It was an amazing weekend. I really wished I could tell my friends about SizeCon, because this weekend meant so much to me. I reflected on the connections with my friends, reaching out to shy, new attendees, volunteering to run social hours. And I had plenty of time to reflect on these because I was standing in a tortuous, protracted line of other flight passengers waiting to check in.

“Ebrahim Abbasi, please speak with the nearest Information Desk.”

I sold everything I came with, a fact I was grateful for as I shifted my backpack from one shoulder to the other. My cheeks still hurt from grinning so hard as one of my favorite models had her way with a tiny image of me, about to shove me into her waiting jaws and cushioning tongue. And I had a new favorite model, the one who placed the tiny, 3D-printed version of myself upon her round and jiggling butt. Have I ever come so close to a heart attack before? “Oops,” she said, as I tumbled and rolled down her buttock and slid between her thighs. “Oops,” she said. Words had fled me, or I might have explained this was perfectly fine.

“Will Miss… Ahava… Shulamith please come to Gate 43? Ms., uh, Shulamith, your flight to Denver is waiting for you.”

The line inched forward. I could feel the two Chinese guys behind me edging to the side, as though they were hoping to slip ahead of me if I wasn’t paying attention. But I was hyper-aware, very aware of everything. That started when I saw the two armed PFCs at the front doors: at that moment I’d been unable to shut off my attention to every little thing around me. I closed my eyes, plugged in my headphones, and tried to relive everywhere that model placed “me.”

“Will Domingo Belmonte please report to security? You left an important package behind at check-in. Mr. Belmonte, please report to ICE− …I mean, security.”

She was cute. I noticed her the first moment I saw her, waiting in the hallway before setup. And I noticed her every moment thereafter, the nucleus in a haze of swirling fans. I’d given up trying to construct some impactful, engaging greeting with which to introduce myself, because she was just occupied all the time. I didn’t need to befriend everybody, I figured, it was perfectly fine to let some opportunities drift by. That philosophy came with a little sadness, of course, but that’s where character comes from, isn’t it?

“Sir. Over here, please.”

My podcast on current events had whiled the time away effectively, and I found myself at the front of the line. “Your ID and boarding pass, please.”

“Oh, sure. Right here.”

“Thank you, sir, please step to the right.”

“Excuse me, I have a question about my ticket.”

The security person blinked and shook her head, snapping out of a dream. She asked what was up.

“Here, look on my ticket: there’s no gate. How do I find that out?”

Long pause. “Where are you going?”

“Minneapolis,” I said, preparing myself to be impressed with her professionalism.

Her eyes clouded over as she said they’d tell me that at my gate. “Next, please.”

With my clothes and electronics splayed on the conveyor belt, I passed through without incident. Clumsily I hustled my personal effects to outside of the inspection area and replaced everything efficiently upon myself once more. My flight wasn’t for a few hours, so I mused about restaurant options before spotting a police officer. I excused myself and asked where there was an Information Desk.

“Something I can help you with?” He was young and alert, which made me optimistic.

“Sure, here, look at my ticket: there’s no gate, just a zone. Do I actually go to Zone 4 or is something wrong?”

He squinted at the flimsy printout. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Raising his arm, he indicated a nearby gate attendant working for the airline I was going out on. I thanked him and trotted over to her as she wrapped up a phone call.

But she eyed me as I approached, and she pursed her lips as I got closer. When she hung up and I excused myself, she said curtly, “I’m on break now, sorry.”

“But look at this,” I persisted, knowing the mystery would hook her. Her heavy lids barely fluttered before she nodded in the direction of the airline’s Information Desk. With that, she hustled away and disappeared into a crowd. I noted that this was helpful in a way and walked over.

A dapper young man in a bright red sweater vest studied his computer monitor right up through greeting me distractedly. “How can I help you today?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem with my ticket.” I showed him the creased slip, ink wiping off in places. It wouldn’t survive many more of these encounters. “See? It just says I’m supposed to go Zone 4. It doesn’t have a gate listed.”

That got his attention. He stared at me a little too long before accepting the ticket and opening a new tab in his browser. “That’s really strange. One moment, sir.” His fingers typed somewhere north of 80 wpm and he asked for my ID. “Date of birth,” he droned, “zip code of your home address.” These were questions, apparently, and I responded crisply. His eyes flickered to me once, but he stared at his screen intently as he handed my ticket back. “Go on back to Gate 42. Show them your ticket, they’ll help you out.”

“Gate 42 is my gate?” I nearly felt relieved. All I wanted to do was park myself at a bar with an expensive sandwich and play a game on my phone until my battery burned out.

