It’s an array of snacks. Chips. Trail mix. Fruit snacks and some fruit. I take notice that you look at your favorite. “This one?” I point. You nervously smile. “C’mon…” I shove the favored item towards you. “Don’t make me feed you myself~” I say flirtatiously. As those words left my vocal cords, the sides of my face perk up. I’m not used to smiling.

“Go on, open up”. I poke your lips with the bag of food. “Fine”. I drop one down your throat. And just like that, it’s gone. I peek inside the bag. “Huh, still a bit to go”. You wanted to say it was enough but your organs exposed your lie before you could tell it. I put more into your mouth. I’m doing this almost absentmindedly until I feel saliva drooling down around my wrist. “I didn’t mean to put my hand-woah!” I feel a pull, sending my arm down your throat. You put the limb in your teeth and muffle, “let’s speed things up, then”. Oh. Oh no. I know I’m a tease but uhh..

I try shoving myself out when you grabbed my legs under me, hoisting me above you. You give me a small kiss before my head goes past your lips. My legs spring about frantically but do little to slow my descent. Each swallow around my ears sending me further down. With the last of my legs, I’m sealed off from the outside world. A gulp surrounds me as I’m lowered. The stomach is more spacious than the throat but not by much.

The remains of the snack float above the liquid if they weren’t in the walls. I press my hand outward. There was a ripple. I felt a hand to the back of my head. “There you are. Good snack.” “Good what now?” “Thanks to you, I’m not hungry anymore!” I could hear the giggling smile you would have wanted to hide if anyone was around. “Hahaha that’s so great..,” I say nervously. My surroundings getting warmer. “So uhh, do we feel like uhh letting me out at some point?” You laughed at such a request. It died down a little when you felt me hit a wall. “Oh oho ha! Ah, you’re serious”. You started rubbing my back from the outside. “There, there”. I don’t know what’s worse, the digestive acids bubbling or the humiliation. Or that I was feeling okay with this. Not just okay, weirdly comfort?

I tried to snap myself out of it. “Hey! It isn’t my fault you were greedy. Just.. get me out of here!” I start pounding. It only results in released air. The burping sound taunts me, reminding me my efforts aren’t going to amount to much. “Bad snack, I don’t want indigestion”. “I don’t want digestion either!” I hit you again to punctuate the point. “Owwies.. you know I was just teasing you, right?” I stop. “I’m sorry?” “Yeah, I saw the way you see me eat and, well, I thought you wanted to give it a try! You had your whole arm in me and didn’t say anything so I just thought-” I stared in silence processing the events leading up to me being here. “Okay, so what? I thought about it but I didn’t think you’d go through with it. But now it’s like.. it’s actually sizzling in here! .. please.. let me out?”

THe mouth is warm and wet place. As the tongue presses you against the palate, warm saliva floods in, warm as the waters in the river that would receive you, except that now the rice collapses around you. What a strange thing, rice, it is a weird combination in your mind, but not for the one eating you, the one that has the compulsion to burst the egg against the molars or palate like a water balloon. You get to see your parent fish muscle fibers get chewed into a mushy bolus.

He chews continues to chew gently, almost thoughtfully. The rice breaks apart around you. You slide, still whole, across the slick surface of his tongue. Saliva continues to envelop you, slightly salty. Another soft press of teeth, not crushing yet, just enough to mash the rice and nori into a paste. You’re pushed toward the back of his mouth with the rest of the bite.

Then the swallow. The powerful current down the stomach, the immense pull of the swallow. You’re drawn down his throat in rhythmic waves, the muscular walls squeezing and releasing, pushing you deeper into heat and darkness. You drop into his stomach. At first, it feels almost familiar, like the open sea. The space is vast compared to your tiny size. Thick, salty fluid surrounds you, warmer than any ocean but carrying the same briny tang. The walls shift and roll in slow, heavy undulations, like deep-ocean swells. Currents of digestive fluid swirl past, rocking you gently, then more insistently, the way a rough sea might toss a piece of driftwood. Pressure rises and falls in waves. Occasional stronger contractions surge through the space, big rolling motions that tumble you end over end, the way a storm swell would.

The darkness is absolute, the kind found far below the photic zone where no light reaches. Heat builds steadily, like the warmer layers of a current. The fluid grows thicker, more active, coating you, working at the delicate membrane that once protected the future salmon you dreamed of becoming. Those dreams surface one last time, cold clear rivers, silver flashes in the sun, the long journey home, and then begin to dissolve along with everything else.

The sea-like motion never fully stops. The stomach keeps rolling and churning, a private ocean of its own, until the last of your form softens, breaks apart, and is taken in. What remains of the egg that once imagined becoming a salmon is absorbed completely: turned into warmth in his blood, energy in his muscles, something entirely human. The cycle you dreamed of is gone. In its place is a quieter, final transformation, becoming part of the body that swallowed you.