Sarah felt her heart ready to leap through her chest. It was one thing to come to terms with your mortality and accept that you life was finite. It was another thing to face your executioner in your last moments, knowing that your death would be not only painful and violent, but meaningless and forgettable. Apart from her flesh being reduced to its core elements and used as nutrients, Sarah’s death would mean nothing, having such a physically miniscule impact on the world that even her sister would not notice it. She would disappear into the blistering jaws of death itself and be devoured by them, screaming and unheard wail of fear, and it would not even register on Michelle’s palette as anything other than another fleck of flavored sugar tumbling across her tongue. Even her tastebuds would disregard the shrunken girl as too inconsequential to alert the consciousness that something was amiss.
These were the thoughts that crossed Sarah’s mind. Apart from letting her mind rightfully exacerbate the situation in her head, she could do nothing but curl her knees to her chest and watch as her sister’s lips began to part. Sarah was given her first glimpse into Michelle’s oral torture chamber, the maw of a living goddess who was only intention was to enjoy her favorite cereal. Lined both up and down with pristine walls of ivory, the light from the kitchen window glinted off of Michelle’s incisors as they were exposed behind her lips. Deeper inside, Sarah could just barely make out the dimensions of Michelle’s powerful, food-crushing molars.
To occupy the surface of one while the jaws were in motion was guarantee completely and unforgiving decimation of the food that had found it’s place there.
And that is what caused Sarah to break. She was no longer Michelle’s sister. She wasn’t hardly even a human being anymore, much less related. She was part of the food chain. She was breakfast.
She was food.
The thoughts and emotions ricocheted in her mind as violently as the car had collided against each piece of cereal the encountered when Michelle stirred her bowl. It rattled her consciousness, and Sarah descended into hysterics at the sight of her big sister’s mouth opening to accept her as a mere bit of her cereal. Her broken consciousness would not allow her to register Ethan’s scream, or the blaring of the horn that accompanied it. She babbled incoherently as she tried to bury her face in her knees in a makeshift fetal position, gripping her tangled blonde hair as though it would provide some sort of comfort.
So far gone was Sarah that the sensation of falling had not caught her attention. Her body simply chose not to mention it to her brain, as her subconscious was far too busy pushing to move her into a comatose state to protect what fragile bits of her mind remained salvageable.
Her body ragdolled around in the back seat as the car tumbled into the sea of displaced cereal and milk. Covered in contusions and lacerations from the journey thus far, Sarah did not even attempt to see where they handed ended up. As far as she was involved, they had just been swallowed whole and were now floating in the digestive juices in the pit of Michelle’s stomach. She imagined the pink and red colors that environment must have, the slimy organic walls pulsing, bits of mucus dripping from above and landing with a sizzle in the lake of acid. The disgusting scentof Michelle’s late night snack dissolving away, now mixed with fumes of decaying milk and cereal, and soon, rotting human flesh.
The combination of the vivid scene her mind was painting, her stomach in knots from being tossed around so unceremoniously, and vertigo of falling thousands of feet in mere seconds finally built up, and Sarah wretched into the pool of milk around her. No one responded, and Sarah wasn’t coherent enough to care.
For a second, the only sound was the pulsing beat of Katy’s Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’, a song that reached popularity with Sarah and Michelle were both teenagers. She remembered dancing and bouncing around to the song and pulling Michelle off the couch to do the same. It was a good memory, and despite it being the modern equivalent to the ‘Jaws’ theme, listening to a song that she grew up sharing with her sister created a poetic moment that Sarah could try to soothe her mind. It was a heartfelt, but ill-fated attempt.
Ripples in the milk around the suddenly caused the milk to sway again, and Ethan’s voice calling out to her reminded her that she was not alone again.
“Sarah? Sarah, fucking stay with me! You can’t give up, pull it together!” His voice was more commanding now than ever, it had lost the soft encouragement it had moments ago. It was determined, abrasive, forceful. In a way, it was reassuring, as though he was going to take the lead and deliver them out of this mess. She wasn’t sure if she believed it would happen, but knowing that someone did was comforting.
“...Ethan?”
“Yeah, yeah, just talk, keep talking! Did you hit your head? Are you okay? What day is it?”
“...I don’t know Ethan, I...I don’t care…”
“No, answer me!”
“Ethan…” Sarah slumped over, her sudden lackadaisical disposition was not an improvement over utter submission to death, and Ethan couldn’t place her on the spectrum of willingness to live anymore. He grabbed his seat beat, hesitated as though considering his options, and released it. Grabbing the back of both front seats for support, he pulled himself out of the driver’s seat and into the back seat, splashing some of the milk around him. Once fully seated, he turned toward Sarah.
