THE FAIRY'S GAME

"It was a wonderful game, my dear, but I win."

Jennifer had fallen asleep last night whispering that sentence to her
latest partner. She yawned and stretched luxuriously as she watched the sun
peek over the horizon, far, far away. Judging by the light, it had been nearly
eighteen hours since her last meal; her prey had long ago ceased fighting the
inevitable. Even now, she could still feel his body somewhere in her
intestines. She hauled herself into a sitting position and glanced down,
noting that her stomach once again lay neat and flat - earlier it had been so
swollen that anyone passerby would have thought that she was due for
childbirth. She smiled and lovingly placed a palm over her belly, feeling its
taut smoothness under her soft skin. Whistling a merry tune to herself,
Jennifer crawled to the hole in the hollow tree that served as her home and
thrust her head out to look. Satisfied that no one saw her, Jennifer stood up.

Or rather, she tried to stand up. The dead weight in her intestines
reminded her that she had recently eaten and must purge herself of the body
before she could move freely again. And though her stomach rested flatly on
her waist, her prey's body had moved into her intestines and they bulged with
the meal that they contained. She seized a nearby outcropping of bark and
hauled herself upright, all three inches of her body. Normally she couldn't
move at all after eating, but eighteen hours of steady work did wonders for
mobility. Another smile flitted onto her cherry-red lips as she recalled
memories of the past month. To think that she had completely tricked her prey
into actually rehearsing how she would devour him! And not just once, but
many, many times - so that when she did eat him, weeks of practice made the
feeding process flawless. Realization struck him far too late, as it always
did with her prey. He'd fought desperately against the digestion process, of
course - indeed, in the course of the game she had trained him to do so and
trained him well - and that only made consuming him all the more pleasurable.

Jennifer experimentally flitted her delicate, fairy wings and frowned.
They were still damp and she knelt with her back to the hole in the tree where
sunlight streamed through. She spread her wings wide and they glittered in
brilliant shades and hues of blue and violet; she really did possess a
beautiful pair of wings and her wingspan measured nearly five inches. Ten
minutes later they felt dry and crisp enough to help support her weight and she
lurched upright again. She frowned for a moment before she recalled the proper
equations for the Unnatural Strength spell. Vitality rushed through her veins
and she carried the weight in her intestines easily enough, but she nearly
stumbled with her first step. She found that by leaning backwards slightly and
opening her wings at a sharp angle behind her back, she could walk with a
reasonable sense of balance despite the ungainly lump in her belly.

She first returned to the center of the tree stump where a pool of water
lay perfectly still, filled wherever rain dripped down from a pin-sized hole in
the ceiling of the spacious place she called her home. Even by the dim light
of the morning, she concluded that she looked awful. Her fairy pride prevented
her from showing so much as a lock of hair in such a state and she spent a good
half hour making herself look presentable. When she'd finally finished
kneading honey into her hair and then combing it out, it fell in glossy blonde
cascades down to her waist and she practiced her most winsome smile in the
reflection of the pool. She then chose a pair of slacks and a silk blouse that
flattered her waistline and flaunted her slim, perfect figure while hiding the
more unsightly bulge of her intestines. So dressed, Jennifer prepared for the
day's activities.

But business first. Jennifer crept out of the dead tree trunk and cast the
Invisibility and Scent Negation spells over herself before cautiously working
her way down to the large pond that filled a sizable area of the park. Despite
her magic, she was none too confident of her ability to fend off a chance
marauding creature, especially when she could barely stand upright without
casting a spell. Her particular tree stood about a hundred or so feet away
from the pond; while a human could easily walk that distance, to Jennifer it
translated to an hour's worth of stealthy movement before she found her
favorite hideout on the very edge of the water. A cursory glance revealed that
nothing had disturbed it since she last visited a month ago. Jennifer hid here
for several more hours, watching the sun rise high into the sky and the full
moon vanish around the curve of the earth. Finally her intestines finished
their unpleasant task and her prey reappeared from the business end of the
digestive tract.

She cast the Scent Negation spell before inspecting the horribly digested
remnants of her prey. Post-mortem analysis, though morbid, still remained one
of her favorite activities. All of his skin had melted away and most of his
muscles along with it. The flesh around his head had been completely stripped
from the bone, leaving a ghastly, eyeless skull with a terrified expression
staring back mutely at her. The rest of his bones and a few hardy organs had
survived the grueling trip through her body, but they were scattered throughout
the stinking heap that had once been a man. None of his clothes except for the
iron buckle of a belt had survived, and even the belt buckle had been digested
beyond recognition. Jennifer measured her prey's vitality by the number of
bones that were still connected to each other when her all-consuming intestines
finished with him. Usually they looked like a fossilized collection that had
come off the loser in a fight with a blender, though once she had been
pleasantly surprised to find a man's skeletal structure almost completely
intact. That alone had nearly made her regret choosing him as her gaming
partner. Nearly.

The beautiful fairy smiled as she dumped the disgusting pile of filth into
the pond. In the end, whatever their grand dreams, their abilities, or their
ambitions, humans all looked the same after playing her game. However
different they might have started out - and she knew just how different humans
could be, since she often took the trouble of acquainting herself with each and
every one - the game easily reduced all of them to a common denominator. The
young fairy washed her hands in the pond water before she quietly slipped away.
It was high noon when Jennifer took her station on her favorite lookout post
atop a high beech tree.

After removing her spells, Jennifer gossiped pleasantly with a mother
robin, all the while noting the human activity below. The park in which she
lived was immense by her scale and provided the sole greenery available in an
otherwise metropolitan city. Humans were present at any time of day, but they
gathered in especially large droves between noon and nightfall. Jennifer's
brilliant blue jewel-like eyes could tell a sparrow from a wren even a mile
away and she had no trouble discerning the smallest details on the humans who
walked through the park. She listened to the robin more than she talked, for
her mind occupied itself with classifying the humans into categories of
potential players for her game.

Above all, the human had to be young, healthy, and in possession of all his
mental faculties, and it was no use looking for sick or decrepit prey. Like
most fairies, Jennifer found the idea of harming children to be abhorrent, so
they were automatically ruled out. Her hunting tactics also favored picking
off lone animals who wandered from the herd, so she kept careful tabs on anyone
who regularly visited the park alone. All of which, of course, narrowed the
field of prey quite a bit. Granted, there were some times when she simply
couldn't find a suitable human and had to improvise by randomly picking someone
who might not be missed. As she watched, a young man and his sweetheart
stopped in front of the pond. They exchanged a brief kiss before settling down
and enjoying the scenery together.

Jennifer stifled a laugh, wondering how many of the couples she usually saw
would still be around if they knew that the pond was really a graveyard, a
silent witness to the many lives that her ghastly games had claimed. Men could
be seduced, women befriended, either ensorcelled in an emergency. She kept
careful records of everything she had done since arriving at this park five
years ago and there certainly had occurred much worth remembering. Jennifer
stayed for another hour atop the beech tree before she settled on how to make
her next move. She bid the mother robin a polite farewell and descended into a
thicket of trees that stood close to the park's center. Normally, few people
wandered into this small forest - something about its gloom, she had heard.
But a young, athletic-looking man stood peeping into the grove of trees without
actually entering and Jennifer decided that she would choose him for this
month. He certainly looked the type that she enjoyed toying with most -
healthy, robust, confident, smart. She liked an intelligent opponent.

As a precaution, she cast the Invisibility spell over herself before using
the Illumination spell. The result was that her skin took an ethereal azure
glow - if you could see under the Invisibility mantle, that is. Normally no
one could, but Jennifer attuned the spell to make one special exception for
that man who stood peering into the darkness of the grove. The subsequent
Sphere of Silence spell also applied to everyone except him. Unsurprisingly,
when Jennifer slid from behind a tree some fifty feet distant, the human's head
jerked in her direction and he stared at her, fascinated. Jennifer watched him
carefully and decided to float a little closer - not too close to where he
could distinguish her features, but close enough to pique his interest.

