“LeShae!  LeShae, down here, dammit!”  Erin screamed up at the giant of a woman before her, though she knew that getting her attention would be much more difficult than waving her hands around in the air and screaming from the floor.  She was only 1/8th of an inch tall, and what was worse, LeShae had just settled into the hair dryer seat.  There was a torrent of warm air blowing around her head; it would have been difficult to hear a normal sized person, so Erin might as well have not existed at all.

“Fuck!”  Erin stomped her foot several times, before slowly collapsing onto her knees, burying her face in her hands.  She wanted wasn’t sure what the appropriate reaction was here.  This shrinking disorder…she’d been told it was fixed, that the medications and surgeries had cured it.  And now here she was, shrunk to as small a size as she’d ever been, on the floor the salon she worked at.  In front of her, what seemed like a mile away, was LeShae Fox, one of her least favorite clients.  Despite both being in their mid-twenties, with similar paying jobs and upbringings, LeShae always talked down to Erin.  She made rude comments about Erin’s clothing, joked about Erin’s slight southern accent, and never left her a tip. But for some reason, LeShae only ever asked to let Erin do her hair, despite how she treated her.  She didn’t know why, it was just what LeShae wanted.

              Despite looking a mile away to the tiny woman, only a yard from where she rested, Erin’s goddess of a client sat comfortably, reading a magazine.  Erin couldn’t see what was commonly known as LeShae’s ‘resting bitch face’, and she was glad, it would just piss her off more to know that this was the woman she had to get help from.  Both of LeShae’s feet were planted firmly on the tile ground, protected by a pair of powerful high heel ankle boots.  They were cute, tan and suede, the heels chunky and wooden.  The woman certainly had a sense of style, regardless of what Erin would admit.  Erin also knew that Leshae was wearing some sort of long, flowy blouse that covered most of the shorts she was wearing, but from the floor, all she could see was miles of bare leg.

Trying to compose herself, Erin slowly stood and took the first few steps toward the clueless giantess.  She had to move quickly, LeShae was only supposed to be there for about 45 minutes, and who knew what would happen if that time was up and Erin wasn’t around.  But even more pressing, did Erin really want LeShae to find her?  She didn’t know, but she had to at least move out of the middle of the room. 

Fifteen minutes went by.  Erin had slowly moved from a walking pace to a slight jog, realizing that if she really did want LeShae’s attention, she had less than half an hour to get it.  Being somewhat practiced at this from previous shrunken experiences, Erin knew that simply climbing the woman was not a favorable option. It was doable, but certainly not her first choice.  However, above the rim of the towering bootie was an ankle bone, perfectly carved and chiseled, and seemingly in reach from the cuff of the shoe.  That was the plan, and if it meant Erin would be going mountain climbing, then that’s what she would do. However, she still had second thoughts about letting LeShae be the one to help her.

Soon enough, Erin crossed the dirty floor of the salon, stepping over thick hairs and moving around boulder-like pieces of dirt.  Before her, a monumental boot-clad foot towered over her tiny form, unmoving, indescribable in detail.  Erin was glad LeShae had worn suede, anything else could have been more difficult to climb.  The heel of the boot, as she approached, formed an arch high and wide enough to fit a city block worth of buildings underneath it, and it created a supportive sole of the same wooden color, lighter than the boot itself.  Inside, a female foot that was surely as impressive as the boot that contained it occasionally shifted.  Erin approached the left boot from the side, trying not to gawk, and stay focused on her goal.

In that moment, as if to demonstrate the power of the goddess above her, LeShae made her first significant movement.  High, high above, Erin did not notice LeShae’s perfectly toned calf muscle tighten and pull the rest of her leg up into the air as she crossed her left leg over the right.  All Erin saw was the monumental foot suddenly begin moving upward.  She stumbled backward at the sight, looking up to see the woman’s legs cross at the knee, leaving only her right foot planted on the ground.  She sighed.

Dusting herself off, she stood and moved forward once again, heading toward LeShae’s right foot now, more determined to begin this climbing expedition.  The sole of the boot itself was millimeters wider than the rest if the boot.  It made a perfect sidewalk for Erin to walk along, and was only a little taller than her.  Soon enough, Erin had reached LeShae’s boot and was pulling herself onto the sole.  The shrunken woman’s tiny bare feet fit perfect on the extension of the sole, and Erin pressed her back against the suede surface.  Immediately regretting this decision, she turned around and pressed her chest against it, then began to move horizontally along the boot, using the sole as her own person path. 

Every so often, Erin would hear and feel LeShae’s foot shifting within the boot.  Sometimes her toes would wiggle, sometimes the entire foot would shift just a bit, but Erin had the fur-like fabric of the suede boot to hold on.  Fortunately, it was never much of a movement, and she was slowly able to make progress along the path, which became more steep as she squirmed along the boot.  It was hard to put the thought of whose boot this was out of her head, but she managed to do so long enough to finally reach the top of the arch.  She didn’t dare look down, at least not intentionally.

              A few feet to her right, the massive zipper that kept LeShae’s foot inside the boot.  The zipper tape’s width and teeth combined were easily three times as wide as Erin was, and the teeth made perfect ladder rungs.  If she could climb the zipper’s teeth up the twenty or thirty feet, she’d be dead even with LeShae’s ankle, and hopefully safety. 

So she went to work.  Grabbing ahold of the make-shift ladder, the tiny woman pulled herself up, grunting at the extra effort it took to get in place on the zipper teeth.  She was dirty, sweaty, tired and hungry…but so close to getting out of this alive.  She could do this, she had to.
             
              Hand over hand, the metal zipper hurt her fingers and toes as she climbed each set of teeth, doing her best not to slow down, and certainly not to look anywhere but up.  She wondered why LeShae hadn’t gotten up to look for Erin.  Maybe time hadn’t passed as quickly as she thought.  It didn’t matter though, she had to get up to the ankle, and she had to get LeShae’s attention.

              It must have been only a few minutes, but for Erin, it felt like every inch of the climb took all of her energy to pull off.  However, despite her bruised fingers and aching muscles, Erin finally reached the zipper’s slide, grabbed ahold of it, and pulled herself up to the cuff of LeShae’s boot, using the tiny chain that hung there.  She did it, she finally reached LeShae’s ankle.

In front of her, the curve of the ankle bone, hidden behind partially tanned flesh, was nearly the size of a house.  However, between her and that sensitive skin was a rather large gap, easily ten feet across.  Below, there was just enough light to see where the rest of the ankle lead inside the boot, and the outline of the top of the LeShae’s powerful heel.  Lower, everything vanished into the darkness.  Erin shuddered at falling from here as she stared into the abyss of what was really just a cute little bootie.

She had to figure out how to reach that skin and tickle LeShae.  She’d come too far to give up now.  As she shifted her position to become temporarily more comfortable, she suddenly felt a gentle rumbling, not unlike she’d felt earlier.  As she turned to look up, she felt then entire boot begin to shift position, tilting on the heel.  Yelping, Erin notice that the toe of the boot was lifting off the ground, as well.

LeShae was tapping her foot. 

              Erin screamed as the foot reached the peak of it’s tilt, paused, then slammed hard back on the floor.  The resulting thud shook Erin to her core, and if she hadn’t been holding on to the zipper, she might have been thrown in any number of directions.  She braced for impact, as the boot began tilting once again.

              Thud. The sound of the wooden sole clacking against the salon’s floor tile hurt Erin’s ears, but she was more focused on holding on to that zipper.
             
              Thud.  Another tapping of the foot.  This time, the zipper slide bounced against the teeth, slamming Erin’s back against the rigid metal.  She lost some of her grip.

              Thoom.  The hardest tap yet, not that it mattered to Erin, as the zipper flapped harshly around this time on it’s chain, swinging up and over the cuff of the boot, and carrying Erin with it.  The tiny woman screamed as loudly as she could, now dangling from the zipper’s slider on the inside of the cuff of the boot.  Below her, the darkness of the inside of the boot loomed, threatening to swallow her into it’s depths.  She stared straight up, her view of LeShae’s face still obscured by the crossed leg.  Her fingers were raw, and as she was about to give up, LeShae shifted her position, and the woman’s face peered over her knee. 

              The pretty woman’s face seemed to look perplexed, eyes darting around at the floor.  Her brows were furrowed…until Erin saw her look straight down at her planted foot, with the struggling tiny woman clinging to her zipper. 

              “LeShae, help me!”  Erin screamed as best she could.  She didn’t know how or why LeShae could see such a tiny thing as herself, dangling precariously inside her boot, next to her ankle…but she didn’t care.  “Please help me!”  Erin screamed again, and just then she saw something that made her heart sink.

              LeShae smiled…and her lips puckered, as if blowing a kiss to Erin.  Finally, the goddess mouthed the words ‘Buh-Bye’, and Erin felt her world shift again as LeShae tapped her foot a final time.

              The shrunken girl lost her grip and tumbled helplessly into the depths of her client’s little bootie, disappearing under her ankle, with the rest of her pretty little foot. As she fell, she heard LeShae giggling.

LeShae couldn’t believe it actually happened.  It finally worked.  Erin had finally shrunken again, and was scrambling around somewhere at her feet.  And even better, she was alone in the salon.  The weeks, maybe months of coming in and making Erin use her tainted shampoo, secretly exposing her to the chemicals that she was allergic to, the ones that made her shrink, was finally worth it.  LeShae wasn’t sure if there were security cameras, so she played it safe, and waited until Erin made her way closer.  Standing up and looking around on the floor for her would have not only been incriminating, but would have made her look pretty strange if someone else came in.  She hadn’t known what to do with the tiny girl or how to get her home, until a few minutes after Erin disappeared, LeShae felt the tiniest movement on her boot.  At first she just tapped her foot a few times, forgetting that there was a tiny woman somewhere on the floor.  But then she remembered Erin, and was afraid she’d accidentally crushed the shrunken hair-stylist under foot.  Peeking over her magazine, she noticed the zipper of her boot swinging against her ankle, inside her shoe…and Erin, desperately clinging to it.  It was too perfect.

“Buh-bye.” She whispered, before tapping her foot one last time, and watching Erin fall deep inside of her shoe.  Erin Tucker was trapped in her boot.  For a moment, LeShae considered whether or not today had been a good day to forego her socks.  Shrugging the thought off mentally, she uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, so that the boot containing her tiny prisoner was lifted from the floor. Glancing at the timer on her phone next to her, she still had five minutes left under the hairdryer.  She smirked and turned the page on her magazine, bouncing her foot gently in the air.

***

Erin actually did not fall as far she expected, the fall from LeShae’s ankle to the floor had to have been 50 feet, but she was not falling to the floor, she was falling inside of her shoe. The light had immediately disappeared under her ankle, the temperature climbed ten degrees. After falling what couldn’t have been more than two seconds, Erin’s body collided with a warm, soft surface, and it only took a moment to realize that it was the side of LeShae’s ankle. She didn’t stay there long though, the smooth flesh allowed her to slide off, and tumble another fifteen feet to the insole of the boot.  Erin landed roughly on her shoulder, yelped in pain, and was sure that it was dislocated or something. Turning over, she slowly sat up and looked at her surroundings. 

It was nearly pitch black, other than what light shone in from above.  She was facing the heel of her shoe, an enormous wall of foot flesh to her left, the heel of LeShae’s foot, her heel-skin not looking as soft and perfect as it probably did to the woman herself. To her right, another wall, the side of the boot.  The zipper was there, only this time it was not as obviously climbable.  It still seemed that Erin could probably climb up and out of the boot, but it wouldn’t be as easy, especially not with her shoulder so hurt.  Behind her, Erin knew that she was only a few steps away from the steep decline that lead deeper into the shoe, and she shuttered to think about if she’d landed closer to that hellish world.  Everything around her smelled like some kind of flowery lotion, and a little like sweat.  It had to have smelled so much worse deeper into the boot.  Shaking the thoughts out of her head, she pulled herself up and took a slow step toward the zipper.

No sooner had she reached to grab it, did she feel LeShae’s foot shift some.  Erin hesitated, glancing back at the enormous woman’s foot, and heard what was probably a loud thud, to her, but was diminished by being inside the boot.  Fifteen possibilities raced through her head, before she felt the entire foot carry her shoe-prison higher into the air.  Erin fell over, but grabbed ahold of the teeth of the zipper just in enough time to prevent herself from falling.  Looking up, she could see quick glimpses of LeShae, and the room she was in, and for a moment she could see further up out of the boot.  LeShae’s leg extended high, high into the air.  It would take half an hour, easily, to walk the length of that leg…climbing it was an entirely different issue. 

Soon enough, the lifting sensation was over, and Erin had only a brief reprieve before the entire boot began to buck and sway.  At first, it was just enough to make Erin have to regain a secure hold on the zipper-teeth, but a second later, the bucking and swaying turned into a violent, vigorous left- to right shaking.  Erin immediately lost her grip, and felt the boot in its entirety shift downward a few inches, like an elevator.  While the shaking continued, Erin scrambled to find purchase, her body bouncing haphazardly against both the wall and floor of the boot, and into the side of LeShae’s foot.  The ridges and creases in the pink flesh on LeShae’s heel were almost enough for her to grab, but before a good grip could be had, Erin was thrown back against the wall of the shoe.

After several seconds of this, Erin noticed that LeShae’s foot was no longer flush against the sole of the boot.  Prone, almost face down on the sole of the boot, Erin could see that the foot was hovering several feet above the insole, probably half an inch at normal scale. LeShae must have it off of the ground.  Not that it mattered to her, she just wanted the shaking to stop.  The woman must have been bouncing and shaking her foot around.  But had LeShae actually seen her?  Was she tormenting her on purpose, or did she just imagine that brief moment of eye-contact?  Either way, she didn’t want to end up falling down toward those toes, hidden by the darkness, so escape needed to happen soon.

              Erin tightened her grip on the insole threading as best as she could, and began trying to pull herself closer towards the zipper, knowing it was her best option for escape under her own power.  She pushed herself up with her legs, then reached out to grab another handful of insole, but when the continued bouncing of the foot jarred that tender shoulder of hers, Erin yelped, letting go of the insole.  She was slung around again, but didn’t fare so well this time.  Her tiny, slim body, sliding around on the insole, rolled right into the newly created space between LeShae’s foot and the insole of the shoe.  Above her, when Erin opened her eyes, the rounded heel of the woman’s foot hovered directly above her face, the warm, pink skin inches from her nose. 

Erin screamed the loudest, most blood-curdling screaming she’d ever screamed, and immediately began to scramble away from under the foot of the possibly clueless giantess.  However, Erin realized that she was having a hard time finding a way to push herself back up with the legs, and the bouncing, shaking, wiggling foot did not help.  Every few seconds, Erin felt herself sliding a little closer to the precipice of the decline towards LeShae’s toes, and a little further away from the heel.  The sole above her seemed to soften as she slipped, with tiny wrinkles developing into larger ones as the flesh widened. 

“No, please LeShae, please get me outta here!”  The skinny, shrunken girl yelled through her re-emerging tears.  It wasn’t that she was afraid of LeShae’s toes, but more that she knew getting trapped down there would mean she would be stuck inside this giant bitch’s shoe until she decided to take the boot off.  It could mean hours of torment at her toes, if she even survived.

The air got heavier, muggier, and less tolerable the further she went.  Below, she could feel her legs able to kick a little more, her feet and legs were now completely under the arch of the foot, which meant as soon as her thighs got there, she’d be completely at the mercy of momentum.

“No, no!” She tried turning over, but her shoulder immediately rebelled, sending Erin’s mind reeling in pain and knowing she was screwed.  LeShae’s toes would have to be the size of houses, and Erin was about to become a piece of dirt, crushed between or under them. 

