Pretty Thief

“I’m sorry, Sir! I really am! Please, I promise I won’t—”
“That’s what you said yesterday,” Rei’s stern voice boomed over Lartse’s dangling body, effectively interrupting its panicked plea. “I let you off the hook then, and yet here you are, stealing my candy again.” His words, heavy with anger, wrapped around Lartse’s mouth like a gag. “Such disobedience needs to be punished.”

Lartse tried its best to protest, which was unsurprisingly a futile effort since Rei had complete control over its bite-sized body. He had simply caught it red-handed, picked it from the candy bowl by its leg and flicked it upside down; that’s all it took to make Lartse completely helpless.

Rei forced a finger under Lartse’s shirt and popped the buttons off, then tore off its pants. With very little effort, his pet was now naked—or, as Rei preferred to say, “ready for consumption”. He simply opened his maw, let the tiny thief fall onto his tongue, then started to suck on it.

Lartse hoped that this was just for show. Even though it knew Rei to be very strict about messing with his candy stash, even though it knew deep inside that he wouldn’t back from this punishment, Lartse hoped that Rei would just toy with its body for a bit then spit it out. It was wrong, dead wrong, but it would still kick the soft flesh that engulfed it whole, thrash around in the cramped spaced it had, and beg, beg, beg for mercy to please its offended owner. “I won’t ever do it again, Sir! I’m sorry, I’ve learned my lesson! Please let me out! I was just a bit hungry, I promise I’ll never touch your candy ever again! For the love of—”

Vain words lost in the sea of aggressive saliva that sucked the size out of Lartse by the second. If he paid close attention, Rei could make out some muffled squeaks from inside his mouth; but there was no reason for him to do anything about the candy thief but savour its dwindling, mildly peppery form until it would disappear.

Lartse realized that the more it struggled, the faster it shrunk. Panic won over logic however, drawing its end closer and closer. Lartse soon reached the size of a tastebud, then a tastebud was the size of a planet to it. One moment it was drowning in the saliva biting at its form, the next it was floating through the void of a microscopic residue of space jelly bean. It was as though Lartse had been thrown into a new dimension, with its own rules and physics. The puny thing reckoned it should have been properly swallowed and digested by now, and yet… and yet it was still there, still being savoured and robbed of its every atom. Still alive through this excruciating process, still helplessly trying to find a way out, still pleading with its very last breath, until there was nothing but a mere presence of fear and stupor that finally dissolved away.

“Mmm, nice minty taste.” Rei licked his lips and pondered for a second. “I want another one.”