The Study Session

James Thompson, or Jim, as everyone usually called him, was not a soft man. Born into abject poverty in a large city on the East Coast of the United States, he had grown up in a particularly rough neighbourhood. It was an environment in which he had learned to rely on his wits from a very early age, and not shy away from violence if it was required. Falling in with some particularly dangerous individuals associated with a South American drug cartel, he had ended up with a steep price on his head. This had forced him to flee his home country, but being as tough as they came, along with being well-versed in the use of various weapons, Jim had soon found a new home in the French Foreign Legion. Afghanistan, The Ivory Coast, Mali. He was no stranger to death and destruction. And yet, he had not seen anything like this.

“Someone help me! Please!” A man cried out next to him.

Looking up to the source of the anguished voice, Jim found himself staring into the panicked eyes of another muscular guy, perhaps a couple of years younger than himself. Even more remarkable, however, was the fact that this man was twice as big as him. Tears running down his distorted face, the poor guy tried to hold on to the semi-transparent wall that separated his prison from Jim’s. But it was no use. Something was pulling him up. Something even bigger.

“No, no, no!” The man screamed again, the fear in his voice making it very clear that he was aware of the gruelling fate that awaited him. “This can’t be happening!”

He let out an undignified yelp as his sweaty palms slipped off the plastic edge he had been so desperately trying to hold onto, quickly being lifted up into sheer impossible heights between a pair of two giant fingers. One would have thought that a creature that was mighty enough to carry away such a large young man with such uncanny ease would be an ogrish, grotesque monstrosity. But the opposite was the case. The huge thumb and index finger between which the tiny figure was pinched were adorned by impeccably clean, pink fingernails, and even left behind a pleasant, gentle smell of hand cream lingering in the air in and around Jim’s prison.

His eyes still fixed on the struggling man as he began to cry openly, Jim shuddered as the guy was raised up before the backdrop of a vast pink wall. Upon closer examination, however, it turned out not to actually be a wall, but the upper body of an absolutely gigantic human being, easily the size of a skyscraper from Jim’s perspective. The gargantuan person was wearing a thin, tight-fitting pink sweater, and as two big outward bulges in the wall coming into Jim’s field of view now further implied, the colossus was female. Not to mention well-endowed.

Being carried up even further past a narrow canyon between the two bulges, peeking out near the bottom of a low V-shaped neckline, the man continued to scream, blurting out something about having a family. Jim just shook his head in fatalistic sorrow. That was not going to help the poor bastard. Now that the man had passed the pair of enormous breasts, the previously pink background gave way to a colour of fair, but also slightly tanned skin and a giant neck. Somewhat ironically when one listened to the doomed man’s anguished sobs and kept his imminent fate in mind, the massive neck behind him was adorned by a thin necklace with a heart-shaped little pendant. When the giantess leaned forward, the tiny golden heart almost collided with his body, cheerfully dangling in front of her rather revealing cleavage.

“Please don’t!” The wretched fellow sniffled. “Oh my God, I don’t wanna di…”

Before he could finish his sentence, he was enveloped by a pair of luscious, soft lips. For just a couple of moments, one could still hear his faint cries for help emanating from the giantess’ enormous mouth, then there was a gentle sucking sound, almost as if she was kissing the guy. His squirming legs were suddenly sucked inward, and then there was a wet gulp, followed by a faint contraction in the gigantic neck. Jim wasn’t sure, but for a moment, he even thought that he could see a miniscule bulge travel down the throat, passing by behind the heart-shaped pendant and vanishing somewhere between the two soft orbs that were the giantess’ breasts.

Craning his neck back so far that it sent a sharp pain travelling down his spine, Jim looked at the giant blonde’s face again as she licked her lips and turned the attention of her blue eyes back to an oversized book next to her. Looking at her soft, even gentle features, which made it difficult to keep in mind that she had just eaten another, albeit much smaller human being, he remembered that the giantess was really just a girl, perhaps a student. And that she was, in fact, not a giantess at all. It was Jim and the others around him who had been shrunk down to a mere fraction of their former size, to be sold as a protein-rich snack to what this shithole of a society considered to be ‘upstanding citizens’. A potential fate he had thought of often over the course of his criminal career. He had hoped to have left that danger behind him when he joined the Legion. But apparently, Vortex didn’t forget. Let alone forgive.

“I’m telling you, midget, we gotta get out of here fast.” A female voice said from behind him with an unmistakeable sense of urgency. “If you climb onto my shoulders, you ca…”

“I know what I’m doing, missy!” Jim said irately, turning around and looking up at the young woman he was sharing his plastic prison with. “Now shut up and let me think.”

Generally speaking, there wasn’t ever more than one shrunken person inside each one of the rectangular cubicles that divided a typical Vortex box into small compartments. But evidently, something had gone very wrong. This became quite clear to Jim once more when he gave the woman an angry glare. Just like the young man who he had witnessed being eaten alive just a few seconds ago, she was twice his size, and he barely reached up to her hips. Since people who were shrunken down by Vortex were already reduced to one hundredth of their original size, this made Jim particularly miniscule when compared to the blonde girl who had bought this particular box. Not to mention that it made escaping from this cubicle even more difficult.

“Think?” The woman shot back at him incredulously. “There’s nothing to think about! I can’t even reach the edge myself. Now swallow your fucking pride and work with me here before they eat us. You can get on my shoulders, and pull yourself up from there. Then you help me.”

Jim clenched his teeth. Ever since waking up in this cubicle this morning, the damned woman had been trying to talk to him, even introducing herself to him as Maike. His German was not exactly perfect, but he had become at least conversational in the language over the last few years. After all, a lot of his comrades in the Foreign Legion had been Germans, often people with a dubious past like himself and who were trying to evade criminal prosecution in their home country. So it wasn’t that Jim didn’t understand what Maike was saying. He just didn’t want to talk to her. As far as he was concerned, she was dead meat already. There was simply no way a civilian, a woman no less, was going to make it out of a situation like this alive. So he had also not bothered introducing himself to her in return. Annoyingly, Maike had started referring to him as ‘midget’ and various other diminutives instead. And the bitch wouldn’t shut up, no matter how much he signalled to her that he wasn’t going to be her friend.

“I don’t want to hear another word from you!” Jim barked, warningly lifting his index finger.

Despite the obvious fear in her eyes as she glanced up for a split second, the woman couldn’t help but let out a derisive snort when she looked at Jim again. “Or what, you gonna hit me? You can’t even reach my face, big guy.” She hissed with a look of disdain on her face.

Before Jim could retort, a giant hand cast a shadow over the box, as usual accompanied by an uproar of screams from the adjacent cubicles. But this one wasn’t that of the girl in the pink sweater, who was still focussed on the giant book in front of her and writing down something on a notepad. Turning around as the hand reached into a cubicle somewhere behind him and fished out a portly middle-aged man, Jim saw that it belonged to another blonde girl, sitting across from the one who had bought his box. This girl, who had reached into the box quite often over the last few minutes, was wearing a creamy white sweater, and the fingernails on her giant hand were painted in an elegant blue. All in all, there were no less than four of these huge girls, sitting around a table that was cluttered with books, folders and pencil cases, along with laptops and pens. Right next to him, just outside of the box, Jim could even see a cup of coffee the size of an industrial liquid gas storage tank. The scale of even the most mundane items beyond the confines of the box was intimidating, as was the fact that they were entirely surrounded by these gargantuan girls, meaning that there was no obvious escape route off the table, even if he managed to get out of his prison. But Jim wasn’t going to give up so easily.

