Cindy faintly hears the sound of her car’s engine roaring to life outside her house as her daughter begins to drive off towards the movie theater, leaving her alone with the box of shrunken vehicles and their passengers still sitting on the floor at the end of her bed.
She stares down into the box, looking awkwardly from one car to the next, imaging what she must look like to the tiny people below, seated high above on her bed from their point of view.
“Alright, everyone….” She begins, breaking the silence. “I'm very sorry this all happened and I'm sure you're in a hurry to be big again, so let's get started. I'm taking you back outside to return you to normal.”
Cindy flashes a reassuring smile to the tiny people below her as she carefully lifts herself off of her bed and stands beside it. She begins slipping her right foot into the heel it had just emerged from immediately before laying down. “No...” she says, deciding against this particular choice in footwear. “Not these.” She retracts her foot from within, and the shoe is empty once more. “Actually… none of this.” She speaks to herself, in reference to her outfit, still having not changed out of her clothes after returning home from work.
She returns her gaze to the shoebox on her floor before slowly leaning down over it, stopping when her face is looming directly overhead. Some of her long brown hair threatens to enter the box below, but she catches it with her fingers and swiftly tucks it behind her ear.
“It’s pretty hot outside, and it could take a little while getting all of you and your cars grown back to normal size out there in the sun. I’m going to change into something cooler before we get started, okay?” She asks kindly, with another smile accompanying her question. Nobody below is given a chance to protest, as her hands carefully begin placing the lid back onto the box. “No peeking!” She says with a wink as the shrunken people are sealed in temporary darkness.
“Unbelievable… can we just get on with this already? Some of us have lives to live.” The man in the red sportscar declares.
“We’re almost there, calm down, man” replies a younger male in a red truck. “It’s almost over.”
“Almost isn’t soon enough. All these bitches have offered us is inconvenience after inconvenience, delay upon delay. What’s next, is she going to be too thirsty to grow us back once we get outside? Will we need to wait for her to rehydrate herself first?”
“Relax, we’ll be outside soon and then our size will be restored and we can drive off and away from here.” Says a woman in a blue sedan before smiling to herself. “This nightmare is almost finally over.”
“Okay, here we go, little ones. I’m about to pick up the box, you guys may want to put on your seatbelts, just to be safe while I carry you outside. I'll try to walk very carefully so I don't shake the box.”
Keeping the lid sealed on top, Cindy lifts the box up and off of the carpet and tucks it safely under one arm so that she may open her bedroom door and head into the hallway. She walks gently through her house, keeping her word to the tiny people journeying with her. She reaches the front door and stops. “These will do perfectly.” She says, glancing down and to the left at a pair of pink flip flops.
They were a few shades brighter when purchased, but multiple summers of wear has faded the color into a dull, whitened shade of pink. One at a time, her feet drop onto the well-worn sandals, her toes scrunching and pulling themselves closer towards the end of the shoe before coming to rest in the sweat-stained imprints they’ve forged in the foam beneath them.
She opens the door and takes her first steps outside, the box still secure under her arm as she pulls the door closed once more behind her and begins her walk towards the driveway. A few steps more with her flip flops smacking and clacking against her heels and she reaches her destination, setting the box down carefully in the middle of her driveway.
Her lovely fingers slowly remove the lid of the shoebox and sunlight floods in, momentarily blinding the miniaturized people inside its cardboard walls. When their eyes adjust to the light, they can see the gigantic woman knelt down in front of them has changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. “Well, here we are!” She says cheerfully with another smile.
“For god’s sake, can we just get on with this? I’ve got shit to do, shit that I’m already very late for thanks to your daughter. Both your daughters, actually. And now you. I’ll definitely be finding a way to sue you for what I’ve endured today, although I must admit I’m seriously considering just driving away after all this is over, as it would mean never having to suffer another minute occupying the same space as any member of your family.” Cindy can just barely hear the man in the red sportscar’s outburst, he and his voice are so tiny, but she can, and it causes her to laugh, almost giggling at his anger compared with his size.
The woman in the blue sedan gasps. “You really think that’s a good idea right now, threatening to sue the woman who is about to basically rescue you from being a bug the rest of your life?”
“I’m not threatening anyone. I’m stating a fact. My lawyer will have a field day with this woman for what she’s put us through today.”
“Jesus, you’re unbelievable, what is wrong with you? It was all an accident. Nobody has gotten hurt, and it’s all about to be over in a few minutes.”
