Melissa's Breakthrough, Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Steve barely had time to hold his breath before his entire body was submerged in the gently-fizzing hot tub of Melissa’s stomach acid. He panicked for an instant, because, in the pitch-dark, it felt like he was dropping straight down into oblivion, but very quickly, his bare feet kicked into the smooth, ribbed bottom, and he catapulted himself back up to the surface. When his head came up, he gasped out a few breaths of hot air, not as much from his breathlessness as from the sheer insanity of what was actually happening. It was completely dark all around him, and his ears were full of the gentle fizzing and gurgling sounds that would have been sinister if not for Melissa’s protective coating covering his body, inside and out.

And then, even though he couldn’t see them, Steve literally felt the huge, living walls around him move, as Melissa took a deep breath, flexing and then relaxing her abdominal muscles. Steve bobbed up and down in the lake of Melissa’s stomach acid, “treading water” with his kicking feet. At 5 inches tall, Steve wasn’t quite able to touch the bottom of Melissa’s stomach, and was forced to keep his feet kicking to prevent himself from sinking down.

“Well?” came the genial but booming sound of Melissa’s voice, echoing down through the all-encompassing dome of her stomach above, around, and beneath him. “Did you make it down all right, Steve?”

“Yes! I…yeah, I did!” he answered back, knowing that Melissa was holding that special device up to her stomach so that she could hear him clearly. It was absolutely blowing his mind that all of this was actually happening. He was literally bobbing in Melissa’s stomach, and it just felt like a pleasantly hot bath.

“Oh well that’s just lovely,” she purred, as the walls of her stomach vibrated with her voice. “Steve…I just…I just ate you.”

“Y-yeah…you did,” he replied, getting hard all over again. It was incredible – something about the fact that Melissa was speaking to him, but he couldn’t even see her face because he was INSIDE her…it turned him on with an intensity that caught him completely off-guard. And although it felt completely out of place for him to have an erection as he was floating in stomach acid, Steve really didn’t have too much choice in the matter.

“Oh my god,” Melissa moaned out, with Steve sloshing to the side as she once again adjusted her posture as she reclined on the sofa in the living room, “Steve…that’s just…I–I can’t even express…how this makes me feel.”

THUMP

Steve’s world shuddered from a sudden impact. Melissa had put her hand on her stomach, and was now tenderly rubbing it around and around, causing Steve to feel like he was being tossed about in an unseen current, still kicking his feet to keep himself afloat.

“Uh…Melissa!?” he called out, beginning to panic once more, despite his arousal.

“Hmm?” came her cool, deep, calm reply. It sounded like she was getting lost in the reverie of what was happening.

“It’s...like, pitch-black in here,” he began, feeling a bit stupid to be stating the obvious. But his primal instincts had kicked in again, and he had been about to start asking if there was any way for him to see, before Melissa interrupted him:

“Oh goodness! I’m sorry, Steve – I completely forgot about that…poor little thing, floating in the dark…here, just hang on a moment and I’ll have that all taken care of.”

Steve felt an immense wave of reassurance course through him – reassurance that was almost emotional. He trusted Melissa; he really, truly trusted her. She was so big, so huge all around him, and she was taking care of him. Some more readjusting followed, sending Steve oscillating up and down, left and right, through the gastric currents. Already, though, he was beginning to “get his bearings,” so to speak, and could predict where he would be sloshed based on Melissa’s movements.

“Okay Steve,” Melissa said warmly, moments later after she had stopped moving, “I want you to swim over to one of the side walls of my stomach, all right?”

“Uhm…okay,” he replied, not quite understanding why, but figuring that she knew what she was talking about.

“Something a bit heavy is about to come splashing down in there,” she added, “And I’d hate for it to whack you on top of the head!”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be good,” Steve agreed, eliciting a rumbling chuckle from her as he swam and kicked his way to the left side of her stomach. His hands felt the smooth, ribbed sides of her stomach wall, and he nearly recoiled in pure, instinctual shock. The smooth ribs felt almost alien, and Steve had a crazy moment where his mind decided that this absolutely, positively was not real, and could not possibly be happening. But almost immediately after, he heard Melissa’s gentle, rumbling hum.