“No! Please, don’t eat me!” The pudgy man whimpered as he was lifted up to the other girl’s opening mouth and then flicked inside. Not paying any attention to his pleas, the girl began rolling him around in her mouth, her eyes focused on her laptop. She looked downright bored.

“Lisa?” A black-haired girl wearing a pair of glasses asked, peering over to the box.

“Hm?” The blonde in the pink sweater said somewhat absent-mindedly, glancing up from her book a few moments later as she gave her friend a questioning look.

“Are there any left or did Tanja eat all of them already?” The girl with the glasses asked.

“Wot da fock?” The girl in the white sweater complained with her mouth full. Jim cringed as the desperate, muffled cries from her mouth fell silent all of a sudden as she swallowed hard, sending a small bulge down her throat and into her sizeable chest. “I didn’t eat that many!”

“Jessica’s right though.” Another girl with black hair interjected, giving Tanja a patronising smile. This one had a Mediterranean look and seemed very athletic, even fitter than the other girls. “You ate, like, at least a dozen of them. Leave some for us.” She said with a wink to her friend and then reached into the box herself, lifting out a wailing young woman. Just like her three friends, the athlete didn’t even bat an eye as she swallowed the shrunken person alive.

Jim looked back and forth between the enormous girls as they continued playfully bantering with each other. He had already noted earlier that they were speaking German as well, and so had concluded that he apparently had been shipped to Germany after being shrunk. Not that it really mattered if he ended up getting eaten. A German stomach wouldn’t be different from a French or an American one. A much more important observation was that these girls seemed to be more focused on studying than on the miniaturised people in the Vortex box they were sharing. Together with all the immense items on the table, this meant that hiding from them would likely be easy if he just managed to get out of this box. Even his particularly small size would probably be an advantage. Yet another reason why he didn’t want Maike’s company.

Turning away from the shrunken woman who was still a minor giantess from his perspective, Jim went over to one of the corners of the cubicle. He then spread his arms and legs between the perpendicular walls, trying to pin himself in between them so that he could slowly climb up. This obviously didn’t work, and he came sliding down the smooth plastic walls again just a few moments later, gracelessly landing on his behind. But a minor setback like that wasn’t going to stop him. Letting out a pained groan, he got up again and attempted to scale the wall once more. Behind him, Maike let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head.

“Are you for real, midget? Is it that hard for you to accept help from a woman?” She groaned.

Once again sliding off the wall with a pathetic squeaking noise, Jim turned around to her and gave her another furious look. “I can’t help you. You’re gonna slow me down.”

“I am going to slow you down?” Maike asked incredulously, nervously cowering down as the hand of the girl with the glasses reached into another cubicle on the other side of the box and fished out a young man, probably a college student. Mere moments later, his anguished cries were cut off as Jessica swallowed him whole, typing something on her laptop.

“I’m a survivor.” Jim grunted as he started another futile attempt to climb up the plastic wall. “You, missy, are a civilian. You’re not cut out for this, and as you can see, it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. I’m sorry, but I can’t risk you getting in my way.”

“Look, I don’t know what your probl …” Maike began impatiently, moving up behind him.

But just in that moment, Lisa, the host of the study session and their buyer, rose to her feet. As she did so, her thighs gently bumped against the table. While the tremor this sent through the box was barely even perceived by the normal-sized girls, it sent Jim falling off the wall. He crashed right onto Maike, who let out a surprised shriek as they both fell to the ground.

“Alright, I’m just gonna go to the kitchen to get some cookies. Wouldn’t want you to think I don’t have enough snacks for you all.” Lisa explained, stretching herself for a moment.

“Oh, that’s not what I meant.” Jessica said apologetically. “I was just messing with Tanja.”

“Why thank you.” The blonde in the white sweater sulked.

“No, it’s all good.” Lisa smiled, dismissing the bespectacled girl’s worries with a wave of her hand. “I was going to get some cookies anyway. But the box is still half full, too.”

Peeking into the box from high above, the buxom blonde leaned over and extended her hand towards the cubicles, prompting another uproar of frightened cries from the shrunken people as it cast a dark shadow over them. Then her fingers slipped directly into Jim’s and Maike’s cubicle, reaching around in search of Lisa’s next tiny snack. The girl’s pink fingernails closed around them and Maike was pinned between a giant thumb and index finger. Tears pooling in her eyes, her breathing now quickly turned rapid and flat, and she began to hyperventilate.

“No… Please. Please help me!” She sobbed, putting her arms around Jim as she was lifted up.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He yelled, feeling himself being carried upwards along with her. Unfortunately, since she was twice his size, Maike also was a lot stronger than him. “Let go of me, you bitch! You’re gonna get us both killed! Let go of me right now!”

Jim glared up to the shrunken woman’s face, which had become just as distorted with fear as that of the man Lisa had eaten a few minutes earlier. Tears were running down her face and her mouth was cramping up, indicating that she was going into a full-blown panic attack. She didn’t even seem to be listening to him anymore, keeping her arms wrapped around his even smaller body as they were both lifted out of the box and high into the air. Aware that he had to act fast if he didn’t want to get eaten along with her, Jim tried to wriggle himself out of her tight embrace. Luckily enough, Maike’s arms were cramping up as well due to the low levels of carbon dioxide in her bloodstream, weakening her grip on him. Finally, Jim succeeded in pushing himself down between her arms. It was only then that he remembered that Maike’s deadly embrace had also been the only thing keeping him from falling down.

Shit. Jim thought to himself, trying to grab the woman again, but he was covered in his own and Maike’s sweat, causing his hands to slip off after only briefly hanging onto her ankle.

Then he felt cold air rush past him as he found himself in freefall. Dropping down past Lisa’s gargantuan body as the girl lifted Maike further up towards her face, Jim tried to turn himself around in mid-air. He had parachuted out of a plane before, so he knew how to move around when falling, but obviously he did not actually have a parachute on him. And he was falling towards a hard table, so even he understood that he was as good as dead. But then he realised that he was not falling towards the table exactly. Right below him was the giant cup of coffee he had seen from his cubicle earlier. Seeing that there was a chance of survival, Jim quickly took a deep breath and braced himself, angling his body in a way that it would minimise the force of the impact on his body. Merely a split second later, Jim splashed into the hot liquid and dove under for a moment before swimming up to the surface again. As he broke through the frothy surface, he gasped for air and frowned. Never before had he actually swum in such a hot liquid before, but even though it was painful on his skin, he was going to manage.

Still trying to catch his breath, Jim looked up once more, noting that it wasn’t even possible for him to take in the body of the giant girl all at once. The view in front of him was almost completely filled out by her crotch, covered by a pair of tight-fitting blue jeans. At the height of her waistline, it gave way to the pink sweater he had seen earlier, which stretched up above him for what seemed like miles on end until it bulged around her breasts. These were so large that they blocked his view of anything further up, including the sight of little Maike, who was still squirming around between Lisa’s fingers and now disappeared behind the pink hills. For a second or two, Jim could still hear the shrunken woman beg for mercy, her screams turning increasingly shrill, then there was a moist slurping noise, and the cries subsided.