“It’s okay...” Cindy’s goddess-like voice interjects from up above, bringing all eyes back to the gigantic yet beautiful face that fills their sky and eclipses the sun behind it. “I understand you all must be very emotional. And he’s kind of right. You’ve all been through a lot, and I’m sorry. So I’ll stop wasting your time and let’s get this over with, okay?”
Once again, Cindy doesn’t wait for an answer or any sort of response from any of the tiny people below, instead offering another warm smile before lowering her right hand into the shoebox.
“I’m going to begin placing you on the ground, please stay in your vehicles while waiting for me to grow you back.”
Crouched down on the ground with her back to her home, Cindy begins carefully plucking the tiny vehicles up from inside the box between her index finger and thumb, and gently sets them on the pavement below with their hoods facing her.
As she sets each car down in front of her, the view from their windshield is completely dominated by her gargantuan form. Seeing any higher beyond her chest is impossible from ground level inside the vehicles. Her toes alone resting atop her faded pink flip flops are taller than any of the automobiles.
Cindy places the cars in neat rows, leaving roughly a foot (her scale) between her feet and the first row of cars, as well as a foot (still her scale) between every two cars, and before the next row of cars begins behind it. There are three cars per row, and the rows go five deep, bringing the total number of miniaturized vehicles to fifteen.
Her toes twitch playfully perched atop her flip flops. The sun reflects brightly off of her toenails, adorned in a dark red polish, freshly painted the evening before, though the tops of her toes are just slightly too high off the ground for any of the shrunken people to be able to notice.
“Excuse me, Ma’am...” a voice from a car towards the front of the group speaks up as the gigantic woman drops the final car into place at the back right. “But I think you should space us out much more than this. There isn't enough room for you to grow us all back like this. Not without our cars colliding with one another, at least.”
A woman’s voice from somewhere around the middle of the group replies. “I think lining us up like this was just for getting us out of the box. She's probably going to bring one car at a time over to the road and grow us back there, individually.”
Cindy ignores the conversation going on below her and lifts the now empty shoebox off of the pavement. She reaches her arm to her right and behind her, gently tossing the box with a flick of her wrist, sending it onto the lawn and out of her way.
“Individually?!” The driver of the red sportscar yells angrily from his position near the front left of the group. “Excellent, there goes ANOTHER... FUCKING... HOUR!”
“SHUT UP!!!” Several voices shout out in unison.
“I suppose...” Cindy begins, again drawing all attention back to her. “I suppose I should tell you how this all came to happen. I guess I do owe you at least that much… an explanation. How it’s possible that my daughter was able to do this to you, to shrink you. I bet you never imagined that something like this could be possible.”
“Shit, better make that TWO more hours. What am I saying? Probably going to stretch into THREE.”
Cindy continues, ignoring the minuscule interruption below. “You see, my husband is a scientist, and he’s been working on something big. Or, from your experience, you may say it’s something, small. As these words escape her mouth, Cindy begins rising to a standing position, making the tiny people below at her feet feel truly smaller than ever before. This is the first time they’ve been in front of her at her full height, and she’s even taller than her gigantic daughters.
“The device my daughter used to bring you down to your current size… it’s one of my husband’s prototypes. He’s been working so hard for so many years developing this technology.”
Cindy towers over the tiny people and their vehicles like a feminine godzilla, her gaze passing from car to car as she continues explaining to them how they came to be in their current predicament.
On the ground, the men and women crane their necks, some sticking their heads out their windows to get a better view of her face far above in the heavens as she talks down to them, a few lucky enough to be in convertibles able to just stare straight up at her in amazement.
“This technology is going to change everything. It will change the world. The entire world. But most importantly, it will change my life. My life, and the life my husband and I are able to give to our daughters. I’m so sorry, little people… truly, I am... but my husband is so close to finishing his project.”
Down at Cindy's feet, the people inside their cars find themselves getting nervous as they begin to wonder what the enormous woman is talking about, what she’s getting at and how it involves them.
“The end of my family living a life of mediocrity, the end of having to scrape through each day working a job I hate with people I can’t stand to be around only to receive a wage that’s barely enough to get by… it’s so close I can taste it. Any little hiccup between then and now could ruin EVERYTHING! This… situation we find ourselves in now… this is such a little hiccup. And I hope you understand that I just can't afford to risk losing everything that I… that my family has deserved, and worked for, for so long.”