“LeShae, NO!”  Momentum finally took over, and Erin finally began sliding down the steep hill, watching several inches of wrinkled, soft foot flesh become more like a ceiling of some huge cavern.  Erin cringed and prepared for the worst, curling up into a ball to cover her head and vital organs while she tumbled deeper into the hell of LeShae’s boot.

As LeShae bobbed her foot around semi-aimlessly, she felt a tiny speck bouncing around near her heel.  If she had been wearing socks, she probably wouldn’t have felt it at all. Knowing her tiny captive was stranded down there, she grinned some, tilting her foot forward so that her toes pointed to the floor.  Then she paused.  Should she do this?  Was she really about to torment the shrunken woman even more? Erin had already been through a lot, surely, just getting over to her from wherever she shrunk.  Then she had to have climbed up her boot, before being knocked inside.  Taking her home wasn’t even legal, she’d be a criminal! No, worse…she’d be a felon!  She might even go to jail, and that just couldn’t happen. 
              But what if she wasn’t kidnapping her?  Erin was so tiny that she couldn’t understand a word the girl said.  She was a victim, and LeShae was just helping a friend out of a bad situation.  It wasn’t her fault that Erin climbed into her boot, was it?  She shrugged some, chuckled, and began to quickly shake her foot inside of her boot.  A second later, she felt a tiny tickle under the sole of her foot, which disappeared only moments later.  She was glad that she’d gotten that pedicure only a day or two ago.

***

The little ball that Erin had rolled herself into to protect head and body hadn’t lasted long.  The first shake of LeShae’s foot, once Erin was under her sole, had her sprawling about again.  The soft, warm flesh that was the bottom of LeShae’s foot lorded over her like the sky.  It was more pale than the rest of her foot, and certainly more riddled with shoe fuzz and toe lint.  Unfortunately, most of that shoe fuzz and toe lint was the size of large boulders to Erin.

She rolled to a stop a few yards later, collapsing onto her chest, more bruised and in more pain than she’d felt in a long time.  LeShae had finally stopped moving her foot, and Erin had a moment to rest. Her shoulder was still absolutely screaming at her, but she couldn’t think about it.  Almost all of the light was gone now, and she reached forward blindly to grab the wall at the toe of the boot, only to find nothing there.  Pulling herself a little more forward, she reached out to grab again, with the same result.  Looking up finally, she tried to use what little light was left to see where the wall was, but could only really see darkness.  Slowly rolling over onto her back, she looked straight up, and could make out a much more definitive shape.

LeShae’s toes hovered five feet over her head, and were the size of single-family houses.  The darkness gave them a haunting, menacing ominousness, and Erin knew that she was in trouble.  The pad of LeShae’s big toe was easily as large as the 1,100 square foot apartment she lived in, and a little tap of that toe could crush her easily.  Erin screamed, and scrambled fervently away, imagining herself dying under her client’s little pink toes.

***
              As LeShae skimmed through the article she was reading, she considered what she would do next.  She needed to make sure that she seemed completely clueless to Erin’s plight.  If she just got up and left, she’d be asked about why she walked out without paying.  Obviously Erin wasn’t going to ring her up, and she didn’t know if anyone else was going to come in, but she knew that all the women here had business cards with contact information.  She could just call the manager, tell her Erin had left, and walk right out of the front door.

              Walk.  Oh, shit.  She hadn’t thought about that.  Would walking with Erin in her boot crush the tiny girl?  She wasn’t sure.  Maybe Erin was already dead?  How could she find out?  Looking inside her shoe would be strange on camera.  She was just going to have to risk it.  She sighed heavily, tossed the magazine onto the side-table, and pushed up the hair-dryer, which had long since turned off.  Glancing down casually at her feet, she slowly uncrossed her leg, pointed her shoe toe-down, and placed her foot on the ground, as carefully as she could.  With both feet on the ground now, she waited, trying not to look at her boot. 
             
              She felt a tiny, tiny tickle next to her big toe.  Then another.  Erin was alive.  LeShae breathed a sigh of relief as she carefully stood up.

“Here we go…”  She thought to herself.  “Better hold on tight in there.”  She had to play it cool, walking around all strange would be incriminating.  She thought about going to the bathroom and fishing the shrunken girl out first, but reconsidered.  She needed the cameras to see her call someone on the phone, then leave.  The more time she was accounted for in the salon, the more innocent she would seem. Glancing across the room at the desk with the business cards, LeShae swung her right, unoccupied foot forward, and followed it with a slightly more sluggish left foot.  One step down, fifty or more to go.

***

             LeShae’s toes had always been well-cared for, as was the rest of her body.  Erin remembered seeing LeShae wearing flip-flops just the week before, and noticing how flawless even her feet were.  If there was one thing to be grateful for in this situation, it was that LeShae was a very hygienic woman.  Anyone else might have been a gamble.  Then again, anyone else wouldn’t have trapped her in their boot.

Erin tried to pull herself together, no longer sobbing, but giving a pathetic whimper every few seconds.  If she survived this, she knew she could survive anything.  And better, this bitch was going to jail.  Well, she hoped.  She was still operating partially under the hope that LeShae had not actually seen her, and hadn’t intentionally knocked her into her shoe. LeShae was a terrible woman, but she wasn’t the kind of person to do something like that, was she?  There had to be something criminal about trapping someone in your shoe.  It was kidnapping and assault, at least.

The shrunken girl moved slowly along the wall of the shoe, after having emerged under the pinky toe, and its crater like toe impression in the sole.  She hoped that she could climb back up the insole and into the heel of the shoe, and climb back out of the shoe.  The chances of all that happening before LeShae moved were slim, but the chances of her surviving a day underfoot were even slimmer.  Trying to avoid looking up at the menacing toes, Erin squeezed along the wall of the shoe, thinking about freedom.

The boot began to shake.  It was already too late, she’d barely made it past the pinky toe, and LeShae was already moving.  Erin tried to grab something to hold onto, but couldn’t find anything before the ground tilted sharply, and she was sliding again.  Sliding on her ass this time, Erin only grimaced and braced for impact, screaming had gotten pointless.  The incline was much, much more steep this time, and a moment after she began to slide, her body collided into the wall of the shoe, at the toe where she’d thought she’d been earlier.  She tumbled along the wall into the larger, more open area in front of all five toes, and crumbled into a heap.  The foot corrected itself, and the floor leveled out with a huge, earth-shaking thud.  Erin opened her eyes to see herself face to face with all five of LeShae’s toes for the first time, and though they were all still much taller than her, they had settled onto the insole of the boot, no longer above her.  LeShae’s foot was on the ground again.

The environment was about as punishing as she expected.  The smell of LeShae’s foot had intensified some, but was still bearable, if she could escape soon.  The air was thick, and it was absolutely sweltering.  The ambient sounds of the salon were completely muted, except for a loud, sharp single tapping sound. It only tapped once, but it worried the little woman.  A million questions raced through Erin’s mind.  What if LeShae started tapping her foot?  Maybe she was taking off her boot?  Was she leaving?  The toes in front of her seemed rather settled, and Erin was glad that LeShae’s boots were likely a half size too large, there was probably only an actual inch of space between the wall and the toes.  For Erin, it was enough room to sit and not be harassed by the gigantic, powerful appendages.  She didn’t think this would last long, though. 

She was right. 

Erin watched LeShae’s toes clench in the darkness.  Though she could not make out the details, she could hear the sound of the toes sliding against the insole, squeezing against each other.  She prepared for the worst.
             
              Everything seemed to happen at once, and Erin wasn’t sure what happened first.  Gravity seemed to change, the sound of the toes releasing their grip on the insole, the boot tilted up, and Erin was sent tumbling again.  Immediately after, the boot swung forward more viciously than it had when it was suspended above ground, and Erin flew forward, briefly experiencing a feeling of propulsion, like being in a plane, before slamming full force into a soft, warm wall, with lots of ridges. It knocked the wind out of her, and the boot once again found its place on the floor with a terrible thud.

The smell of perfumed lotion and sweat filled her nose more now than ever, and Erin tried to support herself on the wall, using it’s ridges to pull herself up.  Coughing and wheezing, Erin put the last few seconds together.  That, the entire abusive experience, was a single step from LeShae, and now, Erin was clinging to the wall of one of LeShae’s toes. 

LeShae was walking, and Erin was stranded between the pink, polished toes.

She was absolutely fucked.

LeShae paused after setting her foot down, her first step toward the front of the salon completed.  She stared down at her boot, not moving a muscle, trying to wait for signs of life from the shrunken hair stylist between her toes.  She hadn’t felt anything yet, and just as she was beginning to get nervous, a second thought crept into her mind.  She was stopped, mid-step, staring at her foot.  She probably looked strange, and if the cameras caught her on tape, it would certainly be enough to get her questioned, at least LeShae thought.  Thinking quickly, she shifted her torso around some, using her free hand to check her pockets, as if she had lost something.  Afterward, she checked her pocketbook and retrieved her cell phone. If Erin was alive or not, she had to keep moving now, spending any more time here just made her look worse.  Maybe she was just over thinking the whole thing in her panic.  Then again, she was actively kidnapping an innocent woman.

              The next few seconds were likely as stressful for LeShae as they were traumatic for Erin, as the woman tried to walk normally, but as carefully as possible, to avoid killing the tiny girl, or at minimum, avoid squishing her guts into a mess between her toes. Step by step, LeShae gracefully carried herself to the receptionists’ desk, where a few cards had been placed.  She grabbed the one with the manager’s number on it, dialed, and waited for a moment.  After several rings, the voicemail chimed in, with one of those unskippable, generic recordings.  LeShae began to tap her foot impatiently, and had gotten through several earth-shattering thuds before she realized what she was doing, and cringed.  The chances of Erin surviving to reach her car in the parking lot were not high.

But there was a Starbucks next door.

              LeShae quickly left a voicemail, explaining how she was abandoned under the hair-dryer for far too long, how Erin had ‘suddenly disappeared’ and how ‘unprofessional’ it was.  She finished her lengthy message by informing the manager’s voicemail that she ‘refused to pay for service like this, after being regular customer for months’. After being sure that she’d made a convincing enough story, she ended the call and headed for the door. 

***

              Erin wasn’t sure if being here was better than being in a different part of the boot or not.  LeShae’s toes were, from any other perspective, clean and pedicured perfectly.  Her skin was soft and dry, had no distinguishable odor, and had a smooth, round shape.  She’d be a shoe-in for a foot model by anyone’s standards.  But not from Erin’s perspective.  From Erin’s perspective, LeShae’s toes were massive, powerful, damp walls of flesh that actively tried to crush her.  Squeezed together within the confines of the boot, the two largest, longest toes had become Erin’s prison.  Whimpering, moaning, and groaning in pain from her wrecked shoulder, Erin fought to get free from the grasp of the toes.  She’d become wedged between them with LeShae’s first step, and now her slim torso was keeping her stranded there. 

              Her body faced the big toe, with her back against the next closest of the remaining toes.  Each were taller than her, the biggest of which easily two stories high.  She didn’t want to imagine being smaller than the woman’s pinky toe, she felt pathetic enough as it was.  Her breasts were squeezed against the wall of toe-flesh, and already becoming sore.  Her shirt was moist with what she hoped was her own sweat, but knew it was equally mixed with LeShae’s own sweat.  Her toe sweat.  Erin gagged.

              Despite her eyes having adjusted to the pitch black surroundings, there was no seeing anything.  Her arms were free below her elbows, but she had very little range of movement.  The ridges that made up LeShae’s toe prints were several inches apart, enough that Erin felt confident that she could climb them, and maybe reach the top of the foot.  She also felt less resistance to her right, which meant she might be able to pull herself deeper between the toes, where there could be more space to ride along.  Either option could mean accidentally tickling the giantess, and Erin had no clue if that was the right option.  As she pondered what to do, she felt a powerful crushing sensation against her chest and back, causing her to cry out in pain.  The toes that surrounded her shifted, and that sudden feeling of momentum returned.

              Gritting her teeth and preparing for the worst, the tiny girl braced herself for what she assumed would be the next of an ungodly number of these experiences.  LeShae’s footsteps, from inside her boot, were punishingly brutal, and Erin knew that she wouldn’t survive more than a dozen or so of these.  As the toes relaxed during the mid-step flight, Erin began wiggling and shifting her body to and fro, up and down, left and right as much as possible, trying to make progress on moving somewhere, anywhere else.  Her only reward was another spine-cracking thud as LeShae’s foot hit the ground.  Before Erin could recover, the embrace of those hot, sweaty toes returned, and Erin was ready to give up on surviving.

              *Thud.*

              ‘What did I do to deserve this?’

              *Swing!*

              ‘Did she really hate me that bad?’

              *Thud.*

              ‘Will I grow back to normal, when I die?’

              *Swing!*

              ‘Will…anyone…find me…?’

              *Thud.*

              ‘Am I…the only one with…’

             *Swing!*

“I wish I…had…just…”

             Erin’s brain began to shut down.  Even in her own mind, she was no longer making cohesive thoughts.  Memories from her life sped through her mind, sprinkled with images of LeShae, some of her smiling, some sneering, others of her carelessly looking away.  Erin felt her insides giving in, and the contents of her stomach were expedited through her mouth onto LeShae’s toe, and the tiny girl fell unconscious. 

             She couldn’t have been out long, because when she came around, she was still absolutely inside of LeShae’s boot, and the woman was still walking.  Initially, Erin wanted to scream out, desperate to be free, but she realized she was no longer standing.  She was laying on her side on the floor of the boot, with almost enough space to stretch her legs.  When she did, her bare feet felt the same wall of flesh her hands had felt before she fainted.  Above her, she could feel moist flesh, and she immediately recoiled.  She had fallen under LeShae’s toes.

              The freedom of movement was nice, but each slam of LeShae’s footfalls were more jarring, with nothing to hold her in place when the foot hit the ground.  However, she was no longer being crushed.  She was, unfortunately, covered in her own vomit and still trapped.  Ultimately, anything was better than being between those deathtrap toes.  Curling herself into a ball, she tried to weather the storm that was LeShae’s casual stride.

***
              LeShae had become increasingly concerned that she’d accidentally become a murderer.  She considered whether or not this was going too far.  Sure, she could convince anyone that she didn’t know Erin’s shrinking was an allergic reaction to something LeShae was exposing her to.  But could she convince them that knocking the shrunken woman into her shoe, and then walking around with her trapped at her toes was the best decision?  Nope, if Erin was alive, she wasn’t going back to her normal life, ever.  If she was dead, well, she’d drop the tiny, dead body off somewhere and try to forget it ever happened. 

              As she waited in line to order coffee and a light snack to settle her nerves, LeShae looked down at her boot again.  In a matter of minutes, she’d know if the shrunken woman was dead or alive.  She found herself secretly praying that Erin was alive.  She hadn’t felt any movement since she took her first step—things weren’t looking good.

              After placing her order, a vanilla latte and a pecan tart, she waited for the barista to give her the items, and took them to a discreet table outside.  Placing them on the glass table, LeShae took a seat, double checked to see that no one was watching her, then crossed her legs, occupied foot left to dangle.  With that, she unzipped her boot, and slowly, carefully began to pull her dainty foot out of its prison.

              “You better be alive, you little bitch…”  She said out loud, louder than she probably intended to. It didn’t matter, she was alone out here.  Slipping her foot out of her shoe the rest the way, she examined her bare foot, spreading her toes as she looked around them.  No sign of tiny girls.  Her mind was racing, heart rate increasing.  Looking at her boot, still in hand, she gently tilted it to hopefully give Erin a gentle slide out of the boot and into her cupped palm, waiting below.  For a moment, there was nothing but a few particles of dust.  Just as LeShae was about to check her toes again, she saw a tiny, rag doll-like figure tumble out of her boot.

