It was 11:00 PM in Nick's apartment, the sky dark outside and a cold wind battering at the old panes. The TV was mainly on for background noise, showing some "World's Worst Culinary Disasters" documentary or something, largely ignored by the two people in the living room. Nick and his girlfriend Elisa were at it again: though very in love with each other, there were a couple points of irreconcilable contention between them, usually revolving around physical expressions of affection. Each tended to blow the other argument up into something larger, forcing the other to defend a ridiculous situation that bore little relevance to the original issue.

"You seem to believe in absolute equality," Nick repeated, rubbing his temples, "while I'm trying to tell you I believe in balance, and they're not necessarily the same thing."

"I believe in balance too," Elise said quietly.

"No, let me explain. Your ideal relationship would be one in which both partners are equally matched in capability, weaknesses and strengths?"

"Yes, equality everywhere."

"But if each one of them is a capable individual, why would they need to be in a relationship at all?"

Elise narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you saying?"

Nick got up from the floor and joined her on the loveseat, where she sat with her feet tucked up beneath her. She was wearing a large, oversized sweater that made him want to drop everything and just cuddle her, but some sterile, rational part of him insisted on being understood. "I'm not saying we should break up!" he assured her, holding her hand. "I'm saying that I believe in balance: partners have different strengths, different weaknesses that work around each other. Sometimes one person's in control, sometimes the other one is."

Elise shook her head, and her auburn hair shimmered in the dim apartment lighting. Nick's fuses had been blowing lately, so he back on candles whenever possible. "I can't accept being tied up. I can't see how that's an expression of affection at all," she said, raising her voice. Though six inches shorter than him, Elise had a personal presence that put nearly everyone off-balance. Not that she was hostile, but she was remarkably self-assured and didn't cater to people's insecurities or sensitivities. Her slender hands rested on the knees of her black jeans, and her grey sweater looked almost ochre in the candlelight.

Nick wore a black T-shirt over a long-sleeve grey thermal and black jeans as well. He unlaced his combat boots as he composed his thoughts. "I know where you come from, I know your history about being tied up."

She sighed. "It wasn't as dramatic as that. I just tried it with an ex-boyfriend, and it didn't work out. I didn't like being helpless, and I didn't want him helpless beneath me. I believe both people should be in control at all times. Your issue with domination and submission is really disturbing, Nick."

He looked over at her thoughtfully. "I don't think it's disturbing. I'm just tired of being in control all the time. I'd really like someone else to take charge. And before you say it, no, it's not enough to agree to be in charge. I really want someone to overpower me, overwhelm me. That's what I like about my giantess fetish."

This was a recent area of discussion for them, ever since his Towering Temptresses catalog came in the mail. Elise found it lying around and went through its pages, progressively more unsettled by everything she found until she sat him down and asked him what it was about. She could understand being obsessed with women's bodies, she could even understand objectification to a certain extent, but the predominant theme of women aggressively dominating women truly disturbed her and she couldn't accept it. She asked Nick to just keep it away from her, keep that part of his life to himself, and he agreed to that.

"I can't talk about this anymore tonight, Nick," she said. "I'm going out for a cigarette." Nick couldn't permit smoking in his apartment, so Elise would light up outside, at the front of the building.

"Want me to come with you?" he asked - he didn't like her being alone in his low-income neighborhood.

She shook her head, and again her hair bounced and lofted in the warm apartment atmosphere. "I need to be alone for a few minutes, sort this all out." She pulled her shoes on, slipped into her jacket, and locked the apartment door behind her as she left.

Nick sighed heavily and leaned back in the loveseat, truly frustrated. He didn't feel the need to bring Elise into his sordid fantasies—sometimes they made him feel dirty and callous, and he never wanted to associate that feeling with her. However, it was still a tremendously powerful erotic force, one he was unwilling to give up simply because his girlfriend couldn't reconcile with it. He lit up some incense and set it next to the candle on the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table, and curled up sideways on the loveseat to try to calm down.

He dozed for just a moment, so briefly that Elise hadn't returned from her smoke break, but when he opened his eyes he saw the incense had wafted up into a cloud above the candle. The candlelight illuminated the cloud, and for a moment he thought it had taken the shape of a woman's face.

Nick sat up and stared into the cloud, and then he knew it was a woman's face. It was two feet across and three feet high, nearly transparent and slightly shifting as the incense caught every tiny breeze in the apartment. The face was evenly balanced and finely-sculpted, with high cheekbones, full lips, and a stern gaze that bore down upon him. The apparition seemed to open its lips and exhale.

"You've got to be kidding me," Nick said flatly, as the world rushed up around him. The loveseat cushion spread outward in all directions, the weave of its fabric thickening and bulking up beneath him. His shirts welled up around him and billowed to the cushion, nearly empty but for a tiny, naked man sitting up in near (but hardly complete) surprise. His jeans draped over the edge of the loveseat and onto the hardwood floor. As Nick crawled out of the neck of his shirt, he saw the smoky apparition dissipate into thin air, just as Elise slipped the key in the lock of his door to let herself inside.

Nick watched his girlfriend enter, gazing far overhead. Her normally slight body now took on a monumental proportion and moved massively through the air, like a flying skyscraper or something like that. Nick shook his head at this ridiculous situation, getting inexplicably shrunk down by some mysterious mystical force, for his girlfriend to find him. And find him she did, eventually. She shed her jacket and tossed it onto the arm of the loveseat, nearly burying him in leather. She pulled off her shoes and sat down on the loveseat where she'd been before - he saw her full hips expand above him as she bent over, and then she sat down in slow motion... His heart raced as her buttocks stretched the black denim like two massive planetary spheres, perfect and inviting in their roundness, as they descended from the heavens to strike near him. Their collision with the cushion rocked his gigantic world, toppling him to the side. He had to grab the hem of his shirt collar to keep rolling down against her hip.

Elise sniffed the incense and grinned softly, though Nick could only peer up at the side of her face and see the cheek pull back. She ran her fingers through her hair –Nick saw fingers nearly as long as himself disappearing into her tresses—and leaned back in the loveseat. It was then she seemed to notice her boyfriend's clothes on the seat beside her and for a moment she wondered if he were naked in the bedroom, waiting for her to find him stretched out on the bed. But her keen eyes picked out her diminutive boyfriend, reeling from this overwhelming experience to try to kneel and look up at her.

Unflappable as ever, she pursed her lips for a moment and studied him before saying, "Okay, this is a remarkable development in our relationship, but I'm still not going to be dragged into these fantasies of yours."

Nick stared up at Elise, and Elise stared down at Nick. They stared at each other for a long time. Elise tried to imagine what mystical or physical condition could've happened to actually shrink Nick down, while Nick's thoughts were less pragmatic: he was simply drinking in the impressive monolith that was his girlfriend. Her hand rested on the shoulder of his shirt beside her, and sitting upright, he was just taller than her wrist. He figured he had to be about the size of an action figure, about four inches, based on the size of her hand compared to his new perspective.

Elise slowly raised her hand and extended a forefinger, making no sudden moves to startle her miniscule boyfriend. He'd been sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees; he shifted to lean back on his arms and stretch his legs out, opening his chest to her. She brought her fingertip in: to him, it was the size of a large log, maybe thicker than a telephone pole. He marveled at how such a huge item could hover in the air before him. She brought it in closer, slowly, until the soft, rounded tip of her finger finally made contact with his chest. Frowning thoughtfully, she stroked his bare chest repeatedly, exercising as much caution as she could in this, fully cognizant of the fact that she could probably crumple him like a Dixie cup.

"How, exactly, did this happen to you?" she asked him. "I mean, I was just gone for five minutes. What could you possibly have done?"

Nick shrugged, wondering absently if he'd have to exaggerate his gestures so her eyes could see them, then mused over how clownish that would feel. He'd feel like a miniature Jim Carrey, without the paycheck. "I really have no idea, hon. I just stretched out to take a little nap, and... well, I lit some incense, first."

Elise smiled, sniffing the air. "Yeah, I noticed that. I really like it. What kind is it?"

