Hayden once had a promising life ahead of him. He stood only five millimeters tall, but he had his life on track, having nearly completed a master’s degree in computer science, and having a job lined up for after his graduation. A micro’s dreams are as fragile as his body, vulnerable to both careless crushing and premeditated cruelty at the hands of larger beings. But Hayden did not live in fear; tight security measures protected his domicile, and for all his years at the university, he had not heard of anybody who was dumb enough to try breaking in. One day, though, the lights suddenly died, the cameras shut down, and the door to the micro housing chamber was battered open. Each bash at the door shook his whole world, and judging by the screams he could hear from the neighboring suites, the whole population feared for their lives. Before Hayden could think of a way to save himself, a big, furry fist punched through his wall and stole him from his bed. Squished under a pile of his struggling neighbors in the kidnapper’s black bag, he was sold off to some sick freak shortly after, alongside about one hundred of his fellow students. For the past month, he had been living in a large rectangular fish tank, empty aside from a thin layer of sand at the bottom and a shallow pan of water. His owner was uncompromisingly sadistic, meeting even the most pitiful pleas with a heart of ice. No effort was undertaken to make life comfortable for the micros, as their keeper allowed them to languish in darkness, boredom, filth, and hunger.

Hayden’s captor, a six foot tall gray wolf in his mid-20s, loomed over the terrarium with a mischievous grin on his snout. He never showed up in the evenings, and Hayden was scared. Usually, the wolf would snatch one of the micros up for breakfast, give the rest of them some food, and forget about them until the next morning. But this time, he picked up the tank and carried it to the kitchen. One by one, he took his prisoners from the tank, squished them inside Mars bars, mint-filled chocolates, or Reese’s peanut butter cups, and dipped the sweets into a chocolate fountain he had set up on the table. The chocolate hardened over the openings in the candies, trapping one victim in each. He put the treats back in their packages and glued them shut, placing each one in a big bowl as he deemed its glue to have dried. Hayden tried burying himself in the sand, but it was no use. The wolf found him and picked him up, clearly enjoying the begging, screaming, and struggling of his livestock as he sealed them in their sugary coffins. Hayden got no more sympathy than the rest of them, but after suffering under the beast’s tyranny for thirty days, he did not expect any. He fought back with everything he had as soon as he touched him, but even his hardest bites couldn’t pierce the wolf’s skin. Hayden, too, was shoved into a mint, sinking deep into the gooey paste before a fresh coat of chocolate blocked out the light. He heard the wrapper scrunching around him, and knew he was done for. He could still hear the other micros crying for help from the other candies, unable to escape their fruitless desperation. The wolf whistled to himself as he sealed the rest of the stolen students into the oversized chocolates, but it didn’t quite drown out the screaming. 

There isn’t much air inside a candy, and the captured micros soon found themselves unable to shout, though they remained fully conscious. The wolf gathered all the candies in a large bowl and brought them to the porch, where he sat on the steps with the bowl in his lap. For Halloween, he had dressed himself up as Death from the recent hit film “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” and he was pretty much spot on, if perhaps a bit too tall, and with slightly darker fur. His eyes were yellow, not red, but that was neither here nor there. His snout was shorter, too. Before the first trick-or-treater showed up, his boner (well-concealed by his baggy poncho) was already pressing up against the bottom of the steel bowl, as he fantasized about the fate his victims would suffer in the children’s stomachs. Hayden knew what was coming too, but he could only sob in his sticky, delicious grave. 

__________

Soon after the last light of day vanished, a little yellow bat boy started down the path to the wolf’s doorstep. Clad in red with a golden plush armor on top, the kid could barely contain his excitement. He looked about ten years old.

SC held out his bag: “Trick or treat!”

“Oh, hey there little fella! What are you, some sort of knight?”

“I’m a Roman soldier! Now pay your tribute, barbarian, or I shall put you to the sword. The empire requires your candy!” he said as he held the point of his foam weapon an inch away from the wolf’s neck.