The last distraction that she needed was for him to call his friends. The
Hypnotic Suggestion spell was one of the most complex and subtle of the ones
she had yet mastered, but luckily she had prepared one in advance and she used
it now to stir his interest. Simultaneously she suggested that he investigate
alone - after all, he could just be seeing things, and wouldn't everyone laugh
at him if the beautiful blue light turned out to be a mirage? Exactly as
Jennifer predicted, he stepped towards her and she waited for a few moments
before she turned and flitted deeper through the wood. She kept the distance
as steadily as she could while she pretended to do something else; he must not
suspect that she was leading him on. This game of cat-and-mouse continued for
nearly half an hour, during which he sometimes thought of giving up the chase
and she had to suggest that he shouldn't. Finally, Jennifer glided to rest on
a large bell flower and hid herself in its depths. She curled up and carefully
laid her wings against the flower petals, feigning sleep.

She heard his approach - humans always made a huge racket, whatever they
did - long before he tentatively reached for the flower. Here lay the
trickiest part of the entire scheme, the first contact between human and fairy.
She had to lie in a flower somewhat below his eye level, so that he could peer
into it without actually touching it. When he finally did touch it, which
could sometimes take hours, she had to pretend to be startled but not
intimidated; whatever happened, she couldn't fly away. It was the delicate
part of convincing him that he had frightened her but that she wasn't truly
scared - just startled a bit, that was all - that normally proved to be most
difficult. Still, fascination with the fairy had snared more than one human
before and Jennifer had this part down to nearly an art form. In the meantime,
Jennifer cast an Invisibility Spell upon him; she still had bad memories of her
first prospective victim, someone whom she had failed to snare because a random
passerby had seen him talking to thin air.

After what seemed like half a day spent feigning sleep (though it was
really just fifteen minutes), she felt a massive finger touch her body and she
stirred. Then she yawned and stretched, aware of how closely he scrutinized
her. She turned over in the flower petal and opened her eyes ... Jennifer
shrieked in mock fright. Then she exhaled sharply and called up to him,
projecting her voice so that he heard clearly, "Oh, I'm sorry. You startled me
a bit." He stared at her open-mouthed with disbelief as she climbed out of the
flower and balanced herself on the branch. Jennifer carefully folded her wings
behind her back and called, "What's your name?"

He said nothing and continued staring. Jennifer repeated her question and
he blinked before stammering out, "J-Jeremy. Jeremy Clay."

"Pleased to meet you, Jeremy." Jennifer curtsied elaborately upon the none
too steady tree branch, projecting her voice as she did so. She tilted her
head and looked up at him. "Haven't you ever seen a fairy before?"

"Well ... no," he murmured, still quite put off, and he stretched out a
hand. Jennifer hopped onto his palm and seated herself on it as he slowly and
carefully brought her closer to his face and studied her. He took in her long,
luscious golden hair and fascinating blue and violet wings, her beautiful
figure, her white, cream-smooth skin, her delicate features, her brilliant
cerulean eyes so deep that he risked losing himself in them. She, for her
part, assessed him also. Well-cut brown hair, brown eyes the color of
chocolate, a clean-shaven, strong jaw, brown eyebrows, defined features, broad
shoulders. His breath smelled of coffee, but she liked the firmness of his
hand, his taut muscles, and the way his veins stood out under his skin - all
signs of a clean, strong, healthy body. He wore shorts, a loose grass-green
shirt, a headband of sorts, and a strange-looking device that humans called a
watch upon his left wrist. She estimated that he couldn't be more than
twenty-two or twenty-three years old. Jennifer decided that she liked Jeremy
already.

"A-are you really a fairy?" he whispered at last.

She nodded. "Yes - the only one who lives here, I'm afraid. I'm an exile.
What about you?" And slowly Jennifer gathered the vital information that she
needed from Jeremy as the sun crawled across the sky. Jeremy seated himself
against a tree and Jennifer learned that he was a single man, twenty-four years
old, recently graduated from college and now in the city working a day job as a
clerk. He liked to run in the park, which explained both his attire and his
fitness. Normally he left work a few hours before dusk, but he explained that
today was what he called a Sunday and therefore he had the day to himself. She
listened carefully, but when he stood up an hour later she was quite satisfied
that he had few connections and therefore would not be missed. She told him to
put her down by the flower.

"If you want to see me again," Jennifer called, "come by tomorrow - alone,
mind you - and I will wait for you, Jeremy, by the dead oak tree near the pond.
You needn't worry, I will shield us from prying eyes with magic. But," she
added, "one word of this to anyone and it's over. You won't see so much as a
flicker of blue from me again." This was untrue, of course, but Jennifer
decided that Jeremy did not need to know that until he awoke trapped in her
stomach. They exchanged cordial farewells and Jennifer watched Jeremy stride
off through the gloomy forest, making enough noise for a troop of fairies. She
lifted her spells and smiled to herself as he receded in the distance. Her
stomach growled and rumbled ominously; smiling, she laid a hand on her belly
and whispered, "Soon. I've found you a new playmate."

------------------------

As usual, Jennifer awoke at dawn the next day. She paused only to greet
the sun before she pulled out a heavy tome of spells and set it down in the
light, first reinforcing the Invisibility spell around the interior of the dead
oak before she set to her studies. Like any good hunter, she invariably kept
the skills and tools of her trade well-honed and in top condition. She
reviewed the Invisibility, Silence, and Scent Negation spells among a score of
others, then turned to the back of the book where an extra appendix lay. Here
were contained the spells used by fairy Inquisitors, but amongst the hundreds
of equations Jennifer only bothered with a few. The Waterproof spell was the
most important to her, but she also paid particular attention to the
Self-Sufficiency spell - once she had blundered in casting it, which had ruined
her games for more than a week. Jennifer next turned to the survival section,
where the Regeneration, Indigestible, Undeformable, and Impenetrable spells
were located. These she reviewed before tackling the last and most difficult
section, mind spells. Most of the equations written here were sinfully complex
and could not be explicitly solved except given highly specific conditions;
usually the spell caster had to resort to rough approximations such as the
Hypnotic Suggestion spell, whose reliability were sketchy at best.

Jennifer carefully closed the book and replaced it upon her bookshelf when
she finished. In spite of its age, a steady stream of Preservation spells kept
it as spotless as when it had first been scribed, some six or seven centuries
ago. The spell book proper only occupied half of the tome; the other half
included appendices of other spells that had been derived in later times, as
well as notes by the previous owners of the book. Jennifer herself had once
worked out a complicated sequence of Regeneration spells, which she heard had
been incorporated into standard fairy medicinal curriculum. It mattered little
to her - she was a fairy outcast and used the spells only to amuse herself.

Exercise called next; Jennifer proceeded through her daily routine of a
hundred fifty sit-ups and a hundred stomach crunches. She then spent the next
few hours gossiping amongst the animals of the park. Not all animals were
friendly, of course, but she knew which ones to avoid. A few hours after noon,
she returned to her oak tree and began preparing herself for the inevitable
meeting. Jennifer washed her hair in an equal parts solution of honey, sulfur,
and black alum, a formula she had learned from one of her former prey. It was
a mess to prepare even with the best spell work but guaranteed a sheen of gold
in her hair that, had she still resided further west, would have made her the
envy of all fairy society. She bathed in another solution of milk and aloes
that made her skin soft as a dove's breast. After she finished and dried
herself with a rapid series of spells, she applied makeup to her face. She
donned her best dress, which had been made out of silver thread with gem fibers
interwoven throughout the fabric; it shone with all the colors of the rainbow
and sparkled whenever she made the least movement. Thus equipped, the huntress
knelt at the entrance of her home and awaited her quarry.