Some part of Jim felt sorry for Maike, knowing that she was going to die an agonisingly slow death once the blonde girl swallowed her and sent her down to that endless belly of hers. But over the course of his life, he had seen many people die. It didn’t really matter all that much how one went out. In the end, everyone always was afraid of it, and it was just a thoroughly gruesome and undignified business. So he had no intention of dying anytime soon. Shrugging off the burgeoning sympathy for his former cellmate while Lisa apparently savoured her taste and rolled her around in her mouth for a few moments, Jim began to swim. He had to get out of this cup, or he would end up getting drunk along with a gulp of the scorching hot liquid.

***

Lisa popped another tiny into her mouth, only vaguely noting that it was a young woman. Not that it really mattered to her, tinies pretty much tasted all the same, regardless of gender, age, or race. Like most of the others, this one too kept begging her not to eat her as she opened her mouth and casually flicked her inside. Closing her lips behind her and thus drowning out her desperate cries to be spared, Lisa found herself wondering for a moment if that ever actually worked on anyone. It was almost a bit ridiculous if one bothered to pay attention to what they said, since they all sounded the same. And it never achieved anything. Lisa knew that tinies were people who were of no use to society, that’s why they had been shrunken down after all. But had they all been this stupid before as well? Or was this some kind of adverse side effect of the shrinking process? After all, their brains were pretty small as well. How did that work?

Feeling a slight contraction in her belly, accompanied by a soft gurgle as her digestive system continued to process the shrunken people she had already swallowed, Lisa shrugged off these idle thoughts and pushed the squirming little woman to the back of her mouth with her tongue. She turned away from the table and made her way out of the living room where she and her friends were studying for their next exam, then she swallowed the tiny with a content gulp. In her final moments before being sent on her way down into Lisa’s stomach, the miniaturised woman let out a shrill shriek, her weak voice echoing through the girl’s mouth.

“Please! I don’t wanna get eaten!” She cried out, disappearing into her throat with a last sob.

Hearing that, Lisa frowned a little. Shouldn’t have become my food then, silly. She thought to herself, gently shaking her head in disapproval as she felt the tiny slide down her oesophagus and finally plop into her stomach a couple of seconds later. There, the feeling of the shrunken woman’s frantic struggles blended in with that of the other tinies she had eaten before.

Now that her most recent morsel had reached its final destination and her tummy would take care of it, Lisa turned her attention back to the task at hand: to fetch some cookies for herself and her friends. Walking down the hallway, she went over into the spacious kitchen, where her mother was just preparing a delicious-looking lasagne for this evening. Even just the sight of it made Lisa’s mouth water, but she would have to hold out for a little longer. She hadn’t had lunch too long ago, and now was snacking on tinies and cookies with her friends, after all.

“Oh, there you are.” Her mother said as she looked up, setting a timer for the oven. “How are you four getting along? Need more snacks?” She asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Lisa smiled bashfully. “Just getting some cookies for us. I don’t think the tinies…” She began, interrupting herself as she raised her hand to her mouth and stifled a burp. “… I don’t think the tinies I got earlier are going to last very long.” She explained as she started rummaging through the cupboards. Then she took out a packet of chocolate chip cookies.

“I told you to get two large boxes. Or at least another medium one. You girls have ravenous appetites.” Lisa’s mother said, raising an eyebrow as she put on a teasingly admonishing face.

“You shouldn’t be encouraging me!” Lisa chided her back and held up her index finger as she reached into one of the drawers below, taking out a plate to serve the cookies on.

“Maybe I shouldn’t.” Her mother said, almost talking more to herself than her daughter. “But you aren’t worrying about your weight again, are you?” She then asked more seriously. “I do keep telling you, sweetie; you are a gorgeous young woman. You worry way too much.”

“Well, of course you would say that.” Lisa rolled her eyes as she poured the cookies onto the plate. “You’re my mum, after all.” She continued, pouting a little.

“Yes, exactly. And as your mom, if I thought you needed to lose some weight, I would say so. But you don’t. You’re a beautiful young lady, Lisa, and your dad and I are very proud of you.” Her mother explained and leaned over, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks, mum.” Lisa smiled and returned the kiss. “Anyway, I need to get back to studying.”

“Sure. Tell me if you or the girls need anything.” Her mother replied.

“Will do.” Her daughter said with a wink and then headed back towards the living room.

***

Trying to pull himself over the smooth edge of the oversized cup of coffee he was swimming in, Jim suddenly noticed a jolt go through his surroundings. Initially, he thought that Lisa had come back again, since her giant footsteps had made the coffee shake around in the cup for a few moments as she headed out of the living room. If he had understood her correctly earlier on, she was going to get some cookies for herself and the other girls. But while the booming steps and the tremors they had sent through the cup had made swimming towards the edge more difficult at first, they had subsided eventually, and then even left Jim with an excellent opportunity. Lisa was gone for the moment, leaving an entire side of the table open for him to escape from these enormous, man-eating girls, provided that he got out of this damn cup first. But this jolt he felt was different. There was only a single one, and it was accompanied by a strange sense of being lifted up into the air once more, even though he clearly was still inside the cup, holding onto the white edge with his arms while his lower body was still submerged in the hot liquid. For the first second or two, Jim simply didn’t understand what was going on, but then the realisation hit him like a train. When he turned around, he gasped.

Behind him, his entire field of view was now filled out by the gargantuan face of the girl who had been sitting to Lisa’s right. She was the athletic one with the Mediterranean appearance, and the only one whose name Jim hadn’t caught just yet. Not that it mattered. Because right now, he had very different things to worry about. Slowly tilting the cup towards her face, the girl opened her mouth, and Jim couldn’t prevent his body from starting to tremble at the sight that presented itself to him. Feeling a blast of hot, humid air touch his face, he looked into a vast abyss of pink-red flesh, framed by impeccably white, sharp-looking teeth that were each bigger than his whole body. Looking across her incredibly vast, saliva-coated tongue, which kept slithering around between these monstrous teeth like some monster from another world, he found himself staring into the depths of this girl’s throat. In a way, it almost looked more like a fleshy gateway to hell, a gigantic maw that would effortlessly swallow him whole, just as it had done with the shrunken people the girl hat devoured before. The girl wouldn’t even realise that she had gulped Jim down with a sip of her coffee.

No! He thought defiantly. I am not going to die today.

Fiercely holding onto the slippery edge of the giant cup, Jim had to put in all his strength to fight against being sucked away by the violent current. As he looked down at himself, seeing half his body submerged in murky brown liquid that would swiftly carry him towards certain death if he lost his grip, he felt reminded of that day he had fallen off a boat on the Bandama River and had to swim back to the shore, all while under enemy fire. But in a strange way, the memory of those events helped him stay focussed. Against all odds, he had survived that day, and he would survive this one as well. It just wasn’t possible. James Thompson was not going to get swallowed by some random girl and get digested like a piece of meat. Groaning as he pulled himself towards the edge, he looked on in disbelief as an entire lake’s worth of coffee simply disappeared in between the girl’s lips, only to be swallowed with one loud gulp.

“Come on, come on.” He said to himself, clenching his teeth as another gigantic mouthful of coffee was gulped down, and then another, and another.

“I’m back!” The powerful voice of Lisa suddenly said from somewhere beyond the confines of the enormous cup of coffee. “Here are the cookies. Want some? How about you, Alessia? They go really well with the coffee, you know.”

“Mh.” Made the colossal girl who was one mistake on Jim’s part away from swallowing him whole with her coffee. “Yeah, sure, why not. Thanks.” She said, her booming voice echoing through the half-empty cup as it began to even out again.

Damn, that was close. Jim thought as he let out a sigh of relief, pulling himself onto the edge.

