“You’re a perfect fit!” Massie sighed happily as she lovingly brushed her thumb along her three-inch-tall older brother Paul’s puny cheek, having secured him firmly to the rubbery insole of her slipper with a generous strip of electrician’s tape across his bare chest.

            She puckered her lips and blew him a whispered kiss, then winked, batting her long eyelashes playfully in the process.  Her thumb tapped impatiently against the lip of the shoe as she spoke again: “You’re gonna feel so good down there.  I just know it.”

            The defeated young man nodded meekly as he glanced out at the looming visage of his younger sister’s beaming countenance, framed by the dark and well-worn walls of her shoe that had become a hollow prison to him.  It wasn’t a very deep piece of footwear, but all the same, given his newly finger-sized stature, and the emotional weight of his new life, it could’ve just as easily been the deepest pit of hell.

            His morning hadn’t been so horrendous, at least until he’d actually woken up.  He’d been enjoying a dream about the time before he’d realized he carried the shrinker gene: riding the bus to school, eating lunch on the park benches, meeting his friends at the movies.  It felt so distant, back when he was still treated like a normal human being, and yet he’d only been discovered to possess the gene five months ago, when he’d started experiencing the early symptoms, of weakness, nausea, and headaches, aside from the steady decrease in standing.

            Paul’s was one of the faster cases.  Most took around a year to reach their final diminished height, so he’d had even less time to savor his remaining days as a full citizen, before he’d been deemed property by the entire free world.

            Of course this dream, like his liberty, had to come to a rude halt once he’d been awoken to the sensation of Massie’s gargantuan fingers curling firmly around his sides and entrapping him into the cushy center of her hand, already clammy with anticipation.  The girl’s palms generally took on a layer of excited sweat just as soon as she had her toy-sized sibling gripped into it, and the effect had only been expounded the smaller Paul had shrunk over the past months, until he’d finally been small enough for her to hold in her hand: something she’d been checking for daily with gleeful anticipation.  He could tell she enjoyed this, and whether or not that was a good or bad thing was a terrifying toss-up, though right now he was leaning toward “bad thing.”

            All he could do then was wait in the darkness of her warm fist, ensconced in the sweet haze of flesh and perspiration, and listen to her trouncing joyfully across the tile of the kitchen, where he spent his nights now.  Paul heard the telltale clack of his hamster cage being shut and locked again as soon as he was plucked from his makeshift bed amongst the wood shavings, where Massie had found him so easily, given the utter lack of privacy he had inside.  He’d hardly received a hearty good morning from her before she had him balled into her fist, cut off from the right to sight and sound.

            His makeshift new “home” was a fairly chintzy metal cage that sat on the kitchen counter.  It was intended for pets, purchased for $5.50 at a nearby Goodwill by his parents, who in their crushing shame to have parented a shrinker, had put the minimal required effort into ensuring their former “son” had somewhere to stay.  Letting him have his own bedroom anymore, of course, was out of the question, particularly once he’d shrunk small enough that he couldn’t climb into bed on his own.  The faint odor of dried hamster urine was still stained to the plastic base of the box, as nobody had cared enough to bother giving it a thorough cleaning before dumping Paul into it.

            This morning, the diminished teen didn’t have much time after being freed from his little sister’s caged fingers before he was plunged back into equally dim lighting and poor breathing space.  The next two solid hours were spent with Massie spread out on the couch, munching on a granola bar, thumbing through messages on her cell phone, and flipping through the TV channels.

            Her tiny sibling, of course, saw very little variety during that time aside from the most intricate spiral patterns laden in the flesh on the ball of Massie’s left foot, which had been pinned authoritatively down onto the shrinker’s body without ceasing.

            Occasionally, the girl would give her foot a lithe twist, kneading her brother down into the bouncy give of the couch cushions before relenting just enough that he was buoyed up by the fabric and pounded right back into her bus-sized peachy appendage.  This was always the most unpleasant part.

            Eventually, though, Massie got around to rolling Paul under her wrinkled sole, an admittedly more inviting prospect, as the surface of it was far softer and easier on Paul’s body.  Ironically, the young man’s discovered identity as a shrinker had done wonders for Massie’s skin care, as it prompted her to begin utilizing a variety of lotions on her hands and feet in order to ensure Paul was “as comfortable as possible,” as she put it.  Of course, this had still come after the non-negotiable decree that he’d be spending quite a bit of time at his new size under the mercy of both appendages, so it was a bittersweet gift at the absolute best.

            Despite himself, though, Paul had started begrudgingly looking forward to the inevitable occasions when Massie would deposit him in the plush center of her arched foot.  Her beauty store products had indeed ensured her skin was like kissed velvet, almost baby-soft, and generally scented strongly of citrus or summer flowers.  Once he’d gotten into a rhythm of taking breaths as her titanic foot rocked to the side, relieving the pressure momentarily, it wasn’t the worst possible place he could end up, not by a long shot.

            After all, he’d heard plenty of horror stories of others who’d taken to storing their shrinkers, sibling or not, in a very particular and sensitive place a bit higher up on their bodies.  Hell, he’d known people who tried it, and never thought anything of it.

            Luckily, his sister had insisted on trying to maintain his safety as best as she could while standing on her three-inch brother like this, and truth be told, with the doughy ceiling whomping itself purposefully over his small frame, he could convince himself it was like an aggressive full-body massage.  Frankly, he had to attempt mind games like this, because to deny such a prospect would force Paul to confront the fact that his younger sister now had the right to pin him under her cold soles whenever she pleased like some discarded piece of lint, and that would’ve been a bit too much to handle.