Playing along with the boy’s Halloween game, the wolf stuck his hands up in surrender, greatly entertained by the young kid’s enthusiasm.

“Please, have mercy! You can take as many as you want, to be sure, but our harvest has been destroyed by locusts this year; what I have in this very bowl is all my tribe has left. Take more than a handful, and my people will starve.”

SC stuck his snout in the air haughtily, getting the message.

“Hmph. Very well, I will allow you to pay incompletely, just this once, but I expect you to pay double next year, or we will raze your pitiful excuse for a kingdom to the ground.”

The wolf clasped SC’s little hands, showering them with kisses of submission and gratitude.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! You will not regret your generosity, sire; I will heap untold riches upon you when we meet again. You can be assured of my people’s eternal loyalty, O legionnaire!”

The wolf tossed a handful of sweets into SC’s bag, sparking visible joy on the kid’s face. 

“Thank you, mister! Happy Halloween!” said the bat with a small bow (the wolf responded with a smile and a slight nod), before walking off with his loot. He appreciated the wolf’s playful personality, and tried to make a mental note of the address so he could see him again in future years. He had received six candies from the man, more than he would expect from most houses. It was good stuff, too; his mouth was already watering at the thought of their flavor. He went to the next house in search of more. 

Hayden was not looking forward to the night’s later hours. He squealed and squirmed, trying his best to make whatever noise he could, but he had no chance of getting the kid’s attention. Nor was he able to punch through his cell’s hard chocolate enamel, having no room to wind up a proper hit. His hope of freedom gradually dwindled as he heard more candies tumble into the bag, burying him near the bottom. Still, terror and self-preservation drove him to keep fighting for a few minutes, until he gave in to his exhaustion and decided to save his energy for a more promising opportunity. His body may have gone limp, but his mind could find no rest - anxious thoughts wracked his brain as a series of escape plans were successively drafted up and discarded as unrealistic. Anxiety turned to panic as precious time slipped away without any improvement in his situation. The more his stress escalated, the less he could think, leading him to an even higher level of hysteria. Several cycles of adrenaline-fueled rage and immobile, dead-tired despair passed before SC got home. All that time, nothing changed for Hayden - Fighting did not bring him any closer to breaking out, but neither giving up nor trying to stay cool gave him any peace. So he alternated between his options, always chasing the greener grass on the other side. Predictably, running in circles failed to get him anywhere, though the choices of his hungry new owner drew him ever closer to the fate he now feared most. 

______

When SC got home, he was starving. He heard his parents had preparing him some real food in the kitchen, but he wanted candy. He had waited all year for this, and he would not give anyone the chance to ruin it. So, he snuck in through the back door and brought his candy directly to his room, hoping to eat or hide all of it before it could be confiscated. He scampered up the stairs unnoticed, dumped his candy on the bed, and took off his costume, preferring to hang around in his underwear. He then began sifting through his Halloween haul, unsure of what to eat first. He settled on one of the candies he had received from the poncho wolf, never having been able to resist a good mint. The package seemed strangely easy to open, as if someone had looked inside and glued it back together, but SC thought nothing of it. His stomach was growling loud; it couldn’t wait another minute. Hayden could hear every gurgle. Terror mounted in his heart when he heard SC unwrapping his mint. He screamed at the top of his tiny lungs, but it was barely audible through the thick paste he swam in. He could feel himself rising as SC brought the mint to his lips, and his worst fears were confirmed. The mint caved in when the bat’s tongue pushed it up against his palate, squashing Hayden nearly to death in the process. He was winded, and could not make a sound. He tried to strike at his predator’s tongue, but amidst the swirling chaos of mint and chocolate, his blows went unnoticed. Neither could he get a good grip on any of his teeth; whenever he got close, the bat’s big, slimy tongue swept him away, repeatedly crushing his dreams of survival by mere chance.