***

Alessia gave Lisa a warm smile as her friend reached her the plate of cookies. They looked very nice indeed, neither too dry nor too soft. Putting down her cup of coffee on the table, she picked one of the cookies and took a little bite. They tasted good, though they were perhaps just a tad sweet for her personally. The chocolate chips really were a little bit redundant, since the dough itself already seemed to contain plenty of sugar. Not that Alessia was going to complain about it. Lisa had been spoiling them all afternoon already, even buying a box of Vortex tinies for them to enjoy while they studied together. She appreciated the opportunity, especially since she had missed some classes because of her swim training, and this way her friends could bring her up to speed on any subject matters that she had missed out on.

When she swallowed the mouthful of cookie and was about to take another bite, she noticed a little black speck on the edge of her coffee cup. At first, she thought that it was just a smudge, but then she saw that it was moving a little. Frowning to herself, she realised that it probably was some kind of tiny fly. At least she had seen it in time, and it hadn’t fallen into her coffee. Bugs grossed her out, and she hated it whenever a fly flew into her mouth during her morning runs and she ended up accidentally swallowing it. Not paying all too much attention to it, she moved her thumb and index finger to it and casually flicked it away, turning her focus back to one of her textbooks as she took another bite from her cookie.

***

Still trying to catch his breath after hoisting himself onto the edge of the humungous cup, Jim nearly fell back into it as it was placed back on the table, which sent another tremor through his bizarre surroundings. He managed to catch himself just in time, but the sudden shock sent an icy wave of panic through his aching muscles. If he had fallen back into the half-empty cup, it would definitely have been the end of him, since there would have been absolutely no way for him to scale those smooth ceramic walls again. Trying to calm himself and steady his breathing, he turned around to look up at the girl who had almost gulped him down. It was an unsettling thought that he had been put through such a degree of exertion and fear by nothing more than a girl drinking a cup of coffee, and that he would probably be in her stomach now if it hadn’t been for his strength and endurance. But as he gazed up at her, he saw yet another threat coming right towards him in the form of her giant fingers. Had she seen him?

“No!” Jim yelled at the top of his voice, expecting the girl to pick him up and throw him into her mouth. But then he realised what she was about to do, and his eyes widened. “Oh my…”

Before he could even finish his sentence, the perfectly manicured fingernail of her left index finger rushed towards him and then slammed into him like a truck at full speed, sending him flying through the air yet again. Rolling up in a ball as best he could to protect himself from the inevitable hard landing, Jim flew across the table, over the screaming and wailing tinies in the Vortex box, and Lisa’s textbook. Just when he expected to slam right into the hard surface of polished wood, a giant hand with pink fingernails placed a plate of cookies right in his way. And before his brain could even process this new piece of information, Jim smashed onto one of the semi-soft chocolate chip cookies. Due to his velocity and the angle of his fierce impact, the shrunken man bounced off it two or three times and violently spun around his own axis, taking small splinters out of the cookie’s surface that scattered around him like little pebbles. Finally, his aching body came to a complete halt after skittering across the cookie for another few moments, with Jim bumping into a chocolate chip that was easily as large as his body.

“Fuck.” He groaned, holding his head as he slowly tried to get back on his feet.

“Here, Jessi. Have some too.” Lisa’s voice chirped from somewhere high above.

“Uh, okay. Thanks.” Her friend answered, sounding a little absent-minded. Then, another jolt went through Jim’s surroundings and the entire cookie began to move upwards.

You gotta be kidding me. He simply thought, feeling yet another wave of intense panic rush through his body. Fortunately, it also galvanised him enough to allow him to get up again.

“Oh, and Lisa?” Jessica asked as she lifted the cookie off the plate with her right hand.

“Yeah?” The girl in the pink sweater asked.

“Before you sit down, would you mind closing the windows again? There’s a bit of a draft.” The black-haired girl with the glasses explained, rubbing her left hand across her right upper arm to indicate that she was feeling a little cold.

“Oh, sure.” Lisa nodded, turning around again and walking to the windows of the living room, which provided a scenic view of a well-kept, comfy back garden.

But Jim had other things on his mind than to admire Lisa’s home. For the third time this day, he was just a couple of seconds away from being ingested by one of these colossal girls. And just like Alessia, Jessica wasn’t even aware of his presence as she slowly opened her mouth. Once more, Jim felt the ominous blast of hot and humid air blow in his face as the girl’s lips began to part, revealing the inside of her dark, cavernous mouth. Panting with fear, he turned around and began to run across the surface of the gigantic cookie, jumping across cracks and bumps as well as pieces of chocolate sticking out of the soft surface. Then he looked over his shoulder and let out a panicked shriek, seeing that the horizon was now filled out by Jessica’s gaping maw. Thin, gooey strings of saliva stretched between her wet tongue and her pink-red palate, dissolving as her jaws opened up even further and prepared to bite down on the cookie. And even further beyond, Jim stared right into Jessica’s throat, the perfect darkness beyond her uvula a dreadful harbinger of the digestive doom that awaited him if he didn’t make it.

His lungs started to burn with exhaustion and his sides began to sting, but he knew that there was no other option than to keep on running. Then the massive row of teeth above him came smashing down all of a sudden, easily tearing into the giant cookie and taking out almost the entire landscape behind Jim. The miniaturised man was probably only an arm’s length away from the girl’s incisors as they cut into the sweet treat, the sudden impact throwing him into the air again for a moment before he came crashing down onto the surface. Hectically getting up, he looked over at the girl who had nearly eaten him. This had been another near miss, but it was even stranger to think that this girl, of all people, could pose such a threat to him. Just like her friends, Jessica was a pretty girl, but there was something understated and bookish, even a bit nerdy about her, an image that was further complemented by the reading glasses she was wearing at the moment. To imagine that he could be being chewed up by her along with that mouthful of cookie right now sent another cold shiver down Jim’s spine.

But before he could set his sights back to getting off this oversized cookie, the munching girl slowly exhaled through her nose, letting out a sigh of content approval. From the perspective of a normal-sized person, the sight would have been downright cute, but for Jim it translated into another gale-force blast of hot air that suddenly blew him across the surface of the cookie. He hadn’t even completely understood what had happened yet when the ground beneath him disappeared, and he was flying through the air again. Jim was still frantically looking around to figure out where he was going when he smashed onto the hard wooden surface of the table, yet again rebounding off it one or two times before he rapidly slid towards the edge.

“No, no, no!” He gasped, trying to hold onto the edge as he slipped over it, but to no avail.

Now falling down in a straight line, Jim expected to plummet to the hardwood floor and just explode on impact, leaving nothing but a miniscule red stain on the floor of Lisa’s home. But once again, his expectations turned out to be incorrect. Only halfway down towards the floor, Jim crashed onto a comparatively soft, even a little bouncy surface that absorbed most of the impact, leaving him more or less uninjured except for a couple of bruises he had sustained when smashing onto the table. Letting out another pained groan, Jim sat up and checked his arms and legs, struggling to understand why the past ordeal hadn’t left him with every single one of his bones shattered into pieces. Did it have something to do with him being so small?

“Deese awe weally noice.” Jessica said with her mouth full and then swallowed. “Where did you get them?” She then asked and took another bite. “Nod too dwy.”

“Uh, just from the supermarket around the corner, I think.” Lisa said, her booming footsteps shaking the ground beneath Jim once more as she apparently walked back to the table.