He pointed at a foil packet on the steamer trunk. "You tell me. I've never seen it before. It was just next to that purple candle, I figured it was yours." Her blank expression—broad as a billboard—told him much. "Oh, how hokey," he said, rubbing his temple with one tiny hand.

"What's that?" she asked, settling herself to face him. She turned towards him and drew up one enormous, black-clad leg perpendicular to him, tucking its foot under her other knee and leaning forward to listen to him. Despite his miniature size, she had remarkably little difficulty in hearing him: he sounded like he was speaking to her through an old aviator's radio with the volume turned down just a little.

Nick gestured all about him, laughing. "Oh, all of this. It's happening just like in one of those giantess stories I like to read. Some mysterious element just appears out of nowhere to give a character dominion over the laws of physics, or some paranormal event takes place and someone falls victim to it, blah-dee-blah..."

Never having read any of those stories—not for lack of Nick's suggestion—Elise could only trust in what he was saying. She asked, "Is that what this is like?"

He nodded. "It's just like this. You and I argue about giantesses, you storm out-..."

"I didn't storm out," she asserted. "I went out for a smoke, just to take all this in."

"Yes, that's right, honey. I just mean, that's a common formula. Foreshadowing, an opportunity for the event... in this case, the incense out of nowhere. I light it up, some woman's face appears in the smoke, and she blows on me and I shrink down. You come in, yadda yadda yadda..."

"Yadda yadda yadda?" Elise asked. "This happens in all the stories?"

"Well, sometimes it's a magical potion that an unhappy housewife discovers, or a ring given to an abused girlfriend by a witch, or an amulet from... aliens, I think it was, once...."

"And is the giantess always as reluctant as I am?"

Nick shook his head. "Oh, no. If it's a revenge story, she leaps right into the action, abusing her diminished tormentor... with her body, of course."

Elise looked down at him. "Is that what you want me to do, Nick? I really wouldn't get any enjoyment out of hurting you."

"And I really wouldn't enjoy getting the snot beat out of me, either," he said, "though I would like to get a little closer to you."

Elise looked at him sideways. "How do you mean? This is really unnerving, Nick."

He shakily rose to his feet, standing upon a broad plane of fabric that used to be his T-shirt. He raised his arms slightly and called up to her, "Well, let's just... get used to each other, like this. Could you pick me up and, say, rest me on your knee..."

She frowned thoughtfully again—Nick always thought that expression was cute, the way her lower lip pushed out. But at this size, staring up at a beautiful, even-faced goddess pouting at him, his heart throbbed enthusiastically. She upturned her palm and rested her hand on the shirt, just beside him, not trusting herself to grip him gently enough. He stepped onto her palm, and again his pulse raced at the soft fleshy feel beneath his bare feet. He braced himself against her thumb, noting how tiny his hand looked beside her huge, silver thumb ring, and climbed into her palm. He sat down like he had on the couch, drawing his legs up and hugging his knees loosely.

Out of curiosity, Elise had to raise him to her face, as if she were studying a gem or other small artifact. Caution was always on her mind, careful not to crush him or let him spill out of her hand, but she drew him near her eyes and scrutinized him. It was certainly her boyfriend, and she couldn't get over the detail of his face, the tiny eyebrows, the miniscule fingernails on each tiny finger, and... well, he was naked, she was bound to notice his genitalia. She sighed, already missing how he used to feel inside her.

Nick, on the other hand, was in a private heaven. Her enormous body was no less lithe as the sheer cliff face of her sweater raced past his little platform, and he felt a wonderful, longing adoration for her huge, soft breasts behind the knitted wool. And again, if she was beautiful before, as a giantess she was positively breathtaking. He absolutely lost himself in her huge hazel eyes, and he stared at them, watching them twitch slightly as she examined every aspect of his tiny self. Her thin, button nose was even more adorable, and he smiled at the thought of stroking it... comfortingly, or however. And her lips? Nick's heart skipped a beat as he thought of those huge, soft lips, parted slightly in wonderment. Her breath, slightly sweet with decay, gently suggested itself at him, and his gaze peered into the black cavern beyond her teeth...

His reverie was broken by sudden motion as she lowered him back down and rested her hand on her knee. Very reluctantly, he climbed off and perched upon her thigh, lying on his back to stabilize himself as well as touch her leg with as much of his body as possible. Elise withdrew her hand and leaned over him. Nick, enshrouded in the canopy of her hair, inhaled her sweet musk deeply.

"Is that better? There, on my leg?" she asked him.

Slowly he remembered how to speak English and assured her it would do. He really didn't want to push this issue with her, knowing how quickly it could spin out of control... and yet, he was so eager for more! He supposed he could pace himself, since he was probably going to be this size for a while, and she'd be kind enough to keep him around. Anything could happen, he told himself.

"You're awfully comfortable around me, for someone so helpless... and naked," she remarked.

He blushed furiously at that and crumpled back up into a ball. "I, um... yeah, my clothes," he stammered.

Elise grinned brightly, and it warmed him somewhat. She said, "You know, you were never shy about lounging around with me completely nude before."

"Yeah, well, you were usually naked with me... and I was a bit taller than you, too." He smiled slowly. "You know, if you really wanted to even the score a little..."

"Don't even think of it," she said sternly. "I'm not going to take off my clothes to go along with your little fantasy. This is... really weird for me, Nick." She sighed, and again breathed a gust of warm, personal air over his tiny body. She raised her forefinger up again, showing it to him so he knew it was coming, then slowly stroked his side. Tenderly, she felt for his ribs, then his pelvis, and said quietly, "Come on and open up, Nick. You were... cute, like that. You still look really nice, even at that size. I like looking at you," she added. He looked up at her and unfolded himself, slowly, and she continued to stroke his body with her fingertip.

It was a remarkable sensation for him, to have this huge, rounded pad of flesh running over his body. She never pressed painfully hard, but with enough pressure to feel like a hard snuggle, and he enjoyed it. He closed his eyes and focused on the sensation, trying to push his exposed self out of his mind. She rubbed her huge fingertip in broad circles over his chest, and he dug his head back into her thigh, grinning indulgently. She ran her fingertip down the outside of his legs, and inevitably he wondered if she would grace him with a gentle touch between his thighs. 'All in good time, all in good time,' he thought, sighing.

Nick and Elise went to bed that night, in the loosest sense. Nick didn't actually get to share the bed, as Elise was afraid of rolling on top of him in her sleep (though he secretly relished the idea) and crushing him. He tried to assure her that she was typically a very still and motionless sleeper, but he suspected her own reservations about this whole giantess scenario were her truer motivations for the accommodations: he spent the night in her jewelry box on the dresser. The lid was propped open and it was already lined with velvet, so it wasn't too uncomfortable. But lying there in the silence of the night, laying on a folded pair of socks for cushioning, staring at the ceiling, the actual significance of his situation began to creep up on him.

Obviously, he couldn't go in for work tomorrow. Was he going to lose his job? Would he ever get his height restored, so he could go back and request his position again? His and Elise's incomes were what enabled them to afford their apartment in the nicer part of town: now what? He rolled over to his side, staring at the bronze lip of the jewelry box. Traditionally, he realized, this was the part of the story where the tiny man realizes what a tremendous burden he poses upon the giantess, and makes plans to flee and fend for himself. Nick didn't consider himself a coward, but he knew he didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell outside, in the city at large. If he didn't get run over by a car or hunted down by a cat... Christ, some transient in the neighborhood might find him... Nick shuddered violently and pulled a corner of sock up to cover himself. His soft brown eyes penetrated the velvet wall of his bed-box--there was also the issue of his friends. They got along with Elise as well, and they would doubtlessly grill her with questions once Nick had disappeared for a couple of days. And... oh, damn, there was that techno show this Saturday: Universal Female Adapter was playing at Bivouac, and he'd purchased tickets ahead of time. Rolling over to lie on his chest, Nick reasoned that would be the easiest solution of all the problems facing him: Elise would simply get in with her ticket and keep him in her pocket, and while he wouldn't use his own ticket, he'd still be seeing the show, so he wouldn't exactly be out $12. Elise could give the ticket to one of her friends... and... Nick slowly drifted to sleep, lost in his thoughts.