 Gasping, LeShae slowly brought her hand closer to her face, eyes wide open as she examined her captive.  Erin, groaning, slowly sat up in time to see LeShae’s massive face filling her vision. 
              “LeShae…?”  The shrunken girl squeaked out, unsure if she could be understood, or even heard at this size.  The giantess stared wide-eyed at the tiny occupant of her hand.  She couldn't even feel her, much less understand her.  She opened her mouth to speak, but instead was interrupted by a familiar voice. 
              “Something stuck in your shoe?”  Another woman’s voice rang out, and LeShae, before even looking to see who it was, turned her hand over, intending to drop Erin back into the recesses of her boot.  Then, as if to occupy her hands with something, she reached over to the square paper bag that held her pastry, grabbed her crusty, warm tart, and set it on top of the paper. In the process, a few of her fingers pressed into the sticky filling, and LeShae licked her fingers clean casually.
              “Yeah,”  She responded, looking up finally.  “Hey, Dash.”  The red-headed twenty-something approached the table as the patio door closed behind her.  She was holding her own drink and had a pleasant smile on her face.
              “Mind if I join you?”

Erin braced herself against the enormous walls of flesh with the ladder rung-like ridges that were LeShae’s fingerprints.  She held on tightly, immediately winded and dazed by the incredible speed in which she was traveling multiple miles.  At least inside of the boot, she could only assume how much ground was being covered, and couldn’t be thrown farther than the walls that kept her trapped.  Now, clinging to LeShae’s fingers as the giantess carried her up to her face, the possibility of falling thousands and thousands of miles to the ground was very real.

The skin here, on LeShae’s hand, was undoubtedly softer than her feet.  It had a similar moistness to it though, but it did not have that same scent of sweat, and smelled overwhelmingly of body lotion.  If Erin were not afraid for her life, she would have complained about the overuse of scented products.  In reality, it was likely just enough that only someone within inches of LeShae’s hands could smell it.

A million thoughts raced through her mind.  She remembered that smirk, as LeShae shifted her leg to knock Erin into her boot.  She remembered LeShae’s words as she removed that same boot, calling her a 'bitch' that ‘better be alive’.  She remembered the toes that tried to crush the life out of her, and almost succeeded.  If LeShae wanted her alive, it was not for any good reason, and certainly not to help her get back to normal.  For a moment, as her short hair whipped around her face from the windy ride up, she considered jumping away from the fingers and falling to her death to her death to avoid whatever torment her captor had planned.  But part of her gave LeShae the benefit of the doubt.  She wouldn’t do anything worse than what she had already done, right?  LeShae probably didn’t even realize that she’d nearly killed the girl, she’d never been the brightest candle in the attic.  It was those thoughts that kept Erin cradled between the tree-sized fingers of her former client’s hands until the movement stopped.

And when it did stop, Erin looked up, and nearly fainted at the sight.

The raven-haired goddess of a woman’s enormous face had filled the entirety of Erin’s view.  Looking straight ahead, there was almost no point in which anything other than her face was visible.  Still clinging to her fingers, Erin was given a front-row seat to a more in-depth view of the woman than she’d ever wanted.  Closest to her was LeShae’s nose, which to anyone else, was petite, cute even, and adorned with a small silver stud on her left nostril.  It was then that Erin realized why her hair was still whipping around, not from the wind, but from LeShae’s breathing.  As Erin came to this realization, she lost focus on her grip, and soon enough went tumbling down the length of LeShae’s index finger.

The soft skin was kind to her, fortunately, and her descent was less abusive than she expected. The wrinkles from the slightly curved finger did good to prevent her from gaining too much momentum, and she was able to control herself, avoiding the chasm between the enormous fingers.  Though the slide seemed to last much longer, in truth she’d only slipped down from the fingers to the palm.  She was now an inch or two lower, with LeShae’s slender fingers curled and towering up above her from behind.  Whimpering some, she pulled herself to her knees, and slowly looked up again. 

In front and above her, a pair of massive pink lips, barely touched with gloss, loomed ominously only a few hundred yards away.   Soft, full, powerful, hungry, easily above to smother her.  But Erin wasn’t allowed to focus much on them, something else caught her attention almost immediately.  Her hair whipped around her face more harshly than before, and her torn clothing did the same around her torso.  She shifted her gaze higher, and saw the source.  Nostrils, like deep, endless black holes into a new world, creating a powerful suction that threatened to pull the shrunken girl inside.  Between those, the lips, the throbbing of her shoulder and head…Erin screamed, gripping herself tight. 

“….AHHHH!  LESHAE!”  She wasn’t sure why she screamed her name, she knew LeShae’s attention was squarely on her.  Maybe she was warning the goddess about how close she was.  Maybe it was just the first thing that came to her mind.  Whatever the reason was, it must have prompted a reaction, because the next several seconds had gone by more quickly than she could keep up with.

She knew LeShae’s hand had moved more quickly than she could react to.  She was thrown backwards, and instinctively clung to the first patch of skin she could, luckily finding more fingerprints there.  Closing her eyes tight and gripping what she assumed was the base of LeShae’s finger, the tiny girl was carried along with wherever the hand was taking her. She screamed mournfully as her world flipped upside down, LeShae's slim wrist spinning her hand palm down now.

There was muffled speech above, she almost thought she could make out the words, but was far too distracted with not falling to her death as the hand had inverted, and gravity began to pull at her.  Next, a loud shuffling, crackling sound, before the sunlight had been taken away, and she was in some sort of shaded area.  Opening her eyes, there was still enough light that she could make out the what she assumed was the ground, a brown patch of soil.  Maybe LeShae was putting her on the ground?

The fingers ahead of her began to wiggle around, and Erin took this as a sign from her giantess captor to get off, and Erin let go, plummeting towards the surface she expected to be soft, cold dirt.  Instead, she landed on a sticky, hot…something. 

Having attempted to landing on her legs and forearms, she felt that she’d immediately sunk several inches into the gooey surface, and with all her senses in full throttle, smelled the air.  It smelled like pecans. 

Oh, God.

Her mind began reeling, she was in food…probably LeShae’s food.  Had she dumped her here on purpose?  Was LeShae a cannibal?  No, otherwise she wouldn’t have wanted her alive.  Maybe this was her way of feeding her?  It had to be, right?  Erin tried to settle her mind, cannibals only lived in secluded mountains and jungles, not in a modern city.

Slowly, she began trying to pull her arms and legs free, and was able to move to some degree of success.  Turning towards the edge of the sickly-sweet dessert, she tried to gain enough momentum to start crawling, but instead, fell face first as the entire pastry began to slide rapidly backwards. Most of her body was now lying flat against the surface of the pastry, shoved between crushed pecans.  In this position, she couldn’t see LeShae’s other fingers moving until they, too, pressed into the surface of the tart.  Erin was forced further into the sticky sludge under the tip of LeShae’s finger as it was pulled out of the paper.

This left the tiny girl’s legs submerged in the sticky filling, and nearly immobile, laying on her belly, with the weight of LeShae’s finger still pushing her down further.  The sunlight blinded her as she passed out of the paper bag, and for a brief second she felt herself ascending on the pastry before the pastry was placed down again.  The finger began to pull away, taking some of the sticky filling with it, and pulling Erin along enough that she was turned over onto her back.  Her leg stuck to the massive finger for a moment, but was released, while Erin watched LeShae’s hand lift into the air. 

A distracted LeShae lifted her finger up to her lips, parting them to let her pink tongue slip out, and she dragged the sticky finger across her tongue, licking it clean.  All the while, LeShae had never looked down at the pastry, her eyes focused on something Erin could not see.

“Hey, Dash.”  The goddess said.  LeShae either didn’t know Erin was in her snack, or didn’t care. 

***

“Hadn’t seen you here in a while.”  Dash was a barista here, and LeShae immediately regretted coming here.  Not only because she needed privacy, but because Dash was extremely incredibly nosey, and was a lesbian with a fierce crush on her.  A crush that LeShae wanted no part of.

“Yeah, I’ve been busy and stuff,”  LeShae mumbled, watching the other woman set her own drink down.  “I don’t have much time, I just wanted to grab a little something before I finish my errands.”  Reaching over to her latte, she lifted it, took a sip, then set it back down carelessly.
              “Oh…”  The red-head said, clearly disappointed.  “Well, what’cha doing?  Maybe I can tag along?  I just got off.” 

“Um, I’m just…grocery shopping.  And…paying some bills.”
              “Fun, fun…”  Dash responded with a light-hearted smile, stirring her iced coffee idly.
              “Yeah…”  LeShae agonized in her mind over how to get out of this.  Trying to think of anything, she reached for her latte again, then changed her mind, reaching down for her pastry.  
              “Have you tried those?”  Dash jumped at the chance to talk about something her would-be-lover had an interest in.  “I haven’t gotten a chance.”
              “Not yet…”  LeShae responded with a sigh as she brought the occupied pastry to her lips.  Letting it hover in front of her mouth momentarily, she continued.  “Don’t you work here?  You should probably taste one…” Unaware of the windstorm her words created for the tiny girl in her snack, she opened her mouth, sliding an edge of the tart under her teeth and taking a slow bite.

                The moment that LeShae reached down to pick up her snack, Erin knew what to expect, whether or not the giantess was aware or not, she was about to nibble on her pastry and give Erin a very up close view of her eating habits, or at minimum, chewing habits.  The tiny girl screamed as LeShae’s enormous fingers surrounded the circular pastry and lifted it from the paper, carrying the tiny girl along with it.  Desperately looking around for any sort of help, whether it be a nearby finger, or a way to jump off, or even…Dash. 

                Almost immediately directly behind her, Erin saw the red-headed barista’s huge face miles away, and she seemed to be staring right at her.  She knew it was more likely that she was eyeing the pastry she was trapped in, but that was still more attention than she was currently getting from LeShae. 
                “Dash!  Dash!  Please, help me Dash!”  Her hands waved around as wildly as she could make them, and she tried pulling more of her body out of the sticky filling and onto one of the crushed, toasted pecans.  Above, she heard LeShae’s powerful voice say something as she finished ascending to the woman’s face.  Turning back to look at LeShae again, she found herself a quarter mile (well, a few inches) away from those huge, pillow-soft lips.  They were as wide as they had been while she was on LeShae’s finger, but now she was much, much closer.  There were virtually no imperfections, save for the minute details of the lip that could be see only because Erin had such a close up, unobstructed view of her former client’s face.  The winds whipped around her more harshly than ever, and Erin thought that her shirt may literally get blown off of her body, as LeShae finished exhaling.

                “Don’t you work here?  You should probably taste one…”  LeShae spoke again, Erin watching in horror as the lips she’d been staring at shifted and moved to form words and make sounds, each passing syllable causing some kind of plosive or gust of wind that seemed no less than gale force to the horrified hair-stylist stuck in the pastry.  During those short two sentences, Erin could see glimpses of the pristine white teeth behind those warm lips in front of her.  She thought about how deceptive the human mouth was, especially LeShae’s.  Lips were among the softest, if not the top ranking most welcoming part of the human anatomy.  She’d even seen commercials about a tiny man having a blast as he bounced around on a pair of lips that sent him flying like a trampoline…some Asian commercial.  And beyond those lips, powerful, sharp bones designed to rip, tear, pierce, crush and grind anything inside.  They were walls of pristine white, each at least three to four times as tall as Erin currently was.  And should she make it beyond LeShae’s perfect pearly gates, there was a miles-deep chasm deep into the girl’s gullet, where she would be swallowed and banished to what had to be an ocean of digesting breakfast and stomach acid.  Erin did not want to go beyond LeShae’s lips.

                It seemed that as Erin had these thoughts in her head, LeShae chose to demonstrate them for her.  LeShae’s lips began to part, slowly as her jaw began to lower, and the tips of those impressively dangerous teeth began to show, primarily to the tips of her incisors and canines. 
                “NO!  LeShae!  Don’t eat me!”  The tiny one screamed, louder than she had screamed in her entire life, in her own opinion.  “Please!  Please!”  But her words disappeared in the growing chasm of darkness that was the woman’s mouth.  Inside, there was a hue of pink from LeShae’s tongue and gum line.  She couldn’t quite make out the outline of her uvula, but she didn’t want to.  As painfully slow as the parting of lips and opening of the mouth seemed to go for Erin, it was only a mere second before the entire platform shifted forward, moving her toward the cavern.

                Erin felt LeShae inhale gently, as most people did occasionally when they took a bite of the food, and her hair whipped about once again.  Before she knew it, the inside of LeShae’s mouth was all she could see.  Screaming one last time, she swore she heard the echoes of her own voice bouncing off of LeShae’s molars and the back of her throat, before everything descended into chaos.

                The descent, specifically, was that of the teeth above her lowering into the edible island around her.  Additionally, she felt the platform below her shaking at its core as LeShae’s jaws moved up from below her.  An earthquake, or worse, a continental shift that absolutely destroyed the surface of the pastry.  A simple bite of the tart seemed like the Earth was falling apart to the tiny topping to her toasty treat.  Erin was given a front-row seat to the chaos, LeShae’s teeth had bared themselves completely, and the shrunken woman saw her life flashing before her eyes, briefly, but literally.

                The nearly bleach-white teeth gave Erin a mirror-like reflection of herself and her situation, if only for a moment, and made her realize how close she had come to being crushed under LeShae’s incisors.  It wouldn’t have even sliced her in half, the surface area of the sharpened tooth was too blunt of a surface for the tiny woman, it was a humbling thought.

                Eventually, most of the way through the two-second long encounter, the crumbly crust of the tart gave way and began to tumble beyond LeShae’s teeth and into her mouth.  Erin, unable to do much other than be carried along, began to fall along with it.  LeShae, however, didn’t expect her snack to be so weak-willed, and pursed her lips a bit further around the tart to capture the crumbs that were falling.  Erin, as one of these crumbs tumbling away from the tart, went screaming off of the surface of the pastry and into the abyss.

                She landed seconds later in the midst of an avalanche of graham-cracker crumbs.  The surface she’d landed on was wet and sticky, pink and warm.  Above her, she could see LeShae’s gums and lower incisors.  It didn’t take much for her to realize that she’d fallen into the fleshy valley between LeShae’s gums.  For a moment, she’d clung to a graham-boulder as it slid down the steep incline below the lips and teeth, but quickly realized that going down any lower was a death sentence.  Instead, she dug her fingernails into the flesh and clung to the slippery skin.  She was only yards, a millimeter or two away from the top of the lower lip.  If she could reach it…

                As LeShae finished her bite, she pulled the tart away from her mouth and looked over at Dash, who immediately diverted eye-contact to avoid being caught staring.  Mouth closed, LeShae prayed for something to get her out of this awkward situation without being rude.  Telling Dash to blow off somewhere would probably burn the bridge at this Starbucks, and she surely didn’t want to have to start driving to the Starbucks across town.  She slowly began to chew, focusing on the taste of the pecans, caramel filling, and warm graham-cracker crust.  She noted the slight irritation between her teeth and inner-lip, figuring she would wash it away with her coffee in a moment. 

                Erin had not given up, and despite the massive, powerful shifting of LeShae’s teeth and jawline, had managed to not only avoid falling deeper into that pink valley below her, but pull herself up to the top of the lower lip.  The only thing between her and salvation was the semi-tight seal between the two lips.  If she could figure out a way to get between them, she’d be breathing fresh, non-coffee scented air.  As she considered just pushing her way through the moist flesh surround her, she looked behind her, as if she had forgotten how close she was to those huge, gnashing, crushing teeth.  She was disgustingly close to being crushed alive between them.  Quickly refocusing, the tiny girl pulled herself forward on her stomach another few inches to begin pushing her way through.

