sorry about that.” The girl then apologised, thinking to herself that she really needed to slow down a bit now.

“Fuck you!” A shrunken woman screamed angrily, still retching at the rank smells carried up from Alessia’s digestive system by her unrestrained belch. “You just ate my fiancé, bitch!”

The normal-sized girl’s smile froze and got a much more dismissive quality as she furrowed her brows. “Well, and now I’m gonna eat you.” She stated in a matter-of-fact sort of tone and shrugged, her lips parting again as she pushed the slice of pizza into her mouth.

“Stop! I’ve got noth…” A shrunken man began, silenced by Alessia’s lips closing behind him.

Taking her time to chew thoroughly this time round, she smirked a little as she felt three tiny bodies consecutively getting caught between her molars and ground into pulp as she bit down on them. Finally, Alessia took another sip of her lemonade and washed the masticated paste in her mouth down, the feeling of the bolus travelling down her oesophagus vanishing behind her breasts. Then she finished the third slice of her pizza, her healthy teeth easily tearing apart the grilled remains of some more shrunken people before her oesophagus claimed them with yet another greedy gulp. Wiping some of the grease off her lips, Alessia then licked it off her fingertips and lowered her hand to the wooden board again, reaching for the next slice.

***

Stefan whimpered as Alessia’s gigantic hand reached down and cast a dark shadow over the board again, her hand grabbing the crust of the slice next to him. With a wet smacking noise, the slices began to tear apart, creating short-lived strings of molten cheese that tore apart after another couple of seconds, when the fourth slice was lifted up high into the air above them. Trying his utmost to block out the desperate cries of the two tinies trapped on that particular slice as they approached Alessia’s all-consuming mouth, Stefan pulled himself forward again, only just about managing to disentangle his legs from the sticky cheese that clung to his black overalls like some kind of glue. Every time he suddenly felt himself sink into the sticky goop, he feared that this was it, that he would end up stuck in place now like most of the other tinies on the pizza. This would mean that he would have to watch on helplessly as Alessia ate one slice after the other, slowly approaching until it was his turn to be eaten.

When the girl had sat down on the bed a couple of minutes earlier, Stefan had been amongst the tinies who had been catapulted out of their cubicles and landed on Alessia’s mattress. He had been caught completely off guard by this, and unlike some of the others, he hadn’t even really tried to run away, not sure what exactly had happened when his friend’s giant fingers had closed around him. After a few anxious moments in which he already had feared to be tossed into her mouth and swallowed, Alessia had dropped him and the others onto her pizza instead, where he had landed in the middle of an oversized piece of salami. Knowing that he wouldn’t be safe there, Stefan had jumped down into the swamp of molten cheese all around, trying to work his way towards the crust and off the pizza again. And although he now was in constant fear of getting stuck for good, he still was glad that he had made that decision, since the piece of salami he had landed on now disappeared in between Alessia’s lips. Along with it also disappeared the other two tinies who had happened to get stuck on that particular slice, and Stefan knew that it was down to sheer dumb luck that his friend hadn’t eaten him already.

Still crawling across the warm, squishy surface that gave off a sickeningly intense smell of cheese, oregano and tomato sauce, Stefan tried to focus only on the bread crust on the horizon, stretching along the edge of the cheese desert like a distant mountain range. What he tried to ignore in particular was the ceaseless screaming and crying of the other shrunken people on the pizza, Alessia’s noisy chewing and swallowing, and the sight of the red-to-black, charred corpses littering the landscape around him. But after pulling himself further across the sticky expanse for a few moments, wiping warm tomato sauce out of his face whenever it squirted out from below, he suddenly came across a shrunken girl stuck in the yellow goop.

“Vanessa?” He asked cautiously, once more not recognising her right away.

“Wha…?” The girl began, turning around to him.

Stefan winced a little when he saw her face. Just like before, she looked very different from her usual self, wearing black Vortex overalls, with her hair dishevelled and covered in cheese and tomato sauce. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and her skin had a strange pink discoloration in most places, along with dozens of painful looking blisters. Stefan had no idea how she had survived being put in an oven for five full minutes, but quite evidently, she was still alive. Not that either of them would be much longer if they didn’t get off this pizza soon.

“It’s me, Stefan.” He said gently, pulling himself towards her. He knew that this was going to cost him precious time, but he couldn’t just leave her here. “I’ll help you get out of this.”

“No.” Vanessa shook her head, her burnt cheeks moist with tears. “You got to save yourself.”

The shrunken boy hesitated for a moment. He knew she was right and that he had no time to lose, but the answer still caught him off guard. “Vanessa, there’s got to be a way, we jus…”

“You got to get out of here. You and Nico.” The girl replied weakly.

“Nico?” Stefan asked, looking around. To his dismay, he saw Alessia throw the last piece of pizza crust into her mouth and start to chew. “Where is he?” He turned back to Vanessa with a sudden sense of urgency. “Tell me now, Vanessa. Where is Nico?”

She suddenly looked up at him, a hopeful glimmer in her tearful eyes. “He escaped.”

“He… escaped?” Stefan repeated, finding this difficult to believe after all he had seen today.

“Yes.” Vanessa nodded with a sad smile. “He fell off the pizza. He’s going to make it.”

The other tiny didn’t say anything, his eyes widening with fear instead as Alessia swallowed the last mouthful of pizza and began extending her right hand toward the board again. Feeling his heartbeat intensify yet again, he anxiously gazed at Vanessa. On the one hand, he wanted to turn around and crawl away as fast as he could, on the other hand, he simply couldn’t just abandon her like that. How would he be able to look at himself in the mirror again, even if he somehow ended up surviving this ordeal? Stefan simply stared at Vanessa’s battered face again as Alessia’s hand cast another dark shadow across the pizza. Then a powerful jolt went through the slice they were lying on and it was slowly lifted up from the board. Again, Stefan heard the soft smack of the molten cheese tearing apart along the edges of the slice. Without even knowing it, Alessia had solved his dilemma for him. He was going to stay with Vanessa. And get eaten up along with her in the progress. It was all over now.

No. Stefan suddenly thought to himself. This isn’t over yet. We’re not going to die like this.

Collecting all his remaining strength for one last act of defiance against his impending doom, Stefan inhaled and looked around. The slice of pizza had left the board completely behind by now, flying towards Alessia’s impossibly large body. She was sitting cross-legged and leaned against her pillow, her attention completely focused on the series she had been watching all this time. Stefan’s attention, on the other hand, was immediately drawn towards her tan, bare midriff, her taut belly gently moving a little as she calmy breathed in and out. He had always admired Alessia’s flat tummy, but up until today, he would never have thought that he might meet his demise in there, digested by a close friend he had known for his entire life. But there was one last chance to keep this from happening. He readied himself as the giant pizza slice was lifted up further, now passing by her tight-fitting black top. Despite the severity of their situation, it was a slightly awkward moment, and Stefan still found himself bashfully averting his eyes as his friend’s cleavage filled out his entire field of view for a second or two, turning back only when her neck and her face came into view. Seeing Alessia’s familiar face blown up to such incomprehensible proportions made this entire situation even more bizarre than it already was anyway. Despite all that had happened over the course of this day, Stefan’s brain still wasn’t able to comprehend that this towering, all-devouring monster and his childhood friend were the same person. And yet, he still understood that he was just seconds away from being eaten by Alessia. Mustering all his courage, he began to yell as loud as he could.

“ALESSIA!” Stefan screamed at the top of his lungs. “IT’S US, STEFAN AND VANESSA! WE’RE ON YOUR PIZZA! DON’T EAT US! PLEASE, WE’RE DOWN HERE!”

Just in that moment, there was a hard cut to a loud battle scene on the screen, fully drowning out his miniscule voice, and even making Alessia flinch. Slightly grimacing, she leaned over towards the laptop to turn down the volume, lowering the pizza down to her cleavage for just a short moment. Stefan blushed a little again as he stared right down at the giantess’ breasts, but then was distracted by a splat from behind him, not unlike the sound of the cheese tearing apart whenever Alessia had picked up another slice of pizza. Turning around to see what had happened, his eyes widened as he saw that one of the pieces of salami had come lose and was sliding across the sloped surface of the pizza, coming right at him. Stefan felt a surge of panic swell up inside him and glanced over at Vanessa again, but before either she or he could say anything, the oversized piece of salami suddenly slammed into him from the side.

The next few moments were a complete blur. The piece of salami had basically run him over like a freight train, and Stefan had become trapped underneath it, being rolled around his own axis so rapidly that he almost lost consciousness. Then he suddenly found himself in freefall before landing on a warm, soft surface just a mere split second later. Thankfully, it cushioned his fall perfectly, not only absorbing the force of the impact, but even making him bounce off a little again before he slipped down into some kind of crevice. It was only there that Stefan began to feel a sudden sense of claustrophobia, slipping deeper and deeper until he was fully surrounded by the oddly squishy material. Maybe he had fallen between two pillows. But no matter where he was, he was still in danger. Not only did it feel like he was being smothered the further he sank into the crevice, as Stefan looked up towards the only remaining source of light, he suddenly saw the giant piece of salami sliding down towards him again. Only when it apparently didn’t fit into the crevice any further, it finally came to a complete halt around a head’s length above him, but although it no longer posed a threat, it now blocked his way out.

“Shit.” Alessia’s voice then sounded from above, reverberating through his surroundings.

All of a sudden, the piece of salami was lifted up, and Stefan found himself staring at Alessia again. The perspective was quite distorted from his point of view, but he clearly was looking up at her, having a clear view of her from the shoulders upwards. His view was only limited by the two mountainous protrusions pressing down on him from his left and right, which, judging from his point of view, had to be… Stefan gasped, realising that he had fallen into Alessia’s cleavage, and that he was fighting against being squished between her breasts.

“Ugh, now I got sauce on my boobs.” The girl whined, wiping some red tomato sauce off the gently wobbling mounds to his left and right, and then licking it off her fingers.

She didn’t see me. Stefan thought to himself. She doesn’t know I’m in here!

High above, Alessia casually popped the piece of salami into her mouth and chewed for just a couple of seconds before swallowing. Stefan heard a loud gulping sound and then observed a gentle contraction in the giantess’ throat, and although he couldn’t be sure, he imagined that he could almost feel something travel down Alessia’s oesophagus right below him just a few moments later. Then there was an ominous, wet gurgle from somewhere below, which again seemed to reverberate throughout the entire massive organism. Scared out of his mind by the literally tangible power of Alessia’s vast body, Stefan remained entirely still, not even daring to wipe some of the sweat running down his forehead. And so he could only watch helplessly as the girl turned her attention back to her pizza and opened her mouth, biting off a piece just a little short from where he and Vanessa had been located on the slice. Once more, his giant friend chewed noisily for a couple of seconds and swallowed. Again, Stefan could almost feel the bolus of food travel down into her belly. And then, the giantess ate the rest of the slice.

Alessia smacked her lips again and audibly continued to chew for what felt like an eternity to Stefan. Then she reached for her cup of lemonade again and took another sip, washing down the contents of her mouth with a big gulp. Stefan’s eyes began to blur, tears freely beginning to flow down his cheeks. Trembling, he carefully put his hand against Alessia’s warm skin as the chewed lump of food containing whatever was left of Vanessa passed down below him, forever disappearing into the murky depths of the giant girl’s digestive system.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, trying to cry silently so that Alessia wouldn’t hear him.

***

Anxiously closing her eyes and quietly praying to herself that Alessia would notice them as Stefan began to call out the giantess’ name, Vanessa breathed in and made another attempt to free herself from the gooey molten cheese. She considered calling out as well, but feared that this would make their tiny voices less intelligible, and therefore left it to Stefan to draw their enormous classmate’s attention. It likely would be better anyway if Alessia recognised him first, since Vanessa had no doubt that she would help him if she realised who he was – as for herself, she wasn’t just as sure. She had no personal problem with the German-Italian girl, but she was aware that Alessia and Nico didn’t like each other, and in this situation, that wouldn’t be helpful. Nico. She wondered what had happened after he had fallen off the pizza. The drop down to the kitchen counter hadn’t been particularly far, so he had to be still alive.