“Mmmm, I feel your little hands in there,” she hummed. “You’re on my left side, aren’t you?”

“I…honestly have no idea,” Steve replied, his mind snapping back into the reality of the situation.

“Of course,” Melissa chuckled, “How silly of me to even ask something like that. Okay Steve, get ready…”

With his hands clinging to the side of her stomach, Steve heard a sudden rush of liquid from far above, like a waterfall, and, the next moment, it all came splashing in a loud torrent straight down into the middle of Melissa’s stomach. Even though they were protected, Steve instinctively closed his eyes as his face was splashed with more hot acid, mixed with something cold…something extra-fizzy and bubbly that danced against his skin and made tiny ‘pops’ that almost felt like brief little massages all over his skin before they vanished away. Not knowing what on earth was going on, he opened his eyes just in time to see the whole dome of Melissa’s stomach illuminated in light as something bright splashed down in the lake of acid. Steve saw this illuminated object – whatever it was – submerged for a few moments, lighting up the tossing currents of acid, before it finally came bobbing to the surface.

“Dya see it?” Melissa asked eagerly. “Did it make it down?”

“Yeah, I see it!” called Steve, pushing off from the rubbed walls with his feet as he swam towards it. Once he was closer, he realized that it was a flashlight – one of those mini keychain flashlights. It was only about two inches long, but at that size, it was nearly half as long as Steve was tall. Even still, thanks to its buoyancy, Steve was able to retrieve the flashlight and hold it without too much trouble.

“You got it?” came Melissa’s voice. “I know it’s still pretty huge compared to you, but –”

“Uh-uh, yep, got it!” Steve called back. He was using two hands to hold onto the flashlight – which functioned as a convenient floatation device – as he directed it upward at the roof of Melissa’s stomach. The light was bright, and illuminated everything. Steve looked in awe up at the red, ribbed dome above him, and the corrugated walls of flesh that stretched around him on all sides. And nothing was stationary, either – ever so slightly, everything was moving, expanding one moment and contracting the next. Now that he could see, it was clear to Steve that he was surrounded by living flesh. His panic subsided, and he started to feel intensely aroused again.

“So if you shine the light directly upward,” Melissa hummed, her huge, pleasant voice sending shivers through the liquid Steve was floating in, “You’ll see my fundus, which is positioned directly above my cardiac orifice, which you just popped out of a minute ago. How’s my gastric acid feel?”

“I…it…” stammered Steve, who was shining the light all around the inside of Melissa’s stomach, utterly flabbergasted that all of this was actually happening. “Yeah, it feels…uhhh…I don’t know? Hot? Warm?”

“Mmm excellent,” replied Melissa, sounding very pleased with herself, “So the phenolic coating is working perfectly – just as I intended…if you had felt even the slightest bit of a sting or burn anywhere on your body, I was prepared to perform emesis and get you out of there straight away.”

Steve was still almost in a daze, looking up at the illuminated rubbed walls of Melissa’s stomach stretching up above him, but Melissa’s odd nomenclature managed to bring back a humorous degree of normalcy to the crazy situation.

“Emesis?” Steve ventured, not understanding. He figured that Melissa was talking about some fancy science technique, performed by an elaborate contraption that she had invented, but his question was immediately answered by an immense contraction of the ribbed membranes all around him, as the walls seemed to close in every side. Steve gripped the floating flashlight hard for a second, alarmed by the sudden contractions, but as the stomach walls seemed to relax a second later, as a whooshing “Haahhhhhhhh” sound emanated from far above, beyond his ceiling, Steve abruptly realized that Melissa had just let out a huge sigh. Her inflating lungs had squeezed her stomach a bit tighter, which had caused the wall contractions that were now easing up as she exhaled her air.