                Then, as if she’d said ‘Open Sesame!’, the lips parted again, but only a little, enough that Erin could see the outside world.  But instead of seeing the outside world, she saw a big, white wall.  Before she could process this wall as being the lid of a coffee cup, she watched the rest of the lid tilt forward and towards her more.  Unable to respond quickly enough, the plastic white lid’s surface rested against her.  She was now trapped between the lip of a coffee cup, and the lip of the woman drinking from it.

                If not for the soft, fleshy surface of LeShae’s lip, Erin would be crushed to death.  As for now, she was only being smothered.  She couldn’t see much, and didn’t care to, the pain from the immense pressure was nearly unbearable.  In actuality, the pressure was only really the contact space from the cup, LeShae was bearing the weight of the cup in her hand, but Erin wasn’t much focused on that.

                She could hear the millions upon millions of gallons of flavored coffee splashing around above her.  The coffee cup’s lining was probably only as thick as she was, and she could absolutely feel the heat from the warm coffee penetrating its surface.  The waves of coffee barely shifted the weight and center of gravity as the moved from the back of the cup to the front, then back again, like a serene ocean.  It wasn’t enough for LeShae to notice, but Erin certainly did.  A moment later, she heard the sound of LeShae swallowing mouthfuls of coffee.  Each gulp resonating deep into the throat and warning Erin of just how close to being swallowed alive she was. 

                As the nightmare scenario began to reach a crescendo, Erin felt the pressure relent, and before she knew it…she as free.  But not the way she hoped…she was lifting into the air, stuck to the lip of the cup!  For once, whatever deity was watching her life worked in opposition to Erin’s plight.  She almost laughed as she watched LeShae’s lips slowly move away, and soon enough, she felt the thud of the cup on the table again.  She was free. 

Now…to get Dash’s attention!

What was unfortunate about Erin’s position on top of LeShae’s cup was that she was stranded there, unable to do much other than try to get someone’s attention.  She’d prefer to have Dash’s help, but after nearly being eaten alive by the woman keeping her captive, but anything was better than being helpless now.  She screamed at the two giant women, waving her hands around and trying to make herself as big and noticeable as possible.

“Hey!  Hey, down here!  Dash!  Please help me!” Her attention primarily focused on the red hed across the table,she was tempted to try to climb down the cup and sprint to one of Dash’s hands, placed on the table not too far from LeShae’s cup.  “I’m right here, you have to see me!  You have to!”  She screamed up again, being careful not to move into the steep decline that led to the mouth of the cup’s lid behind her.  She was also still sticky with some saliva and lip gloss from her encounter with LeShae’s mouth, which made things uncomfortable.  If that wasn’t bad enough, her shoulder pain, temporarily forgotten about in the adrenaline rush, was returning with a vengeance.  

All of these factors contributed to Erin being slightly unprepared for LeShae reaching to take her cup again, looking for something to do to fill the uncomfortable silence between the two.  She considered leaving, but she really wanted to check on her little passenger that she assumed she’d dusted off back into her boot when Dash arrived.  She wiggled her toes in her boot, hoping to feel some kind of struggle in response...she did not feel one. As she brought the cup to her lips again, she glanced up at Dash, who was fidgeting away, clearly trying to find something to talk about.  This was awful.

Erin nearly fell over at the sudden movement, and she was filled with dread when she realized her platform was moving again, back towards LeShae’s face.  She could make out the moisture and trace bits of saliva and lip gloss that were still present on the lid.  They were primarily in the lower section of the lid, for ease of use.  She’d be getting right up to LeShae’s face again, no better time to get her attention.  However, Erin didn’t account for the amount of tilt necessary to funnel the coffee from the cup into the woman’s mouth.  Nor did she account for Dash’s actions.

----
“Y’know, LeShae...I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something…”  Dash began to speak as LeShae brought the cup within an inch of her lips.   Dash shifted positions, crossing her legs some under the table.

“Yeah?”  LeShae responded, wetting her lips with her tongue before finally beginning to take a sip from her cup.

“I...I don’t know if you’re seeing anyone, but...would you want to go get dinner some time?” As she spoke, Dash nervously let her foot slide against the single table leg, until she realized it was not the table leg she was stroking with her foot.  Her eyes went wide.

LeShae, mid-sip, inhaled sharply in response to Dash suddenly playing footsie with her and pulled her drink away from her face, spilling some on her face and shirt in the process. She quickly placed the cup down and looked for a napkin to grab.

“Oh no, I didn’t mean to...I thought that was…!”  Dash stumbled over her words, shifting out of her seat.  “Here, let me go get you some napkins, I’m so sorry!”
“No, it’s fine...just let me go to the bathroom.” LeShae stood as well, covering her face and nose to hide the mess before heading inside to clean up in the bathroom.  Once she grabbed the door handle, though, she found it locked.  Inside, she heard someone shift as if to warn her that it was occupied.  Groaning under her breath, LeShae grabbed a napkin from a nearby table and wiped her face some.  It took the occupant of the bathroom another three or four minutes, but eventually the woman stepped out, quirking a brow at LeShae, who ignored her.  Slipping inside the bathroom, she grabbed some paper from the dispenser and began to dab at her shirt.  Her nose itched, she must have sniffed up some coffee.  Thanks, Dash.

---

“LeShae!  LESHAE!” Erin screamed louder and louder, desperate to get LeShae’s attention as the cup moved towards her face.  She was once again treated to an unobstructed view of LeShae’s nose, lips and chin.  She had a moment of hope, as the vessel she was stranded on paused in front of her former client’s mouth.  The lips parted partially, allowing Erin to see inside the dark, moist chamber again.  She shuddered and began backing away from the edge of the cup where the mouth would collide with the cup.  

“Yeah?”  She heard the woman speak, before that soft, pink, powerful tongue casually slid over the still clueless woman’s lips, leaving them glistening in the sun.  The movement begun again, and Erin screamed, scrambling out of the way of the lip’s projected path. She turned and began to run, but found herself losing traction rather quickly.  Despite being almost clear on the other side of the cup’s lid, she began to slide backwards, just in time to see the lips grace the edge of the cup’s lid, right where she projected.  Despite not being in danger of being swallowed in the first wave, the cup was still rising and inclining, and Erin’s was now sliding back towards the mouth.

Before she made it, though, she noticed a shadow above her that she had not noticed before.  Looking up as she slid, she could see a dark, deep cavern...it wasn’t LeShae’s mouth, it was her nose.  Before she could react, she heard a terrible rumble, a suction, and Erin was tumbling deep into LeShae’s nostril.

It wasn’t like through empty space.  A few dozen feet into the nostril, and things got much, much warmer, and the miniscule nose hairs inside the nostril were like vines, whipping across her skin.  LeShae had inhaled heavily and quickly, so Erin’s journey deeper into the moist, sticky world was violent and unrelenting.  At one point, she crashed violently into a wall, and her shoulder screamed fiercely at her for subjecting it to more pain.  Hitting the wall did slow her momentum almost to a complete halt, however, and she only tumbled back a few more feet before finally landing in small clearing.  She’d ended up pretty deep in here, and it was relatively quiet, apart from the cave like sounds of LeShae’s breathing and mucus dripping around her.  

She took the moment to cry.  She’d been crying off and on the entire time, from the moment she’d ended up in LeShae’s boot until moments ago, stranded on her coffee cup.  This was the first time that she’d been able to have a deep, sobbing cry at her predicament.  She was shrunken, absolutely miniscule, and now lost deep in the bog like caverns of a woman’s nose.  She wasn’t sure if she was going to die here, but she was beginning to lose faith that she would make it back to her normal size. A few seconds into her cry, she felt the rumbling of LeShae speaking, which scared her at first, but was gone moments later, returning to a sense of normality, or at least relative normality.  It was dark, it was quiet, and it was almost...almost worth trying to rest here for a while.

The wind currents were nothing like the one that carried her in here.  They were strong, surely, enough to push or pull her where they wanted, but as long as she stayed curled up against a wall, she was able to avoid going deeper into the cavern.  She thought about it again, she was inside LeShae’s nose.  A living, breathing woman’s nostril was a huge cave to her now, able to be explored and climbed through.  A basic high school education told her that not too far behind where she was now was a precipice that lead to LeShae’s throat.  As hard as she’d tried to avoid being eaten alive, now she had a looming threat of being swallowed in a glob of mucus.  The thought made her dry heave, but she still had nothing in her stomach, despite having been stuck in a giant pastry not five minutes ago.

With what little energy and will to live she had, Erin began to crawl on her belly towards the direction she’d come from, hoping that it would help her avoid being inhaled deeper, or exhaled into another precarious situation.  She needed to take her time.  Despite LeShae’s nose being petite and hardly something anyone spent any time thinking about, Erin had to be careful she didn’t bring any attention to her inside it. Her shoulder kept screaming, but she pulled herself forward.  

The farther along she pulled herself, the better she felt.  Traces of light had begun to reach her, and Erin regretted being able to see the thick, sloppy mucus she was trying to climb through.  She had to keep reminding herself that she was very tiny, it felt like LeShae’s nose was filled with snot, enough that she could drown in some places.  She avoided those areas.

LeShae’s rhythmic breathing set the pace, and as she headed for what she hoped would be freedom, she noticed the area was slightly more moist, and she could smell something familiar...coffee.  As curious as to why the coffee smell was so strong, despite not being in her mouth, Erin pushed the thought aside for now, especially when she discovered a landmark...a large, silver rod screwed into a thin curved piece of metal.  It was LeShae’s nose stud, a sign that she’d made progress.

As she reached it, Erin pushed herself up against the wall, and found herself just tall enough to grab the curved end of the stud’s screwback.  She climbed aboard, and sat there for a moment, trying to catch her breath.  It was almost comforting to have something strong and sturdy to support herself against in this organic, living cave.  She could also see better here, than ever, and saw that the area ahead was a little more dense with those soft nose hairs.  She’d have no way to get around them, she’d just have to hope not to…

Rumble.

Erin sat up quickly, something was about to happen.  Unsure of how to react, Erin turned to slide off of the screwback, but before she had the chance, what light she had a moment ago was completely cut off, and the pressure increased exponentially.  The draft from behind her thundered through the nostril, and Erin found herself careening through the nostril again, towards the exit this time, followed by a hundred gallons of warm, wet snot.  There was little she could do, the nose hairs she’d seen earlier whipped across her body again, leaving a few welts and bruises, and breaking up the mucus she was being followed by.  

In the blink of an eye, the mucus bits had caught her, and she was expelled along with them out of LeShae’s nostril, into a folded tissue.  Before Erin could react, the rest of the mucus followed, covering the surface that Erin had landed on.  LeShae had blown her nose, and expelled the tiny woman from her nostril like some dust caught in her nasal cavity.

Coughing and struggling wildly, Erin fought to make her way to the top of the miniscule puddle of mucus that had been purged from LeShae’s nose.  She was humiliated, stuck and helpless in this woman’s snot-covered tissue.  Comparatively, there wasn’t much expelled from the nose, but it was enough to have annoyed LeShae, apparently.

But Erin, being the only moving bit of mucus on the napkin, had caught the eye of her powerful goddess of an ex-client pretty quickly, as she scanned the tissue for the offending mucus.

The pretty, raven-haired woman’s face lit up when she saw the tiny girl struggling in her snot.

“I’m not sure how you got in my nose, Erin...but maybe you’ll stay put now.”  She smirked some, and Erin got one last look at her gigantic captor, and began sobbing again as she saw the napkin begin folding around her, encasing her in it’s folds and sealing her in tight with the rest of the excrement of the pretty girl’s nose.

LeShae breathed a huge sigh of relief as she tucked the little napkin filled with a few drippings from her nose...and a tiny little woman, into her purse.  Erin was safe, alive, and LeShae could finally head home.  She only had one last distraction.  As she opened the bathroom door, she glanced out of the large glass panes that made up the front entrance of the coffee shop.  Outside, she could see Dash, still sitting there with her coffee at an otherwise empty table.  Dash was sitting with her back to the entrance, meaning LeShae could slip out the side entrance.  Perfect.  

With Erin stowed neatly away in her purse and unlikely to escape the unconventional confinement, LeShae was free to give a light jog to the side entrance.  After that, a quick walk across the parking lot, and she’d be back at the salon where she parked.  She almost giggled to herself in excitement.  

Arriving at her car, she unlocked the door remotely and slipped inside, pushing the ‘Start Engine’ button quickly pulling out of the parking lot.  It was 4:45...backroads were the best option, taking the highway and hitting rush hour traffic would only prolong her suffering that much more.  She clicked on some tunes for the drive home and smiled, it was going to be a good night.

~~~

Erin had finally caught a second breath.  Her time in LeShae’s nose had been just the slowdown in pace she needed.  It hadn’t been pleasant, and she wouldn’t for an instant go back willingly, but it was just long enough to focus on what she needed to do.  She wanted revenge.

The first thought that crossed her mind, as she struggled in the hardening, clear mucus from her adversary’s nose, was to take her own life.  LeShae wanted her alive, she didn’t know why, but suicide would not only free her from this torment (and possibly a life of being a shrunken slave), but it would keep LeShae from getting what she wanted.

Or...she could fight.  She could find a way to escape, survive, and land that bitch in jail for everything she’d done.  But that meant surviving, which was easier said than done.  And before she could even begin anything...she had to escape this snot-encrusted tissue.  From here, all she knew was that she had been tucked away somewhere.  It definitely wasn’t LeShae’s boot, so she assumed it was either a pocket or her purse --the lack of body heat told her it was probably her purse.  Lots of hiding places, if she could escape.  Using what strength she had, Erin began to rip and claw at napkin.  At this size, it was more like tearing cotton, but it wasn’t impossible.  She just needed time.

~~~

Fifteen minutes after departing the salon, LeShae finally pulled into the parking lot of her condo. She grabbed her purse semi-carefully and moved quickly out of the car and up the stairs to her home, where she made her way inside.  She lazily tossed the keys on the table and sat in the plush carpet next to it, then sat her purse on the table in front of her.  Practically ecstatic with excitement, she began to sort through the items in her purse.  For a moment, she didn’t see the napkin and began to panic, pulling out the wallet, makeup kit, breath mints, USB drive, until she saw a tuft of white paper, and pulled it out carefully.  She set it amongst the items on the table, then slowly, gently unfolded it.

Inside, she found a slightly moist layer of paper...and a tiny, helpless woman.  She grinned again.

“Hi, Erin.”  LeShae spoke for the first time since leaving the coffee shop.  It was also the first time she’d greeted her tiny captive so casually.  “Just so you know, this…is kind of going to be a one-sided conversation.  I can’t really understand what you’re saying.  You’re a little too...little.”  She giggled to herself, moving a little closer to the napkin so that her face would fill Erin’s view.  She was starting to get off on this whole thing.

Practically inhaling the euphoria she was expecting, LeShae shifted her position and began to pull off her shoes, un-zipping each one before slipping the off her warm, soft feet.  As she did, she remembered how much trouble they caused tiny Erin, not quite an hour ago.

