Mental Adventures 2

(story continues from Mental Adventures)

#3.

I was surprised. Not at how I’d been brought back to my normal size, but at the location of where I was teleported to--MY HOME! So the monster toying with me must be done, for now.

When I finished shimmering and was entirely there, I checked the use of my powers, to find that all was in order! I walked up the sidewalk to the quaint little home Sarah, my wife, had wished up. The scenery was beautiful, and I again silently thanked her for wanting our home in the woods, rather that somewhere full of people. The one-story cottage was small, but that’s all you need when you can wish for anything you want, and you’ve only got to share with one person.

I reached the front door and knocked. The house was protected against assault by monsters via wishing the door was the only entry in and out, and the door would only open if it read my or Sarah’s DNA. I heard the snick of the deadbolt turning, and I pulled the door handle to admit myself. “Hello! I’m home!” I said tiredly as I closed the door behind me. I heard the familiar snick as the lock closed again.

I was yanked off my feet, to my astonishment, by an appendage of some sort. As I was pulled closer to the owner, I found it not to be an appendage so much as a scaly tail, and that tail belonged to…

“Darling! You’re home!” Either someone was impersonating as Miia the lamia, from Monster Musume--a show I watched when I was a kid--or someone had wished Miia to be real, and alive, and in my house. Or was it my house? I wished to find out, and found that this wasn’t my real house, and that that and a few other specific wishes were the only things I could use, other than my invincibility power. I’ve been led right into a trap, I realized as Miia squeezed me tightly in her arms and coils, disguised as my own home. And I fell for it, too.

“Come on, darling, let’s continue from where we started.” Miia started to pull her skirt off and used the tip of her tail to unzip my pants, but I pulled an arm out from her semi-loose coils and made the “stop” symbol with my hand while rezipping with the other.

“No. First of all, I’m not your original caretaker, so could you please stop calling me darling? I have a name, and it’s Graham. Second, I only have sex after marriage.” She dropped her shirt back in position. She seemed confused. A far-off, unfocused look came into her eyes. Then, just as suddenly as it had happened, her eyes cleared up.

“OH! You’re my new caretaker!”  Her eyes lit up with joy. “Let’s go get married, then. I’m ready!” She wrapped me in a hug.

“Um… I just need to check on something real quick. I’ll be right back.” Miia let go and lowered her coils to the floor, and I ran over to the front door, to find that there wasn’t a handle on it! Well, there goes that plan. No escape.

I was again jerked back to her by a quick lash of her tail around my neck, and she looked hurt. “Not running away already, darling?” Tears welled in her eyes, and I thought of how dangerous it could be being stuck in the same house as a lamia that was angry with me.

“I’m already married! I’m happy with whom I’m with!” I thought it best to just break it to her. No use beating around the bush.

The tears broke, but after a few minutes, she calmed down and relaxed her crushing grip slightly. “I’ll just have to convince you I’m better, darling.” Uh-oh. That couldn’t be good. She seemed even more determined to have me now.

“I’m sorry, okay! When I saw you on TV, I thought you were cute, but nothing more.” This was a lie. When I was a kid (and hadn’t been turned into a monster yet), when I watched the show, I’d wished she were real and had a thing for me, not that lucky weak cartoon guy. Also, I wasn’t going to tell her that when I said, ‘on TV’ I meant as a cartoon, not on the news. Now, though, this wasn’t funny. I wished to see if the wish I wanted was allowed in the house, and I found it was. I wished that she saw me as a caretaker, not anything more than that. And thus it was.

I found that wish to be foolish, as it changed almost nothing between us. Throughout the rest of the day, Miia continued to pester me with her body, trying to tempt me to join her in her idea of fun. I eventually squirmed free of her coils and left for the bedroom with her trailing behind, and I dashed into the room and shut & locked the door behind me before she could enter. I knew the door probably wouldn’t hold should she use her body to slam it open, but based on the TV show, she’d probably not resort to such aggressive measures.

I slept on the bed, happy to have a moment to relax without having to worry about imminent pain, digestion, and death. Although, hearing her cry “darling” and beg me to let her in was kind of unnerving. I felt kinda bad, knowing that in her past, except for when she was waiting for me to arrive, she’d always been with someone to give her company, as per the law in the place she came from.

I eventually slipped into a troubled sleep, and nightmares plagued me.

When I woke up, I turned on my side to find Miia slumbering right next to me.

Oh, dear.

