“Don't forget to take care of your sister's little slave!” Jennifer's voice rang across the entire gigantic home, the sheer volume of it making Ned cringe beneath the teenager's green suede booties. Taking a deep breath, Ned started to calm his pounding heart before the giant woman shouted again, “Lana! Don't forget!”

Ned could hear the girl's bare feet thud against the hallway carpet as she walked toward the stairs. Fearing the noise, Ned covered his ears and hit the deck as the enormous young woman shouted back, “I heard you the first time, Mom!”

“Well it would have been nice if you had let me know!” Jennifer's voice was fainter but clearly annoyed.

“Love you, Mom!” Lana said with a lazy shrug, and as the towering girl turned around, Ned could see her gigantic brown eyes roll.

Ned could easily imagine Jennifer standing at the front door, arms crossed and huge foot thrashing against the floor in rage as her strained voice called up the stairs, “Love you too, sweetie!”

A second later the door to Lana's room crashed shut, and the front door thundered almost right after. Cowering beneath Brittany's boots, Ned tried to imagine how he would last through an entire holiday with the Sachs family. Despite the joyous welcome Jennifer had given her daughter at the airport, the two obviously didn't get along, and Brittany had spent the entirety of her sister's first night back in her own room kicking him back and forth while complaining to her boyfriend. As far as the shrunken man could tell, the sisters had barely said anything to each other but somehow Brittany had enough words to fill an entire evening while bits of his skin were torn off by the rug.

He had never been so happy to be returned to his tank and watch the titanic teenager turn off the lights. It wasn't long after Brittany had fallen asleep though that the sound of Lana's music drifted through the walls. To his de facto owner, it wasn't loud enough to rouse her from sleep, but Ned was left tossing and turning beneath her old socks, wondering when the other enormous girl would go to bed. Ned was far from certain when she did because all he knew is that when Brittany got up, ready for her day, he was sluggish and zombie-like.

A state that had not endeared him to the enormous blonde. She pinched, slapped, and prodded him till he became something resembling awake, all so that she could slam the green suede booties down and demand that they be cleaned by the time she got home from school. When he begged forgiveness from the girl, prostrating himself in front of her enormous frame, she had simply laughed at him before walking off.

Unable to return to sleep, he had started working on the boots, mystified as to why the girl kept wearing them when all the Chicago winter would do was mess them up once more. He scrubbed and brushed them until the sheer fatigue put him back to sleep, only to be awoken once more by the sound of Jennifer and Lana arguing about when an appropriate time to wake up was. Not that Jennifer was an early riser since from what the tiny man could tell, she was only up a few minutes before her eldest daughter.

His only hope as he sat there, wiping the last flecks of rock salt from Brittany's boots was that Jennifer would feed him before she left for work. Instead, he watched her walk past her daughter's room, and then listened as she foisted the task onto Lana.

Music came through the walls while he knelt beneath the now clean shows, his stomach rumbling. Ten minutes later, the sound intensified, and Ned found himself burrowing beneath Brittany's clothes just to escape the jarring folk-rock that blared across the house. The noise only got worse as the shower came on, and Lana's thunderous voice joined with the garbled words of the female singer. Incapable of fighting back, Ned shut his eyes and tried to cram the smelly t-shirt into his ears, hoping that somehow his misery would end.

Song after song came and went as Lana lazily got ready for her day, her own off-tune accompaniment almost as ceaseless as the music itself. Whimpering and sobbing beneath Brittany's old clothes, Ned almost didn't know what to do when the music suddenly shut off. Peaking his head out from beneath his makeshift bedding, he stared out into the giant sunny world of Brittany's bedroom and the house beyond.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Lana strolled by, thick-soled wine red Doc Martens on her feet, with tight leggings clinging to her muscular legs and ending in a pair of tight cut-offs with a flowing ripped up shirt exposing a wide swath of her tattooed flesh. Despite the freezing weather outside, the girl looked ready for spring as she passed by the door and walked downstairs. He listened to her putter around far below, and his stomach growled as the smell of cooking eggs filled his nostrils. Trembling and aching with hunger, Ned felt tears stream slowly down his face, wondering if the girl even remembered he was there.

Half an hour later, her voice drifted into his ears barely ahead of her heavy footfalls.

“- it's so fucking weird,” Lana explained amidst laughter, “She keeps him in a fish tank and no joke, he, like, cleans her shoes... I don't know, old? Definitely older than my dad.”