Cindy brings her hands to her hips, continuing to tower dominantly over the fifteen vehicles that look like nothing more than fragile children’s toys down on the ground in comparison to her feet. “I can't trust any of you to not talk about this little incident. In fact, thanks to your little friend in the fancy little red car down there…” Her eyes focus on the red vehicle she’s just mentioned and she raises an eyebrow. “I can trust with certainty that you will take action against me and my husband’s machine as soon as you’re given the chance. And you talking about what's happened here today is exactly what I need to prevent. A news story about something like this… it would without a doubt paint my husband’s work in a negative light, give the public the opinion that shrinking technology is dangerous, that the world isn’t ready for it. Our bright future would be over before the technology is even released.”
“P-please, Wh...when are you going to grow us back, Ma’am?” Asks the driver of the blue van, the vehicle in the very middle of the front row of cars.
“Awwwww...” begins Cindy, frowning down towards the people below. She focuses on the blue van directly in front of her, if she squints she can just barely see the tiny man through the windshield, and what must be his wife or girlfriend in the passenger seat. “Poor little things. Haven’t you realized it yet?” She pauses for a moment, leaving the people on the ground with time to wonder about what they haven’t yet realized regarding her growing them back to their normal sizes. “I’m not.” Cindy removes her hands from her hips and crosses her arms at her chest before sighing. “I can’t. You must understand.”
Everyone’s eyes widen, many loudly gasp. The woman in the passenger seat of the van reaches out and grabs her husband’s hand for comfort. He accepts her hand and squeezes. “Wh...what are you going to do with us, then?” He asks nervously.
“This.”
Suddenly and without warning, Cindy lifts the front of her right flip flop off the ground and pushes it forward on its heel. A terrible scraping sound fills the air as her foot crawls forward towards the cars, the toe section of her sandal high in the air as it draws nearer and nearer, quickly closing the distance. Everyone on the ground is screaming and covering their ears in a futile effort to block out the horrible noise of the foam sandal scraping against the pavement, louder and more unpleasant at their scale now than perhaps anything they’ve ever heard.
When her foot reaches the cars, she lets the toe of her sandal hover directly above the tiny blue van occupying the young couple. “Again… I am sorry.” With these final words, she drops her foot down, letting it slam onto the vehicle below, her sandal smacking loudly with an immense POP as the van is compressed instantly between her footwear and the hot pavement. The flesh of her soft toes spreads outwards under her weight before she begins to gently lift and twitch them on top of her sandal, though she keeps her foot firmly planted on the ground, the completely flattened van still trapped beneath it.
The ground rumbles as though there’s been an earthquake, the remaining fourteen cars rattle from the impact, and everyone inside of them loses much of their hearing from the devastated slam of the massive woman’s foot hitting the pavement.
“YOU MONSTER!” screams the woman in the blue sedan. “YOU MURDERER! YOU KILLED THEM! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?! YOU KILLED THEM!!!”
Everyone on the ground is in panic. A collection tiny engines roars to life, though Cindy pays no mind to this sound, nor the plethora of tiny voices shouting pleas and obscenities up at her from below. Instead, she slowly begins raising her other foot, preparing for her next step.
Chaos erupts at ground level. In complete panic, everyone tries to flee from the now hostile gigantic woman whom they believed only moments ago to be their savior.
The sight below at Cindy’s powerful yet beautiful feet causes her to laugh. She really does feel sorry for the tiny people below at her mercy, or seemingly her lack thereof, but the view from above as over a dozen occupied vehicles try their best to scurry away from her, she can’t help but find humorous. They look like tiny little colorful beetles, scared little insects just ahead of her cute little toes. But she knows they aren’t bugs. They’re human beings, driving in actual vehicles, many of which larger than her own personal car under normal circumstances. Here, looking down on them from above… she’s never felt more powerful in her life. And it feels… good. It’s beginning to feel… right.
All trying to flee at the same time, a large portion of the vehicles ends up smashing into each other, creating a mass of tiny cars and trucks that just won’t budge. Horns honk and voices scream and cry, but hysteria has taken control away from logic for the shrunken people.
Cindy’s left foot slowly rises, moving through the air high above the pathetic traffic jam. It passes overhead, its shadow engulfing the pack of vehicles as it hovers over them and continues forward. Rather than drop onto the large group of stuck automobiles, easily taking out several of them at once, Cindy aggressively drops the heel of her foot directly onto a car near the back of the group that had started to break away from the pack. The car is flattened just as easily as the first one, the wreckage of which still compressed beneath her other foot.
The cars start to separate from the group, one by one breaking off and distancing themselves from each other as the towering form of Cindy continues to loom overhead. Tires screech and drivers swerve to avoid smashing into each other, as well as the colossal pair of feet that have already claimed two victims.
