The story is written by the incredible author Mysterion1800. This will be a part of a whole Father's Day week worth of stories, leading up to Sunday. If you'd like to reach out, his socials are below:X: https://x.com/Mysterion1800?s=20Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mysterion1800/

First Beer

Carson stared intensely at the clock on the opposite wall. It was almost five o’clock. He had been sitting on the couch since four, had been home from school since three, and had been eighteen years old since two.

Eighteen. At long last. He was eighteen.

Despite still being in math class at the time, Carson snuck a text message to his foreign friend on Discord within seconds of the turn of the hour, bragging about how he was now old enough to drink in his country, while his friend had to wait another long, grueling three years. Carson then spent the rest of the day thus far salivating over the can of beer his father had promised to give him later that night. 

Carson had already taken swigs of his father’s beer throughout his life. Under his father’s supervision, of course. However, this time, the can would be all his, and Carson couldn’t think of anyone he would want to share his first beer with more than the man who single-handedly raised him since he was two.

Nevertheless, the longer Carson waited for his father to return home from work, the more his thirst desired to be quenched. By the time five o’clock had come and passed, and his father still hadn’t come home, Carson’s loyalty to his father was now hanging by the thinnest of threads.

“I guess I could have my first by myself,” he pondered, a smirk taking shape on his face. “I just won’t tell Dad that the one I’m having with him is my second.”

Satisfied with this plan, Carson stood up from the couch and quickly padded out of the living room and into the kitchen. When he reached the refrigerator, he threw open the door with much more force than was needed. His eyes then scanned the shelves before locking onto his desired prize, one of many red and white cans of Molson, which had been his father’s favorite beer brand since before Carson was even born.

His fingers flexing with excitement, Carson reached out to grab the can at the very front. However, the moment Carson wrapped his fingers and palm around the can, he suddenly felt as if a wave had washed over him, depleting him of all the adrenaline he had built up since that afternoon. Carson’s eyes then immediately drooped, and the last sensation he had experienced before blacking out entirely was his body going completely limp, collapsing forward towards the shelves of the open refrigerator.

Carson groggily awoke some time later. He wasn’t sure how long he had been out, but what he did know was that he was on his back, drenched from head to toe in icy cold water, and was in an equally frigid place that was bathed in darkness.

“W-w-where the f-f-fuck…” he whispered to his new pitch black surroundings, his voice quaking from the cold.

He placed his palms flat on the ground, trying to lift himself up, but yelped and instinctively shut his eyes as the skin of his bare hands immediately became raw from the freezing floor, which, beneath a thin layer of water, felt as if it were made of steel.

His jaw still clenched from the pain, Carson exhaled through his teeth and opened his eyes once more, blinking several times in an attempt to get them to adjust to the darkness. To Carson’s surprise, they eventually did. He could see the ceiling above him, which curiously looked as if it were opaque rather than a solid color. There also appeared to be a large dark mass lying directly on top of the other side of the ceiling, suggesting that there was more beyond the dark space Carson was currently in. 

Carson blinked a few more times, hoping to obtain any extra details that he could. After what felt like the twentieth blink, he noticed there was some large text on the bottom of the mass above him. He then squinted, trying to bring the text into greater focus. 

BEST BY 15 JUNE 2026

21:57 15 06 2026

Carson did not know what to make of this at first. He knew that date was coming up. Next week, in fact. But there was something significant about that rather innocuous date. It had been brought up before. He pondered for a moment, and then it hit him. And at that same time, his breath froze in his throat.

Carson had heard it when he and his father had last gone grocery shopping. His father had read that date aloud on the bottom of a tub of sour cream, complaining about how it was going to go off sooner than he would’ve liked, but as there weren’t any tubs with better dates available in the store, he bought it anyway.

The gears inside Carson’s mind began turning fast. That mass above the ceiling was the same tub of sour cream his father had held in his rough hands a week ago. The water Carson had been lying in wasn’t just water, but condensation that would normally build up on a refrigerated aluminum can. There was also the frigid air as well as the darkness. Old memories of him as a young kid, wondering if the light inside the refrigerator stayed on when the door was shut, flooded back to him, mixing in with the terror he now felt at his core.

Carson had shrunk, more than likely to the size of a common ant, and was now stuck inside his own refrigerator on the very same can of Molson he had tried grabbing just before this nightmare had begun.

If Carson’s mind had been running at a hundred miles an hour a moment ago, it was now running at a thousand. 

“The f-f-fuck am I g-g-going to d-d-do?” He cried, his voice now shaking from fear as much as it was from the cold.

God then suddenly answered. Or rather, someone the size of a god did.

“YO! CARSON, I’M HOME!”

Even through the thick material of the fridge and the equally thick wall separating the kitchen from the living room, there was no mistaking that voice. Carson’s father Chris was finally home.

“D-d-dad?” Carson squeaked through chattering teeth, knowing full well his father would likely not hear him.

Carson then felt distant tremors as his father started walking through the house.

“YO! BIRTHDAY BOY? WHERE YOU AT?”

The tremors started growing in strength and volume. Carson was about to call out again when the refrigerator door suddenly started to open. The lights inside the refrigerator instantly came on, blinding Carson momentarily to the point where he threw up his arms in an attempt to shield his eyes. By the time his eyes adjusted, however, Carson was met with a sight that almost made him black out again.

