Reality Check

By: TheDragonBoy

Summary

Let’s be real: when something(one) gets eaten, is there really any way to escape?

Note

[There is an alternate version of this story named “Wake-Up Call”. The stories are nearly the same, but in this version the pred is a bit colder/harsher.]

Content

“…Ugh…” He put a hand to his head, wearily opening his eyes.

“Good, you’re finally up.”

Alarmed, he scrambled to sit up and looked around; unsure of where he was or what was going on, and plagued by the inexplicable feeling that he was somehow in horrible danger.

“Who’s there? Where am I?!” He was surrounded by curved, glass walls, towering two or three times his height.

He heard footsteps from nearby. Spinning around, he finally saw her: a girl, teenaged, now walking towards him. At first he thought the glass was somehow warping her image, because he couldn’t see her below the waist and the rest of her seemed to stretch far higher than it should. That explanation didn’t last long, though. A second later five giant fingers wrapped around the sides of his enclosure, pressing up against the glass. He might not have believed his own eyes had he not felt the sudden weight of inertia as he was lifted up into the air.

He looked down and saw what he could now recognize as a wooden desk, a great distance below the transparent floor at his feet. With a start, he realized that the walls around him weren’t just glass, they were a glass- a cup- a giant cup. Everything was giant! No! He was-

He felt a jerk as his ascent stopped. Looking up, he found himself confronted with the girl’s massive face. She examined him with a cold, if mildly smug expression. And, strangely, she seemed a bit familiar.

“Wha- what’s going on?” he asked fearfully.

She eyed him for another second before she replied.

“Dinner,” she said flatly.

His whole body tensed up. Suddenly he could hear his heart pulsing in his ears. He’d heard about this, people getting kidnapped and shrunken, ‘played with’… eaten.

He instinctively plastered himself against the back wall as another sudden jerk of the girl’s hand lifted the glass higher. Not that it made him any safer. A moment later the glass began to tilt, tipping forward and sending him falling onto his face. Looking ahead fearfully, he saw the girl’s lips line up with the rim of the glass, and then slowly part.

Revealed beyond them were her teeth, pristinely clean and white to keep up her image for school. Beyond the rows of pearly whites, her tongue came into view, rising gently in anticipation. And beyond that still, her throat: an immaculate, pink, glistening cave with smooth, fleshy, arching walls, and her uvula dangling pointedly above it all at the entrance to her gullet and the dark depths within.

The glass tilted further, and he felt himself begin to slide. His eyes went wide, his heart skipped a beat. He glanced frantically at his hands as they failed to find a hold, then quickly back at the maw below him. He was getting closer. Her tongue swelled, reaching up to catch him as he approached the edge with mounting speed.

In the midst of all the terror, it finally hit him.

“Madeline!?” he shouted.

The cup suddenly jerked backward, catching him just as his arms passed over the rim, leaving him hooked right on the edge. She closed her mouth and gave him another once-over, this time appearing much more inquisitive.

“Madeline Prescott?!” he repeated.

“You know me?” she asked, mildly surprised.

“Y-Yes!” he stammered. “It’s me! Mr. Edwards!”

She raised an eyebrow, clearly drawing a blank.

“Nole Edwards! You’re in my English class!”

She eyed him a bit closer and then, to his relief, showed a look of recognition.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, thinking back.

“Thank God,” he breathed. What were the odds he would end up kidnapped, shrunken, and then be lucky enough to end up with someone he knew, rather than some random stranger who would only know him as their next twisted meal. Sure, there was a whole other discussion to be had about how and why this young girl was getting her hands on tinies, but right now all he cared about was that he was still alive.

“Some luck, huh?” she asked.

He smiled at her for just a moment, but something in her voice and the way she was still staring put a chill through him. Though her face remained innocuous and unchanged, in that split second of silence he felt the terror grip him again.

“…for me.”

Without any further warning, she raised the glass and reopened her mouth.

“Madeline!! Wait! No!”

She tilted the cup, her tongue sliding up over her bottom lip like his own personal red carpet, just as he felt himself begin to slide toward it.

“NO!!”

*splat*

Darkness.

He felt the hot wetness of her tongue slap against his face, forcing him to close his eyes as her lips closed around his legs. Fear consumed him just as thoroughly, but not the fear of being eaten. No, it was far more primal than that. He felt the squishy muscle below him, swelling and flexing against his body, touching him everywhere, and all he felt was the instinctive urge to pull away. But of course there was nowhere to go. Instead he found himself rolling and jerking, almost involuntarily, lurching away whenever the taste buds brushed him, only to press himself further into the flesh on the opposite side. She didn’t even need to slurp up his legs, he immediately pulled himself into the tightest ball he could, yanking his feet in close, past her lips.