She awakened to my shift of position and I noticed that she was shivering. I looked around for her method of entry and found a vent on the ceiling, too high for me to reach or barricade, hanging wide open. “Why me?” I asked to no one in particular.

“You’re warm,” Miia moaned sleepily as she flipped a coil of her tail around me. It was too heavy to push off, and she curled another ring around my chest and opened her eyes to look at me.

“Can’t I get up first?”

“Five more degrees… just five more…” I heard those words that, so long ago, I’d thought were cute and cuddly, but now were my undoing as she wrapped herself around me.

Quickly I remembered what else had occurred during that episode. The main character had pulled her tail, and had been able to escape after that. I reached for my salvation just a moment too late, and my arms were pinned to my sides as Miia began constricting unconsciously. Soon, I couldn’t feel my legs or arms, and my vision began growing dark. Just before she unwittingly ended my misery, the coils loosened, and I heard Miia’s slightly faint voice, “Darling? Darling, are you okay? Are you alive?” I was only beginning to feel blood rushing through my veins, and was too weak to answer. “Darling? Oh, no! I think I’ve killed him! Well, he’s not responsive, so he must be dead… I guess there’s no crying over spilt milk… He didn’t really like me anyhow. What should I do with his body? Oh, I know! I’m hungry anyway, and he’s still warm. It’ll be nice to have a warm meal for once.”

I silently groaned and cursed in my head. When I was younger, being vored by Miia would have sounded like heaven, and here I was, getting my wish. I bet whoever was putting me in these situations was laughing their ass off at the irony.

I felt movement of the air once she had stripped my clothes off (they don’t digest). I felt a light compressive suction sensation on my feet. My blood vessels were still recovering from the constriction, and I could barely feel more than a whisper on my skin as she swallowed my knees. My waist went into the hole; I could slightly feel my feet stretching Miia’s first stomach out before they breached and went into the second. I struggled to gather enough energy to move, to speak, to do something, but soon my chest had reached her mouth. She paused to lick me, probably to ‘savor the flavor,’ and I managed to grunt and kick my legs a little bit before becoming exhausted again. “Ogh, om so sowwy ahling…” Miia struggled to talk with me filling her mouth. At least she’d realized she hadn’t killed me, yet. I felt my knees entering her second stomach, and I knew that escape was hopeless, as the second stomach doesn’t have a puke reflex. Crap. Well, I might as well enjoy the feeling of my limp form being slowly forced down her slimy gullet, the feeling of her body surrounding mine in an intimately deadly embrace.

I tried to get comfortable as her throat pulsed around my shoulders, and my head finished its entrance into her stretchy mouth. Everything darkened to a deep red when Miia shut her lips. I grimaced when she licked my face. Making the most of me perhaps? She doesn’t know that I regenerate whenever I die, and for all I know, I’ll be teleported away as soon as I die from digestion. I felt her tongue wrap around my face, and the vibrations she emitted as she purred with pleasure. Finally, she swallowed with one giant heave, and I felt her slick throat squeezing around my face and felt my entire legs in her much-warmer second stomach.

That’s something else I didn’t get: why would nagas’ second stomachs be super-hot inside, and yet they still have to seek warmth for their outside?

My chest slipped into her second stomach, and I felt the white-hot burn of acid tingling on my feet. As my head exited her non-lethal first stomach, I wobbled around in my cocoon of wet flesh as she shifted around, probably to lay on her side or back, more comfortable positions for digesting a meal. Her belly reeked of digestive slime. It wasn’t long before the digestive pinpricks had spread all over my body, and I heard and felt a slight rumbling--Miia had fallen asleep and was snoring softly.

After laying in my organic prison for over a half hour without anything occurring other than the increasing pain, I began to black out. Soon, the pain was too much to bear, and I lost consciousness…

I reformed standing next to Miia, and I watched her sleeping for a few minutes. I had to admit, she was a whole lot cuter when she wasn’t actively rushing around, trying to seduce me, constricting me accidentally. I soon tired of listening to her oddly low-pitched snores and I crept over her to the other side of the bed, the roomier side and lay down facing her, occasionally glancing at the almost unnoticeable shrinking of the lump in her body, about two feet down from her waist, until I fell back to sleep.

I woke up to find Miia looking down at me, propped on her arms, one on each side of me. She seemed relieved but confused to see me open my eyes. “How did you come out? You’re still in there,” she said, pointing to the almost entirely disappeared lump in her scales.