Ned's whole world started to shake as Lana walked into her sister's room, her gaze fixed on him as she continued rambling into her phone. “Yeah, my mom said I have to take care of him. Whatever that means...” he found himself scrambling back as the young woman, his son's former babysitter, loomed over him. “... I don't know, I didn't ask my sister how he does that...”

Lana's face dipped into his world and Ned squirmed beneath her gaze, which instantly made the giant girl smile. “No, I don't see any like, little bowls or anything. Smells nasty though. Maybe he just, like, shits in the corner or something?”

Ned's whole body became flush with embarrassment as Lana's laugh rang off the glass. Standing up onto his own two feet, he shouted up at her, “I... I use the toilet!” It wasn't precisely true, Brittany or Jennifer often put him in the sink to let him relieve himself before they washed him with a rough washcloth but he wasn't going to let the giant punk know that.

“Oh my God! Did you hear that?” Lana asked whoever she was talking to. Her hand invaded the tank, and a chipped purple fingernail smacked against his chest, knocking him flat onto his back. “His voice is ridiculous,” Lana announced, “Wait, hold on, you have to hear this, it's hilarious.”

The girl lowered her massive smartphone toward the shrunken man, and the screen lit up with the call information. He didn't recognize the area code, or the huge smiling face staring down at him, but Ned knew it was another young twenty-something on the other end. A picture of a cute auburn-haired girl with big white teeth and bright green eyes stared down at him, and the label 'Mags' sat directly beneath the photo.

Crystal clear giggling boomed out of the phone, and a high pitched feminine voice said, “Helloooo? Little man?”

“Say hi to Mags you little shit,” Lana ordered, shoving the phone toward him.

His teeth chattering, Ned desperately cried out, “Pl-pl-please help me, my name is N-ne-ned Cooke and I have a wife named Joanne who must be l-lo-look-looking f-f-f-”

Mags thunderous laughter left him sputtering beneath the phone before it was lifted back up into the sky, where Lana asked, “Is that not the funniest thing you've ever heard?” The whole tank suddenly shook as Lana leaned down against it, her arm sprawled across the sky and the long hair that fell over half her face dangling into his prison. “I don't know, what do you think I should do with him?”

The glass wall behind Ned shuddered as Lana's fingers drummed against it.

“Meh,” the girl replied to whatever her friend suggested, her eyes looking toward the floor, “I mean, they're scuffed up but not like gross 'I-need-to-clean-these-today' scuffed. I might go to a show on Wednesday night so maybe I'll have him clean them after... No, after, cause they're just going to get worse at the show.” She paused, cocking her head as she listened to Mags's counter argument, “Right, but I'm sure Brittany will totally throw a bitchfest if I use him too much... Yeah, and then my mom will side with her and I'll have ruined Thanksgiving.”

Ned wished there was somewhere he could run as the gigantic girl debated the merits of having him clean her boots. All he could think about was how their grimy soles had almost crushed him when he was trapped in Jennifer's purse.

A sudden burst of giggles derailed Ned's thoughts, and craning his neck back he found Lana smiling, “Oh man, that is a great idea... No, no, stay on the line, this is going to be funny as fuck.”

Ned scrambled away as Lana's hand descended from on high, all while she described every action to her friend. Before he could dive beneath Brittany's boots, her thumb and forefinger latched onto his left leg and yanked him high into the air, leaving him screaming as he dangled before her. “Can you hear him? Good.”

Lana left him hanging in front of her face as she started to walk, each one of her huge footsteps causing him to swing wildly back and forth. His screams were punctuated by the huge young woman laughing, her warm breath whistling past his ears as he hung in the open air. Ned began to panic as her fingers started to sweat, and his thin leg slipped through them.

“Please, please, don't drop me,” his words turning to screams as she clenched harder.

“Oh man, I think he was about to literally slip through my fingers.” Lana stopped to look down at the floor, and Ned could see her big boots fidget against the carpet, “I wonder how far of a drop it must be for someone his size... yeah, like, I have to be at least a ten stories tall in comparison to him, right?”

“I don't know,” she said, swinging him before her face as she screwed it up in concentration, her eyes squinting as they raked over his nude body, “Like, four or five inches maybe?... Well, how the hell am I supposed to know that?... Actually, why do you know that?... Fine, whatever.” Lana's huge eyes rolled once more as she walked into the bathroom she shared with Brittany and dumped him into the sink.