And that was all before she even started.

*squelch*

*squelch*

*squelch*

The tasting began. He felt the tongue roll across him, pressing him tightly as she sucked at his flavor. Then, suddenly, a lurch to one side as he was stuffed into her cheek.

*squelch*

*squelch*

*squelch*

Saliva covered every inch of his skin, soaked every fiber of his clothes, his hair was already matted down. He kept his eyes tightly shut, both from the fear and because he could feel the slime smeared across his face, not to mention the constant pestering of the girl’s tongue as she continued to taste him.

He tried to fight back; he flailed out, striking wildly at the squishy flesh. The tongue pressed against him again and he swatted at it, punching and kicking. But it just kept coming, a force far too large for him to stop.

*slurp*

He felt himself shifted inside her mouth again, but this time was different. She had pulled him backward. A vision of the teen’s waiting mouth flashed through his mind. He lingered on the image of her throat, unavoidably picturing himself stuffed all the way in the back, just waiting to be swallowed. The image was so vivid that it managed to remind him of something.

The uvula!! he thought with a frantic sense of hope.

Feeling the tongue underneath him, he quickly reached upward and ran his hands awkwardly along the roof of Madeline’s mouth, desperately feeling at the various textures of slimy flesh as the walls around him began to tense in preparation. With a burst of hope, he finally found it. A loose, extra malleable blob, resting limply atop his body.

Ah-ha! he thought confidently, and gave it a big squeeze.

*GULP*

The sudden pressure from behind forced him forward, pulling the slippery uvula right out of his hands. At the same time, the flesh before him suddenly gave way, leaving him nowhere else to go but down. Down into her esophagus. Down, on a one-way trip to a place he never even thought to fear: a girl’s stomach.

It was so tight. He couldn’t struggle, he couldn’t breathe. All he could do was listen as the sound of the teen’s heartbeat grew louder, and feel as the slimy walls of her throat passed him by.

*splat*

*GASP*

Mr. Edwards flopped onto the stomach floor and took a huge breath, something he immediately came to regret. The hot, foul atmosphere flooded his airways and burned in his nose, sending him into a fit of coughing. As he forced himself to continue breathing, he felt the surrounding muscle begin to shift, slowly stretching and flexing as Madeline’s body adjusted to its new- temporary- occupant.

“Geeze, catch your breath already,” came the thundering voice around him as he continued to choke.

“Why *cough* didn’t you gag!?” he sputtered angrily, almost unwilling to believe that his last hope had slipped so easily out of his hands.

“You tried to go for the uvula, didn’t you? Everything you eat hits that thing. It doesn’t make you puke while you’re swallowing,” she replied condescendingly.

He opened his mouth to shout a retort, but gagged on the breath and went into another fit of coughing.

“Ugh,” she scoffed. He felt her move slightly and heard a muffled cracking-like sound, followed by an unmistakable *gulp*.

“Ah!!”

A sudden burst of cold slapped him from above, showering down on him with a sound like a heavy rain landing on wet ground. He took a deep, gasping breath out of reflex, and with it drew in a fresh, familiar scent. It smelled like soda. Soda! She was washing him down!

“Argh!!” Infuriated, he picked himself up and threw both fists against the side of his slimy prison. They landed with a comical splat, the muscular folds squishing around his hands. He lifted one and then the other, slamming them back against the wall in alternating blows.

“I am not your snack!! Let me out of here!!” he demanded.

“No,” came the cold reply.

“You can’t keep me in here!!”

“Yes, I can.”

“I’ll pound your guts until you barf!!”

“Stomachs don’t work like that,” she replied matter-of-fact-ly. “I can’t even feel you in there. You’re not gonna hurt anything. No one else did.”

“Argh!” He threw himself futilely against the stomach one last time, his breathing heavy in his ears. “Then I’ll claw my way back up your throat! I’m not-”

*URP*

The booming sound shook him as the walls shuddered, pushing him off onto the floor as they contracted sharply around him, shrinking the already narrow enclosure.

As he got back to his feet, he heard twice an unmistakable sound:

*gulp*

*gulp*

A couple squelches followed along with a gurgle, and then he felt the walls withdraw a bit.

She’s swallowing air… he realized. Why? He almost began to wonder, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was him getting out.

The cool reprieve of the soda already beginning to lapse, he furrowed his brow above his tightly shut eyes and gritted his teeth. Shooting his arm up into the air, he pressed his fingers firmly into the fleshy wall and squeezed, ready to climb his way back up her neck. But his fingers immediately slipped together into a fist, grabbing nothing but a fresh coat of slime.

He pushed himself onto his feet and plowed one shoe into the wall, pressing forward and down, trying to get a foothold. He slipped, stumbled forward into the squishy folds and then over onto the floor with a splat.

