I bounced with the rhythm of Fulda’s gait, grabbing the bars of my cage to keep from getting thrown around in it. It hung from a chain around her neck, plunging past her collar bone and into her cleavage where it met her chest. She had been instructed to wear the same attire she wore to work out, leaving her with compression shorts and a sports bra. While the bra kept her enormous breasts from jiggling with each step, it also pressed them together, making them seem even larger. Had she not pulled my cage locket out of the crevasse they would have completely engulfed me.
“Whoa, hold on,” came a voice from below. Fulda stopped suddenly enough that the locket swung into the air, and as it came back down it clipped the curve of her breast, causing it to turn around before landing on her chest. “You can’t wear that necklace during the photoshoot, it’s off-brand.”
“This is more than a necklace, and I wasn’t going to,” Fulda replied. As her larynx buzzed, turning air into her low, booming voice, strong vibrations spread through her chest. They rattled the gold cage, and I pressed myself against as much of her skin as I could. The vibrations passed into me, giving a vigorous full-body massage for as long as she spoke. It was one of the most pleasurable sensations I could experience, and one of the perks of being smaller than my wife’s toes.
Fulda unhooked the necklace’s clasp, plunging me deep into her cleavage before friction from the skin stopped me. She yanked it out, giving me a jolt when it came free from her breasts, and the heart-shaped cage started swinging and twirling in the air. I braced myself against the bars and focused on a single point that consistently crossed my vision to keep from getting dizzy. For a moment she held me aloft, then moved the necklace forward to present it.
“You mentioned you could save a lot on effects if you had a tiny model, so I brought one!” Fulda declared. “Janice, meet my husband, and at less than an inch tall he’s the only person in the world qualified to be your tiny model.” Janice gaped up at me, her jaw dropped open in shock when she realized there was indeed a tiny person inside that locket. With her skinny frame evident under her thick wool sweater she did not look like someone I would associate with the fitness industry, but the camera hung around her neck was all the explanation I needed. Her blond hair was long and wispy, pulled back in a tight ponytail, and I could see my spinning reflection in her thick glasses’ lenses.
“That’s your husband?” she exclaimed. “I’m… huh. I imagined someone bigger.” Janice barely even reached the bottom of Fulda’s breasts, so I did not know where she got off talking about how big someone else should be.
“Yeah! Don’t you watch TV?” Fulda replied. “We were all over it a few months ago! I guess there’s a novelty factor in people like us being together? Personally I don’t get it, but I did get the checks for our appearance fees.”
“Yeah, I just thought… well, it seemed like a marketing gimmick, you know? To coincide with that movie about a guy who shrunk in a sorority house?”
“If anything’s a marketing gimmick, it’s what we’re doing here,” Fulda retorted, chortling. She held her other hand flat, roughly level with Janine’s eyes, and lowered the locket into her palm. There was a strong bump when it landed, and Fulda eased the chain back to make sure it landed with the door facing up so I was on my back. Slowly she placed the rest of the chain in her open hand, letting it coil around the locket’s base to steady it. “Speaking of which, let’s get down to business.”
Janice’s pale, bony fingers crested the side of Fulda’s palm, but Fulda brought her other hand down to act as a wall. “I’d prefer to be the one who handles my husband, if you don’t mind,” she said, leaving the photographer little room to negotiate. Her thumb laid across the locket’s door, the flesh pressing through the small gaps between bars as she reached across. She dug her thumbnail into the small gap between the door and the locket’s structure, prying it apart, and flung the door open with a flick of her thumb.
Fulda tipped the locket on its side, dumping me from the cage and onto the smooth skin of her palm. She lifted the necklace away, making metal clang together when the door swung back against its frame. “Just tell me where you want him and I’ll make sure he gets there.”
“Okay, I can work with that!” Janice eagerly responded. “You’ll be over there, where all the lights are set up, and – what am I doing? This isn’t your first rodeo!” She chuckled briefly before continuing. “I’d like to start with some simple big versus small photos. Put him on the ground and stand about three feet away like you’re standing astride him with your hands on your hips. I’ll shoot from his height to visually establish your dominant presence.”