“Didn’t you just graduate from college?” Melissa asked, a familiar, slightly-jocular disappointment in her voice. “Steve, seriously…I know you’re probably still reeling a bit from getting eaten alive, but come on…emesis? You can’t even read the context clues that I was –”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I get it now!” he called out, finally understanding what she had been saying. He kicked off from the left side of her stomach again, since he had lightly drifted into it because of the gastric currents produced by Melissa’s sigh. “I’m still kinda trying to get my bearings here, okay? So…a little understanding, maybe?”

“MHmmmm, of course,” Melissa giggled amiably, her stomach trembling and jolting with her mirth. “You know I just like teasing you, whether you’re in front of me…or inside me. Still though, all kidding aside, you really didn’t know – ?”

“Gosh you’re really going to drill into me, aren’t you?” Steve shot back, almost getting annoyed despite his continued, utter fascination, and arousal with what was going on. “I wasn’t an English major, okay?”

“Huh…so you weren’t an English major,” Melissa considered, lightly drumming her fingers on her stomach, which sounded like bass drums over Steve’s head. “You already told me you weren’t a Science major…what on earth DID you major in at that school!?”

“I…look, I was a telecom major, all right!?” Steve exclaimed back, now kicking off from the other side of her stomach. “Are we…I mean…are we seriously talking about this right now??”

“No, I’m sarcastically talking about it right now,” laughed Melissa, adjusting herself on the sofa and sending Steve careening back into her opposite stomach wall. “Don’t you think it’s just so sexy, Steve…so HOT, as they say…to carry on one of our typical conversations, like everything is totally and completely normal, except…you’re in my stomach?”

Steve blinked, staring at the gently-undulating red walls of Melissa’s stomach, as the aroused, flushing heat crept back into his face. For a few moments there, he had thought that Melissa had just reverted to her ordinary self, which would have been almost concerning, given the circumstances. But now it was clear what she had been doing all along – turning herself on.

“Don’t you, Steve?” she persisted, her voice lowering down to a sultry purr. “Don’t you think it’s sexy?”

“I…y-yeah…yeah, I do,” Steve managed to say. He suddenly had the strange but powerful urge to drift over and press his body up against all those smooth, glistening, fleshy corrugations along her stomach wall. She was just so huge, so enormous compared to him – she had encompassed him completely, and all around him…was…HER. There was simply no other way to say it. She had become his entire world, so that every one of her movements, every word, every breath, affected him profoundly. A simple sigh had sent him careening around from wall to wall…and as the reality of what was actually happening began to sink into his brain, Steve became more and more aroused, his cock rising up to its full mast as he frog-kicked on the floating flashlight over to the right side of her stomach, bumping into it. He wanted to press himself into her, to feel her up from the inside, to kiss her all over.

“Mmmm I love that little thud, Steve,” Melissa cooed, “When you bump into the side of me like that.”

Steve felt himself pressed up against the inner lining of Melissa’s stomach, and, using the floating flashlight as a buoy as he grasped the smooth walls, he stepped up on a smooth, rounded mucosa, pulling himself up completely out of the lake of acid. He was standing there, on a corner of Melissa’s stomach, grasping her inner walls, with his entire naked body pressed up against it. Steve was breathing hard now, but not from the exertion of pulling himself up. He was incredibly, unbelievably aroused, his hard cock pointed straight up at his chin as he embraced Melissa from the inside out. He was shaking, trembling…he felt that, at any moment, totally unprompted, he was going to spray his load all over those huge, glistening walls. It didn’t matter in the least that he had already succumbed to a thunderous climax mere minutes before. It seemed like his little body was working in overdrive now, to produce more cum to spray everywhere inside her. His mind and body were now completely within her thrall – he was totally transported by lust, and immediately started smushing his face into the warm, wet walls, kissing them, rubbing himself against them, surrendering himself to the living flesh all around that had swallowed him whole.

“Hah…Melissa…huh…huh…oh god…oh my god…” panted Steve, not caring, or even thinking to care, how he sounded. He pressed himself even harder up into her, and her stomach walls squirmed and squelched around his tiny body, almost seeming to absorb him within their folds as he continued to vigorously kiss and embrace them.

