I stared up at the woman towering over me, her chest an immense wall of white with a brief band of pleated plaid at the bottom.  The giantess dangled my best friend over her open mouth with only two fingers, dropping him a little further each time before pulling him back up.  Every so often I could hear him scream, but it was quickly drowned out by her laughter.  Whatever we had done to offend her, surely it did not warrant this.

Her fingers opened and my friend slipped in between her lips.  She tilted her head back and I saw her cheeks bulge a couple times, once with a distinct human outline in the skin.  The movement stopped, and I watched a lump move down her throat.  Without even chewing she had swallowed him.  At least I didn’t have to hear his screams anymore.

She looked down at me, her dark brown eyes like deep pits.  I was next.  Her hand moved toward me, but I was not going to give her the satisfaction.  The front door was only a few feet away, an easy trip even at my size.  Before her fingers could curl around me I turned and ran.

Her fingernails clicked against the wood where I had been standing, and I felt the breeze from her fingers on my neck.  I sprinted toward the far end of the table, digging my feet into the wood grain so I would have some measure of traction on my route.  A translucent tower loomed on my right, a dozen long-stem roses stretching from the rounded base and poking out the top.  In the glass I could just see the colossal woman reaching forward, her hand rapidly gaining on me.

I dove forward and to the side, just slipping away from her fingers when she lunged to grab me.  Through the vase I could see her fuming while staring at me, just out of her reach.  “Get the door!” she roared.  “We’ve got a shrink on the loose!”  She continued to glower in my direction while I dashed away and hopped onto a broad plain of red.

When I reached the end of the table I looked down at the floor.  The carpet looked soft and inviting, but even a full drop from this distance would kill me.  Nearby, however, there was a chair pushed under the table, complete with a very nice cushion.  Its seat looked about half the height of the table, a perfectly survivable drop, though not without risks.

Footsteps plodded toward me, and I realized that any risk is worth it.  I leapt from the edge of the table, falling quickly until landing on the seat’s velvety cushion.  My knees were bent, and to help absorb the impact I rolled forward.  No loud snaps or pops, and I could stand on my weight.  There was still a fighting chance.

Another series of footsteps joined the din, louder and more powerful than the ones coming from the woman who had eaten my friend.  A shape that was more mountain than woman ran in, a white and peach colored streak briefly remaining in my retinas when she blew past.  She posted up by the door, standing with her feet shoulder width apart, scanning the carpet in front of her.  Just one more obstacle for me to overcome.

As fast as possible I crossed the cushion to the back of the chair, where the support was formed by long, horizontal slats with large spaces between them.  Without stopping I flung myself from the seat, flailing my arms during my rapid descent.  I hit carpet and sunk in, finding it soft enough to absorb my fall without significant issue.

Now the only thing between me and the door was the titaness in white.  Slowly I crept among the carpet fibers to avoid drawing her attention.  I did not have the faintest idea how to open the massive door when I got to it, but I could wait.  Eventually she would get bored, or to go to class, leaving the door unguarded, while I only had to survive.  Time was on my side. 

Unfortunately, it was not to be.  With her bird’s eye view and sharp vision, the giantess’s blue eyes easily spotted me.  “Got it!” she bellowed and raised one of her white high-top Converse above me.  Apparently it did not matter how they disposed of me, only that they did.  At least it would be quick, instead of the slow and painful death of digestion.

The door roared open and hit the colossal woman in the back, tipping her forward.  She flailed to regain her balance, but it was too little, too late.  A massive tremor ran through the ground when her enormous body hit the floor with a thud, forcing me to stand still while it passed.

My savior pushed the door open all the way before stepping through.  I looked up at her and whispered a silent thanks to what I saw as nothing but a towering pair of legs, though she would never know she saved my life.  Quickly I dashed between a pair of gray, studded flats to the world outside, scrambling over the threshold on my last step toward freedom.

“Shit, Helen, I’m sorry!” she boomed, then closed the door with a slam.  Through a comedy of errors and excellent timing I had managed to escape.  I inhaled deeply, savoring the air I was sure I would never get to breathe again only a few minutes ago.  Maybe I was only an inch tall now, but dammit, I was alive.

I looked around for what to do next, and it dawned on me that I had no idea.  The extent of my planning began and ended with escaping the house.  Now I was tiny and alone in the big open world, incredibly vulnerable, with nowhere to go.  I reached for my phone to call someone.  Someone might at least humor the idea that I was puny in front of a sorority house, but to my dismay my phone was gone.  It must have fallen out during one of my jumps.

The white pavement field stretched ahead of me, longer than several football fields and at least twice as wide.  On either side of the driveway a thick forest of grass grew, the individual blades double my height despite being freshly cut.  Heat radiated from the pavement, and I worried the sun would bake me before I even made it off the sorority’s property.