Far off in a remote under-mountain laboratory, a dozen burned-out scientists buzzed about their clinical hive, checking monitors and taking notes in a cryptic shorthand.

"How's subject #3257 coping?" a tall, greying man in lab coat asked.

The younger assistant, behind a console of three screens and two keyboards, read the data off a neurotransmission transcriber: "Subject #3257 seems to be mid-range. This strip here represents his theta waves, indicating he's fairly receptive to the idea of being a tiny person. This erratic feedback up here, however, represents a synaptic transfer we've correlated to personal conflict. He could be experiencing anything from fear of a household pet to an inventory of exactly how his life has changed." The younger man leaned over a 3-ring binder of codes and patterns, running his fingers down to the third paragraph. "...Okay, this seems more analogous to introspection, so it's reasonable to assume he's assessing his responsibilities. ...Oh, wait, now he's going to sleep."

The older man nodded and made terse notes on his clipboard. "Your summary?" he asked.

"Subject is experiencing typical self-doubt and the precepts of alienation, but seems to have an adequate coping mechanism. Also, he entered into this stage fairly early, so he may be particularly resourceful, or merely confident in his environment."

Again, the greying man nodded and noted this as well. "He's probably worried about rent or something," he muttered. "Mail them off their first check in the morning."

"Got it," the young man said. "You want another holographic imaging pattern sent over, to reassure him of his fate or somesuch?"

The older man scanned the clipboard, then looked up at the Big Screen thoughtfully. "Naah, that won't be necessary. Just mail them the check, and look in on #2290's status for me."

Nick stretched as he arose, listening to Elise bumping around the bedroom, fumbling for her clothes. He smiled to himself, listening. "Honey," he called out, "I just had the strangest dream..."

Elise walked over to the dresser and leaned over him, resting on her elbows and leaning down to blow him a kiss from a short distance. She wore only a pair of panties and a pair of socks, from what he saw. Her breasts, moderately-sized when he was big, were enormous and rested upon her forearms with a seductive, ponderous weight. "You're locked in your idiom, Nick, and you know I hate clichés..." She lifted him up by grasping the sock upon which he reclined and set him onto the dresser, commencing to refill her jewelry box.

He grinned up at her and said, "No, seriously, I dreamed Nikita Kruschev and I were in a basement with only one exit, this rickety wooden staircase, and the room slowly filled up with melted butter." He scratched his head and rolled off the sock, walking around on the dresser to stretch his legs. The varnished mahogany chilled his feet, but he withstood it. "And he had three boiled lobsters, and I had five lobsters and... and Alaskan king crab, I think... and then Carl Sagan walked in with a lit cigarette..."

Elise laughed and stroked his short, brown hair with a broad fingertip before turning around to straighten out the bedsheets and look for her bra. "That wasn't your dream," she said, "that was an old SNL sketch we saw on that tape last week, remember?"

Nick rubbed his chin. "Oh yeah," he said. He realized he needed a shave, he was getting kind of rough... but then, who would notice? Elise? What, were his tiny little whiskers going to take on the quality of fine razor blades and shred her skin? He decided he could let it go for a while, work it out later. He called out to her, "Hey, don't you have work today?"

"Yeah, I'm covering Jennifer's hours at the bookstore. She has to take off for a wedding, and I could use the extra money. Some new feng shui material came in I'm really interested in..." She paused and looked at him, standing straight. The orange sunrise shone through the window to her side, and half of her glowed with a peachy luminescence. "Oh no. What about you?"

He paused in his stride on the dresser. "I, um..." he started, then sighed. "Look. I know it'll creep you out to keep me around with you, so just..." He walked over to a fine silver ring and began booting it around, idly. "How about you put me on the steamer trunk and leave the TV on? Slice up a banana for me to eat throughout the day, and... um, get me a bottle cap from a soda bottle in the recycling bag."

Elise sat down on the edge of the bed and started brushing her curly auburn hair. Nick took a moment's enjoyment in watching her nicely-shaped breasts shudder from side to side as she vigorously brushed herself. "A bottle cap? What for?" she asked.

"You know, for... waste products," he said. "They may be tiny, but I still have my intestines. I still make poop."

Elise stared at him a while as her brushing slowed down, and then her hand fell to her side. After a thoughtful moment, she rose wordlessly from the bed and started rifling through her closet for the day's outfit. She yanked out a cranberry linen button-up blouse and her khaki cargo skirt. She dressed hastily, noticing the time, and pulled on a pair of hiking boots, to be laced up later. Nick held his arms around his ribs as she reached over for him, and he was struck by the intimidating visual of her open, flat palm rushing at her, her huge fingers splayed and stretching around him. Embraced in her morning-sleepy warmth, he grinned to himself. "Comedy Central should work for most of the day," he called up to her, "if they don't keep playing Johnny Dangerously."

However, she didn't take him to the living room. She grabbed the sock from the dresser, unbuttoned one of her cargo pocket, and wrapped him up in the sock before inserting him carefully into her left cargo pocket. Nick looked up at her in genuine surprise; her face was one of resolute determination, and he imagined she was probably overriding some of her personal compunctions against this, but apparently she thought this was the best idea - he was coming with her to work. Elise kissed her fingertip and pressed it against his tiny cheek before buttoning up the pocket and running out to her car. Nick jostled very pleasantly against her firm, warm thigh and looked forward to the rest of the day.

It wasn't a tight-fitting skirt that Elise chose that day, it was more a blossom of khaki and linen with shallow billows-pockets on either side. Nick found plenty of room to stretch out as he shared the driver's seat with her in the mid-90s model VW Jetta. A brighter red than her burgundy blouse, it rolled out of the driveway and took off for the highway as Elise headed off to work.

Nick again took stock of his surroundings, a sensory inventory to calm his mind and help him to focus. If he let his mind wander he either became unreasonably horny or frantic with the realization of how much his life had changed and how powerless he was to recover it. Paradoxically, there also lingered the thought that this was perhaps a temporary condition, hope against hope, and he should burn these images and senses into his mind while he may observe them from this vantage point. He knelt upon the seat, from within the cargo pocket, and splayed his fingers upon the fabric beneath him. The linen was of a very loose weave, at his size, but the fibers were plenty strong and unyielding. He could just barely sense the contours of the driver's seat, the rough weave upholstering and plastic seams. All around him the roar of the engine vibrated the air, accelerating and dwindling away like a valley of angry dragons just on the other side of the mountain. . .

The mountain, the warm ridge of female flesh beside him. Heat radiated off of Elise's thigh like a sun-baked side of a building. He felt it was such a different sense of heat, as well, since it burned from her muscles and exuded through her sweet, sweet skin. If you could feel the quality of scent in a perfume, if scent were a tactile stimulation, the heat off her thigh would be it. He smiled, closed his eyes, and let it soak into him.

From without layers of fabric enshrouding the tiny man, Elise said, "Hold on, Nick, tight turn..." Gravity abruptly shifted and threw him against his girlfriend's thigh as she swung the vehicle hard to the left. The car settled back in its lane and her massive log of leg rolled gently upon Nick, overpowering him mindlessly, effortlessly. He found himself half-pinned beneath her thigh as she adjusted herself in the seat. Not wishing to jinx this magic moment, as the blood drained from his legs yet his erection rose beneath the huge monolith of flesh, Nick held his breath and said not a word. "Sorry about that, honey. Crazy drivers today. You okay?" she spoke to him.

He carefully released his breath and called up, "Oh, sure, not a problem," as casually as possible. She seemed satisfied with the answer as she made no move to pick herself up off of her boyfriend. For the rest of the trip to the bookstore, Nick enjoyed every pothole, speed bump, and thank-you-ma'am in the road for the tremendous shockwave they sent through dear Elise's thigh, rippling and rumbling over his tiny body excitingly. He knew there wasn't enough gas in the world to keep this car going long enough for him to tire of this wonderful situation, and all too soon they pulled into the parking lot.

Gathering her things, Elise saw her cargo pocket was caught beneath her leg and hastily yanked it out from beneath her seat. "Oh my God!" she cried. "Are you okay, Nick? Did I crush you?" She extracted him cautiously from the pocket and held him up to her face to examine the tiny nude man.

