“We’re, like, sure this is the best thing to do?” Wanda muttered. She peeked over her two roommates’ shoulders at the cramped kitchen table, where three identical juice tumblers ominously stood on the surface. The glow of the glass filtered through evenly poured iced teas: all three cool and dripping with perspiration.

            “Didn’t we talk this through over and over already?” Nora groaned. She crossed her arms, her thumbs fiddling with the fraying ends of her sleeves. “Let’s just get it over with.”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know, but like, what if something goes wrong, and this still doesn’t bring in enough cash to pay the rent?” Wanda asked. “I mean, the shrinking is permanent!”

            “Look, do you have any better ideas? I don’t see those bills going anywhere if we don’t do something major!” Cassie said. Her hands waved about with her normal charismatic overdrama. She dug her self-manicured fingers into her dark, curly locks, ensuring they weren’t unkempt by the added emphasis. “Cuz unless you give me something better, then we’re all gonna have to drink these teas, and whoever loses- well, whoever gets the one with ShrinkTuff mixed in is just gonna have to be a good friend and go along with it.”

            “I guess so,” Wanda shrugged.

            “How could it miss?” Nora said. She rubbed her eyes, still a touch veiny from her last bowl. “I mean, stuff between us three doesn’t have to change, really. Yeah, one of us will be super small, and depend completely on the other two, and probably need to be okay with getting… used for some funny stuff, for the vlog, just so we can go viral and get paid, but that’s it, really.”

            “That’s true,” Wanda said, at last sufficiently reassured. She wrapped an arm around each of her two roommates, giving their hips a squeeze. “I guess it’ll turn out okay once the vlog is up and running and the money’s coming in.”
            “You got that right,” Nora chuckled. She ruffled her noticeably shorter roommate’s black hair with rough affection. “So… we gonna do this, or what?”

            “I think it’s time,” Cassie announced, as though the decision wasn’t truly made until this exact moment when she confirmed it. “I poured the ShrinkTuff in one and stirred it in without you guys looking, then after me, Nora switched them around-”

            “Like three-card monte,” Nora said.

            “-yeah, like that, and then Wanda moved the glasses, too. I think this is the fairest way, don’t you guys?”

            “Well-” Wanda began.

            “Coolness!” Cassie said brightly. She puckered her lips and scooped up the nearest glass of ice tea. A slosh of liquid, a wrinkle of her nose, and she took a sip.

            “Down the hatch,” Nora shrugged with near-lethal indifference. She tipped the glass over her mouth and guzzled it down like a champ.

            “Hey! We all have to do it at the same time so… ugh!” Wanda said, resolving instead to join with the same ferocity. Within a minute, each of the three young, broke women had consumed their beverages. In silent solemnity, all three filed into the adjoining living space of their apartment: first Cassie, followed by Nora, and then Wanda at the rear.

            “Feel anything?” Cassie questioned as she sat daintily on the nearest couch cushion. She crossed her bare legs one over the other and squinted at her glossy nailbeds, perhaps assuming they’d diminish at any moment into the ether.

            Nora wiped her mouth and swung a foot over the side of the chair. “Nothin’ yet.”

            “Maybe we didn’t put in a strong enough dose?” Wanda suggested helpfully. The final syllable had only just passed from her lips when her body began to melt down into the billowing fort of her now grossly oversized clothing.

            The shrinking effect was powerful, taking its course in mere seconds and without scientific mercy. Wanda threshed like a lemming as she sunk down into the coiled heap of her jeans and panties. The parachute of her hand-me-down top draped heavily above.

            Naked, her legs huddled to her chest, Wanda remained seated in the crater of her now-useless clothing. The girl bit her lip.

            She’d agreed to this. This was okay. That was the thing to remember.

            They all took a chance, after all, and agreed to be supportive. This was for Cassie and Nora, her best friends, and especially herself. Wanda. This was the start of a new life, free of debt, with the new vlog and thousands or even millions of people making goo-goo eyes over her tiny self.

            Think positive. Think positive, she told herself.

