Evidently, Massie could detect the dejected look on her miniscule brother’s face as he remained fastened to the center of her rubber insole, nearly swallowed up by shadow.  She furrowed her brow and tilted her head piteously, adjusting her grip on the shoe as she gazed inside at his pathetically entrapped and soon-to-be-hidden form.

            Apparently, the shrunken lad wasn’t taking the news at all well that he was to be her birthday present from their parents.

            “Don’t look so sad, Paulie.  This is a good thing,” she assured in a gentler voice.  “Y’know, I wasn’t gonna say it, but… I sort of asked Mom and Dad for this.  To have you, I mean.  I was hoping they’d give you to me as soon as you started getting smaller, actually.”

            “Why?” he sighed darkly, too resigned given his train wreck of a new life to be any more put out by this than was necessary.

            “I dunno.  I just know some people at school whose parents bought them their own shrinkers from the store.  It just seemed… so awesome.  Getting to have a little person of my very own.  And when you started getting smaller, it was like… it was like you were made for me.  To be mine,” she described dreamily, then scrunched her face up adorably once she’d emerged from the reverie.  “The cutest and funniest and best little person I could want.”

            “Uh-huh,” Paul grunted, unable to help himself from feeling oddly flattered to be spoken of so positively after such a long time of being downtrodden, though the effect was nearly undone to hear his sister simultaneously speaking so naturally of owning a person she’d known - shared genealogy with - for her entire life in an ostensibly equal context.

            “So see, you don’t have to be all grumpy about this.  I’m not gonna treat you bad like a lot of other shrinkers get.  We can… help each other,” Massie explained earnestly, nonchalantly twirling a swirly lock of hair around her index finger.  “I know there are things we both want.”

            “Yeah?” he answered, nerves rightfully reinvigorated.

            “Sure.  Y’know, like… how I wanna put you in my shoes, and in my socks.  And my stockings.  It feels good,” the girl explained matter-of-factly, pressing a finger to the corner of her lip.  “You just… feel good.  Under me.”

            “So I’ve heard,” Paul mouthed to himself under his breath.  If that wasn’t the rallying cry of shrinker-owners, he didn’t know what was.

            “But then for you… well, I bet it’s no fun living in that crappy cage Mom and Dad got you, so in two weeks you’ll start living in my old doll house.  With your own bed, and table and chairs and car, and everything!” she posed happily.  Her fingers snaked their way back into the shoe’s opening, partially blotting out the view of her face, though Paul could still easily make out her cheekily grinning lips, plush and primed.

            “Oh,” he groaned as his sister’s huge fingertips roughly nudged at his sides around the tape in an attempt to pet him, which in turn caused the adhesive to dig with even itchier fervor at his skin.

            This was probably the thousandth reason Paul had discovered that made him bemoan the fact that most shrinkers were just given enough clothing articles to cover their private areas, as yet another symbol of separation between them and true “humans.”  He knew there would be a very particular brand of sting to look forward to when his sister finally peeled him out of the shoe.

            “That’s not all, though.  I can make little foods just for you, and stitch new pants for you to wear.  Plus, I bet for my birthday I’m also gonna get a pair of those shrink-rider shoes where your little person fits at the bottom, cuz I was telling Aunt Carol about them, and she said she thought I deserved a pair.  My friend Kristy has ‘em, and she wears her sister in them all the time and she says it doesn’t even hurt her at all!  And then sometimes, y’know, if I don’t feel like using you in my shoe, you can sit in my purse and go to the mall and the movies and stuff,” Massie rambled before finally taking a final deep breath.  “Won’t that be great?”

            A good deal of it was still a terrifying omen on the horizon in Paul’s mind, particularly in the case of those shrink-riders, but given the vast and mortality-threatening alternatives, that all actually sounded incredibly livable.

            “Yeah, sounds okay,” he mumbled truthfully.  He’d learned to take his victories where he could get them, no matter how little like victories they actually appeared.

            “I knew you’d agree!” she squealed softly, and the world around her as well as gravity seemed to shift as she lowered herself down into a chair in her bedroom.  The shoe didn’t stop, and landed with a delicate thump on the carpet.

            Though his view was upside down, Paul was treated to an intimidating view of his younger sister’s slender left leg, winding up and up and up like an alabaster pillar holding up a hallowed structure until it reached her tight dreamsicle-orange track shorts.  At this distance, looking up at the girl’s massive body in all its towering magnificence, the teen had to remind himself with a painful gulp that his sister only stood at around five-foot-five.

            “Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, so you’d have something to look forward to until I let you out of there later,” Massie said with a shrug, and Paul’s heart jolted at the sight of his younger sibling’s bulbous toes gripping the edge of the shoe, as though they were their own entities just itching to crawl inside with him.  She snickered at his bracing reaction and shook her head.  “Don’t be scared.  We’ve done this so many times before!”

            “Y-Y-Yeah,” the teen said with a hard swallow, rapidly mulling over a last-ditch effort, then blurted as he saw her dexterous digits cresting over the lip of the shoe: “MASSIE!”