“Agh!!”

He got up and tried again, and again, each time with similar results.

*yaaawn*

*thud* *thud* *thud*

The young girl’s footsteps shook everything around him and jostled his entire body, catching him off guard and knocking him off balance. He felt every movement- amplified- reduced to a helpless bundle of limbs stewing at the bottom of her stomach. He heard the creak of bed springs and then his entire world turned upside down.

Well, not literally. To be honest he couldn’t quite tell exactly what had happened, but now he was sprawled out on his chest, and the muscular folds which he had used to consider the walls were now the loose floor and low-hanging ceiling of a long, narrow passage.

She laid down, he realized. The cocky little witch had put her throat right at his level. Her arrogance would give him everything he needed.

Scrambling quickly, Mr. Edwards crawled the length of the girl’s stomach, splashing through the shallow liquids until he reached the end. Feeling around, he could clearly make out the small folds of muscle as they all came together and converged to a single point: a small dimple in the wall, marking the exit of Madeline’s esophagus- his ticket out.

He flattened his palm and stuck his fingers into the spot. He made it as far as his knuckles before the slimy flesh refused to stretch any further. He pushed harder, until his fingers threatened to give way. He curled them into a fist and pressed even harder, putting as much of his body into the movement as he could. Nothing. It wasn’t budging even an inch. It just barely stretched away from him as he struggled and then gently contracted back again when he inevitably withdrew- just like every other surface in the girl’s god-forsaken stomach.

Frustrated, he splayed his fingers and put them on either side of the tiny indent, clawing at the sphincter in a desperate attempt to pry it open. He might as well have been an ant trying to pry open a balloon knot. His digits slid across the slime, unable to find the slightest grip.

“Damn!! Why won’t it open!?” he yelled.

“You’re too weak,” she replied, obviously taking a pretty good guess at what he was attempting. “Food’s not strong enough to force its way back up, that’s why it’s food. The throat is a one-way trip.”

“I’m not food!!”

“Try telling that to my stomach.”

He clenched his fists angrily. A series of gurgles sounded from nearby, more of her food moving along through her body, the body that would start melting him down into goo any minute now.

One-way… That’s it!

“If I can’t make it back up your throat, I’ll just push through the other way!” he asserted. “Acid is only in the stomach, so once I make it out I’m home free!”

“Phft,” she scoffed, “you definitely weren’t a biology teacher. Sure, there’s no acid, but there’s plenty more. Digestive enzymes strong enough to turn you into a blob; they’re all over the intestines. After you suffocate, that is. Plus, you do realize that ends up, best case, with you crawling out of my ass, right?”

He stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t believe it, she was right, she had him totally outsmarted. His fists shook with rage.

“You’re sick, Madeline!! Sick!!” he yelled.

*urp*

The stomach shuddered again, pressing in closer. But just like before, he heard another couple swallows and the slimy walls retreated.

He felt his breathing growing unsteady. That had been a reality check. If he didn’t get out of there soon, those walls would make sure he didn’t get out at all- at least not alive. He racked his brain, trying to ignore the heat.

Come on! I’m a teacher, she’s a high school girl! I must know more biology than her! There has to be something I can do!

After a tense moment of concentration, it hit him.

“You’re not getting me that easily,” he muttered angrily, loud enough for her to hear.

He had remembered something, a vague lesson from his old biology class. The stomach digests everything- except itself.

“Oh, yeah?” she asked dully, clearly not convinced.

“Yeah! I’ll just cover myself in mucus!”

“Mucus?” she asked mockingly.

“Yeah! It’s what keeps the stomach from digesting itself, it’s everywhere, I remember from high school! All I have to do is cover myself with the stuff and I’ll be as safe as you!”

He started to rub himself against the wet, fleshy walls. He dug his digits hard into the muscle, feeling the slime against his fingertips, then wiped them against every inch of skin.

“That’s not gonna work, you know,” she told him.

But he could feel the slime covering his body. All this time rolling around in her stomach had already coated him in a decent layer, it was only a matter of spreading it over what was still untouched.

“Why should I listen to you?”

“Just think about it for a sec. If stomach mucus rubbed off onto food that easy, nothing would ever digest. Stomach mucus stays on the walls, stomach acid comes out onto the food, common sense.”

He ignored her. No matter how ‘logical’ she sounded, this was his last hope, and he refused to accept defeat. He kept bathing himself in her slime.

“Alright, teach. You think you’re so smart? Give it a taste.”

“What?!” he shouted in reply.

“A taste,” she repeated. “Don’t you remember what else they taught you in high school? How does acid taste?”

He thought back for a moment.

“Well?” she asked derisively.