            The shirt she previously wore snagged and rose into the air like a circus big top. One of her roommates was uncovering her. As light spilled in to the cottony remains of the shrunken girl’s former stature, Wanda cupped a hand over her eyes. Despite the fifteen entire minutes of research she’d done that morning on the physical effects of ShrinkTuff users, she still wasn’t prepared for the sight which greeted her.

            Nora, whose gigantic hand had swiped away Wanda’s shirt, stood nearest.

            Nora, who easily stood the tallest between the three before, now held the title in laughable terms. Those denim-clad legs of hers stretched up like hulking blue temple pillars, up to the ratty grunge band shirt she’d thrown on that morning. The heel of her Sharpie-tattooed sneaker, newly double the length of Wanda’s entire body, thumped against the floor. The enormous girl smirked down at the uncovered treasure beneath the shirt.

            Wanda looked down at her pathetically bare self. Her skin tone and prominent hips, once her biggest body worries, were hardly the highest order concern now. She couldn’t be certain without a ruler, but she was easily less than six inches now. At least a couple lower, in fact.

            “Oh, thank God. Thank GOD it wasn’t me!” Cassie squealed giddily. She pumped her fists, leaping up and down like a small child who just discovered Santa left the motherlode. Her earrings and necklace bounced gaily against her cheeks. The disarray of her curls was long forgotten. “No offense, Wanda!”

            Each time Cassie’s pink-socked feet crashed back to the hardwood floor, the seismic activity rattled Wanda’s body. She teeth chattered as her friend’s enormous toes plowed into the earth again. All she did was nod in response.

            “Yeah, luck of the draw,” Nora said with her usual cavalier cool. Her shoulders remained in their perpetual state of carefree shrugging. As she brushed her bangs out of her eyes, the look on Nora’s face suggested she wasn’t any more or less concerned now than she’d been two minutes before, when she might well have been the one shrunken down into her clothes instead. The shabby-chic blonde nibbled the corner of her thumbnail as she crossed one leg over the other, looming above her tiny, stranded friend.

            “Should we get started, then?” Cassie said brightly.

            Started? Wanda thought. Already? No adjustment period? No minute alone, just to get her bearings on her brand new existence?

            “That’s good with me,” Nora said with a grin. She hunched down, her chuck sneakers squeaking low on the floor as she reached out a wide open palm for her friend. Her long, peachy fingers had no hesitation in barreling toward Wanda and wrapping hard around her vulnerable little body.

Wanda grunted and groaned. The wind was squelched from her lungs by the sheer brunt of Nora’s fingers. A massive thumb casually pressed into the tiny girl’s stomach.

            “Hey! Be… be careful, Nora!” Wanda cried.

            “You don’t have to worry. I’m not gonna drop you,” the girl reassured.

            “It’s not that, it’s… you’re sq-” Wanda sputtered. She writhed like a worm on a fish hook, unnerved by the rigid bar of finger flesh squeezed directly over her abdomen. Her tiny feet dangled helplessly, her heels kicking against Nora’s palm. “-you’re squeezing me!”

            “Ooohhh, I gotcha. My bad, my bad,” Nora said. The iron grip of her fingers softened, finally allowing Wanda to unclench her panicking muscles. However, that thumb still remained poised possessively upon the four-inch girl’s stomach, cradling her friend against a curved wall of the other four digits.

            “Yeah, seriously, Nora. Watch it!” Cassie whined.

            Wanda couldn’t help but blush. It was good to know her friend still had her back.

            “We need her for the vlog! It’s not gonna get any followers if you snap her tiny little bones on the first time you hold her!” Cassie continued, snuffing out Wanda’s momentary blink of relief.

            “Yeah, yeah,” Nora said, rolling her eyes. She slumped backward into the chair, one leg hanging lazily over the arm. Her long fingers cupped below as she palmed Wanda into a reclining state in her slender hand. “So, about this lame vlog thing…”

            Grateful, the future viral star allowed herself to stretch out as her friends commenced the internet business discussion. She crossed her arms behind her head and pressed her miniature soles into the heel of Nora’s hand. Now this was a little more like it. Sure, Nora had a rough grip, but they could work on that. Besides, Nora was a bit on the rough side in general.