“Oh, come on…” Begins Cindy, returning her hands to her hips and surveying the scene of the escape attempt at her feet. “Just stay put and accept it, you little ones know there’s no way you’re getting out of this, it’s just a waste of time and energy to struggle. Just relax and it will all be over soon.”
The cars continue speeding away, though speeding may be a generous term as they’re too tiny to cover anything close to a meaningful distance in a small period of time. One car does stay completely still, the vehicle that had found itself in the exact center of the collision, rammed into from every angle by the others moments ago when the panic first began. Perhaps the car is actually too damaged to move, maybe the driver inside is in shock, or they’ve decided to listen to Cindy’s words and realized the truth, the futility of their hopes to escape.
“Thank you!” Cindy smiles, pleased that at least one tiny person has seemingly chosen to obey her. “I really appreciate your cooperation. I promise you won’t suffer.”
Much faster than the previous time, Cindy lifts her right foot into the air and immediately brings it back down to the earth, the center of her flip flop’s pink sole slamming directly onto the motionless car below with even more force than she’d used on either of the other two. The van she’d begun her display of destruction with remains on the ground behind her, a flattened mass of scrap metal, totally unrecognizable as an automobile.
The ground slightly trembles for anyone near enough to the impact zone of the gigantic woman’s latest stomp. A tiny white convertible changes course to avoid coming into contact with the enormous flip flop that had just been dropped from the sky and now rests in its path. Cindy notices and rolls her eyes, lifting her left foot this time and dropping it onto the convertible, effortlessly crushing it, as well as its occupants’ hopes of escaping her.
As the giantess’ left foot drops, Kevin speeds his yellow jeep between her feet. He passes through, in front of her now, relieved that, for the moment at least, her attention is focused on her right side. The ground rumbles around him and he looks in his rear view mirror to see how much distance he’s put between his jeep and the gigantic monster, but all he can see is a glimpse of her powerful lightly tanned legs dominating the skyline. “She got another one!” his girlfriend yells, her head sticking out the passenger side watching in horror as the carnage continues to unfold in the background. The crashing smack of the immense flip flop reverberates through the air once more not far in the distance. “And another one’s gone, Kevin! What are we going to do?!”
“I don’t know, Brianna! I don’t know!” Kevin yells, frustrated and trying desperately to focus on the ridiculously massive expanse of road ahead of him. “We’ve just gotta hope the other ones keep her distracted and drive as far away as we can, if we get lucky we’ll get out of her sight and hide somewhere.”
“Well drive faster then, hurry!”
“Ugh, why can’t you just make it easy on me and stop trying to get away.” Cindy takes a few steps in pursuit of another tiny vehicle, a little green car nearly at the end of her driveway now and about to enter the road. Luckily for her, her home is in a woodsy area, with no neighbors for a decent distance, and very light traffic down the road at this hour. The miniaturized automobiles could drive for quite some time before reaching any other semblance of civilization.
A tiny red sports car speeds past not far ahead on the road and to the right, and a bright grin spreads quickly across Cindy’s face. Ah, I’ve been looking for you, little guy.” She abandons her pursuit of the other vehicle, and turns her body to the right.
Cindy strolls calmly towards the speeding car, her modest steps quickly closing the distance between herself and her target. Tiny bits of crushed debris fall from the bottoms of her sandals as she walks. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” The angry driver of the red car chants to himself as he feels the ground quake and checks his rear view mirror to confirm his suspicions. The giant woman has set her sights on him, and she’s quickly catching up.
The man checks his speedometer, watching the needle climb, though certainly not as fast as he’d like. “Come on, come on!” He looks in the mirror again quickly, then back to the road ahead of him, but it’s too late. With one final step, the woman has both caught up with and surpassed him, placing her right foot directly in the path of his speeding car. With no time to react and brake, the tiny red sportscar slams directly into the foam heel of the pink flip flop.
The front of his prized car takes massive damage. The driver’s world is spinning. Desperate to survive, he attempts to reverse, but quickly realizes this path of escape has been blocked as well when he crashes again, this time into the front of the woman’s left sandal. “Going somewhere, little man? I don’t think so.” The woman’s soft yet powerful voice booms down at him.
Cindy lifts her lift foot just enough to place the top of her sandal onto the car, the toe section of her summer footwear resting on the frail little car’s roof. She applies a tiny bit of pressure, but not enough to crush the vehicle, just enough to destroy the wheels and begin compressing the metal. “Get out of the car… now.” Her voice commands sternly. She waits a few seconds, her foot still resting on the car, waiting for the man to comply with her simple request. “Come out or I’ll just squash you like the worm you are right here. Ready? Three… Two… O-” She stops her countdown as the driver side door finally opens far below her. “Good little bug.” She smiles.