His legs tingled pleasantly from the ride, as well as the circulation restoring to them, and he could only smile back up at her concerned expression. He attempted to reassure her: "I'm perfectly fine, honey, really. It was a snug fit, but it wasn't unpleasant at all! I hardly noticed." He waved amiably up at her to accentuate his claim.

She seemed satisfied with his answer. Hesitantly, she raised him to her face - which beautiful visage swelled and grew in his vision - and placed as gentle a kiss upon his forehead as possible. To him, this translated into two beautiful lips the size of a small sleeping bag puckering up, hovering tantalizingly above him, and somewhat roughly mashing into his face. Again, a delightful sensation, as his vision, scent, taste, hearing, and tactile capacities were overwhelmed with her soft, sweet lips and anxious breathing. He pressed his face into her kiss, his heart pounding, and placed both hands modestly over his raging hard-on.

"It's time for me to go to work, I'm almost late," she noted, slipping him back into her cargo pocket. "I'll try to be more careful throughout the day. You be sure and let me know if anything's wrong, okay?" She tilted her head as her hiking boots clomped across the asphalt. Not hearing anything from him, she added, "How about you just tug on my skirt or poke at my leg once for yes and twice for no. . . " That provoked one soft little fist, smaller than a pencil eraser, nudging at her leg. Again satisfied, she strode through the huge doors of the bookstore and made a beeline for the back room, to punch in for her workday.

Nick's thoughts were racing as he lay nestled in her pocket. The view never changed, except for patches of light and shadow sailing over the fabric, but the noise was a cacophony of activity that suddenly sent a shiver of panic up his spine. When normal-sized, he'd never been a fan of crowds in particular but could manage his way through one with minimal effort. Now, however, the noises were overwhelming and he knew they were coming from giants several dozen times his own size. If the pocket were somehow to give and he tumbled onto the floor. . . would anyone even see him before he was crushed beneath some huge sole? Would his last image of Elise be that of her voluminous skirt sailing away like a perambulatory mountain of khaki, just before a dirty white Converse sole descended upon his frail frame? His heart started racing and his fists clutched handfuls of fabric. He told himself logically there was no way he could produce enough weight to test the strain of the fabric and fall to the floor, he knew this was true. It was simply a train of thought his mind, once engaged, found difficult to leave. He took small consolation in being so close to his girlfriend, since she was wrapped up in her own world and he only idly bounced against her thigh.

It took him a few minutes to calm himself down; it helped that Elise stopped for some coffee before going to work. Sitting in the café she reached down to gently stroke what she hoped would be Nick's back. It felt right, the concave bend in the middle of tiny tangled limbs. "How are you doing down there, honey?" she whispered, staring into her coffee.

Nick gathered his breath and called up to her as gently as he could, "I'm fine, sweetheart. I just had a panic attack, I'm fine now." After a moment he added, "Promise me if you suddenly feel your pocket go a couple grams lighter or you don't feel me banging off your thigh, you'll stop and look around for me. . . "

She wondered where that came from but agreed to it promptly.

Soon coffee was over and she had to attend to her duties in the store. It was a game for Nick to try to pick out one sound out of the ocean of noises and identify it. Sometimes it was easy: the shrill cry of an angry child; two matrons gabbering about cooking recipies; the plaintive whine of some loser looking for the self-help section (Nick suspected there was an oxymoron in there somewhere). Sometimes it was more difficult, when all voices were raised to a similar volume, or when the speaker could have been a young boy or a small woman, or someone of either gender with a dire smoker's rasp. Venturing within his pocket, he slowly raised himself to his feet, gripping the pleats of the cargo pocket very tightly, and extended his legs until his head just came up to the seam of the pocket. He dared to grip the seam and pull just a little downwards. . .

And the entire world was opened up to him, albeit from a dramatically altered perspective. Much of the world was a blurry rush of book spines, colors and textures, as Elise skirted the aisles and led customers to their destinations, but once in a while she stood still and he could peer about. He was about eye-level with baby strollers and toddlers; he was merely knee-high to the rest of the population. As fearful as he'd been before, trepidation slowly gave way to amazement as he studied the once-familiar landscape around him. Jeans strode by powerfully; skirts fluttered past; hips rumbled and asses shook, and shoes and boots engaged in thunderous collision with the floor non-stop. He was surprised to imagine that everyone's spines didn't just shatter with the terrible impact of heel upon floor, time and time again! Yet there they were, tall and strong and proud, going about their business.

Nick began to wish he could steer Elise around rather than jostle about only as far as she stood or walked, because there were a couple interesting straits he would have liked to pursue. Two teenaged girls were sitting in the café talking to each other rapidly, their smooth hands fluttering in the air, fingertips twitching and twirling like the antennae of butterfly in communication with each other. Their part of the café happened to be next to the foreign history section, and Elise's customer proved to be quite dull, requiring several explanations to get across exactly what this section offered in terms of history and other countries. Keep talking, keep asking questions, you idiot, Nick thought to himself. He was staring transfixedly at the girls in their seats, being maybe a few yards away from them (his scale). They both wore jeans that were nicely faded and clung snugly to their developing hips. The girl on the right tended to shift in her seat with some frequency, as if never comfortable with how she were arranged. Full within his gaze, her ass shifted and slid over the wooden chair, rising gently and then lowering, plumping out with the ponderous weight of the young woman squooshing down upon it. More talking, more rocking back and forth - she seemed to enjoy rolling back and forth on her buttocks, her pelvis never touching the chair as she floated on layers of muscle, fat, and young firm skin - all accentuated by the lines and creases in her jeans. Nick felt himself get a little aroused, and cupped his hand over his genitalia to keep from poking into the fabric of her pocket (as if anyone could notice).

Then she did an unconscious, sexy thing: she shucked her sandals off, gripping each back with her toes and pushing them off, and tucked her right foot beneath her left thigh. So situated, she leaned forward to talk conspiratorily to her friend, as if imagining anyone in the café could possibly care what two teenage girls have to confide in each other. Nick cared, however, for her new position: she had a darling row of pink-orangey toes that twitched reflexively before a broad pad of soft instep. All her skin seemed to glow with youth, and the enormous log of thigh that pressed upon it resisted spreading all over by virtue of the strong young skin encasing it. Her toes twitched and he caught a glint of burnished silver - she was wearing a toe ring! Nick never thought much of them before, but now, seeing that band of carved metal around one slender, darling toe, waggling seductively beneath a huge wave of faded denim painted onto a long, strong thigh. . .

Abruptly, Elise spun on her heel and marched over to the information desk. Her customer had evidently found what he was looking for and was fine to leave on his own for a while. Nick bit his lip to keep from howling with disappointment and longing, as the flap above the pocket bore down upon his head: Elise rubbed his head gently with one fingertip to make sure he was okay and to remind him she was thinking about him. She didn't find it so unpleasant to keep her boyfriend around with her: even if he couldn't talk to her, he still kept her company and it made work a little more bearable.

"Yes, yes, I love you too," he muttered darkly, reaching out of the pocket to stroke her fingertip. For a moment he felt bad, what with his girlfriend being right there; indeed, her thigh being the mighty redwood that stood behind him scant inches away. But only for a moment for, as Elise turned, he saw something that froze his blood and turned his heart to stone.

A young girl, maybe six years old, was bending over just slightly to stare at him with huge blue eyes. Her thick brown hair fell like a waterfall around the sides of her round face, and her pink mouth was hanging agape as she studied the tiny little man in the woman's pocket. One of her arms was pulled idly back by her mother, only making a token gesture of restraining the girl; her other arm lifted, trancelike, and her young, stubby fingers extended and reached straight for Nick's tiny head.

Nick was unable to breathe. This was the worst situation imaginable--after, of course, being crushed under some unknowing shoe or maybe dropped down an outhouse at a campsite... okay, there were several more unpleasant situations he could imagine, but this right here was a disaster. He was standing in the cargo pocket of his girlfriend's skirt, nude as the day of his birth, staring at the pudgy, grubby palm of an enormous young girl. The palm in question was only increasing in size as it flew closer and closer to him.