            Now that she was allowed to lie back freely, Wanda found it easy enough to get comfortable in her lanky friend’s roomy hand. Of course, even with the warmth of plush skin pressed up against her back and butt, at four inches tall, it didn’t take long for Wanda to shiver from the chill.

            “Hey, uh… guys? I know we didn’t really figure this out before, but uh, can I have something to cover me?” Wanda peeped. “You know, just until we get some extra cash from the videos so we can buy me some cute little doll clothes, to… hey, guys?”

            “-so like, I definitely think it’d be a bad idea to just have the vlog be called “SUPER TINY GIRL” or something stupid and lame like that,” Cassie continued, her eyes locked above to Nora’s. She twirled her fingers through her curls now as she lay on her stomach across the couch. Her pink socks kicked up in the air and swayed like metronomes.

            “Yeah, definitely too obvious,” Nora agreed. Her fingers thrummed in gentle waves beneath Wanda’s back, though not enough to shake the star from her rest. “It’s gotta be… I don’t know, smart sounding, you know? Like, just kind of hint that we’ve got a super-tiny girl and we’re gonna do fun stuff with her, but it’s totally not all about that, you know?”

            “Well, yeah, I mean, it is kind of all about that. That’s the whole idea, you know?” Cassie retorted. She wrinkled her nose again and cocked her head to the side.

            “Hey,” Wanda said.

            “Sure, sure. But like, we don’t want to put that on the front cover too much. That’s like, not the vibe we’d want for this thing, you know?” Nora continued. Her fingers were waggling a little more insistently beneath her four-inch friend’s naked body now, forcing Wanda to sit upright and awkwardly huddle around the massive thumb. “Just make it laid back… like it’s not a big deal we’ve got our own ShrinkTuff doll girl. Y’know?”

            “Hey!” Wanda barked.

            At last, both normal-sized girls shifted their gazes to their roommate, where she was perched on the end of Nora’s air-guitaring hand. A look of shared bemusement crossed their lips.

            “What’s up, little one?” Cassie asked softly. It sounded like she was speaking to a toddler.

            “Besides not you,” Nora blurted. She could hardly stifle her laughter long enough to finish the sentence. Cheeks rosy with mirth, Cassie cackled along with her friend.

            For another half minute, Wanda waited patiently while her giant cohorts got out all the giggles. She had both arms wrapped around Nora’s thumb, which was just beginning to join the antsy motion of the other fingers. Where was she even supposed to sit and be comfortable?

            “Okay, okay, har-har-har! Yeah, I’m tiny and stuff,” Wanda interjected loudly enough to be heard over the lingering chortles. “So, I’m… kinda cold now. Can we, like, find me some clothes? I don’t care if it’s not actual new clothes yet, just anything, you know?”

            “You’re cold, huh?” Nora questioned. Her tone suggested she’d only bothered processing the first part of Wanda’s explanation. Those fingers ceased their bouncing and began to curl upward in a short tidal wave of pink skin and destiny creases. Ramrod digits soon cocooned Wanda back into a fist: warm, indeed, but even more restrictive than before.

            “Yeah, but… hey, hey, wait! I just want a tissue or something. Can you do that?”

            “What do you want a tissue for?” Cassie asked. “So you can blow your nose on it while you wear it like a robe?”

            “Maybe that’s the first video?” Nora suggested. She choked back another laugh.

            “God, no! So gross,” Cassie scowled. She draped her fingers zombie-style by her cheeks in revulsion. “Let’s get serious, though. Obviously we’re not gonna have enough money to, like, buy her cute clothes at first. That’s just for a special occasion. But what about now?”

            “What’s she need clothes for? She’s got us to keep her warm,” Nora answered instantly. “Plus, you just know we’ll get more views if she… y’know, comes as is.”

            “Yeah, that’s true!” Cassie said brightly. “I hadn’t thought of that. Good thinking.”

            This decision came before Wanda could summon enough composure to respond. In fact, the hapless four-incher was still struggling to wrestle her way into a comfier pose. Her entire body, now overheating, if anything, was compressed even harder beneath Nora’s fingers. She was going numb below the neck. Blood rushed to her head. Wanda spat stray hair from her lips as Nora’s fist began to rotate absentmindedly like a breezy pinwheel.