Fulda stepped around the photographer, keeping her hand flat and balanced to protect me from the tumultuous effects of her gait. She set the necklace down on an empty crate as she walked past, the links of the chain clinking together as it collapsed onto the locket. Raising a foot she stepped onto the stage, where a background depicting a desert mesa silhouetted by a thunderstorm wrapped around her. Bright spotlights shined on her, making her bronze skin glisten. It seemed like the lighting would undermine the dark background behind her depicting an active lightning strike, but my knowledge of photography was minimal, and I doubted Janice would listen to me regardless.
Fulda crouched and set her hand on the ground, forming a shallow incline with her fingers. Carefully I strolled from her palm onto the floor, making sure my feet were firmly settled in the soft flesh of her fingers as I made my way down. Once I stepped from her fingertip she curled her digits away, giving me no way back. The stage’s gray floor continued the theme for a desert at night during a storm, complete with pebbles strategically placed to seem like boulders.
I turned to face Fulda, and she had already assumed the prescribed pose. Her ginormous feet were shoulder width apart, putting several feet between her lo-top black Converse that were supposed to be astride me. Long legs stretched up from them, appearing hundreds of feet long to me just as they would on the camera, with her calves forming strong, rock-like ridges. Fulda’s thighs bulged against her black compression shorts, he raised fingers resting against them, and her defined abs formed a sharp ridge with her navel in the valley. A black sports bra was pulled tight around her chest, making her breasts seem even larger, and the next thing I could see above them was a pair of cold blue eyes. As usual she had put her auburn hair in a French braid to keep it out of her face, with her bangs coming to just below her eyebrows.
The floor trembled, but contrary to what I expected while looking at Fulda the shockwaves came from behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw Janice propped up on her elbows, a gigantic curved camera lens looming over me. A plastic black shield extended from the lens far enough to bump against me, and the glass itself was several times taller than me, and at least as thick. Most of Janine’s face was blocked by the boxy camera, but I could still see a shock of blond hair spouting above it, the dark roots making it easier to spot.
“Hey, turn around,” she whispered, the harsh edge on her words a sharp contrast to how low it was. “I need you to face her and act neutral, like this is a normal thing for you.” It was a normal thing for me. Fulda liked to show off how much she towered over me so much it was a daily occurrence, but I doubted my normal response was something Janice wanted to capture. Instead of being excited to climb my wife, I simply looked up at her and acted non-plussed.
The shutter clicked behind me, and I jumped from the sudden harsh noise. Janice waited for me to calm down before snapping another picture, but this time I was expecting it. It rapidly clicked several more times, happening so fast it sounded like a bug’s mating call, then the floor creaked when she shifted her weight. She took more photos as she moved and took her new position, trying to capture it from as many minutely different angles as possible. From what I understood, Fulda was supposed to be the big selling point of this campaign so it was important to make sure she was featured while my role could have been filled by anyone.
“Okay, I’ve got what I need for this pose,” Janice boomed, jolting me out of my sense of comfort. “Fulda, take one step forward for the next set.” The floor groaned when Fulda shifted her weight, and the white rubber running around her Converse deformed around her toes. “No, not like that!” Janice interrupted her, and Fulda froze mid-stride. “Just raise one foot up, like you’re about to step on him.” Fulda obediently rolled her foot back so her heel was on the ground, then lifted the other into the air. Little by little she raised it higher, until her thigh was parallel to the ground, and Janice stopped her by saying, “Perfect, like that!”
While she held her foot in the air over me, Janice leaned to the side and began frantically snapping pictures again. “Great! Now, start slowly lowering your shoe toward him.” We did this sort of thing recreationally, so I looked up nonchalantly as the brown rubber sole descended toward me. Janice could not take pictures fast enough, and quickly told Fulda to freeze. “And you, little guy!” This was her first time directly correcting me, so I flinched away from her voice. “First, go back to where you were, that was just fine. Second, do you think you could act shocked or scared or something? For the purpose of this shoot, she’s not your wife. She’s someone who got big and strong with our pre-workout while you’ve been using some other brand. She’s going to step on you, and it’ll be so easy for her.”