Trying to get up on the slightly squishy surface had been difficult enough, but now that his surroundings were being shaken by the massive footsteps again, it was downright impossible. When Lisa stepped back into Jim’s field of view just a moment later, he gasped with terror, finally realising where he was. Right next to him were her denim-clad knee pits, and she was still standing upright, which could only mean that…

Fuck. Jim thought, looking around.

The immense scale of everything around him continued to boggle his mind, but it was clear to him now that he had landed on the cushion of Lisa’s chair. Under different circumstances, this could even have been a good thing, but seeing that the enormous girl was standing right next to him, Jim could only conclude that he was in grave danger once more. Almost falling over backwards as he craned his neck back, he looked up along her giant legs, which almost looked like two colossal tree trunks wrapped in blue denim. But even the trunks of mammoth trees paled in comparison to the circumference of these gargantuan legs, and they only grew thicker around Lisa’s thighs before they finally bulged into a pair of two immense butt cheeks. Pressing firmly against the tight constraints of her jeans, the fat tissue on Lisa’s ass wobbled a little as she shifted her stance, still talking to her friends about where to buy the cookies she had served. Had he been at his normal size and walked past her in the street, Jim would likely have risked a furtive glance at this admittedly impressive butt. But all he could see now was yet another part of an impossibly large human that was possibly going to kill him. Trying to rise to his feet on the squishy surface of the pillow, Jim let out a desperate, pathetic whimper. Was this really it? Was this how his story was going to end? After all he had survived so far? Lisa’s stance shifted once more, and then she lowered her behind down to the seat. All went dark around Jim, and everything he could see was two giant butt cheeks coming towards him.

“No! Please don’t!” He squealed, his voice cracking as tears began to run down his face.

Instinctively holding up his arms, Jim was suddenly hit by a wall of denim and soft, but firm ass fat, effortlessly being squeezed deep into the cushion underneath him. The deeper he sank into the silky fabric, the more the pressure around him began to increase, clamping down on his miniscule body as Lisa’s butt slowly, but steadily squeezed the life out of him. To make it even worse, he soon found himself unable to breathe, not just because of the terrible pressure that squeezed the oxygen out of his lungs, but also because he was being suffocated between the girl’s buttocks and the pillow. Hearing nothing but his own panicked breathing as he was enveloped in complete darkness, Jim tried to scream, but even the weak squeaking noise his dying lungs managed to produce was easily absorbed by the mass of fat and flesh above him. Then, an ominous crack went through his bones, accompanied by a sharp pain going through his body. Jim howled in agony, his cries muffled by the giant ass pressing down on him, and pushed up his arms between the denim fibre, as if he somehow had even a remote chance of pushing the gargantuan girl’s body off himself. Obviously, it had no effect whatsoever.

Just when the pain and unspeakable fear started to fade away, giving way to an almost calm sense of cold numbness, Jim heard an odd buzzing noise from somewhere beyond. A moment later, Lisa apparently said something, though it was less of a sound and more of an extremely powerful vibration reverberating through the endless mass of muscles and fat. Then, much to Jim’s surprise and relief, the pressure all around him vanished in a mere instant, and he even could see light again as Lisa stood up again. Also to his surprise and a lot less to his relief, he was carried along with her, his arms still stuck between the fibre mesh of the girl’s blue jeans.

“Uh-huh, just gimme a sec, I’m just gonna go to another room real quick…” Lisa’s voice boomed high above him. “Yeah, they’re here too. We’re just studying together.”

Looking down for a moment, Jim began to feel dizzy. The thunderous footsteps had resumed, shaking Lisa’s buttocks as she walked across the hardwood floor again, all at a speed and on a scale that was hard for his brain to keep up with. Being nearly thrown off the left ass cheek with every little jiggle it made, he clawed his hands deeper into the denim fabric. If he fell off now, the drop would most likely kill him. But sooner or later, Lisa would sit down again, and he would have to get to safety if he didn’t want to end being crushed beneath the girl’s behind after all. Trying to block out the pain in his aching bones, he pulled his arms out of the denim mesh, making sure that he still had a firm grip on the fabric. And then he started to climb.

***

Tanja was bored. The first hour of the study session with her friends had been useful enough to finish up all her outstanding homework, but now, there wasn’t much left for her to do. She only really was needed if Alessia or Lisa asked her a question, but otherwise, she didn’t have much along the lines of studying to do. Tanja didn’t even really understand why people did it. All one needed to know was in the textbooks, and they usually even read those in class. Sure, Alessia missed out on a lot of stuff because of her swim training, but why did people have to read the same thing multiple times, or do virtually identical exercises over and over again? It all seemed so redundant to her. But much of school was like that. Doing the same boring shit again and again, even if the subject at hand was kind of self-explanatory. At least to her.

Half-heartedly munching on one of the chocolate cookies Lisa had brought from the kitchen, Tanja reached into the box. She picked out a shrunken boy, probably around her own age. He wasn’t moving around too much, only weekly trying to wriggle himself out between the grip of her fingers, but he undoubtedly was mortified. Tears were freely running down his cheeks, and he was staring up at Tanja with a look of pleading desperation on his little face. Bringing him closer to her face, she swallowed the mouthful of cookie and simply looked at him.

“Please, don’t eat me!” The tiny implored her. “My name’s Markus! I’m a human being, just like you. Please. I know I’ve made a mistake, but I’m sorry! Just please, please don’t kill me!” He continued, his words almost becoming incomprehensible due to his sobbing near the end.

The blonde put on a sad face and then brought her free right hand to her eye, making a crying gesture. This act of ridicule led to the tiny break out into outright bawling, but as much as she would have enjoyed taunting him even further, it would most likely disturb her friends with their studying. So Tanja just pushed him between her closed lips and sucked on him, relishing his increasingly shrill cries as he was slowly slurped into her mouth like a spaghetti.

“No, no, please, God!” Markus sobbed. “Please, someone help me! I want my mommy!”

Your mommy’s not coming for you. Tanja thought, mischievously grinning to herself as the tiny was sucked into her mouth and wriggled around on her tongue. You’re mine now.

“No, no, no!” The shrunken boy’s weak voice echoed through her oral cavity while she rolled him around with her tongue for a moment. “Stop it! Please!” He shrieked hysterically.

Mmmh, yes. Cry for me, little bitch. Tanja relished his futile squirming, feeling her heartbeat speed up and a pleasant warmth spread between her legs. Life would be so dull without tinies.

While Tanja kept playing around with the shrunken boy in her mouth, Lisa’s phone suddenly started buzzing, the name and picture of her boyfriend Konstantin appearing on the display.

“Oh, sorry about that.” Lisa apologised and picked up her phone. “Hey sweetie, what’s up?” Listening to her boyfriend’s muffled voice for a few seconds, she got up from her chair again and began to walk around the table. “Uh-huh, just gimme a sec, I’m just gonna go to another room real quick… Yeah, they’re here too. We’re just studying together.”

Seeing her friend’s ample breasts bob up and down beneath her pink sweater as she rose up to her feet and feeling the shrunken boy in her mouth slip towards her throat, Tanja was hit by a wave of intense horniness. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at Lisa’s curvaceous body as she walked by, her gaze wandering down to her taut butt. With her thoughts now entirely elsewhere, Tanja swallowed the sobbing tiny and panted just a little. She was generally more into dark-haired types, but Lisa simply had an ass to behold. Firm, but also soft, with just the right amount of bounce in her step. It was a shame that she was in a committed relationship. When she walked by, heading towards the living room door, Tanja couldn’t help herself any longer. Extending her arm to gather momentum, she gave Lisa’s passing butt a hearty slap.