“Steve…I…I can feel you,” came Melissa’s deep, throaty voice, echoing and vibrating in Steve’s ears like it was coming up from the very bowels of the earth itself. “I can feel you in there…you’re…you’re all squirmy! I…oh wow…I didn’t…uhhh…whooooh…I didn’t even know…how this could feel…”

From the quickening, booming bass thud high above his head, Steve could tell that Melissa’s heart, like his own, was beating quicker and quicker. The main difference, of course, was that he could feel the mighty reverberations of her pulse through the very walls of her stomach that were surrounding him. The evident intensity of her own excitement and arousal drove him to still further heights of lust, and he started thrusting his cock into her gleaming walls, feeling the hot, liquid pressure of another orgasm rapidly building up in his balls and the base of his member.

“Yeah? You feel me?” he panted out, piston-thrusting harder and harder into her walls, which accepted his tiny appendage with enthusiastic slorps, “You feel me fucking your stomach?” In this moment, it never occurred to Steve how silly or ridiculous his dirty-talk sounded. In his mind, he was just going at it, his entire body devoted to the task – he was utterly captive to his lizard-brain lust, which was fixated on Melissa’s immensity all around him.

“Y-Yeah…yeah I do feel you,” Melissa breathed, and she lounged back further on the sofa, staring at the ceiling as she reached her free hand down to stimulate herself. In the process of moving, though, the acidic lake was thrown into disarray, and the floating flashlight rose up in the sudden waves and drifted away to the far end of her stomach, leaving Steve embracing her stomach walls in near-total darkness. He didn’t care in the least, though, and carried right along passionately kissing and thrusting.

“I had no idea how…huhhh goddd…how stimulated the enteric nerves would be,” Melissa panted, and the living walls around Steve began expanding and contracting around him more rapidly as she began taking deeper and deeper breaths, her inflating lungs constricting the stomach and then allowing it to expand in turn as they deflated, only to inflate even more moments later.

“My myenteric plexus…oh my god…” moaned Melissa, her blood beating mightily through her veins, thundering in Steve’s ears through her flesh, “It…it almost tickles – I…I didn’t even know that my…whooo god…that my Dogiel cells would…huhhh…would register all this. Steve – I can feel everything you’re doing in there. I can…I can feel it, Steve.”

“You can feel me?” he cried hoarsely, thrusting harder and harder, paradoxically egged on by Melissa’s ridiculous anatomical references. He knew that this was her version of “dirty talk,” and it just fired him up even more intensely. “You can feel my cock!?”

“Mmmmm, yessss, sweetheart,” Melissa moaned, “Poking right into me…oh Steve…go harder.”

“You want me to go harder?!” he huffed, his lungs almost bursting as he sped up his thrusting. “You want to feel my cock fucking you even more?”

“Yessss…yesssss, I want that,” Melissa goaded him on, “Harder, Steve…harder! Press your little body into me more…I want to feel it in my neuropils…uuhhhhh goddd…come on Steve, don’t get tired. Don’t slow down. More…MORE…HARDER! Set my axons on fireeeee!!”

Melissa’s throaty, lusty exhortations had their desired effect instantly, and Steve felt his body beginning to seize up as the awaiting cum began boiling at the base of his driving cock. But then, from somewhere far away in the distance, he heard the sound of something immense, a deep, remote whooshing sound, that soon began growing into an unmistakable, deluging roar. It sounded like there was a cataclysm of rushing water rumbling through Melissa’s body, and, it turned out, that was exactly what it was. Steve’s world was undulating, expanding, and contracting at such a rapid pace now, as her blood roared in his ears, and Steve had to grip her stomach walls extra hard to keep from tumbling back into a hot hydrochloric acid bath.

“Oh Steve…!!” rumbled Melissa, her huge voice rising into a high-pitched whine, “Steeeeeve…I ate you…I…ATE you…I’m cumming…ohhh GOODness Steve, I’m cumming I’m cumming I’m cumminnngggggggggg!!”