“Sour,” he barked back. Realizing her challenge as he recalled the answer. If he tasted that slop, and it was sour, that meant it was acidic and he was only helping her digest him faster. Well, maybe. What if the mucus was just naturally sour too? What if this was just a trick to keep him from safety.

“I’d try it before spreading that stuff on your eyes,” she advised, as if reading his mind. “Unless you want to scream like the other guys did. Sounded pretty bad.”

That made him hesitate. He raised a hand to his face, thoroughly soaked in juices. What if she was telling the truth? He might be cutting his own time in half. He felt the mild burning in his throat from the hot, acrid air and couldn’t help but imagine a similar, much worse sensation spreading through his eyes. That wasn’t something he ever wanted to feel.

Reluctantly, he opened his mouth and brought his fingers up to his tongue.

“BLECH!”

He gagged and spat, resisting the urge to wipe his tongue, which only would have made things worse. It was disgusting, nauseating… and noticeably: sour.

Damn it. She’s right! Again! She’s been right about everything!

He sat there on his hands and knees as a low rumble vibrated ominously around him. He felt the slime against his skin, the substance he’d now helped spread, probably already hard at work, melting him down. He wracked his brain again, desperately groping for another idea… but he had nothing.

“I… I can’t get out…” he whimpered.

“Nope.”

“…Why? Why do this to me? I know you’ve been giving me air! Why keep me alive in here when you’re going to digest me anyway!? Why not just bite my head off!?”

There was a short pause, filled only by his ragged breathing and the quiet gurgles of the girl’s belly.

“Because it’s so much fun listening to you try and get out,” she revealed, smirking to herself.

“’Fun’!? Is this some kind of game to you!? Do you think I’m some kind of toy!?”

“You’re the best kind of toy: the living, edible kind.”

“Madeli-!” He stopped himself, yelling at her wouldn’t do him any good now. Nothing would at this point. “… Please… please let me out. I’ll do anything… just- please…”

The only answer he received was a fresh groan from her intestines as they made room for his arrival. The girl herself didn’t speak another word.

He collapsed to the soda-soaked floor, finding himself on the doorstep of defeat. But just as despair was threatening to take him an idea crossed his mind, one so wrong and twisted that it sent a fresh chill down his spine. Eating wasn’t the only sick thing he’d heard people do with tinies.

“Madeline… if you let me out, I’ll let you do something even more ‘fun’ with me.”

“Huh?”

He considered his next words.

“Something much more pleasurable,” he hinted sharply, hardly able to stomach the words he was saying.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“All you have to do is put me somewhere else and I’ll give you more fun than you’ve ever had.”

“Somewhere else?” she repeated.

Mr. Edwards grimaced in the darkness. Did she have to keep toying with him!? Did she really want to hear him say it!? Fine!

“Your vagina!” he finally yelled. “If you let me out, you can use me as your own personal sex toy. I’ll let you use me every day- whenever you want. I’ll pleasure you better than any toy ever could. I promise I’ll make it worth it. Just please, don’t keep me in here, get me out of your stomach, don’t digest me!”

“… You little pervert!” Madeline yelled angrily.

She sprung up off her bed and Mr. Edwards’ world went into chaos. Liquids sloshing everywhere like a raging sea, the walls tumbling around him, then shaking violently with a series of thuds as the angry girl stomped heatedly across the room. Just when he was finally starting to get his bearings again, he heard an all-too-familiar sound.

*gulp* *gulp* *gulp* *gulp*

*splash*

A cascade of cold liquid crashed down on top of him again, but unlike the first time, the torrent didn’t end.

“Madeline!! Stop!! What are you doing!?”

*URP*!

The stomach shook as a large bubble of air made its way out through her throat, letting the walls close in even closer and raising the carbonated pool to his chest.

“Giving you the end you deserve, creep!”

*gulp* *gulp* *gulp* *gulp* *gulp*

Another long spout of soda poured in on him, still fizzing as it landed. He pushed off the stomach floor as the drink reached his chin, doing his best to stay afloat.

“Madeline!! Please!! I’m sorry!! Stop!! I’m drowning!!” he yelled, breathing heavily.

He heard the crack of a fresh can.

“You won’t drown, you’ll suffocate,” she replied spitefully. “Carbon dioxide poisoning from the soda. Enjoy your last few seconds.”

He felt the dizziness begin to take hold, even in the gurgling darkness.

*gulp* *gulp* *gulp* *gulp*

Another downpour of Madeline’s drink came down on him. He felt his arms and legs growing weak, his chest burning. He felt himself begin to sink, the drink fizzing in his ears until his head went under.

Two loud gurgles reached him as her guts shifted to accommodate her sudden thirst. And then he heard one final sound:

*URP*!