Introduction

“You know why people trust me, it’s BECAUSE I’m a cautious motherf@*#%r!”

“Aright calm down people are starting to get curious,” Jim whispered.

Jim looked around the diner at the late night clientele, those who had been listening turned away from his gaze. The couple in the next booth over got up and left, undoubtedly thinking some shady deal was going sour; they were right.

Jim worked for the RCMP; his team had been undercover for weeks to stem the flow of GTS, A synthesized drug previously known as 109-GEN. An experimental drug for shrinking tumors that failed miserably at its intended use but found a new market as a bizarre black market drug in communities across North America.

It took only a small amount of the drug to produce the desired shrinking effect, which lasted until a restoration pill was taken. Crummy dealers & mules like Tony and Jocelyn here distributed the drug to kinky couples and others with more criminal intentions; it was the latter Jim was concerned with.

Tony stared at Jim from across the table, barely skipping a beat before continuing his dirty deal.

“Look I’m sorry for the attitude but between cops trying to bust me and all the freaks who keep wanting more of this stuff I haven’t been getting much sleep,” Tony said through bloodshot eyes. The scanky pale girl next to Tony slid what looked like a pack of gum towards Jim.

“But for someone wanting a pack of twenty, sleep had to wait” Tony laughed.

Jim opened the corner of the pack to make sure he wasn’t being conned but everything seemed clean, in a manner of speaking.

“Would you mind me asking what you plan on doing with that much GTS?” This was the first time the girl had talked, the fact that Tony didn’t back-hand her seemed to indicate she was more then just his drug mule.

“Don’t mind her man, she’s always lookin’ for knew ideas of what to do with shrinkees” Tony said tossing a smoke across the table to Jim. “Almost every night she gets her hands on some poor bastard who was just looking for a good time, screaming almost keeps me up all night.”

Jim involuntarily let a shiver pass through him; the girl could’ve been attractive enough to be a model but her dark malevolent eyes and dirty appearance showed a past that had left her twisted and sadistic. Her foot rubbing up against his leg encased in clear stilettos did not help ease the cold feeling in his stomach nor chill the warm feeling slightly south of there. Jim picked up the cigarette

“I hear that, you should think of finding somewhere else to sleep,” Jim said motioning for a light. “I know a place where I can get you room and board without having to pay a dime.”

Tony smiled raising his lighter to Jim, “Oh yeah, where’s that?”

SNAP!

Jim flung a pair of handcuffs on Tony’s outstretched arm, while his team burst in from every entrance and exit.

“You’d like it, its downtown”

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Several moments after his team rushed in it was over and Frank and Jocelyn were in custody, his team had pulled it off efficiently. He was lucky Tony didn’t carry a gun; in fact Tony did very little when faced with a dozen officers, what Jim found even stranger was Jocelyn’s lack of panic seeing as how she actually handed him the drug.

At the station he and his partner Emma had been called in to see Capt. Heather Watts; while he often considered the operation his, she was the real one in charge of the team which consisted mainly of women. She had never been happy about him being assigned to the operation, but he never caused enough trouble to be reassigned.

Emma and Capt. Watts were old friends, so knowing his partner was always trying to help her friend get rid of him didn’t help their relationships. Emma was more of the girl-next-door type who had been hardened by police training, pale with long messy red hair and a cute face complete with a button nose gave her a non threatening appearance. Capt. Watts on the other hand was a tall supple blonde but embodied the ideal of a cold ice queen.

Upon entering the office he was taken aback to see her enjoying a drink, well at ease, and trying to hold back a grin.

“Sit down you two, we just got a big break” she said pulling out a blue folder and handed it to the two officers.

“Tony was just another small timer out to make a buck, but when we looked into his girlfriend Jocelyn’s activities we hit pay dirt.” Heather explained, while he opened the folder showing long distance photos of Jocelyn entering several warehouses.

“Judging from surveillance she’s a big part of the shrinkee trade, as both customer-“

The next page showed a photo of several small corpses found in her trash, Emma looked traumatized.

“-and a seller”

The next few pages had dozens of photos, all of women entering or leaving Jocelyn’s apartment. Couples who wanted to experiment didn’t go through Jocelyn; her clientele seemed to consist of a wide array of sinister looking girls. A twenty something girl with long brown hair and a little weight around the hips left carrying several shoe boxes, several middle aged women resembling street walkers and one who looked like a professional dominatrix also made appearances.

“The last few pages are of particular interest, they shows just how wide spread the GTS phenomenon is getting”, another hint of a smile flashed on her face so quickly he thought it must have been his imagination; a small gasp from Emma set my concentration back on the photos.

Their, on the first page a mother and her 14 year old daughter were leaving Jocelyn’s with the signature shoe boxes and an excited smile on both their faces. This was something he’d never seen, irresponsible parents introducing their children to their sick habits. Many experts figured it would take years for something as new as GTS to become a fad drug among tweens and teens; but in parents eyes they weren’t letting their kids handle cocaine or dildo’s, GTS was something different to them.

