Scott had been placed in some pretty compromising situations in his life by his younger sister. The most recent a year before involved her tricking him into stripping naked for a ride around the inside of her dark, moist cheeks, and a month before that, even, a social media blunder where she’d posted him half-bare, half-frilled in doll’s clothes for all her friends to see. Naturally, he’d built up a pretty thick skin, and so couldn’t say he was feeling much trepidation right now, when weighed against those prior experiences.

            But still, this, by Maggie’s normally earthier standards for humiliation, felt just a little bizarre.

            Reduced down to an inch, Scott crouched calmly inside the tight squeeze of the clear plastic marble-like “accessory” his sister had fished out of her bag, at Judy’s insistence. It took a little finagling from his sister’s massive thumb to wad his body fully inside. But she’d managed, of course, as she always did.

            The view of the expansive office beyond took on an even more disorienting sight than normal for Scott once he was filled inside the ball. Every surface was distorted, creating the impression of staring out at the world through a fish-eyed telescope. If anything, the world seemed even larger now.

            On all sides, the soft skin of his sister’s palm was smushed against the tiny sphere containing its prize. Her fingernails worked delicately to screw the top hatch of the marble back into place, ensuring there was no way for Scott to get out until someone released him. Once satisfied, she gave her miniscule sibling a smirk, one last clicking tap with her index fingernail against his translucent prison, then deposited him in his cramped hamster ball back on the carpet.

            Scott did his best to get his bearings as he patiently awaited whatever demonstration his sister was preparing for their delighted mother. The tasteful office space had swelled yet higher, the walls curved and dipped in unknowable concave shapes by the circular view of the marble. Just in front of him, at the sight of Maggie’s bare foot on the carpet, unpainted toes casually bouncing, her ped appeared even wider than normal at his smallest size.

            Up above, Kyle was secured into a similar marble, though from Scott’s vantage point, he noticed Maggie took a few extra seconds placing her younger brother inside than she had with him. Rather than jamming her thumb against his back, as Scott experienced, she used her pinky, prodding insistently but without shoving to place Kyle inside. If anything, encouraging him to make the transition himself, without physical coercion.

            Holding the marble, the size of a healthy cherry tomato, against her palm, Maggie screwed it in place with a fingernail, then lowered Kyle toward the ground as well between her massive thumb and index fingers.

            A few token airholes were all that connected Scott texturally to the world now. He supposed there were a few benefits to such a state of being. Especially after the working-over he’d just taken in his mother’s giant slipper.

            “All right, I’m seeing the potential, honey,” Judy boomed. Her voice was thickened and aqueous in Scott’s ears: almost as if he was hearing her through an old-fashioned sea diver’s helmet. She sat facing her daughter, her even-more enormous toes thumping possessively at the floor and rattling the pair of marbles, just to ensure her sons didn’t forget her presence, despite the fact that they couldn’t turn around to see her.

            Awkwardly, Scott shifted his neck enough to the side to make eye contact with Kyle, resting in his own marble a few inches away. The teen looked more bewildered than ever, still somewhat pale from his upchucking beneath his mother’s sole. He’d buried his face in his hands, though Scott couldn’t guess whether it was from embarrassment or motion sickness.

            “Now what?” Judy questioned.

            “Well, there’s a few things you can do,” Maggie explained. She straightened her back against the swivel, laying her forearms regally on the supports on the side of the chair like a throne. Her thighs came together until they touched, her muscular calves folded against one another, and both big toes pointed at the floor with the same graceful intention.

            Scott could almost see his pitiful glassy prison reflected in the funhouse mirror of his giant sister’s shimmering toenail.

            But not quite. Thank God.

            “Looks like they might make for a nice little massage,” Judy remarked. She, too, sunk into her chair, extended her left leg outward, her broad sole hovering inches over Scott’s marble. The wrinkles of her instep were warped almost beyond recognition.

            “That’s true, yeah,” Maggie giggled. Her toes crept across the carpet, the ball of her foot arching up just above Kyle’s sphere. She rested the peachy hill of her bed down against her younger brother’s container, though it didn’t budge other than the initial trembling under the considerable weight of her limb. She was in total control of the pressure.

