“We in this country are being subject to a sickness: an obsession with altering the very makeup of our fellow man. Judy Stevens would have you believe the most effective method for fixing the common criminal is to make him an ANT within it permanently. What will this do, other than develop an unhealthy fear of the world and an eye toward comeuppance?”

            Theodore Darwin’s droning voice suited his rigid face and obviously doctored lack of wrinkles. Still, in spite of these robotic predilections, Scott couldn’t help but be compelled to gaze up at the TV and drink in the man’s telecasted promise to fight tooth-and-nail against Judy’s proposed national growth of the Shrink Act. A flurry of press microphones fought for space under his chin as he laid out his goals to dismantle many of the maniacal punishments the matriarchal Stevens planned to visit upon the nation, if he was allowed to become senator in her stead.

            “Instead we need to focus on inviting those who’ve made mistakes back into our community of citizenship. It can’t happen overnight, I admit, but the approach to finding peace for everyone lies not in shrinking every single minor offender, but in giving them the chance to repent and, in the meantime, keeping them secure,” Theodore continued, re-centering the knot of his tie. The conversation then transitioned back into the advancements his company was making in surveillance technology. Finally, a couple of jokes regarding the man’s last name and the easy evolution-themed campaign slogans being pumped out.

            Not bad, Scott thought with a last glance at Darwin’s face. Better bring your A-game.

            Once the potentially empty yet nonetheless comforting campaign vows had ended, Scott rose back to his feet, grappling at the cushioned leg of the nearby building-scaled couch as he did so, and scooped up his handy Lil’ Fella Cleaner rod: a veritable Swiss army knife of maintenance devices intended for shrunken housemates on janitorial detail.

            Incidentally, it was the result of another ultimately helpful message that had originated from the TV during an infomercial one night when Judy was catching up on her crime shows after several weeks without a day off from work.

            Her mammoth bare feet were propped up on the coffee table with a hapless eight-inch Scott sandwiched between them on massage duty. Given how heavily his parent’s soles weighed upon his frame, though, the boy wasn’t so much providing the massage as offering up his body as a squishy tool by which the woman might knead her weary dogs together and get some much-desired relief. Which he was pretty used to.

            The gasp of delight she’d emitted when the plastic contraption flashed onscreen stopped Scott’s heart momentarily, as he briefly assumed all the rubbing she was doing had prompted an even more undesirable effect in her body. Instead she’d whipped out her cell phone to order the Lil’ Fella Cleaner trinket for Scott’s immediate use with priority speed, stroking her pinky toe through his mussy hair and offering him a wink as she spoke into the mouthpiece.

            Incredibly, the LFC was one of the few gifts Judy had given to her son in the past few years that actually was beneficial to his existence. And now it was time to put it back to use before the woman wandered through and thought him to be loafing during his normal work hours.

            Anyway, at six inches, it was getting a little tiring for Scott to crane his neck upward and witness the flaring screen in the living room. However, he was more than willing to put up with it after spending approximately seven hours of the previous day not only at one-sixth of this size but plastered to his mother’s doughy sole and flexed continually into the fibers of her soggy stocking. It was good to keep things in perspective.

            Scott’s incredibly kosher retelling of his first review board at the Adams Reduction & Rehabilitation Clinic to Val and his fellow reduced troublemakers had apparently put him back into his mother’s good graces, or at least her acceptable graces. She’d still made a point of depositing him back into her heel for the car ride home, grasping his head into the clamping crevice of her greasy toes every other minute.

            And now he had a brand new day to find all-new ways to test the limits of his patience and weigh the impossible moral question of whether it was worth it to wrestle his mother’s foot just for the privilege of maintaining some of his personal pride. At the very least, the high school had let out for the summer as of two days before, and with Kyle and Maggie home for a few months once again, Judy’s attentions might be more evenly divided. Not necessarily a good thing, but it inspired some hope.

            He meandered under the opaque overhang of the coffee table, switching the tool to its sticky lint-collecting head and plucked up some stray cracker crumbs and specks of fluff soon to become dust bunnies if he didn’t intervene.

            Truth be told, he was the only one in the house with the stature and vantage point to ever truly be inconvenienced by such low-tier detritus, but in the past year he’d noticed Judy taking more heed of the slightest imperfections in the upkeep of her home. She’d stated it was in case of impromptu interviews regarding her campaign, but he suspected it was primarily just to give him constant purpose. He was just lucky she didn’t try to rub his nose into the filth with the back of her thumb as she might a naughty dog.

            Satisfied with the state of the place’s foot-level ecosystem, Scott crossed the LFC over his shoulder like a bayonet and marched off the shaggy carpet of the living room and onto the hardwood of the hallway.