Ned shouted in pain as he rolled down toward the drain, his already sore back smashing against the open stopper. Without warning, he found himself beneath a lukewarm waterfall, screaming and squirming as he tried to escape the sudden deluge. The slick sink prevented him from gaining any traction and he soon found himself splashing about as the water pooled around him.

As quickly as it started though, it stopped.

“I think that should do it,” Lana's voice echoed off of the tile, “I'm not going to put soap on him, it'd probably make me, like, vomit or something...”

Ned's eyes went wide as the booming voice filled his ears. If she was afraid that him being covered with soap would make her vomit. “No, no,” he screamed as he desperately tried to escape the sink, literally digging his fingernails into the porcelain.

Her thick fingers latched onto his torso and gently pressed against him, forcing the air from his lungs. “He's all squirmy,” she explained to her friend as she giggled, and lifted him up to her lips and then past them as she craned her neck back. “Ok, are you ready?... Oh, right, let me put it on speaker.”

Lana fiddled with her phone as she opened her mouth wide, giving him a view of the dark abyss that was her throat. “Bottoms up, little guy,” she said while Mags's garbled laughter bounced around the room.

Ned found himself free falling, his arms flailing and his wordless terrified screams being overpowered by the sound coming from Lana's phone. He was silenced as the enormous blonde's tongue stud rammed into his gut with the force of a heavy weight champion. Rolling about, he found himself being wrapped up by an enormous pink tongue that still reeked of eggs and cheese. Light disappeared as her lips closed and Ned's world became oppressively warm.

His whole body was shoved about her mouth, slammed against her palate and then rubbed against her teeth. Light and fresh air poured in as he started to scream for help, but all he could see was Mags's smiling profile picture. Her uncontrollable laughter penetrated the dank world of Lana's mouth and Ned tried to scramble toward it, but each one of his attempts was stopped by a harsh snap of the girl's teeth.

The sound of Lana's own laughter began to shake his disgusting prison, and then the giant girl pitched forward. Despite how badly he wanted to escape her mouth, Ned found himself trying to grab on to anything as the sink rushed up toward her lips. His hands rolled over the round saliva coated tongue stud while he kept screaming, and then finally slipped past her lips only to violently crash down against the porcelain.

His whole body wracked with pain as stars swam in front of his vision.

“Oops,” Lana said between thunderous laughter, the sink shaking as she smacked her palm against the counter, “I think I broke it.”

“Oh shit, really?” Mags voice sounded distant but concerned.

“I don't know, he's like, writhing in the sink.”

Sucking in wheezing breaths, Ned tried to appraise how badly he was hurt. He was fairly certain nothing was broken, but before he could get any accurate sense of himself, his tender body was pummeled by a probing finger with chipped nail polish.

“Is he, like, dead?” Mags asked nervously.

“No, he looks ok. He's just a little bitch, I guess,” Lana snorted as the tiny man started to sob, “Anyway, did you hear him screaming when he was in there?”

“Sort of?” Mags replied, her concern for the shrunken man instantly forgotten, “I mostly just heard you laughing...”

“I swear I could feel him screaming in there. It was amazing, like, if you ever get the chance, you have to do it.”

“I don't know where I'm going to find a shrunken person,” Mags replied, but something about her response sounded insincere to the bruised man.

Both girls laughed, as if Mags had just made some in-joke, and then Lana spoke, “Well, anyway, I think I finally figured out something more normal I could have him do while I get some other stuff done.”

“Alright, I'll talk to you soon,” a loud over-exaggerated kissing noise came through the phone.

Lana matched it before saying, “I'll probably talk to you in, like, ten minutes online anyway.”

Ned watched as her huge hand slapped down against the phone, and it beeped as the call ended, while her other hand descended on his exhausted body. Her fingers wrapped around him and lifted him up while his limbs flopped across her fingers like he was a rag doll.

“Come on, bitch,” she said casually, slipping her phone into the back pocket of her cutoffs, “My nails could use a new coat and maybe after that I'll give you something to eat, I guess...” She suddenly slapped her palm to her forehead, “That's what Mom meant, she mentioned it last night.” The girl laughed as she carried him into her bedroom, “Well, after you're done painting my nails then...”

Ned whimpered, wondering where he would find the strength to stand up, let alone paint her nails.