However, it seemed that she would indeed never be reunited with her boyfriend, or even learn how his story continued from this point on. All that was left for her now was to pray that he had survived and would live on to remember her. Because now, her last faint hope of getting out of this nightmare in one piece was shattered as some loud noise from Alessia’s laptop drowned out Stefan’s voice. Suddenly, the giantess leaned over forward to adjust the volume, the slice of pizza with the two tinies on it dangerously tilting towards her breasts. Behind her shrunken classmate, Vanessa already could see some of the viscous oil starting to slowly run down the slanted surface of the slice. But before she could even open her mouth to warn him of the imminent danger, a piece of salami suddenly came loose and slipped towards them like a rock sliding down a mountain face on an avalanche. Stefan too heard something and turned around, his eyes widening as he saw the giant piece of meat heading towards them. He looked at her again for just a split second, but before he could say anything, the salami slammed into him from the side and carried him away along with it, falling off the pizza moments later.

“Stefan!” Vanessa blurted out incredulously, not being able to see where they had fallen.

High above, Alessia leaned back in her pillow and looked down at herself, looking confused. “Shit.” She muttered to herself and picked up the piece of salami, the giant piece of meat that had just easily taken Stefan with it now looking strangely small between her fingers.

“Alessia!” Vanessa called out hoarsely, desperately trying to pull her arms out of the molten cheese. “Don’t…” She coughed, spitting out tomato sauce again. “Don’t eat that! Stefan is…”

“Ugh, now I got sauce on my boobs.” The giant girl said to herself and frowned as she looked down at her cleavage again. Wiping away the red sauce she had inadvertently spilled onto her breasts, she quickly licked it off her fingertips and then threw the salami into her mouth.

“No! Wait…” Vanessa cried out again, more tears beginning to run down her face as Alessia started to chew. A few seconds later, the colossal girl swallowed easily. “Oh my God…”

There was another wet rumble from Alessia’s belly as it eagerly welcomed the newest arrival of food in her digestive tract, then the giantess’ beautiful brown eyes focused on the slice of pizza again. To Vanessa, it almost felt like she was looking at her, but she was aware that she hadn’t actually seen her. Nevertheless, it made her think of all the times she had talked to her, been recognised as a fellow human being by her. The last real conversation between them had been during a group project for their English class, and she recalled some of the people in her clique expressing their ‘condolences’ for Vanessa being grouped with the school’s queen bee. A lot of the less popular pupils tended to think of Alessia as arrogant, and while she could be aloof and a bit snarky at times, she had never been disrespectful towards her and always did her part in any assignments she was given. Vanessa had always felt a little intimidated by her even back when they both had been normal-sized, but unlike Nico, she didn’t dislike Alessia. To think that she was now going to be eaten by her seemed too surreal to be true.

Nevertheless, it was exactly what was going to happen now. Vanessa whimpered as the giant girl opened her mouth once more, feeling her warm breath blow into her face. It was terribly humid and gave off the same intense smell of cheese and oregano as the pizza she was on.

“Alessia, please…” Vanessa cried, struggling to wipe the tears out her eyes as they began to cloud up her vision. Not even in the oven had she been so afraid. “Please don’t eat me.”

The gargantuan mouth opened further, now filling out the shrunken girl’s entire field of view. It looked like a vast cave of slimy, pink-red flesh, glistening with spit. The organic grotto was framed by perfectly symmetric, pearly white teeth, each one of them large enough to maim or crush Vanessa’s shrunken body with ease. The bottom of the apparent cave consisted of a massive red tongue, covered over and over in slime and chewed-up pieces of pizza, some of which also still stuck to the chewing surfaces of Alessia’s molars. The tongue kept moving in between the giantess’ sharp teeth like some kind of alien snail, now gently extending towards the slice of pizza as if to welcome it and Vanessa to their journey into the depths of Alessia’s body. Gooey strings of saliva stretched between the tongue and the girl’s palate, soon tearing apart as the giantess’ mouth opened even further. The light falling into the fleshy cavern now also illuminated the very back of her throat, where Alessia’s uvula ominously dangled above the entrance to a visceral abyss of undulating flesh. If Vanessa’s assumption had been correct, Stefan already had disappeared into that organic chasm, literally swallowed up by it, never to be seen ever again. To think that he and Alessia had been close friends their whole lives…

All of a sudden, Alessia’s massive front teeth snapped down just an arm’s length away from Vanessa, brutally cutting into the molten cheese and pizza dough. Oil and tomato sauce came squirting out of the area where the slice had been severed in two, the force of the bite tangible throughout the ground beneath Vanessa. This violent jolt, and Vanessa jerking back in shock, suddenly allowed her to break free of the molten cheese, rolling over on her back as Alessia’s mouth retreated backwards for the time being. While she had almost come to accept her fate a few minutes ago, the sight of her giant classmate’s maw and the feeling of her hot breath on her face had now filled Vanessa with a renewed sense of pure dread. Her survival instincts were beginning to take over, and she rolled over on her belly, gasping as she began to crawl across the pizza surface again. She didn’t even know where exactly she was going. She only wanted to get away from Alessia’s mouth. She wanted to live, and see Nico one more time.

Behind her, the female colossus continued to chew, the sound of her teeth smashing down on her food and the greedy smacks of her lips ringing in Vanessa’s ears as she desperately pulled herself forward. Then, there was another gulp, and the shrunken girl instinctively knew that time was up. Freezing in place and closing her eyes as her tears began to drip onto the gooey cheese below her, the shrunken girl let out an anguished whimper as she heard Alessia’s lips part behind her with a wet smack again. Then she felt another blast of humid heat wash over her body from behind, and a dark shadow being cast over her. All around her, she could feel Alessia’s lips and teeth pass by her as the pizza was pushed into the girl’s mouth. And just a few moments later, she found herself looking out into her classmate’s room from inside the organic cavern, her field of view constricted by two menacing rows of teeth. From above, spit dripped down onto Vanessa’s head from Alessia’s palate, and from the sides and below, even more saliva began to soak into the pizza dough. The last thing Vanessa would ever see of the outside world was her classmate’s bed, with a half-eaten pizza and her laptop in front of her, and the posters and shelves on her wall. Then Alessia’s teeth closed in front of her, biting off the slice she was lying on and sealing her in perfect darkness.

When the giant girl’s incisors mercilessly severed the bite of pizza Vanessa was now a part of, she was thrown backwards all of a sudden and landed on her tongue, viscous saliva squirting out of the bumpy tastebuds. Vanessa gasped, inadvertently inhaling the warm and unbearably moist air along with some spit. She instantly started coughing, spitting out the sticky fluid, and tried to wipe it off her face, only covering herself in even more slime. Being stuck in the molten cheese had been messy enough already, but here inside Alessia’s mouth, absolutely everything was covered in spit and organic goo. And as if this wasn’t bad enough already, all of Vanessa’s surroundings kept moving constantly, and she couldn’t see a thing.

“No.” She spluttered, coughing up more of her classmate’s pizza-induced spit. “No, no, no!”

Slipping across Alessia’s tongue, Vanessa bumped against what felt like wet rocks, though it was perfectly clear to her that these were the girl’s teeth. Merely a second later, the tiny could hear and feel an unbelievably powerful smash as Alessia’s upper molars slammed down onto the lower ones. A wet splat echoed through the fleshy cave as dough, cheese and salami were effortlessly flattened between the girl’s teeth. But before Vanessa was able to even begin to understand how close she had come to being pulverised, she was violently tossed across the tongue again like some miniature ragdoll, this time coming dangerously close to Alessia’s left canine as it cut into another lump of dough and cheese. Finding herself caught in a constantly shifting mush of masticated pizza and spit, all Vanessa could do was draw breath whenever she happened to be not submerged in the thick mass for a moment. But the forces around her were several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything she had ever experienced, and she had absolutely no way of putting up any meaningful resistance to what was happening.

Again and Again, Alessia’s molars came hammering down on the pulpified mass of pizza in her mouth, very nearly missing Vanessa’s tiny body several times over. At one point, her face was only a hand’s width away from the giantess’ teeth as they crushed the charred corpse of one of the tinies who had been burnt to death in the oven, shattering it into thousands of splinters. Vanessa inadvertently ended up swallowing some of these herself as she gasped for air, accidentally inhaling more spit and pizza mush as well in the process. Too busy to not drown in her classmate’s saliva, Vanessa didn’t even take note of this, instead flailing around helplessly as she was thrown across the tongue yet again, landing on one of Alessia’s molars. Some part of her hoped for the upper molars to smash down onto her, obliterating her in an instant, but it was not to be. Instead, Vanessa was now sucked towards the tongue again by a strong current of saliva. Then there was another smashing sound as Alessia’s teeth bit down yet again, only this time, it was accompanied by a sharp pain as Vanessa’s left lower leg was caught in between the enormous molars. The shrunken girl screamed out in agony, realising that her lower leg hadn’t just been severed, but instantly ground into a pulp of meat and bone.

Nearly passing out due to the excruciating pain, Vanessa finally was deposited on the back of Alessia’s tongue, hearing the giantess bite down two or three more times before the chewing stopped all of a sudden. The utter chaos gave way to a strange few moments of relative calm, in which Vanessa laboriously wiped some of the masticated slop off her face again and let out a series of tortured sobs. The intense throbbing pain where once her left knee had been was unbearable, though for some reason, her body simply refused to let her lose consciousness.

“Just... let me die.” She panted, clumsily continuing to wipe spit and pizza bits off her face.

While she couldn’t see anything in the darkness that surrounded her, she still knew that she was very close to the edge of Alessia’s throat, feeling a sickeningly humid blast of hot air hit her face again as the girl exhaled. As before, it smelled intensely of cheese, tomato sauce and oregano, but there was another, even more menacing note in it, a faint whiff of acid. And then, light suddenly poured into the fleshy cavern again, though Vanessa almost wished that it had simply stayed dark, as she now found herself staring right at the back of Alessia’s throat. She was even closer to her gullet than she had thought, mere centimetres from slipping into the gaping maw below. The giant girl’s uvula was gloomily dangling almost right above her, as if pointing down into the black abyss to taunt her regarding her impending fate.

Vanessa let out a fearful moan and turned around, glancing down her body for a moment. Her black overalls were partially torn and completely soaked with spit, as well as covered in slime and chewed-up pizza bits. But what was worse than anything else was the sight of her left leg, which had been cleanly severed right at the height of her knee, oozing red blood onto the wet tongue. Whimpering to herself, she looked away and painstakingly turned towards Alessia’s half-open mouth, squinting at the glaring light falling in from the outside. Just as her eyes had managed to adjust to the brightness, however, a torrent of clear liquid came pouring in from beyond the girl’s lips, carrying the chewed-up pizza pulp towards her like a tsunami.

“Oh God.” She whispered to herself, the torrent reaching her just a split second later.

The shrunken girl felt a fierce wave of cold lemonade smash against her body, then she was simply carried away by the violent current, which soon turned into a roaring waterfall when it splashed over the back of Alessia’s tongue. Passing by the young giantess’ uvula and tonsils, Vanessa looked down, letting out a panicked gasp as she gazed down into the colossal throat that would now swallow her. There was an exceptionally powerful, wet gulping noise, and Vanessa’s ears popped as the air pressure suddenly changed around her. Rushing downwards with the tsunami of lemonade and masticated pizza, she could see Alessia’s epiglottis rush to close her windpipe and protect it from any foreign objects entering her respiratory system. It left Vanessa with only one way to go from here: Down into the girl’s gaping oesophagus, a dark tunnel of undulating flesh that now greedily slurped her in as she was swallowed alive.