“Uhhh…” I knew I was stalling, but I needed the time to think. How much was I going to tell her? I made my decision, and told her that I used to be a human and that I now had powers, including that of invincibility, which isn’t very aptly named, as you still die. “I was tricked by someone into thinking this was my home, and you were fooled into thinking I was your caretaker. I walked into this house willingly, and now I’m unable to escape.” Miia voiced curiosity about what kind of a species I was now and who had tricked me, and the answers weren’t satisfying for her: “monsters of some sort” and, “I don’t know.”

Then she popped a question I wasn’t prepared for: “If you like me, why can’t you marry me and have your other wife at the same time?”

“Wait… Who told you that?! I mean, whatever gave you the idea that I liked you?”

She giggled. “You talk in your sleep, and I distinctly heard you say, ‘Miia is cute, but I can’t have both of them…’”

Well, that was pretty difficult to deny. “Ok, maybe a little, but… Every time I’ve had multiple wives, it’s never ended well for the other ones. Sometimes they’ll force me to marry them, sometimes not… Anyway, they always end up becoming more and more possessive of me, and they eventually cause me to kill them myself, or cause Sarah--my wife--to get tired of having them hog me, or get jealous of each other and fight between themselves. If I married you, there’d just be fighting between you and Sarah, and I’d take her side, because I love her very much, and she feels the same for me. And after all that, you’d be…” I couldn’t finish. It was enough being implied.

“But, as you said, we’re trapped in here, unable to get out. Doesn’t--”

“I never said that we weren’t able to escape. I said that I wasn’t able to escape.” I was getting tired of trying to explain to her.

“If you aren’t able to leave, no one will find out, or care.” Miia just didn’t know when to give up.

I decided it’d be a better idea to give her some time to think about the issue herself, as it might allow her to consider my point of view. I maneuvered out from underneath her, and she watched my passage to the door with sad eyes, but when I glanced back before I reached the door, I saw a hint of mirth in the corners of her lips. When I attempted to flip the deadbolt to unlock the door, I found it to be seized shut, and wouldn’t move no matter how I pushed or pried. I turned around to see Miia chuckling silently.

“I’d tried to exit the room as well, but I decided that if I were going out of the room just come back to see you, crawling through the vent system wouldn’t be worth it.”

The vent! I’d forgotten about it. Maybe I could escape from there? No, it was too high for me to reach. I cursed my lack of desire for furnishing, as my room contained no more than a bed, myself, and a lamia. A lamia… maybe…

“Could I get a boost up to the vent, Miia?” I asked in a nonchalant voice.

She smiled slyly at me. Now this was a side of her I hadn’t seen before, on the anime or in my interactions so far. Happy, yes. Tired, yes. Angry, yes. But never focused, calculating, and devious. I thought she would be too bubbly, too joyful, to show such an emotion. “For a price.”

“And that would be…? You know I can’t marry you, and I’ve been sexually abused too often by girls to not put my all up in a fight now.

Miia shifted slightly. I didn’t see it coming until I felt her coils suddenly cinch tight around me from where she had positioned them near me on the ground. She smiled joyously. “I suggest a trade. Every time I help you out of this room, I get to play with you, eat you if I want. You said you regenerate every time you die, right?” She brought her mouth up to my cheek, and, holding her hands on my shoulders to keep me steady, gave me a slow, slimy lick with her two-pronged serpentine tongue. After seeing my involuntary shudder when she finished, she mirrored the process on the other side of my face. “Mmmm… You taste awesome! I know that eating living humans is forbidden, but since you aren’t human, it shouldn’t break the rules.” I knew something was up now. The monster who’d put me in this situation must have put something in Miia’s mind, something that caused her to want to eat people and like it. “You feel sooo good just right here against my skin. I could just relax here and enjoy it, but I think relaxing would be easier on the bed. Now, doesn’t that feel more comfortable to you too?”

Not really, I thought. Now I’m not only being squeezed, I’m also being crushed by the weight of her coils on top of me. It’s getting hard to breathe. She put her face in front of mine and put her lips on mine, and sucked. Her mouth enveloped my head, then she seemed satisfied and coated my head with saliva with her tongue, licking me to taste me once more. When she had satisfied herself with her handiwork, she pulled her mouth off my head, sucking as much of her saliva and my taste as she could into her mouth.