The photos went on and on. Many of the older teens came alone or with friends, all looking trashy, miserable, or scared. Many of them girls looked familiar; he may have even seen them around the local high-school only three blocks from his house.

He actually felt relieved to see two older girls (a tall and skinny girl with bleach blond hair and a shorter pale girl with black hair) in the final shot; the blonde wore a modified school girl outfit heavy on the punk side while the brunette wore so much dark clothes and make-up it took him a minute to understand the feeling of lead in his stomach and the sharpness of his heart beat….Samantha?

“That’s right Jim, it’s your daughter” Heather said now no longer hiding her glee, Emma seemed to have a rather blank expression not looking at either of them. “Caught, and she only just turned eighteen a few months ago. Things aren’t looking good for her future” A steady sly inflection in her voice.

“What is this?! You’re going to blackmail me off your team! Dragging my daughter into th-“

“Calm down Jim, you’re good at what you do and I just intend on using those skills for the good of the team. Busting the shrinkee trading ring in this area will be the greatest achievement of my career and you’re just going to help me accomplish that by going undercover.” She threw a slip of paper at me.

“I knew you’d weasel out’ve the order if I didn’t have collateral”

Jim inspected the document which authorized the use of GTS for an undercover operation.

“In 5 hours we will release Jocelyn and you’ll be waiting in her apartment placed with the shrinkee’s destined for trade, you’ll be bugged with advanced audio and visual equipment which I will be monitoring. I suggest you get ready and maybe have a chat with your daughter”.

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Walking into his house Jim had never felt this tormented since the divorce, he felt betrayed, stupid, and scared for both himself and his daughter.

How long had this been going on? He knew her friend Crystal was probably to blame, in the photo she was the one with the shoebox and Samantha carried nothing; He knew it wouldn’t help much in court but it eased his conscience, perhaps it was just her friend.

There was something else thought, he knew the profiles of girls who used shrinkees and his daughter fit the bill; she wasn’t the prom queen she was an experimental, dark, and rebellious girl. He had always figured it was just a faze; but what if she did love torturing defenseless shrinkees and maybe even killing them?

She’d be coming home in about 30 minutes, giving him more then enough time to search her room; but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

He grabbed a pen and paper, leaving a note telling his daughter he’d be back in a few days and that she would be home alone and was forbidden to have anyone else over. This would be the first time he’d be leaving her alone without a babysitter; she’s pressured him to give her more responsibility now that she was eighteen and to stop babying her.

‘Her throwing a party is the least of my worries now’

He grabbed his things and went out the door.

“Ouch!”

“Sit still we’re almost done” Emma said, sticking a small device to the side of his head. “This little thing will allow us to see everything you see, it’s flat and skin colored so I doubt Jocelyn will notice it.”

“It’d be easier if all this surveillance equipment didn’t shock me every time you attached it.” He’d been having himself bugged for the last half-hour in a surveillance van parked outside Jocelyn’s house.

“They shock you because they communicate through your body rather then using wires.” She activated the computer console next to her; a video stream matching Jim’s vision began playing. “Neat huh?” She said excitedly.

“Neat.” He replied with much less enthusiasm. Jim hated that Emma was going through with this knowing he was being blackmailed; he figured she probably wouldn’t mind having him out of the way for a while.

After all the equipment was checked Emma handed him two pills, one blue, and one red. “We colored the GTS and the reversal tablet: Red - you shrink, Blue – you grow.”

“You watch the matrix too much” He said trying to ignore the bad feeling in his gut; Jim threw the red pill in his mouth and took a mouthful of water. Seconds later he blacked out…

-

“Rise and shine Jim” Emma’s voice boomed above him. He remembered instantly what had happened; but was taken aback at finding himself in Emma’s hand, already in Jocelyn’s apartment. He tried getting to his feet, but couldn’t keep himself steady. Trying not to look down he crawled to the edge of her palm to get a better look at the apartment.

It was dark; all the curtains had been drawn allowing only slivers of light to pass through. The place seemed a mess with clothes, magazines, and boxes, covering most surfaces. In the corner, Jim could see several cages lying empty on top of a cabinet. Emma seemed to pick up on what he was thinking and slowly made her way across the apartment, avoiding the junk that littered the floor.

When she opened the cabinet doors, hundreds of tiny screams greeted her. It was impossible to hear what they were all saying, but most seemed to either be crying for help, or mercy. They were all divided into plastic containers, doted all over with tiny air holes. Some were so over crowded with guys that they seemed to have no room to move, while some of the last containers were empty, or had two at the most.

Jim heart was beating hard in his chest. Emma was ignoring the cries of the little men and trying to decide the best place for Jim. She put him in one of the last containers on the bottom row; dropping him in unceremoniously before getting up and heading straight out the door, with not even a backwards glance.