“No, but they’ll take care of you.” Now he looked at me again and nodded seriously. “Have a great day, sir.” Something on his screen commanded his full attention and that was all I was getting out of him.

The weight of my backpack did nothing to counter the fluttering in my stomach. I felt groundless, unstable, and I waited for a gap in the streaming crowd to carry me along. The noisy, smelly, out-of-shape people swept me along to the end of the corridor, all the way to the end where Gate 42 was parked. Every gate was managing two flights, every gate was stuffed with two separate manifests of people, and every gate desk was thronged by people who needed to introduce their questions with long, meandering background stories. With three hours to kill, I started my podcast up again and waited behind a family of five.

Big chunky dad, stubbly hair running down the neck bulging beneath his camouflaged baseball cap. Tough customer, or wants people to think so. Mom’s pretty, starchy Midwestern hair in large curls, but lean and wiry. Clothes hang on her well. She does like her gold rings, though. Two boys, the teen’s glued to his phone, scowling at the game he operates with two thumbs. The younger one wants his attention, sprawls across the carry-on, moaning about whether they’re there yet. I hope to gods I’m not sitting near these kids.

And there’s a daughter, you knew there would be. Older, maybe college age. Athletic: for some reason, she needs her yoga mat with her on this flight. Flipflops reveal chalky teal toenails on long, slender, even toes at the end of long, smooth feet. Calves just beginning to form, running up to toned, slender thighs that disappear beneath loose running shorts. Basketball tank top, school colors I don’t recognize (but I’ve never been into sports), thick and unruly hair pulled back into a full-bodied, chestnut ponytail. When the breezes go still around us, I think I can smell her shampoo.

I know I’m a creep. I just try to be a not-dangerous creep, taking things in, observing, making notes, but never acting on anything. Keeping to myself, resigned to my private thoughts. You should be free to imagine anything you like, I feel, but when it comes out of you, then you’re subject to the laws of respectable society or the judgment of those around you. It’s easy enough for me to not let anything out, keep it all inside until I can crib notes for a future story.

Like this girl’s ass. The hem of her running shorts dance around her caramel-smooth thighs, but her butt bulges fiercely and stretches the fabric with lots of dramatic stretch lines. She has a proud little bubble butt, perky, hasn’t even begun to sag with weight or age. And so the seam between the legs just disappears into the crevasse between her cheeks, just gone. Shadow, dramatic tension lines, and then it’s devoured into her butt. Who couldn’t stare at that? I bet if I looked around, I could find a bunch of men and maybe a few women checking it out, but if I looked around I’d have to stop staring at this ass.

She shifts from foot to foot, like her body’s crackling with energy. It probably is. She’s young and athletic and waiting in line is probably killing her. It’s so boring, to someone who’d rather be running up and down a court or a field or whatever. Not that it’s any of my business, but I’m glad to see she’s not also glued to her phone like her brother. Why do I care about that so much… I guess I don’t, and I let my eyes slide back down into the savage cleft of her butt. Her cheeks twitch with every restless footstep, and they clench every time she shifts her weight from one long, toned leg to the other.

She’d be impossible for a tiny man to climb. There I am, standing beside her running shoe, resting my elbow upon the rim of the quarter, face-to-face with her slim ankle. Above me runs the smooth, sheer surface of her shin and calf, nothing to grip or grab onto until her knee, and then only where it bends when she’s resting on her other leg. I picture myself wrapping my arms around her slender calf, hugging myself to her leg, seconds away from sliding over that silky skin to the crude flooring. But in looking up, all I see is the hollow behind her knee, the gently swelling underside to her thigh, and maybe the beginning of the tuck under her buttock in the shadows of her shorts. Nothing to grab onto, at my size. If I were up there, sure, I could dangle from the leg of her underwear all the livelong day, but getting up there is the thing. I’d need some thread or one of her long, thick hairs…

I go back to the photo shoot, to the model. My body flushes with the adrenaline in that first moment she placed me upon her ass, lying down. A bigger ass, rounder, fuller than the one trembling in front of me in line. Tiny little me stood upon it, grinning like an idiot, wobbling with every movement she made, transmitted and amplified through the mass of her glutes, until I tumbled down her own Lycra-covered crack.

This woman ahead of me, I wouldn’t tumble down hers. She would pinch me and wedge me in there and keep me forever. Her family would board the plane and I’d be lodged deep in her butt, no threat of falling out or anything, if I can estimate by how greedily she chews her own shorts. Goddamn.