The distant, rushing thunder of Melissa’s orgasm echoed out in Steve’s ears, and he simply couldn’t hold himself back any longer. With jerking, enraptured spasms, his little body seized up and came and came and came, painting the stomach walls around him with rope after rope of cum. In the process, he temporarily lost the ability to use his hands and feet, and his fingers slipped from their grasp of Melissa’s mucosa walls, and, still cumming, he tumbled backwards right back into the hot, fizzing acid lake.

The liquid completely engulfed his body, which briefly submerged for a few seconds, and, despite the continuing spasms of his orgasm, Steve felt himself sighing out in relaxed contentment as the stomach acid washed over him. It felt like he had fallen back into a huge hot tub. And then, after taking a few moments to catch his breath, Steve fixed his eyes on the flashlight, illuminating the far end of Melissa’s stomach like a powerful spelunking light, and he swam over to it.

“Wow Steve,” came Melissa’s voice, as, evidenced by the slow, rhythmic undulations of her stomach walls, she too was catching her breath, “That was…something else…”

“Yeah,” he replied, catching ahold of the flashlight and once again using it as a flotation device, his little feet not quite reaching the bottom of her stomach, “It was. I don’t…uh…I don’t even know how to explain it.”

“You don’t have to,” Melissa declared simply, adjusting herself again on the sofa, this time so that she was sitting up straighter. “I already understand, Steve.”

“You…pppfffffthhhh…you understand?” he asked, briefly distracted by the large wave of gastric acid that had suddenly risen up in response to Melissa’s movements and smacked him directly in the face, causing him to spit and spew for a few seconds.

“Mhm…yeah,” she said gently, now lovingly petting her stomach in a circular motion, around and around, just above her belly button, as she spoke. Steve heard her hand above his ceiling, resounding in a rhythmic rush in his ears…it sounded like some huge machine high over his head, whooshing steadily.

“We both felt it,” Melissa continued, her voice calm and pensive as she stared up at the ceiling, “From opposite sides – from my perspective, I just couldn’t get enough of the fact that I had just eaten you, that your little body was now completely inside me, in my stomach. Oh Steve, I–I…I had been thinking about this moment for days and days, and nothing…NOTHING, could have prepared me for how incredible it felt…how incredible it FEELS…to have you inside me like this.”

Steve opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Just hearing this enormous creature, this ENTITY that was surrounding him, speak like this…well…even though he had already cum twice in fairly quick succession, he couldn’t help but think that if Melissa kept on like this, it wouldn’t be long before he came a third time inside her.

“Now,” purred Melissa, “From your perspective, you were just…blown away with how huge I was, all around you…surrounding you, Steve, encompassing you…”

“R-right,” he croaked out, his voice hoarse from all the organic yelling, as he continued to float aimlessly in Melissa’s stomach, occasionally bumping into a fleshy side, which slightly gave way to his weight, as he listened to her.

“The thought that I had swallowed you whole,” she persisted, “Gulped you down…absorbed your entire body, your entire BEING, into mine…it was too much for you to take.”

“I…yeah, I…couldn’t control myself,” he replied. He still hadn’t quite wrapped his mind around the fact that they could actually have this conversation in the first place, with him inside her like this. That little contraption she was holding up to her stomach…it was just another one of Melissa’s impressive inventions.

“Mhm, yes, you couldn’t hold back,” hummed Melissa gently. “You HAD to submit. You HAD to surrender yourself to me completely. Heh…and the way you did that was sooo cute and funny!”

“Uhm, funny?” asked Steve, confused, but already beginning to feel the pangs of some kind of indistinct, uncertain embarrassment, “What…uh, what do you mean?”

“The way you were talking!” giggled Melissa, her stomach beginning to shake and tremble with her amusement. “Like you were some big, strong, masculine man! When you were engaging in coitus with my anterolateral folds!”

“...you mean the way I was fucking the inside of your stomach?” Steve ventured, chuckling to himself about Melissa’s exceedingly technical language. It helped that her inadvertent silliness distracted from his embarrassment. She really just couldn’t help herself, could she?

“I don’t know why you have to put it in such a boorish way,” Melissa sighed, “But I suppose that’s, to use a golf analogy… “par for the course” with your generation, I suppose.”