***

Alessia swallowed the mouthful of pizza with a gulp of lemonade, leaning back in her pillow as she felt the lump slide down her throat, being deposited in her stomach a few seconds later. She looked down at the board and the remaining three slices, and decided to eat a few tinies from the box now. There still was around half of them left, and now that her stomach was a bit fuller, they wouldn’t tickle too much even if she swallowed them whole. So she took the box and placed it on her gurgling belly, tearing off the remaining plastic foil and crumpling it into a ball. Since she felt too lazy to get up again just to throw it away, she eyed the trash can next to her desk for a moment and then just threw the crumpled ball towards it. Interestingly enough, it landed right in the middle of the bin, something Alessia hadn’t actually expected to happen. Raising her eyebrows in mild surprise, she nodded appreciatively and then turned her attention back to her series. The noisy battle scene was over by now and the story had moved on to some more subdued dialogue between two of the main characters, so that she felt safe enough to turn up the volume a little again as she leaned forward and fished one of the tinies out of the box. This shrunken man didn’t even bother to beg for his life. Instead, he just kept hurling insults at Alessia while she opened her mouth and popped him inside. She was about to swallow him when her phone, which she had placed on her nightstand when she had gotten changed earlier, started ringing. Checking out the caller ID, Alessia saw that it was Tanja.

She swallowed the squirming tiny in her mouth and picked up the phone, tapping the pause button on her laptop as she accepted the video call. “Yeah? What do you want?” Alessia then asked a little impatiently as her blonde friend appeared on her phone’s screen.

“Mh.” Tanja began, sucking a pair of kicking little legs in between her lips. “Thewe yow aw.” She said, swallowing the tiny in her mouth with a soft gulp. “I’ve been meaning to call you.”

“Which you are doing now.” Alessia said, expecting her to explain why she was calling.

“Yes.” Her friend smiled happily, walking around in the kitchen of her family’s home.

“What do you want, Tanja?” The black-haired girl groaned. “I’m watching something.”

Tanja frowned. “You’re not being very nice to me.” She pouted with faux indignance.

“Of course I am being nice to you.” Alessia protested, furrowing her brows.

“And now you’re gaslighting me.” Tanja admonished her with a subtle smirk. “I don’t know, I’ve been getting lots of passive-aggressive vibes from you lately. Is this about that American dude I made out with the other day?”

“Uh, no?” Alessia said, looking confused for a moment before remembering what Tanja was referring to. “But now that you mention it: Don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“Josie and I are more like… friends with benefits.” The blonde replied evasively.

“Does she know that?” The German-Italian girl asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course she does.” Tanja replied, sounding shocked. Then she flipped another screaming tiny into her mouth and swallowed. “You’re making me sound like a terrible person!”

Alessia shrugged, reaching into her box of tinies and lifting a shrunken woman to her mouth. “I mean, it’s none of my business. Just don’t hurt her, okay? She’s a nice girl.”

“I’m not.” Tanja shook her head, now looking somewhat more serious. “Josie knows we’re not exclusive.” She said before changing the topic: “Hey, I see you got yourself some Vortex!”

“Yeah. So did you, apparently.” Alessia said, placing the miniaturised woman in between her lips before easily sucking her into her mouth and swallowing her down.

“Oh, these? No. I’m just cleaning up the house. I had a little… incident a few weeks ago and some of them got away.” She explained, looking a little gloomy. Then she seemed to pick up another shrunken person from somewhere outside of her phone camera’s field of view, lifting the crying little woman to her face and smiling at her. “But you stuck around, didn’t you?”

“Uh, Tanja…” Alessia began, realising that her friend was drifting off into Tanjaland again.

“Oh, don’t cry now, Michelle.” The blonde cooed as she raised the sobbing tiny over her face. “You knew this was going to happen sooner or later. It’ll be over soon, I promise.” She said, her voice cracking a bit as she opened her mouth. Dropping the shrunken woman inside, she swallowed gently and then wiped away a tear from the corner of her eye.

“Are you crying?” Her friend asked incredulously. “What was that all about?”

“Sorry. That was a very emotio…” Tanja replied, interrupting herself as she raised her hand to her mouth and let out a short belch. “… emotional reunion for us. We went way back.”

“Right.” Alessia stated dryly. “So, why is it you’re calling me?”

“Yes, I should let you get back to it.” Her friend said. “I wanted to ask if I could borrow your history notes. I figured I maybe actually should study for that test on Wednesday. I was going to ask Stefan, but he was ill or something, and Jessica didn’t have hers with her today.”

“Uh, sure. Just come around anytime you want tomorrow, I’m not going anywhere. Only my morning run at six.” Alessia explained, eating another shrunken man from her box.

“Yeah, I won’t be awake that early, girl. Not on a Saturday.” Tanja laughed.

Alessia grinned. “Didn’t think so.”

“Anyway, thanks. See you tomorrow. Enjoy your evening, sweetie!” Her friend said, waving her goodbye as she started walking up the stairs to her room again.

“You too. Bye.” The black-haired girl said with an amicable smile, and then hung up.

Just when she was about to put her phone back on her nightstand, Alessia thought about what Tanja had mentioned. She hadn’t been in school all day because of her swim training and the exam later in the afternoon, but she was sorry to hear that Stefan apparently was unwell. For a brief moment, she considered calling him to check in on him, but then she decided against it. They had agreed for her to call him tomorrow anyway, and if he was ill, he most likely just wanted to be left alone. So she opened her messenger app and went to her ongoing chat with Stefan, typing up a short message to ask how he was doing.

hey! tanja said you were ill today. hope it’s not too bad? lmk if you wanna talk! <3

Alessia waited for a couple of moments in case he replied immediately, but when it appeared that this was not going to be the case, she shrugged and put her phone away. She would just phone him tomorrow and see how he was doing then. Letting out a soft sigh, she grabbed her paper cup and took another big gulp, feeling the cold liquid run down her throat. Since all of the live tinies on the pizza had been eaten, she fished a few more out of the box and sprinkled them onto the remaining pieces, then picked up another slice and brought it to her mouth.

***

Following the violent chaos and mayhem that came with being eaten alive, the journey down Alessia’s oesophagus felt almost anticlimactic to Vanessa. It wasn’t a pleasant experience by any means, but after being tossed around in her classmate’s mouth and almost being crushed to death between her teeth, it was much more straightforward. In fact, the slow descent down into Alessia’s body had an almost serene, otherworldly quality to it. For just a short moment, Vanessa had even wondered if she had indeed died in the giantess’ mouth and was now being ferried towards the afterlife through some kind of eldritch tunnel. But the slimy texture of the oesophageal walls and the peristaltic contractions, the regular thump of Alessia’s heartbeat, and the throbbing pain in her left leg were all harsh reminders that Vanessa was still very much alive, and currently sliding down into the giant girl’s belly. Soon, she would arrive in Alessia’s stomach, to be digested by her classmate while awake and conscious. There were few ways to die Vanessa imagined to be worse. Not only would it be extremely painful, but it would also not be instant, a slow, undignified death as her body was molten down and turned into nutrition for the girl that had eaten her. And sometime tomorrow, Alessia would shit out whatever remained of Vanessa after spending the night inside her digestive tract.

This can’t be happening. The shrunken girl thought to herself as another powerful contraction of the surrounding muscles pushed her down deeper. This must be some kind of nightmare.

Almost gliding downward along the slick, warm walls of the giantess’ oesophagus, Vanessa was unable to see anything in the absolute darkness. But instead, she could virtually feel what was happening around her. Just above her, the bolus of chewed-up pizza was travelling down in the same direction as her, having dropped into the oesophagus just a moment after her. The torrent of lemonade that had washed her down had flowed passed her by now, vanishing into the dark abyss below. And through the fleshy walls constricting around her aching body, she could hear, even sense the calm beat of Alessia’s heart. Since the girl who had eaten Vanessa was an extremely fit athlete, now relaxing as she ate her dinner, her heartbeat was quite slow, giving it a strangely calming, almost hypnotic quality. Further adding to this almost soothing soundscape was Alessia’s tranquil breathing, a sound of powerful lungs to Vanessa’s left and right drawing in vast amounts of oxygen before gently forcing out equally large quantities of carbon dioxide. Vanessa couldn’t tell for sure, but to her, it indeed sounded like the breathing of a top swimmer, far more controlled and efficient than that of a regular person like herself.

But the thought of being inside the body of an athlete like Alessia caused her own breathing to become hectic and shallow once more. Being trapped inside these cramped, hot and humid confines made breathing difficult enough, but thinking about Alessia’s fitness and health also served as another reminder that the girl’s organism would make short work of her. Not short enough to be quick and painless, but to leave very little, if anything of her that wouldn’t just be absorbed into Alessia. Perhaps there would be nothing left of Vanessa at all when this was all over. Perhaps she would just vanish, burned off as nothing more than a miniscule amount of energy to be used by her classmate. Perhaps that was going to be her ultimate fate.

“Let me out.” Vanessa cried, feebly pressing her hands against the pulsating wet flesh.

Unable to fight her unstoppable descent, the girl closed her eyes as Alessia’s heartbeat grew almost unbearably loud, hammering into her head with such an intensity that it overpowered even her own thoughts. She tried to scream, feeling as if her very soul was being torn apart and absorbed into the slimy organic tissue around her. But all she managed to produce was a pathetic gargling sound that simply bounced off the powerful muscles clamping down on her. Again, the peristaltic movements forced her deeper, and suddenly, Vanessa began to feel as if she was being buried alive. Buried underneath layers of flesh, muscles and tendons, within a living mountain. Her head began to spin, only adding to her profound sense of disorientation. The only thing Vanessa still could make sense of was where up and down was, and that, judging from the thumping heartbeat next to her, she had to be somewhere inside Alessia’s chest. Somewhere behind those voluptuous breasts so many envied and admired.

Finally, the oppressively strong heartbeat became a little weaker again, but the price for this apparently was that the air inside the oesophagus became even more hot and rank. Whenever Vanessa tried to inhale, it felt like she was just sucking in some kind of thick gas, filled with little droplets of hot spit and slime. She coughed and spasmed, trying to claw her hands into the oesophageal walls again, but since absolutely everything, including herself, was covered in gelatinous slime, it was impossible to get a hold of anything. And so Vanessa continued to slip deeper and deeper into the darkness, until the flesh tube she was travelling through began to slope sidewards. Now sliding down an extremely steep incline, still being pushed forward by the impatient peristalsis, the shrunken girl started to hyperventilate once more. Her arms and her remaining leg began to cramp as raw panic started to squeeze her chest. Trembling so badly that it would have looked like a seizure to an outside observer, Vanessa slammed into a tightly shut ring of muscles. Only a split second later, the powerful sphincter opened up with a moist smacking noise and began to suck her in, its tight muscles nearly crushing her chest.

The shrunken girl howled in pain, only for a wet lump of chewed-up pizza dough and cheese to drop onto her from above and forcing her upper body through the ring of muscles as well. For just a moment, Vanessa feared that her aching body was going to implode under the raw pressure, but then she was forced through to the other side of the sphincter and quite literally spat into a gigantic organic cavern. She still couldn’t see a thing, but nevertheless, she once more found herself wishing that she would have just lost consciousness or been crushed by Alessia’s teeth earlier. The moment she found herself in freefall again, her eyes immediately began to burn, and when she inhaled, it felt as if her airways had been lit on fire. Vanessa felt nothing but raw pain as she plummeted through thick fumes of digestive gasses, her already burnt skin flaring up with searing agony as it came into contact with the invisible clouds. The stench inside this place, which she knew at the back of her mind to be Alessia’s stomach, was unlike anything her olfactory senses had ever dealt with before. It was unbearable blend of vomit, the ingredients of the pizza the girl was eating, and hydrochloric acid.