“Oh, sorry about the whole shoe thing...I hadn’t planned on carrying you around in my boot, but you kinda made it easy.  Hope my feet didn’t stink.”  Her grin faded some, she sincerely hoped her feet didn’t stink.  “Now let me help you out of there.”  Reaching down slowly, she watched Erin, who had just gotten to her knees, try to scramble away from LeShae’s manicured fingernails.  Sighing, she stopped, letting her fingers setting nearby, next to the napkin.  “Listen, bitch.  You’re only going to make things harder if you run like that.  I don’t actually want to hurt you, but you’re gonna get hurt if you keep acting like that.”  To emphasize her point, LeShae tapped a few of her clear-glossed nails on the wooden coffee table, and let her thumb rest immediately in front of the tiny girl.  “Now, let’s talk.”

~~~

Erin, was struck with fear.  Her attempt at escaping had failed miserably, and now she was staring up at LeShae, with the woman’s full attention focused squarely on her.  The only reprieve she had was that LeShae didn’t want her dead.  

Yet.

When LeShae attempted to free her from the napkin, Erin thought of nothing but to run, and began scrambling on hands and knees away.  Only a motion or two in, and the shadow of LeShae’s hand moved ahead of her and came down quickly.  She closed her eyes, hoping not to be crushed, and when she reopened them she was standing in front of LeShae’s thumb, the shiny, glossed surface of her thumbnail reflecting Erin’s own image back at her.  The thumb itself was a few times wider than she was tall, and made her instantly stumble backward.  Driving the point home, a few of the other fingers’ nails began to tap loudly on the table, cracking like lightning in the little girl’s ears.  Erin covered her head and stared anywhere but LeShae’s face.

~~~

“Good.  This could be a good thing for both of us, trust me Erin.  But you have to trust me.  I’ll explain everything in a few minutes, but I have to make a phone call, first.  Now just stay there.”  Erin didn’t move, and LeShae took this as a sign of obedience.  She smirked at how good she was at this negotiation thing.  Maybe her Italian roots could be traced back to the mafia...who knew.  She reached over for her purse and reached for her phone.  Strange, not in her purse.  She scanned the table, assuming it was one of the items she removed from her purse to find Erin...nope.  Maybe in her car?  No, it couldn’t be, she hadn’t used it since she left the…

Fuck.  

It all came flashing back to her.  In the rush to get away from Dash, LeShae had left the phone on the table outside, along with her spilled coffee and pecan tart.  Not that those mattered, but the details returned to her so vividly that she moaned out loud. Attention shifting back to Erin, she leaned in close to the table.

“Look, I have to go for a minute.”  She pushed her purse and the items on the table back, and carefully, softly used her finger to push Erin to the middle of the table.  “Stay. Right. Fucking. There.  You don’t move, we’re going to have a real easy, relaxing night.  I could lock you up or some shit, but...this is me proving that I want this to be a good thing for both of us.  Don’t screw it up.  I’ll be gone thirty seconds.”  Standing up, LeShae grabbed her keys and moved quickly to the door, slipped on a pair of simple white flip-flops, and closed the door behind her.

~~~

LeShae was really dumb.

Did she really think that Erin wasn’t going to take the opportunity to get the hell out of dodge while she could?  With her original plans for escape completely busted, Erin was ready to either escape or die trying.  The moment the door closed, Erin made a full sprint.  Fortunately the purse had been moved in such a position that the strap was now dangling off the edge of the table.  It had to be hitting the floor somehow, this was almost too perfect.  It only took a few seconds for Erin to reach the purse, climb onto the buckle of the strap, and begin climbing down.

About a minute into her descent to the floor, Erin quickly found that her shoulder, again, was begging to receive medical attention.  At least part of the climb down required putting some weight on that shoulder, and each time, her shoulder throbbed in rebellion.  Another minute and a half of this, and escaping was already looking bleak.

However, she saw that the leather strap of the purse was thick enough and wide enough that instead of climbing, maybe she could just slide?  It was a better plan than spending ten minutes climbing to down, only to be caught by LeShae, who she realized should have been back long ago.  Time to get moving.  She shifted onto her back side and pushed herself the last few relative yards to the steepest part of the strap, then slid off.

If she hadn’t been in pain and quickly beginning to feel the friction burn, this might have been fun.  It was almost like a riding a slightly less tame roller coaster.  The wind whipped through her hair, and she was making much faster progress.  

As she reached the halfway point, she peeked over the edge and realized that the strap didn’t quite reach the floor, it was settled against the now vacant pair of ankle boots that LeShae had discarded moments ago.  It was a little too late to stop now, and Erin whined in discomfort as the one-way trip carried her right toward those terrible, terrible pieces of footwear that the woman tortured her in.  A second or two later, and Erin was in free-fall.

This time, it was her hip that took the brunt of the impact, the shrunken girl tumbling unceremoniously into the empty cavern of LeShae’s boot. Despite landing at the cushioned heel, her momentum didn’t let her stay there for long enough to appreciate it, soon enough she was rolling down the insole, back down to the toe of the very same boot she’d been trapped in just a bit earlier that day.  It was a different experience this time, she hadn’t gotten to appreciate the architecture of LeShae’s shoe originally, not that she wanted to.  She was free to explore the terrain, unmolested by the giantesses wiggling toes or crushing sole, though she could still smell their presence.  The body lotion and light fleshy scent of LeShae’s bare foot still hung in the air, and it just made Erin want to escape that much more quickly.

She scrambled away from the toe of the boot, taking a moment to avoid the slight impressions left in the floor by the toes themselves, a reminder of how daunting each of them were.  Climbing up the inclined insole Erin finally made it back up to the heel, where she was granted just a bit of mercy.  With this boot vacant, the zipper was down, and Erin would have no trouble escaping.  She headed for the exit, limping slightly with her hip reminding her of it’s own injury now.  

She reached the zipper without incident and quickly moved to try climbing out, but froze in her tracks when she heard the tell-tale sign of LeShae’s return, the door opening.  Gasping, she swung her weight back across the zipper-treads and tucked herself behind the lining of the boot to hide, peeking  between the to see as much as she could.

“I’m back…”  LeShae answered for a moment, and Erin could see LeShae’s sandal-clad feet step through the door.  “Please don’t tell me you were stupid enough to move, either…”  The goddess spoke from high above. Her steps were ominous, each lift of her foot creating that familiar ‘thwack’ of the sandal’s sole slapping into the soft flesh of LeShae’s foot, resonating through the air and ringing in Erin’s ears.  She watched thick carpet fibers, each twice as tall as her, disappear under the woman’s tread, crushing anything that was unfortunate enough to end up in it’s path.  Erin found herself whimpering in fear, she’d run, but now she was too far play innocent, and too close to move.

“...you were!  You little bitch!”  LeShae’s voiced crescendoed in time with her footsteps, placing her closer to the table.  Being on the third floor of this apartment building meant that the ground beneath her was someone else’s roof, and her footsteps, no longer soft and casual, caused thuds that were not some fictitious, pre-recorded sound created by foley artists in a studio...no.  These were real, live, ground shaking thuds, from a real, live, angry giantess.

These powerful footsteps created just enough movement that that threw poor tiny Erin off balance, and she went tumbling forward, out of the boot.  She did, however, managed to grab hold of the zipper and dangle there, barely able to mute her scream of pain from that incessant shoulder injury.  She looked down, and saw that the ground was several yards below, and worse, LeShae’s powerful left foot landed on the opposite side of the boot.  It shook Erin heavily, but she kept her hold.  What she didn’t expect was LeShae’s right foot to graze the same side of the boot Erin was dangling from.  The tiny girl could hardly keep her balance as the entire boot shifted several inches, and Erin fell, once again, towards the floor.

Her landing, for once, was not painfully jarring.  Her bruises and injuries cried out some, but she found that she could immediately recover and sit up straight.  But when she did, she did not like what she saw.

Towering above her, the high arch of LeShae’s foot had created a tall, fleshy alcove, tall enough to single-family home.  She had not fallen to the floor, she landed in LeShae’s flip-flop, immediately next to her bare foot.  When Erin had shared LeShae’s boot with this foot, she had not been able to see it in such detail, being pitch black inside the shoe.  Here, however, she had an unrestricted view of every inch of the woman’s powerful foot.  From the swirling, oceanic whorls of engraved lines, her footprints, to the slightest twitch of the flexing muscles that operated the foot itself.

“This better be a joke, Erin…!”  LeShae growled, kneeling to get closer to the table.

“Eep!”  Erin yelped as LeShae began to move, shifting her weight onto the balls of her feet.  This in turn began to push again the material of the sandal, causing the back end to lift slightly as the rest of the foot raised high above the base of the shoe itself.  This gave Erin a monumental view of the sole of LeShae’s foot, each wrinkle of flesh moving to compensate for the movement, tall hills and deep valleys of female foot flesh flattening out as the goddess moved. It also caused Erin to begin sliding down the material, along the side of the foot as the entire shoe raised barely an inch off of the ground.  Desperate to find something to hold on to, she was just barely able to grab ahold of the towering archway of leather that made the thong of the sandal.  As she looked around for something, anything to help her get off of the woman’s shoe, she caught a glance of something written on the insole.

“Nordstrom - U.S. 7”  

LeShae’s was a petite woman with a slim build, cute features, and small feet.  This just humbled Erin even more, surviving even simple motions had become a struggle.

~~~

 
“Dammit!  You always ruin everything!” LeShae began with a shout of anger, which quickly settled into almost a whimper.  She sounded...desperate, not furious.  After her failed attempt to find Erin on the table, she stood to her full height again, letting her feet settle back into her flip-flops.  “I...I still have to find my phone.  I don’t want you to die or get hurt anymore than you probably are.  Fucking stop being a bitch for once, okay?”  Reaching over, she grabbed the breath mints from earlier off of the table, popping the lid open.  “Listen, I’m giving you another chance.  I know you’re scared and shit, but running around where I can’t find you is just going to get you stepped on or killed some other way.  Even if you left my apartment, we’re on the third floor, you can’t get down, or go anywhere.”