            Still, the girl tried to remain calm and optimistic. After all, God knew she’d seen Cassie and Nora naked many times after they all got too drunk on a Sunday night and went streaking. Why did this have to be weird? They all had tits and pussies, for shit sake! Wanda could almost hear Nora speaking those exact words as a symbol of worldwide female unity; in fact, she probably had at some point, and that’s why she remembered.

            Okay, okay. Wanda breathed in, then out, though not too deeply, as Nora’s fist was only getting tighter and clammier.

            She could do this.

            “Give her here,” Cassie said. “I want to have a look at something.” Her volume rose only now as the conversation continued zigzagging haphazardly. A petite hand was outstretched, fingers clicking against her palm impatiently in Nora’s direction.

            “Okie dokie,” Nora said. Her fist zoomed across the gap between chair and couch, lurching Wanda’s stomach. “Don’t squeeze too hard.”

“I won’t squeeze too hard!” Cassie said defensively. Her fingers cinched like cat claws as Wanda was passed from one hand to the other. “I told you! This whole vlog is blown if she can’t talk or walk or something.”

            Wanda somersaulted in the awkward cage of her giant friend’s fingers.

            “So what’re you looking for on her?” Nora asked.

            “I just want to see… like, if she could be used for one of the ideas I had for a video. Now hold still, lil’ buttercup.”

            Wanda plopped in Cassie’s palm. She instinctively reared into a fetal position as the larger girl’s long, manicure-carved index finger speared toward her chest. The slight crook of the fingernail dug into the underside of Wanda’s vulnerable breasts, first one then the other, wiggling them under Cassie’s extremity. Gasping, the little girl shoved her friend’s probing digit away.

            “Hey, quit!” Cassie sneered, as though she was the one being nakedly felt up in a giant’s palm. “I’m not gonna scratch you. I just need a better look at your tatas. Don’t make it weird. I have them, too.”

            Though Nora’s fingers squeezed harder than necessary before, it was done with inattentive randomness, leaving Wanda mostly to her own devices. It was different being directly examined and tested like an organic pin cushion. Cassie’s fingers, by comparison, were thinner, as a result of her bi-weekly fad dieting. Thinner skin cushioned the prodding digits as they rubbed and hooked around the contours of Wanda’s body. Already, the four-inch girl determined she was much more comfortable in Nora’s grip.

            “Seriously though. Like, what are you looking for?” Nora repeated. The half-drunken grin on her lips suggested she was at least entertained by the spectacle, though.

            “I don’t know. I thought maybe we could have Wanda do a belly dance or something, you know? Set to some sexy music? Maybe exotic, too, or pole dancing on a pencil. But I don’t think she’s got the jugs for it.”

            “Psshh. I could’ve told you that while I was holding her a minute ago,” Nora shrugged. She wagged her fingers again at Cassie, her eyes never once making contact with Wanda’s. “Now c’mon, I want another turn.”
            “Are you kidding? You just held her. Besides, we need to focus again and talk ideas.”

            “Oh, whatever. But I was gonna say, she can still do the whole sexy dance thing. We just need to not put too much focus on her tiny boobs, that’s all,” Nora said. “Hold her up straight so I can show you.”

            At last the probing on Wanda’s breasts ceased. She was glad, at least momentarily, to be left lying flat in the narrow plain of Cassie’s palm. However, the break was short, as the girl’s needling digits instead reached for Wanda’s left hand. With her entire forearm clamped between a pair of spiral-gridded fingerprints, the shrunken girl was dangled up loosely to her feet. She felt like a miniature marionette. Her toes grazed the plush terrain of Cassie’s palm in a fruitless attempt to stand on semi-solid ground.

            “C-Can… can you just… let me s-stand up?” Wanda mumbled. Not only was she colder than ever now, but the discomfort of this treatment was just beginning to cross the line into somewhat painful territory.

            “Okay, so what about her?” Cassie questioned, ignoring the question. “Why do you want to look at her like this?” Again, her gaze was entirely gifted to Nora. Those enormous fingers swung limply from side to side, causing Wanda’s entire body to arc as a pendulum from the pinpoint of her forearm. Suddenly the giant palm previously cupped for protection under the little girl’s feet swooped away, and resumed pecking at Wanda’s modest A-cups.