Along with the burning pain on her skin and her maddening fear at what was going to happen now, this infernal smell sent Vanessa’s body into convulsions again. And so she regrettably gasped for air once more just when she splashed into the churning soup of digesting food and lemonade. Her mouth and nose immediately began to fill with what essentially was a mixture of lemonade and Alessia’s stomach juices, along with some smaller pieces of digesting pizza and shrunken human beings like herself. But just when Vanessa thought that she was going to drown, a massive object smashed onto the surface of the digestive stew above her, displacing large amounts of liquid and sending a tidal wave rippling through the stomach. Vanessa was caught in the shockwave, aimlessly kicking around herself as she was smashed against one of the soft stomach walls. Then she realised that her head was no longer below the waterline and took a deep breath as she instinctively tried to fill her lungs with oxygen.

Instead of being rewarded with cool, fresh air as she would have been if she had simply fallen into a lake or the ocean, Vanessa once more inhaled the acidic fumes and the disgusting smell of digesting pizza. Her airways flared up with searing pain yet again and the muscles within her battered body cramped up once more. She wanted to scream, but instead of giving voice to her pain and agony, her body expelled the contents of her own stomach in a concentrated jet of hot vomit, mixing with some metallic-tasting blood that had begun to ooze out of slight ruptures in her airways. All of this soon blended into the thick sea of puke Vanessa was now swimming in, and when she had finally emptied herself, the shrunken girl gradually began to calm down just a little. Bumping into what appeared to be a piece of chewed-up salami as she aimlessly drifted through the bubbling soup, Vanessa held onto it to keep herself from being sucked down into the depth below again by the swirling currents and vortices around her.

She had been eaten. This was the inside of Alessia’s stomach, and for all intents and purposes, there was no difference anymore between Vanessa and the piece of salami she was clinging to as if it was some kind of life raft. She was nothing than a piece of meat inside the stomach of her classmate, about to be digested over the course of the next few hours. Unable to see in the darkness around her, and with her olfactory senses overpowered by the acrid stench, the shrunken girl only had her hearing left to make sense of her alien surroundings. Somewhere high above her, she could still hear Alessia’s mighty heartbeat and breathing, but the sound was not as loud as it had been in her oesophagus. Now, the soundscape was dominated by the menacing gurgles and groans of her classmate’s stomach, supplemented by a moist slithering noise coming from the slippery walls as they kept contracting and expanding. For Vanessa, these movements translated into choppy waves shaking her around with her piece of chewed salami. Had it not been for the warmth and density of the broth she was drifting through, she could almost have told herself that she was a castaway out on the open sea.

But she wasn’t. Somewhere above her, there was a powerful gulping sound, and just a couple of seconds later, Vanessa could hear the cardia open up once more, accompanied by a greedy wet smack. Then she suddenly heard a man crying out as if in pain, the sound of his agonised voice rapidly descending down towards the digesting swamp. It was cut off by a splash as he fell into the thick soup of disintegrating food and stomach juices somewhere to Vanessa’s left, leaving her to wonder if he was going to make it up above the surface again. She would never find out, because now, the giant body surrounding her shifted just a little and then was shaken by a loud, but also strangely muffled noise that Vanessa couldn’t make sense of at first. Only when she recognised the cadence of Alessia’s voice did she understand that the giantess was talking to someone. Strangely enough, however, she couldn’t hear anyone reply, even though it definitely sounded as if Alessia was having a conversation. For a while, Vanessa listened to the voice echoing through the body around her, trying to understand what she was saying.

But although she eventually heard another female voice from somewhere beyond the confines of Alessia’s belly, it wasn’t loud enough for her to identify as belonging to anyone she knew. Vanessa found herself trembling again. The fact that she was unable to understand what the booming voice was saying gave it an especially ominous and threatening quality, almost as if her classmate were some kind of ancient titan mere mortals such as herself could not hope to comprehend. To make things worse, there soon was another gulp from above, again followed by the cardia opening up and spitting a wailing shrunken woman into Alessia’s stomach just a few seconds later. While the sobbing tiny splashed into the bubbling stomach juices like her predecessors, the giant girl who had eaten her simply kept talking, as if she hadn’t even really thought about the fact that she had yet again swallowed a living, breathing human being.

Vanessa shivered, trying to block out the anguished cries of the woman as she made her way back to the surface, now coughing and retching just like herself when she had arrived in here a few minutes earlier. While Vanessa wasn’t in that state of frenzied panic anymore, she too was afraid like never before in her life, her hands shaking almost uncontrollably as she tried to pull herself further up onto the piece of salami. She didn’t really know what she was trying to achieve by this, since it wasn’t going to help her get out of Alessia’s stomach. But she felt like she at least had to do something, something else than simply waiting for her classmate to digest her. Unfortunately, the soggy lump of chewed meat was unable to support her weight, sinking dangerously deep below the surface when Vanessa tried to climb onto it. Finally, she gave up on her attempts, letting her body slip into the warm, acidic stew again.

“Fuck.” She whispered to herself, frowning at the throbbing pain in the stump of her left leg flaring up once more as it was submerged beneath the surface. “It hurts so bad.”

The girl who had devoured her simply kept talking, finally swallowing something yet again. When the cardia admitted the next shrunken person to the undulating cavern, Vanessa quickly could tell from the pitch of the screams that it was a man. He too fell into the churning broth with a subdued splat and made it back to the surface a couple of moments later, crying out for help that would never come. Vanessa didn’t feel a strong urge to come to his assistance either. She barely even knew where inside Alessia’s stomach she was herself, and if she tried to help him – what would they do? The only way out of here was that tight ring of muscles, but even just getting up there was impossible. The stomach walls were slick and slimy, and even if she somehow managed to make it all the way up to the cardia and squeeze through it, she would have to climb up the walls of Alessia’s oesophagus again, and them somehow make it out of her mouth without the giant girl noticing it. No, even thinking that it was possible to escape from this place was ludicrous. Alessia’s stomach was the closest thing Vanessa could imagine to actual hell, and all who entered here ought to abandon all hope.

Even though she couldn’t see, Vanessa closed her eyes. Feeling her trembling fingers dig into the mushy piece of salami, she tried to tell herself to let go. Drowning in this rancid soup of chyme and stomach juices was going to be an agonising death, but at least it would be over in a couple of minutes. She already was suffering unbearable pain from her severed leg, and her airways burned up yet again as she inhaled more droplets of stomach acid, amounting to what felt like the most excruciating heartburn imaginable. So it seemed only reasonable to subject to a few more minutes of particularly gruesome agony, and in return find everlasting peace. Just then, Alessia also appeared to have stopped talking, leaving Vanessa listening to nothing but the steady sound of her heartbeat and breathing again, as well as the sinister gurgling and squelching of her digestive tract. Trying to focus on the sounds of the colossal organism that she was going to be absorbed into soon, Vanessa let go of the piece of salami, feeling the hot, acidic liquid wash over her face as she sank below the surface. But as she began to sink into the depths below, she was overcome by a profound, dizzying sense of dread. It was similar to the unsettling sense of vastness one got from swimming in the ocean or a deep lake, realising just how miniscule one was in comparison to the expanse and the depths around.

This sense of anxiety quickly turned into all-out panic again as Vanessa’s lungs began to cry out for oxygen. The muscles in her body began to twitch and convulse, and she found it more and more difficult to resist the urge to swim back up to the surface. But then her increasingly difficult struggle against her own survival instinct was interrupted by another loud gulp. For just a few seconds, nothing seemed to happen, then the relative calm underneath the surface was violently interrupted by a torrent of cold liquid streaming into the stomach. This resulted in a tsunami-like tidal wave that carried Vanessa along with it, smashing against the stomach walls and creating an uplift that propelled her back to the surface. Now finding herself stuck in a stomach fold, the slimy mucosa licking across her face like some kind of alien tongue as it covered her in slime and bitter acid, Vanessa gasped again. The foetid air within Alessia’s stomach made her gag once more, but it seemed she had somewhat gotten used to the stench by now, adjusting to it after a few moments of feeling the urge to throw up. Then Vanessa cried out in raw despair, pounding her fists against the slippery flesh walls of her prison.

“Why?” She cried, her voice cracking. “Why can’t you just let me die?”

Her uncaring consumer, not even remotely having heard her outcry, swallowed once more. Again, there were a few seconds in which nothing seemed to happen as the girl’s oesophagus ferried another bolus of food to its destination, then a lump of chewed-up pizza splashed into the frothing chyme. This sent another wave of thick, semi-digested stew rippling through the stomach and smash right into Vanessa’s face, leaving her coughing and spitting out chunks of Alessia’s vomit as the tide subsided again. Frantically trying to wipe pulpy puke off her, she reached into her hair, noticing that a whole bunch simply detached from her scalp as she did so. Vanessa gagged yet again, both in disgust and fear as she felt a renewed burning sensation on her skin. Her overalls had largely melted away at this point, and Alessia’s stomach acid was now getting started on eating away at her body directly. She was starting to get digested alive, fully conscious to witness the process. Letting out a bone-chilling, horrified moan, the shrunken girl tried to pull herself out of the stomach fold, which ultimately released her with a wet smacking noise. Vanessa once again started swimming through the odious liquid being churned around in her classmate’s stomach, once more trying to muster the courage to dive below the surface and hold her breath until she would lose consciousness.

But no matter how often she tried dipping her head below the surface, an intense fear of death always pulled her back, leaving her gasping for air in the caustic fog. Vanessa didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. All she longed for was to get out of this terrible place and be reunited with her beloved Nico again. It was the thought of her boyfriend that gave her perturbed mind something to focus on. What would he tell her if he were here? Surely he would not want her to just give up like this. They had had so many plans for the future. They had wanted to travel the world together, learn about other cultures. They had wanted to make a difference.

Bracing herself for the impact as Alessia swallowed again, sending another bolus of chewed pizza into the depths of her belly, Vanessa tried to keep thinking of Nico. She swam over to a lump of masticated pizza crust, holding onto it as the next bite of the giant girl’s dinner was catapulted into the stomach, creating yet another tidal wave that washed her new raft towards the stomach walls. When it bounced off the undulating mucosa and drifted back towards the centre of the gurgling swamp, she used the momentum to pull herself upwards. This time, she succeeded in pulling herself out of the chyme, slowly rolling over onto her back as she let out an exhausted groan, her thoughts still with her boyfriend. Unlike Stefan, whose masticated remains were probably floating around in the digesting broth around her, Nico had not been eaten by their classmate. He was going to make it. Even if she didn’t, that was at least some small consolation. Losing her wouldn’t be easy for him, but he would live.

Vanessa forced herself to smile, blocking out the pain for a moment. “You can do it, sweetie.”

***

Stefan panted, feeling the air being pressed out his lungs as he continued to slip deeper and deeper into the narrow space between Alessia’s breasts. By now, the gigantic mounds around had almost completely enveloped him, leaving him with little air to breathe and just a tiny bit of light falling in from above. But he couldn’t see much of his friend’s face anymore, and so had to rely on his hearing to understand what was going on around him. The dominant sound was that of Alessia’s steady heartbeat, the powerful thump of which he could actually feel on his body as it reverberated through her chest. The entire surface below him kept lifting up and down as she calmly continued to breathe in and out, and it made Stefan slightly dizzy to think that all of this vast body he was lying on was really just his old friend Alessia. Rationally, he was aware that it was her, but it still just didn’t want to sink into his mind how incredibly big she was. Or, more accurately speaking, how small he was compared to her.