The man’s door has become severely damaged, he is forced to kick it open, just before the colossal woman’s countdown reaches zero. He struggles to emerge from his battered vehicle, but he finally manages, falling to the ground when he’s out and curling in a huddle on the pavement.
“Stand up.” She commands him. His body writhes in pain on the ground, his head aching and still spinning. The woman slightly increases the pressure on the foot resting on top of the little red car and it creaks and groans beneath the immense weight. “I said stand up!” She repeats her request once more, not yelling, but raising her voice enough to convey her anger and her diminishing patience. The man rises, his wobbly legs barely able to support him as he gazes skyward at the beautiful woman stretching impossibly high into the air.
“How much was this car?” she asks, removing her foot from the roof and nudging the side of the vehicle with her sandal. The man is in agony, finding it incredibly difficult to focus on anything other than his pain. “Come on, how much did you spend on it? I’m really curious.”
“Fifty… Fifty thousand dollars.” The shrunken man yells up in response, deciding to play along in hopes of just getting this all over with as quickly as possible.
“WOW, fifty thousand dollars? Really?” Her eyes enlarge and she pretends to be impressed with the number.
“Yes, fifty-fuckin grand. Now go ahead, just do-”
“That’s a lot of money, little man.” She says, interrupting him. “Hey, do you know how much my flip flops cost?!”
“No.”
“Come on, guess!”She shifts her feet around, modeling the foam footwear for the tiny man at her feet.
“I don’t know, and I don’t ca-”
“Ninety-nine cents. Can you believe that? I got ‘em in the bargain bin. But they’ve lasted me like… three summers. I bet that’s longer than you’ve had your car. And they seem to be a liiiiiiiittle more durable than your car too.” She laughs. “Money well spent on my part. Yours… not so much.”
Anger rises in the man, overpowering his pain. He clenches his fists at his sides. “I get it, I know what you’re getting at, stop wasting my time and just go ahead and do it. Demolish my fifty thousand dollar car with your one dollar nasty fucking sandals.”
“No, silly little guy, I’m not gonna do that.” She replies with a giggle, beginning to slip her right foot out of its flip flop. “I wanna try something else.”
Cindy extends her leg and propels her now bare foot forward through the air. Her monstrous toes splay and wriggle playfully in anticipation as they draw closer to the doomed red vehicle just ahead of them.
The man watches from ground level, fear finally beginning to take root in his heart, overpowering his anger. With the giant woman’s toes spread, his entire body could easily fit in the space between any two of them. Though the flesh between them appears luxuriously soft, he knows finding himself snagged by them would be a deadly final embrace. He is aware of the fact that total destruction of his prized car is inevitable, and he feels that although it doesn’t really matter what way it’s done, obliteration beneath her bare feet rather than her sandal is just somehow worse, more insulting.
The gigantic feminine foot is upon the car at last, and the soft sole touches down gently, pressing lightly against the roof while the gorgeous toes slowly and sensually curl over the shattered windshield and onto the hood.
“You’ve made it very clear to me, little man, how strongly you dislike when I waste your precious time, so, without further delay…” Cindy winks, finding great enjoyment in taunting the tiny man below.
The man watches from just a few feet away as unfathomable pressure is applied to the beautifully pedicured bare foot on top of his vehicle. The steel contorts beneath her mighty toes, glass litters the ground and a series of hisses and pops emerge from within the dying machine.
Cindy has never felt more powerful in her entire life. A fifty thousand dollar automobile capable of turning any head as it drove by has been reduced to a flattened heap of scrap under the power of nothing more than her bare foot. And the insufferable asshole that owns it was forced to watch from the ground below where he belongs, like the insect he really is. She twists her foot from side to side and grinds the mess of metal beneath her against the unforgiving pavement.
The gargantuan bare foot rises, as does the wreckage of the red car, stuck to the thick pale sole which lightly glistens in a thin coat of sweat. The object has been almost completely flattened, its shape contoured slightly by the appendage. The giantess repositions her foot, moving it into place directly above the tiny man, letting it hover overhead.
“Your turn.” She says coldly. She scrunches her hovering sole and wriggles her toes as the wreck begins to come loose from her skin. The chunk of flattened steel crashes hard to the ground, connecting with the pathetic insect below and splattering him underneath.
“Just a few more to go.” Cindy turns her attention to the left and surveys the road for the remaining targets. Upon spotting one, she lifts her left leg backwards and towards her body, reaches down and slips off her remaining flip flop. She drops it on the pavement where it lands with a loud THWACK before taking her first steps towards the next doomed vehicle, both of her perfect feet now bare, the heat of the pavement warming her soft soles as she travels forward on her path of destruction.