“That woman out there is the most important thing that ever fucking happened to me.”
“Ethan just…”
“No! You listen to me, Sarah!” Sarah’s eyebrows lifted, she’d never heard him this way before, and she stopped talking. “I love your sister with every bone in my body, every fiber of my being. I would do anything for her.” Reaching out, he grabbed Sarah’s shoulders forcefully in his hand as though to keep her attention on him.
“I want the best for her, and if there is one thing I know about Michelle, it’s that she loves her family, she cares about you so much. She’s so proud of you, and constantly talking about you.”
The car bucked harshly as they felt what had to have been a heavy object hitting the table, or maybe even the bowl itself. Despite the milk splashing them in the face, Ethan continued.
“I haven’t gotten to know you as well as I want to, but Michelle wanted us to be close, she wanted us to be family, and as far as I’m concerned, you are family. I would do anything to protect Michelle or anyone in her family...and I’m going to get you out of this alive. Okay?”
“But Ethan, we…” “No! No arguing, no excuses, I won’t fail Michelle by giving up on protecting you. I love her too much for that. We’re going to make it, okay? Okay?”
Ethan then pulled Sarah forward, taking her fully into his arms and squeezing her frigid, dripping body against his. Sarah did not resist, and even found herself closing her eyes for a moment while Ethan hugged her reassuringly. He kept repeating a something she couldn’t understand, but assumed it was variations of ‘we’re going to make it’ over and over. She slipped her hands around him as well, the two embracing each other like the scared, cold siblings they felt like in that moment. The moment lasted a few seconds longer, before the car bucked again, and they both went tumbling back into the pool of milk surrounding them.
Coming back up for air, and pulling a sputtering Sarah with him, Ethan peered out of the window, pushing up to see what was happening. As he expected, he could primarily only make out the massive, fruit-flavored loops of breakfast cereal from all directions, twisting a bit to peer higher into the air, Ethan could see the bottom of the spoon raising into the air. It was ascending more slowly than expected, and he could see a drop of the milk converging at the bottom of the spoon. As it gathered, the weight of the liquid became too heavy, and a single drop of milk, as large as a bus, fell from Michelle’s spoon.
“Brace yourself!” Ethan screamed as the bus-sized drop of milk came barreling through the sky, on a collision course for the tiny car below Michelle’s spoon. The shrunken trio in the car had no time to prepare however. The single drop of milk fell only a few inches from the spoon, then crashed back into the bowl, sending the tiny car and it’s occupants back into the depths of the milky ocean.
Ethan and Sarah held on for their lives as they sank deeper into the cream-colored liquid, violently turning upside down under the milk. With the floor now the roof, the air had shifted, and the two immediately came up for air. Coughing and spitting up milk yet again, The couldn’t see outside of their windows, they were still completely submerged, and floating back up to the top, only upside down.
They didn’t have time to be humiliated that a single drop of milk had capsized their vehicle, they both immediately felt the bottom of the vehicle bump against something above them as it attempted to reach the surface of the milk. Ethan immediately realized that the level of liquid was increasing much more rapidly, and their original problem had returned.
“Okay...we’ve gotta abandon the car…it’s going to fill with water in a few seconds…” He spoke with urgency, looking around.
“Fuck! No, Ethan! Maybe we can wait until she stirs again or something? The car is all we have left!”
“No...we need to get out now, if the car turns back right side up, we can try get back in…”
“So...where do we go? And what about Linda?”
Sarah glanced at the still unconscious woman in the front seat.
“We...leave her.”
“WHAT?!” Sarah nearly screamed.
“We can barely survive without having to swim with an unconscious body, Sarah…”
“This is so fucked up, it’s not right…”
“I don’t like it either. But you said it yourself, let her die without having to go through anymore than she already has.”
Ethan gritted his teeth some, but this mostly a show. He felt bad about leaving the girl to die, but this her comments about Michelle earlier had numbed most of his feelings toward her. He had to write it off as karma. The milk was nearly chin level for Sarah now, and Ethan felt bad that Sarah would have to hold her breath for a longer period of time.