And then there was another sensation he simply refused to associate with his childhood friend. That of intense fear. This colossal being had just eaten Vanessa, not to mention all those other shrunken people from the Vortex box she had already consumed. And it was only due to luck that Alessia hadn’t eaten Stefan as well. If she noticed that he was in here, it was quite likely that she would just pick him up and toss him into her mouth, swallowing him before he could even try to get through to her. Back when she had bought the box in the restaurant, Stefan had still hoped that she would recognise him. But after seeing how she had massacred dozens of shrunken people like himself already, even eaten one of their classmates, he simply didn’t dare to draw the attention of the giantess. It would probably be better to just think of her as some kind of man-eating monster, not as a girl he had known for his entire life. But this new approach had been extremely short-lived, since Alessia had soon after received a phone call from Tanja. The following conversation between the two girls had been disturbingly normal considering what Stefan had been through over the course of this day, but it also served as a painful reminder that, from Alessia’s perspective, none of this was out of the ordinary. And he himself had observed her eating shrunken people from Vortex plenty of times. He had just not assumed that he would once be one of those miniaturised people she was devouring.

When Tanja had mentioned that Stefan had apparently been ill today, he had come close to a complete mental breakdown. All he had wanted was to kick and scream, to call out to the two girls that he was right here. But he was too scared that Alessia would not realise who he was and eat him, perhaps even swallow him whole. He could just not take that risk. And so Stefan remained hidden in the depths of her cleavage, listening to her gobble up shrunken people and slices of pizza. Every time the young giantess swallowed, he could faintly hear and sense her food travelling down to her stomach below the giant collarbone he was lying on. What turned out to be particularly disturbing was that whenever she swallowed a shrunken person whole, he could even hear them screaming and crying as they slid down the oesophagus just below him, although the sound was quite weak, and often drowned out by her heartbeat. And so, he simply waited while Alessia continued to eat, slowly slipping deeper in between her breasts since he didn’t dare to move in such a way that the girl would notice him.

At some point, his friend seemed to have finished her pizza, resuming to pick up crying and begging shrunken people from the box before she flicked them into her mouth like peanuts. It was a procedure that repeated itself over and over again. But since he was paralysed by fear, Stefan didn’t even try to escape. It was only after another man’s cries were suddenly cut off, followed by the sound of Alessia swallowing and a quiet sobbing passing down through her oesophagus beneath him that Stefan realised he could move his legs more freely again. For a few moments, he didn’t understand what was going on, but then he started to feel the pressure on his lower body ease more and more. He risked turning his head around, and then realised that he had slowly slipped through in between her breasts, now looking at the vast expanse of her tan belly behind him. Like her chest, this surreal landscape gently moved up and down with Alessia’s breath. But while this sight and the sound of her gentle breathing alone would have had an almost calming effect on him, some of the other views and noises around him let the blood freeze in his veins. Further down on her belly was the Vortex box again, almost all of its cubicles empty. And deep below him, somewhere inside Alessia’s belly just below her left breast, he could hear ominous gurgling and squelching. And a chorus of faint screams.

From the corner of his eye, Stefan saw Alessia move her right arm. He began to panic again, looking up at the giantess, but her face was hidden behind the soft mountain range that really was just her two breasts, and so he couldn’t tell what exactly she was looking at. However, it soon turned out that she was just continuing to watch her series, and simply reaching into the box again to grab another snack. Stefan’s eyes widened as her fingers slipped into one of the few cubicles that still had tinies in them, pinning a middle-aged man between her thumb and her index finger. Then the poor tiny was lifted out of his prison and towards Alessia’s face, flying by right over Stefan’s head as he desperately began to struggle against his fate.

“Please don’t!” This man pleaded like so many others before, pointing down at Stefan all of a sudden. “Look, this one is getting away! Eat him instead! Just please don’t do this to m…”

He began to cry as he vanished from Stefan’s field of view, his sentence cut short as he was flipped into Alessia’s mouth and immediately swallowed whole. This time, the shrunken boy felt a grim sense of relief that the girl wasn’t listening to her food. He did still feel a sense of residual compassion when he imagined hearing the consumed tiny slide down into Alessia’s stomach below him. But since this one had tried to save himself by selling him out, he forced himself to not give this one too much thought. What Stefan felt a lot more conflicted about were the few shrunken people still left in the box. Some of them had noticed him by now, and apparently seemed to think that he was coming to help them, banging their fists against the transparent windows of their cubicles and trying to draw his attention to them.

“Please, help me!” A young woman barely older than himself shrieked. “This is some kind of misunderstanding; I didn’t do anything wrong! Please, she is going to eat me!”

Stefan sorrowfully shook his head. He did feel an intense urge to run across Alessia’s belly and try to help the poor shrunken woman. But all he would have ended up doing would have been to draw the giant girl’s attention, and get eaten along with this woman in the process. It didn’t make any sense. And yet, there also still was the remote possibility that Alessia would recognise him, especially now that she was eating single tinies as opposed to them just being toppings on her pizza. There was a chance to perhaps end this massacre and save this woman. But it would require him to risk his own life, and not just on a fifty-fifty chance. Seeing how Alessia was devouring her dinner, getting eaten by his friend was the most likely outcome to such an undertaking. And so, he closed his eyes, turning away as he carefully backed against the underside of the giant girl’s left breast. His eyes began to water when Alessia reached into the box again, now grabbing the young woman and lifting her to her mouth.

“No! You have to believe me; this is all a terrible mistake. Please, I want to see my fami…”

As short and impersonal their brief encounter may have been, Stefan couldn’t help but break into tears as the woman’s voice fell silent forever, her desperate plea for her life joining that of so many others that had gone unheard before they were swallowed. She too would now fall into the digestive hell just below Stefan as he still tried to block out the cacophony of screams rising up through Alessia’s skin. He could only pray that Vanessa had been chewed up and wasn’t still alive somewhere in there. Once more paralysed by fear, he just kept his eyes shut and covered his ears, trying to focus all his attention on the powerful heart beating inside the giant chest he was sitting on. Over the course of the next few minutes, he nevertheless heard and felt Alessia swallow some more times. But then, after a series of gulps that implied that she had taken a few more sips of lemonade, the murderous dinner finally seemed to be over.

Carefully opening his eyes and taking his hands off his ears again, Stefan looked around. The box was indeed empty, and Alessia was just taking it off her belly to place it beside her on the mattress again. This allowed him to look even further beyond her flat stomach, across her soft navel and down to her legs, which appeared to stretch on into an impossible distance before parting around a slim laptop on Alessia’s mattress. The laptop was still playing the series she was watching, now at an episode Stefan himself had only watched a couple of days ago. How he wished that he could just turn around to Alessia now and talk to her about the most recent developments on the show. Just a couple of days ago, he easily could have. But now, drawing his friend’s attention to himself could easily mean death. And so, he anxiously glanced at the empty box and pizza board again, both of them now entirely devoid of the food they had held save for a few crumbs on the latter. It felt like looking at smoking ruins in the aftermath of an intense battle. But as he listened to the subdued screaming and gurgling below his feet, Stefan knew that it wasn’t over just yet. For some of his fellow tinies, the worst was still to come.

He was just about to try and think about what to do next when Alessia began to lean forward, her breasts pushing him away as they were pulled down by gravity, and her abdomen turning into a steep slope. Stefan began to panic again, frantically trying to hold onto his friend’s tan skin. But it was too soft and smooth for him to find a proper hold on anything, and so he soon found himself sliding down Alessia’s belly as if he was slipping down the face of a mountain. Almost gliding across her trained abdominal muscles, he finally slipped into her belly button for just a second before his momentum made him shoot out again at the other side, throwing him off his friend’s gigantic body. Then he smashed onto Alessia’s mattress, bouncing off it one or two times before coming to a complete halt. Still disoriented, Stefan anxiously began to look around, fearing that she might have noticed him and would pick him up. But when he looked up at the colossal girl again, she simply reached across him to tap the pause button on her laptop and got up from her bed. Stefan gasped as Alessia’s enormous buttocks moved over him just a hand’s width above his head, feeling the oppressive mass of her entire body hover over him for a few seconds and praying that she wouldn’t sit down.

But she didn’t. Instead, she stood up and turned around, briefly giving Stefan another scare as she reached down to put the empty Vortex box on the pizza board. Just as she had lifted them up and was about to pick up her empty paper cup, she stopped and raised her free hand to her mouth. Then a rumbling sound travelled up from her belly to her throat and she let out a loud, satisfied burp that made Stefan shiver. To her, it was nothing more than venting some excess air from her stomach, but for him, it carried a grim sense of finality, a visceral confirmation that the shrunken people she had eaten would now indeed be digested. Nevertheless, Alessia seemed just a little taken aback as well by how crass and vulgar that last belch had been.

“Excuse me.” She muttered, pressing her fingers onto her lips and looking mildly disgusted.

After the initial surprise, however, she just shrugged and grabbed the empty paper cup on her nightstand, walking over to the door of her room. She struggled a little bit to open it, having to press down the handle with her elbow since she had both her hands full. When she finally slipped out of the room, her booming footsteps kept sending slight vibrations through the soft mattress as she went downstairs, leaving Stefan alone for a moment. He was aware that this moment probably was the freest he had ever been since he had been shrunken down, and that he had to make the most of it. Quickly setting his sights on the nightstand, he began to make his way across the mattress, which worked surprisingly well. The ground below him was soft and even a bit springy, allowing him to traverse the vast mattress quite easily. Only when he came to the nightstand itself, which was a bit higher than Alessia’s bed, did Stefan encounter the first major obstacle. He would somehow have to climb up to the top of the nightstand, but he decided not to do this right now and hide next to the pillows until Alessia fell asleep.

Indeed, this turned out to be a foresightful decision. Just when he had crawled into a tiny cave at the bottom of Alessia’s pillow, the mattress was shaken by booming footsteps once more, and just a few seconds later, the young giantess stepped into the room again, closing the door behind her. Then she went back to her bed and lied down once more, leaning into her pillow as she hit the pause button on her laptop again and resumed her series. Although still feeling a subdued sense of dread at Alessia’s sheer size and the incredible power behind every single one of her movements, he was out of her sight for now. Letting out a relieved sigh, he leaned back into the soft fabric of the pillow as well. Now all he could do was wait.

***

Vanessa covered her ears, trying to shut out the shrill, agonised screams of the other tinies as they were digested alive. She had almost made peace with her fate of becoming nutrition for Alessia, trying to think of Nico while she began fading in and out of consciousness. But that had been when most of the food that kept dropping into the giant girl’s stomach still had been pizza and the occasional shrunken person. Once Alessia had finished her main dish, she had moved on to swallowing the remaining tinies in quick succession, filling her stomach with dozens of screaming and wailing people. And while some of them eventually calmed down like Vanessa, grimly awaiting their fate in silence, others only became more hysterical as they began to fully grasp what was going to happen to them. While the giantess appeared to have concluded her gruesome dinner by now, this only seemed to make things worse. The constant stream of new arrivals being spat into the churning organic sack also had provided for some kind of macabre distraction, but now, nothing appeared to happen at all. But the air seemed to be getting thinner and thinner, and the acid was getting increasingly potent. The tinies were just left squirming and crying in darkness, waiting for certain death.

“She’s digesting us!” A man cried out right next to Vanessa, his screams making it through to her ears despite her best attempts to cover them with her hands. “We’re all gonna die!”

Just shut up. Vanessa thought to herself, tears running down her cheeks.

When they dropped onto her lips, she noticed that they didn’t have their usual salty taste, but instead a much more unsettling, metallic note. It was the same taste she had had in her mouth ever since throwing up earlier. The taste of blood. It only made sense, since Vanessa’s entire body felt like it had been set on fire. She wasn’t even really aware of the fact anymore that she had lost a leg, since there wasn’t a part of her that wasn’t in agony. Her hair had partially fallen out, taking parts of her scalp with it as they stuck to the piece of mushy bread on which she was drifting through the stomach. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth, and even her ears were leaking hot fluid, most of it apparently blood. Her scorched skin was blistering and peeling, likewise coming off and sticking to the piece of chewed-up pizza crust. It almost felt like she was melting into the soggy lump of food, and an outside observer maybe even wouldn’t have been able to distinguish her from it anymore. But for some reason, she was still alive.

