Coming Out, Going In
By: Semibu
I hadn’t seen or heard of Dale in over a million years. Okay, make that ten years and possibly a few months. Last we set eyes on one another was one sunny lunch at that bar overlooking the Thames. I don’t even recall the occasion: social, work or just being at a loose end. So Dale’s letter came as something as a bolt out of the blue. Did I remember him? Of course I did! Maybe we weren’t the closest of friends or the most agreeable of colleagues. But we always seemed to get on, and we certainly shared the same line in wicked humour. His hand-written scrawl harked back to those happy times. Reading between the lines I quickly realised that the world had moved on but Dale hadn’t. I pondered for a while on what it was that’d held back such a tall, dark handsome fellow ten years my junior.
“Sorry I’m late,” he puffed as he pulled up a chair and sat himself down. He pointed at one of two bottles on the table. “Is that for me?”
“Yep. Same pub, same beer,” I smiled. “Get it down your throat and let’s start catching up.”
“Can’t do alcohol tonight, mate,” he smirked, thumbing the opening of the neck before sliding the bottle over to me. “I’m driving. I’ve only just bought the new wheels. I don’t want to lose my license too soon!”
He requested a sparkling water from an Adams Family extra wearing a waiter’s outfit. Although in his late twenties, early thirties, Dale still lacked the confidence that comes with age and experience. He seemed almost embarrassed when Lurch took his order. The rather cumbersome 6-footer lumbered off in the direction of the bar leaving Dale and me to make some much over-due eye contact. The young old flame shuffled nervously in his seat, a habit of his I’d noted way back in the ‘good old days’. I passed comment on how the place hadn’t changed much since the mid-1990s. Dale’s response was arrested by the swift return of Lurch with Dale’s bland but enthusiastically effervescing beverage on a stained tin tray.
“I still smoke,” he informed me as Lurch lurched away through the bar’s evening tobacco mist. “Got a cigarette?”
He took a smoke from my almost empty pack, lit up and sat back. Exhaling a grey cloud, he watched the smouldering end of his Marlboro changing from bright orange to simmering red. Thus far our conversation had been bitty and disjointed. I was beginning to wonder why he had bothered to try rekindling a slight and flimsy friendship from ‘way-back-when’. All would become clear.
“How old were you when you came out?” He was leaning forward, and breathing dragon-like from his freebee filter tip draw. “You must have been about my age.”
“I suppose I was. It was the best thing I ever did.” I sipped on my beer and pulled closer the bottle I’d originally bought for him. “See, I’d underestimated everyone. I thought I’d be rejected, turned away. I really imagined that my sexuality was of such earth-shattering importance.” Dale pulled his chair closer to the table and cocked his head so as to hear better the words of wisdom I was about to share. “Nobody, as it turned out, was in the slightest bit bothered about it. Some were surprised, yeah. Nobody horrified. If anything it was me who felt like a complete dork for keeping my real self under wraps for so long.”
“Well, I’m gay,” he announced expecting me to roar in disbelief.
“Are you happy with that?” He didn’t answer at first. “Has this been a huge problem?”
“Mmm.” He peered through the diminishing tangle of ice in his tame, fizzy drink and ran a finger down the condensation of the glass. “I haven’t told anyone…apart from you. I don’t know what to do. You don’t seem too shocked.”
“Of course I’m not shocked,” I replied in a tone reflecting my concern. “I’m more worried that you’re wasting prime years simply living up to the expectations of others.” I flicked a thumb at the base of his glass. “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Be you. Be Dale. Fuck everyone else!” There was an uncomfortable pause. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I thought you fancied me. I thought you’d take advantage.”
“I didn’t even dare imagine that you could see yourself with a dinosaur like me!” I smirked. “Yes, you were…you ARE a looker, but we would always be poles apart. In my mind you were either too young, too straight or too both!”
“So it did cross your mind, then?”
“Dale, I don’t know where this conversation is going…”
“I just had to tell someone. I could only think of you.” He shoved a finger up his nose, withdrew it and inspected the damage. “I thought you’d understand.”
“Thought I’d understand? Of course I understand!” I beckoned him closer. “If you’re worried about coming out then just say. I’ve been there.” My chair rasped on the polished floor as I stood. “I need a piss.”
After a few seconds of reading the graffiti and sniffing in the man stink, I shook the lizard and was slipping it back into my Calvins. The men’s room door squeaked open and in crept Dale. He shuffled up next to me and started to do what I had just finished.
“It stinks in here,” he commented as he unleashed his length and commenced squirting. “I wonder how many gallons of yellow have been guzzled by this trough.”
“Dunno.” I couldn’t think of anything constructive to say. “Dunno.” I turned away from him, glimpsing briefly at his semi-erect monster as I made for the washbasins. “But it does reek of ammonia in here. Takes yer breath away.”
The thirty-second blast from the hand drier masked his footnote on the subject of urinal odours, and camouflaged his stealthy approach. He grabbed me from behind and led me by the arm to one of two cubicles. I didn’t protest. Foolishly I had assumed he wanted an uninterrupted one to one chat. Maybe I could help. He shoved me down onto the lowered toilet seat and kicked the door shut. Keeping his now blazing eyes glaring into mine, he reached back and slid the bolt. And there we were, Dale and me, in a three-foot wide, by six-foot deep, by nine-foot high WC. A single halogen lamp shone brightly from its loose fittings. I was more curious than afraid.