She placed the square, clear container of breath mints, still half-full, into the carpet by her boots.  “When you come to your senses, just climb into this container, and I’ll know where to find you.  If you're not there when I get back, I’ll have to assume you’re already dead....good luck surviving without me.”

~~~

Erin was able to avoid the descending sole of LeShae’s foot as it settled back into place by sliding further across the white surface of the sandal.  As she passed the ball of her foot, she pulled herself up and headed for the edge of the shoe.  Above her, LeShae’s toes wiggled gently, another warning to stay away from the monumental towers of flesh.  Slipping off the edge of the sandal, Erin high-tailed it for cover, the closest being the arch of one of those same ankle boots.

Seconds later, Erin saw the crate-like container of car-sized mints be placed a few dozens yards away.  She could understand every word, and wasn’t sure to trust them...but LeShae made sense.  Even if she did escape to the door, she couldn’t go anywhere.  She’d get eaten by a bug at worst, or starve to death at best. It would be no better than taking her chances with LeShae.  

Hiding in the towering archway of LeShae’s ankle boots, sitting in the tall carpet, Erin could see LeShae’s feet sitting above the carpet majestically.  She hoped this was the last she’d see of them.  She didn’t even panic when the flip-flopped feet turned and crashed away for the door again, she just curled up and watched silently until LeShae left, and locked the door behind her.  Closing her eyes, the tiny girl fell asleep a few minutes later.

She was ready for this to be over.

It had been hours since Erin had originally shrunk, and now she was a prisoner is LeShae’s apartment, unable to do anything but wait for her to come back and continue the torment she’d already begun, only this time LeShae would be fully aware and intentional about the pain and humiliation she would be putting her through.  Erin wasn’t entirely sure which was worse.

The ankle boots that had been her prison for much of the day still towered high above her, without LeShae’s feet in them, the seemed less intimidating, but no less impressive in stature or ability to crush her.  She’d gotten to know their owner’s feet much more intimately than she’d ever wanted, and the combination of the two made a Godzilla movie look like a romantic comedy.  In short, LeShae’s petite feet were indomitable power houses of femininity and destruction as far as Erin were concerned.  She shuddered, partially out of fear, but she couldn’t ignore the rush of adrenaline at the idea of the roles being reversed. If she could get LeShae’s into her shoes, neither of the women would ever forget the wrath of a scorned hairstylist.  

But..LeShae didn’t have a shrinking disorder. LeShae wasn’t the size of a speck.  LeShae wasn’t debating whether or not to resign what was left of her life to being the toy of a self-righteous, entitled, cliche false stereotype of a millennial fashionista.

With a quiet, defeated sigh, Erin turned towards the open breath mint case, and took a step towards it, she was sure this piece of clear plastic was about to become her new home the moment LeShae discovered her inside. As she crossed the threshold of her prison, she her a muffled voice.  Was LeShae back already?  

Then she heard another. Then the doorknob jiggled. Then it swung open.

The first thing she noticed were the bright red capris pants on this new goddess.  They exposed the lower shins and ankles of the woman who stepped inside, wearing a pair of low-heeled, black, patent leather mules. Higher up, a white sleeveless top with some band’s album art on the front.  Long blonde hair tumbled down either side of her face, framing it perfectly, her eyes covered by dark shades. Erin didn’t recognize the woman, but she hoped that she was the kind of person to help a shrunken girl in need.

So mesmerized was Erin with this new goddess that she hardly noticed that the woman was not alone.  Behind her, a redheaded woman wearing a black shirt, shorts, and running shoes.  Erin recognized the girl as Dash, the barista that she’d tried to get the attention of at the coffee shop.

“Hey, LeShae? You home?” Erin heard the first girl call out, taking a step farther into the apartment. Despite being as petite as LeShae was, Erin swore she felt this girl’s footsteps twice as much as any of LeShae’s.  Standing partially inside the breath mint container, Erin immediately felt conflicted about whether it would be worth it to attempt to reach one of these girl’s attention.  

“It’s a good thing you showed up when you did, Zoe.  I didn’t want to sit around outside with LeShae’s phone waiting for her to show up if she wasn’t already here.” Dash said, stepping in immediately after the goddess, who Erin assumed was Zoe.  Dash paused in front of the door and looked around.  “Woah, this place is so nice…”
“Yeah, she’s always liked things on the pricier side.  It’s hard to believe we’re related sometimes.” Zoe shrugged, heading over to the couch, but pausing in front of the table next to LeShae’s abandoned boots. She reached down and picked up a container of breath mints, quirking an eyebrow at the open container, before dumping one into her palm and closing the lid and setting it on the table amongst the other discarded items from LeShae’s purse. She took a moment to read the label some, shifting her bare foot inside it’s shoe a bit, then shrugged passively. Finally, she tossed the breath mint into her mouth, took a seat on the couch and crossed her legs.
Dash wandered over, also giving a curious eye to the assortment of things on the table, but chose to stand instead, taking Zoe’s place in front of the table next to the boots.  
“So, uhm…how long have you guys been cousins?” Dash tried to strike up a conversation with a joke, but Zoe, who had removed her shades, quirked an eyebrow and looked away impassively.  
“...Hah...funny.” Sighing, she began to bounce her foot gently in the air, beginning to wish she had have just taken LeShae’s phone from Dash and sent the red-head on her way.  Zoe hadn’t realized how true her cousin’s horror stories about this girl had been until she was experiencing them first hand.  Dash idly rocked back and forth on her heels and toes.
“I’ve...uhm, never seen you around here before, are you, like…”
“I’m just visiting.” Zoe answered without so much as looking at the other woman.  “Hey, so how about I just hang onto LeShae’s phone and let you get back to...uh, whatever you were doing before.”
“Oh, I wasn’t doing anything important.”
“It’s fine, really, I’ll just hang on to it, I don’t know when she’ll be home. She’s feel so bad that you waited for her.”
“Well, are you sure? Because I really don’t…”
“I’m sure.” Zoe said, trying to force a smile onto her face. “I’ll tell her you stopped by to drop it off.” Dash looked a little disappointed, but relented.
“...yeah, okay.  Thanks.”  She slipped the phone out of her purse and set it down.  “Uh...do you mind if I use the bathroom first?”
“The only one is in LeShae’s room..I don’t really want to let someone in her bedroom without…”
“I really have to go...I’ll be super quick, I swear!” Before Zoe could argue, Dash was already bouncing off toward LeShae’s bedroom.  Pinching the bridge of her nose, Zoe uncrossed her legs to place both feet on the ground, and buried her face in her hands for a moment with a frustrated sigh.

---

“EEP!”  Erin screamed as Zoe’s feet landed on either side of the plastic container she was standing inside.  The ground rumbled slightly under the massive woman’s steps, enough so that she heard the round breath mints deeper in the container tumble around some, and she was slightly afraid one would roll right on top of her.  Looking straight up, she saw the shadow of Zoe’s hand coming down to pick her up, and she waved her arms around from inside of the container to try and attract the woman’s attention from inside.  

“HEY!  Help me!  Please!”  She screamed, knowing full well that she wouldn’t be heard from inside the container, but feeling that not screaming was not putting in a full effort.  Zoe’s fingers soon eclipsed the light, the fleshy digits surrounded the container and filling Erin’s vision.  The fingerprints might has well have been ladder rungs, Erin could easily have climbed Zoe’s thumb like the face of a rock wall for beginners.

But as Zoe’s finger and thumb pressed against the plastic, growing more pale against the pressure, the container shifted, one of the mints fulfilling Erin’s previous fear, and rolling towards her.  She gasped, trying to move out of the way and stepping closer towards the open lid of the container, and immediately lost her footing.  She tried to grab ahold of the slick plastic wall, but could not get a grip, and tumbled out of the container towards the floor.

She was lucky in that this all happened as quickly as it did, Zoe had lifted the container more tha an inch out of the carpet before Erin was falling back to the ground, and she landed right back where she had been standing before the girls had entered.  She was once again reminded of her injuries as they screamed out to her upon impact on the floor.  More importantly, she was reminded of the fear of being at a woman’s feet when you were beneath her notice, and too small to be of any consequence.

Zoe’s feet towered above Erin on either side of her, the backs of the mule, slip-on shoes exposing Zoe’s heels and ankles as tall as any mountain she’d ever considered.  Like LeShae’s, Zoe’s feet seemed perfectly unblemished, if not slightly pinkened from supporting the petite woman’s weight at the moment.  The exposed flesh both gave Erin something to be wary of, but hope that she might get help just yet.  If Zoe were ticklish at all, pounding away at her heel or under her ankle should be enough to at least get a reaction.  However, the kind of reaction she would get was the concern, she didn’t want the blonde giantess to shift her weight under the tickle and end Erin underfoot. Still, she had to try.

“ZOE!”  She screamed, finding it strange to call out to a woman who she was only partially sure she’d gotten the name correct of. Additionally, the screaming was beginning to wear at her throat again.  Regardless, she did the best sprint she could muster towards Zoe’s right shoe, hoping the inch-high rubber heel would be easy enough to climb.  From there, she’d roll over onto the insole and go to town on the girl’s exposed foot.

As she ran, the idea of spending more time with feet sickened her, but as much as it did, the idea of returning to LeShae’s witting or unwitting clutches made her stomach turn that much more.

Like her cousin, LeShae had perfumed her feet with a scented lotion, this one being a more neutral, honey and cocoa butter smell, but the smell was more prominent.  Erin was just glad that there was any attempt at all, and never thought she’d appreciate someone caring so well for their feet as Zoe and LeShae seemed to.

Approaching the monolith of a shoe, Erin looked up at the sheer, flat surface that made up the heel of Zoe’s shoe.  She winced at the idea, it was only a few yards above her, a much shorter climb than LeShae’s boots, but much less forgiving.  She did see that the surface was somewhat worn in, and to her luck, was made of several smaller layer of rubber, making the climb much more plausible.  Soon enough, she was pushing her way up to the top

Again, the heels of these shoes were only an inch tall, if that, and Erin’s struggle to climb the heel of some giant woman’s footwear humbled her.  She was putting all of her effort into climbing the sole of a shoe that was probably only as tall as its owner’s toes. She didn’t want to think about Zoe’s toes, they were seemingly miles away, and she was happy to stay far, far out of their reach.

After a few seconds of climbing, she reached the soft insole of the shoe, pulled herself up, and rolled over onto the slightly curved insole.  She breathed heavily for a moment, opening her eyes to find herself near the soft arch of the woman’s foot.  Above her, the ankle, and further up, her leg disappeared into the fire-engine red capri pants leg.  

The warmth of shoe, provided by the natural body heat of Zoe’s foot, as well as the softness of the insole, the smell of the lotion creating a soothing combo.  Erin was beaten and battered, mentally exhausted and emotionally wrecked.  This was the closest to being comfortable that she had been in several hours, and if she were not inside a woman’s shoe, she likely would have curled up for a nap.  But Zoe was not a patient girl, and Erin found that out the hard way.

Her eyebrows raised and her heart sank as she watched Zoe’s foot slowly lift and begin to move.  The soft sole of her foot began to expose itself just under her arch, and Erin peered deeper into the cavern of the shoe, watching as the foot begin to slip out of the shoe itself, the entire surface she was on gently shifting to allow more room for Zoe’s to pull her foot out.  

She whimpered under her breath as she saw deep in the shadows of the patent leather interior of the mule, Zoe’s red-polished toes wiggling gently as they came into view, and moved towards her.  

Erin was at the mercy of yet another woman’s foot.

To be completely fair, Dash did need to use the bathroom.  Maybe not enough to justify ignoring Zoe’s hesitance to use LeShae’s bathroom, but she did plan to relieve herself at least a little.  As she slipped through the door to the bedroom, she noted that it was an unusual setup to have the only bathroom tucked away inside a bedroom.  LeShae must not entertain much.

Inside her bedroom, Dash took a moment to admire the sight.  This is where LeShae slept.  This is where she woke each morning and did what little pampering she needed to do to make herself stand out in the crowd.  This is where the magic happened.  The diva’s domain.  She grinned to herself.

The bedroom was large, to say the least.  It was nearly half the size of the rest of the apartment, not including the bathroom.  The room was white, trimmed in sky blue and the decor matched. Black, white and blue curtains hung from the windows and reached the floor, seemingly cut from the same pattern as the blankets on the bed and pillowcases.  The carpet was a brilliant white, something Dash would not dare try herself, for risk of dropping a single drop of wine and ruining the carpet forever. It was a bold move, and very fitting of the owner’s personality.

There was a small closet, and Dash noticed a few button-down shirts, masculine ones.  She assumed that they belonged to her fiance, for when he stayed over.  There was an antique dollhouse sitting on the long dresser, next to a vanity mirror, and Dash noted that she would inspect it more closely when she finished her business.

Stepping past the large bed, Dash slipped into the bathroom and admired the decor.  Pristine white, perfectly clean and organized.  The bathroom also contained a large walk-in closet, and the trimmings for the bathroom matched the bedroom perfectly. White towel with black and blue accents, dark marble countertops, white shower curtains, trimmed still with black and blue.  She definitely noticed a theme, and knew that she needed to remember this color scheme for the next time she wanted to by LeShae a gift.

Finally dropping her shorts and panties, she took a seat on the toilet, finished her business, and made her way back out to the bedroom.  

As she headed toward the door, she remembered the dollhouse, and casually stepped over, looking over the exterior of the dollhouse.  It was very well made, and clearly handcrafted years ago, probably a family heirloom.  
“Aww, it’s so cute…”  She whispered to herself, smiling at the intricate details.  fIt warmed her heart that LeShae kept her family close, or it seemed.  Stepping even closer, she leaned in to peer inside, peeking one of her big blue eyes into the open window. Her lips parted, leaving her mouth slightly ajar in awe of the craftsmanship.

~~~

David had not slept well the night before.  He was never really able to get comfortable, and his stomach churned from not having eaten enough the last few days.  He just couldn’t bring himself to, there was too much on his mind.  Bright and early, he’d heard his fiance get out of bed and leave, assumingly to run errands like she normally did before he woke up.  After he heard the  living room door close, he sat up and grabbed a piece of scratch paper that he’d made into a journal.

“May 24th,

LeShae hasn’t treated me the same since the accident.  We were already struggling with our relationship, but lately it’s been nearly hostile.  I can’t say that I’m not a little concerned, and I’m not afraid for my life, but I definitely worry that she is beginning to reconsider how invested in me...in our relationship...she is going to be if we can’t fix things soon.

She did mention that there was potential, she found someone who would be willing to help us, that she’d had a similar problem, and now she was having a mostly normal life.  That’s what I want, a normal life again.  I want to kiss my fiance, I want to cook her breakfast in bed, I want to lay in bed with her at night and cuddle, or go farther. I want her to know how much I love her.  It’s so hard to prove it like this, but I know that she’s struggling as hard as I am.”

Feeling a more depressed than he did before, David turned rested his head on his pillow again, and coaxed himself into a partial sleep.

A few hours later, he heard the living room door open, but he did not move.  Seconds later, he recognized LeShae’s voice, speaking to someone. He couldn’t understand what she was saying, and didn’t hear a reply, so he assumed she was on the phone, and turned over in bed.  It was several more minutes later that he heard the living room door open and close again, and things fell silent. He tried to put himself back to sleep.

Ten minutes passed.  The door opened and closed once again, but was immediately followed by voices, neither of them being LeShae’s.  He nearly panicked, but remembered LeShae saying that her cousin would be coming by some time today to pick up a few things.  Relaxing, he again tried to put himself to sleep. And then the bedroom door opened.

David wasn’t sure how much Zoe knew about his condition, but he certainly didn’t want her to find out like this.  When the door opened, he immediately buried himself in the blankets of his bed to hide himself. A second later, he heard someone walk by and go into the restroom.  Maybe they would just do their business and leave?

He heard the toilet flush.  Okay, they’d be leaving soon.  

Listening with bated breath, David heard the footsteps head out of the bathroom, and counted the seconds until he heard the door close.  But the footsteps started getting closer.  Breathing heavier, he prayed that whoever it was would go away.

“Aww, it’s so cute…”  Her voice filled his ears.  He didn’t recognize it, either.  Despite his nerves going haywire, he couldn’t help but peek through the blankets.

Filling his window, a pair of pink, glossy lips were slowly parting to reveal an enormous set of powerful teeth, which widened partially to show the pink tongue and dark depths of this woman’s mouth.  Her breath filled his window as she exhaled gently, and David could not help but to scream in fear.

The massive face of the woman peering into his dollhouse filled most of the windows on his end of the house.  He assumed she was staring into a window on the third floor.  Had she heard him scream?  Was she already looking for him?  He wasn’t sure, but he did know she needed to go away.  His curtains blew in the wind of her breath, and as small as he was, getting near the window was nothing short of stepping into a windstorm.  Despite how inviting her lips seemed to be, the last thing he wanted was to be inhaled by some giant woman.

Scrambling backward in his bed, he rolled off of the edge and tumbled to the floor, then pulled himself up.  There were stairs immediately in front of him, and he made his way toward them, only to be buffeted by the coffee-scented breath from the woman’s mouth.  Pushing through, he ascended the stairs.

The second floor was mostly devoid of furniture, but he needed to reach the his panic room.  Unfortunately, it was in the attic, which meant sneaking past the curious giant’s wandering eye. Most of the exterior wall of the second floor was missing, which gave him an unrestricted view of the woman’s upper lip and nostrils.  Fortunately, there was not as much of a draft here, and he only had to sprint across the floor with the ominous, looming threat of the woman’s facial features  hovering in the background. He did note that she was moving slowly to peer down to lower floors. Time was on his side.

Soon enough, he reached the ladder that let him climb up to the third floor.  

This floor was primarily for the dining room and access to the attic. There was a single window here, and as she looked through the tree-house style floor entrance to the room, he had to duck back down to avoid a massive blue eye peering inside.  The iris was a brillaint grey-blue, speckled with bits of other colors near the pupil.  It was a sight to behold, as he clung to the ladder, watching as the woman’s eye filled the large window.  She blinked once, the long eyelashes, as thick as his arm, almost brushing against the window sill.  After only a second, the eye descended to look into the second floor, and David pulled himself into the third floor.  

From here, the attic was just a door and a ladder away. Staring out through the window as the slightly pale forehead gave way to a long, viney forest of red hair, David considered...what if he allowed her to find him?  Maybe she would be willing to talk with LeShae about the situation, maybe she’d be an arbiter for him?  But did he want to risk that?  Did he want to risk LeShae’s trust?