            “But that’s not all, I gather?” Judy asked.

            “Nope,” the girl grinned. She rolled Kyle’s ball down along the slope of her sole. He made two full rotations before he reached her heel, whereupon she allowed his marble to slide out from under her foot. “Watch this.”

            Scott blinked, somehow almost grateful to see his sister’s two largest toes separating as her enormous foot lurched forward. Neither woman was exactly trustworthy at this height, but it was easier to put his faith in the girl who’d been dedicating internship hours to this exact science. With Judy’s size-twelve behemoth still hovering above and so severely limiting his view to the sky of mature foot flesh, Scott was soon walled in as Maggie’s smaller, stubbier toes snaked underneath her mother’s sole.

            “Hey, are you stealing him from me, sweetie?” Judy chuckled. Her foot instantly came down with a heavy slap, the bulwark of her sole skin contouring around Scott’s marble. Before she could, though, the middle Stevens child had shoved her own foot in underneath her mother’s and sunk Scott’s marble into the creamy crevice between her toes.

            In an instant, Maggie had claimed both tiny brothers between her digits.

            “Maaaaaybe,” she sang. “You gotta be quicker.” Her two toes danced around their victory prize.

            “Are you sure you’re interning over at this internship I set up for you, or are you just sitting around playing with the little ones you’re supposed to be teaching a lesson?” Judy joked. The woman rocked her foot from side to side, casting only thin slivers of light along the sole wrinkles that continually mushed and deepened above Scott.

            Still, Maggie’s meaty big and second toes remained firmly grasped around the sides of his globe. Almost in a dance of gentle wrestling to retain possession of Scott’s marble from their mother.

            “How about a little of both? They’re barely paying us anything, anyway,” Maggie snickered. The joints of her toes whitened, flushed of color by exerted pressure as she waged playful war with the monstrous mass that was Judy’s foot. Eventually, the dark sky fell away, and the girl’s foot emerged triumphant, Scott’s marble gripped haphazardly between her two toes and braced against the ball of her foot for support.

            Maggie hummed to herself as she settled into a relaxing yoga-esque exercise, keeping her leg locked out as she raised and lowered her bare foot with elegant slowness.

            Trying not to let himself get too seasick as he watched the ground zoom into the relative distance, Scott made an effort to remind himself that things could, and had been, much worse in the past. He’d ridden inside his sister’s cleats on multiple occasions while she kicked game-winning shots on the soccer pitch, after all. Motion was on an advanced level of theoretical nausea there. Despite this, it was a different ballgame to have to look down at the ground while it drew nearer then pulled back, as though he was continually scrolling in and out of an electronic world map.

            The only real respite during the intervening seconds was for Scott to crane his neck back and face the other direction to limit how much shifting earth he was forced to watch.

            Of course, that just meant he had to look directly at the pale valley of soft flesh currently wedged in a vice around his temporary prison by two mammoth toes. Which he imagined was how his sister wanted it anyway. She certainly seemed to smirk wider when she noticed him craning to face her foot in the cramped sphere.

            “This is certainly a useful exercise,” Judy said from somewhere beyond. Each word entered Scott’s marble in echoes of various pitches, as he continued to ride the wind up and down along Maggie’s foot.

            “Isn’t it?” Maggie said. “Olivia is always talking about improving our - what’s the word she uses? Dexterity. She always says it’s the most important thing to learn about these types of lessons. It helps the little person… acclimate, and it helps you improve, too.”

            “I couldn’t agree more.”

            “Make sure you keep Kyle upright, Mom. It’s easier to balance the weight if he doesn’t roll as much.”

            “I’m sure I can handle it,” the woman said, chuckling again. She extended her leg up, with her youngest son’s miniature form wadded up in the ball and between her toes, though not quite as high as her athletic daughter. “Don’t you remember who taught you how to handle a person at this size?”