            “All right, I can, like, see the potential now,” Nora said. “What does this remind you of?”

            “What, me holding her? Um, a Christmas ornament?” Cassie gnawed the corner of her lip. She lifted their prize higher for just an instant to consider the aesthetic possibilities.

            “No, dummy. Think cooler and creepier and better for going viral.”

            “Those words don’t mean anything, Nora. Just tell me already!” Cassie insisted. Her fingers had returned to petting, and with greater focus than before. Her pinky finger was jammed like a sapling trunk between Wanda’s breasts. She jostled them side to side.

            “No, you have to guess,” Nora said.

            Next, Cassie’s thumbnail curled inward and planted directly into the tiny girl’s nipples, the rough curve of keratin sending her delicate areolas into stinging overdrive. Wanda shuddered. She winced in a bid to go the opposite way. However, she was only drawn closer into the fidgeting of Cassie’s spindly fingertips. The effect was akin to receiving a smarting punch to the chest and then a careless swipe upside the nipple, again and again and again. It wasn’t pleasant.

            “Guys? Guys… can… can you p-please…” Wanda mustered. Quaking with soreness as she was dangled by one hand, her shoulder beginning to burn and her breasts aching from Cassie’s careless jabbing, Wanda looked on. Neither pair of eyes made the slightest effort to meet hers. At most, they’d glance down at her exposed body, and then back to one another with renewed smiles and fresh jokes about their friend’s undersized fun bags.

            “I seriously don’t know!” Cassie said.

            “Please-” Wanda murmured. Her voice cracked.

            “Okay, fine,” Nora said at last in answer, but it was to Cassie, not Wanda. “Take the fun out of it, why don’tcha? She’s like the lady who gets sacrificed to King Kong!”

            For the umpteenth time, her voice bulldozed over the whimpering coming from between Cassie’s hands.

            “What, the giant lizard?” Cassie asked. Her expression was vacant.

            Nora’s eyes just about rolled back into her head. She raked her long fingers through her blonde locks and huffed her frustrations out.

            “No, ya idiot, the giant monkey,” Nora said. “They sacrifice a lady to him, and he grabs her and takes her back to his lair!”

            “I am NOT putting on a gross hairy gorilla suit!” At the very least, Cassie’s apparent disturbance at this very idea had made her pause in toying with Wanda’s chest.

            “Nobody says you have to. It’s really more about our cute little star. That could be super cool and awesome and makes total sense, and plus, then we have a good reason to string her up, just like this, so people can get a good look at her if they want.”

            String up? Get a good look? Just when she was achieving numbness to the sharp caress of Cassie’s nails on her raw, reddened nipples, Wanda found a way to be surprised again.

            Wanda didn’t mind putting some heat into the act. Sex sold, after all, and they needed money. She knew how to move her hips and get people to look; translating that wouldn’t be hard at her new size. However, between the various cracks at her breasts, plus the general disregard for her agency in the King Kong idea, Wanda was souring on the concept as a whole. She was less a snazzy showgirl in this scenario and more a shrunken pair of boobs and attached vagina. Which didn’t sit well with Wanda.

            More and more, she wasn’t liking the sound of this at all. In fact, she was hating it. No two ways.

            “I’ll show you what I mean,” Nora promised. “Here, just hold her steady. I’ll grab a few glamor shots.”

            “Oh, good idea!” Cassie encouraged.

            If Wanda had the energy to spare, she would’ve raised an eyebrow at this. Instead, she waited, optimism dwindling ever lower, as Cassie’s fingertips closed around her feet and pulled. Now stretched from one enormous manicured hand to the other like a rubber band, Wanda truly did embody King Kong’s next meal. She gritted her teeth. A bead of sweat descended the nape of her neck.

            “Just keep her exactly there,” Nora instructed. She fumbled with her camera phone, took aim, and snapped a picture. The flash burned deeply into Wanda’s delicate little retinas. Smacking her lips, the shrunken prisoner batted her eyes in attempt to banish the ghostly green specks at the corner of her vision. Nora took a second picture, catching Wanda wide-eyed and trembling again. This time the girl’s eyes yielded moisture, mostly from the shock of it, though she already felt the instinct to cry in the back of her throat. It didn’t take much of a push. Another flash, then another.