Huntress. Quarry. Jennifer smiled at the irony of it: she sometimes
played cat-and-mouse games with a human, but she invariably had the role of the
mouse. Naturally, the human lulled him or herself into a false sense of
security when really Jennifer was not the prey but the predator. After all,
how could this waifish-looking fairy with such a delicate body be the huntress?
Jennifer chuckled as she thought back to the past; some of these humans she had
even warned explicitly. In the end, they all became a part of her. She
lovingly stroked her breast, idly wondering how many humans had been sacrificed
to provide her with her seductive bosom.

But Jennifer was no conceited fairy concerned only with her appearance;
otherwise she would long ago have found herself in a zoo, to be admired by all
men and to arouse jealousy in all women. Instead, her unearthly beauty served
only as a means to her end. It was the thrill of the hunt and the excitement
of playing the game that she truly enjoyed, the tension of matching her wits
against a human's. True, they played by her rules, but Jennifer had no
illusions about her safety. Even a ten year old girl could easily crush her
fragile fairy body with one firm squeeze before Jennifer could prepare a
suitable spell. Had any of her prospective victims known about her true
intentions, she probably would have died long ago.

But just then Jennifer caught sight of Jeremy and put the thoughts from her
mind. Whereas she had prepared her looks with the meticulous care of a
surgeon, he dressed quite casually in running pants and a T-shirt. He stopped
practically right under her and looked around anxiously; when Jennifer was
certain that no one else was looking, she cast Invisibility and Silence spells
over him before lifting her own. He saw her in a flash; she waved happily and
he reached out with his right hand. He grasped her slender body quite gently
with his thumb and index finger, tilting his other three fingers so that she
could sit on them. Jennifer giggled and snuggled against the warm flesh;
sometimes the men handled her so roughly that she would have been crushed, but
she always took the precaution of casting the Undeformable spell first. Not
Jeremy, though; he knew his strength and she found herself ever more pleased
with him.

First Jennifer assured Jeremy that her spells made them undetectable, then
she asked him to put her back into the tree. This he did, handling her as
carefully as if she were made of spider web. She then cast the fairly
complicated Transmutate spell upon him - and just like that, he was standing
beside her, only half a head taller than she, blinking and bewildered by the
abrupt transformation. Jennifer giggled and seized his hand, leading him into
the hole of the tree. "Welcome to my home, Jeremy! Please, make yourself
comfortable. Would you like tea, or do you drink only water?"

"Ah, just water is fine." He glanced around the insides of the tree as she
poured water into a hollowed acorn shell. From the outside, the trunk of the
tree measured a little more than two feet in diameter, but from the inside it
looked immense. The hollow out trunk towered above him, ending in a sloped
wooden dome through which only a pinprick of light showed at the very apex of
the wood. Photoluminescent lichen providing a steady source of soft, white
light throughout the interior of the cozy establishment even in the dead of
night. And cozy indeed it was: shelves and beds were carved out of the sides
of the walls, the latter lined with swan down and heather. A type of moss
served as a soft, thick carpet. The hollowed out center of the room had been
dug into a shallow well where rainwater collected, functioning as a mirror and
a bath. A writing desk lay across the room and a few leaves with white
undersides had been pinned to the interior of the bark with discarded porcupine
quills; curious, Jeremy stood up and walked to largest of the posts. "What do
these words say?" he asked.

Jennifer, holding an acorn shell filled with water in both hands, nearly
dropped the cup in shock before she remembered that he could not understand the
words. Come to think of it, it wasn't the first time she'd had the question.
She handed the acorn to him. "These are the rules of a game," she explained.
"It's something that I play with the pigeons around the city. I won't bore you
with the details." That it was a posting of game rules was true, but that it
was a game she played with pigeons an outright lie. Originally she had posted
the guidelines with men in mind, though a few women had also played the fairy's
game. Jeremy nodded in understanding and Jennifer smiled up at him as he
drank.

Had he been able to understand the fairy runes, this is what they would
have told him:

RULES OF THE GAME

1. I must not tell him about the game.

2. If I lose the game, I may not see him again. If I win, I may do as I
wish with him.

3. I may influence him but not interfere explicitly with his free will.

4. If at any time he wishes to leave me, I may not prevent him.

5. I may not force him to enter my mouth, stomach, or any part of my body
against his will.

6. I may not hold him within my mouth, stomach, or any part of my body
against his will.

7. I must give him fair and adequate hints and warnings of my intentions.

8. I win only if he is completely within my stomach when the light of the
full moon shines upon me.

9. Violation of any of these rules is automatic forfeiture.

10. When the full moon sets, one game ends. If I have not won by then, he
wins by default.

11. When the full moon sets, another game begins with a different man.

Even upon the first reading, anyone could tell that the rules were heavily
biased against the fairy. A discerning reader might also have judged the true
purpose of the game, although it was not explicitly stated - the victim had to
offer his or her body as a meal to the fairy. In a normal situation, this
would have been ridiculous. It was a game of Jennifer's own devising and even
she admitted that she had built the rules to provide herself with a challenge -
later adding rules three, four, and seven after she decided that the first
version provided a few loopholes for her. Earlier there had been another rule
two - "He must not tell anyone about me. If he does, I win" - but she had
erased it on the grounds that it defeated the prospect of winning the game the
proper way. She considered eliminating the word "not" from rule one but
decided that she wasn't quite ready for that level of difficulty yet. Jennifer
took pride in the fact that she had not lost a single game in five years.

They chattered amiably for two or three hours before she served dinner to
him. It was a simple affair, really - honeyed bread and a raspberry tart, but
as he ate Jeremy declared, "I've never, ever tasted any food this good. Aren't
you going to join me, Jennifer?"

She shook her head, carefully phrasing her words so as to both speak no
mistruth as well as provide Jeremy with the first of her hints. "No. I only
eat once a month, on the night of the full moon. It's my custom. Otherwise I
keep myself alive with spells."

"More's the pity, this is excellent," Jeremy said between gulps. "Do all
fairies do this?"

Jennifer folded her legs under her body, giving every impression of a
beautiful and elegant lady. The last thing she wanted was for him to feel
intimidated, however, and she spoke to him like an old friend. Cultivating
trust was an important step in winning the game. "No. Most fairies eat as
humans do, Jeremy: twice or three times a day. I'm peculiar in this regard.
Most fairies do not eat any meats unless all other food sources have been
exhausted. And we try not to eat too much. Our wings can't handle the extra
weight."

"Can you fly?" he asked.

She laughed and shook her head ruefully. "No, I'm afraid not. Fairy wings
aren't built for flight, Jeremy. But we do glide very well."

The last of the honeyed shortbread disappeared from his plate. They talked
more and Jennifer carefully structured her conversation to create an illusion
of intimacy between herself and Jeremy. She told the story of how she had once
tried to sleep in a carnivorous plant, not realizing what it was until the last
moment. She laughed as he told her of a time when he had fallen asleep into a
plate of spaghetti. She learned more about him and in turn told him more about
herself and fairies in general. She knew much of humans from her previous
encounters, but still listened attentively as he discussed the world at large.
Much of it fascinated her, especially how humans had adapted using engineering
to accomplish what they lacked in magic. Knowing what she did of magic,
Jennifer found she agreed with Jeremy's statement that engineering was much
more reliable than magic.

They talked until the moon rose, after which she bid him a fond farewell.
She again reiterated that he must not speak a word of her to anyone, lest the
knowledge of her existence (and fairies in general) became public. She undid
the Transmutation spell before vanishing back into her home with a slightly
seductive flair. Jennifer smiled to herself as she extricated herself from the
tight dress and donned a silk nightgown. The day's meeting had been
wonderfully spent. It was not quite midnight and she felt very weary, but
Jennifer made herself perform her regular exercise of a hundred fifty sit-ups
and a hundred crunches before she bathed. Bathing, in her opinion, constituted
the only proper way to finish a day - one washed one's body clean ere sleep
overtook reality. When she finished, she dried herself with a few Waterproof
spells before sinking into bed, tired but satisfied.