            “Oh, I remember, Mom. But now I’m taking the master class. So I can teach you a thing or two.”
            “I suppose you can, honey. And I look forward to more.” The pride was so evident and swollen in Judy’s voice, it carried easily to Scott’s ears, even in spite of the whoosh of the improvised roller coaster and his sister’s gritty toe flesh smeared across the marble’s airholes. He could practically taste Judy’s satisfied egoism. Unironic joy in her daughter, who was rapidly molding into a true protégé of this twisted art Judy had designed. Though the concentrated, stale air inside the marble was now thoroughly tainted with Maggie’s rubbery toejam aroma, Judy’s tone was the most potent thing in the air for Scott.

            And it made him just a bit sicker than he imagined his brother was after emerging from their mother’s topsy-turvy footwear.

            There really had to be something he could do.

            The demonstration carried on for several more minutes primarily in silence, save for the occasional little peal of laughter from Judy or Maggie. The two Stevens women, each with one of the shrunken Stevens men jammed in their marbles like human truffles, savored the quiet might of their quadricep stretches. Even as sunlight cast through the window and across their faces, both Judy and Maggie kept their eyes glued to their tiny targets below.

            “All right, dear, I’d better take a break from this soon, or I won’t be able to get out of bed in the morning,” Judy said at last, caressing both palms along the thigh she’d been working this entire time. Her foot lowered back to the carpet a final time, where she released Kyle onto the floor. Before he could enjoy his freedom from her toes for too long, though, she rolled him back beneath her sole for the massage she’d hinted at earlier.

            “Well, you know, it’s not like this is the only thing you can do with these accessories,” Maggie said slyly. Her foot continued to hover in air, with Scott suspended face-to-toe with the gridded underside of her largest digit. With her opposite leg, though, she casually slid her instep along the carpet, approaching Judy’s weary foot. In another skillful swipe, Maggie’s toes darted underneath Judy’s sole, and suddenly Maggie had Kyle’s marble pinched between her opposite set of toes.

            “Now that’s just not fair,” Judy smarmed, planting both hands defiantly on her hips and fighting back a jovial smile. She watched her soccer-star daughter gripping both her shrunken brothers between her toes, and finally beamed with adoration. “Didn’t I always teach you kids to share with others?”

            “Only if it doesn’t get in the way of self-improvement,” Maggie sounded off as though she’d read this rule from an encyclopedia written by their mother.

            Scott couldn’t help but grimace. All the Stevens children knew perfectly well that Judy’s definition of “improvement” was more akin to “advancement.”

            Judy, at a pleasant loss for words, only smiled and shook her head. “So what is this other use you were going to show me, honey?”

            “Oh! Right,” Maggie said. She stretched her leg across the narrow gap between her own chair and Judy’s, setting her heel down against her parent’s knee. Kyle’s fetal-positioned body in the marble was proudly displayed in the grasp of Maggie’s pink toes. “Just put him against whatever muscle’s tired, and try rolling him around a bit.”

            “If you insist,” Judy said. She plucked her youngest son’s prison from between her daughter’s toes and deposited him down on her thigh. Next, cupping the base of her palm around in orbit, she proceeded to roll him in an ovular track along her sore quadriceps.

            Scott cringed. That couldn’t be doing great things for the poor little guy’s stomach, though at least Kyle was above ground again. The air flow would be more regular and potable when handled by Judy’s fingers rather than her toes.

            “But if you still gotta have the massage, too, well then…” Maggie began. Her other foot, still hoisted in midair, shifted downward, and that was when Scott realized with a roll of his eyes that he was being offered as tribute. His marble was plunked softly on the ground mere inches from Judy’s toes.

            Luckily, his mother was more than willing to make up the space difference as her sole arched above, swallowing him up in shadow and flesh simultaneously for a vigorous puttering back and forth. After a few rolling revolutions from the ball of her foot and on down to her thick heel, Scott had a feeling his brother was currently on the gentler ride of the two.

            Which was something, at least. The kid deserved a grace period to figure things out. And Scott was willing to bet Maggie had very strategically chosen where on their mother’s person to deposit each of her hapless brothers. Which, also, was something.

            “Honey, you just might have completely changed the way I work in this office now,” Judy said with another burst of pride in her daughter as she massaged her pathetically tiny sons along inner thigh and lower sole.