            Nora swiped her thumb across the touchscreen, grinning an ever-wider Cheshire smile at the collection of photos she now possessed depicting her helpless, naked friend on the verge of medieval quartering by Cassie’s fingers. She turned the phone around, granting Cassie a clear view of the images, though Wanda was still too low to make it out.

That was the last straw.

“Okay, I think we need to STOP and TALK for a second!” Wanda shouted, louder than she intended. However, between the stretching of her limbs, the camera flash, and the painful teasing of her breasts by uncaring nail tips, the tension was built higher than she realized.

            And, to their credit, Wanda thought, the pair of lounging giants did halt their conversation again at her outburst. Nora’s trigger finger abandoned the phone. Their eyes returned for a rare occasion to the naked four-inch star. Wanda tried to ignore the mental image of how ridiculous she must appear now, jiggling breasts just as pink and panged as her flushed cheeks. She cleared her throat. Before she could get out another word, though, a voice from above drowned her out.

            “Uh-oh. Sounds like our lil’ doll girl needs a lil’ nap,” Cassie teased. Her thumbs jammed back on Wanda’s breasts to emphasize each word, and then remained, circling the pad of her finger in taunting ovals on the little girl’s skin.

            “NO, I don’t,” Wanda insisted. She didn’t want to sound like she was ready to cry, but the warbling in her tone wasn’t helping. “What I need is for you guys to just, like, hold up for a second, so I can-”

            “I’ll take care of it, yeah?” Nora said. Her gaze diverted back to Cassie, as had become the default. “I’ll be the dolly master whenever the dolly gets upset. Or maybe I’m the dolly’s master? Whatever the right word is.”

            “Yeah, I guess so. I’m getting bored of this, anyway,” Cassie admitted, just to make clear it was of her own volition. In a show of exquisite mercy, the platform of her petite palm scooped under her roommate’s little feet just as her clenched fingers released. Wanda fell into the cupped curve again. There was no time to recompose, though, since she was just as quickly collected again via her ankle between a thumb and forefinger.

            Head spinning and hands flailing, Wanda dangled upside down from Nora’s pinched fingers. This time, as she neared the oncoming palm of her pothead friend’s opposite hand, her tiny head was nestled into a firmly encircling wall of fingers. Wanda realized her arms were being squeezed at her sides to prevent struggling, her face pressed hotly into the peachy landing of Nora’s vaguely herbal-scented skin.

            Wanda yelled again, but her voice was muted into the pillowy surface of Nora’s palm. The tiny girl was essentially mummified inside the considerably taller roommate’s fist. At least, she was on her inverted top half; to Wanda’s dismay, she realized her legs were left to flounder against gravity at the top of Nora’s fist, exposing her pert little butt to the open air.

            “Right, I guess that takes care of that,” Nora said simply.

            “Hey, you remember now. Hold our favorite dolly steady. Not too much squeezing, got it?”

            “I saw how you were poking her,” Nora accused with a sporting snicker. “That’s just as rough on her, probably. Unless she was lezzing out a little bit from all the titty rubbin’.”

            “Oh, don’t be weird. I was just deciding if she could handle… you know, a little roughhousing, if we think we might wanna play with her for the vlog. I mean, I bet that’ll be one of our first requests! People that want us to show her off. Test her out.”

            “Yeah, yeah, that’s probably true.”

            “But really, though. Be soft! You can squeeze, but not too much.”

            “You’re not my MOM!” Nora retorted jokingly. She gave her fist a soft pulse, momentarily scrunching Wanda even tighter into her grip. Walls of creamy palm flesh compressed against the girl’s breasts and shoulder blades on all sides like a cobra’s tract. Wanda moaned from pain and mounting despair.

            At the very least, the little girl could still hear the conversation through the thin porthole formed by the bottom of Nora’s coiled fingers. She couldn’t see, of course; the heat was building like a sauna and she was only getting dizzier, but at least her friend was allowing her to listen.