Turning his head, he ducked through the door across the room, grabbed a ladder, and ascended to safety in his dollhouse attic. No one needed to know about LeShae’s shrunken fiance.  Not yet.

~~~

Dash, amused by the strangely assembled, but still elegant dollhouse, peered through the third floor window, then slowly moved to the second, and finally ground floors.  She would have given anything to have such an intricate dollhouse as a little girl.  Sighing, she stood to her full height again.  Just as she was about to move, she heard the door open, and LeShae’s voice rang through the living room.

Zoe was an entire inch shorter than her cousin, a detail that hardly mattered in most situations. However, to the shrunken woman at the mercy of her toes, every inch counted.

Erin cursed herself for not simply trying to make it to higher ground when she had the chance, instead of climbing into yet another woman’s shoe and hoping that things would end up any different. She could note that while LeShae’s ankle boot had been dark and she hadn’t been able to see what was coming next, Zoe’s mule allowed her toes to freely and easily slip in and out of her shoe, which she clearly took pleasure in doing. Before Erin had really a chance to dive out of the way, Zoe’s foot had slipped entirely out of the cavernous toe of the shoe, and her toes her come to rest further along the insole near the heel, precisely where the shrunken hairdresser had been standing. The shadow of Zoe’s foot darkened her world, and in short order, the young blonde’s flesh settled gently on top of her, burying Erin between Zoe’s neatly trimmed and painted toes.

Maybe it was just that pain mattered very little anymore, or that Erin had no outstanding issues with Zoe like she had with LeShae, but Erin could not find herself upset with Zoe for burying her between her toes.  The giantess couldn’t have been aware of what was happening on the surface of her patent leather slip-on, and Erin was the one who chose to climb into it. Now she was prying her bruised arm from under the gigantic girl’s toe, inhaling the cocoa butter-infused scent of Zoe’s foot lotion. Whimpering to herself, she could barely catch a glimpse of the clueless woman, idly scrolling through one of her social media accounts, a slightly bored look on her miles-away face. Feeling helpless, Erin continued trying to pull herself to freedom before the toes became more active.

Zoe herself was usually vibrant and excitable, ready to move on to the next experience as soon as possible. She rarely spent much time idling about or procrastinating. She was a bit of a gossip and tended to play second fiddle to LeShae’s much more domineering personality. The two had always been close, especially when LeShae realized at an early age that should could manipulate Zoe into doing whatever she wanted, and Zoe was happy to tag along, if it meant hanging out with her cousin. It worked extremely well. She often accompanied LeShae to the salon Erin worked at, and Erin had even cut her hair a few times, though never without her cousin with her.  As she waited for LeShae to return, or for Dash to leave, she began to idly curl her toes, playing with them against the insole of her shoe.

Much to the dismay of Erin, despite Zoe’s toes being a marginally less distressing experience for her senses, she found that Zoe was much more active with her feet, leaving Erin to suffer that much more torment at her toes. Just as she was pulling her arm free, the soft flesh keeping her stuck in place began to shift, pulling the speck sized woman along with it.  The toe prints pulled at Erin’s body, dragging her deeper and deeper between them, until what light Erin did have was completely darkened in the shadow of Zoe’s toes. Now, no longer buried under one of the toes, Erin could move more freely, but only found herself curled up between the two largest toes, lost in the valley of Zoe’s toe cleavage.

As the mountain-like digits curled further in, the space between Zoe’s toes got smaller, and Erin began to panic. She was already in a considerably tight space, but now it was just getting tighter and harder to deal with.  The Space around her was getting congested, and the rippling toeprints began to push against her. Moving became more difficult, and soon, so did breathing.

                “ZOE! HELP ME! HELP! PLEASE STOP!”  Erin screamed with what breath she had at the towering, clueless blonde who was innocently scrolling through Twitter, occasionally peeking at LeShae’s bedroom door to see if Dash would show any signs of finishing up. When she didn’t, Zoe turned her attention back to her phone, and toes curling still against her shoe in slightly annoyance.

The pressure only increased further as Erin felt her rib cage threatening to collapse because a 20-something was subconsciously squeezing the life out of her between her normally petite and pedicured appendages. Painted as red as the blood Erin was sure was about to burst out of chest, the any other time someone would have called these powerful pillars of destruction delicate and cute, two adjectives that Erin would never use to describe any toes again, ever.

She felt faint.  With her supply of oxygen mostly cut off, and what little she could get failing to reach her brain efficiently, Erin gave up trying to scream, and for an umpteenth time in the last day, accepted death as the only release from this torment. Her eyes closed.

And as though the goddess herself had heard Erin’s admission of complete submission to her toes, Zoe relaxed her unwitting grip on Erin, and the shrunken woman breathed in a painful, heavy breath. The color returned to her tear-streaked cheeks, and she opened her eyes again. The dizziness had not yet subsided, but she could see again, the space between Zoe’s toes allowing light to flood between them, like sunlight washing over a dark valley.

She didn’t have time to appreciate it. Her body, now at it’s worst state yet, ached to rest, but her mind knew that it would not come until she was free from the wrath of Zoe’s playful, unaware antics. With a new, albeit temporary, lease on life, Erin pulled herself off of the wall of toe-flesh and swung her arm up to the next highest toe print. It was not unlike climbing the zipper of LeShae’s ankle boots, though Zoe’s toeprints were closer together, and had more give.

Her swollen shoulders and joints fought against her motives with every move she made, begging her to simply stop and rest. Escaping from this woman’s toe cleavage was less of an exercise of physical endurance, and more of an exercise in mental fortitude, mind over body.

And it was not as though Zoe made it any easier. She may not be squeezing her toes together now, but even the tiniest shift of her feet was enough to warrant Erin’s heart to beat heavier against her surely cracked rib cage. Humbling now more than ever, was still that this escapade was wholly unnoticed and unconsidered by the woman’s whose very toes Erin tried to escape from. This was not arduous, life-and-death struggle that Erin’s perspective made it seem.  This was a wounded bug at the feet of a goddess.

Finally deciding that standing around wasn’t going to make either of the women she was waiting for move any more quickly, Zoe slipped her foot back into her shoe and turned towards the couch.

Just as Erin began to find confidence in her eventual escape from this hellish climb, she felt a much more significant shift in the position of Zoe’s foot. She braced for impact, afraid that the toes were about to engage in a much more lethal round two of curling, but instead, upon looking around, saw the yawning cave of Zoe’s shoe ahead, growing closer as Zoe’s foot moved inside.

“No, no!” She more thought than said, the dark cavern quickly encompassing the whole of her world. Zoe’s toes wiggled gently, nudging their way into place, and had Erin not already had a strangle hold on the toe prints of the big toe, she would have surely tumbled back into those terrible depths. As the toes settled, Erin pulled her ragged body the last few inches to the top, rolled over a few times, and tumbled gently right into the cuticle of Zoe’s big toe, against a parking lot sized field of pedicured, cherry red toenail.

Just in time for Zoe’s first step.

The cuticle made for a surprisingly durable handhold. The darkness of Zoe’s shoe didn’t allow for much to be seen, but Erin could feel the toes shifting and settling to compensate for each step.  The gliding sensation was not unlike the one she’d had at LeShae’s feet, but Zoe was being less careful, she assumed, and Erin had a much better grip. That didn’t make the ride anything near pleasurable, but there was no chaotic tossing to and fro, and less worry for ending up crushed alive. She could barely make out the sight of the other, smaller toes following a similar rhythm, and the sound of the back of the shoe gently slapping at Zoe’s exposed heel was muffled by the foot itself.  Overall, each step was tolerable and manageable, and she just needed to wait until the foot slipped free of its shoe again.

As she approached the couch, Zoe paused for a moment, then shifted to move into the open kitchen, immediately behind the couch. Grabbing a clean glass and a carton of fruit juice, Zoe poured herself some, put away the carton, then moved back to the living room, glass of juice in hand. For a moment, she went to take a sip of the juice, but her eyes fell on the breath mints she’d placed on the table earlier. Shrugging and flippantly changing her mind about the juice for now, she placed the glass on a coaster among the other various contents of the purse LeShae had dumped onto the table. Then she grabbed the breath mints, tossing one casually into her mouth and closing the lid, dropping it back on the table afterwards. Finally, she pulled out her phone, sat down on the couch, and returned to scrolling through her Twitter while happily crunching away at her mint.

It seemed that Erin had yet another chance to relax that she could not afford to take. Stranded inside the shoe, atop this unaware millennial girl’s toes, Erin knew that to finally free herself of Zoe’s feet for good, she had to take the opportunity to move. Begrudgingly, she pushed herself to up to her hands and knees, the ceiling of this daunting cave of a shoe only a few yards above and began to crawl over the cuticle of Zoe’s big toe, only taking a moment to survey the expanse of toenail that she fortunately didn’t have to cross. She thought, for only a second, about what kind of a nightmare-inducing experience it would be to endure a pedicure from this perspective.

 Toenail clippers the size of airplane hangars, cutting through a toenail as thick as she was with each, a paint applicator with bristles taller than redwoods, thousands upon thousands of gallons of varnish, enough to drown in. Even if one were to survive, they would surely die when the paint dried, sealing them in place like a speck-sized ornament on the woman’s toes, fainting after inhaling the vapors in minutes, and dying within hours from suffocation or worse.

A chill ran down her spine, and it motivated her to keep moving. After crawling over the cuticle, she began to move along the top of Zoe’s toe toward the instep of her foot, praying to God that she could make it these last several hundred yards to escape this shoe. She reminded herself that this was her choice. She could have simply taken her chances in LeShae’s carpet, or obediently come to her when she’d asked.

Reaching the knuckle of the big toe, she pushed those regretful choices out of her mind, only to experience yet another tremor.

Zoe’s toes began to wiggle again, and she hoped that, for once, it was not a harbinger of terrible things in the near future. Her answer came rather quickly, and she recognized the sensation of Zoe’s foot moving. Her heart raced, was Zoe about to begin wiggling and scrunching her toes again? Was she about to start walking again?

Light blinded her, as Zoe slipped off her shoe, her slender foot angling downward for a moment to pull her toes out. Erin, unprepared, rolled back several yards, losing all progress as she grabbed ahold of the cuticle once again. Gripping it tightly, the wind whipped through her hair as the entire foot elevated, the air escaping her lungs and the gravitational force of moving so high into the air at such an intense rate threatened to expel the lack of contents from her stomach. Her unconventional air ride shifted in direction, and she went from vertical, to horizontal, and then upside down in mere seconds. Zoe’s foot was now vertical, with her toes pointed up, and seconds later, it all ended with a decisive ‘thud’ that caused Erin to lose most of her grip. She dug her fingers into the cuticle flesh and found the strength to pull her other hand up to grab ahold as well. Now dangling with both hands from the cuticle of Zoe’s big toenail, she got her first look around at the new environment.

Zoe had slipped off both of her shoes and kicked her feet up onto the coffee table, ankles crossed, leaving Erin on the top-most foot. Below her, the slightly pale surface of Zoe’s instep, the toes of the other foot gently resting against it, gently wriggling every few seconds.

All she had to do was slide down Zoe’s instep, avoid her other toes, and reach the table. From there, she would just wait until LeShae returned like she should have in the first place.

It felt like the first break she’d gotten all day. She may not want to submit to LeShae’s whim, but at least she would not be killed unwittingly. As grim a thought as that was, she’d, at this moment, would rather die because LeShae willed it, instead of at the feet of her clueless cousin. LeShae might have said she didn’t want to hurt her, but actions dictated otherwise.

Death by design over death in vain of survival. What a morose, disgusting choice.

And so, she began to climb. Using the same ridges of the cuticle and toeprints that she’d used to escape the valley of toe cleavage that had imprisoned her earlier, Erin clambered across the surface of Zoe’s big toe, pulling herself back, pulling herself over, and slipping down rather athletically to land directly in the space between Zoe’s toes again.  This time, however, the foot was vertical, allowing her to stand on the surface that had previously been a wall, and apprehensively take a break, while she sorted out a plan.

The view from here was astounding. She had an unrestricted view of Zoe’s body, her legs extending for miles across the space between the couch and the table. The bright red capris paralleled the sense of danger and warning that would come from attempting to cross them in any reasonable amount of time. Beyond them, Zoe wore a white tank top, tucked neatly into her pants, and a short denim jacket. Her face, failing to hide her sense of boredom, was gently freckled and framed by long blonde hair that tumbled gently onto her shoulders. Her lips were unpainted, she wore very little makeup, apart from some eyeliner and mascara.

Erin took a moment to examine her immediate surroundings as well, now that they were illuminated by the light of LeShae’s living room.

Zoe’s toes were a similar shade as the rest of her skin, slightly pale with a few normally unnoticeable freckles. They had a soft shape to them, if not evidenced by the pedicure, they were well taken care of.  Even from here, deep between the typically most unnoticed parts of a girl’s anatomy, there was very little evidence of dry or dead flesh. Very little dust, debris or lose sediment had gathered, and already had what little sweat from being in her shoes accumulated between her toes been reabsorbed or evaporated.

Her eyes closed. She needed to rest. Just for a second.

Her knees pulled up to her chest, and she leaned into the warm flesh against Zoe’s second toe, forgetting the severity of her situation for a moment to simply allow her body to recuperate, even if temporarily.

Mistakes were made.

The foot shifted violently, and, as usual, Erin was unprepared. She lost her place amongst Zoe’s toes, tumbling backward. She lost her purchase on Zoe’s flesh, and the falling sensation she’d experienced so many times returned.

As she fell, she wondered if this would be the final blow to her body that would kill her. The table below was made of glass, and there would be no recovering from that kind of an impact. It would be a quick death, and Erin would no longer be tortured at the hands and feet of these women. She watched the sole of Zoe’s foot fall by, regretting that that foot would be the last thing she saw before she died.

And no sooner did she have that thought did a cold embrace overtake her, and Erin lost consciousness.

Shortly afterward, consciousnesses returned to the shrunken girl, and she was floating on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

Wait, floating?

Glass walls surrounded her on all sides, and the water was a pale yellow and decidedly citrus-flavored. Instead of squelching onto the glass table like she expected, Erin had fallen into Zoe’s glass of fruit juice. Surrounding her, a veritable ocean of fruit juice. Her tattered shirt had floated off some distance during her unconsciousness, and Erin had no will to swim after it. The mercy she had been shown by fate was debatable, and the sense of a slow, painful death instead of a the quick, nearly painless one from a fatal impact began to creep back into her mind. Adrenaline from the cold rush surged through her veins, but she had not the will or actual energy to take advantage of it. She was now only regretfully awake, trapped in a glass, with the slender soles of Zoe’s feet dominating her immediate view. She pounded her fist against the surface of the lake she floated in angrily, time and time again. Some deity in the heavens wanted this, and when she got there, she would raise hell to see them punished.

“Ugh…DASH!” Zoe called out, growing more frustrated that Dash was taking her time in LeShae’s bathroom after being told to hurry. She received no answer and rolled her eyes into the back of the skull, sighing heavily.  She considered storming in there herself, but that would help very little if Dash was actually still on the toilet, and it was not something Zoe wanted to see. Instead, she grabbed LeShae’s TV remote and flipped over to Netflix.

As she was settling on a TV show to satiate her boredom until her cousin arrived, as if on cue, the doorknob turned and LeShae stepped inside, clearly frustrated at the lack-of phone in her hand. With a medium-small, one-bedroom apartment, she immediately noticed Zoe there, legs crossed up and heels up on the glass table.

“Feet.” LeShae spoken with a warning tone, and Zoe immediately dropped her bare feet back to the floor.

“Hey girl…sorry,” Came Zoe’s response, with only an ounce of plausible credibility in the apology. She grinned some, muting the TV. “What’s up?”

“I can’t find my fucking phone. I thought I left it at Starbucks, but…hey, wait.” Mid-sentence noticed that the breath mint container that she had intentionally left on the floor and open was now on the table and closed. Her heart skipped a bit. “Did you take one of my breath mints?”

“Yeah, you left the on the floor…I took one as a tax for cleaning up after you.” Zoe grinned. LeShae’s eyed widened.

“And…and you ate it already? With that juice?

“I didn’t drink any juice yet…something going on with the mints? Tasted fine to me…”

“Yes! No…! I just…You can’t come in to my apartment and take whatever you want, Zoe!”

“I eat your food all the time, and you eat mine, ‘Shae…what the hell is your problem all of a sudden?”

“Well, not anymore, I eat my food, you eat yours. Period!” LeShae scrambled over to the table and grabbed the box, inspecting it closely for any signs of a shrunken woman. There were none.

“What the hell, LeShae?!” Zoe stood, putting her shoes back on. “I don’t know what your issue is but call me when you’re not being a bitch.”

“Just leave, Zoe!”

“Fuck you too!” Zoe’s words had much less malice in them, and she seemed more hurt than angry. Shoving her phone in her pocket, she headed for the door. As she grabbed the handle, she considered telling LeShae about Dash still using her bathroom. …Nah. If LeShae was going to be a bitch, she could use a Dash of surprise in her life now and again. Huffing, Zoe stormed out and slammed the door.

Now, assuming she was alone, LeShae plopped down on the couch. Either Erin was still somewhere lost in her apartment, or she was digesting in Zoe’s stomach. Either way, she wasn’t where LeShae wanted her, and that was problematic for everyone. Especially…him.

