The moment that LeShae reached down to pick up her snack, Erin knew what to expect, whether or not the giantess was aware or not, she was about to nibble on her pastry and give Erin a very up close view of her eating habits, or at minimum, chewing habits. The tiny girl screamed as LeShae’s enormous fingers surrounded the circular pastry and lifted it from the paper, carrying the tiny girl along with it. Desperately looking around for any sort of help, whether it be a nearby finger, or a way to jump off, or even…Dash.
Almost immediately directly behind her, Erin saw the red-headed barista’s huge face miles away, and she seemed to be staring right at her. She knew it was more likely that she was eyeing the pastry she was trapped in, but that was still more attention than she was currently getting from LeShae.
“Dash! Dash! Please, help me Dash!” Her hands waved around as wildly as she could make them, and she tried pulling more of her body out of the sticky filling and onto one of the crushed, toasted pecans. Above, she heard LeShae’s powerful voice say something as she finished ascending to the woman’s face. Turning back to look at LeShae again, she found herself a quarter mile (well, a few inches) away from those huge, pillow-soft lips. They were as wide as they had been while she was on LeShae’s finger, but now she was much, much closer. There were virtually no imperfections, save for the minute details of the lip that could be see only because Erin had such a close up, unobstructed view of her former client’s face. The winds whipped around her more harshly than ever, and Erin thought that her shirt may literally get blown off of her body, as LeShae finished exhaling.
“Don’t you work here? You should probably taste one…” LeShae spoke again, Erin watching in horror as the lips she’d been staring at shifted and moved to form words and make sounds, each passing syllable causing some kind of plosive or gust of wind that seemed no less than gale force to the horrified hair-stylist stuck in the pastry. During those short two sentences, Erin could see glimpses of the pristine white teeth behind those warm lips in front of her. She thought about how deceptive the human mouth was, especially LeShae’s. Lips were among the softest, if not the top ranking most welcoming part of the human anatomy. She’d even seen commercials about a tiny man having a blast as he bounced around on a pair of lips that sent him flying like a trampoline…some Asian commercial. And beyond those lips, powerful, sharp bones designed to rip, tear, pierce, crush and grind anything inside. They were walls of pristine white, each at least three to four times as tall as Erin currently was. And should she make it beyond LeShae’s perfect pearly gates, there was a miles-deep chasm deep into the girl’s gullet, where she would be swallowed and banished to what had to be an ocean of digesting breakfast and stomach acid. Erin did not want to go beyond LeShae’s lips.
It seemed that as Erin had these thoughts in her head, LeShae chose to demonstrate them for her. LeShae’s lips began to part, slowly as her jaw began to lower, and the tips of those impressively dangerous teeth began to show, primarily to the tips of her incisors and canines.
“NO! LeShae! Don’t eat me!” The tiny one screamed, louder than she had screamed in her entire life, in her own opinion. “Please! Please!” But her words disappeared in the growing chasm of darkness that was the woman’s mouth. Inside, there was a hue of pink from LeShae’s tongue and gum line. She couldn’t quite make out the outline of her uvula, but she didn’t want to. As painfully slow as the parting of lips and opening of the mouth seemed to go for Erin, it was only a mere second before the entire platform shifted forward, moving her toward the cavern.
Erin felt LeShae inhale gently, as most people did occasionally when they took a bite of the food, and her hair whipped about once again. Before she knew it, the inside of LeShae’s mouth was all she could see. Screaming one last time, she swore she heard the echoes of her own voice bouncing off of LeShae’s molars and the back of her throat, before everything descended into chaos.
The descent, specifically, was that of the teeth above her lowering into the edible island around her. Additionally, she felt the platform below her shaking at its core as LeShae’s jaws moved up from below her. An earthquake, or worse, a continental shift that absolutely destroyed the surface of the pastry. A simple bite of the tart seemed like the Earth was falling apart to the tiny topping to her toasty treat. Erin was given a front-row seat to the chaos, LeShae’s teeth had bared themselves completely, and the shrunken woman saw her life flashing before her eyes, briefly, but literally.