“My, my, darling. Your taste just starbursts on my tongue. I wish I could just have you in my mouth forever. However, I’d also like to taste your mouth before I swallow you.” I couldn’t speak more than a muffled mmmf! as she put her lips against mine again and pushed her tongue into my mouth. Her tongue was a thick, strong, powerful invader in my own territory. I couldn’t say that I didn’t enjoy the taste or feel of her tongue wrapping around mine, but I can say I fought it. “And now to the heart of the matter comes up,” she said as she lifted her face from mine. “Comfortable enough? If you want, I can give you a minute to prepare yourself mentally.”

Well, I knew that even if she now had affinity for my flesh, she still had her kind heart. I thought of the different ways I could phrase the wish I wanted for this situation, and found that, at least, the monster who’d put me in this situation had given me a few tools to make it less painful for me. “Could you please loosen your coils enough for me to have one arm out? Ah, that’s better. Here, would you drink this? It’ll give your stomach acids a relaxant and numbing agent an make the trip inside of you even more enjoyable for me.”

Miia looked suspiciously at me. “How do I know you aren’t giving me something to poison me, or make me fall asleep until you can escape?” I mentally sent her a bit of my knowledge of what was inside the bottle and what it would do, and I saw her eyes widen momentarily as her brain absorbed the new knowledge. “Well then… That might do as you say, but what did you mean by ‘make you enjoy it more’?”

Oops. I hadn’t meant to let her know of my fetish for being swallowed, but I didn’t really have much of a choice now. I looked for a way out of the metaphorical corner I was in. “Uhh… It’s a long story. I’d bore you.”

“I’ve got time.” Miia stared at me intently, her yellow eyes looking down deep into my soul. I realized that she wouldn’t allow me to go anywhere until I explained myself. The coils around me squeezed rhythmically in an encouraging way.

“Um, being swallowed kinda… makes me feel good. I get high from the feeling of being slowly squeezed down through an esophagus. Feeling the sensation of being surrounded with living flesh, dominating my own body, just… yeah.”

“Oh. Then you do like the idea of me eating you often.” She seemed pretty upbeat about that, and I felt sorry for having to burst her bubble somewhat.

“Yes… and no. I enjoy the feeling of being swallowed, enveloped, and the peristalsis that ensues, but I don’t like the playing that normally precedes it, nor the pain of digestion that obviously comes after. Though, if you are going to eat me more often, I suggest you drink some of this stuff daily. I can withstand the playing, if I’m able to enjoy the other two thirds of the game without ending in pain. Then it’s more win-win, so to speak. You get a--you said it yourself--delicious meal, and I get to enjoy myself almost the whole time instead of having it end in misery.”

“When you put it that way, it does make sense.” Miia lifted the bottle of liquid to her lips, and drank vigorously. She seemed woozy for a second, maybe allowing the chemical to sit on her tongue a little too long before swallowing, but she soon recovered. “Now it’s your turn. Clothes off.”

I obeyed, then lay back down as she looped a few coils back around me. She brought her face in close, then even closer, slowly closing the gap between us, before finally placing her lips on my forehead and covering my head. The saliva on my head hadn’t yet dried, and she purred with pleasure at how my taste had already pooled into the saliva, flooding her mouth with me as she worked her lips over my shoulders. I felt my head pushing against the entrance of her throat before she made her first swallow. I shivered with excitement.

It’s fine and dandy watching someone who likes soft vore being eaten, but it’s oh-so-much better when you are the one being eaten. You get to feel the slow pull of her working her mouth over your unclothed body, you get to experience the silkiness of her throat slowly sucking and pulsing around your head, your neck, your chest…  The best part is that you can feel her innards changing their shape around you, massaging every inch of your skin, and it’s personal, because it’s your shape her body is taking--just for you! And when you reach your final destination, because of the special tonic you gave her, you quickly relax and are numbed to the tingles of digestion as you drift off to sleep in her warm, comforting second stomach.

4.

I reformed next to Miia, who’d lay on her stomach, happily snoozing after the large meal of me, which formed a very large and conspicuous lump a little ways down her body. “Wake up Miia, you promised to help me reach the vent after you had your fun.”

“Oohhhhhhhh…” She groaned, but lay out a coil for me to use to reach the air vent on the ceiling, the only exit due to the door’s lock being stuck.

I crawled through the immaculate air vents, glad that I’d made them quite spacious. The other end of the vent “T”d off after about ten feet, and I turned to the direction of light shining through and exited, to find myself only a two feet above the kitchen counter. I crawled out, walked to the living room, and sat on the couch. Now I realized a problem. I hadn’t been teleported away after I had been eaten, and I obviously couldn’t escape by trying to exit the door normally… Maybe I could ask Miia to slam the door open for me, but being her toy in exchange was starting to get boring. Also, she might not want to do something so destructive, not to mention the wishes I’d used to reinforce the door might still hold. No, I couldn’t ask her. She wouldn’t want me to leave anyway. All attempts to escape would have to be concocted by me. But how was I to do that?

