Time-Out: Bad Times Ahead (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Scott sighed as he crawled along the field-sized floral sheet that blanketed his gargantuan Sky-Class citizen mother’s mattress. He had just finished remaking the bed, tucking the corners back in and smoothing out the surface to Judy’s liking while she was away. The giantess could’ve handled this task herself, of course, and probably within a minute, just like any normal-sized person could with a normal-sized bed. But she couldn’t be bothered, and had “errands” to run around town, which probably involved spewing her city-ruling doctrines at the tiny people and eating a few of them alive for sustenance. This left Scott instead to struggle with the herculean task, and if a single fold was out of place when Judy returned, there’d be hell to pay.

Despite having been recently regrown to his former six-foot height after such a long time spent as a shrunken house prisoner, Scott was finding it awfully difficult to believe anything had changed. Especially since he wasn’t allowed to leave the fortress-like dwelling without Judy’s permission, it still felt very much like being a tiny boy imprisoned in the dominion of his immense, totalitarian parent. Maggie and Kyle, though also confined to the home, seemed to have a bit more freedom, at least. While he was liberated on paper, Scott’s constant barrage of chores from his mother, and the consequences if he failed, meant he’d outgrown his former prison, only to have said prison grow right past him again.

“I’m back, everyone!” boomed a powerful voice from the specially-made home’s nearby foyer. “I hope everyone took care of their chores while I was away, because I’m not in the mood to discipline anyone, but I’ll find the strength to do it if I have to!”

Scott forlornly chuckled to himself. His mother was never NOT in the mood to discipline.

Shuddering footsteps preceded the appearance of Judy Stevens herself in the master bedroom. Thrown for a loop at first, her eldest son paused where he stood to take in the sight of the power-hungry matriarch and her appearance, unusual when compared to her standard choices. In place of the regular political-friendly suit and skirt, usually some attractive charcoal hue with a hint of rosier reds, Judy had gone for something far more casual in faded denim shorts just barely long enough to disqualify them as short-shorts, plus a sunflower-yellow sleeveless top that actually bared the woman’s midriff, belly button and all. Though, to the credit of the tall yet trim mother-of-three, she was indeed in good enough shape to rock that style, not exactly with a visible pack carved into her abs, but neither was it an unpleasant view, objectively speaking.

Subjectivelyspeaking, however, Scott was now standing on the mattress at the precise level of his towering blonde mother’s flat exposed stomach while she walked toward him with a smug grin on her lips. His knees bobbled.

“Hello there, dear,” she said, positively glowing as she looked down at him from her naturally lofty position. The woman raised a hand toward her lips, extended the tip of her tongue, and invited her thumb inside her mouth like a child. Quietly sucking on the end of her finger for a moment, she retracted it again with a fresh gloss of spit painted around her thumbprint and polished nail. Her cheeks swished. “Mmmm… I could still taste a bit of that last one.”

“Oh…” Scott coughed. He’d seen his mother consume people already, of course, and famously so had everyone else after that first occasion downtown, but it became easier to stay in denial the less often he saw or even heard about it. “Y-You mean you… you…”

“…yes, sweetie, I mean I ate someone,” Judy finished for him, slowly and gently mocking, like she was speaking to an idiot schoolchild. Her thumb re-entered her mouth for one last appreciative suckle, an act that might’ve seemed normal after a fine meal at a restaurant, but not when she’d returned home from errands out in the comparatively miniature city. “Actually, I ate several someones. I don’t normally mean to indulge like that, seeing how I like to keep up an ideal appearance given my increased visibility, but there were so many of them clustered together, making themselves out to be easy targets, I just couldn’t help myself, so I reached down and got them all in one handful, and… well, now there’s about six of them fighting for space down here.”

Six, Scott thought to himself in abject horror. At the same time as his mother’s admission, the hand she’d just been re-sampling for traces of humanity lowered toward her waist, stopping at the level of her gut. Her palm clasped to the soft, semi-pale flesh while her fingers tickled the surface and began to trace wide circles around her belly button. The longer she rubbed her tummy, pressing harder and harder in what was perhaps an attempt to dislodge some still-struggling human morsels, the shape of that fleshy divot at the center of her abdomen cutely smushed in all directions.

“I t-thought you… just had to eat a couple a day…” Scott whimpered, averting his eyes away from the motion of her hand on her stomach dead-ahead. It was so pathetic that he had to try and convince his mother to only eat two people instead of six, but given these dire circumstances, it was a lesser of two evils worth arguing for. And as she’d, up to now, showed no intention to eat him or his siblings, he felt a terrifying obligation to at least try and talk to her about it.

“A couple a day isall I need, in a manner of speaking, but there are reasons to eat people other than nutrition. Though, they are quitenutritious, I must say. I’ve never felt healthier,” Judy continued. She winked at her little son. Steadily she leaned in over the bed, creating a shadow that covered Scott and re-emphasized the divergence in their heights. “As a face for society and a role model, with so many eyes upon me, I have to be a fair but firm leader within the bounds of my new structure I’ve put in place. Sometimes that means demonstrating what will happen when certain outliers choose to blatantly disregard and combat the flow of progress. In this case…”

“…people tried to… stop you?” Scott asked.

“Well, not really. They were just a little group of protestors outside the courthouse, claiming something or other about due process, things being in a martial state since I’ve taken over, blah-blah, on and on,” Judy rambled disinterestedly. “They were waving their little picket signs around like they owned the place, and even when I showed up, they still had the gall to disrespect me, right in front of the voters. There was no way I was going to risk losing a chance to prove how serious I am about this new way of life, even if it means I won’t be hungry again until dinnertime.”

“Oh…”

“I honestly can’t comprehend why it’s so hard for so many people to understand. I am the onlybig one now. Every former method of measuring success and power is irrelevant now, even shrinking technology, really. My new system is clear and straightforward, and can be boiled down to terms so painfully simple, even a child could understand,” Judy continued. A hint of fury now shadowed her tone. “I am big, and everyone else is small. Everyone else is below me. Their lives are only significant so far as they are able to meaningfully contribute to the future of our society. In this case, if that requires them to become a meal so I can stay strong and alert to better lead everyone else, well… it saddens me to think of how selfish and foolish the other little ones your size are, Scott, to think they could defy me. If only you could see yourself. So… small and inconsequential. So very close to nothing.”

To make her point, Judy lowered her giant hand toward her son. He flinched, expecting to be snatched up in her fist, but instead she just separated her thumb and forefinger apart for a practical demonstration of this elevated perspective of hers. After squinting and measuring his relatively-miniscule height with just those two digits, she smudged Scott’s forehead with her spit-coated thumbpad, then gradually retracted her hand again. Instead of rubbing her stomach again, those same fingers pinched the plush rim of her belly button, softly inserting then pulling out.

Scott could no longer help himself. Though he did his best to bend his neck back and keep his view trained on Judy’s face on high so he wouldn’t have to have such an expansive reminder of the elegant graveyard she’d chosen for randomized citizens, it was impossible to avoid looking forever. Gulping, he shifted his gaze downward, until he was looking at his mother’s naked stomach ahead. It wasn’t an unfamiliar view, as over the years he’d spent time around almost all of Judy’s body while he was shrunken, but somehow took on new precedence while hearing her speak. A gurgle emanated through the cushy barrier of flesh and muscle. Judy’s fingertip circled her button again.