A cacophony of grinding and metallic clanking filled the air and a massive black car turned into the driveway.  It barreled toward me, only going a few miles an hour but seeming to race over a vast distance in such a short amount of time.  There was no way I could move before it ran me over.  I had escaped from a house of murderous sorority sisters only to be crushed beneath one of their cars.

After a short, ear-piercing squeal, the vehicle came to a stop, close enough for the rubber to curve over me.  If she had kept driving even a second longer, the tire doubtless would have flattened me.  The door opened with a resounding click, then slammed shut with a resonating boom.  Black Converse slapped against the pavement, carrying tanned ankles past me in two strides before this giantess, too, disappeared into the door.

With a tremendous car parked in front of me I now had protection from the sun.  I walked around the tire and beneath the vehicle to get in the shade and began the trek beneath it.  The air reeked of motor oil and heat still radiated from the engine, loud pops echoing while the parts rapidly cooled.  It was far from a pleasant journey, but by the time I reached the rear wheels it had become significantly cooler.

I emerged from beneath the rear bumper, clothes damp with sweat still clinging to my body.  The ground steadily rose to a plateau in front of me, the white pavement turning to a street’s black asphalt.  Fortunately the slope was built from thousands of tiny black stones, the perfect means to climb onto the road.

The moment I touched one of them I knew it would not be that easy.  I yanked my hand back from the searing hot asphalt that had been sitting beneath the hot sun all day.  There had to be some other way up, but nothing on the driveway looked like it was both light enough for me to move and long enough to cover the incline.  If I wanted to get away from this house before one of them came looking for me, I would have to brave the jungle of grass.

Julie walked along the side of the road, tunelessly humming to herself as she went.  Normally she would go around Greek Row on the way back from class to avoid being harassed, but today was too hot to pass up the shortcut.  She kept her eyes to the ground, following the unpredictable cracks in the asphalt to avoid stepping on them.  Off to the side she spotted a bug crawling up from a driveway onto the street, then fall off immediately.  Feeling sorry for the poor creature, she stopped to help it up.  If she were tiny, wouldn’t she want someone to help her?

An enormous shadow was cast over me and I froze.  Another gigantic woman towered over me, her gray New Balance shoes planted on the street above.  I gazed up her long, shapely legs and over her hourglass figure to see her eyes gazing at me from beneath a waterfall of bangs, the rest of her black hair pulled back in a ponytail.  My experience at the feet of women this big had been anything but positive, and I began to back away.  For all I knew she lived here too.

The female colossus collapsed, coming to a squat on her heels.  She leaned back so that she could see me over her knees, allowing me to get a better look as well.  I had not been able to tell from the silhouette, but her eyes were absolutely remarkable, from their unusual shape to the burnt sienna irises.  Slowly she lowered a hand toward me and extended her fingers to form a ramp.  “Climb on up, little guy,” she said, her voice unusually quiet and gentle for someone her size.  “I won’t hurt you.”

Julie’s eyes bulged when the insect started crawling up her fingers and she nearly jerked her hand out from under it.  She had never seen a bipedal bug before, and when her mind settled down from the surprise she realized how amazing this find was.  Careful not to tip over, she leaned in to observe the tiny creature walking into her palm.  It looked like- no, it couldn’t be.

The instant I crossed from the long, slender planks of her fingers to the broad flesh plain of her palm the giantess began raising her hand.  It was a slow but brief ascent that ended in front of her face with her palm perfectly horizontal.  I was just below the rounded tip of her nose, a little close to her huge, thin lips for my comfort.  Her eyes studied me in silence as though she did not believe I was real, then whispered, “Are you…”  She paused, having trouble with the sentence.  “A tiny man?”

I nodded yes, and I thought she was about to explode from excitement.  A high-pitched wail emitted from her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut briefly.  After a moment she recovered and looked down at me again.

“You’re so cute!” she exclaimed, her pitch so high it sounded like a normal voice.  “Hold on, I’ll take you back to my room and we can talk there.”  I supposed I had no choice in the matter, and it sure as hell beat staying here.  Slowly she folded her fingers inward, and I made no protest or movement while she formed them into a loose fist around me. 

She kept her hand almost perfectly still while she walked, sparing me from the intense forces of it swinging back and forth with her gait.  Unfortunately, there was very little she could do about the heat.  It was already a blistering day outside, and being stuck between her palm and fingers created a miniature convection oven of her body heat around me.  Her loose fist allowed a weak breeze to blow through her fingers and onto me during her journey, and it might have been the only thing that kept me conscious for those twenty minutes.