I was jolted from my thoughts by the sound of Miia coming through the vent and sliding to the floor. I froze, knowing that if she knew what I’d been thinking, she wouldn’t be quite so passive as she glided across the floor and lay her upper body across my lap. For now, until I figured out a way to escape, I would have to go incognito, act like nothing was wrong or out of the ordinary.

We sat there for hours, Miia enjoying the warmth of my body as she finished digesting me internally. I grasped for an excuse to get up to check what I wanted without causing myself to be put under suspicion. Finally, I found an excuse that seemed legit enough to me, because it was true: “Miia, can you get up? I need to use the restroom really bad.”

She turned herself to look at me, checking my eyes for any flicker of guilt.

“Please.”

“Okay. When you’re done, I think I’ll use it too.”

Great! Now, not only am I able to empty my bladder and use the excuse to find if what I need is available, I’ll also have her busy for long enough to come back and not seem too suspicious.

I walked out of the living room and down the hall to the restroom and did my business. When I came out, Miia was waiting for me, and I waited for her to enter and shut the door before I walked to the end of the hall, which seemed to be a blank wall. If the monster who had put me here had copied my house entirely, except for the handle on the only door to exit and a few other maintenance alterations, then that should be there as well… Once I put my hand on the wall, there was a very quiet whirring sound as it recognized my DNA and the wall slid down to reveal a small elevator. YESSS!!!!!!

I crept into the elevator and quietly shifted around as the door reclosed and the small room lowered. The doors slid open silently, opening into a small, well lit room with black walls, just as I designed and wished it. “Welcome, Graham,” the synthesized voice intoned. While I hadn’t thought of the possibility that I might need an alternative escape route (something I’d fix when I got home), I’d still made a “secret” lab/man cave/weapons locker in the case that the house was ever under assault by other monsters. I liked the layout of the room, personally. I followed the walkways between the empty tables (I never left a project unfinished) to the entrance of the weapons closet. The doors opened automatically, as in accordance with the proximity wish I’d made, and they shut behind me as I entered the white room.

The color was perfect to highlight the assortment of awesomeness I’d wished up in the case I wasn’t able to access my wishing power entirely, a situation I currently could state I was in. I looked down the long aisle to the section marked, “crowbars,” and chose one that seemed about the right size for the job, while still being small enough to hide in one of the large pockets I’d prepared already (via wishing, of course) in my jeans. On my way out, I grabbed a small dagger and a hand grenade. “You can never be too prepared,” I reminded myself.  I slipped them into my pocket and jogged back to the elevator, waiting for it to take me back up to the hallway.

When I re-entered the hallway, I heard the toilet flush and the sounds of the sink being used. I slipped into the kitchen, grabbing an apple to snack on before heading to the living room. I heard Miia slither up behind me as I was moving to sit in the reclining chair, but I didn’t expect her to wrap her arms around me and pick me up to place me on the couch. She lowered her upper half down beside me, and wrapped her tail around the two of us, making sure to coil loosely and give me enough room to move my arm.

“Is this what we’re going to end up doing with our time when we aren’t sleeping?” I asked.

“Yeah… don’t you like it, darling?”

“Kindof.” I honestly was getting used to Miia snuggling next to me, which frightened me because I knew I shouldn’t. I needed to stay as faithful to Sarah as was possible. I took another bite of the apple while Miia shifted slightly, trying to find the best position to maximize how much warmth she could get from me, causing her scales to rub against my skin in an extremely pleasant manner.

That night, we crawled through the vent and into the bedroom. I knew I would have to move while Miia was asleep. The element of surprise was my only chance, so I couldn’t be letting Miia see my tools. After all, if worse turns worst, I might have to use the dagger to ensure my escape, and I couldn’t threaten her by surprise if she already knew I had it, right?

The next morning, I woke up, and cursed. Unless I wanted Miia to see that I had a means to escape, and let her know that I was conspiring to, I would have to wait until tomorrow to make my move. I shifted myself to the side of the bed, and slipped the crowbar, the grenade, and the dagger all underneath. I pulled the upper half of my body back onto the bed to see Miia sleepily watching me. She lazily looped a coil around my legs, but I wasn’t going to have a repeat of yesterday morning. I sat up and scooted out from underneath the loop of scales to stand next to the bed. I wouldn’t have any drama if she wasn’t fully capable of thinking.