------------------------

Jennifer's next significant move towards winning the game occurred five
days later when she and Jeremy discussed history. They sat at the edge of the
pond where Jennifer washed away the results of her games, visible and audible
only to each other. Jeremy sat with his back against an elm tree, his eyes on
the school of geese that floated on the pool's surface; Jennifer seated herself
on his shoulder. Earlier she had explained that she would like to take on
human size, but the Transmutate spell did not work both ways. It could only
shrink a man - "It can make you so small that I could eat you," she had said -
or restore him to normal size, but could not enlarge him. He had sighed in
disappointment while she feigned sympathy. She now listened attentively as he
discoursed about the great wars of human history - Canaan, Gaugamela, Carthage,
Mecca, Vienna, Agincourt, Tokyo, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Verdun, Minsk, Normandy.
He traced the evolution of weaponry and tactics, the development of armies and
nations, but when he had finished Jennifer asked, "Do you know anything about
the fairy wars?"

"Fairy wars?" he asked, taken aback. "I can't say that I do. What were
those about?"

Jennifer threw her hands up in a gesture of despair. "Nobody remembers what
they were about except the fairy historians. Humans fought against fairies and
against each other, a long time ago close to where we are right now. The
humans don't remember them anymore - none of the humans and few of the fairies
survived that war." It was a story that Jennifer had invented and blatantly
untrue, but Jeremy obviously did not know that. She was well practiced and
quite skilled in the deception necessary to introduce the object of the game.
"But in fairy history, that war is known as the Unspeakable War. Both sides
committed great atrocities that the fairies would rather forget - fairy
Inquisitors, in particular, mastered the science of torture for extracting
information." She shuddered and he laid a comforting hand across her body which
she snuggled into. "The war lasted many years; the fairy magic arts, which were
already highly developed, grew in leaps and bounds. Humans captured fairies
and fed them to their pets. The fairies did the same - they captured humans
and left them at the mercy of the Inquisitors."

"How so?" Jeremy asked, interest plain in his voice.

Jennifer spun her story out. "The fairies used shrinking and binding spells
to capture humans. But it was under the Inquisitors that humanity suffered the
most. The Inquisitors would - do you know what they did, Jeremy? We still
have detailed records left by the historians of that time. The Inquisitors
would shrink a man down and cast the Self-Sufficiency and Indigestible spells,
both of which were developed at that time, upon their victim. Then the
Inquisitor swallowed the man! And the Inquisitors had their own spells cast on
themselves to prevent the human from escaping. Can you imagine, burning a man
alive in your belly and yet casting spells on him so that he would suffer
without dying? The mere threat of it usually got the Inquisitors the
information they wanted, and they developed the Expose spell at that time, too,
so they knew when a person was lying. Even the hardest of men broke after a
few hours spent within a fairy Inquisitor.

"But that wasn't all. All prisoners given over to the Inquisitors were
dealt with the same way after interrogation finished - all of them swallowed
alive. And if just a few hours of that treatment could destroy a man's will -
did you know, the fairies kept their prisoners for years? Even after the plot
was exposed, all the humans rescued had long gone insane from the torture. The
Order of the Question was disbanded and the Inquisitors banished, but it didn't
stop there - they continued the war on their own, stopping only when the last
remnants of humanity were wiped out, and a second fairy war began that time
which pitted the greater fairy society against the Inquisitors, ending only
when all the renegades had been accounted for and executed. Those were evil
days, long long ago."

Jeremy shivered in spite of himself. "Sounds horrible, to be tortured like
that."

Jennifer nodded. "It is, Jeremy. I've spent my fair share of time either
being eaten by an animal or escaping from one's stomach." That, at least, was
no lie, even if her story about the fairy wars had been.

"You have?" a startled Jeremy asked. "But I thought you were a powerful
magician."

She pressed herself deeper into his hand. "Magic isn't infallible. It was
developed in the first place as a way to protect fairies from our predators,
nearly all of which are much larger and stronger than we. Even so, there have
been many times when I've awoke to find myself inside of a creature's mouth or
worse yet its stomach. All fairies learn escape and wilderness survival as
part of general education, but the sciences are still inexact at best." She
turned what she hoped was her most winsome smile up at him. "Would you like to
experience it for yourself?"

"No thanks, I'll read about it in a book," he answered. They did not
mention the subject again that day or for the next few days to come, but she
took the opportunity to implant the suggestion in his mind where, with a little
nurturing, she was certain that great results would be produced.

------------------------

Jeremy first entered Jennifer's stomach when he lost a game of chess to
her. He taught her how to play, or at least he thought he did; she had
actually learned human chess a long time ago before coming to the park. She
threw her first few games to him with good grace, but today, with fifteen days
until the night of the full moon, she had decided to take the initiative.
Getting the quarry into her stomach for the first time always proved to be the
trickiest part. Once that had been accomplished, her victory was almost
inevitable. This was one of her favorite aspects of the game, coaxing her
partner into her body for the very first visit. The first time usually proved
the most exciting of them all except for the final entry - the first time a man
or a woman entered her body, she had no previous idea of how her gaming partner
would react. Jennifer's terms with Jeremy were simple: if she won, she would
swallow him and let him know how it felt to be within a creature's stomach. If
he won, she would give him a kiss - she'd given him another warning when she
referred to her lips as the gates to eternity. They played in her home using a
makeshift board and pebbles with pictures roughly scratched upon them.

She won the game quite narrowly, coming down to an endgame which pitted her
king and a rook against his king and a trio of pawns. He conceded, but his
face clearly betrayed his nervousness and she tried to calm him. At her
insistence, he washed himself thoroughly. "It isn't all that scary, Jeremy.
I've done it myself several times - if I'm caught in a blizzard and need a
shelter, I'll cast all the spells necessary to protect myself and then feed
myself to a bear or a fox. It's all excellent way of outlasting a storm.
Don't worry, you'll be well-protected. Some fairies like it so much that they
actively seek out creatures who will swallow them."

He gulped mutely and she giggled as she shrank him down until he fit
comfortably in her hand, no taller than her smallest finger. "Listen carefully,
Jeremy. You won't need to do anything, but the moment you want to leave, talk
to me and I'll let you out. I won't cast Sphere of Silence the way the
Inquisitors used to, so we'll be able to talk to each other. I'll cast the
Indigestible spell on you, for obvious reasons, and the Self-Sufficiency spell,
which eliminates your body's need for air, water, or food. The Waterproof
spell will keep all of my stomach's contents off your body and the Tranquility
spell will keep my stomach relaxed so that it doesn't crush you. Oh yes, and
the Scent Negation spell - it really does stink down inside a fairy's body.
I'll cast the Impenetrable and Undeformable spells on myself so that I don't
accidentally burst. I'll also cast the Placeholder spell, which will confine
you to my stomach. We wouldn't want to accidentally lose you into my
intestines or crawling up my throat. You'll be nice and comfortable. Trust
me." She smiled her most reassuring smile at him. Jeremy muttered something
inaudible and she bent closer to listen, her hair falling all around him like a
golden curtain. "Hmm? What did you say?"

"I said, you sound like you're enjoying this too much."

"Believe me, you're the one who's going to have all the fun," she lied.
"Remember, don't panic. It's quite pleasurable; some fairies are hopelessly
addicted to it." He might have refused to go in at all, promise or no, had he
known what was waiting for him: an Epicurean spell lay in the uncharted depths
of her belly, a spell designed to deaden pain while magnifying pleasure a
hundred times. Also, a Cultivate spell had been strategically positioned within
her stomach, a complex and subtle magic used to accentuate the pleasures of an
experience and render them addictive. Between the two of them, she expected
him to within minutes become as ensnared as a man who has used drugs his entire
life, only that this was a deeper, more primal urge that she created. She
smiled again; of all her inventions, Jennifer felt that the game really was her
best. It was certainly the one she enjoyed the most. She had calculated that
she could persuade him into her stomach today anyways and had dressed to match.
She wore a plainly colored two-piece bathing suit with an ankle-length skirt
and a vest over her chest. This left her stomach completely unclothed, which
would be necessary given how much she expected it to stretch.