Steve had to grin, then started openly laughing to himself, even as he continued floating back and forth in Melissa’s stomach on the flashlight – he would have bet all the money he had that Melissa had come across that analogy in a newspaper or magazine and literally written it down for herself, vowing to use it with him at exactly the right time, in an effort to seem “up” on the most recent lingo. The effect, of course, was exactly the opposite.

“What?” she asked suddenly, “Is that just my stomach growling, or is that you laughing, I can’t tell.”

“I was just…look, never mind,” Steve chuckled, shaking his head as he kicked off again from the side of her stomach.

GrrrrrrAUUUgghhggghhhlllllllll

Steve suddenly clutched the flashlight in alarm, as a loud, sloshing squelch sounded out inside Melissa’s stomach, and a huge bubble, a quarter the size of his entire body, suddenly blurbed up next to him, popping a moment later and sending a burst of acid in all directions.

“THAT was my stomach growling,” laughed Melissa. “Mmmm, how was that, Steve? Pretty loud, huh?”

“Yeah…it was…pretty loud,” Steve replied, kicking away from where the bubble had just burst. It had occurred to him that there was a slight undercurrent beneath his feet, and if felt like there was something, some invisible force, beginning to pull at him, trying to drag him down underneath the surface.

“Uh, so…Melissa?” he added, not attempting in the least to disguise the unease in his voice, “I just started feeling…uhh…I don’t know…something pulling at my feet.”

“Well of course you did,” Melissa replied airily, like it was silly that he was even mentioning such a thing, “That was just my pylorus opening and closing.”

“Your pylorus?” Steve asked, not exactly comforted by her response.

“Yes Steve, my pylorus,” she repeated, “The valve that opens during the process of digestion? The opening from the stomach into the duodenum? Does any of this sound familiar to you?”

“I…okay yeah, sure,” he said, “But…I–I mean, isn’t that…uhh…”

His voice trailed off. Even though he trusted Melissa, especially since her pheno-whatever-it-was coating on his body was working perfectly, protecting his body from her gastric acid, that still didn’t mean that he wasn’t nervous about the prospect of being slurped up through a hole in the bottom of her stomach. Even so, this prospect, though frightening, actually inspired another odd pang of arousal in Steve’s cock. The thought of being swallowed up by yet another one of Melissa’s holes – when he was already inside her – served to underline the insanity of their size difference, and intensified his thoughts of submission to her. But, of course, these thoughts did not immediately translate into him relishing the thought of being sucked down deeper into her digestive tract.

“Aww, you’re starting to worry about what happens after my pylorus gulps your little body down,” Melissa giggled, correctly identifying his fear. “Don’t worry about that, Steve – when it comes time for that next step, I’ll guide you through the whole process, and nothing bad is going to happen to you, alright?”

“A-Alright,” Steve replied, nodding (though he didn’t know why he was nodding, since, after all, she couldn’t even see him). “It’s just a little…you know, anxiety-inducing, is all.”

“Poor little sweetie,” Melissa cooed down at him, and, from the deepening and increased volume of her voice, Steve correctly surmised that she was leaning forward on the sofa, so that her mouth was closer to her stomach as she spoke into it. “I know it is…but you have to admit that the libidinous fruits are worth it, do you not?”

“I think…uh, yeah,” Steve began, vaguely surmising what “libidinous” meant through the context and the tone of her voice. He then laughed simply, adding, “I think it is worth it.”

He suddenly felt buoyant, both literally and figuratively, as he continued to float around Melissa’s stomach. Of course he trusted her – she was a genius! An awkward, mad, ridiculous, lusty genius…but a genius nonetheless. She would never let anything happen to him. And that meant that he was free – free to float around and enjoy the perverse insanity of what had happened…and what was going to happen. For the next minute or so he just shined the flashlight all around Melissa’s stomach, absorbing the incredible views of her internal organ, as he still tried to wrap his mind around the fact that this was all actually real.