“God fucking dammit.” LeShae swore, running her hands through her dark hair and trying not to panic.  She took a moment to look over the table but found no shrunken woman. “Erin…look, I don’t know if you’re still here or not. I hope you didn’t get eaten or stepped on by Zoe, but please, please, if you can hear me, get somewhere safe. When I find you, we’ll have a long talk. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I swear.” Sighing, she noticed the glass Zoe had left, still full of juice.  Reaching for it, she raised it to her lips.

“Alexa…unmute the TV.” She spoke to her voice-activated assistant, loud enough to be heard from across the room.

***

Erin had listened to the full discourse from her citrusy ocean of juice. She was a little too focused on her own thoughts to consider LeShae’s for more than a moment, but she did note that she seemed genuinely worried that Zoe had eaten her. Now, if she could get out of the glass, maybe getting LeShae’s help wouldn’t be the end of the world.

“LeShae! Help me! I’m in the juice!” She called out as LeShae finished her short monologue, hoping that she could garner the attention of the original giantess that had gotten her here. This, again, was the best chance she’d had since leaving Starbucks to get help, and she wouldn’t squander it.

Her heart began to flutter when LeShae took notice of the glass and reached for it. It was a retelling of the situation at Starbucks. She was mere inches and seconds from getting the attention she so desperately needed, but so insignificant that it may not have mattered. The glass lifted higher and higher, until LeShae’s face filled her view.

“Please LeShae, I’ll do whatever you say, I’ll be good, I won’t run away again! Please just see me!”

LeShae’s lips parted.

“LeShae! HELP!”

“Alexa…unmute the TV.” The words struck Erin’s ears with a force neither her ear drums or her heart could handle.  She felt an extreme pain from hear ear, and cried out in pain, wincing and turning away from the source of the impact, LeShae’s mouth. The words caused ripples in the juice Erin was stranded in, and they pushed her back the other end of the glass. When Erin opened her eyes again, a familiar, dreadful sight awaited her.

LeShae’s pink lips had parted fully, the edge of the cylindrical glass prison Erin was swimming in had come level with LeShae’s mouth. The glass was tilting gently toward the woman’s massive lips, and the dark gateway leading into the depths of the mouth and beyond had opened. Not only had LeShae not heard her, but she about to take a very generous swallow of the juice, and likely Erin along with it.

“LESHAE! PLEASE DON’T DRINK ME!” Being swallowed alive was perfectly in line with that fear of a slow, painful death by an unwitting giantess that Erin was trying to avoid. The last thing she wanted was to die in a pit of acid in the stomach of some woman who arguably wanted to see her suffer. Unlike with the incident at Starbucks, Erin was actively swimming in the drink being consumed, not on the lid or the lip of the cup or its owner, respectively. There was little to no chance of escaping without LeShae noticing her.

Kicking and screaming with no real consideration of efficient swimming techniques, Erin paddled weakly away from the current that was pushing her toward LeShae’s lips. Hoping for a moment that maybe LeShae was looking into the glass for some reason, she turned her head to check. Erin immediately regretted her choice to look back, LeShae’s lips now parted more than ever. Despite them likely only being open enough to allow in a healthy few gulps, for Erin, the mouth was a black chasm of no return, hued with the pink and red of LeShae’s tongue and gum line. The first quarter-mouthful had already swirled and pooled within the mouth around the tongue, and as the glass tipped further, it was obvious that there was no intent for this to be a light sip, LeShae was drinking enough juice to swallow her emotions right along with it. Unfortunately, Erin was every bit as much a part of the cause of the emotions LeShae was having, as she was apart of the juice she was drinking.

Above, the very tips of LeShae’s teeth, two brilliant white incisors, were visible, and only further exacerbated Erin’s anxiety of disappearing into the woman’s hungry mouth. She’d nearly ben fed to this goddesses’ slim, powerful belly once, and as the current pushed her closer and closer to her demise beyond those lips, and ultimately within the thirsty woman’s stomach, the sense of helplessness overtook her, as did the darkness of LeShae’s mouth.

LeShae’s lip towered over Erin like an archway over a grand canal in Venice, but unlike the floating city, Erin was helpless to resist the pull of the liquid she was floating in toward LeShae’s mouth.  She was never the strongest swimmer, and now, staring into the dark, hungry gullet of another woman’s throat, she regretted not taking what lessons she had learned more seriously.

The temperature of the juice that surrounded her was cold, but not freezing, and was nearly refreshing compared to the oppressive heat of the mouth ahead of her. Despite this being the third time being so dangerously close to one of LeShae’s massive orifices, the fear hadn’t become any less difficult to manage. The towering woman above her was petite by any other measure, her slim waist, tight stomach, and perky breasts provided an athletic, feminine figure beneath the reserved, fashionable clothing that she wore. The woman herself was a sprawling landscape of majestic hills and curves that any man or woman could have spent days exploring to realistically appreciate the intricacies of…and yet Erin was an unwitting captive, destined to explore the most intimate, internal workings of the deity that had been tormenting her all day. It felt almost ironic that in her pursuit to capture and torture Erin, LeShae had done so by accident, and now that lack of awareness was going to be fatal to her, and neither of the two would get what they wanted.

The citrusy, peachy, pineapple flavored ocean she floated in was the only pleasure provided to the shrunken girl floating in her rival’s beverage, it didn’t burn like the coffee would have earlier, and she imagined that she wasn’t at risk of being chewed alive by teeth the size of her house. Then again, Erin wasn’t sure that she would have preferred a slow, painful death being digested alive over a quick, nearly painless death between two molars. She didn’t want to imagine what the inside of LeShae’s stomach looked like, what it smelled like, or what would happen if she managed to survive the initial digestion process. Would she be conscious enough to experience it? Would she even consider trying to escape at that point? If she survived digestion but did not escape, there was still an endless path ahead, wandering the rest of the woman’s digestive tract. As small as she was, LeShae’s intestines would be miles of walking, days of wandering the endless depths of the cruel, clueless girl’s claustrophobic caverns, all the while, the woman above her carried about her business, probably annoyed that she couldn’t find the shrunken girl currently stranded in her gastrointestinal system, unable to escape or be saved by either of them.

But Erin refused to submit herself to that fate. She refused to be a victim of LeShae’s vicious game of tag, or more accurately, hide and seek, especially if LeShae’s gullet was the playground. Being shrunken by this towering titaness was one thing, but being swallowed alive and dying in her stomach like a helpless fleck of nothing was unacceptable. 

And so Erin began to swim harder.

The heat from LeShae’s mouth was punishing, unrelenting, and uncomfortable. Accompanied by the cold juice she swam against and the oppressive winds from LeShae’s massive lungs, the humid, sticky air that Erin was forced to inhale reminded her of how badly she did not want to be trapped behind her rival’s lips. The whole idea was a nightmare incarnate, and it was only reinforced and made into a reality when she turned to check her progress…or lack thereof.

A moment ago she’d been swimming almost in the middle of the glass, only in real danger if LeShae took more than a few heavy gulps. Now, due to her lack of any substantial ability to do more than splash citrus flavored juice, she had floated much closer to the clueless woman’s mouth, and the details of her maw had become much more clear. LeShae’s nose was no longer in view, her lips framed the entire horizon, beyond which held nothing but a dark red chasm of inescapable death. The contrast between those clean white teeth, the pitch black palette of LeShae’s throat, and the sharp reds and pinks of her tongue and gum line painted a noir landscape of glistening wet horror. 

A strand of saliva stretched from the roof of the woman’s mouth to somewhere on her tongue, beneath what Erin could see. It wiggled and shifted on the wind from LeShae’s breath, more capable of holding its own in the maw of the massive woman that Erin could ever hope to. She thought about her brief escapade into LeShae’s nose, and how the mucus that had caught her there was impossible to escape from, and she likely would have been trapped within LeShae’s cavernous nasal passageways for the rest of her life.

But that fate was not too dissimilar to the one she found herself careening helplessly towards now. Instead of being lost within LeShae's sinus cavities, she would be swallowed alive, with even less of a chance of escape. At least there was hope that she could have irritated LeShae’s nose enough to provoke a life-saving sneeze, or even simply climbed and crawled to safety and fallen out of her nostril. Being swallowed alive and trying to escape was an exercise in futility. She’d never studied human biology or anatomy very well, only enough to get out of High School. Now, her mind raced with every piece of knowledge she’d ever studied or stumbled upon to remember the acidic level of the digestive fluids in the typical human stomach. Now she wondered what the strength of peristalsis was, and if she could irritate the esophageal lining enough to make her thirsty captor cough or choke. Now she considered how dark the inside of LeShae’s stomach would actually be.

LeShae’s first audible swallow from her glass of abnormally organic fruit juice was enough to send a gentle rolling disturbance through the rest of the glass, causing Erin to disappear under the surface and come back up with a renewed fear of LeShae’s undeniable thirst. The sound of the woman swallowing hundreds of gallons of juice in an otherwise small mouthful, enough to drown Erin multiple times over, was horrifying. A wave of panic washed over Erin as she imagined disappearing into the darkness of LeShae’s gullet, and realizing that LeShae would never even realize what was happening broke the final straw. 

“LESHAE! DON’T DRINK ME! PLEASE DON’T SWALLOW ME!” Despite putting all of her might into the plea for help, it was tainted with a sobbing wail that showed how desperate and helpless Erin had truly become. An hour ago, she would have given anything to escape from the towering woman who did this to her. Now, she would rather be captured and used for whatever nefarious purposes LeShae had planned for her, if it meant not dying alone in the pit of her stomach, never to be seen again. Any other death would have sufficed.

Erin’s scream reverberated through the glass and carried through the handheld biome of the juice glass, then out into the wide world of giants. As it spilled out into the open air, it was enough to catch the ear of a raven-haired goddess, watching some mediocre Netflix show. It was enough to give her pause.

“Hm…?” LeShae’s eyebrows lifted, something had caught her attention. It was barely audible over the TV.

Erin’s heart stopped, she watched LeShae’s lips slowly settle against each other again, and the glass barely shifted away from her mouth. She could still feel the humid breath rustling around in the atmosphere, but the wind currents came to a stop for a moment. LeShae had heard her cries for help, now she just had to get her attention.

“LESHAE! LESHAE, LOOK AT ME! LOOK DOWN! I’M IN YOUR GLASS!”

She belted the words with all of her lungs, expelling every ounce of air in her lungs to propel her voice up to the woman above whose head had casually swung from right to left, as if looking for something. A few strands of her dark hair teasingly swayed above the glass, but strayed too far for Erin to grab ahold of. The unending restlessness of the juice she floated in was still sapping every ounce of strength from her tiny body just to keep her head above the surface. Even if she didn’t get swallowed, there was still a very real risk of drowning in a cup of tropical fruit juice.

“Please… please just see me…I don’t want to die like this…” Erin prayed to the lips of her tormentor, the only thing she could see. They still glistened, this time with the wetness of the juice she just swallowed, now entering her stomach, the very place Erin was trying to avoid.

The lips parted, and Erin held her breath.

“Ugh…fucking loud-ass neighbors.” LeShae muttered, turning her attention back to her show, and her glass to her lips. The words cut through Erin’s resolve with a devastating finality, and she had no other response but to let out a crying moan of fear and pain. She told her muscles to move, to propel her away from the mouth that was opening yet again, but they could only sway in the undercurrent of the tropical ocean. The glass began to tip much more violently, and LeShae’s casual sipping evolved into something more aggressive.

The tips of LeShae’s incisors could be made out from just beyond her lips, where they were previously hidden behind them for a more casual sipping motion. This time, the mouth had widened to allow a more voracious helping of the beverage to settle into her mouth. The yawning darkness of the oral chasm was towering and powerful, a monolith of LeShae’s girlish features.  There was no hope of sticking to her lips this time, if Erin came anywhere near that haunting, terrible orifice, she would never be heard from again.

As the glass tilted toward the young woman’s eager mouth, the once powerful river of juice had become a raging force of nature, carrying Erin violently towards LeShae’s open mouth faster than ever. Erin could only imagine that the glass had been turned nearly upright, when truly LeShae had only adjusted her wrist a bit more, and widened her lips just enough to get a true mouthful…now that Zoe was gone, LeShae didn’t care as much for politeness or presenting herself more ladylike… not that she ever put on such affairs with Zoe most of the time anyway. Something about being alone in her own home allowed her to shed that final layer of fucks-to-give. LeShae might have had a much different response if she’d known about the two other women in her home, one whose life was in imminent danger by LeShae’s most innocent of actions, the other praying to God that LeShae would find a reason to leave again.

LeShae took a more generous sip from her glass, and whipped out her phone to order lunch.

For Erin, the mouth had become too much to fully take in anymore, she was far too close at this point to see all of it without turning her head. The corners of the lips spanned the entire horizon now, and looking straight ahead, LeShae’s uvula was quietly dangling above, covered in the woman’s saliva, the only possible hope of escape from the doom that could be found beneath it. 

A moment later, in the time Erin could blink, the interior of the mouth was all she could see, with the tongue casually shifting and twisting along to guide the juice around to prepare for a sizable swallow. For a moment, Erin imagined she might be able to grab hold of a tastebud to endure the cataclysmic event of LeShae swallowing, but quickly realized that she hardly had the strength to swim, much less grapple soaking wet tastebuds and survive the tongue of a woman able to consume miles of pecan-encrusted caramel tart in a single bite…something Erin now had first-hand knowledge of.

Another blink, and darkness had taken over. Erin gave another pathetic whimper of defeat as she felt the current preparing to cascade into the maw. This was it…she was being ushered into a strange, terrifying new world beyond the lips of the most evil woman she’d ever met.

A final blank, and this time she felt the climate change blast her harder than ever. The pitch black orifice had a tease of light shining in from beyond the lips, with the teeth hovering above, and waiting below.

And then the lips settled in place behind her, trapping Erin within the mouth of the woman who was preparing to swallow her alive, as if she didn’t exist. For all intents and purposes, she didn’t exist as a person anymore. Just food for LeShae. Just part of another enjoyable mouthful to be washed away into the depths of her body forever.

There was a gentle peace for the next fleeting moments, where Erin fully accepted her situation,, somewhere within LeShae’s mouth, her lips closed, awaiting the violent turmoil of being swallowed. She looked around, but couldn’t make out her hands in front of her face. She could hear the tongue shifting below, slowly, gently, preparing to give Erin the fatal thrill ride into LeShae’s gullet. The motions it made caused the juice to splash and ripple against LeShae’s teeth and gums, and the echoes of those simple interactions could be heard all around her. It became a gentle symphony, accompanied by the sound of her warm breath rushing through the nasal passageways, uncomfortably nearby.

Through the overwhelming smell of citrus fruit, there was almost the deep, musky scent of coffee, still present in the air from hardly an hour ago, as well as a nutty smell, clearly a result of the last time Erin had gotten too close to something LeShae intended to satiate her taste for sweets with.

She wondered where it all went wrong, yet again. She’d never particularly enjoyed LeShae’s company, but she hadn’t been anything that could be described as homicidal. Then again…there had been multiple opportunities to get rid of Erin since she’d been shrunken, and each time, she’d only been tucked away or trapped somewhere uncomfortable, but not fatal. 

But it didn’t matter now. As serene as the depths of LeShae’s mouth had become in these fleeting few seconds, Erin couldn’t imagine…

The surface of the liquid was broken violently and without warning, the tongue beneath her swinging viciously into motion, as LeShae’s jaw, previously still open with lips pressed together, closed. Erin screamed as the tongue curled and lifted toward the roof of the mouth, and the jaw shifted to allow everything trapped within effortlessly float toward LeShae’s throat.

“No….no, LeShae, please don’t swallow me… please… please!”

Erin gave the best whimper she could muster as those powerful teeth closed and surrounded her, and the tongue ushered the shrunken girl toward the back of the young woman’s mouth. She kicked as hard as she could at the tongue as she collided with it, grabbing taste buds and digging her feet into the muscle, but finding no leverage or grip strength against the slick surface. Streams of sticky, saliva-infused juice covered both her and every surface she came into contact with, and her descent only quickened.

It was over. LeShae had won. The clueless, uncaring woman had shrunken her, beaten her, and was now sending her to a grim fate deep within the confines of her digestive tract. Erin would rather have died quickly between the teeth, or even drowned in the glass. Instead, LeShae’s gullet overtook her with a terrible, guttural noise that signified the beginning of the end. The final moments of Erin’s life had come upon her, descending helplessly into the depths of the woman she despised the most..all at the hands of a sip of juice. With another muted scream, Erin disappeared into LeShae’s throat, soon to become a permanent resident of the woman's petite stomach, lost inside her forever.

The thirsty, unaware woman herself had taken a moment to browse the delivery options and choose one, before letting a generous sip of the flavorful beverage sit on her tongue for a moment. She sighed heavily, frustrated that she’d likely lost Erin for good, meaning yet more weeks of research to find another like her…and less time to right the wrong she had committed against someone she cared about more than anyone. Placing the glass on the coffee table, LeShae swallowed her mouthful, juice and hairdresser alike, and turned toward her bedroom to deliver some bad news.

To be continued.