The difference is, I’m just staring inappropriately at someone in front of me, while I saw a miniaturized version of myself on that model. She put me there. She looked at me in her palm, rubbed my tiny head against her rosy bottom lip, and she contorted herself to place me on her butt. Consensual and knowing, fully intentional. That… was a new rush. That wasn’t just me stealing glances or ogling someone surreptitiously: that was a giantess who picked me up and placed me where she wanted me, which was where I wanted to be. My heart started hammering in my chest from the moment she swung her angular face toward my statuette and her eyes narrowed in consideration, as if noticing me for the first time. She paused, staring, shedding the plan for whatever she was going to do and formulating new designs for me. And then acting on them.

She cradled me in her palm, in the soft padding over the bones of her fingers, and I saw how neatly I’d fit in her grasp. My tiny little shoes raced over her flat belly, her chest, where her neckline opened and her jaw began, and then her mouth opened. It was just that perfect, that smooth, almost as if rehearsed… no, as though my dreams had found material form and were playing themselves out before me, like a dancer running through their all-too-familiar steps. She didn’t even blink, as if she were as entranced with me as I was with her, and her puffy lips parted as she lifted me. Not a gaping maw, as though she were going to pull me in, but opened slightly more than casual, indicating she was utilizing her lips as sensory organs, to stroke me and learn about me through rubbing and kissing.

“Yes, sir, through that gate. Next, please.”

She did everything right. That model, she was born to be a giantess, that’s all there was to it. Hell, for all I know, she came here from a dimension where she was. Or she was born into this realm fully stocked with knowledge and memories of her past life, where she was a couple hundred feet tall. I couldn’t even whimper with longing, watching her cup me against her breast. I couldn’t breathe, and I didn’t dare twitch a finger lest I shatter the spell. She nudged my tiny head into her shirt, into her bra cup, presumably into her nipple, and then she looked up at me, the real me. Her eyes glittered briefly, and it was all my imagination but the corner of her lips turned up slightly. It was my imagination, but it looked like she was experiencing a thrill at witnessing the effect she was having on me. I became self-conscious, wondering if my jaw were hanging and drooling, if my eyes were about to roll out of their sockets. I was probably a graceless, leering mess, but she seemed to grin very, very slightly, before looking down to “me” and standing me upright upon the floor, between her knees.

Knees that spread. Knees and thighs that swung open like a powerful gate, opening to her… I mean, she planted her hand beside me, powerful, supporting her upper body with an arm like a redwood tree, as just above my head her hips lowered and brought her…

“Can I have the next in line, please?”

And then she turned. She asked me how fragile I was, me the person and me the figure, and her round and heavy ass hovered above me, waiting, considering, and I begged her to break me into a thousand pieces, and slowly those full cheeks lowered, grew larger, blocked out all the light as they surrounded and embraced me…

“Sir! Over here!”

I nearly had a second heart attack, snapping out of my very deep dream and looking up at the attendant behind the artificial wood-grain desk. She was mad at me: her partner was pretending to be busy with someone else, bringing up unnecessary details for a question they’d asked, in order to not have to deal with other customers, and I was holding up the line. Worse, I’d still been staring at that young woman’s ass, and her family noticed. She didn’t, thankfully, but her father was reddening in the face, his body shaking as though something held his leg back from taking that first step to confronting me. Her mom was torn between a furious defensiveness of her daughter and holding back the force of nature that was her redneck husband.

My face on fire, I stepped up quickly to the clerk and showed her my ticket. “See? No gate. I don’t−” The words wouldn’t cooperate. I simply slid the ticket over and left it for the astute clerk to riddle out.

She only glanced at it, then gave me a once-over. Pursed her lips, raised one eyebrow, and looked me up and own (as much as would show over her desk). “Zone 4’s over there,” she said nonchalantly, as though I’d missed something everyone in the airport had known all along, which wasn’t true. I stammered about not understanding, and she locked her keyboard and told me to follow her. A shadow passed over the full-length windows of the waiting lounge for Gate 42, and I heard soft thunder in the distance. This seemed to distract the family as I slipped away after the clerk.

Following her only took me around the corner of the desk, around the false back with the airline branding, past another section of people struggling to get comfortable in vinyl-and-steel seats that were unpopular in the ’70s, when they were at least new. Past them all, away from everyone, she stood beside a walkway that no one else seemed interested in. It wasn’t labeled, there was no security posted by it: it was simply an extendable ramp that led out of the terminal and turned.

I looked at the clerk. “Is it ready?”

She nodded. “Your flight just arrived, sir.”

I looked around at the waiting lounge. “Isn’t anyone else going?” No one was gathering their bags, no one was shouldering to subtly get in front of anyone else. The walkway might as well have been a wall, and I might as well not have existed.

“Looks like you’re the only one, sir.” Again she pursed her lips, but with a little amusement in her eyes this time. “Lucky, lucky you. Please enjoy yourself.”