“Nooo… come here…”

Well, maybe if she just needed the warmth. If she ate me by accident, then I would use the deal she and I had made to have her boost me up to the vent. Just in case, I wished up a bottle of the same type as I’d given Miia to drink yesterday. I rolled back onto the bed and handed her the bottle. She sipped it slowly, taking in the warmth it brought to her stomach. I then realized, I  probably hadn’t wished the potion to give off as much warmth as I would bring her, so I might be next on her train of thought.

I couldn’t tell whether or not she was going to follow through with that thought as she pulled me closer to her chest and wrapped herself around the two of us. As the next few minutes passed, I felt more and more secure, until I drifted off. I had this most wonderful dream, something about slowly being sucked into a gooey bag, then being shifted into a wet and sticky, but relaxing, warm, and safe place. I woke up to see the reflection of shimmery blue light on the wall facing me. “Miia!” I said as I sat up and the light from the reformation faded.

“Did you enjoy it? Was it a nice sleep, darling?” Miia asked shyly. There was a noticeable bulge a little ways down from her waist area.

“I slept well, but I don’t like being eaten when I can’t defend myself! It’s comparable to rape! And now you’ll have to let me out the vent.”

“Nope. You weren’t awake, so one, you didn’t get the full experience. Two, I didn’t get to feel you squirm inside of me. Three, who’s to say you don’t like your body… played with, when you are asleep? Four, you’re in no place to negotiate, as I hold all the cards.” She smirked, thinking she’d won. If only she knew what I had underneath the bed…

“Fine. But--”

I was swept off the bed into the air by her tail. She held me in the air with only a curl of the tip of it, and opened her mouth wide, showing off her teeth. “Submit.”

“Wait. Did you say that you sexually assaulted my body when I was asleep?!”

“Yup. And you couldn’t fight back, so technically, it’s none of your fault. Now submit.”

“No.”

“What did you say?” She placed me on the ground and coiled her tail around me, then started to constrict. “Just submit, darling,” she chuckled.

“Never!” Now I knew she was playing with me.

She seemed to get an oddly pensive look on her face, but then it changed to the sly grin I now associated with her when she toyed with me. She slipped the tip of her tail between two of the loops that held me captive and moved it into my pants, in my personal area. She gave a single squeeze to such areas before repeating, “Submit.”

“Ugh, no way.”

She pulled out her tail and moved her face near the same area before sticking out her tongue, but waited to proceed when she again said, “Submit to me.”

She had to be bluffing. Her request was met with silence, so she continued, and I felt her tongue ooze around my genitals. “Stop it! Ow! Okay! Okay, I submit!”

The tail was taken away, and my pants with it, then her tongue wrapped around my legs, binding them as she pulled me in to begin digestion.

My feet entered, and before she started to swallow them, she unwrapped her tongue a little bit. This process she repeated: gulp, unwrap, gulp, unwrap, until she finally reached my waist area. Then, she tilted herself back, to allow gravity to help her suck me into her gut. Again the damp, familiar darkness enveloped me.

I felt the walls of her stomach squeezing me and mixing her digestive juices and the relaxant from the potion into my skin. Oh, I enjoyed this experience way too much. Did it seem to feel even better as I fell asleep?

“Oh, Miia, you really need to stop doing that,” I groaned. I needed to stop enjoying it as well, but the intimate way she did it, the way she swallowed, the way her stomach fit me like a glove... it was overwhelming. I couldn’t help it.

“Nah. Even if you don’t like it, and I know you do, darling,” she gave me a pointed wink, “I enjoy it, so you’ll just have to suck it up.”

“Ok, help me out then.”

She boosted me up, and as I crawled through the vents, my subconscious nagged at me for some reason while I mentally prepared myself for the following day and night.

I awoke the following night, as I’d hoped. I slipped off the bed silently, giving extra care to ensure the bed didn’t creak. I crouched low, pulling my tools from underneath the bed. The dagger and grenade I slipped into my outer pockets; the crowbar was placed in hand. I slowly moved towards the bedroom door. I would have to be quick. As soon as Miia heard the sounds, she’d probably awaken, and I’d need to make my escape from the room while she was still sluggish. I took one last glance at her sleeping form.

Two semi-reptilian yellow eyes watched my movements curiously.

Oh, crap!