Exhausted and battered by his struggles with SC’s tongue, and soaked to the bone with his saliva, Hayden slid helplessly down the little boy’s throat, embedded within a messy heap of chewed-up chocolate. SC sent the mouthful down with a small, quiet ulp, but to Hayden, it sounded like the end of the world. Gravity slowly sucked him towards the bat’s stomach, though he pawed and clawed at the esophageal walls. They were simply too slick to grip, and before long, Hayden found himself tumbling into the hissing acids down below. He tried to back away, but an avalanche of chocolate slid down after him, pinning him face down in the caustic juices. Their sizzling, bubbling and sloshing reverberated through the pitch-dark chamber at deafening volume. Still, Hayden managed to dig himself out of the chocolate pile, but as he emerged, he heard another gulp, announcing a cascade of chocolate and caramel. This time, he was done for. The weight of it all was too much to bear, paralyzing him completely. Another micro had fallen in with the candy, and Hayden could hear him bawling and screaming. He wanted to cry out for help to his fellow prey, but he could not inhale beneath the mountain of sugary sludge. He felt himself slowly sinking down as the chocolate below him dissolved, bringing him ever closer to the acid. Tears silently flowed from his eyes, mixing unnoticeably into the sea of digesting candy below. He was a Halloween snack for some sweet-toothed little boy who didn’t even know he existed, and there was nothing he could do. He would melt him down and shit him out without a second thought, and nobody would ever know what happened. 

SC, meanwhile, was having the time of his life. His parents still didn’t know he was home, so they couldn’t stop him from eating as much as he wanted. He scarfed down dozens of treats, barely taking the time to chew them up properly. He felt no need for restraint; the heap of candy in front of him seemed like it would last forever. He felt the micros kicking at his stomach walls, but assumed it was just his digestive system doing its thing. 

“Hehe, silly tummy,” he thought to himself, “there’s no-one in there, only candy.”

He gave his noisy belly a little pat before tearing open a bag of chips, destroying them all in a matter of seconds. He was already stuffed, but he wanted more. Much more. 

“Cmon’,” he complained to his food, “melt faster. I want room for more.”

He released a cute little urp, depriving the micros in his belly of the last of their air. He rubbed over his bulging, jam-packed gut, trying to speed up digestion as best he could. He pressed down hard, forcing the liquefied part of his meal into his intestines while breaking down that which remained intact. His gut gurgled loudly, showering its contents with a fresh batch of stomach acid. The micros inside were brutally squished and kneaded into his juices, left without a spare millimeter of room whether they were squished against his stomach walls or trapped in the middle of the big chocolate ball he was digesting. Those who had not already been turned into soup were soon killed by suffocation, or their skulls simply shattered under the pressure of SC’s paws. His stomach soon rendered them indistinguishable from the densely-packed mush in which they swam, preparing their bodies to be part of him forever. Five unique little lives with memories, hopes, and dreams, all sacrificed in some kid’s gut for the sadistic pleasure of the old wolf who trapped them. Back home, he sat naked on the couch sucking a lollipop, watching the talking heads on the news hypothesize fruitlessly about the university break-in. Where were the kidnapped taken? Only he knew. He changed channels to see the reporters interviewing policemen, shocked parents, and rescued victims about this unprecedented, horrific, phenomenon of people being stuffed into candies. The wolf chuckled, thinking about all the micros who were not so lucky to be discovered, and were swallowed to their deaths by cruel or unaware children. And the best part was, it was all his fault. He stroked himself off with the image of SC in his head, pushed over the edge by the fact that five innocent men and women were probably dying in his adorable little tummy at that very moment. 

