Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Dutton, and Mr. and Mrs. Foster had never felt more sapped of energy than in this moment. All of them naked, peppered with dust and grass stains, and drenched in sweat from the exhausting hike across the backyard, the six shrunken individuals were nearing the back patio of the Robinson family. Long ago, they’d stopped caring about trying to cover up their private areas from one another, just as easily as they’d abandoned most of their dignity. Rescue, or at least the hope of it, was in sight now. Only that mattered.

            “Oh, fuck, I think my heart is going to explode,” Mr. Dutton cried. He clutched his chest and ambled after his encouraging wife. The earth was rising now as the dirt sloped up toward the stone platform of the patio.

            “Almost there now. Don’t give up, everyone!” Mrs. Brown shouted. The grass blades, which previously loomed over all their heads like a shadowy canopy of amazonian trees, were becoming shorter and less frequent. They had open air and, more importantly, a way to be seen by their neighbors.

            “Suppose the Robinsons got small, too,” Mrs. Dutton gasped. The entire party froze at this mention. None of them had considered it either. “What would we do?”

            “We’d figure that out when we got that far,” Mr. Brown snapped. “I swear, I don’t know why we even invited you people to a cookout if you don’t trust us enough as friends to follow our lead when times are tough.”

            “Just shut up and climb up on the damn patio,” Mr. Foster shouted.

            The three couples worked together in impressive unison, boosting one another and clambering over pebbles and ropey weeds. They’d only just managed to crest over the edge and up to the patio, when the feeling returned. The coldness they’d all experienced right before shrinking, in fuller force than ever. Convulsing, the neighbors stopped in their tracks and watched with horror as the wide world around them doubled in size.

            Or rather, their size halved. Where they’d started out at a half inch, roughly the size of a thumbnail, now they were more like grains of rice. The warm summer breeze nearly bowled Mr. Brown over.

            “OH MY GOD,” Mrs. Dutton squealed, nearly fainting from the shock of it. Mrs. Foster, the closest one to her, caught the miniature woman before she could be hurt. “WHAT? WHAT HAPPENED?”

            “It… happened again,” Mr. Brown muttered uncertainly. His composure was slipping.

            “It doesn’t matter! We’re here now, and that’s what counts!” Mrs. Brown called, hoping to corral their spirits, though even her voice shook now. She pointed toward the nearest piece of the Robinsons’ patio furniture, a chair, which now stood higher than any monument she could’ve conceived. “Wait… is… is that them?”

            Over the forest of the flower beds, the six desperate neighbors could just make out two figures marching into view, so massively beyond comprehension they might as well have been imagined mirages. Even Mrs. Brown was out of encouraging words as she watched Michelle Robinson, followed by Greg, moving with purpose toward the patio. Despite the strength of the stone below their feet, the shrunken people could feel it vibrate ever so slightly as the giant Michelle Robinson’s sandaled feet slammed into the earth, rose back up, and crashed back again for a second step. She and her husband crossed the patio and disappeared behind the view of the chair.

            “HELP!” Mr. Dutton screamed first, breaking the quiet. “Help!”

            All three couples took to crying out. They ventured forth, arms waving, and neared the closest leg of the chair which now resembled an ancient temple pillar. Of course, neither Michelle nor Greg could hear them.

            “I’m going to move some of the boxes from the shed. I should be able to reach up to Thomas’s room,” Greg said from somewhere now unseen to the tiny individuals. His voice boomed in their ears.

            “Please HURRY!” Michelle begged. Her voice, despite its lilting and feminine nature, grew ever-closer and stronger as she returned to the patio. Thunderous footsteps: the weathered base of her shoe colliding with the stone, the sole of her tanned foot inside the sandal slapping achingly against the leather, and even her long, dark-green painted toes thumping inside.

            All of it echoed painfully in the ears of the unknown, quarter-inch spectators. Then, as if in answer to a prayer, Michelle came to a stop. She lowered herself into the chair, which groaned softly under her curvy weight, and set both sandaled feet down on the ground, just over spitting distance from the neighbors.

            “She’s back!” Mr. Dutton huffed, out of breath. Still clutching his chest, he charged forward, shoving Mrs. Foster out of the way. “She’s right there! Hey, lady! LADY! GOD SAKE, HELP US, DOWN HERE!”

            “Wait!” Mrs. Dutton cried, stopped in her path by Mr. Brown, who held her as the five watched Mr. Dutton sprint as best as he could across the uneven terrain of the patio. Smooth as the ground would’ve appeared to a normal-sized individual, to the reduced people marooned upon it, the earth was a battlefield of lazily laid cement fillings, leaf scraps, and fossilized insect remains. The tiny man barely managed to keep upright as he rampaged toward Michelle’s idly resting sandal containing her tanned, silky foot. The massive behemoth of flesh and leather more than beat out the size of a Boeing as he neared.

            And then it came again: the cold, under the skin of all six neighbors. The shrinking effect was more instantaneous this time. In a blink, all of them were cut down so low in size that a naked eye would’ve had to concentrate for at least a second to even recognize them as human. They were the size of oat grains, and that was being generous.

            “FUCK!” Mr. Dutton was even shorter on words. He tripped, unable to dodge the uneven earth, and crashed flat down on his face. In the middle distance, he could hear something new. Flesh, probably damp and humid from the heat, peeling away from leather. Soft clacking of elegant toenails against straps and shoe thongs. A heel, strong enough to crush boulders, pressing over the lip of a sandal.

            Michelle’s newly freed bare foot, rubbed raw pink by the shoe and glazed with perspiration in the soft wrinkles of her skin, loomed above. Its shadow swallowed Mr. Dutton, and then the rest of it did, as well.

            Mrs. Dutton fainted. The other four shrunken people screamed from afar. The giant woman’s foot, in the simple act of removing itself from a shoe, had come to rest on the ground. Just beneath the rounded ball of Michelle’s foot and the stone was what remained of Mr. Dutton. He’d popped like a mosquito on contact with her crushing wall of skin.