“What have you guys been up to? Are you already at the… What the…?” The girl suddenly interrupted her call and looked around in surprise as she heard a loud whacking noise and felt a slight pain on her behind. “Did you just… TANJA!” Lisa exclaimed, her face running red.

Surprised, Alessia and Jessica looked up as well, bursting into laughter as they realised what had happened. Lisa too couldn’t help but start to laugh, though she did try to put on a look of scornful disapproval directed at her friend. Tanja put on an innocent face and reached for her half-eaten cookie again, suppressing a grin as she bit off another mouthful.

“Wod?” She asked with her mouth full and swallowed. “Come on, loosen up a little.”

“What’s going on?” Konstantin’s voice quietly sounded from the phone in Lisa’s hand.

Shaking her head, Lisa put it to her ear again. “Tanja is harassing me.” She whined, causing her friends to break out into laughter again.

“No, I’m not!” Tanja protested. “You guys are just stuck-up is all.” She dismissed her with an indignant wave of her hand, turning her attention to her laptop. While she had no studying to do anymore, there still was an email she wanted to write. She could take care of that now.

***

Unbeknownst to the four girls, the impact of Tanja’s hand on Lisa’s backside had very nearly flattened little Jim, her fingers only missing him by perhaps an arm’s length of his own size. But the shockwave it had sent through the soft fat tissue on the other blonde’s butt cheek had been more than enough to throw him off, and it was only thanks to his lightning-fast reactions that Jim had managed to hold onto a ring on Tanja’s middle finger at the last minute. Holding on for dear life, he could feel the intense G-forces tearing at his body as Tanja withdrew her hand again and reached for a half-eaten cookie next to her laptop. Realising that this was his chance, Jim took a deep breath as the giant hand flew across the gigantic keyboard. The speed at which he was travelling was still breathtaking, but he also knew that if he let go too late, he would risk landing on the cookie and getting eaten yet again. And then he let go.

Crashing down between the oversized keys, Jim skidded across the housing for just a moment before he came to a complete halt. His bones still were aching and perhaps had minor fissures from being sat on, and now he had fallen onto a hard surface once more. There was virtually no part of his body left that didn’t feel like it had been smashed up with a hammer. But while the pain was worse than anything he had experienced before in his life, Jim was also aware that he still wasn’t safe. And continuing to lie around here, right on the laptop of the blonde with the white sweater, would make him a sitting duck. It was probably only due to the girls’ joking around with each other that he hadn’t been noticed already. Also, had that really just happened? Of all the things he had been bracing himself for while he held onto Lisa’s butt, he had certainly not expected to nearly be swatted by one of the other girls’ hands as she slapped her friend’s ass. What was the matter with young people these days?

Jim let out another groan and got up, trying to ignore the enormous girls as they continued to giggle and clown around. He looked around, trying to ascertain the shortest way off the giant keyboard, but unfortunately, he seemed to have landed right in the middle of it. But that was not even the worst. Because as he looked up, Tanja lowered her hands around him, and began to type. Suddenly surrounded by a forest of feminine fingers and blue fingernails thumping down onto the keys around him, Jim desperately tried to dodge the colossal digits. After what he had survived so far today, he was quite sure that getting stuck between them and the keys wouldn’t kill him, but it would definitely hurt, and it would lead to Tanja noticing him. So he began to run as fast as he could, dodging the girl’s fingers left and right as he made his way towards the edge of the keyboard. Luckily, the blonde in the creamy white sweater appeared to be completely focused on the screen, not noticing him as he skidded past the last fingers of her left hand and finally rolled himself off the giant laptop.

When he fell down onto the wooden surface of the table, another sharp pain shot through his limbs. But seeing how close he still was to this girl, Jim fought back the urge to scream, and forced himself to get up. Still hearing Tanja’s fingers scurry across the keyboard behind him, he looked around and gasped for air. Apart from the pain throughout his body, he was utterly out of breath and covered in sweat. Yes, not even that clusterfuck on the Bandama River had been this bad. But there still was a chance to get out of this. He just had to tread lightly. There between Tanja and that Mediterranean girl who had nearly swallowed him with her coffee – what had Lisa called her again? Alessia? There between them was a fairly large gap, created by one of the legs of the table. He still wasn’t sure how to get off the table itself, but maybe he would be able to climb down the leg somehow. And if he moved carefully, he would be able to avoid getting spotted. At least now, his unusually small size would come in handy.

Warily glancing up at Tanja again, Jim also saw Lisa walk out of the living room and into the hallway, prattling on about something on her phone. Even better. A girl on the phone. Maybe she would be away for hours, so there was one less pair of eyes to worry about. For a moment, he considered making use of the gap left behind at the table now that Lisa was gone. But then he dismissed that thought. There was no way to get down to the floor from there, and he was most certainly not going to jump down onto her chair. Those couple of seconds beneath her butt probably had been the closest he had ever gotten to dying. So that was out of the picture.

As he carefully moved away from Tanja and her laptop, Jim cowered down behind a gigantic highlighter and continued onwards in a cowering position, always trying to keep a watchful eye on Tanja, and Alessia in particular, since she was the one closest to him now. Reaching another patch of open space, he took another couple of moments to calm his breathing. These parts, where one had to quickly move from one covered position to another, were always the most dangerous. It didn’t even really make that much of a difference whether the enemy was a bunch of insurgents who wanted your head on a stick, or a group of oversized girls trying to eat you. While he thought out his next steps, Jim heard another anguished shriek behind him. He already knew what it was, but he still couldn’t help but look over his shoulder as another shrunken man was lifted out of the box and flicked into Tanja’s mouth. Not once did she take her eyes off her laptop, pushing her living snack around on her tongue for a moment before a soft gulp carried him down her throat. It was a sight Jim had almost gotten used to over the last couple of hours, but what chased a shiver down his back was that the blonde now bit her lower lip, the corners of her mouth moving up just a little as she broke into a subtle smirk.

She’s enjoying this. He realised, looking up at her blue eyes. Indeed, her pupils were dilated a little. Crazy bitch is turned on. Whatever would happen, he did not want to be spotted by her.

Feeling an even greater sense of urgency to get away from Tanja, Jim took his chances and went for a quick sprint to the next giant object on the table, a half-open pencil case. From its position on the table, he assumed that it belonged to Alessia. In the couple of seconds it took him to get there, Jim could hear nothing but his own exhausted breathing, and he didn’t even dare to look up at the girls towering over him. But when he finally skidded into the shadow of the pencil case, he knew that once again, he had not been seen. Slowly inhaling again to slow his racing pulse, Jim peeked into the cavernous inside of the pencil case. It was filled with a variety of pens and pencils the size of giant tree logs, and one of them had halfway fallen out onto the table, creating something akin to a wooden ramp. For a moment, Jim considered the options this presented to him. He could try climbing inside the pencil case and hide there for the time being. If Alessia took it back home, with him hitching a ride as a tiny stowaway of sorts, he would only have to deal with one of these titans. Would that be an option?