The sound of flimsy footwear crashing down against the pavement in the distance sends shivers down Kevin’s spin as he continues charging his jeep forward and away from the source of the noise. He glances into his rear view mirror to find he has put considerable distance between himself and the giantess. She appears truly far away as she continues dropping her deadly feet from the sky, but he knows in reality, at her scale, she can’t be more than one hundred and fifty feet away from his current position on the road.
“I think we should try something different, but I don’t know for sure if it will give us any better of a chance against her.” Kevin says to his girlfriend.
“What is it?” Brianna responds.
“I think we should get off the road quick, while her attention is nowhere near us. We head into the woods and wait for nightfall, or until she gives up looking for us and goes back into her house. After that, we get back on the road and drive until we can find someone to help us. What do you think?”
“I… I don’t know. Don’t you think there’s gonna be animals in the woods that are just as dangerous to us as she is? And if we find someone else and ask for help, do you think they’re gonna really help us? I mean, we thought we could trust her, remember? Can we really trust anyone at this size?”
“So, here’s our two options, really. We can either keep driving in a straight line like this until she catches up with us and steps on us like she’s disposing of a cigarette, or we can head into the woods and worry about giant animals and other untrustworthy giant people later, when that time comes. What do you pick, out of those two options, or have you got another one?”
“Fine.” Brianna replies with a sigh. “You’re right, it’s probably a good idea, just do it quick before she looks this way and sees us. And by the way, I told you not to get this thing in yellow, like how many times? It would be much harder for her to spot us if this thing were black, or gray, or, seriously, pretty much anything other than bright yellow!”
Kevin shakes his head as he turns to the right. “Hold on, there’s gonna be a bit of a jump when we come off the pavement.” The yellow jeep reaches the edge of the pavement, and soars into the air, landing roughly on the ground below a few seconds later. It drifts through the dirt on the new terrain as Kevin brings it to a stop facing the woods ahead.
The landscape the young couple finds themselves in now is almost alien. Their vehicle is currently in a patch of terrain consisting of mostly dirt and pebbles. Further ahead is grass, and further beyond that exist unfathomably massive trees stretching into eternity, or so it seems for the tiny people gazing up at them.
Something green comes flying off the pavement at an awkward angle. It comes soaring through the air, and lands with a crash not far from the jeep. “What the… I think that was a car. I’ve gotta help whoever is inside, if they’re still alive! Stay here, I’ll be right back!”
“Kevin, no! There’s no time, we’ve got to get out of here before she comes this way!”
“If it were you in that car, I’d hope someone would go and get you out. The woman is still far away, we’ve got time. We can’t leave someone behind if we can help it, it’s not right.”
“If you’re doing this, I’m coming too. You’re not leaving me alone out here to get eaten by some giant spider.”
Kevin sighs. “Fine. Let’s be quick about this.” The couple exits the jeep and runs through the dirt towards the crash site. They’re upon it in less than two minutes. A green car is completely overturned, marks in the sandy terrain behind it indicating that it flipped over more than once after hitting the ground coming off from the jump.
A man begins crawling out from the wreckage. Kevin runs over to him and grabs his arms, helping pull him out. Kevin helps him to his feet and the man dusts himself off. His face is bloodied and he is quite shaken, but remarkably otherwise unscathed. The man looks around for the giant woman, spotting her in the distance, occupied with someone else at her feet. He breathes a sigh of relief before turning back to face the couple. “Where’s your car? She hasn’t destroyed it yet?”
“No, it’s right over there.” Kevin points to his jeep nearby. “We saw you crash. We were heading into the woods, but I had to check and see if anyone survived. Come on, hurry, we’ll take you with us.”
“Give me your keys.”
“Shit.” Brianna says silently. “Of course.”
“What, no...” Begins Kevin. “I’m sorry, but I’m driving. Now come on, we have to get out of here, NOW!”
“He doesn’t want to drive, Kevin. He wants to take our car and go alone.”
“Clever girl you’ve got here. Now I’ll ask again.” The man pulls a pistol out from his wasitband and points it towards Brianna. “Give me your keys.”
“You don’t have to do this, we just want to help you. Put the gun down and come with us. We’ve got a better chance of making it through all this if we work together.”
“I don’t have time for this shit.” The man begins raising his weapon towards Brianna’s head. Kevin reacts quickly by reaching out to grab the man’s arms and attempt disarming him. The man is quicker. He turns the gun to Kevin and fires two shots into his chest. Kevin collapses into the dirt.