Groaning with intense pain as the stomach walls suddenly contracted again and compressed the increasingly dense chyme further, Vanessa began to retch, coughing up more warm blood and more solid bits that could only be parts of her dissolving innards. She weakly spat them out, feeling the hot, metallic fluid run down her cheek and neck before it flowed down into the bubbling stew of half-digested food and stomach acids, becoming part of the amorphous sludge. But then, after another sudden surge of excruciating pain that caused her to let out a tormented howl, she began to feel an odd numbness in her chest, accompanied by a tingling sensation that rapidly began to spread to her arms and legs.

High above her, she heard another series of gulps. Already knowing what would come next, the shrunken girl tried to take a deep breath, but only managed to inhale a miniscule amount of sour, acid-laden air due to her chest having gone completely numb now. Then there was a disgusting slurping sound as the cardia opened up and vomited a waterfall of cold lemonade into the stomach, resulting in yet another tidal wave that splashed right over Vanessa and her raft of soggy pizza crust. The icy liquid sent a sharp pain shotting across her burned skin, but after the initial shock, it actually provided some unexpected relief, cooling the acid burns and washing away most of the stomach juices that had been eating through her ravaged skin. But as the waves splashed back from the stomach walls, the opposing currents created a powerful maelstrom right next to Vanessa and her raft, sucking her underneath the surface. And then, accompanied by a wet slurping noise, she was gone, disappearing into the sludge forever.

As she sank into the depths of the acidic broth once more, Vanessa didn’t fight it. The strange tingle and numbness had spread to every last recess of her body by now, effectively leaving her paralysed. But just like her broken body, her mind too had finally given up. While she sank towards the bottom of Alessia’s stomach, hearing nothing but the sounds of her vast body all around her, Vanessa’s thoughts went out to all the others who had shared her fate as well. The thousands of people who had been eaten by Alessia already, and the thousands who would still become her food in the future. She was only one of them, a tiny piece of nutrition to fuel this colossal, strong body. Just as this thought went through her dying brain, her body bumped into another solid object floating through the dark abyss. Vanessa would never know this, but it was the upper part of the skeleton of Klaus Helbig, yet another miniaturised person whose body and very identity would now forever be lost to Alessia’s digestive system.

Feeling the last flickers of life leave her body, Vanessa opened her mouth, allowing the dense chyme to flow into her oral cavity. From there, it forced its way into her airways and her own oesophagus, breaking through the weakened tissue. When it spread through her disintegrating body, she felt no pain, only an icy cold that stood in marked contrast to the warm sludge she was sinking into. Around her, the thick chyme was suddenly pressed together even further as the stomach walls contracted, accompanied by a thundering burp reverberating through the darkness. It was powerful enough to send Vanessa’s semi-digested eyeballs flying out of their sockets, and break several of her bones. But the shrunken girl felt none of this, her mind only fleetingly registering that Alessia had belched. Vanessa had always wondered what her last thought would be. But there was none, only a vague awareness of what was happening to her as her heart stopped beating, her brain functions reduced to that of a lowly animal before they ceased entirely moments later. Then Vanessa’s mind simply disintegrated, not becoming part of a higher plane of existence or moving on to some kind of afterlife, but simply ceasing to exist. Her body would soon follow, sinking to the bottom of the stomach and breaking into several parts as it settled in the pyloric antrum and awaited the next stage of digestion.

***

Feeling her dinner slosh back and forth in her stomach as she headed down the stairs and into the kitchen, Alessia was worried for just a brief moment that this would make her belch again. It wasn’t that she had any particular reservations about burping in front of her family, but she still wanted to avoid it, even though it tended to happen when one ate Vortex menus. It only made sense, given that the shrunken people probably stirred up a lot of air inside the stomach when they kicked and thrashed around. But in her mind, it still was somewhat gross, and one should at least try to stifle it when it happened. Unlike Tanja, who didn’t even restrain herself in public and did it completely on purpose. Alessia figured it was another aspect of this weird power thing she had going on with tinies, that it was another way of taunting them for her.

As she stepped into the kitchen and threw away the empty box and her paper cup, she thought about the tinies digesting in her stomach. Since she was pretty full now, she didn’t feel much of them except the occasional tingle beneath her left breast. But because she was a lot more relaxed now, the feeling didn’t bother her as it had after Tanja had fed that shrunken guy in her sandwich to her, when it had been on a mostly empty stomach. Now, it simply served to complement the sensation of being sated and content. And yes, there was an undeniable sense of satisfaction of having put dozens of suckers in their place in addition to having had a tasty meal. After all, if she worked her ass off all day to secure the best possible future for herself, why should she give a damn about people who couldn’t even take care of themselves? Or worse still, who made life miserable for others too? When her mum and dad had first arrived in Germany, they come here fully qualified and to serve their own country, not to leech off government handouts. And they had done very well for themselves. Alessia could only hope that one day, she would make them as proud of her as she was of them.

Washing off the pizza crumbs from the wooden board, she quickly dried it with a towel and then put it back in the drawer beneath the counter she had taken it from. Then she went back to her room, closing the door behind her and flopping back onto her bed. Alessia continued to watch the series for a little, soft gurgles emanating from her belly every now and again while her stomach began to break down her dinner. She could already tell that the tickling sensation was getting weaker, so there likely weren’t too many of the tinies still alive in there. Alessia considered drinking a gulp from the bottle of mineral water on her nightstand to finish off the stragglers, but before she could do so, her phone buzzed again. It was a message from Tanja.

I’m booored. U still watching? <3

Alessia smiled. The girl really needed constant attention. Yeah. She wrote back.

where you at?? Tanja replied.

Uh… Alessia typed and then rubbed her finger across her laptop’s touchpad for a moment so that the streaming service’s overlay would provide some additional information. start of S4.

those episodes are fun. Tanja wrote back. hey did u get to the part where he cuts off the guys dick and then eats a sausage in front of him?? i fuckin laughed my head off ;-D ;-D ;-D

that was sooo disgusting. Alessia frowned, remembering that particular scene.

<3 he’s my fav character!! Her friend’s next message read.

why am i not surprised. Alessia replied, gently shaking her head. Ur a real sicko, girl ;-D

Anyway, sry for interrupting. I think imma phone josie, see what shes up to.

you do that. Alessia typed. say hello from me :-)

will do. cya tomorrow. Tanja wrote back.

Alessia replied with a thumbs-up emoji and then closed the conversation with Tanja. She was aware that she was once more dividing her attention between the show running on her laptop and the text messages on her phone. But these were mostly action sequences anyway, so she didn’t believe that she was going to miss out on anything important if she didn’t pay attention for a moment. She briefly checked the message she had sent to Stefan, but he apparently had not even received it yet, and so Alessia simply assumed that he was sleeping already. She just hoped that he wasn’t feeling too bad or anything. Then she wrote a quick message to Florian, though she didn’t assume he was going to reply anytime soon either, since he was meeting up with Konstantin and the other boys tonight to play some videogames. He had taken her along to one of those evenings a couple of weeks ago, but she just hadn’t seen the appeal of playing football on a console. Also, she had lost almost every single match, and while she had tried to shrug it off as just a stupid videogame, it still had mildly bothered her.

When she had sent her boyfriend some virtual goodnight kisses, she put her smartphone back on the nightstand and continued watching her series for a bit longer. Just like Tanja had said, it was very good indeed, keeping her hooked for another few episodes before she noticed that her eyelids were starting to feel heavy. Checking the time, she decided to finish watching the episode she was currently at, almost dozing off near the end. When the end credits began to roll across the screen, Alessia let out a long, hearty yawn and simply closed her laptop, not bothering to get back up and put it on her desk again. Snuggling against her warm pillow, she pulled her blanket up to her shoulders and sighed blissfully. Meanwhile, her belly produced a series of gurgles as the first globs of her digested food were sucked into her duodenum. This displaced some air bubbles that had been trapped at the bottom of her stomach up until now, causing Alessia to burp once more. But she was barely even awake at this point, only taking passing note of it before finally drifting off to sleep just a few minutes later.

***

When Alessia had closed her laptop, the sudden darkness that followed had alarmed Stefan a little, making him wonder if he was even going to be able to see anything as he tried to climb up onto his friend’s nightstand. For a couple of moments, it indeed seemed as if it was pitch black around him, but then his eyes slowly began to adjust to the darkness. Moreover, he now noticed a few orange rays of light fall into Alessia’s room through her window, coming from a streetlamp just outside her family’s house. Since the normal-sized girl wasn’t watching her series anymore, Stefan could now also hear the rain outside patter on the roof and against the window. It seemed to be a cold and miserable night outside, and if it hadn’t been for his dire circumstances, he would have almost found the atmosphere in the room cosy and calming. He was in a warm, dry and comfortable room, his best friend and secret crush falling asleep right next to him. If only he wouldn’t have to watch his step so that she wouldn’t eat him.

Just as that grim thought crossed his mind again, Alessia burped, tiredly smacking her lips as she pulled her blanket up to her shoulders and rolled onto her side. For just a fleeting moment, Stefan’s thoughts drifted off to Vanessa, but he soon pushed the feelings of guilt and sorrow away. She was gone now, being digested in the depths of Alessia’s belly. It was over for her, but he still had a chance. And he would not mess it up now when he was so close. He calmed himself and waited for another couple of minutes until Alessia’s breathing slowed down a bit, even turning into a gentle snore at times. Then he carefully rose to his feet and ventured out the small cave at the bottom of his giant friend’s pillow, stepping out onto the vast expanse of her mattress again. Since he wanted to make sure that the girl was indeed asleep and would not see him when he started climbing, he turned around and looked up, gasping a little.

Above him, resting on its left side, was Alessia’s gigantic face. She was obviously fast asleep, her eyes closed and her mouth just a little open, sucking in air and blowing it out again just a few moments later while she gently breathed in and out. Even from here, Stefan could feel a slight suction and then a soft breeze of warm air. But although it was a peaceful sight, he still felt a profound sense of dread, especially when his gaze wandered to Alessia’s soft lips and the ominous darkness between her pearly white teeth. Her face was the size of a house from his perspective. How could it be that this sleeping beauty could also be a man-eating beast? How could it be that dozens of people like himself were being molten into sludge inside her belly right now? How could it be that he was mortally afraid of his best friend?

Stefan reminded himself that he had no time to lose. While Alessia would probably be asleep for the next few hours, there always was the risk that she could wake up again and notice him before he could make sure that their encounter would not end with him being eaten. Turning around towards the nightstand again, he walked over to the wooden wall he would now have to scale. It was quite flat indeed, but at this scale, there were little bumps and notches all over that he would be able to hold onto. And if he fell, he would at least be falling down onto the mattress, so even a misstep wouldn’t necessarily kill him. Keeping this in mind, Stefan took a deep breath, and then slowly began to climb, feeling his friend’s warm breath in his neck.

Several times, Stefan came close to losing his grip and falling down, but he always managed to stabilise himself in time. He kept telling himself to calm down and rush nothing whenever he reached for the next little protrusion or indentation to hold onto, and after a while, he made it up to the wooden board that formed the top of Alessia’s nightstand. This last part was a bit more difficult to climb up due to the edge of the board being slightly curved, forcing Stefan to lean backwards and then quickly reach around the curvature before he fell down. Dangling from the edge of the board, he felt as if he was going to slip for a moment, but this little surge of panic thankfully ended up providing him with the necessary energy to pull himself up with his arms. When he finally pulled himself onto the top of the nightstand, he rolled on his back.

