With no time to react, Mark’s eyes bugged at the grim visage of his mother’s bare foot racing toward him, the full and knowing intention of trapping him under it clearly on board.

            “What?  Mom, no- mmmff!” he screeched hoarsely, and with far better efficiency than the last time, he found himself pinned like a dead butterfly beneath the soul-crushing weight and musty effluvium of a family member’s enormous, naked foot.  At least his mother’s skin had the benefit of having been recently showered, so there was a bearable lilac haze that clogged his every breath, but other than this debatable luxury, the experience was just as trying, if not more so.

            Joy didn’t even allow him room to engage in pitiful combat with the bottom of her foot, as the entire hulking mass of it sunk heavily down over him like a sleeping whale.  Even breathing became a challenge, and the teen was forced to huff in delicate whiff after delicate whiff of plush padding of his parent’s skin that had caved against his head.

            “Mom, okay, that’s enough.  He needs a break.  I wanna pick him up now.  Please?  You promised after I practiced some stuff with him that you’d change him to whatever size I want him,” Becky complained, shoving with annoyance at her mother’s arm, though Joy was concentrated exclusively on melding the feeling of her son’s wormlike squirming into her mind for safety purposes later.  The woman had even closed her eyes and begun to hum a little in intense focus as though this was a yoga pose.

            “Mark, honey, I don’t feel you fighting me!” Joy sang sweetly.

            Is she kidding, the boy thought bitterly to himself as the doughy skin melded around his limbs.  He could hardly get enough leverage to write like a pitiful insect, let alone actually punch and kick in protest.  Becky’s hesitation when she’d taken her turn had allowed him just enough leeway to more or less make an attempt at the lesson, but his mother allowed no such thing.  She definitely wasn’t fooling around with making this exercise as realistic as possible.  Already Mark was feeling dizziness, his limbs giving way to numbness and shooting pins and needles, as though he’d been sitting on them for hours.

            “C’mon.  I know it’s hard, but you have to try,” his mother instructed gently.  She pivoted her foot slowly, twisting the flesh atop her entrapped offspring

            His face, buried in a smelly crevice firmed by the more advanced age of its owner, was the only thing he had at his disposal.  The ceiling of skin, more leathery in its texture, was resistant to some of the effects of Becky’s sweat-buttered foot, but in this heat, even the freshly cleansed Joy wasn’t immune, and Mark had a steadily increasing duct of lightly salted oxygen and moist flesh to contend with.  A few stingingly spicy hints wafted about as the woman’s sole bore down even harder, effectively putting an end to any squirming Mark was doing.

            “Mom, don’t you think you’re standing on him too hard?” the teenage onlooker asked with concern, though it less out of fear for her brother’s immediate safety and more for the terrible possibility that he might not be as entertaining to play with afterward.  She leaned down closer to the floor, pressing her cheek against the surface, to observe the one-sided fight beneath her mother’s bare foot.  She couldn’t even clearly make out her shrunken sibling as he accepted his inevitable defeat.

            “I probably am.  Anything is too hard, Becky.  That’s why we’re doing this,” Joy explained calmly, giving her foot another twist over the plastered young man beneath it.  She bounced her toes patiently against the floor, already feeling a light glaze of sweat beading between them from the focused effort of this practice.  “We’re trying to learn.  We’re doing it safely now so we don’t have to find out the hard way.”

            “But you’re gonna make him all tired, and then he’s just gonna lay there while I carry him around,” the girl pouted.  “That’s no fun.”

            “Just another few seconds, honey,” Joy relented.  She slid her foot a few inches forward, dragging Mark along beneath its fleshy heft.

            “Mom!” Becky squealed.

            “All right, fair enough.  I guess we could all use a break from this,” the mother said with some obvious hesitation, removing her heavy sole from her disgruntled child at last, who wasn’t even making an attempt at flailing his arms to regain feeling in his compressed limbs.

            A sweet smile on her lips, she leaned closer to the floor next to Becky and stroked a towering fingertip along Mark’s cheek.  “That was a good job, sweetie.  A really good job.  But you need to fight me harder.  I could barely feel you.”

            “I tried,” Mark murmured awkwardly.

            Joy nodded.  “I know you used up a lot of your energy for your sister, and that’s good, but you have to be ready.  And don’t worry, I know you’ll do better the next time we practice.  Both of you.  Okay?”

            “Okay, okay, okay, we geeeet it, it’s all good and set and everything,” Becky mumbled uncaringly as her hand descended quickly to claim her prize, having really only picked up the gist of what was being said.

            Her fingers expertly dipped under her three-inch brother’s prone form and she had him cradled into her soft and waiting palm a half second later, her fingers already closing protectively around him in an overly cozy fist.  The familiar heat was immediately infused back into his body.  “Now Mom, you promised.  Can you go get the thingy?  Please?”

            Clearly more than a bit uncomfortable with the past couple minutes, the girl already looked more at home to have her sibling wrapped snugly in her fist again, where he fit far better than under the expanse of her lint-flecked sole.

            “I did promise, didn’t I?  And you two deserve a break.  I’ll be right back,” Joy agreed as she rose from her kitchen chair and began sauntering toward the home office where she kept the PMRD stored in its case.