I nodded, and Janice retreated back behind her camera. This was another regular occurrence between Fulda and I, so it was easy to act dismayed when I looked up at her. In a whisper Janice told me I was doing just fine and waved for Fulda to continue. Fulda’s foot lowered a half-inch at a time, waiting for Janice’s assent to continue, with a dozen clicks of the shutter between each minute movement. As I looked up at her, I admired the absolute control she had over her body. She was as still as a statue, waiting for the command to move each time, while her foot did not deviate more than a millimeter or two from where she held it. The whole time she kept her focus on me, though as her foot drew closer she let her smile spread a little more. Trying to match her, I tried to look more defeated each time her foot moved, though it was difficult to find more ways to express that.
Fulda’s shoe set down on the ground, for once without the accompanying fanfare of a colossal boom and the world shaking. Her control was really impressive, at least when a paycheck was involved. The brown sole of her gargantuan Converse stretched over and beyond me, the upper-most diamond hanging over my head. It stretched in all directions around me, and it was clear I could not get out from beneath it. Janice kept waving her on, and Fulda brough her foot a little closer each time, interspersed with the rapid clicking of a camera behind me. They continued until Fulda’s shoe had shoved me over and pinned me against the ground, and one more move downward would leave me as nothing but a squished corpse on the set of a photoshoot.
“Okay, great!” Janice declared, giving us both a tremendous amount of relief. Fulda did not want to crush me any more than I wanted to be crushed. The titanic foot pulled back, hitting me with a gust of air, and Fulda took a stance so she was leaning back on it. She really wanted it nowhere near me after that.
Janice scurried off and grabbed a stool from the props area and set it down behind Fulda, making the entire set jump when its legs struck the ground. “Next, let’s do a ‘devour the opposition’ set. I need you to sit in this stool while we do this, since otherwise I’ll never be able to get a clear shot.”
Fulda seemed to know what to do much better than I did and stooped down, extending an arm toward me. Instead of the usual, comfortable way of picking me up between her thumb and forefinger, she slipped them behind my head and pinched them around my collar. She plucked me off the ground, letting me acclimate to the feeling of dangling in mid-air before standing back to her full height. It was an intense trip to suddenly be compelled hundreds of feet into the air, and as soon as she brought me to a stop it began again. Slowly she lowered her butt onto the stool behind her, keeping me still so her face gradually came into view. While I swung between her eyes she grinned, and I got the feeling that everything would be okay.
“Fulda, you know the drill,” Janice said. “New guy, this might be a little scary for you, but I need you to tough it out.” I would have appreciated that warning earlier but could do without the condescension. “Just act like you naturally would when someone’s about to eat you, all right?” For anyone else that would be nonsense, but I had been on the cusp of getting swallowed several times. Besides, Fulda acted like she was going to swallow me every time she ate something and liked it when I exaggerated my reaction.
Fulda tilted her head back and lifted me with her hand, moving with the slow, inexorable pace of a roller coaster approaching its first peak. She stopped when I was positioned directly over her lips with her arm halfway extended. After a quick wink that would have gone unnoticed were it not a large part of the landscape below me, Fulda opened her mouth. A long string of saliva trailed between her lips, only breaking when her jaw was fully extended. I gazed into the cavernous maw below me, lined with a row of straight, pearly white teeth on each side. Her gigantic tongue, large enough that I could comfortably lay over and across it, waggled back and forth in eager anticipation of receiving me.
Janice hovered nearby, the gleaming lens of her camera jammed in my face. Immediately she started taking pictures, subjecting me to another barrage of clicks while she maneuvered in a very limited space around us. Her focus seemed to be Fulda’s mouth first and me second, trying to hit every conceivable angle. Each time she reached the edge of her range Fulda lowered me another half inch toward her open mouth, and the process started over again. Had Fulda not gone through this process before, I would have thought Janice was one of her friends, a particularly annoying shutterbug who wanted to play a prank on her giant friend’s tiny husband.
When I passed between Fulda’s glistening pink lips, she waited for Janice to finish her series of pictures and went off script. She opened her fingers, releasing her hold on my collar, and I plunged into her mouth. Her lips snapped shut behind me and I slid onto her tongue. It sprung into action, slamming me against her palate, and pressed me against the hard ridges lining it. The soft flesh formed around me, and she gradually pushed me forward along the roof of her mouth.
