Bucky's

Chapter 35: It's a Giant-Eat-Giant World

The pain ceased, and Ronny was finally able to breathe again. He tried to stand, but he was cloaked in something dark and heavy. The world he knew was gone, the office was gone, and he was shrouded in blackness. He struggled to stand, pressed down by soft heaviness, and groped blindly around him, but he could hardly move. The floor quaked beneath him, knocking him over, and suddenly he was lifted and tossed around like he was on a roller coaster. He tumbled down a terrifying distance, sliding against rough fabric, until he smacked against a hard surface back in the light, momentarily blinded.

His disorientation was magnified by an enormous, bellowing laugh that blew out his ears. "I don't believe it! Look how puny he is!" a deafening roar that sounded like Mr. Hardon, but so much louder and fuller, exploded in the sky above him. "Candy, come here darling, let me compare."

Ronny felt thundering vibrations above and around him, as if a building had come to life and started moving. Candy shrieked somewhere behind him, but like Mr. Hardon, her voice was magnified and resonated through the air. Something large, much larger than him, plunked on the wood beside him. Ronny, squinting as his eyes adjusted, looked up to behold a Giantess standing over him. She was huge, at least five times his size. A towering shadow moved into Ronny's peripheral, and he snapped his head around to find a gigantic naked man, twice the height of the woman, looming above him. Oddly enough, he had breadcrumbs and melted cheese stuck to his body.

"What the fuck!" Ronny shouted, an angry tone masking his fear. He had no clue where these huge people had come from or what was going on. Two colossal misshapen objects, liked beached whales, slammed down on either side of him, making him jump. A dark shape eclipsed the light. Ronny cast his eyes upward and experienced the shock of his life. Mr. Hardon was leaning over him, impossibly massive, like a planet—so vast, he couldn't see all of him.

Two humongous, ridged walls of skin closed around him and pulled him up hundreds of feet. Ronny ascertained with dread he was being pinched between the Giant's plump fingertips, his arms and legs pinned. Mr. Hardon's face, gruesome in its size, encompassed the entire room. His freakish grin petrified Ronny when he registered the awful truth: He was small. And not just small like a human, oh no. Much smaller—insignificant, infinitesimal, virtually microscopic. He was about the size of a single tooth in that mocking grin that seemed to stretch into infinity. The smile widened and the white blocks of bone came apart to show off the landscape of a moist pink tongue stretching into foreboding darkness.

Ronny didn't get a chance to protest, or reason with his former boss, or even scream. He was quickly placed inside his mouth, sinking into the squishy, slimy tongue as the prison of teeth slammed shut around him. The tongue rolled underneath him like waves in a tumultuous sea, frothing with saliva. Mr. Hardon hummed in his throat, a sound that rumbled like thunder all around Ronny. The inside of the mouth was bigger than his living room, and far less pleasant: warm, wet, and putrid.

Ronny whined pitiably with fright as his mind grasped what was happening. This wasn't how he wanted to die, to be reduced to nothing but a crumb in the belly of his old boss. He regretted ever eating any humans or putting them in his mouth. He thought about how Candy and Tanya must have felt when he engulfed them in his jaws against their will, particularly when swallowing Tanya, and he wanted to cry. If he was swallowed now, it would be the end. He'd never see Tanya again. He'd never be able to tell her how sorry he was, or how much he loved her.

By some miracle, the mouth around him opened, and two gigantic fingers grasped him and pulled him out. He fell and landed in Mr. Hardon's open palm, wet and shivering. Mr. Hardon sniggered at him, his lips curling. Ronny huddled into a pathetic lump, hugging himself with shaking arms.

"You won't believe this, Ronny! You taste like coffee! Dark and bitter. Personally, I prefer my coffee a little sweeter than that," Mr. Hardon boomed, making Ronny cringe. "Actually, the three of you would make a great pairing if you were more like hot chocolate. Leon would be the marshmallows and Candy would sweeten it all with caramel." He slurped his lips with his big meaty tongue, and Ronny recoiled at the sight.