The refrigerator door had been opened all the way now, and standing in front of it, slightly crouched, was a colossus that was Carson’s rough yet affectionate father.

“GUESS HE DIDN’T WANT TO SPEND HIS SPECIAL DAY WITH HIS OLD MAN, HUH? DAMN TEENAGERS.” Chris said under his breath as he placed a giant box, more than likely a birthday cake for Carson, onto the shelf above his diminutive son, pushing the tub of sour cream aside effortlessly.

“N-no, Dad. I’m here. I’m r-right here,” trembled Carson as he attempted to stand up again, fighting against the cold aluminum of the top of the Molson can.

Chris then reached out a calloused hand towards the can Carson was perched on. At first, Carson breathed a shaky sigh of relief, thinking his father had heard his son’s cries for help. However, Chris’s large blue eyes were not only impassive, but they weren’t even looking at anything in particular, let alone his shrunken son.

“GUESS I’LL CELEBRATE WITHOUT HIM THEN.”

Carson instantly deflated. “W-what?”

Carson was then thrown back onto his rear as Chris’s hand closed around the Molson can and began to lift it out of the refrigerator. Slamming the door shut, Chris returned to his full height, holding the beer level with his chest as his weathered thumb and forefinger descended upon the pull-tab, ready to pinch it open, unaware of the tiny passenger stranded next to it.

“Stop, Dad! Don’t!”

A loud hiss of carbonation exploded in Carson’s small ears just before a foamy geyser of beer flooded the top of the can, drenching the already soaked Carson further. Carson fought to keep his nose and mouth above the foam, but suffocating in the Molson was soon the least of his worries as he felt the can rise upwards towards his father’s bearded face, his father’s lips parting slightly.

“Dad, don’t! Please!” Carson begged. 

But it was futile. Chris’s upper lip smothered one side of the top of the can, nearly crushing Carson. A loud slurping noise filled Carson’s ears as his father cleared the foam away, sucking it into his huge mouth.

“No, Dad! Don’t eat me!”

Carson turned and tried to fight against the suction, but only found himself being pulled closer to his father’s lips.

At the last second, however, Chris, evidently satisfied with the amount of foam he had cleared away, pulled the can away from his lips, sighing with satisfaction, yet still unaware how close he came to swallowing his son alive.

“GOOD STUFF.”

Carson was more mortified than relieved. However, he would’ve had little time to savor his survival anyway as his father lowered the can to the side of his waist and began to walk to the living room, each footstep causing the beer inside the can to slosh around violently. 

Carson opted to stay flat on his stomach for the time being, praying his father would sit down soon. To his relief, his father collapsed into his usual spot on the couch and placed the can on the armrest, his rough hand still clasped around it as he used the other to pull out his phone and start surfing the web. 

After what felt like a minute’s calm, Carson finally got to his feet before turning and looking towards his god of a father sitting on his throne, unknowing and indifferent to his son’s predicament. Desperate, Carson began to wave his arms up and down wildly, hoping to take his father’s attention away from his phone.

“Dad! Down here! For God’s sake, look! I don’t want to die like this!” he sobbed, his eyes now overwhelmed with tears. “I-I don’t want to die on my birthday, Dad.”

Carson took a step forward. However, in his despair, he wasn’t watching where he was going. The aluminum ground beneath him dipped slightly, and Carson suddenly found himself falling forward once more, this time down a much steeper drop as he fell into the silo-sized Molson can itself and splashed into the ocean of cold beer waiting for him below.

“Fuck!” Carson screamed through tears as he surfaced. 

Getting his father’s attention was already proving to be improbable. Now, it would be impossible. 

Suddenly, there was the briefest sound of crumpling metal. By the light cast from the world outside, Carson saw the walls of the can compress a little as his father tightened his grip. The beer then sloshed around violently again, Carson in the middle of this torrent, as Chris raised the can into the air. 

“TO YOUR EIGHTEENTH, SON. HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” Chris said to himself, almost melancholy.

Through the opening in the can, Carson suddenly saw his father’s hairy lips reappear, descending to meet the rising can halfway. “Please, Daddy, n–”

Carson was then cut off as his father’s lips planted on the edge of the can once more, tipping it this time, and silencing any feeble pleas Carson could muster as he found himself overwhelmed by the cascading beer. He tried swimming against the current a second time, but gravity, the beer, and his father were all stronger than a gnat like him.

The beer, which had previously been ice cold, instantly changed temperature as it and Carson flowed into his father’s mouth. Blinded by the tide, which was also filling his lungs, poor Carson didn’t even have a chance to get a proper view of the inside of his father’s mouth before he felt himself fall even further into his father’s body, the walls of his father’s esophagus contracting with meaty squelches each time his father swallowed gallons of the drink his son had longed to have just twelve ounces of.

As the sphincter opened to welcome the beer and himself into his father’s stomach, it dawned on Carson that he would have only been eighteen for just a few hours.

Through with his pull, Chris lowered the can away from his lips, letting his previous swallow settle in his stomach before taking another swig. Molson helped take the edge off of a long day at work, but it didn’t take away his disappointment that Carson went back on his word and was clearly celebrating his birthday somewhere else. He just hoped that Carson wasn’t out drinking with someone else. He really wanted his son’s first real beer to be with him. Little did Chris know, his son still hadn’t had his first beer. The one he just had was still shared with his father.