I hurriedly jammed the crowbar into the space between the door and the doorframe. I wrenched hard, and while I heard some splintering, nothing gave. On the second attempt, the frame and a bit of the wall near the deadbolt burst open in a shower of shards and a puff of powder. I dashed out the now-open door.

I heard, “Darling?! Wait!” as I rushed down the hallway to the front door. I tried once, twice, three times; I was running out of time. I heard the sound of slithering and whipped out my dagger as the crowbar was yanked out of my hands. “Why, darling?” Miia asked with somber eyes.

I didn’t want to kill her. I knew I didn’t have to kill her. But, it was either her or the door, and the door wasn’t opening. It was time for last-ditch plan C. My knife arm shook. I saw her tail lash towards the knife, knocking it out of my hands. That was a setback, I wouldn't have anything to defend myself with. However, if I played my cards right, I might still be able to dispose of her, or get the door open, or maybe both.

I waited until she wrapped herself around me before I said, “Ow! My ribs and hips! Stop squeezing so hard, they’re bruised!” Her coils loosened up enough that I could move my arms. “Miia?”

“Yesss, darling?”

“Can I tell you a little secret?”

“Sure!” Miia leaned in close.

“I’m really sorry, but… you’re dead.” I held out the activated grenade and showed in my other hand the removed pin, and a moment of shock played on her face.

The next few seconds were a blur. All I saw was scales and a vague feeling of extremely fast motion, and the heat from the blast scorched my neck. All I could hear was a loud ringing in my ears.

When the overload of sensory input subsided, it took me a moment to get my bearings and make sense of what had happened. It seemed after I’d shown her the grenade, when she recovered, she’d knocked the grenade from my hands and used her tail to propel us away from the door, to the other side of the room. The blast had made a huge dent in the door, and a black scar from gunpowder and shrapnel, but no cracks were evident. I’d failed.

“How could you, darling? Miia’s voice almost broke from emotion. She turned me to face her. “You tried to hurt me.” Oh, gosh. She sounded like a little kid.

“I’m sorry. I really don’t want you hurt, honest, but I can’t let any feelings for you take precedence over the ones I have for Sarah, or become more important than my mission, which is to continue reducing the population of those who eat humans for sport.”

“I wouldn’t eat any humans. You don’t count, of course. But why would you try to kill me?”

“I need to leave. Every day I spend here is one day that many people die, because I am the only one other than my wife who would and does kill monsters and protect humans,” I said.

“You don’t need to leave. You have me. I’m all you need darling, and you’re the only thing I need.’

I tried to protest, but she pressed her lips to mine, and prevented any further talk. I tried to back out of her embrace, but she immobilized me up to my chest with her scales.

Eventually, she broke her kiss, and said, “Now relax, darling. I forgive you, but all this jumping around has given me an appetite.” She tilted me onto my side. It was pointless, I had failed, all that work, and now it’d be best to just give her what she wanted. Maybe she’d give me a chance after this? I could sneak back down to my lab and get a few more explosives. The front door couldn’t take much more before giving. I decided to release all the pent-up stress in my body, and loosened my muscles until I was limp.

She uncoiled herself, and took her time, nibbling and teething on my toes before inserting them into her mouth. She swallowed slowly, savoring me, giving me plenty of time to think. The nagging in my mind came back. I allowed my mind to wander. What was my subconscious trying to tell me?

The vent!

Of course! Where would that other end of the “T” in the vent lead?

I wriggled my legs out of the surprised naga’s mouth and leapt to the kitchen. I dodged a grab at me made by Miia’s tail, and jumped to the vent opening. I had no hesitation as I entered the opening. When I reached the area the ventilation network split off from the original path, I took the vent less traveled (being in the profession I was in, yes, I was big into poetry, as well as other things, like music).

A big clanging sound alerted me to Miia’s entrance of the air ducts. I couldn’t dally, as this could be my only chance. The passageway got darker, and the walls became slimier. Suddenly, the path dropped off, and in my haste, I couldn’t stop my quick descent.

“Darling, come back! You don’t want to go that way!” Miia’s voice echoed down to me. The landing was abrupt, and the surface seemed to be squishy…

Ah, I saw now. The monster who’d put me in this situation must’ve wanted my stay to be as painful as possible before I left, requiring that I be digested at least once before I escaped.

I waited for the bag--which seemed to be a stomach--to begin digestion. The pain increased rapidly, and I was soon able to induce a faint and get it over with.