For a few moments, he just lay there, trying to catch his breath and stretch his aching muscles. He wasn’t sure how long it had taken him exactly, but he likely had been climbing for at least half an hour, and it was only now that he began to realise how physically draining the whole endeavour had actually been on him. Nevertheless, Stefan knew that he still wasn’t safe just yet. Suppressing a groan, he rose up to his feet once again and carefully began to look around Alessia’s nightstand. It was a bizarre landscape of various oversized everyday items, such as a book, a bottle of mineral water, a half-empty plastic pallet of painkillers, or Alessia’s phone. But what immediately drew his eye, and which Stefan had been hoping to find here, were the pens, pencils and sticky notes he had seen there before, when visiting his friend at his normal size. After all, he had been in this room many times before, either just to catch up or to study with Alessia. And she had mentioned to him before that she liked to keep something to write next to her bed in case she needed to remind herself of something when she got up.

Hurrying past the gigantic items around him, Stefan glanced at the enormous digital clock on the nightstand. It was five minutes to midnight. If Alessia didn’t wake up in the middle of the night, she would sleep for another six hours or so before going on her usual morning run. So he should have plenty of time to set his plan to get her attention in motion. Fixing his gaze on one of the giant pencils, he was just running past Alessia’s giant smartphone when he heard a deafening buzz, accompanied by the wooden surface beneath his feet suddenly shaking as if there was an earthquake. He was thrown off his feet, and suddenly saw a ghostly golden light illuminating his surroundings as the display of Alessia’s phone lit up. Hearing his giant friend rapidly inhale and let out a slightly startled snoring noise, Stefan threw himself around and stared at Alessia, his heartbeat rapidly speeding up as her silhouette moved around in the dark.

The giant girl smacked her lips, rolling around in her bed for a moment before turning around onto her other side. When her movements stopped and Stefan could hear nothing but her slow, relaxed breathing, he concluded that she simply had fallen asleep once more, or perhaps not even woken up at all. Still trembling, he got back up on his feet and glanced over at the phone, the screen dimming down a little again. On the lock screen, which showed a beautiful picture of Alessia and Florian kissing in front of a gorgeous golden sunset somewhere on a beach in Italy, he saw a single message preview. Looking a bit closer, he saw that it was from Tanja.

u still up?? It said next to a picture of the blonde sticking out her tongue.

“That girl is going to be the death of me.” Stefan whispered to himself, shaking his head.

Feeling his pulse slow down and the adrenaline being washed out of his system, he proceeded towards the oversized pens and sticky notes once more. He briefly turned around just to make absolutely sure that Alessia was still asleep, then he put his hands around the tip of one of the pencils, pulling it up towards him with all his remaining strength. It took him a couple of tries, but ultimately, he succeeded in breaking off a chunk of graphite about the size of his lower arms. Panting heavily, he carried it over to the block of sticky notes, hoisting it onto it before climbing up himself. Then he grabbed the piece of graphite again and slowly began to write down giant letters, taking time to make sure that they would be at least as big as his own body so that Alessia would be able to read them. Finally, he stepped back and checked his writing.

ALESSIA! IT’S ME, STEFAN. VORTEX SHRUNK ME. DON’T EAT ME. I’M UNDER THE DIGITAL CLOCK ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND. PLEASE HELP ME.

Seeing that he had spelled everything correctly, Stefan let out a sigh of relief and dropped the piece of graphite. He had done it. Now, all there was left to do for him was to wait for Alessia to see the note. And in order to make sure that she saw it before she saw him, he now climbed off the block of sticky notes and went over to the giant digital clock. Since it was standing on four little legs, there was a small gap between it and the wooden surface of the nightstand that allowed him to crawl underneath it. Here, he would remain hidden until Alessia read the note and looked for him herself, so that she wouldn’t just see a lone tiny and eat him.

Lying down on the hard ground, Stefan looked over to his friend again, who was still soundly asleep. Maybe for the first time ever since being shrunk, he wasn’t afraid of her anymore. She was still an awe-inspiring sight in every sense of the word, but he was absolutely sure that she was not going to be a threat to him any longer. Stefan hadn’t been able to save Vanessa, and he wasn’t sure how Alessia was going to react when she learned that she had eaten her. For a moment, he considered just not telling her, but then dismissed that notion. It would be unfair towards either of them to conceal the truth. And if Vanessa had been right, Nico perhaps was still alive as well, somewhere in this gigantic house. They would have to at least try and look for him tomorrow. But with the help of Alessia and her family, that would be a lot easier.

“Goodnight, Alessia.” Stefan whispered, then he closed eyes and drifted off to sleep.

***

Around the same time as another burp echoed through the vast darkness of Alessia’s stomach and the girl slowly began to fall asleep, a slurry of digested food and various pieces of human skeletons was slurped through the pyloric antrum, among them an amorphous mass of bones that once had been Vanessa. What little remained of her body was torn up even further by the violent suction as it was squeezed through the tight muscular valve, and then squirted into the first section of Alessia’s small intestine, the duodenum. Mixing with other globs of nutritious paste prepared for further digestion by the girl’s stomach over the last few hours, the chyme was injected with digestive enzymes and bile from Alessia’s gall bladder and pancreas. While the giantess continued to sleep calmly, not even hearing the soft gurgles emanating from her flat belly as the sludge continued to slip along the winding tunnel, these new additions slowly reduced the acidity of the nutrient slop, preparing it for absorption into Alessia’s bloodstream.

At this point, nothing about Vanessa’s remains even remotely resembled a human being any longer. She was nothing more than a disconnected group of bones with some chunks of flesh, muscles and tendons still adhering to them, and even those were being sucked off her skeletal remains by the peristaltic contractions that ferried the sludge along Alessia’s intestines. Then the thick goop containing not only the dissolved flesh and bones of Vanessa, but also those of Klaus and dozens of other miniaturised people entered the middle stretch of their consumer’s small intestine, the jejunum. At this stage, the tinies were nothing more than part of the dense porridge that was being mercilessly squeezed deeper and deeper into the undulating tunnel of flesh, and of course, there was no light source whatsoever in here. But if they had been alive and able to perceive their surroundings beyond just the ominous gurgling and groaning noises that came with their descent into the darkest recesses of Alessia’s gut, they would have found themselves in a truly bizarre, alien world. The girl’s small intestine was a seemingly endless, winding tube that constantly contracted and expanded, churning the digested mush from her stomach and pushing it along further through this organic labyrinth. The walls of the intestine were lined with billowing protrusions which meticulously combed through the passing slurry, beginning to suck all the nutrients Alessia’s healthy young body needed out of it.

It was through this process that large parts of what once had been Vanessa, now broken down into their chemical components, were resorbed into Alessia’s bloodstream, being dispersed throughout her vast body. As the giantess was fast asleep, only a tiny amount of the shrunken girl was burned off for energy, whereas most of Vanessa’s former body was repurposed into nutrition and building blocks for the organism of the girl who had consumed her. The water extracted from her body would be repurposed to replenish Alessia’s bodily fluids, hydrating her and becoming part of her blood, sweat, and spit. Roughly one third of it would go to her bladder, being ejected from her as urine when she went to the toilet the next day. The protein gained from digesting Vanessa would serve to strengthen Alessia’s muscles, especially on her arms and thighs, but also her abdominal muscles and her gluteus maximus. The multitude of vitamins and minerals extracted from the shrunken girl’s remains would ultimately end up in various different parts of her eater, serving to keep the young athlete fit and healthy. And the carbohydrates and lipids that were extracted from Vanessa’s body mostly ended up as part of the fat tissue on Alessia’s butt cheeks and breasts, helping to complement her form, and being stored away as additional energy to be used at a later point.

By the time the dense paste was squeezed into the last part of Alessia’s small intestine, the ileum, most of the soft bits that had once been components of Vanessa’s body had been fully absorbed by the young giantess’ digestive system. Nothing was left of her at this point except for a paltry amount of shrivelled bones swimming in the pulpy soup, but even those were of a certain value to Alessia’s digestive system. Weakened by the combined influence of exposure to acid and enzymes as well as the constant mechanical grinding of the peristalsis, even these bones soon began to splinter and dissolve into white clouds of calcium-rich dust. These were greedily slurped up by the villi on the inside of Alessia’s intestinal walls, soon repurposed to building blocks for the swimmer’s bones and her perfect white teeth. Once the remains of the shrunken people reached the ileocecal valve and were squirted into the lower part of Alessia’s large intestine, even Vanessa’s bones were hollowed out, and her skull had split into an array of smaller bits that nobody would ever be able to reassemble, even if they wanted to.

The only parts of Vanessa that Alessia’s potent digestive system had not entirely obliterated were small bushels of hair, as well as her miniscule finger- and toenails. Consisting mostly of indigestible keratin, they were the only fragments of the shrunken girl’s former body along the hollow bone splinters that now began drifting through her ascending colon. At this point, the thick nutrient soup they had been a part of throughout their journey along Alessia’s small intestine had been almost completely drained of everything useful. Now even more so, it was a good thing that none of the tinies buried inside the slurry were even remotely alive anymore, as it had transformed into an odious, foul-smelling brown liquid. As it was sucked up through the ascending colon and pushed around a sharp bend into the transverse colon, the vile soup was drained of water and any remaining nutrients Alessia’s body could possibly use for itself, thickening into small, soft logs of shit. These newly formed chunks of ordure slowly slithered along the transverse colon during the early morning hours, passing by right beneath Alessia’s empty stomach as it let out a first tacit groan. The girl, however, didn’t hear this, instead just turning around in her sleep again and smacking her lips as the nascent turds travelled through the last bend on their long journey. Sliding down the descending colon, they gradually landed on top of each other as they accumulated in the sigmoid section of Alessia’s colon with moist splatting noises. Having nowhere to go from here, the faecal mass grave containing what was left of the shrunken people Alessia had eaten for dinner began to settle.

The semi-solid mass of shit remained undisturbed for another hour or so, only shifting a little when the girl woke up and rolled around in her bed for a few minutes before rising to her feet. Under the influence of gravity, it then descended a little further, displacing a few air bubbles that had been trapped around the bend that led to the last part of Alessia’s colon, the rectum. The air was ejected through the exit of her digestive system, passing through her sphincter as a short fart which signalled to the girl that she needed to evacuate her bowels. A little later, the colon gently shook back and forth as Alessia started to walk, allowing for the faecal mass to slip past the final bend of the sigmoid colon and into her rectum. Then the girl sat down and relaxed her sphincter, allowing for the log of shit to slip down towards her anus. It was in this moment that the skull of Faruk Şahin was finally illuminated by daylight again, after spending almost two days inside the total darkness of Alessia’s body. But it did not last long, as it now was mercilessly squeezed out of the giantess’ rectum with the soft first turd to be expelled this morning, splashing into the cold water of a toilet bowl mere moments later.

***

Stefan awoke with a start and shrieked, banging his head against a hard surface as he was torn out of his sleep by an unbearably loud beeping noise. Rubbing his head while he anxiously looked around, he tried to make sense of his surroundings, or what that incredibly loud noise was. He was still not entirely sure what was going on when he heard a loud, slightly annoyed groan from somewhere to his right, and then the booming voice of Alessia.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake. Jesus fucking Christ.” She moaned tiredly and yawned, followed by a loud slam right above Stefan that shook all of his immediate surroundings. Stefan flinched, but even though he didn’t understand what had happened, at least the beeping had stopped.