            “What’s up, Best Birthday Present Ever?” the girl addressed with a giggle.  “Is the tape not tight enough?”

            “No, no, it’s… it’s tight…” he confirmed pitifully, realizing with every passing second how futile this was.  “I was just wondering if… maybe you… don’t wanna do this?”

            “Don’t wanna do what?” she pressed.  “Don’t wanna use you down there?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Oh, c’mon, it’ll only be for a few hours while I’m out with Callie and Kristy, and besides, you feel sooooo good down there,” Massie moaned pleasurably in a voice that startled her brother with its intensity.  Frankly, it was a voice far more satisfied than he preferred to hear with reference to his muggy torment.

            “But… wouldn’t you… rather hang out, instead of…” he sputtered, clawing for alternatives.  “I… I w-wanna hang out with you, sis!”

            “Awww, that’s so sweet!  Don’t you worry: we’re definitely gonna hang out later.  Just you and me.  You’re gonna help me pick out what color you’re gonna be painting on my nails, and then we’ve got some Netflix to catch up on.  That ‘chick flick’ queue has like six movies with our names on it, so that’s basically the whole weekend there,” Massie promised, then quickly added: “But first things first!”

            “Of course,” he muttered under his breath again, shutting his eyes in wait for the inevitable.

            “There’s no need to make a big deal, y’know?  This is just something that’s going to happen to you sometimes, cuz I like it,” she stated calmly as she leaned down closer to the carpet again.  “Besides, I’m so used to doing this now, I bet it feels… kinda good for you, too.  Doesn’t it?”

            It made the teen hate himself more than almost anything, but now more than ever he couldn’t look his sister in the eye, because he knew, at least in part, she was right.

            “Bye-bye, Paulie,” she crooned with a princess-like wave of her fingers, before pressing the tips of her digits to her lips and blowing him another gentle kiss.  He didn’t even have to acknowledge her assumption; they both knew the answer to her humiliating question.

            Massie’s toes dove into the shoe, blocking out the light, and then she set about working the rest of her foot in until her heel popped into the back of the slipper with the aid of her thumb and a soft fwump.  She dug her grooved heel against the carpet, ensuring it was on tightly enough to keep her three-inch passenger fully secure, and then rose up.

            Paul fell back into his learned pattern like a seasoned pro the moment his gigantic sister and soon-to-be-owner started walking again.  When Massie’s foot would touch down, her flesh firming up like a punching bag, he would expertly tense his muscles and settle his shape into her skin like he was making a snow angel.

            When the foot would ascend to take a step, however, the pressure alleviated, the give of her skin softening as an infinite pillow, the teen could allow himself to relax for just an instant and take a deep, nourishing breath.

            Once he had this dance down-pat, it all became a blur of smooth skin and caressing wrinkles that loomed above in the black, capable of squelching him into extinction, but stopping well short of this, and instead offering a larger-than-life working over of his tired body with more skill than the most assertive masseuse.

            She was right.

            It wasn’t so bad.

            After all, Massie had indeed taken the time to ensure her brother’s stint below her wasn’t too hellish, as the air reeked not-altogether-terribly of wild berry and rose.  Her sole was cold to the touch, pressed against his chest and stomach, but still oddly pleasant, and Paul knew that over time, with enough walking, it would become snugger, probably in tandem with the return of the staler smell of his sister’s salty sweat and flaked skin, but it would undoubtedly be a slow enough process that he’d hardly notice.

            It was all an unknown void.  His whole meaningless life seemed to stretch before him invisibly into the dark distance, just like the fleshy expanse of the girl’s sole, undulating above as a harbinger made of human clay and mashing him down into the smelly rubber below.

            In two weeks, he’d be fully inherited by his younger sibling.  This was officially his entire existence, contained in one thought.  According to the law, this bondage was binding until one of them perished, debt required her to surrender assets, or she simply decided to gift him to another.

            Which, in Paul’s tortured mind, suddenly felt like a tangible and mortifying possibility.

            What if she grew bored of him?  What if she gave him away as a present to a close friend, or as a consolation prize to a social rival?  What if she made him an heirloom someday when she had a child of her own and his remaining years were spent as a pet for a niece or nephew?  What if she, one day, decided she was sick of looking at his face and simply neglected to ever untape him again from the bottom of her shoe, only acknowledging his existence by the act of grounding him into the earth on every alternate step until his insignificant molecules simply melded into the very foundation of her body?

            No.

            No, she would do none of those things.  He could hear it in her voice like an unwritten sacred promise.

            He was Massie’s, forever: an idea that, six months ago would’ve filled him with doom and dread, but now, was simply a fact.  No longer depressing, or infuriating, or even necessarily scary.

            It just… was.

            And at last, amidst that insanity and the sensory overload as Paul found himself once again painlessly buried under his sister’s titanic foot for the first of many times as her property, her cold, doughy flesh molding tenderly over his frame, he discovered something else inside.  Something he didn’t expect to ever feel again.

            Relief.