Time, in fact, seemed to slow down as his mind flooded with trying to conjure an escape plan. Duck? That would only postpone the inevitable: a young and curious girl would think nothing of digging in someone else's pocket, harboring no nuance of personal space, and that's assuming he could motivate his stiffened-with-fright body to respond in time.

Overhead there was a shrill yelp. Nick's body flew away from Elise's thigh and what sliver of world he could see from her pocket was smeared and streaked in a classic motion blur. Finally, there was a deep, robust clash of thunder and Nick's tiny body was permitted to collapse to the bottom of the skirt pocket.

"What are you doing?!" cried his girlfriend, up and outside. There was a second voice, that of a mature woman saying two things at once, but Nick could only pick out the scolding-noises and the apology-noises. At the young girl's wail, he scrambled to peek out of the edge of the pocket once again and was rewarded with the sight of the young girl being swiftly hauled away by her very flustered mother.

Then gravity failed for a moment and Nick was weightless, until it resumed and placed the pocket around him at a 90-degree angle to where it was. Elise had crouched rapidly and now her tiny boyfriend lay gently against the ouside of her calf. "Are you okay?" she hissed at him, preoccupied with collecting a small load of books from the floor. Nick (correctly) surmised she had staged a small accident when she realized what the little girl was up to.

He heaved a deep sigh of relief at his lover's cleverness. "Very good, thank you, sweetie. Just let my heart resume pumping and we can have a normal conversation again."

"What was going on down there?"

"I'm sorry, it's my fault. I was staring at-... I was looking around at the world outside and I guess that little girl saw me." He blushed, very nearly blurting out the objet d'amour that had commanded his attention and almost led to his capture.

"Well, what in the world were you-..." There was a pause, then Elise rocketed skyward and Nick tumbled in his resituation. "I see. Perhaps stashing you in a big pocket is a little too much freedom for such a busy and curious little man." He detected more than a trace of hardness in her tone. Had she always had such perspicacity of her environment? This struck him as a troubling oversight and he made a mental note to review his past relationship, when he had a free moment, to see if he'd screwed up at points in the past by underestimating her awareness.

The thunderous shudder of her thigh, with corresponding boot-thunder upon the hardwood floor in the bookstore, told him that they were in motion. Lying in the bottom of her pocket, unwilling to stand and peer out again, he saw end-caps and oversized patrons fly by. He wondered where they were headed.

The cloying scent of powdered flowers and chlorine told him: the women's room. Elise's boots clattered on the tile floor, with superior acoustics amplifying them. While he would have done a lot to sneak into such a haven in the past, and while he would have paid two king's ransoms to visit it while a tiny little man, in his current straits he dared not peer outside of his confines. When a simple thumb-and-forefinger could collapse his skull like a grape, he deemed it prudent to let her lead this dance and him to follow her broad and far-ranging steps. Oh, Fate, the bitch goddess who gives to us and takes away.

Elise's own hand thrust rudely into his domain--her pocket--and her cautiously splayed fingers clamped gently but firmly around him, once she detected where and how he lay. The warm insulation of the pocket was stolen and replaced by garish lighting and chill bathroom air. He shielded his eyes from the shock of the fluorescent fixtures with the only arm that was free of her massy palm, and after her blouse raced below his view like a sheet of torrential rain, he found himself hovering before his girlfriend's very stern face.

"You need to do a better job of staying hidden," she scolded--and he assumed therefore that no one else was in here--"and if you won't do that much, it will be done to you." She could have placed him gently upon the public bathroom's vanity, but instead she held him several feet (his scale) above it and released him to freefall the short distance. His bare ass smacked the formica surface that immediately began sucking the body heat out of his tiny frame. To his left was a crappy grouting job around a gigantic sink; to the right was a scummy soap dispenser; and before him, past where the formica tapered and fell away, was his girlfriend's khaki cargo skirt, up to the belt, and then her blouse. A blouse which slowly rose, then quickly rose, exposing the tall, flat plain of Elise's perfect, young woman's belly.

Recent fright regardless, his erection sprang to life. Distantly he thought men's bodies were wired so strangely, but presently he could only stare at Elise's smooth skin, glowing with vitality, sprinkled with fine, tiny, pale hairs. There, that was her darling bellybutton, and he'd always loved it originally but now that he could fit his face inside it, it was beyond cute. And her ribs, that gentle ridge where the bottom of her ribs ended and the slight cavity of her abdomen started, oh yes, that was his favorite too. He longed to press himself, naked and whole, against her skin and absorb that specific flavor of her body heat, to just writhe and kiss and celebrate his girlfriend made of satin.

But the blouse continued to rise and then, way up there--above where there would otherwise have been treetops--was the underwire of her beige bra, and there were the stupendous cups holding those twin blessings to woman and man alike, and... Even his erotic reverie paused for a second. "Elise, are you undressing in the women's room?" he called up, his tinny voice echoing in the basin beside him.

Her arms, raised with the effort of pulling her blouse up to hitch around her neck and shoulders, flopped to her sides. "No, I'm finding a new place for you." She bent at the waist and her face rushed at him like an errant asteroid, stopping to hover just above him. Honestly, he nearly shat himself. "And while this is going to be a real treat for you, I swear, you had better behave yourself or I'm going to turn into one of those troubled little boys that school administration keep a close eye on in elementary school..." her full, rosy lips danced just above him, her breath sweet with the slight scent of decay, "...because I'm going to pull your limbs off." She punctuated her threat with a resounding clack of her teeth.

That did it: Nick's happy hard-on deflated, a failed balloon animal. "Anything you say, dear," he stammered. "I swear."

Her head spun, planet-like, to position her large and breathtaking hazel eye directly above his head. Her pupil focused and enlarged at him, as though it intended to swallow him on the command of its mistress, and as he goggled at it, a transparent fish-bowled Nick goggled back at him from it. "I'm serious, Nick. Every extra minute you live is a gift from me, now, understand? I love you, but I'm in charge of you and if I have to fight you to keep you safe, I'm not going to fight very hard."

Nick's heart fell. "Elise? What are you saying?"

The stunning hazel iris flicked to the left, to the door, then back down upon him. "You're my boyfriend, but this is a very unusual situation. You're living your giantess fantasy now--" (not hardly, he thought) "--but this was never my thing. It's hard to accept you're going to stay this way, and that's bad enough, but having you pull stunts like back in the café or messing with my patience..." Her face pulled back just as her lips started to purse and wrinkle. She took her time in straightening up, then said, "Just behave. Seriously," and reached for him.

He didn't know if it would help, but Nick held up his arms and straightened his bare legs out, rolling to the side as her fingertips approached from the other side, then rolled upon the soft-bedded logs of her fingers. She scooped him much more gently than she'd extracted him from her pocket, raised him up past the beautiful stretch of her belly and into the valley of her bra cups.

Nick stared at her. Her face was inscrutable but for a shade of concentration, perhaps. Her other hand rose in his periphery, disappeared, and then one of her bra cups tugged and opened like the greatest doorway in the entire goddamned world.

Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease, thought Nick.

And it was true: Elise hooked the cup open with her thumb and gently, gently dumped Nick's silly, tiny body against the ineffable sweetness of her left breast. It was all he could do to refrain from leaping in there--best not to tempt Fate just yet--but she landed him upon the upper slope of her soft and silky boob, and he spread himself out to slide deliciously down her curvature. Her nipple turned up between his thighs and lightly stunned his genitalia, but before he could curl up into the fetal position, her bra snapped back into place and squashed him securely against her massive mammary.

"Can you hear me in there, Nicholas?" He nodded. "Can you? Are you okay in there, Nick?" She couldn't see or feel him nod; he drew his hand back as far as he could, aganst the bra cup, and smacked her breast two times. "Okay, good. Two is yes, right?" Two more smacks. "Good. I'm going back out now," and there was a mighty roar as she pulled miles of blouse fabric down over her bra, "...then no more, okay?"

Nick blinked. Two was yes so one was no, but what was I didn't hear any of that? Two large concepts struggled for dominance in his mind: 1) "I need to find a way to get her to repeat that, it might have been important." 2) "HOLYFUCKINCHRIST, THE MOST GLORIOUS TITTY IN THE WORLD IS SHOVING INTO ME!" His cognitive process took too long and she stage-whispered, "Did you hear me?" One smack.