“Dale, are you okay?”
“I’m okay, you piece of SHIT! But you’re not!”
The stench of a million bladders suddenly intensified. I felt dizzy. The bright light above circled through a starry neon rainbow. A rush of air abruptly cooled my toes and heels as my feet reduced in my well-trodden sneakers. The tips of their laces clicked as they met with the wet floor. My shirt and jeans fell away from my diminishing physique. I called out to my old chum. His hands wrapped tightly around my chest and plucked me naked from my now out-sized attire. I was just 12 pathetic inches and still shrinking. He was, as ever, an enviable 6-footer. He brought me to his nervous grin. My gaze fixed on his moist lips as they spoke.
“I shouldn’t have come here tonight,” he whispered. His breath was still heavy with the after-effects of smoking that cigarette. “ I shouldn’t have come out to you. Sorry, but we all make mistakes.”
“Dale, it was the best thing you could’ve done,” I gasped, reaching down to his wrists. “But what the fuck have you done to me?” I was beginning to show signs of panic. “Dale!”
“Shhh!” he sighed. “We don’t want the world to know about this.”
“About you being gay? Come on! I won’t tell anyone, not if you don’t want me to!”
“No. I mean we don’t want the world knowing that I’m eating you.”
“Eating me?” For the first and last time I would muster the energy and courage to struggle. “Dale, what are you talking about, man?” I scanned his enormous face and trembled pale in absolute fear. “Dale!”
“Look,” he muttered suppressing an evil and confused laugh, “I thought that coming out to you would be a good idea. Then, just looking at your face out there in the bar, I realised I’d made a mistake. You’ve always been such a smug bastard. If we go our separate ways tonight, how do I know who you would or wouldn’t tell? I know how you like to talk, little man.”
Through the confusion and shock of shrinking, I was now but eight inches from head to toe, I suddenly found clarity and understanding. Dale had always known I was gay. He’d always know that he was gay. But he resented my happiness and success in life. He hated me. One question still remained unanswered.
“How have you done this to me?”
“Shrunk you?” He beamed. “Let’s just say it was something you drank. I slipped it into your beer almost as easily as you’ll be slipping down my gullet.”
I was beginning to realise that he had always been less interested in coming out and more interested in having me for supper. I began to wonder how many others had found themselves on the menu. The men’s room door squeaked open. Dale placed a thumb over my mouth and stood absolutely still. Voices and splashing echoed for a few moments. The door squeaked and closed again. We were alone once more. I was about to speak but Dale beat me to it.
“I shrink and eat people,” he explained. “It’s like a drug. I can’t help myself. It’s not just any old Tom, Dick or Harry – I choose my victims carefully. I’ve had my sights set on you since the day we first met. I’ve never liked you, you worthless prick!”
“But Dale…”
“I’ve always wanted to devour you and feel you moving around inside me, sentenced to death in my guts, waiting to be digested like the cheap little piece of meat you are.”
“Dale, no! Please, no!”
“Sorry, dude,” he roared, “I can’t hear you. Speak up!”
“Please,” I squeaked for all I was worth, “I’m begging you, really begging not to eat me!”
“Still can’t hear you!”
“Don’t do this to me, Dale! I am pleading with you!”
Tears began to well up in my eyes as he hummed loudly over my tiny panicking cries. For once his shyness and nerves had disappeared. My efforts to escape his grasps had long since waned and he was soon raising me aloft, parting his lips and lowering me upside down towards the ever-dilating gape. The ceiling light shone directly into his ravenous cave. His massive, vulgar tongue extended to welcome me within, its rough taste buds glossed by thick, sticky saliva and sliding gently against my helpless trembling body. My hands thrashed out, attempting to grasp a strong hold, but to no avail. I screamed out in terror as his awesome glistening throat widened and his fat dripping uvular rose and twitched. A rush of cold air chilled my skin as he inhaled and eased me toward the downward slop of his undulating tongue. Briefly, very briefly, I could see way down into the deep red tunnel of no return. I called out his name, hoping he would show mercy. Then darkness. That efficient mechanism of swallowing sprang into action. His tongue forced me against the roof of his mouth. Suddenly it lunged and I was hurled into the tight, slimy, muscular confines of his eager chute. My ears popped as my entire body was quickly warmed and squeezed as a wave of greed and power dragged me squealing into his magnificent forbidding depths.
Despite my then being only six-inches in height, his hideous, all-engulfing stomach offered me little or no room for manoeuvre. I managed only to right myself in the chest-deep pool of stodgy gastric bile. Weak and dazed, I gasped in a stinking mixture of acidic gasses, carbon dioxide from his drink and the precious little oxygen he’d sucked down with me, his easy meal. I swayed in the heat and darkness as he walked. A sudden fizzing shower told me that he had returned to finish his glass, each tiny bubble adding to the swell of his gut. It would only be a matter of time before he belched me into oblivion and soaked me up into his evil being. But first there was fun to be had: The fun of keeping me alive, the fun of having me an innocent prisoner within his skin. The farewell burp could wait a while as he kept another