The air outside became drastically cooler, making the space in her fist slightly more comfortable as well.  Her fingers remained clasped around me for several more minutes while she walked through the building to her room, her hand’s gentle swaying making me relax as it walked back and forth.  The racket of a key being forced into a lock reached me even through her flesh, and with a loud click it swung open.  My time being carried around like an object was almost over.

When her fingers opened she had the back of her hand flat on the table, making it into a raised platform for me.  Carefully I walked to the edge and hopped off into the space between her waist-high fingers.  She spread her fingers out and slid it away, leaving me standing in the open on the vast wooden plain.

Momentarily she stood, looming over me while she gazed at my tiny form.  I looked back up at her, wondering what she was going to do.  She had seemed nice enough, but it could have been a ruse to get me to trust her.  While we were alone in this room she could do practically anything to me.

After what seemed like an hour of uncertainty she sat, the chair making a thud when she pulled it underneath her.  With a thud she set her elbow on her table, then leaned forward to rest a round cheek against her hand.  Still gazing down at me, she smiled broadly and said with bubbly excitement, “I’m Julie!  What’s your name?”  I opened my mouth to answer but could not think of my name.  It was on the tip of my tongue, but no matter how hard I thought about it I had no clue.  Julie suddenly grew concerned.  “You can speak, right?”

I nodded.  “I can speak fine,” I said, and Julie’s smile returned, somehow even larger than before, “I just can’t remember my name.”

“Oh.  Hmm.”  She tapped her fingers against her cheek while she thought.  “I can’t call you ‘little guy’ forever, you need a name.  Let’s see.  Your voice is an adorable squeak… you’re a little cutie… I got it!”  Her other hand slapped against the table with a tremendous boom, causing me to wince.  “Uh, sorry.  You’re a cutie, so I’ll call you Cody!  Is that okay?”

I shrugged.  “Fine by me,” I said.  If I remembered my name later and had to correct her it would be awkward, but we could cross that bridge of we came to it.

“Okay, next question,” Julie said, and began tapping fingers against her cheek again.  “What…” she narrowed her eyes, “happened to you?  Like, how’d you get so small, if you don’t mind me asking?”

My memory of the whole thing was a fog, and only a few images popped into my head.  There was a gorgeous Asian girl looking down at me, then we were sitting on a couch with my hand on her thigh, and the next I could recall was the same woman dangling my friend above her mouth.  “I… don’t know,” I admitted.

“Seems like a pretty big thing to forget,” Julie began.  “Come on, did you shrink?  Did someone shrink you?  Were you born tiny?  Are you growing in reverse?  Are you the result of a cloning experiment gone wrong?  Visiting alien from a tiny race?  Race of tiny people from here?”  She stopped to gasp, then excitedly added, “Are you actually normal sized and I’m just gigantic?”

Nervously I scratched the back of my head.  She had given me a lot of options, but I was unsure about all of them.  The image of the Asian woman’s face filling my view while she dangled me in front of it came back, followed shortly by the memory of looking at her with a bug’s eye view, absolutely in awe at her colossal size.  “I… I think someone shrank me,” I finally managed.

Julie’s eyes lit up.  Now she was getting somewhere!  “Is it reversible?”

“Dunno.”

“How’d they do it?  Magic?  A shrink ray?  Did they-“ I held up my hands to cut her off, and she stopped the barrage of questions.

“I just don’t know, Julie,” I said.  “It might not have even been someone.  I could have just been born tiny, except I remember being your size… or about it.”  Sizing her up she was probably a little taller than I used to be.

“You sure don’t know a lot, do you Cody?” she asked, and I only shrugged in response.  Julie’s free hand started sliding toward me, thumb and index finger outstretched, and I flinched away.  Her hand suddenly stopped, mere inches away from grabbing me.  “One thing I want you to know is that you can trust me.  I’m not going to hurt you, okay?  As long as you’re with me, you’re safe.”

I didn’t know a single thing about her beside her name, how could I trust her?  Though I had misgivings, I knew that life would be very difficult for me if I didn’t.  Besides, she had gone out of her way to keep me safe so far, and if she wanted to hurt me she had ample opportunity.  “All right,” I finally said, “I trust you.”  If I was wrong I doubted I would have too much time to reflect on my mistake.

Her huge lips pulled back in a smile and her hand continued forward.  Julie’s digits pinched around me, holding me just eight enough for me to not slip out of her grip.  “First, we need to get you a bath,” she began, “you smell like sweat and motor oil.  “Then a change of clothes, I think I have some doll stuff around here…”  She stood, doing her best to keep me from rising too sharply while she did so, and went into the kitchen to draw me a bath.  Against all odds, I might end up being all right after all.