            Wait, was she really thinking that? Grateful that her friends only restricted her sight, breathing, body heat, and general privacy? Sure, they’d only been talking this matter over for a short while now, but already, the whole affair was officially a bust as far as Wanda was concerned.

            For a full week before they’d decided on this shrinking vlog gamble, they’d discussed at length how their friendship wouldn’t change over the shrinker, and how they’d all still remain the same tight-knit group of girls as ever. On the day the trio moved in together two years before, they’d all agreed their tenure would be exactly like freshman girls coming excitedly together for the first time in a sorority house to share love, laughs, and joy; well, this was certainly reminding Wanda of the sorority experience, but just the hazing part, and all of it distilled into this singular moment as she was hot-boxed and deprived of her senses inside the muscular tube of Nora’s fist. These were the people she was calling her friends?

            It was at this precise moment of clarity for Wanda that things got worse.

            The pinky of Nora’s free hand came down to rest on Wanda’s rear end. Her left cheek, then her right, like pale little moon faces peeping out of the giant fist. The entire cylinder of humid palm flesh pulsed inward again at regular intervals. For a second it seemed to Wanda her keeper was trying to get her attention. However, it didn’t take long for Wanda to realize she was simply filling the same function for Nora as a fifty-cent rubber stress ball. If she was choked up before, it was easier than ever now to really bawl. And bawl she did.

            “Now we got that settled…” Nora said. “…what are we actually gonna do, huh?”

            “I don’t know! You know, like, honestly? It seemed at first like if we just shrunk one of us, we’d have, like, a ton of ideas. Like, a bunch of videos we could just sit down and do.”

            “I thought that too,” Nora said. “But think about it. It’s… hard to do a vlog. Making something every single week, or more? That’s… that’s like a fuckin’ job, y’know what I’m saying? And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t move into this place just to have “work” to do.”

            Nora’s pinky on Wanda’s skin was replaced with her thumb now, and it was spending more time on each molesting tap to the girl’s tiny ass cheeks. Invisible circles were drawn by the rotating digit, with much greater pressure than Cassie’s childish fingers could’ve conjured. Each caress was punctuated by a slap. The pad of her broad digit patted and drummed on the excess skin, flicking at Wanda’s windmilling legs, and finally settled squarely at the intersection of the tiny girl’s cheeks, spreading them wide apart.

The four-inch girl, with black hair matted across her sweat-glazed face, still blind and dizzy in the hovel of Nora’s clenched hand, was shaken. Tears flowed freely, intermingled with sweat. She flinched, harder even than was natural, hoping to send a message to those intrusive fingers. As she expected, the effect wasn’t slowed; if anything, it was redoubled. The slaps were turning into serious spankings now, with fewer of the gentle strokes along the crest of the girl’s exposed behind.

            “I’ve heard that people with the real vlogs… you know, the ones that make money? They have to spend, like ten hours a day just doing stuff for it,” Cassie explained.

            “Fuck me, are you serious? That’s… Jesus, why even do it if it takes that much time?” Nora gawked. There was a notable seismic shift in the girl’s enclosed fist. Unluckily, that motion did nothing to mollify the pressure squeezing on all sides around Wanda’s fragile hips and bruised ribs.

            “Plus, y’know… if it- I mean, if she can’t handle it after a while, then where are we?” Cassie said. “All that time and effort, and for what? For her to just give out on us?”

            “We would be doing all the work, anyway,” Nora grumbled.

            Next a giant index finger joined in the casual twiddling of Wanda’s lower region. While Nora’s meaty thumb continued its dance of figure eights and spankings, the girl’s exploratory forefinger threaded between Wanda’s thrashing thighs and took hold of her puny body on either side, just above her waist. Then, with a simple, sleepy thrust of pinched thumb and forefinger, Nora was simultaneously massaging Wanda’s miniscule labia and spread ass cheeks in one ruthless rhythm.

            Wanda actually cried out this time. Her squeals reabsorbed just as quickly as her tears into the muffled wall of Nora’s palm. She wormed with greater effort than ever now. Reorienting, the girl focused all her adrenaline into kicking at Nora’s fingers while they worked. However, even with a few good punts and a choke hold achieved by Wanda wrapping her legs around Nora’s considerably thicker fingers, there was no halting the act.