After she left the commotion died down, but didn’t go away. He could hear people yelling down at him from the upper shelves asking him who he was. He couldn’t answer yet; if he told people he was a cop, there was a chance Jocelyn could find out. Jim also didn’t want any of the shrunken criminals undoubtedly mixed in with everyone else finding out he was a cop.

“Jim, are you reading me?” The words came in so clear it was as though someone had spoken them in his head.

“Emma? Yeah I can hear you fin-”

“She’s coming up to her apartment. Be ready, she’s with someone!” Jim’s heart which had just begun to calm down, was once again trying to beat its way out of his chest. “Got it.” He was sure his voice had gone up a few octaves.

The door to the apartment opened and the screams of the men above him intensified once more. He watched Jocelyn step inside, followed closely by a tall African-American woman. She was about 6’1, well toned and well dressed, wearing a black skirt and tank top. Jim thought she was almost too well dressed to be in an apartment like this.

“It’s alright Trish, I should still have one left” Jocelyn said over her shoulder to the other women while taking off her purse and coat.

“Ugh… You have got to clean this place up.” The woman tried to kick off a magazine that had clung to the heel of her black ankle-boots.

“I’m hardly ever here.” Jocelyn said approaching the cabinet. “Besides the cops are probably going to be watching this place now, I’ll have to move all my stock back to Kim’s

The two women were now standing in front of the cabinet; Trish sat down on a nearby recliner while Jim could hear Jocelyn rummaging through the containers of little men above him. His attention was focused strongly on this new woman. He watched as she casually unzipped her ankle boots; pulling them off revealed her long shapely bare feet, each covered in a thin layer of perspiration. Jim staggered back from the wall of the container as the strong odor reached all the way to his plastic prison.

“Here we go, found one.” Jocelyn walked over to Trish and dropped something into her hand. It took Jim a while to recognize the tiny figure as a little man who was no more than an inch tall. “He’s the last Inchy I got for now, hope you get to enjoy him for the whole night.”

Trish smiled, still looking down at the little man squirming in her palm. “Girl, I don’t think he’ll last an hour after I hit the dance floor tonight.” She raised her right foot and shoved the little man into her toe crevice then scrunched and unscrunched her toes until he was hardly visible.

Horrorstruck, Jim watched as the girl slipped on her airtight ankle boots and zipped them back up. ‘There’s no way he’ll get out’ve there alive.’ He thought to himself, imagining the terrible environment in the woman’s shoe.

Jim never understood why most women who bought captured little men, enjoyed having them imprisoned under their feet. Since he’d started investigating the GTS phenomenon, Jim had seen all manner of shoe designs made specifically for containing the men under the owner’s feet.

~-~

One case he’d worked, on involved an entire sorority being rounded up. Part of the initiation to become a member involved seducing a boy and bringing him back to the sorority house, there he’d be forced to ingest GTS and inserted into a special cavity made into the girl’s shoe.

While the girls were being interrogated, Jim oversaw the removal of the little men from their footwear. All the shoes had been placed on a large table and he and four other officers went through each pair, checking for compartments under the insole. The state of the little men had been disturbing to say the least; many were both physically and mentally scarred from the experience.

He remembered one man he’d found in a size 13 running shoe belonging to a member of the schools track team, most of his ribs had been crushed and he’d claimed to have been in there for at least two semesters worth of competitions. The girl turned out to be the star runner for the school, a 6’1 shapely blond with definite Swedish ancestry.

The shoes of the next girl were in sharp contrast to the running shoes, they were a pair of black leather knee-high boots with five inch black rubber platforms. The boots looked worn and menacing, they had a row of silver buckles running down the front with a tiny skull adorning each; he was relieved to see they were fake. The heat and smell from the boots was 10 times stronger then it’d been with the running shoes; it was still so warm he remembered feeling his hand sweat when he’d reached in and fumbled with the moist insole.

Underneath the insole he’d found 6 men in a compartment that’d been carved into the platform of the boot, they were all crowded together with hardly any space to move. Each of the men were delirious and emaciated, hardly aware of what was going on around them. They’re bodies were covered with signs of abuse, one man simply squirmed around the bottom of the compartment lacking both arms and legs, another two were tethered together oddly with short chains and piercings which undoubtedly served some sick purpose. All of their skin had been decorated with tattoos and welts, they hardly seemed human anymore.

~-~

The sight and stench of the little men had made him sick to his stomach, but it was nothing compared to how Jim’s stomach now felt lying in his plastic cell. He could easily be forced to endure what those men had gone through.

Jocelyn had been busy changing while Jim was reflecting. The other woman had left several minutes ago in a hurry, and the commotion in the containers had died down. As he watched Jocelyn crawl into bed and heard the cries of the other men go silent, he couldn’t help at worry about what would happen to his daughter if he were to die on assignment; but even these new fears died away as Jim dozed off after what felt like the most hectic day of his life.