Then the memory of the past day hit him like a train. He had been shrunk. Bought by Alessia and almost eaten by her. Vanessa was dead, devoured along with the pizza Alessia had eaten yesterday. And now he was hiding beneath the digital alarm clock on his friend’s nightstand. That beeping sound had to have been her morning alarm, and she had just turned it off. Stefan also remembered that he had managed to leave a note for Alessia, to make sure that she found him. But the normal-sized girl wasn’t aware of what had happened to him just yet, and so he would have to wait for her to discover the note. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t just go out now and talk to her, ask her for help. If he did that, he ran the risk of being mistaken for just another Vortex tiny and being eaten. He would have to be patient, at least for just a little bit longer. And so he waited, peering out from beneath the giant alarm clock towards the girl as she rolled around in her bed for a few more moments. Stefan shivered involuntarily as she sat up and yawned loudly, looking past her sharp white teeth and right at the back of her dark, gaping maw. He really could consider himself lucky that Alessia hadn’t eaten him yesterday. The odds had certainly not been in his favour, and poor Vanessa had indeed fallen victim to these unfavourable odds. She had vanished forever now, become part of this giant girl.

Almost as if to further remind him of what had happened to his classmate, Alessia now rose to her feet, her large breasts gently bobbing up and down in her crop top. Stretching for a few moments, she turned around, inadvertently filling nearly his entire field of view with the truly spectacular sight of her huge, taut butt cheeks jiggling around in her tight-fitting yoga pants. Then Alessia let out a little fart, paying no further attention to it since she thought to be alone in her room. Feeling both embarrassed at hearing his unaware friend pass wind and horrified at the thought that her body was probably getting ready to expel whatever was left of Vanessa, Stefan tried to look away. But at the same time, he was captivated by the effortless grace and ease at which this colossus of a human being moved around, feeling her powerful footsteps reverberate through the wooden surface below him when she walked over to her wardrobe. Mostly free of the fear he had felt at the sight of his giant crush yesterday, and overcome by a severe case of morning horniness, Stefan found himself furtively gazing at Alessia’s buttocks as it gently swayed left and right with every step she took. Then he found himself running red with shame when the giantess suddenly pulled down her pants and the thong she was wearing beneath, fully exposing the firm, tan curves of her naked backside to him.

When she took off her crop top as well, now standing in front of the mirror on her wardrobe in all her naked glory, Stefan turned away, awkwardly gazing at the surface of the nightstand. There was a temptation to look up again and take in the marvellous sight, especially since he couldn’t do anything but wait for Alessia to find his note, but it still felt awfully inappropriate to be peeping on his friend like this. It was true that she had almost killed him yesterday, but she hadn’t done so intentionally. And, he thought to himself with a touch of gallows’ humour, if Alessia discovered him like this, leering at her naked body, she might kill him after all.

So Stefan waited while the giantess quickly got changed into another pair of black tracksuits, readying herself for her morning run. Then Alessia came towards the nightstand with another series of booming footsteps. The shrunken boy closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

“Please.” He quietly prayed to himself. “Please, for the love of God, see it.”

She didn’t see it. Picking up the phone and some earphones next to the alarm clock, Alessia walked past the nightstand, shaking the ground beneath Stefan a few more times as she went out the door and closed it behind her. Now left alone in her room again, the shrunken boy let out an exasperated sigh. How much longer would he have to wait? What if she didn’t see the note at all? Should he perhaps do something else to get her attention? But what? How else could he get through to her without taking the risk of her not recognising him in time?

Stop it. Stefan then thought to himself, trying to calm his nerves. She will see it eventually.

***

Changing into a fresh tracksuit for her own personal use, one that didn’t sport the emblem of her sports club, Alessia put a watch-like tracking device on her wrist and then walked back to her nightstand, picking up her phone and a pair of earphones. Then she went out of her room and gently closed the door behind her, aware that the other members of her family were most likely still sleeping. But before she went downstairs, she would have to take care of the sense of pressure in her lower abdomen first. Tugging the earphones away in one of the pockets of her tracksuit jacket, she slipped into the bathroom and locked the door. Then she went over to the toilet and pulled down her underpants and tracksuit trousers, seating her naked buttocks. Alessia yawned and unlocked her phone, then she allowed the muscles in her lower body to relax, pressing just a little bit before a soft log of shit slipped out of between her butt cheeks.

When it landed in the toilet bowl with a subdued splash, she didn’t once think about the fact that she had just expelled the last fragment of Faruk from her body. Instead, Alessia frowned a little as she read a text message from Tanja, who apparently had written to her yet again just before midnight, asking her if she was still awake. Gently shaking her head as she typed up a response, she allowed a wet fart to escape from her rectum, having noisily pushed itself to the front of the line with a low-pitched rumble from her bowels just a few moments before.

no. I was asleep. how about yourself, r u awake now? :-P Alessia wrote back, secretly hoping that Tanja had forgotten to set her phone to silent mode over the night. Just as she was about to relax her sphincter again, her phone buzzed, displaying a response from her friend.

WTF GIRL!! IT’S NOT EVEN 6 AM! Tanja replied, followed by a series of angry emoji.

Alessia laughed out loud. oh no, did i wake u up? ;-D

u sure af did. Came the response from her friend, this time followed by crying faces.

just go back to sleep. imma go running soon. The other girl wrote back.

and they call me a psycho. Tanja replied.

Alessia answered with another series of laughing emoji, but then decided to leave her friend alone. Switching to one of her social networks and scrolling through the feed, she relaxed the muscles in her lower abdomen again and felt another, larger turd press against her anus. This time, she pressed a bit harder and let out a soft moan as the dense log suddenly slipped out of her anus, landing in the bowl with a soft splat and leaving Alessia with a pleasant feeling of relief in her rectum. When she farted again, she wouldn’t even remotely have considered the possibility that she had just excreted the remains of her classmate Vanessa, her bleached bone splinters strewn across the large brown turd in the porcelain bowl below her. Then she felt a smaller piece of ordure slip into her rectum, and allowed her sphincter to relax one final time. When this smaller turd had plopped into the toilet as well, Alessia tensed the muscles around her bladder and ejected the urine that had gathered inside it over the night in form of a jet of hot yellow urine. Splashing onto the pile of soft shit, it washed some of the bone splinters that once had been part of Vanessa into the murky water, leaving them floating in the yellow pond.

Getting up from the toilet seat and sliding her phone into her pocket for a moment, Alessia took some sheets of toilet paper from the roll hanging next to her, neatly folding them and pushing them in between her shapely butt cheeks. As she cleaned herself, the soft fat tissue on her buttocks wobbled around a little, but Alessia was not aware that she was also making a substantial part of her former classmate jiggle around with it. Just like she had no idea that she was wiping bushels of Vanessa’s hair and pieces of her former skeleton off her puckered sphincter, along with the thoroughly digested remains of at least two other shrunken people. Alessia only fleetingly took note of the white specks stuck in the brown stain on the toilet paper and baked into the logs at the bottom of the bowl, since it was far from an unusual sight for her. Still fully unaware that she was conducting the undignified funeral of Vanessa, she dropped the used toilet paper into the bowl and grabbed another few sheets, making sure that she had completely cleaned herself. When she was done, Alessia let them fall into the bowl as well and pressed the flush button, unknowingly sending what little was left of her shrunken classmate off to the municipal sewers, never to be seen by anyone again.

She pulled up her sweatpants and then proceeded to thoroughly wash her hands, looking up at the small milk glass above the sink that served to let some light into the bathroom during the day. Alessia sighed. It still was completely dark outside, and from the gentle pattering sound on the glass, she could tell that it was raining once more. Or maybe it hadn’t even stopped during the night. This was going to be one dismal run. But then again, if she was going to be serious about this, she wasn’t going to wimp out just because it was dark and wet outside.

Drying off her hands, Alessia unlocked the door again and headed downstairs into the kitchen, turning on a few lights on the way. Indeed, all of her family was still fast asleep, leaving the house feel strangely quiet and empty while she grabbed a packet of muesli from the shelf and then took a carton of milk out of the fridge. Producing a bowl and a spoon from the drawers, Alessia sat down at the kitchen counter and plugged her earphones into her phone. She then poured herself a bowl of muesli and started to eat, listening to her usual wakeup playlist. Her empty stomach groaned contentedly as the first mouthfuls of oats and dried fruit splashed into it. Likewise, her digestive system now woke up to another day of processing her food, having left no trace of the dozens of shrunken people that had passed through it only last evening.

When she had gone down to the kitchen to make her breakfast, Alessia hadn’t felt particularly hungry, it was more something she did out of routine, and because she didn’t want to run her usual ten kilometres on an empty stomach. But now that her body was waking up and getting ready for her morning workout, she ended up devouring her muesli within just a few minutes, even having to purposefully slow herself down so that she wouldn’t feel bloated when she started running. Greedily scraping the last mouthful of muesli from the edges of the bowl, Alessia then lifted it to her lips and drank the remaining milk. Getting up from her chair at the kitchen counter again, she put the empty bowl in the sink and let out a dainty burp. Then she went into the hallway and sat down on a bench next to the entrance door to put on her shoes.

Once more, Alessia tried to slow herself down a little as she tied her slightly worn and muddy sneakers, wanting to give herself a few minutes to let her breakfast settle. But she was feeling particularly impatient and energetic today. After waiting for just another couple of moments, she opened the door and stepped outside, frowning a little as she felt the cold, drizzling rain on her face. This was indeed going to be a drag, so it would be better to just get it over with. Activating the little tracking device on her wrist, Alessia hurried across the small, paved path that connected the front door of her family home with the sidewalk, and then smoothly passed into a practised jog as she started heading down the empty, dimly lit road.

The morning run turned out to be even more miserable than Alessia had anticipated. Not only was it terribly cold, the bone-chilling wind also kept blowing the sleet drizzle straight into her face. Her tracksuit and her steady pace did a good job at keeping her relatively warm, but that didn’t make the experience any more pleasant. Moreover, the persistent rain over the last few days had thoroughly soaked the ground and left large puddles everywhere, forcing her to run in serpentines half of the time. Even then, she sometimes wasn’t entirely able to avoid the murky puddles, inadvertently kicking up water and mud, so Alessia was more than just a bit exhausted when she finally made it back to the house. Checking her tracker as she stepped in the door again and carefully slipped out of her dirty shoes, she shrugged off the poor time. It had taken her a bit longer than her usual hour, but in conditions like these, it was more of an endurance issue than a question of time. At least she had done it and not chickened out.

Alessia put her muddy sneakers onto a shoe rack to let them dry a little and then checked the ground floor for signs of her family members again, but apparently, none of them was awake just yet. So she went back upstairs, heading straight for the bathroom once more. Locking the door behind her, she slipped out of her wet and dirty tracksuit and put it in the washing basket. Then she took off her tracker and stepped into the shower, letting out a sigh of relief as clean, hot water began to stream down her naked body. For a few moments, she simply stood in the shower and relished the feeling of her chilled extremities warming up again, then she grabbed a bottle of shampoo and began to wash her long, silky black hair. Once Alessia felt clean and refreshed, she turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, drying herself off with a towel before wrapping it around her damp hair. Then she slipped into one of her bathrobes and unlocked the door again, heading back into her room.

When she closed the door behind her, Alessia went over to her bed and flopped down onto it, sighing again as she closed her eyes for a moment. What was next on her list? She had gotten her morning run out of the way, and there was no swim training today. Tanja was going to come over later to borrow her history notes because of that test. She felt prepared for that, but there also was an English exam on Friday she still had to do some reading for. Anything else? Wondering if she had written something down for her to think of, she opened her eyes, got up from the bed again, and looked down at her nightstand. And then she froze.

“What the…” She began, her eyes widening with shock and dismay.

Reading the clumsily written little letters on the sticky note again, Alessia felt her heartbeat accelerate all of sudden, a sense of panic spreading through her body. Then she picked up her digital clock. There underneath it was a Vortex tiny, fearfully staring up at her. Alessia went down on her knees, intently scrutinising him. When she recognised her friend, she gasped.

“Stefan?”

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