            Massie was one who habitually got bored with a single activity, however, and after zoning out on the couch for so long, with her only major movements coming from the practiced caressing of her miniscule brother’s quivering form under her powerful foot, the girl had reached down and snatched him back up into her palm from between the crevice of carpet fiber and feminine sole.  This had immediately been followed by her retreating to her room again and jostling him roughly in her fist along the way.

            And minutes later here he was, taped to the base of her slipper.  She’d at least taken her time, ensuring her brother was positioned in the safest possible place, beneath where her arch was deepest and most forgiving.  Even when pinning his limbs down at first, she hadn’t used the force she could’ve to fully restrain him, knowing he was cognizant enough at this point in this new life to know when a decision had been made for him.  The tape had been carefully placed to avoid bubbles, and she’d spent a couple minutes afterward stroking the layers of adhesive across Paul’s torso to ensure they were tight enough, and it actually relaxed the teen just a little.

            In spite of the grim spectacle of having to look out at his sister’s face beyond the walls of the shoe, probably the only other sight he’d be seeing for a while before the quick flash of her toes and then sudden, sweaty darkness, Paul couldn’t count himself as afraid.  After all, for the past month, the girl had taken to pinning her brother under her toes and soles as often as she had free time around the house to watch TV or do her homework, and had become fairly skilled at doing it without harming him in the slightest.  That, at much, he had to be grateful for, amidst a new world wherein there was precious little to be grateful for.

            “Oh, I almost forgot!” Massie sang in a voice that reverberated off the inner walls of her slipper as she held it closer to her mouth, near enough that her rank morning breath could cloud warmly into the black hovel and prompt her brother to cough.  Her brown curls bounced merrily against her shoulders as she trembled with glee.

            “What?”

            “I have a surprise for you, Paulie,” she murmured enticingly, and licked her lips from one corner of her mouth to the other.  Her tongue left a glistening trail behind it.  “You wanna guess what it is?”

            “Not really,” Paul hacked, still recovering from the throaty stench wafted from the girl’s unclean tongue.

            “I know my birthday’s not for another two weeks, but Mom and Dad already told me what they’re giving me, and… I think it’s probably the best present I’ve ever gotten… or am ever gonna get, ever,” she continued with a cheesy grin plastered victoriously on her pink lips, obviously having easily ignored her sibling’s hum-drum spirit.

            “Yeah?”

            “It’s you,” she whispered meaningfully, keeping her lips pursed for several seconds afterward to let this final syllable resonate for all it was worth.

            Paul’s mouth hung open, and a creaky rattle managed to escape his throat as he gazed into his sister’s gargantuan, unblinking blue eyes as they peered cheerily at him.

            “What?” he gawked distantly.

            “Yeah!  They said cuz I’ve been so responsible with you while you’re tiny, that it shows I deserve you the most.  So I’m gonna be your new owner!” she declared happily.

            The shrinker had to hold back a snort.  He knew damn well his parents couldn’t have cared less how Massie decided to treat her reduced brother.  This, he suspected, was just a fiscally-minded ploy on their part to save on buying her a birthday present this year, as she clearly had taken such a shine to possessing her miniaturized sibling.  Obviously, this possibility had flown right over her youthful and occasionally naïve head with the pure excitement of being able to actually own her older brother, and it almost made him want to laugh.

            After a few seconds had passed, though, his heart sank all the same, though in being honest with himself, he couldn’t quite understand why.  His own parents had disowned him and basically turned him into an indentured servant once he’d started losing height, and then a house pet as soon as he was small enough to live in that hamster cage.  He had a sheet of felt for a bed, water from an inverted bottle, food scraps sprinkled in through the grated roof, and a medicine cup to do his business in.  No friends, no time outside alone, and no entertainment aside from when someone accidentally left the TV on.  He hardly received a word of human acknowledgement, let alone a single glance, from his current keepers.

            Could Massie actually be any worse?

            In truth, Paul knew that, no, she couldn’t be.  Sure, she adored being able to squash her brother beneath her bare soles, or plunk him into a brightly colored sock.  Sure, she’d spent each morning of the past five months pinning him to a door frame with her newfound strength advantage and measuring him, noting the distance he lost every day until he passed below her head, then her chest and waist and knees until it seemed futile to bother using the frame as reference.  Even those things didn’t make her as bad as his parents.

            No, what really was troubling him now was the resolute act of being passed along like an object by his parents, or at least the people who would’ve once allowed him to call them his parents.

            Becoming Massie’s birthday present, even if he was the most treasured one of all time, still was a definitive declaration that he was no longer a person, but property, fit to be gifted to whoever his current owners wanted.

            He was two-and-a-half years older than Massie.  He was smarter, more experienced, more mature, and half a year ago, taller and stronger.

            And precisely none of that meant a single damn thing now.

            He was hers, totally and absolutely.  To be toyed with, tormented, and cherished in whatever ways she chose.  She could stuff him into the toe section of her slipper and wear him continuously until he expired from the heat and crushing weight of her squirming digits, and at most, Massie would be reprimanded with a pitiful chuckle from somebody who thought she’d wasted a perfectly good shrinker, when she could easily have squeezed more slave labor out of him with slightly less harsh treatment.

            Idly, Paul wondered if he’d be allowed to choose what color wrapping paper he’d be presented in to his sister, then had to stop himself when it occurred to him just how foolishly optimistic a concept this was.