"Okay. I said I'm going back out there, so you get one last chance to squirm yourself into position and get comfortable, and then no more. You are going to lie still in there until we get home, because I get no more breaks for the day. You will not squirm, you will not play with my nipple, and if I even think I feel a trickle of semen running down my boob..." The quietude of the bathroom was replaced with the distant and dull roar of her literary mercantile business, though his cramped quarters stayed a uniform level of dimness. "It's a sunny day, and we sell magnifying glasses. Got it?" Two smacks.

He began to adjust himself--how best to do this? He pondered. Probably a spread-eagle position would be best. It didn't seem like he would slip out the bottom, with the sheer tonnage of this delightful, blessed girl-flesh pinning him in this concave fabric cavern. So if he managed to fall asleep, he could do so safely. Otherwise, spreading himself out would provide maximum enjoyment of her erotically charged surface area.

Nick pushed his tiny arms out to the sides, essentially hugging Elise's full breast in a prolonged embrace, and stretched his little legs out. The curve of her boob and the cup were such that he couldn't keep them straight or his knees would go backwards, so he bent his knees and turned his legs out, a bit like a cartoon frog or something. It looked ridiculous but no one was there to see it and, frankly, it jammed his tiny hips against her breast. That was no kind of bad. His erection obediently lay flat against his own stomach, its burning underside only slightly rubbing against the skin of her tit, and he would just have to suppress his raging libido for a few hours. No problem.

As for his head, it happened to nestle comfortably upon her aureola, his face nudging against the stump of her nipple. He tested the waters by giving her a tiny little kiss, small even by his standards, and when no deathly repercussion was forthcoming, he placed a few more, as he would at intervals throughout the afternoon.

"Are you set in there?" Elise seemed to suspect nothing, and he gave her two tiny-man slaps on her breast. This was just heaven, he was happy with just this. "Okay. I'm going back to work now, and no shenanigans out of you. I mean, if you're good... anything could happen." There was no way for him to know, definitively, but he suspected there was a slight grin at the end of that sentence. Nick sighed deeply, happily, and let the tremendous breast throb and shudder against the whole front of his naked self with every step she took.

There had been dozens, nearly hundreds of days where Nick plugged away at his office and Elise trudged away at the book store, but among these were very few evenings when they actually talked about what they did with each other. When they did, of course, it was to share a particularly bad day, a database crash for Nick or a book group hounding Elise about a book whose title or author they couldn't recall "but it has a blue cover." Nick's stories took much longer, were more detailed, and built up to a satisfying denouement, and Elise found them very interesting. Elise's stories were much shorter, seemed to place an emphasis on how she worked with other people rather than the hostile environment and the resources she gathered to achieve resolution, and so Nick rather tuned out. She never seemed to notice, as he'd become relatively adept at listening to intonation and rhythm and could insert a "huh" or "mmm" throughout her monologue, and she was satisfied that he was listening.

But he wasn't, and he realized he never had as he overheard the goings-on of her day through the filter of her bra cup. For instance, who were all these friends she joked around with? Who were they? Men's voices, women's voices, some with accents and some without. The bossy one didn't seem to actually be a boss, whereas the very kind-sounding man who spoke in cautiously respectful phrases seemed to be in charge of quite a lot. Had Elise told him anything about them? Nick racked his tiny brains for any name that might have floated by in conversation... Miguel? Michelle? Sandy? Brock? It was no good, he was just making things up. He felt a little lost, eavesdropping on the chatting and gossip, having absolutely no idea who she was talking to or about.

Well, his own work wouldn't be getting in the way of listening to her now. He'd have to see if they'd allow him to work from home, because otherwise he'd have to quit in a most dishonorable way, leaving Elise the indignity of stopping by his office to collect his things and dodge all the questions that would doubtlessly be leveled at her.

Before him, however, was her massive, swelling breast. He loved her breasts at normal size, and he told her so frequently (but without that modifier), but now it was just about all he could think of. The cushion of her bra cup cushioned his back, forming around his body as the enormous mound weighed upon him. With every step Elise took, gentle rumbles spread throughout her boob, shuddering against him, as though her breast were throbbing to nudge into him. He smiled, feeling the mass of fat and flesh tremble constantly. It was never annoying, he never got tired of it. Sometimes he'd lie back and let it shudder into him, and sometimes he'd exert his little arms and legs to embrace it as much as possible, pushing gently back into the soft, sweet flesh. Of course, it was a great temptation to tease and antagonize her nipple, the perfect, sweet button that lay against his face and chest. But she had been very clear in warning him away from that: though she probably wouldn't lash out with violence, against which he'd have no defense, she still had plenty of options to make him dread his actions, and she enjoyed total and absolute physical authority to make him accept and receive whatever punishment she meted. It was a total imbalance of power, to be sure, but all he had to do was avoid incurring her wrath and they could coexist in peace. He could do that.

He did still like to test the boundaries, however, like resting his tongue against her aureole, just to taste the dry flesh and taste it again once he moistened it up. He would wrap his lips around a slim fold in the wrinkles around her nipple, not using his teeth to pinch it but just to hold her skin, feel the pliant, rubbery flesh content to rest within his jaws for a moment, then feel it slip out of his reach with any motion of her upper body. He had no idea what was going on outside of her bra, but he could read some of the actions based on what her breast was doing against him.

It was difficult to lose himself completely in the reverie of breast-worship, however, because there was always something going on to snag his attention. "Would you mind running inventory on next season's boxes?" the soft-spoken manager asked her.

"That's Scott's job," Elise said. Who was Scott? Had she complained about him to Nick before? "Is he on break? Actually, I asked him to do that last week, is it still not done?"

There was a long sigh, but Nick could hear the smile in the manager's voice. "I'm very sorry, Elise. I didn't mean to take that out on you. I wondered why it hadn't happened. You're right, that's Scott's job. I'll go pull him off break and have a little talk with him."

"I mean, I can do it."

But the manager wouldn't hear of it, apologized again, and departed to straighten things out. Nick felt a little relief, knowing that his girlfriend was being taken care of by a conscientious manager, a very rare jewel indeed. Her nipple nudged at him like a large dog needing attention right now, but he was distracted by wondering how often she'd tried to tell him about her manager and he'd just blocked it out. Elise's nipple chucked him under the chin and rubbed against his chest, stiffening slightly, but Nick felt too guilty to enjoy that right now.

"Excuse me, miss, I'm looking for a book?"

Well, no shit you are, lady, Nick thought. What business is this of anyone's? Oh, are you trying to ask for help in some backward, passive-aggressive way? Nick learned long ago he had no talent at customer service.

"Certainly, ma'am! Please follow me to the counter, I'll look it up for you." Much walking, much earthquaking of Elise's delicious boob upon the whole of Nick's naked body. "What was the title of that?" The woman recited the title and author, and Nick was astonished by the sound of Elise's rapid typing. He thought he was fast, but the way she struck the keys sounded like the steady patter of rain. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry, it's out of stock. Would you like me to special order that for you?"

"No, just show me where it is on the shelf and I'll pick it up."

"Ah, I'm sorry, but it's out of stock. That means we don't have a copy in the store. I'd have to special order it for you, it would probably be here in about four business days."

The woman's tone hardened and grew louder. "No, it's not. My friend was just in here and she told me that she saw it on the shelf!"

Nick wondered if he actually felt Elise's body temperature rise slightly, if he could actually sense her pulse speeding up a little. "How long ago did your friend come in?"

"She was just in here!"

Another pause, and Nick heard the ocean roar behind his girlfriend's vast chest as she drew a long, slow breath. She was pissed: she took the same breath when they were about to have a fight. "Tell you what, I'll go and have a look in back. If you'd like to follow me, I can show you where we would normally keep it."

The woman kept babbling to herself, angrily, about her friend the reliable witness, and how she didn't understand a bookstore couldn't store any books. "I don't think you'll stay in business much longer! If you can't keep any books on your shelves!"