"Fine. Let's get this over with." He shut his eyes tightly.

She laughed softly and not unkindly as she raised him to her mouth. Her
cherry-bright lips opened wide, her breath smelling faintly of honey and
scented almonds, before she gently tilted him into her mouth. She took care
not to hit his body against her teeth. She closed her jaws and opened her
throat, feeling his warm, smooth body with her tongue, enjoying his strong
masculine taste. (She'd gagged the first time she tried to swallow an unwashed
man, which had proved quite embarrassing for both of them.) Unbeknownst to him,
she had also prepared the Frictionless spell and he slipped down her long
throat without a sound. He landed into her stomach with a plop and a muffled
yelp. Before he had quite recovered, however, she laid herself down on the
ground with her back resting on the floor. Then she loosened the Transmutate
spell, just a little. From her stomach she heard a yelp of surprise as he
began to grow. Her stomach stretched and bulged as he expanded in size, but it
did not burst - indeed, even if he had been his normal human size, the
combination of the Undeformable and Impenetrable spells would have held him
securely. However, she had no interest in letting him grow large enough to
tear her house apart. Her stomach ballooned outward as though she had carried
a child for two years instead of a mere nine months, but then it stopped and
she patted it fondly. Just the right size - enough to keep her pinned down but
not enough to crush her, enough to put up spirited resistance but not enough to
cause her any discomfort. "How are you feeling, dear Jeremy?"

"It's tight in here!" a muffled voice cried. "I'm squashed like a coin
going through the mint!"

She chuckled; she could feel his movements through her body and even
through the hands which she had placed atop her belly. He hadn't panicked, but
she sensed that he held onto his calm only by the thinnest of threads. Before
he could demand to be let out, she softly crooned a soothing song in the fairy
language. The uncomfortable movement in her body died somewhat and she spoke
to her distended belly. "It'll become better, Jeremy. The stomach adjusts to
its contents and it may feel tight at the moment but you'd be surprised at how
quickly it becomes comfortable. Relax and breathe, Jeremy. That's right,
relax. The stomach walls are smooth and soft, perfect cushions for your body.
Listen to the sounds of my body. Can you hear my heart, Jeremy, as it beats?
Use it to calm yourself; everything is tranquil inside and as long as my spells
are active you are within the safest, most secure fortress in the world.
Nothing can harm you while you're within me. Stay calm." She hummed a few more
stanzas of the song as her stomach laboriously shifted to accommodate its new
contents. He had stopped fighting so hard and in another few minutes he
stopped struggling at all. She rocked back and forth from left to right as
well as she could. The weight of his body inside of her hung as though she'd
swallowed a boulder, but Jennifer closed her eyes in contentment. Half the fun
of the game lay in the physical pleasure of a living human inside of your body;
the other half came from how they practically begged to jump down your throat
by the end. Using Hypnotic Suggestion and Cultivate, Jennifer began working
the idea into Jeremy's subconscious mind that it really was comfortable within
her stomach - perhaps even pleasurable, once he became adjusted to it. She
gently rubbed her massive belly with her hands and felt more tension draining
out of his body. "It's comfortable inside, isn't it? You can get used to this
feeling, can't you?"

Much to her disappointment, he asked to be let out five minutes later and
she had to hold back a sigh of regret. Nearly all of the other gamers stayed
longer, sometimes much longer, on their first sojourn into her pitch-black
depths. It was due to the Waterproof and Indigestible spells, of course,
without which they'd be screaming in agony. But the trio of spells that
enabled a human to survive down there made the experience far more comfortable.
Jennifer smiled even as Jeremy shrank within her belly and it deflated down to
the flatness which formed part of her perfect body. She hadn't shown him the
true pleasure of being held down, not yet - he'd only caught a glimpse of it as
her stomach adjusted to his body and he would not have denied that the
experience had been a pleasant one. When he had shrunk to the size that could
comfortably slip through her throat, she forced him through and into her mouth
where she very gently lowered him into her soft right hand. Briefly she
considered letting him exit her body through the other passage - but no, that
came only if she won the game. Aloud, she asked, "How was it?"

"Different, that's for sure ... but Jennifer, let's not do that again." He
wasn't even wet. Jennifer giggled as she removed her spells from him and
restored him to roughly her height.

"If you wish, Jeremy." They talked more and he did not broach the subject
again for the remainder of the day, but she knew that she had him hooked. She
knew it by the way he talked and looked at her, by the way his eyes strayed to
her beautiful waist. By the time he said goodbye, well after dusk, Jennifer
knew that she was winning the game.

------------------------

Two days passed before the combination of his memory, his curiosity, and
the subtle influence of Cultivate and Hypnotic Suggestion caused him to say yes
when she asked if he wished to relive the experience. This time he remained
within her for an entire hour, experimentally moving in her tight stomach and
listening as she hummed songs to him. She rubbed her belly gently and softly;
Jeremy felt more comfortable than he had ever felt in his entire life lying
within Jennifer's stomach. To amuse him, she drank water until her stomach had
filled up with liquid. That was a memorable experience, but it paled in
comparison to the next day when she brought her mighty stomach muscles to bear
for the first time. Her daily routine of exercise had developed unnaturally
powerful abdominal muscles and now she used them as Jeremy lay curled within
her body. When she first squeezed, ecstasy pulsed through both of their bodies
and he felt as though he would scream with pleasure. She continued pressing
her muscles, sometimes gently, sometimes violently, always unexpectedly until
after an hour she lay exhausted upon the mossy floor of her home. Then she
cast the Invigorate spell upon herself and continued. That day and the next
few days Jeremy stayed within her stomach for hours at a time until the moon
rose. She discarded her evening exercises and collapsed into bed after
bathing, sometimes asleep the moment her head touched the pillows. In the
mornings when he wasn't around, she noted that she had so far played strictly
by the rules. She looked forward to the conclusion of the game.

Jennifer began "training" Jeremy for the end of the game one week before
the full moon. In the period leading up to that time, he had begun to call her
"buttercup;" she simply referred to him as "love." As she promised, he had
become entirely addicted to the physical pleasure of being in her stomach, but
she intended to take it one step further still. That afternoon, following the
spells and rituals that had become quite familiar to both of them, he snuggled
into her stomach and pushed experimentally on the walls of his confining
prison. She smiled as she laid her hands over her massive belly. It was
really quite pathetic how her prey usually begged to be eaten on the night that
the game ended. When she felt that he had settled down quite comfortably, she
relaxed the Tranquility spell. Not too much, just a little. The effects were
not immediately obvious, of course, but after a few minutes her stomach
squeezed - not the gentle caresses of her voluntary muscles, but the
suffocating grip of a movement designed to crush him. He yelped and a muffled
voice sounded through her flesh. "What are you doing, buttercup?"

"It's a game I thought might amuse you, love," she whispered. "Have you
ever given a thought to the fact that you are within a stomach? Not a womb,
love, where absolutely nothing can injure you. But in a stomach, whose purpose
is to ... process ... the food. And in this case, love, you are the food!"

"This isn't funny," he cried as he squirmed violently. She choked back a
cry of pleasure at his futile struggle. Truth be told, once a man was down in
her stomach he could never escape again except at her whim. But she enjoyed
playing with her quarry and lulling them into a false sense of confidence: it
made the endgame all the more enjoyable, hence her training. "Make it stop!"

"Ohh, that tickles. This game is called 'Two Ways Out,'" she whispered
conspiratorially. "You are securely held in my stomach, love, and your body is
being prepared for the intestines. If you fall into them, you will never see
moonlight again. But there is another way out, though it is not easy. You may
also leave the way you came, and that is the essence of the game - you must
fight your way up to the throat and escape the terrors of digestion. It is not
easy, but try your best. No harm will come to you, love - I'll keep the
Waterproof spell at full power."