No. That wouldn’t work either. At the moment, the pencil case was lying on its side, making it fairly easy for him to get in and out. But once he was inside, who knew if it would end back in that position wherever Alessia put it next? And the zip would perhaps be closed then. Not to mention that it would be quite dangerous being inside what was essentially just a huge bag full of giant logs that would undoubtedly be tossed around whenever the girl started moving. So Jim dismissed the idea again and carefully moved onwards, soon reaching the end of the pencil case and the slider itself. Seeing that even this small piece of metal was bigger than his whole body and that he could easily fit through the small hole in it, Jim suddenly felt dizzy again, accompanied by a strange sense of anxiety and alienation. Was there any point in this at all? It was the sight of these mundane everyday items, blown up to a ludicrously large scale, that really reminded him of just how small he was. Even if he somehow made it off this table, where would he go next? How would he get out of this house, this neighbourhood, this town? Did he want to go back to France, or even America? None of it was remotely realistic.

Stop it, Jim. He disciplined himself. You’re not a quitter. You’ll survive this, you always do.

Shrugging off these uncomfortable thoughts about the true implications of his situation, Jim set his mind onto the next objective, just as he always did. And that was to get past Tanja and Alessia, and off this goddamn table. He took another couple of deep breaths and straightened himself out, then he looked around the corner and beyond the slider. Jim was close to Alessia now, but just like the other girls, she didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to what was happening on the table. Sipping at her coffee again, she had her dark brown eyes focussed on a textbook in front of her and was writing something down onto a piece of paper in her folder. Just to her right, Jim could see the top of the table leg again, which was outlined by a circular groove in the polished wood. It wasn’t especially deep, but at his size, it maybe would indeed shield him from the girls’ view long enough to start climbing down the table leg.

Jim paused for another moment to collect himself. This was it. The final stretch of open space he had to cover before he would be out of the immediate danger zone. Was he ready for this? For a couple of seconds, he considered the only other option he could think of, trying to hide on this table and wait until the girls were gone. But where would he hide? They would likely be taking away all the giant items scattered across the table when they concluded their study session, and then he would be at an even greater risk of being discovered. This was the most sensible thing to do. To get away from where the girls would see him as fast as was possible. And so, that was what he was going to do. He inhaled, and started running.

For the first couple of seconds, Jim made good progress. The groove outlining the table leg was coming closer and closer, and both Alessia and Tanja seemed to be completely distracted. But then, about halfway towards his target, disaster struck. Swallowing a big gulp of coffee, Alessia lowered the cup down to the table again, right above where Jim was making his dash across the surface. The shrunken man noticed the shadow of the giant cup almost too late, and when he looked up, he let out a terrified gasp. Almost as if out of nowhere, the colossal piece of tableware came descending down onto him like some kind of UFO. It was only thanks to Jim making a last-second combat roll to his left that he wasn’t crushed beneath the cup as it came smashing onto the tabletop. Skidding across the surface, Jim tried to stop himself and get back on his feet, but just as he began to slow down, he felt another ominous tremor below. And then another, and yet another, each one more powerful than the last.

“Sorry about that.” Lisa’s powerful voice sounded from above, and following another two or three booming footsteps, she stepped up to the table between Alessia and Tanja, right where he had been planning to make his escape. “Konzi just wanted to know if… is that a bug?”

Jim looked up, again finding himself gazing up a mountain of a human being that seemed to stretch up high into the air without end. But this time, Lisa’s face wasn’t obscured behind her sizeable chest. This time, she was slightly leaning over, looking down at the table. At him.

“Ugh, where is it?” Alessia asked, grabbing a smaller book next to her and letting her slightly annoyed gaze wander across the table. “Let me get it for you.”

His eyes widening and his muscles cramping up with fear, Jim looked over at Alessia. Time almost seemed to slow down as the colossal girl raised the textbook above him, getting ready to smash it down and utterly obliterate him, to crush his frail and miniscule body into nothing more than a bloody pulp. ‘Linear Algebra’, it said. Jim had always hated maths.

“Wait!” Lisa suddenly exclaimed, lifting her hand to indicate Alessia to stop. To Jim’s relief, the black-haired girl lowered her book again, giving Lisa a questioning look. Then the blonde squatted down, bringing her eyes to his level. “Well hello, little man. Where are you going?”

“That’s not a tiny. It’s too small.” Alessia stated with a sceptical frown, nevertheless leaning over as she took a closer look at him. Jim could virtually feel his muscles turn to jelly and his heartbeat speed up so much that he worried he might have a heart attack. “Wait, what? It is?”

“Seriously?” Tanja asked, her cold blue eyes now locking onto Jim too as she leaned over to him as well. “Fuck, dude, what happened to you?” She then asked with an amused giggle.

“He’s cute.” Lisa said in an almost giddy tone, moving her face in even closer.

Jim tried to get up, but his whole body was shaking with fear from seeing the enormous faces of not one or two, but three of these titanic girls looking down at him. As Lisa leaned in even closer, he could feel her powerful breath on his tiny body, a cold suction drawing air into her mouth and nostrils, and then a blast of warm, humid air as she exhaled again. For a moment, he even feared that she would simply inhale him by accident, since she was so impossibly big. But apparently, he wasn’t that small, even though he felt like the tiniest creature in the entire world right now. And he was scared like never before in his life. These were just four girls, but to Jim, they were the most frightening things he could possibly imagine.

“Please…” He began to whimper, his voice suddenly hoarse and shaky. “Just listen to m…”

Before he could even finish his sentence, all air was suddenly forced out of his lungs as Lisa pinned him between the thumb and index finger of her right hand. Judging from the fact that he hadn’t simply exploded under the pressure, Jim concluded that the girl was actually trying to be gentle with him, even though that appeared to be somewhat difficult with this vast size difference between them. Then he was lifted up again, passing by her belly and breasts, still hidden beneath her pink sweater, and finally found himself looking right into her clear blue eyes once more. For a few seconds, Lisa just intently scrutinised him, then she giggled.

“But like, really. What happened? Why are you so small? Are you new?” She asked curiously.

“I… have… no idea. I… just… woke… up… like… this.” Jim gasped, desperately trying to breathe despite the painful pressure exerted on his abdomen by Lisa’s giant fingers.

“What did you say?” Lisa asked, leaning in closer again and turning her left ear towards him.

“I… don’t… know.” He repeated. “But… please… you’re… crushing… me…”

“I can’t understand what he’s saying.” Lisa pouted. She seemed almost disappointed.

“It’s probably some kind of processing error.” Jessica remarked, sounding fairly disinterested in the whole matter. “Too much power on the shrink ray or something.”

“Well, are you gonna eat him or not?” Alessia inquired.

“I want to know why he’s so tiny.” Lisa frowned. “Seriously, he’s adorable.”

“Right?” Tanja agreed, gesturing her friend to hold the strange tiny closer to her face. When she did, the blonde in the creamy white sweater giggled again. “Hi there, cutie!” She waved. “Hey, you wanna come back to my place? I’m gonna take good care of you!”

Looking into her icy blue eyes, Jim shivered. The other three girls just were incredibly huge, but otherwise behaved like normal girls their age. This girl was different. He already had seen a glimpse of this unnerving expression on her face when she had eaten that other shrunken man a few minutes ago. Something about the expression in her eyes chilled him to his bones. It was subtle, and not everyone would have recognised it, but Jim had met enough deranged psychopaths in his life to recognise that distinct spark of insanity. This girl was a killer.

“Please, no!” Jim begged tearfully, looking up at Lisa. “Don’t give me to her!”

“Do you understand what he’s saying?” Lisa asked, holding him closer to Tanja’s face.

“No. I think he’s too small.” The other blonde said with a pensive look. “I sometimes have a hard time even understanding what the normal tinies say.”

“Why would you want to know anyway?” Alessia asked with an unsympathetic frown. “They all keep saying the same stuff. ‘Oh no, please don’t eat me, I have a family’. Who cares?”

