Short Story Collection

Gulp

Darkness swallowed her. Even when she stretched out her fingers, spread them in a fan and moved them an inch away from her nose, still, she couldn't see them. It was like being blind without being blind, yet knowing that the dark milk around you is a complete absence of light that is only possible in an airtight bunker. Or a photographers dark room. Or a black hole. This was none of those, however. This, she realized, was the throat of a ghoul, and she was being swallowed alive, in once piece, to be digested by his acrid juices.

"Fuck, I didn't know ghouls eat fairies," she thought and flapped her iridescent wings in a mad desire to make him choke or cough, or sneeze her out, slime and all. How she'd escape him didn't matter, she'd think of something, she'd... Her feet touched slimy muscles of his stomach opening's and she felt it yawn in a hungry grin, a ring of doom, and welcoming door to her ultimate dissolution. She tried to imagine how her golden hair would look as slime, fully digested, and... "No, that's NOT what I need to think about, I need to think about how the hell I'm going to get out of this thing!" She tensed her fingers and punched them into the walls of his esophagus with all her nail-manicured might. The ghoul yelped and shuddered with a spasm of pain and fury. It sounded half-bark, half-cry. Then it swallowed. A gush of brine or beer or some other nasty tasting liquid trickled on top of her head leaving no air to breathe and pushing her further down. The circular door opened with a sickening whoosh. "No!!!" She yelled, but it was too late. Muscular walls surrounded her like an endless velvet sack. The bad part, she realized was, she's definitely NOT going out of this thing. The good part? There was more light, she could see, and there were others here, in various stages of digestion, perched along the walls in sad rows of grey faces and clasped knees, moving slightly to the rhythm of smooth muscular contortions. They didn't even raise their eyes to look at her, staring at their own misery as if it was displayed right by their feet in some magical acid stomach-juice writing.

"Hi." She waved her hand. No response.

"All right. I'll just sit here. Is that ok?" She edged to the body sitting closest, a grey unidentifiable mass of a man who could be only an elf in his past life that retired into boring slumber. It didn't look like he cared whether or not he lived or died in the next hour or so. She made sure her knees didn't touch his and proceeded at wringing out her wings from the secreted enzymes tracing stomach walls. "Right," she said, to reassure herself that she, in fact, was still able to think and talk. "That means I live. I'll come up with a plan. This is not the end of the world. I've seen worse." She thought back to the time when she was swallowed by a gigantic flying gargoyle who took off and flew with her for five thousand miles, above the cloud, above...

"Miss, are you going to exit or not?" The retired old man punched his elbow into her unceremoniously, holding out his briefcase as if a parting tool to get through the crowd.

"Me? Uh...no, sorry, no. I'm...not." She squeezed back into breathing bodies, trying to give him space.

"Next stop: Central park. Doors to my right." Female recorded announcer blared into her ear. "I hate subways." She said under her breath, watching train-car doors close and attempting to get back into her daydream, but it was gone.

"Fuck."