Pet Shop Pick-Up (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Staring between the metal slats of his pet shop cage at the wall of other imprisoned micro-men in their own enclosures, Joel hung his head. It was often difficult to decide whether he truly wished to be purchased, which came with its own set of terrifying unknowns, or to keep spending his days in this box, with his only real “human” interaction being when the owner opened the door to dump more chow in his bowl and pat his little head with her fingertip. Of course customers broke up the monotony, remarking on the eighteen-year-old fellow’s cute features and what kind of games they might like to play with his helpless little body, but eventually they all moved on, and Joel was left alone.

As if in answer to his existential dilemma, the face of a new giantess suddenly appeared through the bars, her deep blue eyes searching until she spotted him, and her plush lips instantly curved to a sweet smile. Joel just about fell over. She was stunningly beautiful, even from so close up when her every blemish might’ve been highlighted. A dirty-blonde in a crimson low-cut top who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, the girl had clearly been passively scanning the shelves of available tiny men, but stopped dead in her tracks upon spying Joel, and her kind face lit up just as much as he instinctively did inside as a natural response to such overwhelming beauty focusing on him.

She hadn’t spoken word, but a voice inside the boy was already telling him the answer to his question. Sitting here in a cage, unowned, seemed so boring now. Weighed against that solitude, he wanted nothing more than to be chosen by this lovely soft-featured girl: to have her gaze on him all day, while he did the same to her. She raised a humongous hand, gently coiling elegant fingertips around the bars of the cage. The openings were wide enough that she could’ve reached within and stroked Joel, but she merely tugged on the door, causing the whole box to rattle.

“Well, hello there, handsome,” she cooed in a voice that instantly soothed the boy almost as much as her alluring expression. The girl unfurled her index finger, pointing at him. “How is it that a cutie like you is still available? I’d think anyone might just grab you off the shelf the minute you got here.”

“I d-don’t know,” he peeped, a bit shell-shocked still by her presence.

“My name is Scarlett,” the towering blonde whispered, cocking her head at him. Her eyes darted to read the tag on his cage. “Joel, is it? I like that name. So, Joel, would you be interested in coming home with me today?”

The boy gulped, only able to nod his head from anticipation.

“Good,” Scarlett replied. Her smile widened, and the glistening tip of her tongue poked coyly from the corner of her lip. “Why don’t you step up to the front here, so I can get a closer look at you? Maybe more than a look, too. I’d… need a sample to know if you’re really the boy for me today, cute as you are.”

Instantly Joel’s gut twisted, thinking perhaps he didn’t have a happy ending as a beloved pet to look forward to after all. Though most men were kept as amusements and playthings by their owners, there were also a large number who were used for a far more temporary and horrific need. This was something Joel had thankfully never seen for himself, and had at times believed the idea of women buying men just to eat them was exaggerated, but judging by the activity of Scarlett’s tongue, and the way she’d said “sample” like she would in reference to an hors d'oeuvre, he might’ve just jinxed himself into doom.

“Oh,” Joel mumbled. Despite recognizing how easily Scarlett could reach into the cage and pull him to the front herself for a taste, he remained with his back to the wall.

“Come on now. It’s all right,” she coaxed, curling her fingers again to beckon. “I won’t bite you. No, really, I won’t, even if I like how you taste… and, by the way you look, I’m guessing I will. But either way, there’s no need to worry about it hurting. I just have to know if you’re as sweet on the lips as you are on the eyes.”

Stumbling, so weak in the knees it was a wonder he could stay standing, Joel obeyed. He walked until his frontside was pressed to the thin rails of the cage, with plenty of room to push his head between the opening. Hot breath from Scarlett’s grinning lips steamed against him, nearly bowling him over. Before he could stagger at the heat and wind, though, he felt the giantess’s finger wrap around his legs to keep him in place, just as her mouth opened wide to extend her ravenous red tongue. Using only the tip, Scarlett applied the slobbery summit of her oral muscle to Joel’s neck, then proceeded to lick deliberately and achingly slowly up his cheek to his forehead, back down the other side, before circling around again. Every micrometer of the boy’s face was lapped by the girl’s surprisingly docile tongue, despite how obviously strong it was, with such gentility that it became clear this wasn’t her first time. Guiltily, Joel was even starting to enjoy the sensation of her warm wet tongue massaging his features with her saliva like luxurious lotion, given how rarely he got contact with anyone.

Just like that, then, Scarlett’s tongue retracted back between her lips, but not before she licked from end to end, spreading his flavor to every corner and savoring it with a smile. A sound somewhere between a giggle and a moan of satisfaction rumbled from her throat.

“Oh, wow. You might be one of the tastiest boys I’ve ever come across. I think I know who I’m going home with today,” Scarlett replied with such positivity and joy that it almost convinced Joel to feel the same, before he remembered that he was now probably going to become lunch within the hour. The giantess caressed him with her fingertip once more, waved, then skipped away to the front counter to have the owner retrieve her choice.

For a foolish minute, Joel gazed through the bars and considered hurling himself out to “freedom.” Because the cages were raised at the height of the gargantuan customers’ eyeline, doing so would surely leave him broken and paralyzed, making his wait for eventual demise at the lips of his owner excruciatingly painful, and he’d still have to live through being swallowed anyway. He didn’t have the courage, and so Joel slunk in fear to the corner of the cage, which did little to protect him once the owner came back with the key, and Scarlett beaming behind her. The boy was extracted, at the customer’s request by her own tenderly soft fingers, and two quick minutes later, his entire life was bought and paid for, as Scarlett departed the shop with Joel perched in her open palm.

“You really are adorable,” she purred as they made their way down the street. “It’s almost a shame I’m going to eat you when we get home.”

“Y-You don’t… have to do that,” Joel meekly suggested.

“Oh, well of course I do, little one. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but once I’ve tasted someone as good as you, I really can’t rest until they’re in my belly where they belong. If it’s any consolation, it’s very warm and soft inside there, and it won’t hurt at all while you’re going down. I’ll do it nice and slow to help you relax. Really, in a lot of ways it’s a mutual pleasure, and I’m sure you’ll feel the same way once it’s happening.”

Joel, rendered mute by her response and his own mounting fear, sincerely doubted he’d come around to Scarlett’s viewpoint, even if he did trust that she wouldn’t actually “hurt” him. Her saliva from the initial tasting was now dried gummily on his face. Joel tried to ignore this and instead take in the sights of the big world around him, a sort of last meal before execution, since coincidentally he was about to become one of many meals for a superior being who, just by her strength and appetite, had the right to own someone with just as much human intelligence and autonomy as herself, and pop him down her throat for the calories.

“Have you been waiting to be chosen in that shop for a very long time, Joel?” Scarlett asked. The question startled the boy, given that any comradery they built would be extinguished when she swallowed him later, but she sounded so genuinely interested, that Joel overcame his fright to speak to his kind executioner.

“J-Just a couple years,” he replied. “But then… five in the place before that. And six before that.”

“That long, and no one ever picked you? Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that, little one. That’s quite a while. I’d think it would get dreary, being alone so often. I know you’ve got others like you around, but… I’m sure it’s not quite the same,” Scarlett said, her voice cracking sympathetically. “Tell me. The girls that would come by to see you, were they… nice to you? Did they ever hurt you? It bothers me, as I’m sure it bothers you, whenever I hear about owners abusing their pets just for the fun of it.”

“Not r-really… they mostly just… left me alone,” Joel said, getting more confused by the minute, even while it was comforting to speak to someone who seemed to care so much. The irony of being shown compassion by the same person who would soon end his life was nauseating. He fought back a sniffle.