            The torture endured for several more agonizing minutes. It was difficult for Wanda to definitively place her feelings. She was dead-empty on hope now. She was hot, sticky, furious, terrified, and, if she was being honest with herself, frustratingly horny from all the rough attention her tiny pussy was receiving. But all the bucking and screaming in the world wouldn’t get Nora’s attention now.

            “Hey. Wake up, sleepyhead!”

            Wanda was so lost in the black, stuffy reverie of the inverted sweatbox and having her shrunken ass played like toy bongos, she didn’t even notice Nora’s hand unfurled again. It took Cassie’s index finger jabbing her abused breasts again in the center of the open palm to bring Wanda back to coherence. Her skin was pockmarked to butcher-shop pink from all the tweaking and spanking she’d endured while her friends barely deigned to look upon her. Tears still painted her cheeks and smeared up to her hair.

             “Oh my G-God… why… w-why are you guys being so… s-so…” Wanda uttered. Her throat was desiccate, barely able to shape words.

            “Listen, Wanda, good news! We think we finally figured out how this whole rent thing gets taken care of…” Cassie interrupted.

            “…and we don’t have to spend every day working and filming you like crazy people,” Nora said. “Cool, right?”

            “Uh… um y-yeah, yeah, but… but please, can I just… just have a drink of w-”

            “I didn’t believe it until I saw it,” Nora cut in again. “But check this shit out online!”

            “Look at these things,” Cassie said. She propped her phone up against the heel of her hand for Wanda to inspect the website, though the little girl’s eyes were having trouble opening wide enough to glimpse. “It’s nuts. On eShrink, you can sell your tiny person for, like, fifteen thousand dollars!”

            “I mean, we probably won’t get quite that much. Your boobs and face aren’t the best compared to some of these choices. But that little bubble butt of yours is pretty fun. Somebody will find somethin’ to do with ya,” Nora said with a wink. “We’ll get ten grand for you, easy.” The tone of her voice was genuine and almost reassuring; she believed in her heart of hearts this information would soothe her shrunken former friend.

            “WHAT?” Wanda’s shriek was hoarse in her gullet. Still she strained it out. After the minute needed to chew over the insane machinations being spewed her way, she’d finally pieced it together. “You… you guys are k-kidding me, yeah? This is all a fucking joke?”

            “See, the way we see it…” Cassie began. She folded her elegant hands in quasi-prayer. “…there’s no way we can run a vlog well enough to pay for this place. And the odds of going viral? Seriously, that’s just a big fat gamble with the internet gods!”

            “Luck of the draw,” Nora repeated. She nodded in affirmation.

            “…so if we do that, then all three of us don’t have a place to go. Nobody wins, Wanda, nobody. But… this way, we all technically get a place to go, it’s just… us two will be here, and you’ll be with… whoever buys you,” Cassie cooed in a lullaby with a twist of maternal sugar. “See? See why it makes the most sense now?”

            Chest heaving, stomach churned by existential horror, Wanda burst into sobs again. She was entirely out of rhetorical offense now. From the look of stone-cold sincerity in Cassie’s and Nora’s eyes looming above, there was no arguing the point. Not that she had the strength left to do so now, either way.

            “Aw, now. Don’t flip your shit. It’ll turn out okay,” Nora said.

            “We’ll make sure you’re taken care of, lil’ dolly. Until it’s time to trade you off,” Cassie whispered. Her index finger stroked Wanda’s blubbering head, used her nail to cast back the tangled black hair, and then traced down to the miniature girl’s breasts. She gave the pair another thoughtful jiggle.

            “Okay, time’s up, Nora,” Cassie announced with refreshed humor, despite the sour air still hanging over the broken trio. “I think it’s my turn again. Hand her over.”

            “Oh, whatever,” Nora shrugged. “She’s all yours, betch.”

            Wanda crumpled like singed paper in her friend-turned-vendor’s open palm. The weight of her limited life’s oncoming winnowing weighed heavier than either giant woman’s set of talons. The girl looked up, watching the eager geometry of Cassie’s greedy hand bearing down on her, fingernails glowing dim under the fluorescents.

            Wanda opened her mouth, but was out of sound.