“You ate him!” Janice cried, her voice muffled as it traveled through Fulda’s cheeks. “You just ate your fucking husband!” The world shifted while Fulda lowered her chin so she was looking forward again, then she pulled her tongue from beneath me. I flipped head over heels, then fell into her frenulum and sank into the tender tissue. She laid her tongue atop me, pressing me further into the pulsating pink mass, and saliva rushed around me. Her gullet opened with a terrifying schlorp, reminding me of the time I actually had been swallowed, and the streams of saliva disappeared.
“Oh shit, you just swallowed him.” Fulda slid the tip of her tongue beneath me, prying me out from her frenulum. “He’s going to die, he’s dead and I’m a witness. Hell, I’m an accessory. I need to destroy this memory card, delete any mention of our meeting, wipe the server, this never happened, and we were never here.” Even without being able to see her, I knew she was panicking so hard she was on the verge of having a stroke.
Fulda opened her mouth, letting light stream in and illuminate the vast pink cavern around me. Over the white ridge of her teeth I saw a shock of dyed blond hair moving back and forth while Janice paced. She was working herself into a fit and seemed averse to even looking at Fulda’s mouth. My wife reached out an arm as a barricade, stopping her cold the next time she ran into it, and yanked it toward her hard enough to spin the photographer around. Her strong fingers gripped Janice by the arm to hold her still, then she pointed at me inside her mouth.
Janice seemed reluctant to look even when she was being forced, but as Fulda held her there she had to look at something. She winced the whole time, keeping an eye clenched shut, daring not to look into what she thought had just become a murder scene. When she saw me laying on Fulda’s tongue completely intact, however, she overcame her fear and a smile spread across her face. “Hey! He’s still alive!” she exclaimed. “I’m not an accessory to murder!”
Fulda shoved a thumb and index finger into her mouth, grabbing me by the sides with them and lifting me off her tongue. When I was safely outside of her lips she lowered me to her chest and wiped me off with two long strokes against her sports bra. “Yeah, I’m not going to eat my husband,” Fulda said while I was still pressed against her breast. The vibration suffused throughout my body, and I forgot all the stress that had just been built in my body. “We just though it’d be fun to mess with you.”
Janice looked at me like I had just stabbed her in the gut. “You were in on this too?” she exclaimed, and I clutched my ears to protect myself from the sudden barrage of sound.
“Hey, careful!” Fulda cooed. “He’s tiny, you know. Your voice is much louder to him than it is to us. But yes, he was in on it. I can’t have my own husband scared I’ll eat him, can I?”
“But why?” Janice cried out. “Why would you do this to me?”
Fulda shrugged. “For fun. Also to show you that my husband isn’t a prop, and you’re going to pay him the same as you’re paying me.” Janice looked at her in silence, so Fulda continued, “Yeah, I could read between the lines of your e-mails. My usual rate, it said, with no mention of the tiny model I was told to bring. He’s a person too, you know, and deserves the same payment I get.”
“Okay, fine!” Janice said, turning away from Fulda. “We’ll pay him, too. But this little stunt cost us time! Now we won’t be able to have him pose on your bicep while you flex.”
“I think we’ll live.” Fulda stood from the stool, keeping me steady as her legs extended, and I wound up rubbing against the black spandex straining to contain her quads. As she walked, the world beside me alternated between the bare-bones set built to conduct a photoshoot and strained elastic material dark as night. She stopped to grab her necklace off the crate, then started for the door.
“Come on, little guy. Let’s go back to our condo and play real giantess games.”
“Wait!” Janice called after us. Fulda stopped, but did not turn around. “Do you want me to send you proofs so you know what all I got?”
“Yeah, of course,” Fulda replied. “It’ll be fun to show him how puny he is.” Keeping me pursed between her fingers, Fulda left the stage entirely. Even though she easily could have, she did not place me back into the locket. As much as I enjoyed being nestled between her breasts, I liked simply being pinched between her fingers, too. I nuzzled up against her thumb, basking in the warmth, and accompanied her on the way home.