Just then her stomach constricted with much ferocity and she felt him
inexorably sliding further down. He yelped again, but she soothed him and gave
him extra advice. To her gratification and pleasure, he fought spiritedly and
she playfully began to wrestle with him. "Less energy, more technique, love.
If you keep squirming like that, you'll just tire yourself out. Concentrate on
holding your ground. My stomach is far stronger than you, love, but you can
win if you can stand firm. Then work your way up until you find the next
stable area, rest, and continue. Good luck, love." Part of it was a lie, of
course - as hopelessly outmatched in strength as they were, none of her prey
had the slightest chance of escaping on their own - but the false hope that she
dangled in front of them did create an exciting game as they struggled against
her powerful stomach muscles. His squirming, now less forceful but more
determined, sent waves of unholy pleasure rippling outward from her stomach and
she had to restrain herself from making any noise.

But as with most prey playing the game for the first time, he could not
even hold his own position against the inexorable power of her stomach. From
the outside, Jennifer was a waif of a fairy, with such a delicate appearance
that it seemed a strong gust of wind could break her; from the inside, she was
a force of nature. No one ever seemed to realize this fact before the night of
the full moon, however. He gradually slipped lower and lower in spite of his
best efforts and at the end of twenty minutes he lay physically exhausted at
the bottom of her stomach, going no further solely due to the Placeholder
spell. She wiggled her stomach with pleasure; few of her gaming partners
lasted this long. Even the army sergeant who easily benched three hundred
pounds of iron had been incapable of resistance after a mere half hour in her
dark and watery depths.

She knew that he enjoyed the struggle almost as much as she did, for his
complaints had stopped after a short while. She reinforced the Cultivate spell
before casting the Invigorate spell upon him. When he again began to squirm in
her stomach, she also squirmed, but with sensory pleasure. Occasionally she
helped him through a particularly difficult stretch of the stomach with a
tightening of her abdominal muscles, but she made him work for every centimeter
of progress. When he had at last forced his way back to his starting position,
she recast the Cultivate and Invigorate spells. Even from her distant vantage
point, she could feel that he was beginning to enjoy their playful wrestling
every bit as much as she did. "Who's the cat and who's the poor little mouse
this time, love?" she murmured seductively. "Do you like it down there?"

"Very much, buttercup," he answered as he stretched. Her stomach expanded
slightly before resuming its duties and he once again began to slowly,
agonizingly and sensationally slowly, work his way through her belly. She
smiled wickedly as she added power to the Cultivate spell and from deep inside
of her he moaned with pleasure. Ah, the ironies of the game; she could even
convince her prey that digestion was a euphoric process for the digested, when
in reality nothing could be further from the truth. But "love" needn't know
that until the night of the full moon. She played with him for another half
hour until he asked her to stop. This she did, restoring the Tranquility spell
to its full power. Her stomach relaxed and so did he; they made conversation
to each other for a few more hours, his body a massive weight in hers. When he
finally emerged from her mouth, his first remark was that he had more fun that
night than he had in many years. "You'd be rich in no time if you charged for
the experience, buttercup," he told her. She only smiled secretively and
leaned her head against his shoulder.

The next few nights she continued to train him in the sport of stomach
wrestling. She knew that the addiction was setting in when he began to take
his clothes off before entering her body; the sensation of muscle on skin
usually proved a highly intoxicating one, and he wished to expose as much of
his skin as possible. Naturally she played her part as the fairy who was all
too pleased to oblige. His strength and stamina increased and they both
enjoyed the activities more with each passing day, until by the end of the week
she and he held a marathon match of over eight hours. He nearly reached her
esophagus several times and each time she skillfully tempted him before a
violent surge of her muscles sent him tumbling back into the depths of her
belly. Once he slept the night away in her stomach, in the softest, most
comfortable, and most accommodating bed he had ever laid his body; when he
finally awoke, it was after a better sleep than he had in years and he wondered
if he had ever felt so relaxed or refreshed in his life. He might have thought
the experience far less enjoyable if he could have seen her expression; she
smiled as she contemplated the night of the full moon, when his training would
end and the real competition begin.

With his life as the grand prize and no second place awards.

------------------------

As usual, Jennifer rose at dawn and greeted the sun. Today was the big
day, the day when the full moon rose at twilight and one game ended. After the
usual morning exercises, Jennifer took extra care with her appearance, washing
herself twice and spending nearly two hours perfecting the look of her hair and
skin. She applied her makeup with the greatest care and once again selected
her most dazzling dress, the one woven of silver and gems. It was a gift
worthy of a king's ransom and she spent another half hour fitting it to her
tastes. She tied it with a skein of golden thread, emphasizing her slender
waist and seductive figure. Finally she finished by applying a special perfume
of flowers to her skin; it was laced with powerful pheromones that would make
her wishes nearly irresistible to any man. Then she emptied out the rain water
at the center of her home; the caterpillars and pigeons both agreed earlier
that it would rain today and she saw no evidence to the contrary. Besides
which, inclement weather had never stopped any of her gaming partners from
appearing for the endgame.

She reviewed her spells with painstaking precision. By the time she was
completely satisfied with her preparations, the sun had passed noon and she
fluttered off to make the rounds, collecting news from the various creatures in
the park. From a scrap of newspaper that a robin had used to build her nest,
the fairy read a story on whether the park she inhabited was haunted or not.
The story noted that someone vanished in the park every month for the past five
years, usually a young man or woman, and always on the night of the full moon.
Some of the theories that the writer advanced included alien abduction, occult
kidnappings, gang grudges, and even more bizarre speculation. Whoever had
penned the column urged his readership to avoid the park, or else to travel
only in lit areas with large groups. Jennifer wondered what the writer would
have said had he known that all the bodies could be found at the bottom of the
park pond. She gossiped some more before leaving for the next stop. In this
idyllic way she spent the rainy afternoon conversing with her friends until she
spied Jeremy walking into the park in the downpour. He looked a little too
pleased with himself and she smiled as she imagined how the night would unfold.
She hastened back to her home in order to reapply her pheromone-laced perfume.
Her stomach rumbled impatiently and she giggled as she wrapped her arms around
her beautiful belly, whispering sweet promises to the organ that had become a
graveyard for over half a hundred humans. "Soon, my precious stomach. I
cherish you above all other parts of my body and I will not neglect you. Soon,
I will unbind you from my magic and then you may play with my love for one last
time. Be patient until then."

It was a few hours before dusk when she shrank him and invited him into her
home again. They played a most agreeable game of chess (Jennifer lost) and
made idle conversation until dinner, when she served him apple pie and nutmeg
tea. When he asked if she would join him, she answered, "Love, I intend to
have you for dinner tonight." He took that to mean that she dodged the question
and she felt it unnecessary to correct the perception. When he had finished,
they strolled to the edge of the oak trunk and watched the rain until it died
down. The clouds broke and the landscape lay painted with wonderful hues of
gold and scarlet as the sun sank into the horizon. He asked her, shyly at
first, if she would care to resume their wrestling game. She consented with
good grace.

After she cast the necessary spells and he stripped off all his clothes,
she opened her rose-red lips and gently tilted him into it. He slid down her
throat without a word and she sighed in contentment. Then, as he landed in her
stomach, she rose from her position and quietly walked to the pool of water.
The day's rain had nearly filled it to the brim; the fairy undressed herself
and slid into the pool, her wings and skin glistening by the soft light of the
lichen. She immersed her body in the water, carefully laying herself nearly
flat on its gently curved wall, before releasing the Transmutate spell. Again
he expanded to fill her entire stomach. Jennifer's eyes traced the fiery arc
of the sun vanishing in the distance as the heavy weight of his body filled her
own. Her stomach bulged and broke through the surface of the rain water; she
could not move without a spell to aid her. He began wiggling but she softly
crooned, "Wait, love. Let's do something different tonight. I've never loosed
the Tranquility spell more than a little ... but tonight, if you want, I'd like
to release it entirely. Would that please you?"