"That would mean we're selling them, you old bat," she whispered, and Nick wondered if that was for her benefit of if it were simply her habit. "Here you go," she said, louder, "it would be on one of these two shelves. Let me know if you find it, otherwise I'll be in back going through inventory." The woman said something that wasn't "thank you" and Elise ducked through the store.

"Hey, Elise." This voice was unsteady. It came from the side.

"Oh, uh, hi," she said. Her own voice was distracted, clipped.

"Funny meeting you here," the man said. His casual tone was so forced, even Nick had to wince.

"Well, I work here." Elise did not break her stride, nearly running through the enormous bookstore. Nick had no idea how large this store truly was.

"Yeah, I'm just studying for... something for school..." This kid was a terrible liar. Nick really wished he could see his face, if for no other reason than to punch it. When Elise didn't respond, he tried again. "But I'm here for lunch... a late lunch, I guess... and I was wondering when you go on break?"

"Sorry, just got back from break." Nick was impressed with the snappiness of Elise's lie. No quaver, no hesitation. He didn't think it was just because her boyfriend was lodged in her chest, either: it sounded like Elise had dealt with this guy before. Did she ever tell him about someone stalking her at work? He was furious with his inattentiveness: there was so much she was dealing with that he couldn't be arsed to pay attention to.

"Really? Because usually your break is around 1:30, isn't it?"

His voice receded as Elise opened and closed a door, swearing under her breath. Nick tried tapping against Elise's boob but his fist only bounced against her skin without a response. She clomped down a hallway into another, larger, quieter room, where she called out for Miguel.

"Is there a problem?" came the gentle voice. Elise explained the situation with the woman and said she was going to take a minute to cool down. Miguel offered to walk out and meet the customer with her and Elise thanked him for that. She also told him about the young punk who found her again. Miguel's voice showed a little more anger now, as though the entire world were slipping out of his hands, first Scott and now the stalker. So this was a known issue. "You just hide out back here as long as you need to, Elise. Give me ten minutes, I'll get rid of both of them." Wow, Miguel's a real stand-up guy. Nick felt a pang of jealousy.

The day went on like this. Nick never heard anything else from the stalker, and Elise was lucky enough not to have to deal with any other shitty customers. Nick overheated a little, plastered smack against his girlfriend's tit for hours, but he was still in love with it and the experience of being tiny was still new. Maybe in a year he'd get tired of it, but he couldn't imagine that he ever would. More than anything, however, he wanted to pull Elise aside and buy her a drink and ask her all about her life, all about everything he never knew, everything she might have tried to share but sensed he couldn't care less about.

"I'm so sorry, Elise," he said, running his palm over the slope of her breast. "I'll be better, I promise."

The hours counted down and evening fell. "That's it, you're outta here!" In anyone else's mouth that might have sounded threatening, but Miguel made it sound like a reward. "Thanks for another great day, Elise, and thanks for clearing that up with Scott. He likes his cigarette breaks too much, so I gave him a pamphlet from our wellness program to help him quit the habit before it gets in the way of his work. I think he picked up on the hint."

"Thanks for everything, Miguel! See you after the weekend."

"Have a great couple of days off. Hey, do you want someone to walk you to your car?" Nick's brow furrowed to hear this. Had he misjudged Miguel?

Elise laughed and her breast danced aggressively against her little boyfriend. "No, thanks, I'm just right outside. Thanks, though!" They made more farewell noises, and then the heavy front doors swooped and ushered Elise and Nick out into the chilly night air. It was quieter out here, with the distant rumble of traffic. Yeah, this would be about the time of night where Nick would have been home for a couple hours, and if he was feeling especially motivated he'd have made dinner and would be keeping it warm for her as she drove home. He rested his cheek against her sweet flesh: no more cooking anything for her for a while.

Elise's shoes clopped over the gravel-and-tar pavement and Nick heard her keys rattling in her hand. An engine revved and she yelled, "Hey, watch it!" Brakes squealed and a door opened.

"You blew me off, bitch." It was the kid from before, but there was no nervousness. Only anger. "You fucking lied to me. What was the harm in having a sandwich with me? I'm a nice guy."

"Nice guys don't box women's cars in with their van." Elise's voice was strong but tense. Nick heard her keys jostle slightly: she had shown him how she poked them through her fingers to make her fist extra spiky.

"Nice girls don't fucking lie to decent, ordinary guys just trying to make friends." His voice was louder, closer.

"I have a boyfriend."

"See, you assume I'm trying to hit on you, right away. You don't even give me a chance. You'd like me if you knew me. Bitches like you make this world an angry, lonely place."

"Stay back!"

Nick felt the momentum as her body twisted, heard her throat grunt. The kid yelled, something thudded against something else, and Elise cried out. She twisted again and the kid laughed at her.

She took one blow to her breast and Nick went out like a candle.

Nick took too long to wake up. That's how he felt about it when he realized where he was and what had happened. He got the wind knocked out of him, and he had no idea how long he had been asleep, but panic spiked through his chest when he pulled himself together.

"Elise!" he screamed. "Elise! What's going on? Are you okay?" His cries, already puny and pathetic, went no further than the noise-baffling fabric of Elise's bra cup. Her enormous tit was pushing into him, tremendous weighty flesh pinning him against the dense fabric of her bra, and the squeeze made it difficult to breathe. Elise, for her part, was completely still.

He drew his arms down to his sides and attempted to push some of her boob off of his body, just to gain a little space to pull in some air and shout again. His efforts were responded to by thudding, burning pain throughout his shoulders, spine, ribs, and down his legs: his share of the beating that Elise found waiting in the parking lot. He struggled, fresh alarm surging energy into his limbs, but the situation was dire: Elise couldn't hear him and was otherwise uncommunicative; her enormous breast was holding him locked into position; he was at least partially disabled due to the crushing blow that had blindsided him. All of this at once gave him a sense of claustrophobia, everything closing in on him, the horror of his own helplessness in the face of it all when now was the time for action!

But struggling yielded nothing useful. He freaked out for a moment, squirming against the enormous load of blind flesh and fat weighing upon him, and he wasn't any closer to helping her. When he exhausted himself he rested, and a little clarity of perception crept into his tiny skull. Think, man, he admonished himself. (At times like these, he imaged a stern and paternal old man, probably from England, was staring a hole through his face and jamming sound advice into his mind. And in his mind, there he was with his velvet smoking jacket and grizzled, silvery stubble, smoky Cavendish on his breath. Eyes smouldering with intent.) Wait a tic and think this out, lad, you're doing yourself in at this rate. What do we know? Elise is conked but she's still warm, so she's alive. You're battered but you have movement. What else?

Nick paused to think of what else, and all the other information came in. Car grease and gasoline: he was probably in a vehicle but the engine was off. Dull thumping: Elise was stationary but someone was moving around. The assailant? He assumed so and went on, breathing very slowly, and he realized Elise was breathing very slowly too. If he concentrated he could even hear her heartbeat, nice and regular. One less thing to worry about, but time was a crucial resource right now because he didn't know how much he had of it.

The old gentleman steered him back: Good show, old egg, but we're not out of it yet. Your bird's all right and you're a little stiff but you can push through that. Yet we know nothing of the chav she ran afoul of in the lot. Judging by your position, we're probably not folded up in her car or lying on the pavement.

They were in the jerky kid's vehicle, likely a van. That thumping, that was the kid moving around. What was he doing? Nick had to get out of his girlfriend's bra and get the lay of the land. He clenched his eyes shut, set his jaw, took as much of a breath as he could steal, and craned his arms behind him to grab the edge of her bra.

His muscles complained. His bones ached. Else's nipple, as large as his head, poked and dragged against his body but the little man heaved himself to the edge of her cup. (He didn't even let her warm, nubbly nipple distract him as it nudged into his crotch, in passing. But it was an issue, briefly.) From there it was simplicity to reach out for other parts of her bra or to lace his fingers into the fabric of her shirt, and by these to free his legs. He tumbled briefly against the broad, giving netting of her blouse, but rolled to a stop. Elise was lying face-down and completely motionless. He looked up at her chest above him, a broad expanse of smooth, creamy flesh, and the landscape of her shirt streted around just enough to make a not-very-distant horizon. Crawling down under her belly wouldn't give him enough room to maneuver, probably, so he scooted around in the indentation her boob made against her shirt, clawed at her bra strap and tumbled out of her sleeve.