            He discovered a few errant flecks of crushed leaves and added them to his cleansing sabre without even breaking his gait. Passing by the glass door entrance to his mother’s increasingly ornate office, though, the boy was careful to tiptoe, grateful that the woman’s back was turned to her laptop. He was mere inches from reaching the first step of the staircase when the singsong order beckoned.

            “Sweetie, come here for a minute please,” Judy called.

            Silently huffing at the extra pair of eyes he was fairly certain his mother kept hidden on the back of her skull, Scott trudged back in the opposite direction, passing between the strategically cracked door he was now pretty sure she’d left waiting for her favorite houseboy to wander too near.

            As he cautiously approached the deeply imposing monolith that was Judy’s desk, flanked by crystalline pillars suspending it above, her eyes never broke away from the computer screen. Nor did her fingers cease scuttling at a rapidfire pace over the keyboard. The shrunken inmate did his best to avoid letting his gaze fall uneasily to his parent’s right foot. It was bared in all its usual glory and crossed over her opposite knee, bouncing airily overhead in time with each scrunch of her bulbous toes.

            “I could use a trim, as long as you’re down there. Left. Second toe.”

            Apparently that was all, because Judy returned to work after this cheerful request. Breathing a sigh of relief under his breath, Scott stumbled forward and, after tucking away the lint swab tool, replaced it with the combination nail-file/sander out of the LFC and approached Judy’s prodigious ped.

            Indeed, the second nail, recently painted a gleaming midnight purple, was looking a little mature. Now that he saw it, in fact, Scott recalled it appearing just overdone the day before as he was dangled nakedly between those squirming digits, but then again, it was hard to tell in the sweaty darkness where up was down, left was right, and his brain was toe-cooked oatmeal. So, it was understandable that he required having his memory jogged.

            The boy bowed down before Judy’s foot and wedged the rough edge of the implement against the rounded keratin. Next he set to gently sawing back and forth, powdering the tip of his mother’s over-long toenail into a fine dust that scattered quickly into the carpet and became lost, or at least those pieces that didn’t instead float to Scott’s pant legs and cling to the fabric.

            “Thanks, hon,” Judy intoned. She glanced briefly through the translucent surface of her desk and down at the eight-inch boy prostrated before her bare foot and tending to her every tiniest hygienic need.

            Scott nodded, rising off his haunches, but before he could leave he winced to realize two of his mother’s toes had parted and sprung forth. The digits clamped his arm between them and tugged him back down onto his knees. Careful not to struggle uselessly against the squishy flesh, the young man relaxed his limb into the doughy grip of Judy’s toes and looked directly above again to find his parent’s smugly hospitable countenance crooning from on high through the glass.

            “By the way,” Judy said at last, clearly intent on letting her toes do the talking first. They squeezed harder, earning a minute peep from their victim. “Friends from the campaign committee are coming over for coffee in about half an hour, so don’t go too far. Some of them might need you. Okay, sweetie?”

            Scott tried not to gulp too visibly and only bobbed his head again, and at last felt the pressure around his arm from Judy’s merciless toes loosening.

            They uncurled nice and slowly, of course, letting the pink color steadily pump back into the flesh over a few seconds before releasing completely. Immediately the digits scrunched back toward the carpet and then nudged the shrunken young man in the stomach, more or less helping him back to his feet.

            With no other apparent duties on the docket with regard to servicing his mother’s nude size-12s, Scot swung the LFC back over his shoulder and power-walked for the door before Judy could come up with more inanity for his time.

            Only half an hour. Great.

            Anything having to do with campaigns or committees was generally bad news for Scott. Especially since it almost certainly meant Nancy was coming over. And given that every time now that he was forced to look at that surgery-sculpted face of hers he was reminded of the previous summer when she’d forcibly stripped him down and used his head as her personal dildo in the poolhouse: a memory he wasn’t keen on reliving, especially since he’d already spent enough uncomfortable dreams doing just that.

            Plus, the way Judy had pronounced “need you” was troubling. As someone might refer to “needing” a cigarette after a long break, or vigorous masturbation following an intense blueballing.

            If he was lucky, he’d only be massaging the giant sun-baked pump-swollen bare feet of a roomful of middle-aged women with a bad case of the giggles.

            If he was lucky.

            “Kyle and Maggie’s rooms could use a going-over, if you’re looking for things to do before everyone gets here,” Judy sang out softly just as Scott slipped back through the doom-dwelling French doors of his mother’s office.

            Escape was pretty futile by this point, as his mother’s announcement of guests was a definitive command to be at the beck and call of the coffee hour, but that didn’t mean Scott couldn’t catch a short break now before the debauchery of soggy nylons and foot odor began.

            Reaching the base of the stairs again, the hapless incarcerate took hold of the rappelling line that ran along the wall and began bouncing his way up the steps toward his siblings’ rooms.