"Very much, buttercup," he answered in a muffled voice from within the
darkness of her stomach.

"Be careful, love," she teased. "You'll find that you've never quite
struggled against anything as strong as my unrestrained belly. Are you sure
you want to play this game?"

"Definitely. Bring it on, buttercup!"

She smiled as she savored his competitive air; her less courageous partners
sometimes feared the unknown and would lay still in her stomach for hours until
the full moon sealed their fates. This should turn out to be a most
interesting night indeed. She undid the Tranquility spell and set it aside -
after tonight, she shouldn't need to use it again for some time - and her
stomach instantly responded, squeezing with a hitherto unknown ferocity. He
gasped and struggled; she leaned in slightly to her massive belly and softly
crooned, "Any time you want to stop, love, just say so." But after a second or
two it became very obvious that he did not wish to stop and there he and she
wrestled as they had never wrestled before. Even after an Invigorate spell,
however, it became obvious that his trapped body was no match for her almighty
stomach muscles. They wrapped lusciously around his body, squeezing him none
too gently but without injuring him. She sighed in pleasure as the sun
vanished in the distance. Soon dusk would darken to night and then the real
fun would begin.

Jeremy continued to squirm and struggle as her powerful muscles inexorably
moved him to her intestines. In spite of all her training, he could make no
headway against his imminent doom and she found herself casting the Invigorate
spell more often than she had ever done in a night. The churning digestive
juices covered nearly his entire body as her stomach secreted more of it in
anticipation of preparing her meal for the next stage in its journey. She felt
the first hint of fatigue in her belly muscles more than an hour later, long
after the sun had vanished and the first stars appeared in the sky. The moon,
however, was nowhere to be seen. "Did you know, love, that it takes nearly a
day for my body to fully process a meal?" she whispered. "We can play this game
for as long as you wish ... oh, but if you lose, then you will vanish into the
depths of my body, never to be seen again ... are you sure you don't want me to
stop? It must be terribly hot and tight inside of my body, love. No? Very
well ... but after tonight, if you've become part of me, it isn't my fault." He
squirmed strongly and whatever she had planned to say next was lost in a
explosion of pleasure that emanated through her body.

Her stomach began to work harder than ever, squeezing him even though the
Placeholder spell prevented him from slipping any deeper into her body. And at
any rate, he was far too large to fit into her intestines. They would not
stretch like her stomach unless she cast the Impenetrable and Elastic spells,
which she had no intention of doing until she won the game. After all, however
unlikely, there was still a chance that he would ask to be let out before the
moon touched her skin. From the light outside, she guessed that the full moon
had already risen. She could cast an Unnatural Strength spell on herself and
leave her tree to dance under the moonlight, but she discarded the idea. Let
the moon come to her! She hadn't finished playing with her latest partner.

They continued to wrestle for two more hours during which her stomach
filled to the brim with acid. He struggled valiantly, but he was simply no
match for the primal force of her appetite and the wrestling went entirely her
way. He could only squirm helplessly as her stomach gurgled and churned like a
living engine. She referred to her activity as stomach wrestling; the other
fairies had called it stomach rape. Holding a person helpless within her body
as she bent him to her will certainly fit the description closely enough. She
once again reminded him that he could leave her belly anytime he wished, but he
enjoyed the euphoric pleasure of fighting against her muscles nearly as much as
she. The Cultivate spell worked miracles.

White light curtained her doorway as the moon slowly, ever so slowly,
journeyed across the nighttime sky. She waited in the pool for the light to
approach; several hours yet would pass before the moon sank low enough to shine
directly upon her body. Jeremy continued to resist and Jennifer giggled with
pleasure as his body moved within hers. Waves of sensation lanced through her
nerves and she thought that she would melt from euphoria. How could sexual
intimacy compare with this? Stomach wrestling could be sustained for hours and
even days if one wished and the pleasure that it produced compared to none
other. She lay still in the water and watched her belly. If she looked
carefully, she could see a slight bulge where he pressed himself against her
impregnable stomach walls. A fortress, she'd earlier called her body, a
fortress that nothing could breach. But neither could it be pierced from
within and the fortress of her body could become a tomb in an instant.

Jennifer smiled again as Jeremy finally asked her to stop. Moonlight now
fell at a sharper angle into her home, but it still had a long way to go. She
recast the Tranquility spell and her stomach stopped churning; she felt him
relax and she thought to herself how none of them ever realized that her body
was a coffin. She was Death, she was the grave, her body the means by which
men encountered Fate and discovered that they could never defeat her. He lay
exhausted in her distended belly, quite unable to fight any longer without her
powerful Invigorate spells to aid him. As for Jennifer, she had not yet begun
to fight and it amused her to feel how weak the human truly was. "Rest, love.
Rest well and recover your lost strength." She did not offer to recast the
Invigorate spell. The full moon crept closer.

He wasn't interested in sleep, only in pleasure, and she gladly complied.
She laid both hands upon her stomach and massaged her soft skin, at times
squeezing very gently with her well-trained abdominal muscles. He writhed and
squirmed again, but this time with pure euphoria as physical pleasure moved
over his skin and penetrated his entire body. Smiling, she reinforced the
Cultivate spell and cast the Epicurean spell to enhance his experience. He
thought that he must be in heaven. She anticipated turning her stomach into a
living hell. The fatal moonbeams now shone brightly well within her home.

They played for what seemed like hours as the moon sank ever lower, she
doing everything she could to make his last day on earth a memorable
experience. That was usually the way of it - even when she waited to win the
game, her gaming partners never asked to be let out. The physical ecstasy of
her stomach simply proved too addictive. Again her stomach lurched and he
moaned in pleasure. "Are you enjoying yourself, love? I am too. You can't
imagine how wonderful it feels from my side. Stomach wrestling is an entirely
different sport to me than it is to you, love. I hope you enjoyed it. I
certainly did. No, don't leave my soft and warm body yet, love. You've never
slept in a bed this comfortable, have you? Let tomorrow take care of itself.
I'll wake you when the time is right. Sleep well, love." Fortunately for her
that he did not insist to be let out, as then the rules would have forced her
to free his imprisoned body. He snuggled down into her comfortable stomach as
she continued to massage him, all the while watching the bright light draw ever
nearer. It was well past midnight when he stirred again. She continued to
croon and murmur soothing words as she lovingly stroked her belly. Still he
made no move to free himself and she smiled. On impulse, she squeezed him hard
and laughed in delight when he squirmed with equal violence. Again they set to
their play, though she exercised more gentleness this time. He rolled in her
stomach, stimulating her sense of pleasure. She giggled as she contracted one
muscle, then the other; she dimly heard his laughter through the folds of her
flesh. She played with him the way a cat plays with a mouse, withholding her
true strength while allowing him to fatigue himself as he struggled against her
unyielding belly. Smiling to herself as he groaned and slopped around in her
warm body, she felt him slacken off a little as he paused to rest. She also
relaxed her muscles and used them to massage his body as she raised her head.
She could almost see the moon through the doorway and moonlight glittered on
the surface of the pool. Softly and silently the lethal beams stole across the
surface of the water until they touched her swollen belly and the man trapped
inside.

She won the game.

Jeremy lay snuggled in her stomach, as safe and ignorant as any baby. She
caressed his still form through her stomach, her hands betraying a slight
tingle of excitement as she thought of how she intended to break the news to
him. Now that she was the winner, he lay completely at her mercy - a dangerous
situation, as a glance at the bottom of the park pond might show. The moon
sank lower, filling up the entire entrance to her home and she bathed in the
pure light that shone all over her body. Then she undid the Epicurean,
Cultivate, and Hypnotic Suggestion spells - she had no further use for them -
and waited for him to notice. She did, however, cast the Epicurean spell on
herself, which hitherto she had refrained from using. The night of the full
moon was always special and she did not wish to ruin the endgame by a premature
casting of the Epicurean spell.