“NO!” Brianna screams dropping to her knees and taking the wounded man into her arms.
“Last fuckin’ chance. Give me the keys.”
“They’re still in the ignition, just go!” the woman screams through tears and rage.
“Thank you.” The man replies, tucking his gun away. “I’ll be on my way now. Good luck.”
The man sprints off towards the jeep, leaving Kevin and Brianna sitting alone in the dirt. The couple leans against the wreckage of the green car and watches the gigantic woman in the distance still hunting her prey. The sunlight is slowly fading from the horizon as she carries on her hunt.
The jeep drives up to the couple and its hijacker rolls down his window. “This was nothing personal, but it was either you or me.” He waits for a moment for a response but receives nothing but a glaring stare from Brianna while her boyfriend’s blood flows onto her, spilling onto the sand around them. The man silently turns his head away from them and the jeep accelerates.
“You just had to check, didn’t you?” Brianna asks, gently running her hands through Kevin’s hair.
“It was the right thing to do. I just didn’t expect the person inside to be such a dick.”
Brianna smiles, still crying. “I know, it was right. You’ve always been my hero.”
“Two to go. And good thing, too, it’s going to start getting dark soon. Let’s see… where can they be?” Cindy scans the ground for the final two vehicles she must eliminate. She knows nothing has gotten past her, so she turns her attention to the left and follows the road, knowing the tiny drivers must have done the same. After a moment of walking, she spots a yellow jeep. It’s come off the road, but appears to be attempting to climb back onto the pavement. “Gotcha.”
The car thief decides it might be better to return to solid ground. The terrain off the pavement will likely only slow him down, too much dirt, too many rocks, twigs, leaves, and various other natural debris. He attempts to climb back onto the pavement, but it’s too high to access. He keeps driving forward, looking for a lower spot he can use to his advantage.
“Nice jeep.” The woman’s voice booms.
The man looks up and notices she’s fast approaching his current position, her attention focused directly on him. “Shit!”
“What’s the matter? Looks like someone decided to do a little off-roading, then changed their mind but got stuck.”
The man realizes he’s not going to reach the pavement in time so he turns the vehicle around and begins driving as fast as he can through the dirt and away from the woman. Several hundred feet away he can see the wreckage of his own car. “Perfect. I can lead her to them and maybe they’ll distract her. I can cover some distance while she takes them out.”
A quick glance in the rear view mirror reveals to the man that there won’t be time for this. The image of five descending bare toes spread widely apart fills the mirror. A second later, they are upon the roof, pressing down and holding the tiny jeep in place beneath them with the rest of the gorgeous foot hovering in the air.
“Stop fighting, it’s over now.” The driver still hasn’t given up hope of getting away, continuing to spin his tires in the dirt, kicking up a stream of sand behind them that crashes against the back of the gigantic perfectly wrinkled sole and towards her hovering heel.
The man reaches out the window and fires his weapon at the immense foot holding him in place until his ammunition is depleted. She fails to even notice this act, her skin so thick and his weaponry so ineffective against her that if she can even feel his bullets impact her skin at all, she probably only perceives them as more of the dirt being thrown upwards by the tiny tires.
“You tried your best.” She lets her foot drop, instantly destroying the jeep under her unfathomable weight. “Now, where’s the last one?”
“At least that one deserved it.” Brianna says as she watches the man who shot her boyfriend meet his fate. She knows there’s only about one moment left before they’re discovered.
“You need to get out of here, there’s still time for you. Head into the woods now and stay there until you think it’s safe. She’ll never know to look for you. She’ll think it was just me in this car. You still have a chance to live if you go now!”
“I’m not going anywhere, not without you. Maybe somehow I can reason with her, get her to help us.”
“She’s out of her goddamned mind, it’s hopeless. Please, go while you still can!”
Cindy smiles, noticing the final car is within sight. Not only is it in sight, but it’s also already immobilized. “Awwwww…” She begins, approaching the upturned vehicle in the dirt ahead. “How sweet, you destroyed your car for me! I really appreciate this!” As she gets closer, she notices there’s a tiny figure standing next to the car, waving its hands in the air, trying to get her attention.
Reaching the car in a few small steps, the giantess stops and lowers herself, kneeling down directly in front of the wreckage. Her knees sink into the sand as she looms overhead like a goddess of death and destruction.
“What happened here, little one? You had an accident?”