I reformed in front of my house. It seemed that I had all of my powers back, so I checked to make sure it was my real house. I found it to be the real thing, and I was thankful that whoever had been having their fun with me had decided they were done.

I ran into my home, ready to surprise Sarah with my visit. It would be nice to get back to normal, although the norm--at least in my book--was chaos.

5.

After being teleported around in a game controlled by a monster, I’d finally escaped the final obstacle set before me, Miia, and been teleported home.

I quietly opened the front door. If I was quiet enough, I could sneak up on Sarah, and maybe even give her a heart attack. I heard a slight rattle from the kitchen; she must be fixing something. Even though we didn’t need to eat, it was still nice to. Fixing the food yourself when you could just as easily wish it up at perfection is a novelty.

I slinked through the living room. I stuck enough of my head out and around the corner that my eyes could see into the kitchen. Sarah stood in front of the stove, busy in the creation of the meal. I soundlessly tip-toed right behind her and prepared to scare the willies out of her. I was about to touch her shoulder, when--

“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

I reformed next to Sarah, the real Sarah, not the hologram she’d fooled me with. “Hey!” I said. We looked down at the limp form of my recently-killed body. It seemed I’d died of a heart attack. A moment passed, then Sarah let out a small giggle, a welcome sound. Seeing Sarah happy, much less smiling, was a rare occurrence nowadays.

“The fox was outfoxed,” Sarah told me, with an expression of mock surprise. I stared into her blue eyes for a moment, then we embraced. There is nothing better than being with who you love.

I was reminded again, of how lucky and unlikely it was that we had met, and of the horrid events that led up to our marriage…

I’d been walking through the jungle, on the hunt of another monster who enjoyed human meals a bit too much, when the ground had dropped out from underneath me. I fell, and as I had, I shrunk. I had then landed on the palm of a monster.

“Oh. Welcome to my cave, little man. Here, join the rest of your kind.” She set me down in a pit dug over three of my height high, and I had gasped at the number of people she had down there. They numbered in the dozens! I’d tried out my powers, only to find they had been stripped away, even my invincibility power. I’d felt bare, naked, defenseless at how I’d been basically been lowered to the level of the average human.

Over the course of the next few days, I started noticing a certain girl of the group of captives. She had beautiful blonde hair and stunning blue eyes. There were quite a few pretty girls there, but something seemed to be… different, about her. She seemed resistant, defiant, and all while the monster who’d held us captive had subjected us to such monstrosities to demoralize us, including playing with us like we were dolls.

The monster had used many ways to instill fear in us, such as making an example of those who tried to escape or wouldn’t play her games by eating them in front of us. In many of her games, people were also eaten by her pets, and I remember one instance where she’d put a garter snake with heightened intelligence in a labyrinth and put some of us in there, to watch us run around from above. I’d almost been eaten, and had nearly ceased to exist.

About two weeks after I’d joined her group of playthings, the monster further tried to make us all sink even deeper into submission by bringing us happiness and then shredding it. She’d lifted me up, personally, and had turned herself away from the rest of the group to talk to me individually. “I see that Sarah’s taken a bit of a shine to you,” she’d said. It had been true, the girl--Sarah, I then knew--had been hanging around me a little bit closer than anyone else. I’d noticed her watching me, staring at me occasionally. “You like her, don’t you? I think it’d be nice to get you two together, don’t you think?”

I’d answered, “Yes, I have a bit of a crush on her,” and she’d smiled.

She had then picked up Sarah and placed her in the same palm that held me. “He said he likes you as well.” Both the monster and Sarah had smiled, the monster’s more of a sly grin to Sarah’s joyous face.

Then the thing that had surprised both of us: “Let’s get you two married.”

I hadn’t known her well then, so I’d felt somewhat worried about that prospect. I’d been married (by force, of course) to many a monster before, but how would a human react? I’d seen my doubts about the idea mirrored by the shock on Sarah’s face, and that had taken the edge off my worry. But I had been troubled by what the monster was trying to do with this.

That monster had wed the two of us together, and the rest of her toys had been there, as per her mandatory requirement. After the “I do's” that the monster had led us through, everyone had applauded. They had all been joyful to see some form of happiness in their lives for once.

The monster had then tortured us emotionally. She hadn’t allowed Sarah and I to meet after the wedding, and she could see the emotional toll it wreaked on us.

She hadn’t allowed us to work together in any of her games as well.

That is, until the day that she had put the two of us together in a game that would end up being the last game that monster ever played…

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16.10.16