I couldn’t see the athletic college girl behind the partition of my airline desk. All the passengers stared into phones or nagged their parents or nodded erratically in uncomfortable naps. The thunder continued behind me, then ceased. Finally I nodded at the clerk, who smiled tightly and strode off to resume her duties.

There was nothing else for me to do but heft my bag upon my shoulder, turn, and start of down the walkway. I got that heady rush of jet fuel and chilly air, taking me back to every airline flight throughout my entire life. It was comforting and exciting at the same time: that temperature and that scent meant I was going on an adventure. But my footsteps rang hollowly on the aluminum ramp coated in industrial carpeting, a series of reluctant kling-klangs rather than the dull, mindless tromp of cattle dumping into a plane. It was just me making all this noise, walking further and further down the walkway. The muted roar of hundreds of people mumbling was slowly replaced with the sharp and high whines of servos and engines in the landscape of passenger jets.

It was just me, though. Me, by myself, entering Zone 4. What the hell. I had seen one person online who had a plane to himself, some grinning idiot who, rather than sparing the planet by taking a different flight, instead wanted the ego-maniacal thrill of being the only person besides crew on a jet. I didn’t want to be that guy, though.

And I wouldn’t be. I turned the corner at the end of the ramp, and my eyes strained to adjust to the blinding square of bright landscape at the exit to the walkway. There was no plane, just tarmac and the fields beyond the airstrip. Frowning, I looked back up the walkway. A man in a dark blue uniform was shutting the door from the terminal. I was too surprised to yell, as he sealed me in the walkway leading nowhere.

There was one more boom of thunder, and I turned back toward the opening. An immense leg, like a redwood tree in black Lycra, swung quickly by the gaping exit. Two knees slowly descended from above, one after the other, as immense weight stabilized upon twin massive thighs, seeming to scissor shut as they lowered, blocking out the blinding daylight. I stood frozen, rigid, terrified and uncomprehending.

A few ropy strands of honey-blonde hair sailed by the opening in the wild breezes of the airport, and then there was a rosy, bee-stung grin stretching from wall to wall. It grew closer, an enormous nose and mouth fitting themselves against the exit to the walkway. Thin, uneven beams of light ran around the nasolabial folds of a huge grin. The lips parted, exposing shiny, bold teeth, and these parted as well.

Now I stood before a gaping mouth, nearly as large as the corridor of the walkway itself. The puffy lips twitched to stretch and hold their position, rubbing against the canvas ceiling, resting upon the carpeted walkway. Ambient light glowed into the raspberry-pink cavern, where saliva glistened over tender cheek tissues and the restless, fluttering panels of a throat fairly dancing in anticipation. The uvula extended, retracted almost completely, then slowly and shyly extended again. Molars glowed, solid and powerful, running in low, ivory walls that erupted from the floor and ceiling of this maw.

The tongue. It pushed up from the bed of the mouth, from the confines of its resting position to a surprising elongated state. So much mass came out of nowhere, shoving this chunk of muscle and tissue out of the ring of ivory teeth and into the walkway. It flooded into the space, resting upon that nasty-ass industrial carpeting, practically rolling right up to my shoes.

I could only stare at it, all the dozens of unconscious twitches from dense layers of micromuscles beneath the quilt of ripply tastebuds stretching before me. My heart was hammering in my chest. There was no way out of this, no way around this enormous mouth. Maybe I could have squeezed my way against her cheek, around the corner of the walkway exit, if I wanted to tumble to the tarmac. Or maybe I could run back up the ramp and kick at the door until, against all odds, a curious fellow passenger let me out.

But why would I? That’s not what I wanted. I dumped my bag, peeled off my shoes, shed my shirt and shimmied out of my pants. She sighed, loudly, pleasantly, when I fell to my knees on her tongue. Her tastebuds were ticklish and pebbly beneath my palms. She didn’t scoop me up or suck me inside, as I knelt there. Her tongue only spread beneath me, patient and silent, as I let the scene sink in.

Here I was. I was here.

I shifted my weight forward and grabbed another handful of papillae. The thick base of her tongue churned beneath my hand, immediately freezing as though in apology. Smiling, I lowered my chest down to her tongue, reached all the way back where the papillae grew thick and large, and I slid my bare body into her mouth. The trickling sheets of saliva flickered out into darkness as her teeth clicked behind my soles, and the pressure changed only slightly as her lips formed an unbreakable seal. She sighed all around me, and my spine pressed against her warm, wet palate. She hummed, and my body rattled with the eruption from her throat.

My arms stretched around her thick, meaty tongue and I slipped my hands beneath it, where ducts squirted with hot spit and a vein pulsed against my fingers. I rested my face against moist, rippling tastebuds and settled into Zone 4.