He was surprised, then, when, a few moments later, he heard a mighty gulp high above his head, quickly followed by a sudden shower of cold, fizzing fluid that came raining down on top of his head in a torrential downpour. This abrupt “precipitation” caught Steve off-guard, and actually caused him to slip off the flashlight and sink down under Melissa’s gastric acid for a second. He felt the smooth, fleshy pylorus suddenly open underneath him, nearly snagging his foot before he kicked away, and he came up, spraying acid out of his mouth and feeling slightly panicked, not unlike someone who has waded out in the ocean and stepped on something soft and alive in the opaque water.

“Wh-what the – !?” he cried, swimming over to the flashlight again and holding onto it, “Melissa? What…what’s all this!?”

“Haha, was that a bit much for you?” she laughed, “I’m sorry Steve, but I just now realized how thirsty I was – plus, there’s nothing like a little hydration to speed up that digestive process, right?”

“Is that…what you’re doing?” asked Steve, now understanding that the “precipitation” was just a few hefty gulps of Sprite, “Speeding up the digestive process?”

“Well yes, of course!” Melissa responded earnestly. “I’m excited for the next part of your journey through me, aren’t you?”

“Uh, actually I think I’d rather just hang out in here for awhile,” Steve muttered. “I kind of like it here, you know?”

“Silly boy,” Melissa chided him, appreciating his humor while making it clear that he didn’t run the show, “I know you’re nervous about going through my pylorus – I completely understand! But, like I said before, you just need to trust me. You’ll be completely fine.”

Steve knew that Melissa was right, but it was still very difficult to overcome his primal “fight or flight” urges right now. The way that her pylorus had “grabbed” at his foot just now – it was almost aggressive…almost predatory. How on earth was he going to make it through her intestines!? How was he going to breathe? He was so preoccupied with all of these questions that he didn’t even realize that, in the fifteen minutes or so he had been in Melissa’s stomach, his body had gotten smaller and smaller relative to everything around it. It wasn’t a dramatic shift, which is why Steve hadn’t yet noticed the change. But it was happening: he was shrinking in her stomach.

Sppplllllliiisssshhhhhhhhhh

“Gah! Can you…ugh, can you not!?” Steve exclaimed, dog-paddling over to the edge of Melissa’s stomach so that he could avoid the cold rain of more Sprite as Melissa swallowed down a few more large gulps. With all of the additional fluid, and especially because it was carbonated, Melissa’s gastric juices were beginning to fizz and gurgle with renewed vigor. And even though he was now on the opposite end of her stomach, Steve could still feel the pull of her pylorus, now opening and closing even faster than it was before, slowly, inexorably pulling him towards it.

“I’m sorry Steve,” breathed Melissa (and he could tell she was smiling), “But this is happening, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Sppppppllisshhhhhhhhhh Splunnnk Spppplliiiiiiiissssshhhhhhhhh

More torrents of Sprite came pouring down from the ceiling, and Steve suddenly found himself caught up in a vortex. Everything was moving. Melissa had abruptly stood up off the sofa, and had started walking around the living room, pumping her arms cartoonishly in a “power walk” stance.

“What’re you…what’re you doing!?” cried Steve, gripping the flashlight hard as he spun around in the acidic currents.

“Getting active!” Melissa laughed back, using one arm to pump while she held the little device up to her stomach so that she could still hear him. “Hydration and physical activity – there’s nothing that beats those two things for speeding up digestion!”

SLORRRRP

Steve had been tossed toward the other end of her stomach now, and felt the smooth, fleshy pull of Melissa’s pylorus again on his foot. The liquid current was rushing towards the opening beneath him, and he could feel the powerful pull being exerted on his little body. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he was sucked down…and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

‘Hey, wait…’ he thought to himself suddenly, ‘Was this flashlight…always this big?!’

He stared around in alarm at the rest of Melissa’s stomach, and the illuminated walls had never looked so huge, so tall, and so looming.

‘Am I…shrinking!?’ he thought desperately. But the next moment, Melissa’s excited voice was booming out in his ears.

“All right Steve!” she called, walking rapidly around and around the living room as she brought the bottle of Sprite up to her lips again. “Next stop – the pyloric sphincter! Get ready for a reeeeeally tight squeeze!”