The nearly bleach-white teeth gave Erin a mirror-like reflection of herself and her situation, if only for a moment, and made her realize how close she had come to being crushed under LeShae’s incisors. It wouldn’t have even sliced her in half, the surface area of the sharpened tooth was too blunt of a surface for the tiny woman, it was a humbling thought.
Eventually, most of the way through the two-second long encounter, the crumbly crust of the tart gave way and began to tumble beyond LeShae’s teeth and into her mouth. Erin, unable to do much other than be carried along, began to fall along with it. LeShae, however, didn’t expect her snack to be so weak-willed, and pursed her lips a bit further around the tart to capture the crumbs that were falling. Erin, as one of these crumbs tumbling away from the tart, went screaming off of the surface of the pastry and into the abyss.
She landed seconds later in the midst of an avalanche of graham-cracker crumbs. The surface she’d landed on was wet and sticky, pink and warm. Above her, she could see LeShae’s gums and lower incisors. It didn’t take much for her to realize that she’d fallen into the fleshy valley between LeShae’s gums. For a moment, she’d clung to a graham-boulder as it slid down the steep incline below the lips and teeth, but quickly realized that going down any lower was a death sentence. Instead, she dug her fingernails into the flesh and clung to the slippery skin. She was only yards, a millimeter or two away from the top of the lower lip. If she could reach it…
As LeShae finished her bite, she pulled the tart away from her mouth and looked over at Dash, who immediately diverted eye-contact to avoid being caught staring. Mouth closed, LeShae prayed for something to get her out of this awkward situation without being rude. Telling Dash to blow off somewhere would probably burn the bridge at this Starbucks, and she surely didn’t want to have to start driving to the Starbucks across town. She slowly began to chew, focusing on the taste of the pecans, caramel filling, and warm graham-cracker crust. She noted the slight irritation between her teeth and inner-lip, figuring she would wash it away with her coffee in a moment.
Erin had not given up, and despite the massive, powerful shifting of LeShae’s teeth and jawline, had managed to not only avoid falling deeper into that pink valley below her, but pull herself up to the top of the lower lip. The only thing between her and salvation was the semi-tight seal between the two lips. If she could figure out a way to get between them, she’d be breathing fresh, non-coffee scented air. As she considered just pushing her way through the moist flesh surround her, she looked behind her, as if she had forgotten how close she was to those huge, gnashing, crushing teeth. She was disgustingly close to being crushed alive between them. Quickly refocusing, the tiny girl pulled herself forward on her stomach another few inches to begin pushing her way through.
Then, as if she’d said ‘Open Sesame!’, the lips parted again, but only a little, enough that Erin could see the outside world. But instead of seeing the outside world, she saw a big, white wall. Before she could process this wall as being the lid of a coffee cup, she watched the rest of the lid tilt forward and towards her more. Unable to respond quickly enough, the plastic white lid’s surface rested against her. She was now trapped between the lip of a coffee cup, and the lip of the woman drinking from it.
If not for the soft, fleshy surface of LeShae’s lip, Erin would be crushed to death. As for now, she was only being smothered. She couldn’t see much, and didn’t care to, the pain from the immense pressure was nearly unbearable. In actuality, the pressure was only really the contact space from the cup, LeShae was bearing the weight of the cup in her hand, but Erin wasn’t much focused on that.
She could hear the millions upon millions of gallons of flavored coffee splashing around above her. The coffee cup’s lining was probably only as thick as she was, and she could absolutely feel the heat from the warm coffee penetrating its surface. The waves of coffee barely shifted the weight and center of gravity as the moved from the back of the cup to the front, then back again, like a serene ocean. It wasn’t enough for LeShae to notice, but Erin certainly did. A moment later, she heard the sound of LeShae swallowing mouthfuls of coffee. Each gulp resonating deep into the throat and warning Erin of just how close to being swallowed alive she was.
As the nightmare scenario began to reach a crescendo, Erin felt the pressure relent, and before she knew it…she as free. But not the way she hoped…she was lifting into the air, stuck to the lip of the cup! For once, whatever deity was watching her life worked in opposition to Erin’s plight. She almost laughed as she watched LeShae’s lips slowly move away, and soon enough, she felt the thud of the cup on the table again. She was free.
Now…to get Dash’s attention!