Brianna has never been so afraid of anything in her entire life. She knows this is the last chance to save the lives of her boyfriend and herself, and somehow finds the courage to communicate with the immense being gazing down at her. “No, this isn’t my car!” She yells as loudly as she can so that her words may be heard. “It belonged to the man driving the jeep that you just...” She stops, thinking of the best choice of words to use to not incite a negative emotional response.
“That I just crushed?”
“Y-Yes! It belonged to the man driving the jeep that you just… crushed! He crashed, we saw, stopped to check for a survivor, and he pulled a gun on us! He shot my boyfriend and stole our jeep!” Brianna gestures towards her boyfriend where he rests against the wreckage of the green car, on the verge of bleeding out.
Cindy hadn’t even noticed a second insect on the ground. She leans in for a closer view. “Boyfriend?”
Brianna gasps and shivers in fear, utterly terrified as the immense face falls from the heavens and stops so close to her that she can feel the warmth of the woman’s breath blowing against her like a light wind. “Please, help us! We promise we won’t tell anyone anything about any of this! We’ll sign anything, we’ll do anything, just help us! I’m begging you!”
The woman frowns, she truly does feel sorry for this tiny couple. “I’m so sorry. You’ve been through so much. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but there’s nothing I can do. And there’s nothing you can say to change my mind. The only help I can give you is a quick death. I have to finish what I’ve started.”
“Please, no! We’ll do anything! Just let us live!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, little one. But congratulations on being the final survivors. You two should be proud!” Cindy offers the tiny people below a warm smile.
“You bitch! You gigantic bitch!” Enraged, Brianna pulls off her right flip flop and whips it as hard as she can at the gigantic face smiling down on her. The sandal hits the side of the giant woman’s nose, bouncing off and falling back down to the dirt below. “How can you be so heartless!? So cruel?! We’re people!”
Cindy can’t help but laugh when the shrunken woman’s sandal strikes against her nose. She felt nothing, and would have never known it was done to her if she hadn’t seen the act committed before her comparatively colossal eyes. Her light laughter blows a gust of air that knocks Brianna to the ground and sends sand into the air. “It’s time to get this over with.”
The gigantic woman rises to her full height and towers menacingly over the tiny couple. “You might be right. Maybe I am a gigantic bitch. But I’m not heartless. I’m doing this for my family. And what you’re getting here isn’t that bad either. Soon you’ll be at peace. You’ll never have to worry about anything again.”
The massive bare right foot rises up, sand cascading off of it, falling through the air and raining down upon the world below. “You should be with him at the end.” Her eyes gesture towards Kevin, leaning up against the wreckage. “Holding each other on the way out. It’s romantic, don’t you think?”
Defeated, Brianna crawls the short distance across the ground and reaches her boyfriend. The two embrace.
“I love you.” Kevin says, barely able to get the words out through the pain and nearness of death.
“I love you too.” The couple kisses as the bare foot is positioned directly overhead. Bits of dirt and debris sprinkles down around them but they do not let go of one another. The massive wrinkled sole begins its descent, bearing down on them like an indestructible ceiling of pale flesh. The lovers focus only on each other, paying no mind to the chaos around them, thinking only of their love for one another until their final breaths.
Night has fallen.
Kylie has returned home from the movies with her sister. “Give me your popcorn bag and soda cup if they're empty, I'll throw them away. “She says as she pulls the car into the driveway. “You go ahead inside and talk to Mom.” She didn't pay much attention to the movie. She was too busy thinking about the tiny boy she caught staring at her from inside his car on her bed and how cute she thought he was. She wished she could have met him, and under much different circumstances.
Lizzie runs quickly up the driveway and disappears into her home. Kylie walks around the car and towards the trashcan at the end of the driveway. She takes the lid off of the trashcan and before she can throw away her sister's garbage, she notices the shoebox… the same shoebox she left behind only a couple of hours earlier.
The girl removes the lid from the cardboard box, and inside rests a familiar site. Her mother's pink flip flops. Her mother wore them very often, around the house, outside, anywhere and everywhere that she went during the summer unless she had to dress up for the occasion.
Kylie reaches into the box and grabs one, pulling it closer to her face. Upon closer inspection, she notices tiny pieces of metal sticking into the foam and small red splotches dotting the surface of the sandals. Scattered throughout the bottom of the box lay various tires, rims, bits of broken glass, and an assortment of other crushed car parts.
Kylie drops the box back into the trashcan in shock. “Mom... no!” she says in quiet disbelief. A tear emerges from her right eye and she wipes it away, a futile act as many others begin streaming down her beautiful young face.
“Oh, Mom, no... what have you done...”
THE END