            “Mom, are you sure, like absolutely positive, there’s not some rule that says I can do it myself yet?” Becky called out as she leaned comfortably back in the chair, refocusing her efforts on petting the top of her brother’s mussed hair while shifting the squeezing power of her digits around his body.  “Since I’m so super-duper responsible with him like this?”

            “Honey, we’ve been over and over this.  Fifteen is the minimum age, no exceptions.  I asked about loopholes, remember?  Twice!”

            “But I don’t turn fifteen for five freaking months, and by then he’ll probably be big again!  I wouldn’t even get a chance to make him whatever I want him whenever I want!” Becky pleaded sadly at the mention of this unbearably awful prospect.  She uttered the word “big” with the kind of ire most people would say the word “pustule.”

            As this conversation continued, obviously completely unconcerned about Mark’s presence, the fourteen-year-old’s fingers tightened more firmly as a subconscious response to her disappointment around his body, though still without inflicting harm.

            “I don’t make these shrink laws, honey.  Leave that to people like Judy Stevens.  Besides, cooperate like this all the time, and I’ll let you help decide how tall he’ll be more often, all right?” her mother responded as the sounds of the silver case being snapped open reached Mark’s ears painfully, like an execution blade being unsheathed.   

            “Oh, fine,” Becky sighed under her breath, at last returning her attention to her coddled sibling.  “Sorry if it was kinda gross down there, widdle brudder.”  Cupping him back toward her face once again, she planted another of her frequent pecks on the top of her sibling’s head with a wet smack of her lips, then slid him toward her cheek to nuzzle up for a few accidentally abrasive sweeps.  “I bet big feet are always gonna be gross for you, but if I’d known we were doing this, I’d have wiped them better or something.”

            “It’s fine,” Mark answered groggily, leaning his weary cheek down against his sister’s pointer finger as it remained clenched gently around his chest.  He was still feeling emasculated beyond belief after the double event under his sister and then mother’s bare feet, carried out like it was the most natural thing in the world, so it didn’t seem like his pride could be much more damaged to appear so docile in her grip.

            “Tell you what,” Becky whispered with a wink.  “Before we have to practice again next time, we’ll both make sure they’re extra clean and nice for you to be underneath.  I’ll wipe them off real good with a washcloth, and then you can help me pick out the little bits that I miss.  And then you can help me put some really yummy-smelling lotion all over ‘em, so you only have to smell strawberries and fruits instead of stinky stuff when I stand on you.  Okay?”

            “Uhh…” Mark drawled, appalled at how unattractively humiliating an activity that sounded, despite how it would probably benefit him in the long run.

            “Maybe we can go to the store, and you can tell me which one I should get?  Since you’d probably be getting more of it on you than me, anyway.  We’ll pick whichever smell you want, as long as it doesn’t cost too much.”

            “I…”

            “It’ll be a fun thing for us to do together,” she responded cutely without waiting for what was an assumed consent, then immediately perked up again at the sight of Joy returning to the room, PMRD switched on and brandished like the weapon of justice that it was.

            “Well, I promised you.  Hold him out, and I’ll make the switch,” the woman declared.  “What’s it going to be?  Seven?  Ten?”

            “Mom, you’re funny,” Becky snickered at the absurdity of this suggestion, opening her palm to let Mark sprawl vulnerably onto the platform of her fingers, where he’d make an easy target for the device.  “Just make my little brother my littlest brother, please.”

            No more words were exchanged as Joy happily squeezed the trigger and reduced her son from three down to a single inch in the center of his sister’s palm, which trembled slightly from pure glee at the sight of it.  All he could get himself to do now in this moment and, indeed, this entire seemingly innocuous yet hugely confidence-draining event was study the intricate lines in the roadmap of the peachy surface that made up Becky’s now considerably larger hand.  What else was there to do, after all?

            He wasn’t even surprised to feel the pair of bulbous lips, now large enough that it seemed they might suck him between them on a hard inhale, squeezed together and puckering against his entire person for another smooch.  At this miniscule size, the affectionate gesture left enough sticky residue on his clothes that it felt like he’d vigorously licked by a large and hungry wild mammal.

            “Guess it’s time to try out one of Mom’s lessons, huh?” Becky boomed, biting her lip sheepishly as she observed him nonchalantly trying to clean a smear of her saliva out of his hair.  Shaking it off, she marveled at the tiny life sitting so precariously and weightlessly on her soft skin, and goose bumps ran along her skin.  “We have sooooo much fun stuff to do now, widdle brudder.  I bought a bunch of new stuff with Carey last week for school and you’re gonna help me decide which outfits go together best!”

            “Uh…”

            “Then we’re gonna take some new selfies together to add to our album.”

            “W-”

            “So I’ll let you out in a couple minutes.  First, you’re gonna help me pick a different charm to wear on my bracelet for every day of this school week, okay?”

            “Let… me… out?” Mark repeated back in a bitter whisper, but the question was answered well before he could finish as his sister’s youthful fingers, fleshy spires that hung above his head at a level of power he was incapable of comprehending, curled downward like a tidal wave of pink terrain and swirled prints approaching him inevitably.

            The teen’s titanic fingers descended and arced overhead, meeting the heel of her hand a short distance behind him, and a moment later he was being softly yet still forcibly flattened to the darkening surface of Becky’s palm and watching with an eerie sense of defeated resolution as his little sister clamped out the last strain of light, sealing him inside the sweet-smelling warmth and blackness of her almighty fist.