It was a brief fall from there to the scratchy, grimy carpeting of the van. Nick was completely naked and, consequently, chilly and vulnerable to the abrasive van floor. The thumping around he heard before was louder and clearer now, but he couldn't see the boy--Elise's body was in the way. From his perspective he could see the entire back half of the van. It was dirty with little light coming in through the windows. There were some oily rags, some mechanic's tools scattered in the distance. There were patches of grease in the carpeting, splinters of wood, metal scraps, bits of twine, cigarette butts and dead leaves. Nick caught some radiant warmth from Elise's side, and then it hit him: where was her arm?

He spun around and crouched, ready to dart beneath her if necessary. Her blouse ran up to the short armhole and her armpit was exposed, little brown stubbly hair from where she shaved it two days ago. And off in the distance, her arm was stretched up behind her head, and her wrists were duct-taped together, to a steel D-ring mounted on the wall of the van.

Above her contorted shoulder was Elise's face, and as he stared she slowly woke up. Her eyes blinked twice, then screwed up with effort. Her eyes went wide, she opened up her mouth wide, and Nick heard the rapid intake of a massive quantity of air, and he only just clapped his palms to his years before Elise let loose with a booming, blood-curdling scream.

This was followed by an "Oof" and a gust of breath, and the lovely giantess' body heaved abruptly. She'd been kicked in the ribs. Outraged, Nick stood up and tried to peer over her body for the assailant, mindless of being seen and what that would mean.

The boy's head rose up in the distance, just over the huge ridge of Elise's cranberry blouse. He was shaven bald and wore some kind of goat-scruff around his mouth and jaw, too young for the facial hair to fully develop. He looked angry, too, glaring down at Elise, who had fallen silent while struggling for breath.

"Not another fucking noise, bitch!" he hissed at her. "You make another fucking noise, I'll fucking stab you!" So saying, he knelt beside the woman (and out of Nick's view). Nick heard the clatter of metal on metal and then the boy's fist knotting itself in her hair, yanking her face to the other side. The boy whispered harshly: "See that? See it? That's what you'll get, and I'm fucking serious!" it took no imagination to get the general idea of what was going on, on the other side of the giantess mountain range. Nick felt cold, but not from the night air seeping into the van.

But what could he do? He looked around at the detritus in the van, desperately and with increasing despair.

*   *   *

Elise was in pain. Her arms were twisted up behind her back, above her head, and she was only just flexible enough to keep them there. If she scooted back or if someone made her sit up, she'd be tortured, but she could just tolerate where she was now. The scratchy van carpet in the side of her head was disgusting and irritable but, again, not damaging. The swift kick to the ribs was damaging, however. The punk was only wearing sneakers and not boots, but the blow was enough to push all the air out of her lungs.

And his fist was clutching her hair, while her tear-filled eyes tried to see the sharp object he brandished before her. And her jaw burned and throbbed from where he punched her, in the flurry of blows he'd surprised her with. She dimly remembered being slammed against the door of the van and a kick to her ribs, and there was a flash sensation of her body being dragged inside the vehicle. He'd parked not far from her car. Where were they now?

They... Oh my God, Nick! She recalled her alarm when the punk punched her in the chest. There was only a moment of calculating whether Nick had been injured before the full-on assault exploded and she lost consciousness. When the punk set his sharp object back down and paced somewhere below her range of view, Elise tried to shift her chest gently against the van floor. She didn't want to crush poor Nick, but she couldn't even feel him in her bra. Nick! Goddamn it, what happened? Where are you? Did you fall out? Did he--oh, no--did he find you? Elise was close to being overwhelmed by all the thoughts, all the questions, but the punk snapped her out of it.

She felt him snake his fingers quickly underneath the waistband of her skirt, then yank her hips sharply upward. He wasn't strong enough to haul her up but he tugged at her until she complied. "As long as you don't fight," he murmured, "you won't get hurt." She guessed he meant the way her arms were pinioned behind her head, but he could've meant a heinous amount of things.

"I won't-" she started, interrupted by a kick to her ribs.

"You don't even talk!" he screamed, then checked himself, reverting to a savage whisper. "No talking, no screaming, no nothing!" She didn't even dare to nod her head, but just fell silent and, as he tugged at her waistband, she kneeled awkwardly, her butt straight up in the air.

It was too obvious what was coming next, and as her skirt flew up over her thighs and hips, settling on her back, she strained her wrists at the duct tape. All she could think was, Nonononono...

"Should've just been polite," the punk muttered. "Just costs too much to be polite, doesn't it?" She felt her panties slide down over her buttocks and hips, down over her thighs to bunch around her knees. There was thumping and shuffling behind her, the jangling of a belt buckle. "You fucking cunts just can't be polite. I try to be nice, and you're just fucking rude to me." His voice strained as he got into position, once his pants were off. Elise could not believe this was happening to her. Was there no one outside the van? Couldn't anyone hear or sense what was going on in here?

"It's gonna happen," said the punk. "You can be polite and it can be nice, or you can be a goddamned bitch and it can be rough. But it's gonna happen." Why can't he say the words? she thought. Why can't he say what he's going to do? Is he afraid of the words? Crazy thoughts, she knew, as her imagination ran loops in her head, spinning with terror.

She heard a gulping noise and liquid splashing in bottle. Liquid courage. There was a pause as he recapped the bottle, a strangely tidy gesture in the midst of all this brutality. "Well, guess what, bitch," the punk said, a little huskier. "Guess what happens now." She could hear him spit, and she heard a moist, smacking noise right behind her hips, and her heart froze solid.

And a shriek split the air. Surely, someone had to hear that through the van walls. It was an exceedingly high shriek, one long, smooth note that sustained for a surprisingly long time.

Behind her, the punk collapsed and was thrashing around, but Elise felt a tickle run up her left arm. Something jerked at her wrists; she twisted her hands and the duct tape shredded easily. Her arms collapsed limply to her sides, her circulation slowly restoring in a flood of warmth, and something fell in her hair. She shook her head reflexively and reared back slightly, and when she turned her head, there was Nick, her diminutive boyfriend, lying on the grimy van carpeting, naked and panting like a panicked squirrel.

*   *   *

One of Elise's coworkers had happened to be one aisle away in the parking lot when the would-be rapist screamed his head off. He flung the side door open just after Elise pulled her skirt back down, so all he saw was a sobbing Elise, cupping something to her chest, and a pale and horrified young man next to her, cupping his testicles, blood trickling between his fingers.

Nick was warm and safe, back in Elise's bra cup once more, hastily stashed there when the coworker laid hands on the punk and hauled him out of the van like a sack of so much trash. Kneeling on the punk, the coworker called 911 and an EMT pulled up with the cops, minutes later. They gave Elise a once-over and, satisfied she'd sustained no injuries, released her on her own recognizance to file a report with the police.

They accepted her story, with her coworker's corroboration, that he'd interrupted a rape attempt. They accepted that she'd freed herself during a moment of distraction, that she'd found a tiny scrap of clipped metal and lacerated the rapist's scrotum (they had no reason to check the scrap for prints). They accepted the idea that the punk had just done a shitty job of binding Elise's wrists (they had no reason to check the tape for a tiny slit in the fabric, right before the stretched-out and jagged edges of Elise's effort began). As it happened, they had a couple reports out on the kid, too: no successful assaults but two other attempted rapes. The cops chuckled to themselves over what a schmuck the kid was, as they tucked him in the back of a cruiser, a wad of gauze and sterile tape holding his balls together. They had no reason to hear his side of the story, and it wouldn't have made much sense if they'd listened, either. The punk himself had no idea what had happened.

The only people who knew were curled up in their bed: one thoroughly shaken, but recovering, lovely young woman, freshly showered and clad in cozy flannel jammies; and one tiny, tiny little man, wearing nothing but a thick layer of kisses and some tears. They lay embedded, one entirely surrounded by the other, breathing and sharing warmth until sleep came and borrowed them for the night.