If she understood correctly, they always reacted after they realized just
how hot and tight her body was becoming. She continued caressing her belly,
acutely conscious of the fact that his experience was rapidly becoming less
pleasurable to him and more pleasurable to her. Her stomach turned and she
applied a gentle squeeze. The light of the moon caused her flawless skin to
glow in its ethereal brilliance. Softly at first, then more firmly, she
continued to squeeze him with her abdominal muscles until he shifted in her
stomach, trying to settle his body comfortably. She sighed with pleasure and
lazily reached for one of the acorn cups that she had left nearby. When he
moved again after a few minutes of her stomach's unrest, he called up to her,
"Okay, I've had enough for tonight, buttercup. Let me out."

"No, love, I'm afraid I won't do that," she whispered, almost as if she
were inviting him to join in a conspiracy. Which, in a way, she was. To
accentuate her point, she gave a firm squeeze. "You lost the game, so you'll
have to force your way out."

"No more time for games tonight, buttercup, I have work in the morning.
Let me out, I have to go home."

She giggled. "Your home for the rest of your short life is right where
you're sitting, my love. Only your home has a mind of its own." She paused to
rip the Tranquility spell apart and fling it away before she continued. Her
stomach responded almost immediately, squeezing him with bone crushing force.
Even the scream that he emitted was abruptly choked off as her muscles
responded with gusto, enveloping her utterly helpless prey. "I won the game and
I have decided not to let you leave, love. I enjoy the sensations that your
body produces when you're inside of my stomach and I want you all to myself.
Force me to change my mind, if you can."

"This isn't funny anymore, buttercup."

"It never was, love, but it is certainly amusing. For me, that is. You
might change your mind after hearing what I have to say. Remember those words
written on the leaf, that I said were the rules to a game? They are indeed
rules, but I lied when I told you that I played it with pigeons in the park. I
played that game with you, love. And I'm afraid that you just lost. Since you
lost, I can do whatever I want with you - and I want you to stay right where
you are while my body catches up." Slowly and carefully she read the rules of
the game to him. A terrible, poignant silence ensued when she finished, but
only for a moment. Then he exploded into motion, moving more frantically than
she thought possible with the strength that only desperation can lend. He
clawed futilely at the smooth and unyielding walls of her stomach as it swung
into full gear; in but a matter of moments, in spite of his best efforts, her
massive stomach muscles overcame his weak limbs and began crushing
relentlessly. He screamed with despair and disbelief, with effort and terrible
realization. Jennifer thought that she would faint from the intensity of the
waves of pleasure coming from her belly. She'd thought earlier that their
games had been pleasurable, but with the Epicurean spell it went beyond all
bliss. "Yes, love," she crooned softly, "tonight stomach wrestling is a game
for me but not for you. If you lose, you'll be trapped inside of me - forever.
I hope you paid attention to your lessons, because the game is about to become
a lot more fun!"

"You mean that you were playing this sick game with me all the time?! What
are you going to do? Let me out, Jennifer! Please, I'll do anything you want,
anything at all!"

"You already are, love," she answered with false tenderness in her soft
voice. Oh, how he wailed. He cursed at her. He begged her for mercy and
pleaded with her to reconsider. He demanded to be let out. Ignoring the
racket that emanated from her stomach, she turned a deaf ear to all of his
frantic shouts as she proceeded to undo another two of her spells. The
Waterproof spell she erased first, with the result that one of his appeals was
cut off in midsentence by a shriek of pure agony. Her stomach acids washed
violently over his confined body, seeking out every last square inch of his
skin with vengeance. Pain such as no human was ever meant to know flooded
through him and he screamed, a horrible sound that could have stirred pity in
even the most hardened of hearts. They all screamed the same way, she
reflected. It had become rather tiresome hearing the same shrieks every month.
Then the thrashing began anew and she nearly lost her concentration as his
suffering caused euphoria to soak through her entire body. With considerable
force of will, she hastily relaxed the Indigestible spell - but only down to
half its normal power. Now that she had won the game, she wanted to reap the
rewards for as long a time as possible.

He squirmed violently inside of her hellish depths, completely covered by
her searing acids. He continued to slop around, turning frantically as he
sought her elusive esophagus and with it a hope of escape. But he was clearly
outmatched by her well-trained and superbly conditioned muscles. To be fair,
she undid the Placeholder spell. "I've taken away the Placeholder spell, love.
If you can reach my throat, you can escape. I look forward to a most
delectable night of play!" Inwardly she laughed; even now she dangled false
hopes before him, when in reality his body was simply too large to fit through
her throat. Her intestines, on the other hand ... "Love, I should tell you
that my intestines have had no exercise for a month and are eagerly awaiting
the arrival of your nutrient-rich body. Try not to fall into them, as then it
would be most difficult even for me to find you. In fact, you'd better escape
quickly, love," she added, almost as a careless afterthought. "Once your skin
is stripped away, my stomach will begin to turn your muscles into mine. And
once your muscles are well-digested, love ... you can guess, can't you? You
won't be able to fight or even move without your muscles and must succumb to
the inevitable." She laid a pair of loving hands atop her swollen stomach and
giggled as he fought more frantically than ever. It was a little known fact
that movement actually stimulated the stomach into producing more and stronger
acids. Still, with the Indigestible spell not completely removed, Jennifer
expected the fun to last all night. She cooed to him, her outward calm at
sharp variance with the miniature war that her insides waged with him.

Over the next hour he made a small bit of progress up from the black pit of
her belly. She then picked up the acorn cup in both hands and looked down into
it. Most of the full moon had dipped below the hole that served as the
entrance to her humble home, but moonlight still shone on her face and she idly
wondered how many hours had passed since midnight. She shrugged. It didn't
really matter, she was fast becoming tired and her body needed sleep - no
wonder, either, as he had been within her body for more than nine hours. But
even asleep she could still enjoy the sensation of his body fighting against
the irresistible might of hers. She smiled as she spoke to him. "Love, this
game just became more interesting. You're doing well; just a bit further and
you'll be free. So I've decided to stack the odds against you, just a little."
With that, she tilted her head back and drained the acorn cup of half of its
contents. Half a cup of honey vanished down her throat and into her stomach,
where he became hopelessly mired in it. "Do you remember when I said that I was
an exile, love?" she asked conversationally. Any passerby might have thought
from her tone of voice that she was casually gossiping to one of her animal
friends. "I didn't lie. The fairies banished me because I developed a taste
for human flesh. But more than that, I just love playing the game with humans.
They're intelligent - you're wonderfully smart, love - and that makes the game
all the more enjoyable." Certainly the humans fast became addicted to the
sensation of being caressed by her stomach, at least before the night of the
full moon, but she knew that she was no less addicted to the thrill of the
game. It had snared her as surely as the Epicurean and Cultivate spells in
conjunction made pleasure slaves out of the humans. But she lacked the
morality to care much about what they wished; indeed, her implacable spirit
could not be moved even by the most desperate and heart-rending cries of the
men who melted from within.

She yawned, knowing that Indigestible spell or no, sooner or later her
stomach would make gastronomically short work of him. It was all that she
looked forward to for an entire month, yet now that she had won, she did not
want him to stop fighting as he eventually must. The endgame always proved to
be the most fun for her and it alone made the game worth playing. She yawned
again and sank deeper into the makeshift well, until her belly was covered by
water which left only her head exposed. She stroked her massively distended
stomach, secure in the knowledge that in the morning it would be flat as an
unbroken plain, ready to help her begin another game tomorrow. By the time she
greeted the sun again, Jeremy would be no more than a lump of meat making its
last journey through her body. She paused only to recast an Invigorate spell
on him before she closed her eyes and let herself drift off into the welcome
bliss of exhausted sleep. For exhausted she was and would doubtlessly be even
more so by the time moonlight gave way to the sun; yet for all the demands that
the game made on her body, she still found it every bit as addicting as her
prey found her to be. Just before sleep overtook her, Jennifer murmured a
final farewell to Jeremy.

"It was a wonderful game, love, but I win."