Still completely oblivious to his prey, SC kept rubbing. It felt so good he couldn’t stop, though he knew he should probably hide the remaining candies somewhere in case his parents came in. His digestive system was working at full blast by now, tearing through his food at a scary pace. One could almost see his belly shrinking as its contents burnt away into slop. All alone with his candy, SC didn’t bother stifling his burps, which grew louder, longer, and more frequent. His stomach didn’t fall silent for one moment, burbling incessantly as his acids aggressively ate away at the ball of sugar, flesh, and bone that was his dinner. No trace of Hayden remained by now; he had been entirely converted into calories for the boy’s sugar rush. He contributed an unnoticeably miniscule volume to the growing mass of shit building up in the little kid’s colon. Not even his skull remained; every atom of him had been thoroughly processed by SC’s ravenous guts. The other four prey were in varying stages of digestion, but would all meet the same fate within the hour. Their predator, lost in the pleasure of their destruction, kept kneading and grinding at his belly until only a modest bump was visible. It was perfectly soft now, devoid of any solid content. The bat gave it a satisfied poke, pleased with the results of his belly’s hard work. This is why Halloween is my favorite holiday, he thought as he hopped onto his chair for some video games. Already feeling the energy his body had made from his feast, he planned to stay up until he was forced to bed. He stuck a note on the door saying he was asleep, and turned off the lights - the glow of the computer was all he needed. He muted his device, logged onto Ninjakiwi, and opened up BTD battles. He was going to have a very good night. He kept a pile of candy beside him, of course, to sustain him through the hours. Among these candies was the one containing the very last micro, still alive and conscious. The wolf had accidentally given SC a sixth candy - luckily for the bat, but not for the tiny feline inside. He had heard everything that had transpired over the past hour, and could not help but mentally replay the gory fate that awaited him in the greedy kid’s gut. He periodically heard him reaching his hand into the candy pile, but all he could do was hope and pray his piece wouldn’t be picked. His turn came soon enough, and he went down just as easily as the others. 

Without a flood of chocolate crushing him, the last micro had the space to move around. He was able to stay out of the acid, kicking and pounding at the stomach walls while shouting for help. This only prolonged his suffering, allowing him to gradually and agonizingly descend through the stages of grief while the acids slowly rose to claim his life. Engrossed in his game, the kid supposed his mind was just playing tricks on him, and didn’t really care enough to make sure. He heard something coming from his stomach, but decided it was probably nothing important - maybe an expired chocolate disagreeing with him. SC took a sip of water, patted his softened gut, and carried on. Hours passed without him looking at the clock once - he was having too much fun to go to bed. Meanwhile, Hayden’s screaming was drowned out by digestion noises and the sound of the computer’s fan, and he soon lost his voice from all the crying. Melting into a puddle of bloody goop, he whimpered for his life to his predator, and heard nothing in return beyond the occasional nonchalant burp. When SC passed out at his desk, it was 2:00 AM, far past his usual bedtime of 9:00. He finished his last game, folded his arms on his keyboard, and laid his little head down to rest. He fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes, enjoying only the sweetest of dreams that night. His guts never slept, though. There was nowhere left for his prey to run, treading the very water that was breaking him down. Aside from his own desperate splashing, the last thing he heard was the little bat’s soft, almost inaudible snoring. 

[scat caution ;3]

When SC awoke the next morning, it was bright outside, well past 10:00. Thankfully, it was Saturday, so he was not late for school. His belly was totally flat again, empty and growling from hunger. Not a trace of his former meal remained, aside from the massive pressure in his bowels. He woke up with plenty of energy, and went straight for the bathroom. He locked the door, yanked off his undies, and hopped on the throne. He unclenched his anus, sighed with relief, and let the waste flow, emptying his bladder at the same time. Shitting out all the candy felt almost as good as eating and digesting it. Thick logs of gooey paste forced themselves through his tiny butt, easing the pressure with every foot that came out. It stunk to hell and back, but getting rid of it was so satisfying he barely noticed. Goosebumps rose on his arms, and a shiver ran through his body. One could hear the pleasure in his shaky panting. When he was done, he felt considerably lighter. While wiping himself clean, he found the paper smeared with dull streaks of medium-brown; there was nothing to indicate that he had digested anything other than candy. When he looked upon his handiwork before sending it down the drain, he was quite impressed with himself - it was easily the biggest pile he had ever made. He stood up, wiped the pee from under his foreskin, flushed the toilet, and put his underwear back on. He couldn’t wait for next year.