“Okay, as soon as we go under, I’ll open the door, the pressure should back off pretty quick after the car is filled, then we swim to the first...thing we reach.” Ethan hesitated, he was having a hard time admitting out loud that they would be climbing on board of a Froot Loop to save their lives. At least they’d be out of the cold milk. Sarah nodded, and they held eye contact for another three seconds before Sarah finally took in as much air as she could, and went under. Ethan followed shortly after, despite having several seconds longer before he had to go under. Making his way over to the door with his eyes closed, Ethan began to play with the handle and push at the door. It took several seconds, but eventually the door gave way, and the two pushed out of the car.
They immediately realized that swimming in milk was not the same as swimming in water. The thick, viscous milk was nearly impossible to see through, and required a lot more energy to push through. Ethan immediately took Sarah’s hand and tried to swim up, but realized rather quickly that Sarah was a stronger swimmer, and found that she was leading him, rather than him leading her. Just as they were unsure if they would make it without running out of breath, the breached the surface of the milk and gasped for breath.
They were surrounded, still, by massive colorful loops, as they had been before. Seeing them outside of the car gave them an eerie confirmation of how real this situation was. There was no protection from the sugary behemoths anymore, they were in the thick of this now. Leading them over toward the closest Froot Loop at the bottom of the pile above them, Sarah grabbed ahold of the giant blue wall and began to climb.
The cracks, crevices, and holes along the surface of this bit of cereal were perfectly hand and foot holds. Again, Sarah being athletic, only struggled due to the bruising she’d received from being thrown about in the car. Ethan wasn’t far behind, but he was pretty sure that Sarah was pacing herself to prevent him from being left behind. He appreciated that.
As they climbed, Ethan realized that it had to have been a few minutes since Michelle had taken the previous bite that capsized their car. He wondered if they would reach the top of the pile before she took another bite. Instead of dwelling on it, he kept climbing and simply enjoyed the brief reprieve from the chaos, as well as being out of the milk.
As they ascended the first in a tall pile of Froot Loops, they pulled themselves on top of the blue island, and tried to catch their breaths. The world around them was dim, there were far too many loops to get much light. Sarah likened to being in a cavern with gashes of light shining down.
“Do you think she’ll see us without the car?” Sarah said, looking up through the various holes to the bit of visible light shining down into the cavern
“She...she has to.” Ethan said, sighing some.
“What do we say about Linda?”
“I’m not sure..Michelle doesn’t need to find out she ate her best friend. But Linda deserves a memorial.”
“Maybe we should…” Sarah started her suggestion, but before she got much farther into it, they felt that familiar, dreadful tremble. Immediately grabbing onto the porous surface of the enormous blue loop, the two felt themselves lifting up into the air.
“No, not again! No!” Sarah called out, feeling her anxiety immediately skyrocket. They both felt crumbs and bits of the cereal above them sprinkling down as the cereal grated against each other while it was being lifted. As they slowly ascended away, the saw the edge of the spoon only a few dozens feet away. With a quick glance to each other, the scrambled off of the edge of the piece of cereal they were inhabiting, and splashed back into the small lake of milk in the spoon.
As they did, daylight finally lit their world, and they could see the walls of the bowl again. Struggling once again through the thick milk. Sarah’s strength in swimming once again served her well, and she made it to the edge without too much difficulty, and immediately dove off, splashing back into the milk after a fifteen foot drop.
Resurfacing safely, she took a breath and looked around. She hadn’t heard Ethan’s splash, and immediately began to panic.
“Ethan? Ethan?!” She said, the fear growing in her voice. She still hadn’t heard his splash, but she did hear his voice.
“...SARAH!” The voice came from above, and Sarah looked up. She couldn’t see Ethan, but her view from below Michelle's ascending spoon gave her every answer.
“ETHAN! NO! JUMP!” She screamed frantically, her helplessness in this situation being driven home again. Ethan was still on the spoon. High above, Michelle’s face stared down at the spoon momentarily, until it was above the bowl’s walls, and her attention then shifted back to her phone. Her jaw was slowly bouncing, lips shifting gently as she lifted the spoon, she was still chewing her previous bite.
“Ethan...no…” Sarah’s screams weakening again into a whimper as she realized that Ethan was all but doomed. “Michelle, please, please don’t eat Ethan…! Please save us!” She cried desperately at her deity-like sister, who careless stared into her phone, the music having shifted to some commercial. As she finished chewing, Michelle’s lips slowly opened, and the spoon was swiftly slipped into her mouth. Pulling out the spoon clean, she let it fall limp and dangle in her fingers for a moment.
The first crunch was deafening to to Sarah, not because of it’s volume, but because of it’s implications. Michelle had just devoured her brother, and was none the wiser.
Sarah’s mind began to shatter once again.