“Eh, I guess you’re right. Oh well.” Lisa shrugged, lifting Jim back up to her face.

Without any further warning, she opened her mouth and tossed him inside. Jim gasped, but before his brain had fully processed what was happening, he was flying through the air again, feeling the now eerily familiar sensation of a moist, hot breath on his face. Then he passed through Lisa’s soft lips and her glistening white teeth, only missing her upper incisors by a few inches from his perspective. Struggling to breathe in the oppressively humid and hot air, Jim fell down onto the girl’s giant, slimy tongue, hearing a sickening splat as he fell onto her tastebuds and they began squirting out even more hot, gooey saliva. Within a couple of split seconds, he was covered over and over in viscous spit, coughing as he desperately began to gasp for oxygen. Jim tried to look around, but all he could see was slimy, pink-red flesh and massive teeth. The last thing he saw before the giant mouth closed shut was the foreboding darkness of Lisa’s throat, like a huge organic gateway framed by two saliva-covered tonsils and her uvula, dangling above the fleshy abyss like an organic stalactite.

Right when the last rays of light from the outside world were shut out by Lisa’s closing front teeth, the slippery tongue jolted upwards towards the giant girl’s palate and angled backwards, sending Jim slipping helplessly down toward the vast, visceral chasm at the back of her throat. Then there was a painfully loud, wet gulping sound, and Jim lost all sense of direction, along with his hearing being shattered by a violent pop ripping through his auditory canals. All of a sudden, the entire world around him was nothing more than a maelstrom of slimy, bubbly spit, and undulating walls of slick flesh. Jim could neither see nor hear anything, but he could still feel the disgusting texture of warm, raw flesh slithering across his body, as well as a periodic thumping sensation that almost drowned out any other thoughts of his as he descended deeper and deeper into a tight organic tube. Every now and again, he could feel rings of muscles pull him down with merciless efficiency, his helpless kicking and squirming achieving absolutely nothing to slow down his descent. Feeling his aching lungs cramp up as they began to cry out for precious oxygen, he instinctively inhaled, only to feel more spit and slime being forced in his mouth. His body began to convulse, and all he wished for now was a swift, painless death.

But it would not be granted to him just yet. After some more moments, another wet plop went through his ears, partially restoring his hearing. The powerful thumping all around him now became somewhat more recognisable as a human heartbeat, and was also accompanied by the menacing sound of a pair of vast lungs calmly breathing in and out. To Jim, who had to hold his own breath so as not to suffocate in the deluge of slime and spit inside this narrow tunnel of muscular flesh, the abundance of oxygen just beyond his visceral confines sounded almost like mockery. But he knew that none of these sounds was derisive. In fact, the gigantic body he was travelling through was utterly apathetic to his fate. He knew that Lisa had swallowed him whole, eaten him alive with no more thought than she gave to a piece of candy.

Feeling his tears mix with the thick goop around him, Jim quietly sobbed as his body slipped down a steep incline, smashing into a muscular sphincter. Upon contact, it opened up with a visceral slurp and effortlessly sucked him inside, spitting him into an almost endless void that gave off a pungent smell of puke and acid. For a second or two, he found himself in freefall, passing through invisible clouds of acidic gas that left a painful burning sensation on his skin. Then he splashed into what seemed like an ocean of hot vomit, the sounds around him falling quiet for a few moments. At the back of his head, Jim knew that it would probably have been better to just let himself sink to the ground of the putrid sea and drown. It would have made it easier for him. But feeling himself submerged in liquid, his survival instincts kicked in again, and he swam back to the surface, breaking through the thick soup with a panicked gasp.

When he inhaled, his airways immediately began to flare up with the most unbearable pain he had ever experienced. He knew that he was swimming in a foul broth of chyme and stomach juices, and inhaling gasses laden with digestive enzymes that immediately commenced their grim task of ripping him apart, whether he was dead or still alive. But Jim wanted to live. He wanted to get out here. And he was afraid. He would have done anything to suffer a different fate instead. But this was the end for him. James Thompson was going to be digested alive.

When he cried out in horror, his screams blended in with those of dozens around him.

***

Lisa flicked the peculiar tiny into her mouth and briefly tried to determine whether he tasted any different from the others. Adding even further to her disappointment, he didn’t appear to taste like much at all. Perhaps another downside of his particularly miniscule size. Giving up on the prospect of finding anything interesting about this little oddity, Lisa shrugged and then swallowed the shrunken man with a gentle gulp. As he disappeared into her oesophagus, Lisa frowned. She barely felt him going down into her stomach at all, and so she wasn’t even able to tell whether he was a wriggler or not. There was just no sensation whatsoever.

“Hey!” Tanja complained, giving her a disapproving look. “I wanted to have him.”

“Yeah, but I was feeling peckish.” Lisa said indifferently. “Just take one of the others.”

“But they’re not as tiny as he was.” Tanja moaned. “He was special.”

“You mean, he was a freak.” Jessica shook her head, not looking up from her textbook.

“I could have kept him around a bit, tried to find a way to talk to him. Maybe he would have told me something interesting.” Tanja insisted.

“You were just going to fuck around with him again, like with all the others.” Alessia replied with an exasperated sigh. “And then you would have gotten bored and eaten him.”

“Maybe. But I would have had more fun with him than Lisa did.” Tanja argued.

“Sorry.” Lisa said with a sheepish grin and gave her belly an ostentatious rub. “Too late now.”

“Yeah, whatever.” The other blonde said, sounding a little dejected.

Shrugging to herself, Lisa went back to her chair and sat down. She had just begun to read the next chapter in her textbook when her stomach gurgled noisily, and a sudden surge of air was forced up her oesophagus. Caught a little off guard, Lisa was unable to hold it back, resulting in an unexpectedly hearty burp slipping out through her lips. Jessica looked a little shocked and tried to shrug it off with an awkward smile, and Alessia simply started laughing.

“Okay, now you’re just mocking me.” Tanja said with a disapproving frown, but was unable to keep a straight face and soon started joining into Alessia’s contagious giggling.

“I swear, that wasn’t on purpose.” Lisa said, holding both her hands in front of her mouth and blushing a little, her eyes wide. She too was struggling not to laugh. “It just slipped right up.”

“Small guy, big effect.” Jessica said with a laconic smirk, prompting her friends to burst into laughter once again. After a couple of seconds of trying to stay serious, she joined in.

The four girls continued to study until the late afternoon. When they were too exhausted to go on, they kept on chatting for another hour, snacking on the cookies and the remaining tinies in the box until both were completely empty. Finally, Lisa’s guests packed up their books and folders, deciding to all leave together. Their host saw them to the door and took time to give each one of them a long, loving hug before they finally stepped outside, looking on after them for a few moments and waving at them again when they split up. Jessica disappeared around the corner of a street to the left, while Alessia and Tanja headed down along the pavement to the right, finally disappearing behind some parked cars in the distance as well.

Lisa sighed and closed the front door, returning to the living room. It had been a long day, but at least they had gotten at lot of studying out of the way, and she now felt well prepared for the upcoming tests and exams. Picking up the empty Vortex box from the table, she went into the kitchen and casually threw it into the trash. Lisa was just about to head back to her room when she saw the casserole dish with the lasagne on the kitchen counter. Her stomach, having emptied itself into her intestines around half an hour ago with a moist gurgle, let out a groan.

“Mum? When are we having dinner again?”

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